Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [85]
“We wanted to go with him, too,” Tse-Mallory explained, “but he insisted we stay behind to look after you. We've done that.”
And done it well, she knew. The nihilists of the Order of Null who wanted Flinx dead and had attacked them at the shuttleport had not shown themselves in his absence. So under the watchful eyes of the two senior Commonwealth scientists, one human and the other thranx, she was allowed to recuperate in peace.
Her spleen had been badly lacerated in the attack. Bioengineers had grown her a new one. Her lungs had been punctured. They had been stitched. Several veins had been shredded. The organosynth tubing that had replaced them was indistinguishable from the originals save for their vivid turquoise hue, which none could see unless she was opened up. Her blond hair had been burned away from the back of her neck to the top of her head. That, at least, had regrown all by itself.
Her irritation stemmed from the presence of minuscule specks of shrapnel, some of which even after a year were still lodged deep in her body. Sometimes difficult to detect, they were gradually working their way up and outward. Only a week ago a physician had squeezed a small bump just below her left clavicle and popped out a shard of sharp plexalloy.
“It's safer this way than utilizing repetitive probes or surgery,” he told her apologetically. “Given a little time and a little help, it's amazing how well the body does at healing itself. Better when and where possible to let Nature make the repairs in her own good time.”
Which was all well and fine, she muttered by way of reply, if you were not the one who had to deal with the continual itching and stinging as microscopic fragments of bone, metal, plastic, glass, and other insoluble invaders slowly worked their way to the surface of your epidermis.
Not only did the bandage help her flesh to heal, it also monitored her condition. If a piece of shrapnel migrated too close to a large blood vessel or internal organ, the sensors imprinted into the bandage would raise an alarm and pinpoint the location. Other sensors sent regular reports to her wrist or home communit, which then passed the information along to the local hospital.
At least she had been able to work, if not to go home. Her doctors insisted she remain at the facility for another couple of weeks. At that time the bandage would be removed. Though it was less of an imposition than a silk scarf, she would be glad to be rid of it.
This being Nur/New Riviera, the facility was more of a medical resort than a hospital. Located on the shore of one of the northern hemisphere's extensive, exquisite lakes, it offered all the comforts of a first-class lodge. From her room or outside on the beach she was able to communicate with the company she worked for in the capital city of Sphene. Her superiors at Ulricam had been genuinely concerned for her health and supportive of her efforts to maintain a daily work schedule. It helped that Tse-Mallory and Truzenzuzex had been able to suppress the literal details surrounding her injury. Insofar as her bosses knew, after seeing off a friend at the shuttleport she had been seriously injured in a subsequent skimmer accident.
The friend in question was in reality much more than that, and she had not seen him off. One moment the battle to reach Flinx's shuttlecraft had been raging in full fury, with weaponry erupting all around them. A bright flash had wiped out consciousness, vision, and sound. The next thing she remembered was waking up in the hospital, dazed, immobilized, swathed in protein bandages, hooked up to an assortment of imposing and intimidating instrumentation, and in spite of a sufficiency of numbing pharmaceuticals and soothing radiation, in considerable