Ship Who Searched Read online

  “Well, Tia,” said the AI’s voice—changed to that of the “doctor.” “What brings you here?”

  “My toes feel like they’re asleep,” she said dutifully. “They kind of tingle.”

  “Is that all?” the “doctor” asked, after a moment for the AI to access his library of symptoms. “Are they colder than normal? Put your hand on the hand-plate, and your foot on the foot-plate, Tia.”

  She obeyed, feeling very like a contortionist.

  “Well, the circulation seems to be fine,” the “doctor” said, after the AI had a chance to read temperature and blood pressure, both of which appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. “Have you any other symptoms?”

  “No,” she replied. “Not really.” The “doctor” froze for a moment, as the AI analyzed all the other readings it had taken from her during the past few days—what she’d eaten and how much, what she’d done, her sleep-patterns.

  The “doctor” unfroze. “Sometimes when children start growing very fast, they get odd sensations in their bodies,” the AI said. “A long time ago, those were called ‘growing pains.’ Now we know it’s because sometimes different kinds of tissue grow at different rates. I think that’s probably what your problem is, Tia, and I don’t think you need to worry about it. I’ll prescribe some vitamin supplements for you, and in a few days you should be just fine.”

  “Thank you,” she said politely, and made her escape, relieved to have gotten off so lightly.

  And in a few days, the pins-and-needles sensation did go away, and she thought no more about it. Thought no more, that is, until she went outside to her new “dig” and did something she hadn’t done in a year—she fell down. Well, she didn’t exactly fall; she thought she’d sidestepped a big rock, but she hadn’t. She rammed her toes right into it and went heavily to her knees.

  The suit was intact, she discovered to her relief—and she was quite ready to get up and keep going, until she realized that her foot didn’t hurt.

  And it should have, if she’d rammed it against the outcropping hard enough to throw her to the ground.

  So instead of going on, she went back to the dome and peeled off suit and shoe and sock—and found her foot was completely numb, but black-and-blue where she had slammed it into the unyielding stone.

  When she prodded it experimentally, she discovered that her whole foot was numb, from the toes back to the arch. She peeled off her other shoe and sock, and found that her left foot was as numb as her right.

  “Decom it,” she muttered. This surely meant another check-in with the medic.

  Once again she climbed into the claustrophobic little closet at the back of the dome and called up the “doctor.”

  “Still got pins-and-needles, Tia?” he said cheerfully, as she wriggled on the hard seat.

  “No,” she replied, “But I’ve mashed my foot something awful. It’s all black-and-blue.”

  “Put it on the foot-plate, and I’ll scan it,” the “doctor” replied. “I promise, it won’t hurt a bit.”

  Of course it won’t, it doesn’t hurt now, she thought resentfully, but did as she was told.

  “Well, no bones broken, but you certainly did bruise it!” the “doctor” said after a moment. Then he added archly, “What were you doing, kicking the tutor?”

  “No,” she muttered. She really hated it when the AI program made it get patronizing. “I stubbed it on a rock, outside.”

  “Does it hurt?” the “doctor” continued, oblivious to her resentment.

  “No,” she said shortly. “It’s all numb.”

  “Well, if it does, I’ve authorized your bathroom to give you some pills,” the “doctor” said with cloying cheer. “Just go right ahead and take them if you need them—you know how to get them.”

  The screen shut down before she had a chance to say anything else. I guess it isn’t anything to worry about, she decided. The AI would have said something otherwise. It’ll probably go away.

  But it didn’t go away, although the bruises healed. Before long she had other bruises, and the numbness of her feet extended to her ankles. But she told herself that the AI had said it would go away, eventually—and anyway, this wasn’t so bad, at least when she mashed herself it didn’t hurt.

  She continued to play at her own little excavation, the new one—which she had decided was a grave-site. The primitives burned their dead though, and only buried the ashes with their flint-replicas of the sky-gods’ wonderful things—hoping that the dearly departed would be reincarnated as sky-gods and return in wealth and triumph. . . .

  It wasn’t as much fun though, without Mum and Dad to talk to; and she was getting kind of tired of the way she kept tripping and falling over the uneven ground at the new “site.” She hadn’t damaged her new suit yet, but there were sharp rocks that could rip holes even in the tough suit fabric—and if her suit was torn, there would go the promised Family Day.

  So, finally, she gave up on it and spent her afternoons inside.

  A few nights later, Pota peeked in her room to see if she was still awake.

  “I wanted you to know we were still flesh-and-blood and not holos, pumpkin,” her mum said, sitting down on the side of her bed. “How are your excavations coming?”

  Tia shook her head. “I kept tripping on things, and I didn’t want to tear my suit,” she explained. “I think that the Flint People must have put a curse on their grave-site. I don’t think I should dig there anymore.”

  Pota chuckled, hugged her, and said, “That could very well be, dear. It never pays to underestimate the power of religion. When the others arrive we’ll research their religion and take the curse off, all right?”

  “Okay,” she replied. She wondered for a moment if she should mention her feet—

  But Pota kissed her and whisked out the door before she could make up her mind.

  Nothing more happened for several days, and she got used to having numb feet. If she was careful to watch where she stepped, and careful never to go barefoot, there really wasn’t anything to worry about. And the AI had said it was something that happened to other children.

  Besides, now Mum and Dad were really finding important things. In a quick breakfast-holo, a tired but excited Braddon said that what they were uncovering now might mean a whole lot more than just a promotion. It might mean the establishment of a fieldwide reputation.

  Just what that meant, exactly, Tia wasn’t certain—but there was no doubt that it must be important or Braddon wouldn’t have been so excited about it. So she decided that whatever was wrong with her could wait. It wouldn’t be long now, and once Mum and Dad weren’t involved in this day-and-night frenzy of activity, she could explain everything and they would see to it that the medics gave her the right shot or whatever it was that she needed.

  The next morning when she woke up, her fingers were tingling.

  Tia sighed and took her place inside the medic booth. This was getting very tiresome.

  The AI ran her through the standard questions, which she answered as she had before. “So now you have that same tingling in your hands as you did in your feet, is that right?” the “doctor” asked.

  “That’s right,” she said shortly.

  “The same tingling that went away?” the “doctor” persisted.

  “Yes,” she replied. Should I say something about how it doesn’t tingle anymore, about how now it’s numb? But the AI was continuing.

  “Tia, I can’t really find anything wrong with you,” it said. “Your circulation is fine, you don’t have a fever, your appetite and weight are fine, you’re sleeping right. But you do seem to have gotten very accident prone lately.” The “doctor” took on a look of concern covering impatience. “Tia, I know that your parents are very busy right now, and they don’t have time to talk to you or play with you. Is that what’s really wrong? Are you angry with your parents for leaving you alone so much? Would you like to talk to a Counselor?”

  “No!” she snapped. The idea! The st
upid AI actually thought she was making this up to get attention!

  “Well, you simply don’t have any other symptoms,” the “doctor” said, none too gently. “This hasn’t got to the point where I’d have to insist that you talk to a Counselor, but really, without anything else to go on, I can’t suggest anything else except that this is a phase you’ll grow out of.”

  “This hasn’t got to the point where I’d have to insist that you talk to a Counselor.” Those were dangerous words. The AI’s “Counselor” mode was only good for so much—and every single thing she said and did would be recorded the moment that she started “Counseling.” Then all the Psychs back at the Institute would be sent the recordings via compressed-mode databurst—and they’d be all over them, looking for something wrong with her that needed Psyching. And if they found anything, anything at all, Mum and Dad would get orders from the Board of Mental Health that they couldn’t ignore, and she’d be shipped back to a school on the next courier run.

  Oh no. You don’t catch me that easy.

  “You’re right,” she said carefully. “But Mum and Dad trust me to tell you everything that’s wrong, so I am.”

  “All right then.” The “doctor’s” face lost that stern look. “So long as you’re just being conscientious. Keep taking those vitamin supplements, Tia, and everything will be fine.”

  But everything wasn’t fine. Within days, the tingling had stopped, to be replaced by numbness. Just like her feet. She began having trouble holding things, and her lessons took twice as long now, since she couldn’t touch-type anymore and had to watch where her fingers went.

  She completely gave up on doing anything that required a lot of manual dexterity. Instead, she watched a lot of holos, even boring ones, and played a great deal of holo-chess. She read a lot too, from the screen, so that she could give one-key page-turning commands rather than trying to turn paper pages herself. The numbness stopped at her wrists, and for a few days she was so busy getting used to doing things without feeling her hands, that she didn’t notice that the numbness in her legs had spread from her ankles to her knees. . . .

  Now she was afraid to go to the AI “doctor” program, knowing that it would put her in for Counseling. She tried looking things up herself in the database, but knew that she was going to have to be very sneaky to avoid triggering flags in the AI. As the numbness stopped at the knees, then began to spread up her arms, she kept telling herself that it wouldn’t, couldn’t be much longer now. Soon Mum and Dad would be done, and they would know she wasn’t making this up to get attention. Soon she would be able to tell them herself, and they’d make the stupid medic work right. Soon.

  She woke up, as usual, to hands and feet that acted like wooden blocks at the ends of her limbs. She got a shower—easy enough, since the controls were pushbutton, then struggled into her clothing by wriggling and using teeth and fingers that didn’t really want to move. She didn’t bother too much with hair and teeth, it was just too hard. Shoving her feet into slippers, since she hadn’t been able to tie her shoes for the past couple of days, she stumped out into the main room of the dome—

  Only to find Pota and Braddon waiting there for her, smiling over their coffee.

  “Surprise!” Pota said cheerfully. “We’ve done just about everything we can on our own, and we zipped the findings off to the Institute last night. Now things can get back to normal!”

  “Oh Mum!” She couldn’t help herself, she was so overwhelmed by relief and joy that she started to run across the room to fling herself into their arms—

  Started to. Halfway there, she tripped, as usual, and went flying through the air, crashing into the table and spilling the hot coffee all over her arms and legs.

  They picked her up, as she babbled apologies about her clumsiness. She didn’t even notice what the coffee had done to her, didn’t even think about it until her parents’ expressions of horror alerted her to the fact that there were burns and blisters already rising on her lower arms.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she said, dazedly, without thinking, just saying the first thing that came into her mind. “It’s okay, really, I’ve been kind of numb for a while so it doesn’t hurt, honest—”

  Pota and Braddon both froze. Something about their expressions startled her into silence.

  “You don’t feel anything?” Pota said, carefully. “No pain, nothing at all?”

  She shook her head. “My hands and feet were tingling for a while, and then they stopped and went numb. I thought if I just waited you could take care of it when you weren’t so busy—”

  They wouldn’t let her say anything else. Within moments they had established through careful prodding and tests with the end of a sharp probe that the numb area now ended at mid-thigh and mid-shoulder.

  “How long has this been going on?” Braddon asked, while Pota flew to the AI console to call up the medical program the adults used.

  “Oh, a few weeks,” she said vaguely. “Socrates said it wasn’t anything, that I’d grow out of it. Then he acted like I was making it up, and I didn’t want him to get the Psychs on me. So I figured I would. . . .”

  Pota returned at that moment, her mouth set in a grim line. “You are going straight to bed, pumpkin,” she said, with what Tia could tell was forced lightness. “Socrates thinks you have pinched nerves; possibly a spinal defect that he can’t scan for. So you are going to bed, and we are calling for a courier to come get you. All right?”

  Braddon and Pota exchanged one of those looks, the kind Tia couldn’t read, and Tia’s heart sank. “Okay,” she sighed with resignation. “I didn’t mean to be such a bother, honest, I didn’t—”

  Braddon scooped her up in his arms and carried her off to her room. “Don’t even think that you’re being a bother,” he said fiercely. “We love you, pumpkin. And we’re going to see that you get better as quickly as we can.”

  He tucked her into bed, with Ted beside her, and called up a holo from the almost-forbidden collection. “Here,” he said, kissing her tenderly. “Your Mum is going to be in here in a minute to put something on those burns. Then we’re going to spend all our time making you the most disgustingly spoiled little brat in known space! What you have to do is lie there and think really hard about getting better. Is it a deal?”

  “Sure, Dad,” she replied, managing to find a grin for him somewhere. “It’s a deal.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Because Tia was in no danger of dying—and because there was no craft available to come fetch her capable of Singularity Drive—the AI-drone that had been sent to take her to a Central Worlds hospital took two more weeks to arrive. Two more long, interminable weeks, during which the faces of her Mum and Dad grew drawn and frightened—and in which her condition not only did not improve, it deteriorated.

  By the end of that two weeks, she was in much worse shape; she had not only lost all feeling in her limbs, she had lost use of them as well. The clumsiness that had begun when she had trouble with buttons and zippers had turned into paralysis. If she hadn’t felt the need to keep her parents’ spirits up, she’d have cried. She couldn’t even hold Ted anymore.

  She joked about it to her Mum, pretending that she had always wanted to be waited on hand and foot. She had to joke about it; although she was terrified, the look of fear in her parents’ eyes drove her own terrors away. She was determined, absolutely determined, not to let them know how frightened she was. They were already scared enough—if she lost her courage, they might panic.

  The time crawled by, as she watched holo after holo and played endless games of chess against Braddon, and kept telling herself that once she got to the hospital everything would be fine. Of course it would be fine. There wasn’t anything that a Central Worlds hospital couldn’t cure. Everyone knew that! Only congenital defects couldn’t be cured. But she had been fine, right up until the day this started. It was probably something stupid.

  “Socrates says it has to be pinched nerves,” Pota repeated, for the hundredth time, th
e day the ship was due. “Once they get you to the hospital, you’ll have to be really brave, pumpkin. They’re probably going to have to operate on you, and it’s probably going to take several months before you’re back to normal—”

  She brushed Tia’s hair and tied it in back in a neat tail, the way Tia liked it. “I won’t be able to do any lessons, then, will I?” she asked, mostly to keep her mother’s mind busy with something trivial. Mum doesn’t handle reality and real-time very well . . . Dad doesn’t either. “They’re probably going to have me in a cast or something, and all dopey with pain-pills. I’m going to fall behind, aren’t I?”

  “Well,” Pota said, with false cheer, “yes, I’m afraid so. But that will probably make the Psychs all very happy, you know, they think that you’re too far ahead as it is. But just think—you’ll have the whole library at the hospital to dig into any time you want it!”