Bitter Medicine
(English)
My rocky relationship with the Organic Authority was no secret.
Firsthand experience had told me that Org certified physicians were not necessarily incorruptible, despite the organization’s nearly universal reputation.
And yet, further experience had shown that my first exposure might have been the exception that proves the rule.
“What do you mean ‘you tricked a bioterrorist’? That’s insane!” Ingrid said.
I shrugged.
“What? It’s not that big of a deal. The auditor wanted to frame the Vorak for a bioweapon attack. We stopped him.”
“Is he telling the truth?” she asked, turning to Nemuleki. “Lying or not?”
“Not lying,” Nemuleki said.
“It seriously wasn’t as crazy as it sounds,” I insisted. “The Casti was an auditor: basically HR. An expert, he was not. Math says it probably would have failed even if he had somehow smuggled it outside.”
“These guys still sound real incompetent,” Ingrid said.
“I thought so too at the time,” I admitted. “But everyone makes mistakes, and time has shown that these guys make fewer mistakes than most.”
“The ones back on Hashtin already checked me out once,” she said. “They didn’t have much to say.”
“…Did you tell them about your heart?” I asked. “Cuz me and my crew helped arrange those Org visits; those were more like a GP check. The only specialists who got called in were immunology people for allergies.”
“Has that been a problem?” she asked.
I stared at her.
“Do you carry an epi pen?” I asked.
“No? I’m not allergic to anything.”
“Maybe not anything in Earth’s ecosystem, but almost everyone’s allergic to one thing or another from alien ecosystems,” I said. “Here, take one of mine just for the time being.”
“Epi pens are just adrenaline, right?” she asked, glancing at the label. “Epinephrine?”
“More or less, yeah. Oh wait, is that a problem with your heart?”
“Not sure,” she admitted. “Label just says ‘talk to your doctor if you have a heart condition’.”
“Well that’s what you’re here for,” I said.
Almost every city above a certain population had a dedicated Organic Authority office. Pudiligsto was no exception. Unlike the megacomplex back on Yawhere, this office was much more limited, dedicated to day-to-day operations rather than elaborate and intensive research facilities. Most cities incorporated the office into some other larger medical facility, usually a hospital or university. But a few of the more ecologically canted offices were attached to nature preserves or even zoos.
The morning’s tests had brought me, Ingrid, and Nemuleki to one of the former kind, a hospital still recovering from the hurricane’s flooding but mostly operational again.
Ingrid had balked at everything from the blood tests, to the x-rays, to the ‘interstitial-cellular-pulse-mapping’. But whinge and moan as she might, she did comply.
I hadn’t expected her to. Not completely.
When I’d confronted her face to face, she’d been too reticent at the prospect. I thought she was on the verge of ghosting us again.
Me and eight of my finest crewmates awaited in front of the hospital. Such a posse wasn’t really necessary as a welcoming committee, but they would have been essential to storm Cadrune’s estate in the event she didn’t show.
But a car dropped her off right in front of us, right on time.
No bodyguard though. Not that I would have accepted one’s presence, it was just a surprise that Cadrune didn’t try.
But since things were progressing smoothly instead of as expected, the rest of my posse broke to chase other assignments while Nemuleki followed Ingrid and me through the Org.
“Why does this place have such a good reputation?” Ingrid asked, peering at the bustle of aliens moving through the halls.
Most of them were Vorak, but this was a pretty big hospital with a pretty big Org office, and the hurricane had routed a lot of visiting aliens here for medical reasons.
Ingrid and I stood out like sore thumbs, but Nemuleki was just one of several Casti sprinkled among the crowds of Vorak. I even spied a pair of Farnata waiting to be called just like us.
“It’s because they’re consistent,” I said. “I’ve only read the organizational material in passing, but the original charter of the Org apparently places a huge amount of importance on timeliness, organization, and clear expectations.”
“Why?”
“Public trust,” I said. “Every government agency, corporate business, hell, even illegitimate networks like drug cartels, they all have one fundamental weakness: corrupt personnel. The Org is no exception, but a hundred years ago, they aggressively curtailed the problem before it could happen.”
“I remember they talked about bio-crimes when they visited on Hashtin,” Ingrid said. “I didn’t really understand the word then, but is that what you’re talking about?”
“Sorta,” I said. “The Org isn’t technically a government. They don’t hold territory, they don’t govern citizens, they’re not a nation. But they do make laws. Two types: internal and external ones. External laws are the ones you’ve heard of. That’s the bio-crimes they’ve outlined in treaties with planets and colonies. They work with anyone and everyone to make sure that life as we know it doesn’t find itself in any catastrophic situations.”
“Then internal ones are for themselves,” Ingrid followed. “What, like bylaws?”
“Yep. They’re internal regulations for how the Org operates. The short version? Do your job well, receive highly competitive industry pay as well as unbelievably good benefits. Use your position to smuggle contraband, produce illicit substances, skim money or resources? You’ll be prosecuted with extreme prejudice in an Org court.”
“That doesn’t seem like something nations or colonies would agree to,” Ingrid frowned. “Wouldn’t that require extraditing?”
“It’s one of the conditions of their treaties,” I explained. “If you take a job with the Org, you forgo certain rights to trial. When the Org prosecutes its employees, it’s more like a performance review where there might be a jail sentence attached. The Org punishes certain crimes even more heavily than nations would.”
“No jury?”
“For the important accusations, I’m sure there is,” I nodded. “But the basic idea is that the Org punishes corruption extremely sharply, provides near total transparency to its finances, and has invested heavily into exceptional employee screening and support processes.”
“What do you mean ‘screening and support’?” she asked.
“They don’t hire quickly,” I said. “Training takes months, minimum. And during that time, candidates are scrutinized exceptionally closely and subjected to everything from IQ tests to ethical dilemmas. Get this: I know for a fact that they have special hiring screening to detect when sociopaths apply for jobs.”
“Wow, really? They can just weed them out?”
“Nope. Being heartless monster isn’t actually a disqualifying factor,” I said. “The point of the screening is to identify how best to place people with low morality so they can’t do any damage.”
“You’re saying this place would hire Hannibal Lecter, and they somehow make fewer mistakes than average?”
“They would hire a sociopath and place them in a job with massive disincentives from abusing their position,” I explained. “The Org funded some pretty huge studies into fraud prevention back in the day—but get this, they don’t actually do any psychology.”
“You said ‘screening and support’. What is support if not psychology?”
“Ah. Yeah, they do do psychology. But not as part of the mission statement or anything. It’s not medical, more like human resources.”
“They don’t consider psychology and psychiatry…I don’t know…related in any way?” Ingrid chuckled.
“They do, but there’s a really funny competitive spirit between the two fields,” I said. “The Org is probably where they get along best, but Nerin has told me that the discourse between psychotherapy and psychopharmacology in alien circles is wildly intense.”
“Who’s Nerin?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Not the point—she’s Nai’s sister, a surgeon—the point is aliens have cool weird and even vitriolic distinctions that humans just haven’t made!” I grinned. “That’s cool!”
“Like the math wars?” Ingrid asked.
Nemuleki nodded, recognizing the phrase. “Yes, there’s a famous large and bloody Casti war that ultimately stems back to cultural preferences now considered petty, mainly what base-numeral should be used. Eight won. Ten lost.”
“Shocking, to me, that twelve wasn’t even in the running,” I joked.
Nemuleki glared. Was I making fun of the Casti equivalent of World War II? No, not quite. The Math War was a lot older. Maybe more like making fun of Europe for the Hundred Years’ War.
It took a moment, but she did soften.
“You’re a little high strung, aren’t you?” I asked.
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“…Maybe,” she conceded. “This planet would be bad enough, but this city in particular…”
“Not your [cup of tea?]”
Nemuleki simply clicked ‘yes’.
“Is the city’s reputation really that bad?” Ingrid asked innocently.
I gave her an incredulous scowl.
“A: yes. B: how would you not know better than me how corrupt this city is?”
“I don’t get out much. Sue me. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around your perspective. This city is Mos Eisly, but the Organic Authority isn’t the Empire? At the end of the day, isn’t this thing a sprawling multi-billion dollar company that dwarfs the size of any corporation back home?” Ingrid said. “How is this not the most corrupt thing ever, just on size alone?”
“Transparent finances,” I reminded her. “The Organic Authority is the largest non-profit in the universe, and they’re extremely public with their money. There’s audits all the time, both from inside and out. I think I even read about some pre-finance Casti organizing an Org audit for a final project in their version of high school—Nem, that sound familiar to you?”
“What? I’m only getting about every fifth word in English.”
“Was it you or Tasser that told me about those Casti in secondary education? The money auditors junior something…”
“Oh yeah. Fourteen Casit on Muriego put together a probe into the local Org’s payroll verification. They even found a few hundred-thousand gross that went missing in a programming error,” she mused.
“Did that error send anyone to jail?” Ingrid asked skeptically.
“Doubtful,” Nemuleki said. “The Org comes down hard on people who break the rules, but they also know that mistakes happen and are necessary for growth. If the money was being intentionally siphoned, they probably would have laid down some punishments, but I don’t remember that being the case.”
“But someone could have been sent to jail just based on some work a couple high schoolers did?”
“More like their work would have caused investigations from other, more qualified groups, but if the results held up? Why not? Kids can be right,” Nemuleki shrugged.
Ingrid wasn’t thrilled with that answer, and she put her skepticism of the whole affair on display just like she had during all the testing. But like before, her resistance was strictly verbal.
I would have liked to spend more of the conversation trying to ask Ingrid about her illness, but I wanted to go easy on her. She wasn’t going to like what I needed to talk about after the medicine, and it was going to be a lot of pressure on her.
But not nearly as much as the medical results.
* ····
“You understand that all of this data is completely without context,” the physician said. “We can offer opinions with as much information as we can, but…”
I held up my hand.
“I understand,” I said.
“Of course you understand: you’re…” the Vorak physician waved an overwhelmed hand at me.
“She is the patient. She’s the one who needs to understand.”
“I do—I do,” Ingrid said. Slow to switch languages. “You’re making the best guesses you can, but ultimately? I’m an alien. Guesses are the best anyone can do right now.”
The physician nodded and presented the results of the morning’s scans.
“I need to warn you. It would be best if you…tempered expectations. These results are far from conclusive,” the physician said. “Your transplanted heart seems to be healing well. The scar tissue is pronounced, but we can’t be sure exactly what the implications of that are.
“In Vorak, it would be an excellent sign…a hundred years ago. Modern bio-grafting techniques don’t leave these kinds of markings…but again. Human. Vorak. We can’t make assumptions. I would say that your provided vital data is...not promising. Your blood pressure and oxygen saturation have declined over the last year without any other obvious cause. Those could be precursors to organ failure.”
I frowned. Provided data?
“But you can’t know for sure?” Ingrid asked.
The rak shook their head.
“We have Human baselines to compare to, and some figures are elevated, but without a proper education in Human medicine, I can’t speak more definitively,” they said.
Well…she was right about that.
“Is there a treatment you’d recommend?” I asked. “If her heart is failing…what can we do?”
I almost missed the Vorak’s dread. Psionics picked up a flash of emotion from the alien. This was the part of the conversation they’d been most anxious for.
“My first recommendation would be to move to Nakrumum,” the doctor said simply. “Barring that? At least move to Thamunekiad.”
“The gravity?” I asked.
The rak nodded.
“Kraknor’s gravity is heavier than your homeworld’s. The health consequences of long term occupation are…manageable yet complicated, even under normal circumstances, but with your transplanted heart, those risk factors are magnified severalfold.”
Ingrid glanced at me.
“…I don’t want to leave this place,” she admitted. “I know you don’t like Cadrune, but they and their people have been good to me. I care about—”
She trailed off. Just choked up?
“Why Nakrumum?” she asked, forcing her attention back. “If gravity is that much stress on my heart, why not just live on a starship?”
“Living in zero-G has even more health complications,” I explained. “Nakrumum is the homeworld with the lightest gravity: around 0.7G. It would be a happy medium. Less gravity to strain your heart, but still enough to help moderate all your intra-cellular processes.”
“My what?” she asked.
“Intra-cellular—Krebs Cycle,” I tried. “Freshman bio? A bunch of body chemistry depends on at least some semblance of ‘up’ and ‘down’. Plus your blood pressure can get weird because parts of your body start to puff up if you’re living weightless for a long time.”
“You seem to get by,” she noted.
“We don’t live weightless,” I explained. “The Flotilla is either under thrust-gravity or the artificial stuff more than ninety-percent of the time. For pretty much all the reasons these guys are saying.”
“Would moving to another planet actually help me?” she asked the doctor. “Or would I just be staving off the inevitable.”
“Again, all I have are guesses, but given your already slow rate of decline, a change of environment could extend your life expectancy by more than a year. Possibly more.”
“How long…” she started, but Ingrid gave up on the sentence halfway through.
“How long is she looking at in her current situation?” I asked instead.
“I could only speculate,” the Vorak said slowly. “If her decline stays linear, she could have a year. But in Vorak and Farnata, similar figures would indicate an acceleration in her deterioration.”
“Months?” I asked.
“Worst case scenario could be…six weeks? Sorry I can’t be more specific.” the doctor said. “If you need time to parse your prognosis, I can go update your file. We don’t need to schedule follow-up immediately.”
The doctor left us to mull the bad news ourselves, and even Nemuleki gave us some space in the room. Ingrid however…
I couldn’t believe the look on her face.
She wasn’t interested.
Her eyes were somber, but unsurprised. Pained, but unfazed.
“See?” she said simply.
“See what?” I asked. “Let’s get you the hell off-planet.”
“What for?”
I blinked.
“What for? How about the death sentence you’re—”
“Old news,” she said. “I was dying before I got abducted. Sorry if this isn’t what you had in mind, but I’m not keen on getting on the pity-train and dragging things out.”
“Going off planet could give you another year,” I said. “Trust me, we can get a lot done in a year. Casti medicine is epic. If we put you in front of their best minds, I bet they could figure it out a way to save your life in six months.”
She just laughed.
“You can’t guarantee that,” she said. “I’ve been through desperation before. I’m not interested in false hope.”
“Are you sure? Because from where I’m sitting right now, it seems like you might not be interested in hope at all.”
“…Maybe I’m not,” she said. “You can try whatever you want here. Point is, I’m not leaving.”
I was actually stunned silent. Could I even remember the last time that happened?
“N-no,” I blurted out. “You—he. I mean, you…”
My brain couldn’t put the right words together. The only thing that kept any part of my head screwed on straight was Nemuleki being just as shocked as I was.
“We don’t know each other well, but that seems possibly suicidal,” she said gingerly.
Ingrid shot my friend a withering look that said, ‘I forgot about you, but butt out’.
“You can’t just give up,” I said, at least forming a cogent sentence.
“I appreciate that you’re trying to be encouraging,” Ingrid said, “but right now I’m not really interested in a debate on the merits of a life of suffering.”
She was so cavalier about dying. How? It didn’t compute for me. Intellectually, I knew people committed suicide. I knew people could give up on life. But…not people like Ingrid. She wasn’t despondent. She had things she liked doing.
“I don’t…why?”
It was all I could ask.
“I already said why,” she said. “…I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense to you.”
It sure didn’t.
I was at a loss for words, and she took it as a cue to move on. She got to her feet and headed for the door. Dying, no big deal. Appointment over. Let’s go home.
As she exited the room, I saw she’d forgotten the paper readout of her lab results. The doctor had left us a copy to peruse.
Before I could think better of it, I tossed it to Nemuleki.
Copying medical records like this might be illegal, but I wasn’t sure I cared right now.
Nemuleki hung back, out of sight and out of mind for Ingrid, thumbing through the pages while I chased after Ingrid.
I caught up to her sending a psionic ping, presumably for whoever her ride was.
“You’re basically the reason we came to this planet,” I tried. “Do you expect us to go back to your friends on Hashtin’s moons and just go ‘sorry, we tried, but she turned us down’. Seriously?”
“I…I don’t know what you should tell them,” she said honestly. “I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live the way you have in mind.”
“I brought a lot of people here trying to save your life,” I said. “I don’t think I’m alone when I say; we’re not giving up.”
“But you’ve already failed,” Ingrid said. “You can’t save my life.”
“Fuck off…” I whispered. I barely even realized the words were out of my mouth.
But I didn’t regret saying it.
“Fuck that,” I repeated.
“Why do you care?” Ingrid said. An edge crept into her voice, on the verge of real anger.
“Because I’m the only one still alive from my A-ship,” I said. “I couldn’t save any of them, so you’re downright delusional if you think I’m just going to sit back and watch more humans die. I don’t care if you have a problem with it, because you don’t get to give up that easily!”
“Easily?” Ingrid hissed.
It looked like she was about to spit some venom of her own, but she lost her stomach for it. Or she thought better of it. It was impossible to know why, but her brow uncreased, and she let out a sigh.
“It’s not easy,” she said. “I don’t want us to be enemies. I don’t even know what that would look like. But…I don’t want the things you all do. Besides, six weeks? Turns out, even worst case scenario, I’ve got more time than I thought. Mac and Mav told me about that abductee’s corpse you’re looking for. If you want, I can help with that? I know this city a lot better than you do. Or. maybe…I don’t know, maybe I can take some of your young kids flying sometime. Just because we’re at odds doesn’t mean we can’t…”
“Can’t what? Stay in contact?” I said. “If I push this, are you just going to ghost us again?”
“That’s…fair. I’ll make sure I’ve got a psi-channel open. Okay?”
“Fine,” I said. “But do me a favor? Don’t blab anything of ours to Cadrune. They might have helped you, but I don’t trust anyone in that income bracket.”
Ingrid nodded, drifting away when the doctor found us again and she had to rehash everything she’d said to me.
I didn’t like how loud we’d gotten. More than a couple eyes had been staring at the strange aliens even before we raised our voices.
Nemuleki emerged from the private room quietly.
Without so much as a word, she passed me a psionic copy of all the day’s medical tests.
‘Blood pressure—annual decline; 10%’, ‘Blood acidity: 14 ppm*’, ‘immune activity: +14%*’, ‘neuro-synaptic decline: N/A’, ‘gastric culture stability: -2% (N/A?)’, ‘exotic particle count: N/A*’, ‘meta-microbe concentration: -4%’.
It was dense medical data, but Nerin and Dyn both had given me a crash course in basic medicine. At least enough to recognize terms.
Most of the page was in percentages, relative measurements rather than strict measurements. Comparing states of her body over time rather than against any known standards. The few numbers in units rather than percentages were all on stats too medically advanced for someone like me.
There was even one category of tests all about hormone levels where every field was filled in with a Tarassin figure of speech that translated to ‘how should we know?’
Even advanced alien medicine couldn’t magically puzzle out the labyrinth that was human hormones, at least not yet.
Half of the sheet was covered in superscripted triangles—the Vorak equivalent of an asterisk. Dozens of footnotes providing caveats about the murky Human medical data. I captured every last stat and figure, beaming it straight to Jordan via superlocator pearl.
“So what now?” Nemuleki asked me.
“Depends,” I said, “when your unit was on Archo, what kind of surveillance did you guys get up to?”
“We tracked Railgun for three weeks and stayed invisible until the last two days,” she said. “I think I can handle whatever you have in mind.”
“Good, because Ingrid just offered to help out with our corpse hunt. And whether she knows it or not, there’s a coinflip’s chance she knows one of the people directly responsible for it.”