Part 40 (1/2)
”Anytime. No need to apologize.”
”You go careful with the other stuff, okay?” He meant her investigation of the cloning activity. ”You got us some solid-gold intel, but it's not worth getting killed for.”
”Isn't that the risk you all take?” Another pause. ”Even a manipulative old chakaar like me feels guilty sometimes. Whatever it costs, you know I can pay.”
Or General Zey can. ”I'll call you as soon as I've resolved it,” she said. It was Treasury-speak, but she'd flipped into that persona now. ”Whatever it takes. It's nothing a budget code can't resolve.”
It could have been worse, she told herself, automatically putting on her work suit. It could have been three in the morning, when she'd be too sleep-befuddled to be any use. She tied her hair back in a severe tail because loose blond hair got her instant attention, grabbed her bag-and blaster, because Skirata wasn't joking-and called an air taxi.
RCM was a small city of a medcenter with its own traffic system, and it took several pa.s.ses around the internal sky-lanes for the pilot to find the entrance to the neurology unit. Besany didn't like medcenters, and the moment she walked into all that bright-lit, antiseptic state-of-the-artness, she felt agitated. It was where her father had died. That was all it would ever be to her, and no amount of exquisite fresh flowers in the lobbies could change that. Skirata probably knew he'd plugged some gap in her life, but he couldn't know how well.
”New admissions,” she said to the orientation droid, holding her anonymized datapad up to its port. There was a lot to be said for knowing how to cover your tracks. ”Here's the patient ID.”
The droid digested the code and when she withdrew the datapad, the text SKIRATA, FI: LEVEL 96, WARD 5, BAY A/4 appeared on the screen. So Fi wasn't a number any longer, but a man with an inevitable surname. The sensor system took over from the droid, and Besany followed a flow of instructions, from a reminder from the turbolift to ALIGHT HERE to the sensors in the corridors directing her left and right via the datapad. A city-planet of a trillion beings needed medcenters on an industrial scale, but there was something soul crus.h.i.+ng about a complex so vast, it needed its own global positioning system. It was no place to be when you were sick, scared, or dying.
But the GPS worked. Besany found herself facing a small room in a side ward with SKIRATA, FI-TEMP ADMIT DNR visible on the viewscreen next to the doors.
They opened as soon as she stepped forward, and there was Fi with a line plugged into the back of his hand, lying on uncreased white pillows with his arms neatly on top of the blankets like a man newly dead awaiting a final visit from the family. The only difference from what she recalled all those years ago was that Fi was wired up to sensors, with his vital signs displayed on a small panel on the wall.
He did look very young indeed. Besany hadn't been imagining that, and somehow she'd expected to see visible injury even though Ordo had said there was none. It seemed per-verse that Fi could look so perfectly whole and yet be so close to death.
”Fi,” she said. ”It's Besany. Kal sent me to keep an eye on you. Just checking you're okay.”
She stood there for a while, working out what she was going to say to the administrators, and then the doors opened behind her.
”This is an unauthorized entry,” said the med droid. ”Who are you?”
Besany did it more out of habit than intent. She pulled out her Republic ID and shoved it in front of the droid's photoreceptors, but didn't put it in the data slot so it could identify her or her department. Something told her she was going to have to bend the rules again, and she didn't want to be traced. ”Government business. What's happening with this patient?”
”There seems to have been an administrative error, Agent...”
Besany let the pause hang. ”What kind? Billing?” It almost always was, and she could fix that. ”Notification?”
”Are you from the Department of Defense?” It was all pure reflex now. ”Would I discuss it with you if I was? Just update me on this patient. I understand some difficulty arose over treating him here.”
”He can't stay here.”
”If this is about budget codes, my department will be most displeased.”
”No, we have to terminate the treatment.”
”You've got a line of saline in his arm and there's nothing on the drug chart. You're not short of beds. What treatment? I don't see the chief of neurosurgery in here.”
”He's not a citizen. He's a clone soldier.”
”I know. And?”
”We have no agreement for long-term care with the Grand Army. In fact, as far as the Republic is concerned this patient doesn't exist, and as he's been declared brain-dead by the duty neurosurgical team, we would normally terminate life support, except he's still breathing, which is highly abnormal.” The droid paused as if to check if Besany was following its train of logic with her inadequate organic brain. ”Withdrawal of life support in his case means withdrawal of hydration or feeding, or both.”
”Starving him to death, for us lay-beings.”
”Indeed. This is clearly ethically undesirable, so euthanasia will be administered.”
Besany thought she'd misheard, but she hadn't. ”No,” she said, hearing her voice as if she were standing outside her-self. ”No, it will not be administered. I'll get his care authorized. In fact, I'll get him moved to private care.”
Did I hear that right? Do they really put patients down like that? Like sick pets?
”He's Grand Army property, so unless you have a Defense requisition, you can't take possession of him.”
”He's a human being.”
”I don't make the rules.”
”His name's Fi. If he hadn't been engineered and hatched, he'd be about twenty-four years old. He's a sniper. He's a trained combat medic. He likes glimmik music. He's an elite soldier.”
”He's brain-dead.”
”He's breathing.”
”I said this was a perplexing case.”
”Well, if you or any of your colleagues want to try eutha-nizing him, or whatever tidy euphemism you have for killing people in their beds, you'll have to get past me.”
”You're not from the Defense Department, are you?”
”I'm from the Treasury. If he's government property, he's mine. So I'm taking him.”
”I cannot allow this.”
”Try stopping me.”
Besany rarely said things she regretted, but she realized she was now terrified. What of? Injury? Getting into trouble with my boss? What, exactly, when Fi's lying there? But her primal defensive instincts-for herself, for Fi-had taken over, and her mouth was pursuing its own panicky agenda.
”You have to leave now,” the droid said.
If she walked out of here now and abandoned him, Fi was definitely dead, really dead. He was breathing fine. She didn't care about definitions of brain death or depth of consciousness. This was about what she believed in and thought was right, from the time she'd first met Trooper Corr and realized what her government sanctioned in her name.
If I don't make a stand now, what's the use of expecting Senator Skeenah to make a difference?
”Then you'll need to have me thrown out-bodily.” Besany reached inside her jacket and drew the blaster Mereel had given her. ”I'm not going quietly, and I'm not leaving without Fi.”
She aimed the weapon squarely at the med droid's central section, where the power packs were located, and flicked the charge indicator so that it could see she was serious about using it.
She had no idea how she was going to get Fi out of here. She had no friends or family to call upon, and her small band of special forces contacts were scattered across the galaxy; she was on her own. Order and precise planning had always been her watchwords, but there was no time for that now, and the best she could hope for was to stall for time-time for what, and how long?-or make such a scene that they backed down.
”I'm calling security,” the droid said, and backed toward the door.
Besany could see that it already had, or had at least alerted someone to the argument: there was a small crowd of white-coated figures and droids outside in the corridor. She fol-lowed it to the threshold with the blaster aimed, and when the staff outside saw it, pandemonium broke loose. They ran for it. Some screamed. The security alarm boomed and flashed along the corridor.