The Galactic Health and Wellness Coalition found Sandra and I asleep together the next day when they caught up to the Canteron. We were in my old room on Skaalt’s ship, which had a bed of the proper size for us.
I was curled into a ball against Sandra, and she was wrapped around me, arms around my chest and under my pillow. I would have been very happy with the arrangement, but we had both been too busy with the slaughter of the Canteron and the impending political nightmare to enjoy it. We hadn’t even meant to fall asleep that way: we had both passed out mid conversation.
The doctor knocked loudly on the door and didn’t wait to walk in. Sandra sat upright at once. This close to her, I could feel her chest heaving and heart thumping, immediately on high alert. She was ready for another attack.
I poked my head out from the nest of blankets and saw the small figure in the doorway, covered by its protective layer of clear scales, eight eyes wide in their covered sockets.
I sat up and put a hand on Sandra’s shoulder to calm her. “Good morning, doctor,” I said, “you got here very quickly.”
The doctor wasted no time on pleasantries. “I am here to examine your leg. Please, come with me.”
I growled in irritation.
“What is it?” Sandra asked me in a whisper.
“They are a doctor,” I said. “Did you tell the Librarian about my leg?”
Sandra nodded. She climbed out of bed, shaking out her hair and straightening her clothing. She pulled my chair over next to the bed and made sure the wheels were locked so it wouldn’t roll around while I got into it before walking away a few steps to get a drink of water and check her phone.
I held my temper and didn’t tell her that there was a reason I hadn’t asked her to tell the librarian about my injury. I could have continued working in a wheelchair, but now that the doctors had gotten hold of me, I had no chance of staying up-to-date with events unfolding.
I followed the doctor out of Skaalt’s ship, then out of the Quick Sliver. Sometime while we’d been asleep — recently, based on the amount of scuttling the Lorak are doing — the Galactic Health and Wellness Coalition had managed to get a hospital ship to Earth. And now things were in full swing.
Sandra caught up to me halfway down the Quick Sliver’s ramp and was immediately halted by an Udomach who was wielding protective equipment like weapons in each of their hands.
“No humans past this point without protective gear,” They said in their high-pitched squeak.
Sandra, of course, didn’t understand what they were saying because they were speaking galactic common. She looked back and forth between me and the Udomach several times.
“Mask and gloves,” I told her, “and then you can come with me.”
She took a mask from her own back pocket and accepted the awkward, mitten-like plastic gloves from the Udomach. Then they allowed her to follow me into the ship.
“Why don’t you have to wear a mask?” she asked me.
“Because I don’t exhale disease-causing agents,” I said.
“Oh, well…” Sandra took the push bars of my chair and started pushing, “I guess that’s fair.”
The hospital ship was apparently deserted apart from three of us making our way to a particular wing, but I had been on these ships often enough to know that they only looked empty. Behind the nearly invisible, sealed doors, a whole city researched, tended to the sick, and did everything else one would expect them to do. Like reading medical journals, growing food, and finding the time, somehow, to make and raise children.
Once you hit a certain population threshold, a spaceship is less a ship and more a mobile culture. And the Galactic Health and Wellness Coalition hospital ships were well past that point.
But neither Sandra nor I was going to see any of that. We were here as patients, so we’d be kept in the part of the ship actually used as a hospital.
We arrived in a sterile white room after two minutes, and the doctor gestured for me to get out of the chair and onto the bed. They pulled a medical computer out from the wall and began to enter parameters while I got settled.
“What’s happening?” Sandra asked me.
“They are going to examine my leg. And then, more than likely, they will take me to surgery to correct the issue. And I will be unconscious for the next day at least. So you are going to have to keep track of the events unfolding on Earth and nearby. And keep Skaalt and the Librarian up to date about where I am.”
She looked around at the doctor in the room with us, then bent close and hissed to me. “Acharya, I can’t do that!”
“Unfortunately, Sandra, you don’t have much choice. Here.” I passed her my notebook. “You can send letters to the Librarian from this.”
“Archie,” Sandra said again, sounding genuinely frightened.
“You’ll do just fine,” I soothed her, “and if you need help, you can always leave and go find Skaalt.”
“And leave you here alone?” She sounded like the very thought filled her with disgust.
I reflected that I should have told the galaxy how loyal and attentive humans could be when I wrote my report. I found Sandra’s hand and squeezed it hard.
“Can’t you just tell them not to operate on you until all this is over?” She asked desperately.
“No, Sandra. The doctors act with the best interests of the galaxy and my literal health in mind, not my desires. Once they decide what treatment is best, they will carry it out. That is their right as doctors.”
Sandra just shook her head. “I don’t know whether to tell them never to do that to a human or warn them not to hire a human for this job ever.”
“We’ll have time to tell them both,” I said. “Now, at least while I’m in surgery, will you take over communicating for me?”
“Yes,” she said, “yes, of course. Don’t worry about it.”
“Thank you,” I steeled myself and did something I hadn’t done before. I reached up a hand and touched her face. She was soft there, like she was everywhere. And I knew reaching out to her like this was an expression of possessiveness and affection for humans. “You’re going to do wonderfully.”
Sandra’s eyes grew in her face until they were almost as large as mine. She struck like lightning, and for a moment I thought she was going to hit me. Then she pulled me into her arms and buried her masked face against my neck. I hugged her back hard.
“I want to kiss you,” she whispered into my ear, “but not with someone else in the room.”
“And I’m very curious what it feels like to be kissed,” I murmured. “And if you’ll be able to smell my scent if I leave it on you.”
She pressed her head against mine, cheek to cheek. Shivers went up and down my spine, and I breathed out a huge shuddering breath. She was a welcome refuge from the pain, the harsh lighting, and the stress. I felt, not for the first time, that all I needed to feel well again was a few hours with Sandra in private. I really wished we weren’t in a hospital right then.
I patted Sandra’s shoulders. “We can figure all that out,” I said, “later.”
She sat back, just holding my hand. “Okay. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Just make sure that humans don’t get forbidden from traveling with other species,” I said, “or there might not be any point.”
Sandra nodded, growing somber.
At that point, I thought it was a very real possibility that humans would end up completely segregated from the rest of the galaxy. I worried that if they were forced to be separate from everyone else, they would end up becoming something far, far worse than the Canteron were. And thinking about never seeing Sandra again in person killed me a little.
The doctor wheeled the imaging computer over to the bed and pulled the splint off my leg.
“Sandra,” I said, “would you mind leaving the room for this?”
“Okay?” She didn’t move.
“This is going to be awkward and undignified,” I explained. “I’d rather you didn’t see this.”
This time, she stood up and nodded. “Alright; I’ll wait outside. If you need me, just yell.”
“I will,” I lied.
The doctor had enough tact to wait until she was out of the room before speaking. “That humans is very attached to you.”
“We’re attached to each other.”
That gave them pause, “I see. You should have let her stay. They hate being separated.”
“I know, but she has important work to do. Can we get on with this?” I gestured at the imaging device and my leg.
“Of course.” The doctor hit a button and the computer whirred to life.
Another doctor came in after a while, and I caught a glimpse of Sandra seated on the floor in the hallway, bent over two notebooks and typing furiously. Then the door shut again.
I took a deep breath and prepared myself to surrender to the medical machines. Despite my best efforts, my heart was pounding in my chest and my temperature was up. Now I was ready to fight or flee like Sandra had been.
The doctors conferred for a moment, then one turned to me and said, “We will have to replace your prosthetics. It will be a three-hour surgery followed by another three hours of cell-treatment to speed up healing.”
I nodded, knowing it would take longer than that because they would have to cut away what little bone growth I had managed to produce.
“When did you last eat?”
“Ten hours ago, Earth time. So about 6 standard-units.”
“Then we can proceed with the procedure immediately.”
They did not wait for me to confirm or give consent, just engaged the motor on the bed and pushed me towards the second door in the room: the one that went into the back hallways of the hospital.
My insides lurched with anxiety like they always did when I was going into surgery.
“Just one thing,” I said to the doctors. “Please make sure the human who came with me knows where I am and is put somewhere comfortable where she can work while she waits for me.”
“We will move her to a room where she can wait,” the doctor assured me.
I didn’t point out that that was not what I had asked for. There was no point with the doctors. Hospital ships worked at their own pace and in their own way, and each one was just a little bit different. I was just happy that I would be sedated before they brought me into the surgery suite.
***
I woke up in the recovery room. My head felt heavy and woozy, like it always does after a surgery, and both my legs ached. Ached in that particular way that meant my muscles had been stitched to new prosthetics.
This time, like every time, the feeling filled me with an insane joy. Using my legs was always cause for joy. I had too many vivid memories of dragging myself through the hot sand on my stomach as a child for it to ever stop being a miracle to walk upright.
A face swam hazily into my vision. A strange, smooth, flat face framed by long brown fur. It took me several long seconds to recognize Sandra.
She said something. Asked a question, probably, but my translation implants were not back online quite yet, so I couldn’t make sense of it.
“Good morning,” I told her, and when I saw from the way her face scrunched up. “Sorry, my star, but my translators aren’t working yet.”
She clearly didn’t understand, but she sat down on the edge of the bed and took my hand anyway.
There was a knock at the door, and Nick opened it. I hadn’t seen him anywhere before my surgery, but I had known he would be fine because he was with Skaalt and the other humans.
“Hello, Nick,” I said.
He frowned at me, then looked at Sandra.
“I don’t know—” I heard before the speech dissolved back into gibberish.
There went my ability to say whatever I wanted without consequences.
“Give it a moment,” I told them, and some of what I said must have gotten through, because Sandra squeezed my hand.
The last of the anesthetic was clearing from my mind, leaving behind only sharp pain and worry. I shook my head, which made my ears thump painfully.
“I’m back,” I said, “tell me what’s happened.”
“Humans are keeping the Canteron’s war ships,” Sandra said at once, “and they aren’t letting anyone on them except us.”
My stomach dropped, which in my present condition made me feel very sick. I swallowed hard. “That isn’t promising.”
Sandra shook her head, “It’s very good, actually. All of the Canteron warships are biohazards, and humans are letting them land on Earth so we can clean them out.”
“I see.” I didn’t know if that was really a good thing or not. Humans were not going to let those ships leave again without them on it. “So they know what the plague was?”
“Yes,” Sandra said, “poor Carrie: she has tuberculosis. We were there then the WHO gave her the test and she reacted within 15 minutes.”
I hadn’t interacted with tuberculosis at all on Earth, except I knew that I wasn’t susceptible to it. Maybe I should have investigated that more.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Nick answered. “She can’t leave the planet without being cured.”
“Alright,” I said, “so she’ll have to stay put for a few months?”
“Maybe,” Nick said, “if it’s not immune to every drug we can throw at it.”
“What?” I asked.
“Sometimes,” Sandra took over, “tuberculosis evolves immunity to antibiotics and treatments. It could be incredibly difficult to cure.”
“That is terrifying,” I said.
“Yes.” Sandra sighed. “Normally, humans with latent infections like Carrie can’t even spread their infections. The Canteron must have absolutely awful immune systems.”
“I could tell that just by looking at them,” Nick said.
Something had occurred to me. “Is anyone else infected?”
Sandra turned her arm and showed me a circle of skin outlined in black ink. “I’ll have to wait another day, but so far I’m clean.”
“Same here,” Nick said.
“And her crew mates?”
“None of them have had a reaction either.”
The Canteron had either gotten supremely unlucky or their immune systems were so susceptible to infection that a single stray bacterium had done them all in.
I wondered if it was even Tuberculosis that had killed them. Maybe it had been some other, more common bacterium. Staphylococcus, for example, which covers humans all over. Or yeast.
I learned later it had been a combination of several things. One foreign bacteria the Canteron might have been able to handle. But against the hundreds that humans carry plus a super case of tuberculosis from Carrie who, it turned out, had been popping antibiotic tablets ever since a nasty case of strep throat in her teens, they stood no chance.
“What about the rest of the galaxy?” I asked.
“What about them?” Sandra asked.
“How are they responding to humans?”
“Well, a couple species have added us to the list of species forbidden on their planets,” she said, “but the galactic library and the hospital people are fine with us. And human health organizations are generally really good about giving aid to people and helping prevent disease spread. So we’re actually doing a lot to help the remaining Canteron.”
“Some of them survived?” I hadn’t expected that.
“Less than ten, and they’re in rough shape. But according to them, the Canteron never went back to one of their home planets, so only their armies were infected.”
“Good. Good.” I pressed at a sore spot on my head. “And the war?”
“Still on,” Sandra said, at least for now.”
Both sides were too stubborn to back down, so that made sense. The Canteron would come to their senses soon though. At least I hoped they would.
“You’re in trouble though,” Sandra said. “For categorizing Earth as a Deathworld.”
“In trouble with who?” I asked.
“Earth,” she said.
I expected that, but it was still a pain. “That’s fair,” I said. “Just so long as they let other representatives of the galactic library finish what I started, it won’t be an issue.”
Both humans looked surprised at that. “There’s more to do?” Nick asked.
“Of course there is,” I said. “I haven’t even seen four of your seven continents yet. And once I’m finished with an Earth primer, other scholars will want to come study here.”
Sandra was looking out the small window beside the bed. Out of it, I could just see the blue edge of the planet glowing in the light of the distant star.
“It looks so small,” she said.
I squeezed her hand.
“People will calm down about Earth being a deathworld,” Nick said. “It’s true, after all, and we’ll get a crazy reputation because of it.”
“So you agree with my assessment?” I asked him. I was surprised any human agreed with me, considering how much the modern philosophy centered around loving Earth.
“Of course,” Sandra said.
“Yeah,” Nick said
“We’ve talked all about Chint,” Sandra said, “and you’ve never mentioned being scared of your planet or being attacked by any wildlife. And all I’ve talked about with you is all the dangerous animals and plants. It’s pretty obvious we’re a Deathworld when a class 2 planet looks cuddly by comparison.”
When you put it that way, it did sound very obvious. Also, I was shocked that the picture of Chint I had given to Sandra was so pleasant. I remembered the place as judgemental and harsh, blinding, burning. I still had deformed scales from burning myself on the sand.
But in comparison to Earth, the planet itself was welcoming and pleasant. They were right about that. I just couldn’t see it that way because I had been treated so poorly there.
“Thank you for taking charge while I wasn’t able to,” I told Sandra. “You seem to have held things down well. Now, give me my notebook back and I’ll handle the rest.”
“Right after surgery?” She asked suspiciously.
“There’s nothing I can’t do while I rest,” I said, “is there?”
“Depends. Do you want to go to any of the meetings between the WHO and the Galactic Health People?”
“No,” I said. Skaalt would probably be interested though.
“Then no,” Sandra passed me my notebook. I paged through it quickly after changing the language back to galactic common because reading using the translation implants made my eyes hurt. There was correspondence from Sandra where she had relied on the translation features to communicate with the Librarian and some scholars, and it looked like she had handled herself reasonably well. Considering she had never really talked to another alien besides me, that was. She had definitely offended a few people, but I did that on a daily basis.
“You did a very good job.” I told Sandra.
“Thank you,” She said, “I didn’t really expect most of your job to be fancy email, somehow.”
“Only when something very important and very boring is happening.” I set the notebook down. “So what’s next?”
“With what?” Sandra asked.
“Humans,” I said.
“I don’t know.”
“Really? You don’t have any idea?”
Both humans were quiet for a while. “I bet some people will hold a wake for the dead Canteron soldiers,” Nick offered tentatively.
“And then the governments of the world will fight over the spaceships,” Sandra said, “and then, eventually, they’ll use them to leave Earth. Probably.”
“Probably?” I asked.
“If they don’t manage to break the ships somehow,” she clarified, “and if the rest of the galaxy lets us leave the planet at all.”’
“They will,” I sent a quick update to the Librarian, signing back online. “Apart from everything else, they wouldn’t be able to stop you. Not with humans already off the planet and fighting in space.”
“Won’t they be scared of us, though?”
“Yes they will. But that won’t make a difference to you. There are more people out there who will be looking to make alliances and hire humans now than there will be avoiding them.”
“Even after we killed all the Canteron?”
“Most people are better-equipped to handle foreign diseases than the Canteron,” I pointed out gently, “you’ll notice that I haven’t died of a cold or flu.”
“You haven’t even got sick,” Sandra remembered.
I nodded. “You may be asked to quarantine during your first few weeks off the planet, but other than that, you will be fine.”
Sandra and Nick stared at me. Slowly, Sandra’s hand on mine squeezed hard.
“I expect both of you are very interested in leaving Earth,” I said, “but I would wait if I were you. Until you finish your schooling on Earth and until there are more options for leaving the planet—”
“I’m not leaving,” Sandra said, “not until you’re done here.”
“I’ll be happy to have your help.” I ran a finger over the back of her hand. “I want to be back on Earth in time to see the memorial for the Canteron.”
“I’ll go find a doctor so you can get discharged.” Nick turned to the door and left.
As soon as the door closed behind him, Sandra grabbed me in a real hug and kissed me between the ears. I felt her hair brush against my ears. Humans are perhaps the only species that kisses. They might be the only species that can, with their strange puffy lips. I had seen humans kiss several times. I had even seen Sandra kiss Raymond. It has always looked awkward and wet to me, and it didn’t look pleasant. But I was wrong. Human kisses were warm, soft, gentle, and possessive.
“I was so scared you weren’t going to come out of surgery alive,” She said.
I hugged her back and didn’t say that there was no chance I would die in surgery. I didn’t want to spoil the moment. I just wanted to hold her before either my work took me away or hers did.
I still hadn’t realized how far humans will go for people they love. But Sandra taught me eventually.
This story is also published on Archive of Our Own, where the story is being published in addition to the blog. To read more, follow me here or on AO3 or Tumblr