Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [81]
“I’m going to give her a shot,” Kriefmann announced to his rapt audience. “Got to relax her muscles. Her IT can take care of the pain, but it doesn’t have the facilities to deal with this kind of reaction.”
“Are you sure it won’t do any harm?” Dulcie Gherardesca asked, anxiously.
“No, I’m not,” said Kriefmann, “But the symptoms are consistent with the smaller wounds I’ve treated before, so it ought to be okay. Keep hold of her, will you.”
“It’s okay,” Ikram Mohammed assured the doctor. The convulsions were not so emphatic now, and Matthew modified his grip so as to put less pressure on the arm.
Kriefmann left the room. Worried glances were exchanged but no one spoke. They were all waiting anxiously. The doctor came back two minutes later with two sterile packs in his right hand, each containing a liquiject syringe. His left was clutching a handful of plastic bottles. Kriefmann scattered the bottles on the tabletop in order to free the hand that held them, then liberated the first syringe. He filled the liquiject from one of the bottles and positioned the head of the nozzle above a blue vein that showed on the inner side of Maryanne Hyder’s left forearm.
When he pressed the button, his patient’s whole body jerked in response. Matthew hoped that it was a reflex born of fear rather than a physical response to the injected drug.
The spasms in Maryanne’s muscles began to die down almost immediately, and Matthew let the arm he was holding go limp. He let go of it, wondering if all the convulsions might have been the result of a psychological response rather than a physiological one.
One final frisson seemed to release the toxicologist’s tongue. She began to swear, and then to babble. “God, I’m sorry,” she said, when she finally obtained sufficient control over herself to string a coherent sentence together. “I never saw it—carrying those boxes in my arms—so careless.”
“It’s okay, Maryanne,” Kriefmann replied. “It could have happened to anyone.”
“They’ve been creeping closer since we established the test plantings,” Ikram Mohammed told Matthew. “They’re just like the slugs back home in one respect—they take it for granted that everything gardeners do is for their benefit.” Then he turned back to Maryanne Hyder. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said. “Rand should have seen it if he was where he was supposed to be, leading the way.”
“You know Rand,” the stricken woman replied, in a thicker and slower tone. “He was in the lead all right, but he was carrying three times as much as me, all piled up. Couldn’t have seen a pitfall full of sharpened stakes.”
“Don’t go to sleep if you can help it, Maryanne,” Kriefmann went on. “Stay with us, if you can. Get a grip on your IT—don’t let it slip you into a coma.” While he was speaking he had been preparing a second shot. This time he positioned the nozzle halfway up Maryanne’s thigh, just above the topmost wound in the cluster. Matthew hadn’t seen him look for a vein, but he presumed that this must be the antitoxin and that he intended to spread it generously around the afflicted tissue as well as the circulatory system.
This time, the woman did not react to the shot. Her Internal Technology had damped out all feeling in the damaged tissue—but she was fighting its wider effects, as she had been instructed. Her IT didn’t know that she needed to retain consciousness, but she knew.
“Hang in there,” Kriefmann advised. “The antitoxin will kick in any second, if it’s up to the job. Once it does, your IT will register the effect and begin to ease up. Keep talking, if you can. You’ve met Matthew Fleury, haven’t you? He’s our new ecological genomicist.” Kriefmann knew perfectly well that Maryanne already knew that, but he obviously felt that he had to keep talking himself and didn’t know what else to say. “Mr. Solari’s been asking us questions,” he went on. “He’ll want to talk to you as soon as possible—which might not be the best reason in the world to stay awake, but …” He stopped as soon as he saw that the woman on the table was trying