Chapter Four: Intrepidation — Part 5

“I can’t tell if his head took any damage. I can’t find a reason for him to be unconscious.” Jun said.

Glyph did a scan of Bamboo’s body, put up a holographic image of his insides. “Hopefully this will help.”

Jun was no expert, but she could see that the skull was intact, and that there was no bruising of the skull or the skin and muscles of the face. In fact, his head and spine seemed to have been protected at the cost of every other part of his body. The suit, obviously, had been designed with great consideration for the brain and central nervous system. Jun let out a sigh. The dark-skinned man with the vacant sockets was either a heavy sleeper, or in shock. He wasn’t, however, in a coma brought on by a concussion. He had brain waves.

“His head is in good shape. How did he survive the impact?”

“I nudged him into a fall that dragged him across a much longer stretch of ground and air. I then used my tractor beam to ensure that his impact was a series of bounces, using a local hot spring as a bounce board for the initial impact. Unfortunately, I dragged the remains of the biodroid along with him, as the two were, until the final impact, locked together.”

As it got darker, Glyph and the Bugs worked together to provide Jun with additional light. The Bugs seemed more interested in the smell, each drifting to and fro in a constant, watching cycle. She knew that each checked, casually, to see if Bamboo was dead yet. Only Swift respected her enough not to check so obviously.

Jun studied Bamboo’s body carefully, comparing the hologram Glyph provided with her soldier’s understanding of hume anatomy. “One thing’s for certain, he’s not going anywhere until he heals.”

Jun washed out the gash in his hip with mineral water from the hot spring, which would sterilize it completely, and began carefully stitching the torn skin back into place. Bamboo stirred slightly, and Jun shushed him before continuing with her careful stitch work. Bamboo hardly seemed to notice the needle.

“About time you woke up.” Jun said. “You want to tell me why you’re in such a stupor. You don’t feel any pressure in your head do you?”

“I feel like shit, but my head is okay.” Bamboo struggled with stubborn, slurred lips. “A corporate doctor accidentally exposed me to a living vaccine. Zon is the origination, and your physicians have knowledge of how to cure the disease, but the people at Genugal honestly didn’t have a clue.” Bamboo didn’t know how well he could trust the soldier girl who was treating his wounds, but something about her stoic, calming voice and slow, careful movements made him chatty. Bamboo tried to raise his hand, regretted it instantly. “My shoulder aches. Fuck-ups at Genugal owe me big time for this shit.”

Jun didn’t know who or what Genugal was, but she decided to interrogate him on such issues later. “Your head may be fine, but the rest of your body’s in bad shape.” Jun said. She looked at the hologram projection, “Magnify the bones in his left shoulder and compare it to differences in the right.” Jun studied it closely. “The shoulder blade has a stress fracture, but all the tissues seem intact.”

Glyph interrupted suddenly. “Ma’am, my scan of his genetics indicates the presence of a parasitic organism in his prostate.”

“Does this organism pose an immediate threat to his existence or fertility?” Jun asked.

“I am not capable of making that assessment.” Glyph sounded disappointed. “I am not a medical drone.”

“My apologies. Sir, you got an answer for me?”

Bamboo lay on his back, aching too much to move. “Yeah, but it can wait. It isn’t a threat to me yet. If I can get medicine within a day or two, then I’ll be fine.”

Jun was calm, no betrayal in her face. “What happens in a day or two?”

“The parasite will eat its way into my stomach cavity, lay its eggs in my soft tissues, and I will fall asleep and never wake up.” Bamboo said.

Jun grimaced, knowing exactly what Bamboo was going through, and how to treat it. “I’ve heard of that before.”

“Do you know the cure?” Glyph asked.

“At this late stage? Yeah. But it has to wait until after I build us a shelter. Like the man said, we’ve got time.” Jun didn’t want to mention that help was weeks away and that he was beyond the help of medicine at this point.

Making shelter proved to be exhausting. Jun dug thick mud from the springs and laid it out to dry in blocks. The mud, hot and sterile of any life that could survive at normal temperatures, cooled first to an oozing sludge, then began to harden almost immediately. Mixing gravel into the mud made it dry quicker, but also made it heavier and harder to cut. Using her sword to cut the slabs into bricks, and not even waiting for the bricks to dry and harden, Jun made a shallow adobe structure with an opening in the south wall. The muck in the mud made it pliable, rather than brittle as it dried. Now completely covered in mud, and looking crazed from exhaustion, Jun threw slick mud onto her crude shelter, hoping to strengthen its walls by thickening them. While the adobe pyramid dried, she impatiently waited for her recently refilled and wetted canteen of spring water to cool. With Jun’s help, Bamboo limped carefully into the rather shallow but effective enclosure.

He sat down so as to best conceal his naked self from Jun. “Where the hell am I, anyway?”

“I guess that all depends on where you’re from.” Jun said.

Bamboo wondered at Jun’s perspective. Jun spoke the Citizen’s Dialect of Uzol quite fluently even if it wasn’t her first language. She’d been improving ever since he started talking to her. Bamboo wondered if she might not be an advanced telepath.

“After I left Sholm, I called an asteroid in Orion’s belt home.” Bamboo said.

“Like the Little Prince, huh?” Jun said.

Bamboo didn’t make the connection, but didn’t want to seem stupid in front of Jun. “Kind of.” He said, trying to sound intelligent instead of confused.

Jun wasn’t stupid enough to be misled. “It’s a book from Earth. It’s one of Lord Chen’s most cherished possessions. He let me read it, even though it was in some language called French and took me a damnable amount of time to translate.” Jun considered Glyph, who had nearly repaired itself. “Zon isn’t tech enough for you. It’s a long way from home.”

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