Konrad, Reel

“Hold still, damn you,” the medic swore at him.

Konrad ignored the injunction, twisting and wincing under the man’s unsympathetic hands. The doctor’s fingers probed mercilessly at the gash in the back of his head, peeling scabbed-over hair out of the way. Konrad hadn’t even noticed the cut until he’d felt the warm trickle of blood down the back of his neck. He hadn’t realized how bad of shape his ribs were in either, and Reel had cracked at least three of them when she hit him. There might be more; it was hard to tell, since his entire left side was a purple, mottled bruise. The medic had prodded his way up and down each rib, asking him where it hurt worst. That seemed to Konrad a bit like asking which wave of the sea was wettest, but he’d found a few spots that did indeed hurt like hellfire when touched, as opposed to just aching dully. The base doctor had wrapped Konrad’s chest tight with strips of linen, and then moved on to the wound on his head. They were just now getting to him; their first priority had been to stabilize Reel.

“Ow!” Konrad protested as the doctor scrubbed at the wound. “Be gentle, you’ll tear it back open!”

“With any luck, yes.” The man had deep bags under his eyes and more than a day’s worth of stubble on his chin. “I need to clean it out, and some fresh bleeding will help that. Now quit fighting me.” He pushed Konrad firmly back down onto the cold metal stool. The tray full of glittering medical tools and white bandages on the table next to them rattled as the man grabbed a pair of forceps off it.

Konrad hunched his shoulders, flinching at the continued prodding and doing his best not to pull away. “How’s she doing?” he asked. The base’s whole medical team had been pulled in to do everything possible for Reel. Now, hours later, one had finally come to see him.

The man blew out a long breath before answering. “It’s hard to say.” He took up a fresh sponge and dabbed at the back of Konrad’s head, water trickling down his wrist onto Konrad’s back. “Her breathing is steady, and so is her heartbeat…If that’s even what we’re hearing when we listen to her chest.” Konrad more felt than saw the man shrug. “Aliens…Who can say?”

“But stable is probably good, right?” Konrad insisted, twisting in his seat. It pained his ribs to move, but he fought to catch the doctor’s eye. “Stable means she’s not getting worse.”

The doctor didn’t bother to meet his eye, pushing his shoulder to bring him back around. “I told you to hold still. Yes, stable is usually good…” He paused, turning to pick a long, curving needle up off the tray to his left. “This will need stitches. Don’t move, or you’ll look like you were sewn up by my baby sister,” he warned, threading the needle with catgut.

Konrad gritted his teeth, tensing before the needle had even touched him. “So why wouldn’t stable be good this time?” He jerked as the doctor touched him, expecting the stab of needle, but it was only his hands again, pinching.

“Well, she hasn’t woken up. For starters. Stable is one thing, but what we’d really like to see is improvement.” He drove the needle through Konrad’s scalp without warning, drawing a yelp of pain out of the scientist. “That thrashing…Looked like a seizure to me. But usually people wake right up after a seizure, unless there are more serious complications.”

Konrad breathed in short, quick gasps as the medic worked the needle back and forth, pulling the catgut thread through his tender skin. It felt like…It felt like the doctor was cutting him in slow motion, and his every instinct screamed for him to yank his head away. Each breath hurt like a kick in the ribs, and he found it hard to get enough air with the bandages around his chest. “Was someone able to get a wallet in her mouth?” he asked through gritted teeth. He thought he remembered hearing you were supposed to do that, to keep them from biting their own tongue or choking or something. Would that even apply to Reel’s people?

The doctor snorted into his hair. “Not much chance of that. The way she was kicking around, her biting her tongue was the least of our concerns. We did put her on oxygen when we finally got her up to the med bay and she’d calmed down. That seemed to help her color and breathing a bit, but we’re still only guessing.” He pulled hard, and Konrad whimpered as the catgut pulled taught, tugging at the edges of his scalp. “There.” Scissors snipped a final time behind him. “That should hold you. I’ll put a bandage over it; it’s just as well you didn’t have much hair back here to start with.”

Konrad ran a finger over the wound, wincing. He found a row of neat, even, knots, like little scabs sticking out of otherwise smooth skin. He felt an immediate, nearly irresistible urge to pick at them, but he thought that the doctor might object. “Can I see her?”

“Why not?” the medic growled, turning to pack away his tools. “Seems like everyone else has been through, gaping like a bunch of damn idiots at a zoo. Still,” he went on, and his voice softened. “I suppose you have more right than most. She’s down the hall, first room. I think von Braun is in there, and I imagine he’ll want to speak with you.”

He was indeed. Von Braun looked out of place, sitting in the spare metal camp chair someone had drug in for him. The room was otherwise sparsely furnished, with plain, unadorned white walls and a single metal-framed bed on which Reel lay. Von Braun rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, his back hunched. He stared intently at Reel’s rising and falling chest, as though he could will her awake. For her part, Reel showed no sign of consciousness. The oxygen mask fogged with her breath, deeper and steadier than Konrad’s own labored inhalations. Her face drooped slackly, her eyes closed, and the tip of her tail dangled limply off the end of the bed. Konrad frowned; someone had strapped her wrists and ankles to the sturdy metal frame of the bed with wide, thick leather restraints. Between that, and the empty walls of the room, it had more the air of a prison than a hospital.

“Why is she tied down?” he blurted out.

Von Braun started and turned to look at him. “Konrad! I was just about to go look for you. Please, grab a seat.”

He eyed the bare room; unless von Braun meant him to sit in his lap, he’d have to stay standing. “Sir? The cuffs?”

Von Braun sighed, massaging his temples. “She’s still thrashing occasionally, and one punch just about took you out. Better safe than sorry.”

Konrad rubbed at his own wrists, looking at the straps binding Reel. That made sense, he supposed...but she wasn’t a threat to anyone now, and it hadn’t been on purpose. He tried leaning against the doorframe to take some of the weight off his tired feet, but that made his ribs scream. Grimacing, he settled for shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Medically?” Von Braun laughed, without much humor. “No. Tell me what happened though. Walk me through the whole night. How’d you end up down there?”

Konrad hunched his shoulders. “I found her stargazing when I left the office. We got to talking about the implant and I took her down to the basement to show her the calculating machine.” He tensed, half expecting a reprimand.

“Stargazing,” Von Braun mused. “She’s spent her whole life in space, and she was stargazing?”

“She said they looked different from down here. And the moon too, she’d never thought about a moon having phases before.”

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Von Braun shook his head. “I suppose that’s an obvious thing for us, but maybe less so if you’ve never had a moon. What else did you talk about?”

Konrad shuffled his feet. “I tried asking about the implants…where they come from and how they work. She seemed reluctant to talk about it in detail, like always.” He nodded towards the prone, alien figure. “She did mention that her implant was her grandmother’s before hers.”

That raised von Braun’s eyebrows. “Really? Durable little piece of equipment, if that’s true. And that was when she had the seizure?”

“No, that didn’t happen until a little bit later. She was asking about the circuits, how they could be used to do math…I drew out a table for her to explain, and that was when…” he trailed off, searching for the right words and waving towards her. “All this happened.”

“Hrm…” Von Braun pursed his lips, considering. “Did she seem to get it?”

“Huh?”

“Did she seem to understand the binary logic,” he clarified. “Or was it new information for her?”

“Um…Both, I think. Something seemed to click right before the fit took her, but it was definitely new to her.”

“Stranger and stranger…” he murmured, running a hand through his thick hair. “You know what we never bothered to ask? Why they need us to make these implants for them.”

“Maybe…maybe they require special equipment that they don’t have on their ship?”

“No, if that was all they would just have explained it. Instead, they’ve asked us to design them from scratch. An impossible task of course, not one I imagine we can complete.” Konrad blinked at that. He worked to master his expression before von Braun could notice, as the other man went on. “You know what I think? I think the design is proprietary. How do you like that idea? Maybe we’re running afoul of some galactic copyright law.”

Konrad snorted a laugh, and von Braun grinned at him. “Funny, right? But it might actually be why, for all we know.” He sobered, the smile fading away as fast as it had come. “It just doesn’t fit together. Why send only one person? Especially one who seems to be prone to illness? What aren’t they telling us?”

A low moaning sound from Reel interrupted them. They fell silent, watching, as she thrashed in her restraints, pulling hard against them, her muscles bulging. The leather creaked and the bed rocked, but it held until she subsided again.

“See?” Von Braun gestured towards the bed. “Better than her hurting herself or someone else. We’ll take them off when she’s settled.”

Konrad was at something of a loss, still thinking about what von Braun had said before. It hadn’t occurred to him that Reel would be anything other than honest. “I don’t think they’ve lied to us, if that’s what you meant sir. Reel seems very forthright.”

Von Braun nodded. “Guileless, even. When she says she doesn’t know something, she really doesn’t. And the more questions we ask, the more suspicious the gaps in her knowledge become. Things that I would think would be basic for an engineer, no matter how alien.”

Konrad didn’t know what to say to that. “Maybe it’s a translation error, and she’s not actually an engineer? Sir, what did you mean earlier when you called the implants an ‘impossible task’?”

“Well, exactly that.” He glanced sidelong at Konrad, one eyebrow raised. “You didn’t seriously expect us to be able to build anything close to that in the time frame she was talking about?”

Konrad gaped at him. “Well…With the computer parts to work from we could…” But von Braun was shaking his head. “But then…What have I been working on it these past few weeks for?”

“We had to at least present the appearance of working on it; I’d have promised her anything to keep that ship here for study.” Von Braun’s eyes flicked back to Reel’s prone form. “You know what struck me about her from the very first?”

Konrad was still stuck on the implants, his mind struggling to catch up. Von Braun didn’t think he could figure it out. That stung, more than it probably should have. He’d known that Lusser didn’t think he could do it, but for von Braun not to trust him either... “What’s that, sir?” he answered automatically.

“You were right earlier when you called her forthright. Straight to the point, direct in her requests. None of the dancing around or haggling you’d expect with a deal of this magnitude.” He turned to look Konrad full in the face, blue eyes boring into him. “She just showed up, said what they wanted and what they were willing to offer. They didn’t even check to see if we could deliver on what we promised.”

That was all true, and it made Konrad’s stomach twist. They were missing something, or they’d assumed something that was wrong. He’d pictured the…What had Reel called herself? A Torellan? He’d imagined them as advanced, sophisticated people. You’d have to be, to cross the stars, right? But von Braun’s words had the ring of truth to them as he went on.

“What she reminds me of most,” the other man said, pushing himself up stiffly from his chair. “Is a child. A wide-eyed, naïve, and trusting child. And if that’s what they send to us, then what does that say about the group as a whole? What are we missing?”

…

Reel drifted in and out of consciousness, floating on a sea of pain. By the black, she hurt. Her head felt like someone had split it in two and then smacked the halves together over and over again. She was dimly aware that every muscle felt like she’d been moving heavy steel equipment by hand for a week.

She thought she heard voices talking, but the conversation made no sense. She struggled to understand the words, to put them together in a reasonable order. “Impossible task.” “Naïve.” “Missing.” “A child.” The voices blended and echoed; their speakers could have been anyone.

She’d been Stricken, hadn’t she? Yes, that was right. The memory wafted through the haze of her pain, replaying in her mind. She was with Konrad, in that subterranean room, looking over a vast array of mechanical parts and wires that she couldn’t make any sense of. What had he been trying to show her? She thought she remembered a table…

Her mind recoiled from the thought. No, no! Don’t think about it! Don’t even think about thinking about it! She’d never been stricken so fast, or so violently before. Always there were warnings. Always there were chances to turn back. Fear rolled through her, the dream taking on a nightmare cast. What if she’d run out of chances? What if the implant had decided she was too disobedient, and deserved no more warnings?

She wanted to thrash, but her limbs would not obey her. More fear, building to terror. What if the implant had broken her, killed her? Made her into a drooling idiot? That could happen, if you were bad enough. They’d always told her it could, though no one had ever seen it.

She thought she heard her father’s voice then, deep and gruff and a little afraid. “Reel, come in. Reel, answer me blast it, can you hear me?”

Sorry. She thought. I’ve been bad. I let you down. I’m a failure.

“Naïve. A child.”

“With the computer parts…”

“An impossible task.”

“Impossible.”

“Reel, I need you to answer me. I’m in trouble, and I need you to come get me. I can feel you hurting, but I need you to push through it.”

That was silly. He was back on the Old Bug. Still, she tried. She really tried, but her limbs wouldn’t work. A great weight lay across her chest, on her legs and arms, and her head just hurt so badly. What did it matter? This was all just a dream, anyway. What difference did it make if she couldn’t get up? She just needed to sleep for a while, and she’d be okay.

Sorry dad, she thought, dazed, the fog growing thicker, as heavy as if the Old Bug had landed on top of her. Just need to rest, and then I’ll make it up to you. I promise I’ll make you proud. Somehow. She couldn’t remember why it was so important that she get up, anyway.

“Reel!” her father’s voice pled, but she was already fading away again, spiraling back into the blissful insensibility of unconsciousness, like stardust being swept into a black hole.