Power Play - Anne McCaffrey [93]
“Sláinte, Adak, what’s up?” Clodagh asked, as she threw open the door and let in a blast of cold air, which smelled refreshingly clean to Adak. He realized then that there was a fusty stink to the air in the cube, due to the patient, no doubt, and all the funny bottles and tubes in his floating chair.
“I am Dr. Thavian von Clough,” the leader said, eyeing Clodagh disdainfully. “My patient is Secretary-General Farringer Ball.” A graceful hand introduced the patient. “We were informed by a reliable source that this planet has unusual therapies to assist my patient back to full health.”
Clodagh squatted down so that her face was on a level with Ball’s. “Sláinte, Farringer,” she said softly. “You looked better on the comm screen. What’s wrong?”
Ball wheezed and looked at Clodagh from under lowered eyebrows. “That’s apparently supposed to be for you to find out, young woman.”
He looked startled at Clodagh’s laugh, which was not only ripplingly youthful but beautiful.
“Thanks for the ‘young,’ ” she said, patting his hand companionably.
“It wasn’t intended as a compliment,” Dr. von Clough replied stiffly, eyeing Clodagh with distaste.
Clodagh shrugged, unconcerned. Before any of the medical team could intervene, she had her fingers on Ball’s wrist. She stooped down to look him squarely in his lined and sad face, and tut-tutted. She pinched a flap of skin on his arm and observed the rate of its relaxation.
“You’re real tired, aren’t you?” she asked.
“The secretary-general is suffering from a serious PVS condition . . .”
She nodded. “Real tired.” Straightening up, she added, “He should stay here awhile.”
“That’s what Luzon said, though he wouldn’t say why,” Ball wheezed.
“Him?” Clodagh snorted derisively. “Just goes to show you anybody can do something right once in a while. Don’t suppose he meant to. But the joke’ll be on him. How’d you all get here? Whit Fiske said the PTS was grounded.”
“Why, the secretary-general has a private launch for the necessary travel he must—”
“At SpaceBase? Now?”
“Of course it is.”
“Good, then you all can stay there and I think I can find space for Mr. Ball . . .”
“But—but this—individual—said you had no hospital facilities.” Von Clough regarded Adak accusingly.
“Don’t need them. So far, folks have found the whole planet pretty healthy—good food, good air, nobody havin’ to take on more’n they can handle. Sick folks can rest when they need to, exercise if they need to. That and a bit of a tonic seems to do the trick. You might say the whole planet’s a hospital facility, only it’s so good at it, everybody stays pretty well, so’s you’d never notice,” Clodagh said slowly, as if turning over the words she spoke in her own mind at the same time. “I never thought about it before, but now that I do, it’s true.” She made an expansive gesture that included everything outside the cube. “We got everything a human body should need to keep well or cure what’s ailing.”
Von Clough’s eyes bulged with indignation.
“Mind you, Farringer, you were a little late comin’, but I still think we can help you out.” She eyed the apparatus with as dubious a glance as von Clough had awarded her. “Right now, of course, as we’re getting started, we have to make do with what we’ve got.” She indicated the cube. “We’re organizing slow but sure.”
“So, where can the secretary-general go?”
“The school at Kilcoole doesn’t need all the rooms in their cube yet,” she said. “We’re kinda short of places to put people since Dr. Luzon”—Clodagh paused to grin—“has been so good as to send us so many unexpected guests. But we’ll find a place for Farringer, since he’s so bad off. If you wanted to help, Doctor, the men could use