Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [50]
Charas watched and then, smiling ever so slightly, turned to an Hon who was blandly anticipating her reactions.
“Oddly enough I don’t believe he was as thoroughly gassed as he appeared.”
She knew exactly how one felt coming out of that sort of encounter. The tape showed the rescue team advancing on the body and going through the whole routine of administering oxygen to counteract the effects. The too-handsome man went through the gagging, the disjointed motions, and the lingual distortions the gas caused. The medteam administered a hypospray to reduce the nausea. But something about the performance suggested to Charas that it was a performance.
“And the lungs?”
“They showed only a minute residue of gas—not a full measure. Certainly not one that would have rendered him unconscious so long. He also had the ransom note!”
“Well, what about that?” she asked.
“Yes, what about it?”
“I think we watch this—what’s his name again? Never mind. He’ll be Mac in my books.”
“Indeed we will. Here’s the note!” And the commander passed over the slip as gingerly as if he expected it to explode in his face.
On the pirate ship
When the voice contact with Sean had been summarily curtailed by Megenda, Yana was close to lashing out with her fists at the big first mate and the monstrous hologram of Captain Louchard. Either would have been a foolish waste of time, and as it was, another paroxysm of coughing racked her.
“Haul the female to Dr. Mendeley. She can’t be dying on us, or we lose our bargaining position with the planet,” Louchard growled.
Doubled up as she was, Yana was bundled out of the cabin, and after a very short distance down the corridor—which confirmed her notion that they’d been deliberately routed along every deck of the vessel in order to confuse them—she was pushed into a considerably larger accommodation. It had bunks along three sides, a narrow table with benches under it in the center, and two narrow doors that she would later discover led to the sanitary facilities: the shower behind one door, and the “head” behind the other. She half staggered, half crawled to the nearest bunk and lay down upon it, coughing, gasping, hacking, and wondering if she’d have anything left of her normal throat lining.
She was only marginally aware of the panel whooshing open and shut again. Then a cool hand soothed her forehead, and someone urged her to sit up long enough to “Drink this.” A mug was pressed to her lips.
The beverage was cold, tart, and soothing, and she managed to still the cough reflex long enough to take a good swallow.
“Cookie let me rummage in her stores for the ingredients,” said the rich voice of the astronomer, Namid Mendeley. “It’s what I think was in my grandmother’s recipe, plus a little codeine, which does depress the cough reflex.”
Yana hesitated. “C-codeine?” she gasped. “What—about—the—b-baby?”
Mendeley raised his eyebrows and gave a slight uneasy shrug. “I wouldn’t think there’d be much risk to the fetus at this stage, but I’m no obstetrician. However, I think it’s a safe bet, if the cough continues to be this violent, that you could miscarry.”
She nodded, pausing only a moment to bark again. She was panting from the effort of trying to suppress the cough long enough to keep from choking on the drink. She took the mug from him and sipped slowly; the liquid seemed to be coating her throat, and it didn’t taste bad, either.
“It might sting going down,” Namid said anxiously, “because pepper is one of the ingredients.”
“Oh.” Yana kept sipping. She didn’t care if it contained pepper or eye of newt and toe of frog, so long as it stopped her coughing. She got into a more comfortable position, propped against one end of the bunk, crouching just a bit to avoid banging her head on the bottom of the upper bunk.