Partnership

“Complete blindness?” Bachir gaped at Alwen.

Terry had sent a message to Alice and the others and had escorted Alwen back to the ship, and she felt more than saw as Terry faded away and the Bosun came out the moment he set foot on the expansive and usually empty deck. He stood there and radiated waves of aggression and violence as a set of tired drunken steps approached the ship. She still couldn’t see, but the tangy metallic scent that tinged the air told her that they were covered in blood.

“They dead?” the bosun rumbled softly, a shiver had gone down her spine when she heard the menace and rage implicit in his words.

“Yes” Alice answered firmly.

“Bodies?”

“None to be found, Sir”

Mirth entered his frame “Den hos ‘off, ye smell o’ cowards blood”

He left down the passageway and Alice rushed up to engulf Alwen in a suspiciously sticky hug, and laughed as Alwen told Alice about how she got lost and ran into the Bosun.

The next day Allen’s head pounded, and her vision had only somewhat returned while doctor Bachir spent most of their morning interrogating her about last night’s adventure. Now she was trying to explain why she had lost vision.

“It has something to do with how alcohol interrupts the signals being sent by the optic nerves. And the way it inhibits my brain doesn’t help either.”

“That last part is something you and humans share, its part of alcohol’s allure. But a disturbance specifically centered in optic nerve is something new. Terran eyesight is effected by alcohol, but not to the point regular temporary blindness.” He mused “What can you tell me about your eyes?”

She thought for a moment, Terran eyes and Torweni worked in very similar ways, but accomplished the task differently from each other. “Tri-chromatic vision, with less cases of color blindness than Terrans. Slightly worse night vision than a humans, and similar pupil functions. The main difference is in our light filtration ability’s. Humans absorb any and all light, and simply shrink the range when necessary, we do the same but with one extra feature. Something in our eyes change to modulate distorted light which lets us see very clearly underwater, and our tear ducts release a viscous fluid to protect our eyes underwater.” She explained, drawing comparisons to human biology was a lot easier than comparing her features to all Terrans in general. She had learned from context that the word Terran referred to all sapient species from Earth, and not just humans.

“Why all the water-based adaptions?”

“Unlike humans whose ancestors left the trees for plains and became bipedal persistence hunters we left our trees for coastal scavenging. Our ancestors evolved in a time when there was much more land mass to support their populations, but the end of the third ice age flooded lots of the lowlands where our ancestors evolved. It slowly took away our forests and replaced them with lots of low coastal areas. We adapted to eating invertebrates and crustaceans, and its believed that the protein and enzymes we got from them allowed for us to begin evolving our brains. We got good at swimming and eventually lost our fur, and developed bipedal locomotion because it made us better swimmers without becoming true marine mammals like a lot of other species. Some Torweni races even have a slight webbing in between their fingers, if we hadn’t started sailing and fishing we may have become like your dolphins”

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“Or mermaids” he mumbled “How long can you hold your breath”

“Me, six to seven Terran minutes, but I think the world record is close to twenty.”

“Do you sweat.”

“Yes but not as efficiently as humans.”

“Why are you purple?”

“Camouflage, water absorbs red and yellow light naturally so a lot of people on Torwen tend to be orange, red, and pink. I’m from the far north, when our ancestors migrated that way we stopped relying on coastal gathering and instead found other food sources. So when bluer pigments started showing up they weren’t as susceptible to ocean predators like we were down south. In fact some people are born with total blue pigmentation, its considered very beautiful.”

“Hmm, that is fascinating, but doesn’t help us cure your drunken blindness. Please forgive this old bear, I was just curious.” He said softly as he turned to start rummaging through a drawer.

“Its fine, Alice and Limey made me explain chromosomal shifting last night, this is just basic grade school evolution”

“Yes I’ve heard about that, the very notion fascinates the researcher in me. Terran couples have to go through long and extensive treatments to achieve the same. And gender therapies have only recently been able to permanently alter a person’s chromosomes to better fit how they feel inside” He found whatever he was looking for and turned back to Alwen “This is a handheld MRI, this version is likely as accurate as the large machines you have on Torwen. I’m just going to get a quick scan to see what’s going on in your head.” He placed the cold probing end against her forehead and slowly made a complete circle around her skull. He then fiddled with a dial and placed it against her temples, presumably to get an accurate scan of her optic nerves.

“You can scan nerves with magnetic resonance?”

“Partially, the scanner applies a few other methods to give me a wider range of versatility” he finished up and plugged a cord into the scanner. Familiar looking scans of her brain filled the screen accompanied by a strange looking blown up cross section of her eyes. “Do you have experience with MRI scans?”

“Yes, though none of it is practical experience, just textbook examples.”

“Then you and I will need to figure out what we’re looking at, because I don’t know anything about Torweni neuroscience. A few sections of your brain appear familiar, but I don’t even recognize this one.” He said with a point.

“That’s our language center, it also handles decision making”

“A cross between the frontal lode and cerebral cortex, where is thought a motor control at then?”

“Right here”

He stared at the chart a little while longer. “Doctor Djani I would like to ask a favor; I promise I mean no disrespect by it”

“What?”

“I would like to make you a subject in my research, you’ll have full access to all the data, and I will likely need a lot of help from you throughout the process.”

“But, uh, why me?”

“You’re biology has the potential to change a lot of Terran medical science. Your physiology is very similar to humans, but the differences between you two could lead to a lot of major developments that go both ways. Like right now, I have a feeling we could develop a preventative medicine that prevents the blindness brought on by alcohol.” He explained, gesticulating with massive, clawed paws.

“How would it work, this study of yours?”

“Mostly it will boil down to you explaining your biology to me while I take lots of samples and tests while explaining to you how each device works. After that if I start to develop potential supplements you’ll have to be the gihnee pihg for. Nothing deadly though, and you can always say no.”

“Will I be able to perform my own tests?”

“Once I’m convinced you can safely operate the equipment, yes” he glanced back to the lab were strange apparatus and arcane looking machines stood, polished and gleaming.

Alwen thought about it, her original plan in life had been to work in medicine and surgery roles until she earned enough experience and seniority to start work on her own research. Her sister, Toray, had ruined that by restricting her ability to work as a real physician and allocating her to only the most basic surgeries. No one ever earned research grants like that. And now here she was on a pirate ship being offered to merge Terran medical science with the work of the goddess and pioneer new fields of medicine her people only ever imagined. Just the few things she had learned already was enough to earn her respect on Torwen.

“Fine, but any papers or patents you publish I want my name next to yours, I’ll do the same for anything I create as well. And nothing can be restricted from me.”

He grinned, exposing all his viscous teeth, “I’ll do you one better, any proceeds I earn of this research we’ll split sixty-forty, the larger share goes to me”

She smiled, after a month aboard she wasn’t worried about money. Union credit exchange was one of the first things to be negotiated, she was now sitting on a healthy sum of money when converted into shells. At an exchange rate of one union credit to nearly twenty shells she was pretty much set for life. But a new plan was forming in her head, a plan for after her time on a pirate ship. A plan that consisted of her buying lots of advanced lab equipment and setting up a research facility on Torwen, one under her control, not her family’s.

“Deal!” she said, and they shook hands.