I CHASED DOWN Hippocrates Wallace in an infirmary corridor between maternity and pathology. He glanced over his shoulder when I called, then turned and faced me with his rounds chipboard in one cocoa-colored hand.
I said, “There’s a case of Glenmorangie in the foot-well under your desk. Don’t drink it all in one place, Colonel.”
He grunted. “Took you long enough.”
“I brought it all the way from Earth. And I’ve been busy.”
“So I’ve heard.” He stared at me for two heartbeats. Then he said, “You didn’t come over here to deliver scotch.”
I shook my head.
He pointed at an empty double room across the hall, ushered me in, then closed the door behind us.
My heart pounded. “I hear Ord put himself on sick call this morning.”
“DeArthur stopped by downstairs, two weeks before you got back here from Earth. Complained of persistent sniffles. Got loaded up with the usual complement of patent meds and a download advising rest and clear fluids.”
“You’ve known Ord long enough to know he’d never visit the infirmary over sniffles.”
“I have. But he didn’t come to me, just saw a duty nurse.”
“And?”
“The next visit, which was just after you got back from Earth, he did come to me. I observed visible weight loss. He complained of flulike symptoms that persisted too long. I ordered some tests.”
I closed my eyes.
I heard Wally draw a deep breath.
I said, “Pneumonia?”
“Jason, we can’t beat all the bugs on Earth, much less the pathogens on fourteen alien planets.”
I opened my eyes. “I don’t understand.”
Wally pulled up two chairs, sat me in one, then sat down across from me and laid a hand on my knee. “We’ve seen this bug infect Earthborns on Bren before. Mostly picked up in the Highlands, maybe waterborne. Ord was out in the boonies a couple days while you were gone. The locals are resistant. In Earthborns, it mimics cold and flu, while it digs in.”
“Digs in. Where?”
“Jason, it’s a total bastard. Once it gets going, it fragments erythrocytes faster than we can transfuse the patient.”
“It’s eating his blood?”
“The red cells.”
“You have antibiotics.”
Wally shook his head. “In a few years, maybe.”
“The medic shot me up with a blood booster before the Weichsel raid. That would replace the red cells.”
Wally shook his head again.
“You can transplant bone marrow.”
Wally sighed. “That’s cancer. Cancer would be easier.”
I shook my head back at him. “No. Not Ord. No bug would dare-”
“DeArthur’s a tough customer. But he doesn’t have a younger man’s immune system, Jason.”
“Wally, listen up! I’m a fucking lieutenant general. I said no! Doesn’t that count for something?”
I walked to the window, shaking my head. Troops drilled in the sunlight, and in the distance, aircraft floated into the cloudless sky. I said into the windowpane, “No, no, no!”
Blood roared in my ears, and finally I knew that my rank and my rage counted for nothing. Ord was dying. Not cut down in combat like a soldier. Murdered by some fucking Mesozoic bacteria. I grasped the windowsill, then pounded my fists on it. I spun and pointed at Wally. “Goddamit! You call yourself a fucking doctor? I want the nurse who sent him home with two aspirin in my office in an hour! With her lawyer!”
“She could have shot him home to the Mayo Clinic on a cruiser and the result would be the same, Jason.”
I pounded the wall again, until my fists were sore, while Wally stood by, silent.
Finally I turned to him. “How long?”
“Art’s in remarkable shape for his age. And we can transfuse the hell out of him.”
I blinked back tears. “How long?”
“Three weeks. Two quality.”
I stepped back until I steadied myself against the windowsill, then whispered, “Does he know?”
Wally nodded.
I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, then straightened my gig line. “Where is he?”
“I’ll take you to him.”