The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [19]
Reaching over, Ingrid gave the girl a reassuring pat on her upper arm. “Depends on the severity of the breakdown. I’m pretty sure yours is salvageable.” She glanced at the mother standing nearby. “First we need to treat the infection. I know it looks bad, but it’s not ampstaph or anything like that. A shot of polyotic should clear it right up.” She turned her attention back to the now alert teen. “I’ll give you a couple of names and addresses. I’m not in a building that specializes in these kinds of melds, and you definitely want a specialist to perform the repairs, but the references I’m going to leave with your mom are for melders I know personally. Either of them should be able to restore your crest.” She spared a second glance for the obviously relieved parent.
“It won’t be cheap, but this time it will be done right, and the work will be guaranteed.”
The grateful mother lurched forward. “Thank you, Dr. Seastrom, thank you! Cara …”
Mother and daughter embraced. Both were crying. Gathering up the medogic, Ingrid folded it carefully and let herself out into the hallway. To her ongoing dismay, dealing with botched melds constituted a fair share of her work. It was an unending source of amazement to her that despite the almost daily reports of deaths and disfigurements caused by unlicensed practitioners, people continued to seek out and make use of backstreet melders. Such decisions all boiled down to money, though she could not for the life of her imagine that any such savings were worth the potential risks.
Take Cara Gibson, for example. Probably engaged someone to do the feather work who had been “recommended” by a friend. A cheap unauthorized melder operating out of the back of a truck. The loss of feathers was nothing. Far more significant was the infection that had resulted from the incompetent work. Left untreated, it could have developed into something far more serious. One touch of ampstaph in the girl’s upper spine could have left her paralyzed for life. Or at the very least in need of an emergency extensive back meld.
Not wishing to interrupt the emotional mother-daughter bonding, she occupied herself reviewing the medogic’s readings. Infection type and rate there, recommended polyotic dosage so-and-so, muscular trauma rating, neural welds so many, growth points so many …
How now—what was that?
She scrolled back and enlarged one portion of the readout. There were forty-six points of quillgrow attachment along the girl’s skull, neck, and spine. Forty-five of them were fashioned from the expected patented custom blend of gengineered carbon and melded proteins. The forty-sixth …
Most obviously, it had been installed deeper in the back of Cara Gibson’s skull than was necessary. Not dangerously so, but just enough for the abnormality to register on Ingrid’s sensitive medogic. The insert did not call attention to itself and could easily be overlooked. In fact, had Ingrid not been wiling away the time in the hall the information would have been automatically compressed, filed, and forgotten the instant she shut down the device. She had caught the anomaly only thanks to boredom.
Like the other attachment points it was composed of familiar organic staples, none of them expensive. That, and something else. There was an—impurity. This in itself was not what drew Ingrid’s attention. It was the nature of the adulteration. In her experience, impurities tended to be irregular in form and composition. This one was anything but.
For one thing, it glistened.
After checking the readout for a third time to ensure that the anomaly was real and not a program aberration, she reentered the room. Sitting at the foot of the bed, the mother looked up in surprise. “Dr. Seastrom: I thought you’d let yourself out.”
Ingrid smiled. “I have to give you those referral names and