Free Eternity Row by S. L. Viehl Page B

brief follow-up auditory exam.
    “No aftereffects from the sonic blast?” I peered into the narrow, flat apertures that served as his ears. The perforations had nearly closed.
    “Only a slight headache.” He hopped off the exam table. “I understand you have five new feline companions.”
    “For a couple of weeks, anyway.” I gave him a speculative look. “I was thinking-”
    “No.” He backed away, shaking his head, holding up all three appendage-ends. “No kittens. I beg you.”
    I scowled. “Coward.”
    We decided to keep Dhreen in sleep suspension while we went back to work trying to slow the rate of deterioration in his liver. Ilona showed up again, demanding to see him.
    “We did this yesterday.” I gestured behind my back at Adaola to come and help me. “You can’t go in there.”
    “I will see him today.”
    “Weaver Red Faun!” Adaola distracted the Terran girl by admiring the striking black-and-yellow tunic she wore. “What a lovely garment! I am going off duty now. Perhaps you would accompany me for a meal interval and discuss its making with me?”
    “Chief Xonea will hear of this.” Not quite finished, Ilona shot me a look of sheer dislike. “The men on this vessel understand a woman’s duty.”
    I couldn’t help the chuckle. “Jorenians don’t subjugate their females, Ilona. They’d get their teeth knocked in if they so much as tried.”
    She didn’t like me laughing at her, either. “Regardless, I shall return.”
    “I’ll hold my breath in anticipation,” I assured her.
    Squilyp called me over to perform morning rounds with him, and we discharged most of the inpatients who had come in with injuries from the brief Hsktskt attack. Several signals came in from Qonja, which we both ignored. Our double-hernia patient, Yarek, proved to be healing rapidly and anxious to return to duty.
    “Other archivists must work double shifts to compensate for my continued absence,” he said as he tried to talk us into discharging him. “Surely I can sit at my duty terminal and run analysis programs without risking physical injury.”
    “Oh, sure, no problem. And when you’re off duty, of course you wouldn’t teach any classes, or lift so much as a throwing dagger to demonstrate something for your students, right?” I watched the telltale shift of his white-within-white eyes. “That’s what I thought.”
    “You are a tyrant, Healer.”
    I batted my eyelashes at him as I completed my scans. “Flattery will not get you discharged, ClanCousin.”
    One of the nurses interrupted us with her concern over Dhreen’s monitors, which were showing unusual cardiopulmonary fluctuations, and Squilyp decided to take him out of sleep suspension long enough for a full examination. He left me to finish rounds, which I continued until crashing sounds came out of the critical care unit.
    “What now?” I ran in.
    Squilyp was holding Dhreen down by pinning him to the berth with his body. The Oenrallian struggled wildly, tearing at the monitor leads with scrabbling hands.
    “Stop that!” I pushed between the two males and hauled a restraint strap over Dhreen’s chest. “Squilyp, get his legs!”
    “Let me out of this contraption,” Dhreen said, then coughed up some blood. “I need some air.”
    Between us we got him restrained, but I already knew what the problem was from the heat emanating from his skin. I turned and grabbed a syrinpress and a scanner. “Temperature’s spiking. One hundred fifteen degrees. He’ll stroke out on us.”
    “I can’t breathe! Get off!” the Oenrallian yelled as his wavering fist connected with the side of my head.
    Squilyp turned and bellowed, “Nurse! Coolant paks, stat!”
    Fever in an Oenrallian was much more lethal than in humans, as their lung/heart organs automatically valved off blood circulating to the extremities. It rendered the feverish patient irrational, then unconscious. A healthy Oenrallian body would kick-start itself by reopening those arterial