Glasshouse - Charles Stross [127]
I still ache from the fever, and I feel weak, but I’m well enough to get up and go to the bathroom on my own. On my way back I notice that the curtains around the other occupied bed on the ward are drawn back. I glance around, but there are no nurses present. Steeling myself, I approach.
It is Cass, and she’s a mess. Her legs are encased in bright blue polymer tubes from toe to thigh, and raised by wires so that the bedding dangles across her in a kind of valley. The bruises on her face have faded to an ugly green and yellow except around her eye sockets, which look simultaneously puffy and hollow, her eyelids sagging closed. She’s still thin, and a translucent bag full of fluid is slowly draining into her wrist through a pipe.
“Cass?” I say softly.
Her eyes open and roll toward me. “Guuh,” she says.
“What?” She flinches slightly. I hear footsteps behind me. “Are you all right?”
The nursing zombie approaches. “Please step away from the patient. Please step away from the patient.”
“How is she?” I demand. “What have you done to her?”
“Please step away from the patient,” says the nurse, then a different reflex triggers: “All questions should be addressed to medical authorities. Thank you for your compliance. Go back to bed.”
“Cass—” I try a last time. Gross memory surgery falls through my mind like a snowflake, freezing everything it touches. I feel awful. “Are you there, Cass?”
“Go back to bed,” says the nurse, a touch threateningly.
“I’m going, I’m going,” I say, and I shuffle away from poor, damaged Cass. Cass who I thought was Kay, obsessing over her, when all the time Kay was sleeping in the next room, and Cass was living in a nightmare.
I have a problem with the ethics here, I think. Hanta’s not bad. But she collaborates with Fiore and Yourdon. What kind of person would do that? I shake my head, wincing at the cognitive dissonance. One who’d perform illegal memory surgery then implant the recollection of giving informed consent in the victim’s mind? I shake my head again. I don’t really think Hanta would do that, but I can’t be sure. If the patient agrees with the practitioner afterward, is it really abuse?
IT’S a bright, sunny Thursday morning when Hanta comes and sits by my bedside with a clipboard. “Well!” Her smile is fresh and approving. “You’ve done really well, Reeve. A splendid recovery. I think you’re about well enough to go home.” She uses her pen to scribble an annotation on her board. “You’re still convalescent, so I advise you to take it very easy for the next few days—certainly you shouldn’t go back to work until this time next week at the earliest, and ideally not until the Monday afterward. Take this note and give it to Janis when you return to work, it’s a certificate of exemption from employment. If you feel at all unwell, or have another dizzy spell, I want you to telephone the hospital immediately, and we’ll send an ambulance for you.”
“Will the ambulance be much use if I’m incoherent or hallucinating?” I ask doubtfully.
Hanta shoves an unruly lock of hair back into place: “We’re still populating the polity,” she says. “The paramedics aren’t due to arrive until next week. They have to have additional skill set upgrades to their implants. But in two weeks’ time if you call an ambulance or see a nurse or need a police officer, you won’t be dealing with a zombie.” She glances along the ward. “Can’t happen soon enough, if you ask me.”
“I was meaning to ask . . .” I trail off, unsure how to raise the subject, but Dr. Hanta knows what I’m talking about.
“You did the right thing when you called the ambulance,” she says firmly. “Never doubt that.” She touches my arm for emphasis. “But zombies are no use for nonroutine circumstances.” A little sigh. “It’ll be much easier when I have human assistants who can learn on the job.”
“How big is the polity going to grow?” I ask. “The original briefing said something about ten cohorts of ten, but if you’re going to have police and ambulance crews, surely that’s not enough?”
She looks