Glasshouse - Charles Stross [121]
Then one morning I am awakened by a brassy flare of trumpets from the bedside orrery, which announces that I have a visitor.
I realize who and where I am—and that I am desperately sick—at the exact moment that Dr. Hanta presses a small, freezing cold brass disk against the bare skin between my breasts. “Ow!”
“Breathe slowly,” she orders, not unkindly, then blinks like a sleepy owl from behind her thick-lensed glasses: “Ah, back in the realm of the conscious, are we?”
By way of an answer I go into a hoarse coughing fit, my muscles locking in spasms that leave my ribs aching. Hanta recoils slightly, removing the stethoscope. “I see,” she says. “I’ll just wait a moment—glass of water?”
I realize she’s jacked the back of my bed up as the coughing subsides. “Yes. Please.” I’m shivery and weak but not freezing anymore. She holds out a glass, and I manage to accept it without spilling anything, although my hand shakes alarmingly. “What’s wrong with me?”
“That’s what I’m here to find out.” Hanta is a petite female, shorter than I am, her skin a shade darker, although not the aubergine-tinted brown of Fiore. Her short hair is dusted with the silver spoor of impending senescence, and there are laugh-lines around her face. She wears an odd white overcoat buttoned up the front and carries the arcane totems of her profession, the caduceus and stethoscope—the bell of the latter she rubs upon my chest. She looks friendly and open and trustworthy, the antithesis of her two clerical colleagues: but beauty is not truth, and some gut instinct tells me never to let my guard down in her presence. “How long have you been febrile?”
“Febrile?”
“Hot and cold. Chills, shivers, alternating with too hot. Night sweats, anything like that.”
“Oh, about—” I feel my forehead wrinkling. “What day is it? How long have I been in here?”
“You’ve been here six hours,” Dr. Hanta says patiently. “You were brought in around midafternoon.”
I shiver convulsively. My skin is icy. “Since an hour or two before then.”
“The Reverend Doctor Fiore tells me you were climbing.” Her tone is neutral, professional, with no note of censure.
I swallow. “Since then.”
“You’re a lucky lady.” Hanta smiles enigmatically and moves her stethoscope to the ball of my left shoulder, pulling open my hospital gown to get at it. “I’m sorry, I’ll be quick. Hmm.” She stares into the stethoscope’s eye crystal and frowns. “It’s a long time since I’ve seen that . . . sorry.” She straightens up. “It’s not safe to climb around in the walls here; some of the neighboring biomes aren’t biomorphically integrated. There are replicators in the mass fraction reserve cells that will eat anything based on a nucleotide chassis that doesn’t broadcast a contact inhibition signal, and you’re not equipped for that.”
I swallow again—my mouth is unnaturally dry. “What?”
“Somehow or other you’ve managed to get yourself infected with a strain of pestis mechaniculorum. You’re feverish because your immune system is still just about containing it. It’s a good thing for you that we found you before mechanotic cytolysis set in . . . Anyway, I’ll fix you up just as soon as I finish sequencing it.”
“Um.” I shudder again. “Oh, okay.”
“ ‘Okay’ indeed. Do I have to tell you not to go climbing around inside the walls again?” I shake my head, almost embarrassed by my own fear of discovery. “Good.” She pats me on the shoulder. “At least if you’re going to do it again, come to me first, please? No more unfortunate accidents.” She carefully disconnects the stethoscope and wraps it around her caduceus. It makes soft clicking noises as it fuses with the staff. “Now I’ll just run you off a little antirobotic, and you’ll be up and about in no time.”
Dr. Hanta hitches up her coat, then perches on a stool next to my bed. “Isn’t this a bit out of character?” I ask her, throwing caution