Free The Settlers by Jason Gurley Page A

been labeled a suicide as well. Emil suspected otherwise, but had troubles of his own. He wasn't unfamiliar with death threats, either. Maybe he was spared because he was trying to treat the victims when nobody else was.  
    Of the remaining one hundred nine patients, forty have agreed to come to Galileo for observation and medical attention. The sixty-nine left refused to spend their unknown number of final days within Galileo's walls, and Emil cannot blame them. If at any moment you might die, better to spend those precious minutes with family, or space-diving from Aries' inner ring.
    But here he is now, with a meager support staff and little patience for the daily media requests that pile up on his desk.
    He walks slowly down Corridor 7, where most of the forty have been sequestered from the rest of the hospital. It is eerily silent here. General hospital staff are not permitted. While the corridor is not quarantined, it may as well be. Patients are not permitted visitors. Emil thinks this is probably the reason most Soma patients refused to participate.  
    Who wants to spend their last days forcibly removed from their loved ones?  
    So the forty are a strange bunch. Most are isolationists and introverts. Most are very, very wealthy. Soma is not the most affordable treatment on the market. Well, that's not true. Before it was banned, the cost dropped dramatically, and people with little to lose signed up for what had become certain death.  
    And yet they hope.  
    They hope for a cure. They hope they are an exception. They hope for an asteroid to tear through the entire fleet, so that at least if they have to die, everybody else does, too.
    Emil pauses beside the first room.  
    Nurse Lynne appears from nowhere.  
    Where did you come from? Emil asks.
    From room 22, the nurse responds. Mr. Fitz is displeased with his room. Again.
    Mr. Fitz is quite welcome to leave, Emil says. It is the only way he will find a room more to his liking.  
    Are you making rounds?
    I'm about to, he answers. Why?
    The nurses are in the office watching something, she says.  
    He takes the screenview she offers him. What is it? he asks.  
    She touches the screen, and it begins to play.

    The image is of a warmly-lit news studio. Two large chairs, shaped like deep bowls, stand unoccupied. Beyond the chairs -- Emil sighs at the image -- is large glass wall, through which Earth, in its haunted glory, hangs like a glowing coal.  
    Theme music plays, and two people enter and sit down in the bowls.  
    It's Tasneem, Emil says.
    Nurse Lynne nods. Yes.
    And that man -- he's familiar.  
    His name is Blair Hudgens, Doctor. He's been pestering the office for a chance to interview you for months.  
    Ah, Emil says. Let's watch, let's watch.

    Did you know any of the Soma patients who have unfortunately passed away?

    Actually, I don't know any Soma patients personally.  

    Emil frowns. Her hair, he says. It's white! But -- it's only a little bit. A stripe, almost.
    I think it's pretty, the nurse says.  
    Emil shoots the nurse a hard look. White means death, he says.  
    Not for her, she says.  
    He pinches his eyes shut. What do you mean, not for her?  
    Here, the nurse says.  
    She advances the video.  
    Watch this, she says.

    Let me ask you about that streak in your hair, then.

    Oh, this?

    Patients who have died from Soma have witnessed their own hair go white before they died. What does that white stripe in your hair mean to you?  

    That I'm a survivor, I guess.  

    Would you characterize it as the souvenir of a brush with death?

    This happened about a month ago. How soon after their hair turned white did the other patients die?

    Most within days.

    Perhaps I'm a survivor, then.  

    Emil turns to the nurse in surprise. How long ago was this? This interview?
    The nurse says, I don't know. I think it was last month.  
    And nobody told me until now? Emil says. Why not?  
    I -- we didn't know, the nurse says.  
    Well, we must have