Chapter 16

"That is so, Governor. Oh, I should mention that I have discussed my forthcoming marriage with the London University Vice-Chancellor by phone, and he understands that I could not commute to my job from another planet. He has accepted my resignation, and has waived the mandatory period of notice. I have to admit that I failed to mention to him that I have a new job lined up in the Colony. I thought that would be to much of a shock."

"That was thoughtful, of you, Pro ... I mean, Jane. I want to proceed with these discussions about the proposed Metropolis University, as soon as possible."

"So do I sir. You have one existing college, so I want to propose that it offer two levels of courses from now on. One will be craft and practical, the technical college; and the other academic. The academic courses should be based on university-level studies, with the Colony granting provisional degree status on satisfactory completion, after a rigorous verbal examination of the proposed graduate. I am prepared to lecture on biology, and in particular on marine biology. The Colony could do with getting research done into the denizens of the oceans here. If you have other specialist graduates who could teach their subjects, we could soon have a staff structure in place.

That would be the first basis for degree-equivalent courses, and I would expect the academic part of the college to be hived off as a separate college. That college would become part of the proposed University, with other colleges being formed and buildings constructed to suit each faculty. We may have to bring in experts from Earth to validate each course and agree on research efforts.

"Excellent, my dear. I can see we have chosen the right person to lead this project. I will appoint a University Board to examine your planned proposals and make decisions about how and when we proceed with the plans. They will have my authority to select suitable buildings in Metropolis, and adapt them for University needs.

I am making notes as we speak, Jane, and I will ask the board members to invite you to a preliminary meeting to start things off. They will have to advise you on the needs of the Colony for particular specialisms. I do expect that the University will be geared to the educational requirements of our Colony, and not be simply blue-sky research. We cannot afford to be generous in educational funding without having hard targets in sight."

"You are as capable as I had heard, Governor. I know that agricultural subjects would be a priority, but also geography, meteorology, and ecological topics such as forestry, natural sciences, and so on. Your Board would have a best overview of the possibilities."

The Governor put forward a few ideas of his own. "We have a planetary Chief Meteorologist, and an exoplanet expert that I know of personally; a materials scientist ... yes, we may be able to find a few experts who could at least provide part-time lectures for your preliminary courses. I can see a few ways to get courses up and running before we even start importing lecturers."

Esme Limbada was at the bank as usual, sitting in on loan application interviews. The bank had decided that this was the most advantageous way to use her talents. Ninety-five per cent of the time, she was happy with the clients, but whenever she voiced doubts, the bank personnel took it seriously, and either investigated further or just dropped the application without comment other than, "The bank is unable to proceed with your loan application."

At first, Esme imposed on her fellow Malan mothers to look after her daughter while she was at work, but as they became more involved with Colony life, she concluded that she should hire a child-sitter. She asked around at the bank. One of the other staff knew a man with a teenage daughter who sometimes did babysitting for a parent or two. Esme was willing to try her out, "As long as she is okay with a Malan girl. It is just while I am on duty here, so it is mostly after school until I get home."

She phoned the family mentioned, and got the girl's father. The man, Thomas Craven, said he would ask his daughter to call Esme that evening. "Her name is Fearn. She is twelve, but very reliable, the parents tell me."

"Do you know if there is a standard rate for babysitting a five-year-old, Thomas?"

"Not sure" he said, "but she gets five dollars an hour from the other parents. Why not start her on three, as a probationary period, and once you are happy, up it to five. I will warn her this may happen."

Fearn did phone, just after dinner, and Esme explained what she wanted for her daughter. "Nargo can accommodate you to a considerable extent. She can manage at the house until you get there from your own school. She comes home with some of her pals who live close to us. She may be five, going on six, officially, but she is much more competent than that. Treat her as a ten-year-old, and you won't go far wrong, Fearn."

The first few days worked remarkably well. Fearn and Nargo took to each other at once, and Nargo was happy to do whatever Fearn told her she had to do. They worked on the evening meal preparations together, Nargo learning a lot about cooking and the processes in the kitchen. Fearn stayed for the meal, and would work late if Esme had to go out on a visit or a social event. She just phoned her parents to let them know.

Fearn became a friend during the course of this, until she was sharing family tales and difficulties without fear of them being disseminated further. One day, a couple of weeks later, she was just about ready to go home when there was a phone call from her mother. The distraught mother told her that her father had just had a stroke, and the hospital had been called. Her mother would go there with her father and report the situation later.

Nargo saw that Fearn was upset, and asked why.

"Daddy has had a stroke, Nargo. I've heard about these things: He might die!"

"What is a stroke, Fearn?" asked Nargo.

"It is a blood clot or something in the brain. I heard about this from another girl. If it is not sorted quick, it could damage his brain so much that he dies! It is urgent to get help for him."

Nargo was thinking. "If the clot is inside the brain, how do they get at it, Fearn?"

"I think they use medicine to break down the blood clot, but it doesn't always work, my friend said. I don't know why."

Nargo asked politely, "May I use your phone, Fearn?"

"What for? Oh, I suppose so, if you must. Don't be long, in case Mum rings again."

Nargo put a call through to The Personalia, and spoke to them in Malan, to Fearn's confusion. "What are you up to, Nargo?". She did not know this foreign tongue.

Nargo raised a hand, to stop Fearn, while she listened on the phone. Nargo asked her, "Is it the hospital in Metropolis, they want confirmed?"

"Of course. What about it?"

"They are on their way. They are configuring the nanos during the transit. Phone your mother and ask her your father's location inside the hospital. No, even simpler, ask your mother to switch her phone on for a call to The Personalia, and keep it on when she gets to where your father is. The phone must go to where he is being treated."

Nargo completed her call and handed the phone back. She gestured, "Phone her now, and tell her that. It is very important, they say. Help is on the way."

At this moment in the hospital, the Director's phone rang. She picked it up, "Dr Prentice."

"Doctor, this is The Personalia. You have a stroke patient on the way to you: his name is Thomas Craven. We are sending a Landership with nanos to treat him, if you will permit this. The nanos will come in an ampoule for you to inject them into his bloodstream near the aneurism or whatever kind of clot is there. The nanos are being targeted for breaking down a blood clot or closing off an aneurism, whichever they find. Please allow our wheeled mechanoid access into the hospital to bring you the nanos."

Dr Prentice thought swiftly. "Very well. I approve. I shall make the arrangements. Timing?"

"Expected arrival outside the hospital: 34 minutes. Please clear the street outside for a Landership landing."

Fiona at once phoned Diana Kempe. "Diana: emergency clearance of the street outside the hospital, for a Landership arrival, please. You have 30 minutes."

Diane remembered they had done this once before, and wasted no time. "Right. Goodbye." She stabbed the icon for her action team. "Boss here. I need the street outside the hospital cleared within half an hour, for a Landership emergency arrival. GO!"

The team knew their planning for what had to happen, and rushed to their vehicles. With flashing lights and loud horns, they reached their designated sites on both ends of the wide street and started shutting down the fortunately limited amount of traffic in each direction. Any traffic heading out of the closed section was encouraged to leave rapidly, and each side street blocked off. The process took them all of twenty minutes, but they were ready before the Landership swooped down from the sky.

The space machine managed an almost vertical descent; it was so elegantly done. It ended by curving down to horizontal at the last, before landing on its gravity repulsors outside the hospital door. A hatch opened in its side, and a small machine drifted down to ground level. The moment its wheels hit the ground, it was charging up the wheelchair ramp to the front door.

The staff, warned what to expect, had the door open for it, and it rushed inside. A member of staff was standing inside, pointing at the open door to a room, and it rolled across the floor and entered. It homed in on the phone that still had an open to The Personalia, and halted beside the phone. The phone was on a trolley next to the operating table where Thomas Craven lay, already unconscious from an injection that the doctors had given him.

The mechanoid opened its front panel and produced the ampoule, offering it to the doctors. The nearest doctor carefully picked up the ampoule in his gloved hand, and gently handed it to another doctor who had a syringe ready to be used. The patient had been scanned and they knew where the obstruction was located.

One doctor had already marked the artery where the injection was to be made, and as soon as the syringe was loaded, the contents were injected, and everyone simply waited for some kind of response.

While they waited, they became aware of traffic noise outside, instead of the silence while the Landership stood there. It had gone, silently taking off shortly after its arrival. Even the racket of the rocket noise had been missed, as the ship had remained on its anti-gravity mode, just half a dozen meters above the road, until it was a couple of kilometres away and turned into the almost empty countryside.

They waited. And waited. After about ten minutes, the lead doctor picked up the online phone and asked, "How long should this take, please?"

The Personalia voice answered, "We do not know. It depends on the exact position of the clot or aneurism, and how much work is involved in dealing with it, as well as the general condition of the patient. We anticipate that 15 to 20 minutes should be sufficient, if the task goes successfully."

They all resumed waiting. Fifteen minutes passed; sixteen; seventeen; eighteen; nineteen; twenty; twenty-one. At twenty-two minutes The Personalia voice said on the phone, "Our mechanoid is reporting the procedure complete. It is now up to you to decide when to revive the patient. We do not have the experience to be able to say what damage may have already been done."

The doctor was not yet satisfied. "Can you tell us what exactly has been done to the patient?"

"No. The nanos are not geared up to detailed reporting; they are too miniscule for that, and the time was too short to include reporting nanos, which are more complicated. All these ones can do is send a signal to say that their task has been achieved; that is all. It is up to you to discover what that achievement was. We are sorry, but these are the facts; we can do no more."

"Thank you all the same. We appreciate the effort you put in to save the patient, at short notice. How the heck, were you able to know what was happening with this man, and do something about it?"

"It was a request made to us by one of the Malans, who it seems was speaking to someone in the patient's family. Once we knew the basic facts, we consulted our data banks on the subject of strokes, and proceeded accordingly. Our nanos are a better solution than your stents or other surgical procedures."

"You had the time to produce nanos to act as a medical intervention? Amazing!"

"Not so. We used nanos that normally thread their way through an asteroid to the site of valuable minerals. A supply is available on each Landership. We simply reconfigured them to travel through the human bloodstream to the site of the blockage, and perform whichever of the two procedures was required. The time period for that part of the operation was quite short. Most of the time would be in reassembling the walls of the blood vessel, if an aneurism; or disassembling the remains of the blood clot if that was the problem, so that there would be no repetition of the event."

"Thank you for that explanation. We shall put him under the scanner again, and find what the current prognosis might be. What do we do about your nanos?"

"Nothing. They have become inactive and will be flushed out of the body as with other unwanted materials, in urine or faeces."

"That is satisfactory. Goodbye for now." The doctor took charge of the patient, looking around at his team.

"Right. I want our patient back to the scanner to examine his head again. Make it so, without delay, folks!"

The staff hurried to get the patient transferred smoothly onto a gurney and off to the recently-installed scanner suite, while the lead doctor phoned ahead to have it made ready for them. There was another patient being prepared for the scanner, but as that one was not so urgent, the staff switched to repeat the scan of one Thomas Craven. Fortunately, he was still unconscious, making matters simpler.

With the machine returned to its previous settings, the scan was repeated, and the doctors waited for the image to appear on the screens. When it did, the next demand was to see the "before" and "after" pictures of his brain. The machine was able to display both, and they were carefully examined.

Brain function appeared to have gone back to normal. The interruption to blood flow had disappeared, and blood was flowing as it should. The doctors were satisfied that all was as it should be, at this stage.

The next task was to bring the patient back to consciousness, to find out what damage, if any, there was to motor function. He was whisked out of the scanner and taken to a surgical recovery room, where the tests could be done in private.

Mr Craven was slowly brought back to consciousness, and as he regained full awareness he complained, "My head hurts."

Charles, the team leader, ignored this as an expected symptom after any brain trauma. "Mr Craven, can you see me properly, using both eyes? How many fingers am I showing you?"

Getting the affirmative, and correct answers, he asked the same of each eye in turn, then asked him to move each arm in turn, then lift each leg. By the time he had got this far, Tom wanted questions answered.

"Where am I? What is going on? Who are you?"

"I apologise, Mr Craven. You are in Metropolis General Hospital, and we are your doctors. My name is Charles Cavan. You had a stroke, and we treated you under anaesthetic. What we are doing now is testing your reactions, to discover if your body is back to normal or not. Is that all right?"

"Oh. Yes. What do I have to do now?"

"I think if you would help us by sitting up, and then we will see how you are at getting to your feet."

He obligingly sat up, put his hand to his head, and complained, "Sore and dizzy. What did you do to my head?"