A change of tactics, p.25
A Change of Tactics, page 25
“If I’m right about the corn starch, they don’t have to,” Den told her. “A corn starch solution of the right concentration liquefies under a gentle pressure, but hardens when hit sharply.”
“Like when they run on it?”
Den nodded. “My parents showed Rital and me some tricks to play with corn starch, one rainy morning when we were driving them crazy, but they never let us make up a whole tub of the stuff and walk on it.”
“You obviously had a deprived childhood,” Sera commiserated as the children in the audience chanted, “Non-Newtonian fluid with high shear rate!” in more-or-less unison.
The third graduate student, a scrawny young man with unkempt, overgrown brown hair that contrasted with his indoor pallor, was trotting toward the washtubs. The audience grew quiet with anticipation.
Thus the high-pitched scream of, “Whoa-oh-oooah! Look out!!!” that reverberated through the amphitheater caught everyone’s attention.
Glancing around, Den spotted a carrot-headed boy precariously balanced on one of the ubiquitous rolling boards. He was hurtling down the steep path into the amphitheater at a speed far too fast for safety, arms flailing as he struggled to keep from falling.
About half way down, the boy lost the battle. The board swerved suddenly and he jumped off. As his feet separated from the board, it soared through the air, tumbling through two complete rotations before it smashed into the table on which most of the demonstrations had been staged, bounced back into the air for another rotation, and finally rolled to a stop against the building. Flying glass and chemicals peppered Fibes, his assistants, and the audience. Over the screams as people scattered for safety, Den clearly heard an outraged cry.
“Raymond Ildun, you little monster! I told you never, ever to touch my board!”
It was the third of the graduate student assistants. He had paused to watch the unfolding disaster and without the impact of his moving feet to harden it, the starch solution had liquefied, leaving him knee-deep in a washtub of goo.
Den was already on his feet, propelled by reflex and training. He pushed through the milling crowd into the glass- and chemical-spattered space at the epicenter of the disturbance. Professor Fibes was frozen in shock, dripping blood from a scalp wound. Several damp splashes on his lab coat were smoking as the cloth blackened. Three of the four graduate students had similar injuries, as did some of the closer members of the audience. It was more than one Donor without a channel or medkit could handle.
“Someone contact emergency services,” Den called loudly, making eye contact with as many people in the audience as he could.
A bearded man who had been watching from a second-story window shouted back, “I’ll call from my office.”
“Thank you,” the Donor responded.
“It’s the least I can do, under the circumstances,” the man said, looking unaccountably guilty. He disappeared into the Center for Technology.
Den turned back to address the crowd again. “If you and your children are not injured, please leave the area in a calm and orderly matter,” he ordered. “Anyone hit by flying glass or chemical splashes, come this way. Be careful. Don’t step on the broken glass or into a puddle. You, there,” he continued, pointing to the only uninjured graduate student, who was still mired in the washtub of starch. “What’s your name?”
The student looked vaguely alarmed, but stammered, “It’s Branlee Arnborg.”
Den nodded. “Branlee, put your shoes on, then turn on that hose and start washing the chemical splashes off of people’s clothing. Start with the professor’s coat, before that acid soaks through and burns him.”
The student recognized the voice of authority and moved to obey, wading through the starch quicksand toward the nearest ramp and his shoes.
Den spent the next half hour checking cuts for slivers of glass and improvising pressure bandages. He was vaguely aware of Sera and several other Gens sweeping the broken glass into piles for disposal and setting chemical containers out of harm’s way. The university police arrived with paramedics and an ambulance for Professor Fibes and a half-dozen other victims whose injuries were beyond the scope of first aid.
As the crowd of injuries began to ease, the lead paramedic, a stocky woman wearing a uniform with ‘Alizon’ embroidered on the pocket, began making rounds, checking for any additional injuries or damage that might have gone unnoticed. She dropped by the corner where Den was applying pressure to a little girl’s cut arm with the aid of her father’s handkerchief. She looked at the Donor’s work critically, nodded approval, then opened a small box of bandages, tape, and other basic supplies and held out a neat stack of sterile gauze pads. “I think you’ll find these useful.”
Den took the pads, substituted them for the bloody and unsterile handkerchief, then expertly secured them in place with the tape she offered. “Thank you,” the Donor said absently, looking around for the next patient as the little girl and her father went on their way.
“No, thank you,” Alizon corrected him. “Your fast response minimized the severity of the injuries, as I’m sure you know, Doctor…?”
“Sosu Den Milnan,” he introduced himself. “I’m the senior Donor at the new Sime Center.”
This, she had obviously not been expecting. “You work with the channel there, taking care of the changeovers?”
“I do, among other things,” Den admitted.
She hesitated a moment, then spoke in a rush. “I know there are plenty of good folks who didn’t want the Sime Center around, but I’m just as happy there’s somebody else taking some of the changeover calls. They’re nasty.”
The Donor sighed. “They don’t have to be, you know. Changeover takes time. If parents and children learn to identify the early symptoms and get a channel’s help, then nobody gets hurt.”
Alizon nodded. “That may be, but most folks here don’t want anything to do with you people. I don’t think that’s going to change much before I retire.”
Sadly, Den had to agree.
The amphitheater cleared rapidly as the paramedics tended the last injuries. Sera surrendered her broom to a graduate student with training in handling chemical spills. She came over to Den and said, “I think the crisis is over.”
Den looked around and nodded. He walked over to one of the washtubs and poked at the surface gently. It gave easily, but stiffened when he tried a slap. “It seems a pity to waste this setup,” he observed wistfully.
“Oh, go ahead and give it a try,” a voice urged from behind them. “It’s fun and you’ve certainly earned it.”
Den turned.
Branlee Arnborg grinned at them from underneath his overgrown mop of hair. “Why not? I’m only going to dump the stuff. Might as well get some use out of it first.”
The Donor glanced at Sera, who seemed intrigued. He grinned back at Branlee. “Why not, indeed.”
Stripping off their shoes, Den and Sera jogged across the goo, laughing as their feet slapped wetly on the solidified cornstarch solution. While they were rinsing the splashed flecks of starch off their feet with the hose, Den’s attention was caught by something lying against the building. It was the object whose meteoric entrance had so disrupted the magic show. Curious, he picked it up and examined it.
The general shape was similar to that of the board-on-wheels toys the local children rode. However, this was obviously no child’s toy. The main body was a plank about the length of his arm and a handspan wide. The material it was made of had never been pulled off an old packing crate or pallet. It was very thin and slightly flexible. Despite the abuse it had taken, the board was essentially intact: some scratches marred the surface and a small chip was missing from one corner. The top surface was covered with sandpaper to improve the rider’s grip. The wheels were of high quality, turning freely and with very little friction. Technologically, it was as far beyond the toys Den had seen as a modern sliderail trail was beyond toy trains for children.
“What is this thing?” he asked Sera.
She shrugged and admitted, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“It’s my custom rollerboard,” Branlee said, walking over to join them. “I made it out of lab surplus.” He took the board from Den, turning it to show off its features. “The wheels are a special, low-friction design that I salvaged from a remotely controlled device that was going to be thrown out. Once I cleaned the cobwebs off, they were in perfect working condition.”
“What’s the board proper made of?” the Donor asked. “I’ve never seen a material like it.”
“That’s because we just invented it,” Branlee said, with no little pride. “It’s a fiberglass analog composite for chemical storage tanks. It’s chemically inert, like fiberglass, except it uses a carbon-based fiber instead of a silicon-based one. That gives the material a lot more strength and makes it less brittle. Combined with the wheels, this board can run circles around the ones the kids use.”
“It doesn’t steer right,” grumbled a childish treble. The carrot-headed child walked toward them, ignoring the detritus from the magic show his misadventure had ended so abruptly. Up close, he seemed strangely familiar. “I couldn’t make that board stop swerving back and forth. It shouldn’t have done that and you should fix it.”
“You shouldn’t have stolen my rollerboard when I told you to leave it alone, Raymond Ildun!” Branlee retorted. “And whatever got into you, that you thought going down a path that steep was a good idea? And on a type of board you’ve never ridden before? I’m surprised you made it halfway down before wiping out.”
The freckled face grinned broadly. “Wasn’t it great, the way the bottles and stuff went flying? And all the ookey blood and stuff?”
“No, it was not great!” Branlee’s glared down at the juvenile delinquent in outrage.
The boy’s attention turned to Den and his eyes widened. “Hey, you’re the guy who did the tour of the Sime Center.”
That provided the connection Den required to remember where he had seen this child before. “You’re the boy who wanted to know what it was like to donate.”
Raymond nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! It’s gross, with all the tentacles and things. Changeover is even better. My babysitter, Nozella, went through changeover.” He frowned. “You wouldn’t let me see her tentacles.”
Den was starting to understand Nozella’s grudge against her erstwhile charge, even if his ability to spot her changeover early had saved her life. “A lot of people got hurt here,” he pointed out. “Don’t you think they have a right to be angry at you?”
“I got hurt, too, and I’m not mad at myself,” Raymond countered disingenuously. He raised his left hand in demonstration. The littlest finger extended sideways in a decidedly unnatural fashion and was starting to swell. “It’s disgusting, isn’t it?” the child asked cheerfully.
Den held out his hand, aware of the irony that with four work-starved channels facing entran across town at the Sime Center, he was the one spending his holiday tending injuries. “Let me take a look at that,” he ordered.
With obvious pride in his battle wound, Raymond complied.
A quick examination confirmed that the finger was dislocated. The Donor couldn’t zlin the details of the damage as a channel would, of course, but there were no obvious broken bones or skin damage. The key to treating dislocations was to get the joint back into place before swelling made movement impossible. On the other hand, reducing a dislocated joint was a painful process and he had neither a channel’s ability to block a patient’s pain nor access to pain-deadening medications.
It was a holiday and the sun was hovering just above the horizon. It might take hours for the boy’s parents to find an out-Territory doctor to tend the injury. Den looked at the unrepentant grin on Raymond’s face, thought about the number of others who had been hurt by his escapade, then gripped the injured finger firmly and popped it back into place.
The boy screamed at the intense pain, then glared at the Donor. “Why did you do that?” he demanded indignantly.
“Your finger is back in place now,” Den pointed out. “Branlee, would you hand me a piece of that painter’s tape?” He nodded toward a roll of brown tape left behind by the cleanup crew, grunted thanks as it slapped into his palm, and taped the injured finger securely to the uninjured finger next to it. “There,” he said, releasing the boy’s hand. “That will hold you until your parents can get you to a doctor tomorrow. In the meantime, Sera and I would like to enjoy at least a little of our holiday.”
“You should go see the dog races over at the sports arena,” Branlee suggested. “They started,” he glanced up at the four-sided clock that occupied place of pride on the tower that formed the high point of the Center for Technology building, “about half an hour ago, so you should be in time to see the final heats.”
“Dog races sound like fun,” Sera agreed.
Branlee obligingly provided directions. “Enjoy the show for me,” he ended wistfully. “I’ve got to stay and finish the cleanup. The Chancellor and his evil minions are giving some Very Important Guests a guided tour of their shiny new Center for Technology tonight. With Professor Fibes injured, I’m the one who gets to spend Union Day in the lab, twiddling my thumbs while I wait for the Chancellor’s very good friends to arrive.”
Following Branlee’s instructions, they soon found the sports arena. They rested their tired feet on the bleachers as they watched sausage-shaped, short-legged dogs race after a much-chewed rabbit pelt. The whole stadium cheered when Frankfurter beat Muffin and Fritz for the grand prize. As Frankfurter’s owner accepted the rubber pull-toy ceremoniously presented by the president of the Veterinary School Student Association (while unsuccessfully trying to keep the champion from grabbing it instead,) Sera convulsed with giggles.
Den was post enough to notice that she had a very nice giggle.
“You were right,” she admitted as the crowd filed out of the bleachers. “Once you get them away from Simes, these are normal people. Or at least as close to normal as you can get with only Gens.”
Den agreed, steering her toward a bench where they could sit and talk while they waited for the mob to clear. “Which is to say, as set in their ways as any of the old junct families. People don’t change their fundamental world view unless they have a very good reason to do so.”
“And yet, you’ve devoted yourself to getting them to make exactly that sort of fundamental change,” she pointed out. “Aren’t you just another crusader following an impossible dream?”
“Me, a dreaming idealist?” Den whooped with laughter. “Rital, maybe. He’d really like to convince the people here that they don’t have to fear Simes. I, on the other hand, am quite happy to let the Gens here deal with their own existential crises.”
“This from the man who is obsessed with flying like a bird?” Sera grinned at him in challenge. “That sure sounds like a dreamer to me.”
“I’m not obsessed with flying as a goal in itself,” Den corrected her. “I want to re-create the Ancient technology of flight as a practical means of transportation. There’s a difference.”
When she looked at him in confusion, he elaborated. “If we don’t refine selyn technology into something much more efficient during our lifetime, future generations would probably keep our current technology base, but couldn’t expand it to recapture other Ancient technologies in the future.”
Sera shook her head. “That’s not what I was asking. Why develop flight, in particular, as opposed to any other Ancient technology?”
“Technology is never ‘in particular,’” Den argued. “If we can develop a smaller, lighter selyn battery that can be used in a flyer, it would also hugely reduce the amount of selyn used by the sliderail train system. If we can learn enough about the weather to use flyers for transportation, the information will also be used to fine-tune agriculture and produce more food with less work. But as to why I, personally, want flyers…”
He looked up at the sky for a long moment, remembering. After a moment, he said quietly, “Rital and I were raised together because his parents died when he was five. They were trying to rescue a group of people stranded by a flood and drowned when a collapsing bridge dropped their train into the raging river. They knew the bridge pilings had been undercut, but the refugees were running out of time, so they gambled their lives that the bridge would hold. And lost.” He met Sera’s eyes squarely. “An airscrew-flyer like those the Ancients used routinely would have gotten them safely to the other side.”
“I think I understand,” she said quietly.
It was dusk when they started on the long walk back to the Sime Center, pleasantly tired and too relaxed to talk much. Across the street from the arena, the Conservative Congregation’s church was brilliantly lit. Den was debating whether it was the proper moment to invite Sera to spend the night with him, before she returned to Valzor the following morning, when he was distracted by a low moan and the smell of vomit.
Physician’s instincts alerted, Den followed the sound toward the Center for Technology and discovered a youngster huddled under the bushes. “Are you all right?” Den called softly, already suspecting what was the matter.
“Go away!” The adolescent voice cracked over two octaves. Ducking under a branch, the Donor knelt by the boy’s side. Den could feel his own selyn production rate increasing rapidly. He knew what he would find even before he touched the boy’s neck and felt the glands swollen with changeover.
The boy cringed away from his touch with changeover-induced paranoia and Den murmured, “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you. Do you think you could stand if I help you? You’ll feel a lot better once you’ve had a chance to clean up.”
The boy slowly sat up, as if only then becoming aware of the dirt and less pleasant things that were spattered on the front of his lightweight jacket. With a jerky nod, he allowed the Donor to help him to his feet and they stumbled out of the bushes to where Sera waited. Gesturing for her to support the boy’s other side, Den steered them toward the door to the battery room. It was at least well-insulated, private, and close. “There are steps,” he warned the others as he unlocked the door with the key he had neglected to put away after the morning’s tour. “Let me get the light,” he advised as he pulled the door open and groped for the switch. He flipped it, blinking in the sudden brightness. He turned to help the others down the stairs, then stifled a groan as he recognized the boy.
