Chapter 6: Change can be a Good Thing

Roy had left his animal with heavy heart and foreboding gloomy thoughts in the mostly gutted ruin of Research Outpost 2. Even though he was sure the animal understood and would wait for him, he feared he might have seen his new friend the last time.

Bob always left Wobbler here, when he had to go inside and Wobbler was always there the next day. Norm’s Zisch always came right out of the water; so Roy sighed and petted the humongous head of the black beast and received a dry lick across the chest and face. He then went to Ma’ Swenson’s where Nick, one of Ma Swenson’s employees took him over to Ant Hill.

Nick was a tall, thin half Andorian. Unlike a full size four meter Andorian, he was only a little over three meters tall and flew the Toyo-Sung Ajax 453 from the first passenger seat, and the actual pilot seat had been removed. Nick and Roy knew each other for a long time. Nick and Ma Swenson and everyone else of the Boathouse knew that he was walking the jungles without much gear.

Nick wore the same type of light armor as the Ranger and most adult Greenies, he had the helmet completely off. He chewed on a wad of gum as he steered the fast flyer towards the city and the force field membrane entrance and said. “Lucky they were, your parents I mean, Sam being out there just 100 clicks from the crash.”

Roy only nodded.

Nick offered Roy a piece of gum. “You and that crazy Marine are the only ones who would dare to go that far into the thickets. I mean unprotected and all.” Roy took the gum and said, while he unwrapped it. “I am not unprotected, I use the Thompson Ma Swenson gave me all the time, besides I am a Greenie.”

The tall flier mechanic slowed the flier to a full stop as a robot arm extended from the city’s entry ring and took the Toyo Flier, passing it underneath a curtain of high pressure superheated steam. This procedure was done three times and the flier was scanned and bathed in a lethal soup of chemicals and steamed of again. Only after almost five minutes of intensive cleaning and checking, to make sure no Green Hell life form had clung to the outside and thus gained access to the inside of the city, the Flier was shoved in a parking bay,

Nick extended his well wishes and Roy took the next Inter City Mover cabin and dialed for the Hospital.

He had been here a few times before and he knew the head doctor. The city’s medical center was deep below the surface of the island and separated from the water of the lake by half a kilometer of solid rock and thick Ultronit walls.

Like the rest of the city, this level was well lid lit and the there were wide corridors with silently moving slide belts that sneaked past islands of greenery, gurgling water spouts, open area seating areas, vendor booths, restaurants and bistros.

Everything was smooth and bright, white plastee-skin covering the impenetrable Ultronit.

A group of three scantily clad girls, giggling, and talking passed him on the opposite slide belt as he approached the hospital.

He had seen them before at School; they were in a different class, but of the same age. They were the daughters of researchers or technicians and had been on Green Hell at least a year or so and yet Roy was certain none of them had ever taken a flier ride to see what was out there. Probably haven’t even been to the top observation platform of the city. Their dresses were of a fluttery shimmery material that did little to hide the developing bodies of sixteen year old humanoid females.

The girls of course noticed Roy. He was tall despite the higher gravitation of the planet, where true native Greenies tended to grow a little more compact and stocky than the generation before; and if that ancient Earth sculptor Michelangelo was still alive, he would ask Roy to model for his next masterpiece. His muscles were well developed and he had rock-hard, chiseled looking abs.

He had the same sandy blond hair as his mother had; he also inherited his mother’s high cheekbones and narrow, aristocratic looking nose. From his father he got the pronounced lower jaw and the energetic looking chin with the same cleft his father had. Most strikingly were his dark purple eyes he shared with his Grandmother.

While Roy had just begun to notice girls in the way young men did, the girls were more advanced in that regard. One of them, tall and thin with her hair dyed in a bright purple and cut in an asymmetrical short bob, jumped skillful and changed Slide-belts. She gave Roy a deep stare from underneath her long lashes and said. “Hi, I am Nuki, aren’t you Roy Masters of Ms. Harshe’s class?”

Roy blinked and wondered what she wanted and nodded. “Yes I am.”

Nuki folded her hands upside down before the short skirt of her fluttery dress and said. “My friends and I are going to see the new Star blazer Virtu and we wondered if you would like to come along?”

“Sorry, I can’t. My parents had an accident and I need to see how they are.”

She was clearly disappointed, but said. “Maybe we can do something another time.” With that she changed directions once more and Roy left the slide belt a few moments later as he had reached the hospital entrance.

A receptionist greeted him right in the lobby. The man in the white coverall and the med symbol on his chest had dark blue skin and his hair had a metallic coppery color, the telltale hallmarks of a Thauran. The Med Tech held a PDD in clipboard mode and said with a friendly tone. “Good evening Citizen, how can I help you?”

“I am Roy Masters and I understand my parents are here, after suffering injuries of an accident.”

The blue skinned man pointed with his PDD to the left and down one of the corridors that branched of off the lobby. “Your father is still in ReGen, we are growing him a complete new spine, that means he is completely submerged so patient interaction might be somewhat limited and your mother has been discharged right away, she was virtually unharmed, save for a few mild contusions. She left about fifty minutes ago.”

“She isn’t here with Dad?”

The Thauran turned to look down the corridor he had pointed out. “Well there isn’t much she could do for him and she said something about recovering data or something.” He shrugged and gave Roy a toothy smile. “Your Dad is in ReGen-4, just down that corridor and to the left.”

Roy found his father floating in a transparent horizontal cylinder bathed in bluish light. His face was covered by a dome shape hemispherical thing. There was another empty ReGen tank next to the one with his father, where a two meter long, thick black slug like life-form was in the process of sliding out of the empty tank. The big snail had a white tube like garment around the upper part of its body and two feelers under arm long feelers at what seemed to be the head. The moist shimmering monstrosity said to Roy, using a small voice box attached to the white garment, “Oh good evening, you must be Roy. I am Dr. Herbs, the neurosurgeon treating your father.”

Roy stared at the large black snail oozing onto a small hover platform. “Yes I am Roy, how is my dad doing?”

“Your Dad suffered fractures to the vertebral column and neuro-tissue damage to the spinal cord and that is the reason he is in the tank. He should be out and back to normal by tomorrow morning.”

“So he is going to be alright?”

“Indeed he will be. Human neural nets are quite simple really and hardly needed my attention, but sine since I am here anyway I took a hand in his surgical procedures and supervised the neuro tissue grafting of the Expert Nanites myself.” The Shail snail managed to make the Voice box sound very self-assured and confident.

Roy stepped closer to the tank where his father was and put a hand on the transparent material. “Can I talk to him?”

The large mollusk-being guided the hover platform closer and stopped it next to Roy, and then it said: “Of course you could, but he requested a Virtu Connection Helmet and I think his Avatar is tele-present at some science meeting on Earth, he was so eager to attend.”

The Shail snail wiggled his feelers towards the end of the room. Roy’s eyes followed the pointing move and he noticed a mobile GalNet Terminal that had been rolled in and placed at the far end of the ReGen tube. Its display flashed the words. ‘In use - do not disturb’.

Roy, who knew his parents, actually should have expected something like that. They wasted no thoughts on him, invested very little emotions on themselves as a matter of fact. In moments like this he wondered how they ever found time long enough to actually make love to each other, a necessary activity to explain his own existence. Especially since he was born the natural way and not in an ArtiWomb.

The Shail doctor appeared quite intuitive to human emotions however and said. “I am not just a Neuro Surgeon you know. I am also a councilor and psychiatrist, if you ever need to talk you now know where to find me.”

Not taking his eyes of off his father’s floating form Roy said: “Are you a telepath or something? I see no hands and no eyes you could use for surgery.”

“It seems you either flunked the Union Xeno Class when the Shail were discussed, or they did not cover my kind yet. Thanks to the Pree we are sentient and thanks to Terran technology we can move at the speed our minds wish us to move and we have hands. You probably don’t know the difference between Shail and Shaill, either. I am a Black Solid Shail”

To demonstrate what it was saying, a dozen tentacles and intricate mechanical arms appeared all around the him and underneath the hover sled; equipped with manipulators and what looked like an array of surgical instruments. The arms disappeared as fast as they had materialized.

Roy had a sheepish expression on his face as he said. “I flunked a few Xeno Classes until recently; I felt that learning about Off-World life forms was a waste of time, since we have so many here.” He kept looking at the Shail. “I see the error of my opinion and promise I will cerebral-upload Brillstein’s Guide to Sentient Life tonight.”

“To answer your initial question, no we Shail are not Telepathic or psionic gifted. As a matter of fact Shail are Psi Inert, with the exception of perhaps the Narth or the Leedei, even the Saresii can’t really read us.”

He wiggled his fleshy feelers with surprising speed and agility. “We communicate with these fellers among each other, we can sense the minutest changes in electrical and magnetic field, and we can smell and taste to a molecular level. It is the feelers that make us Shail the finest bio-chemists in the known universe. I can sense the minutest chances of your neuro electric impulses when I am close enough to your bio-electric sphere and smell and analyze changes in the output of your glands. We don’t need eyes to see, like our Shaill brothers or you humans.

These abilities, my education as a medical doctor and several decades of experience as resident department specialist at Med Central on Pluribus enable me to read your mind without any Psionics and at least as good.”