Hybrids

The surgeon, a female named Korbonon, was a member of generation 145, about Mary’s age. Korbonon normally worked on repairing severely damaged limbs, such as those that sometimes resulted when a hunt went horribly wrong; her knowledge of musculature and nerve tissue was second to none.

“This is going to be a bit tricky,” said Korbonon. The temporary Companion was sitting on a small table, hooked up to an external power source; it was unattached to Mary, but still doing translations for her, through its external speaker. Korbonon clearly wasn’t used to having her speech translated; she spoke loudly, as if Mary could understand her Neanderthal words. “Your forearm is less muscled than a Barast one, which may make anchoring the Companion difficult. But I see what they said about Gliksin proportions is true: your upper and lower arms are the same length; that should give us some extra territory to work with.” Barast forearms were noticeably shorter than their upper arms; their shins were also shorter than their thighs.

“I would have thought this was a routine operation,” said Mary.

Korbonon’s eyebrow was a light reddish blond. It rose. “Routine? Not adding a first Companion to an adult arm. Of course, when the Companions were introduced, almost a thousand months ago, they were mostly installed in adults—but the surgeons who did that then are all long dead. No, this operation has only been occasionally performed since, mostly on those who have lost the arm that contained the implant they received in childhood.”

“Ah,” said Mary. She was leaning back in something that vaguely resembled a dentist’s chair with stirrups—apparently an all-purpose operating platform. Her left arm was sitting on a little table that protruded from one side of the chair. The inside of her arm had been swabbed with something that wasn’t alcohol—it was a pink liquid that smelled sour, but apparently served the purpose of disinfecting the skin. Still, Mary was surprised to see that Korbonon wasn’t wearing a face mask. “Our surgeons usually cover their noses and mouths,” said Mary, a bit concerned.

“Why?” asked Korbonon.

“To keep them from infecting the patient, and the patient from infecting them.”

“I might as well operate blindfolded!” declared Korbonon.

Mary was about to question the statement, then realized what the surgeon meant: the acute Neanderthal sense of smell provided a crucial part of their perception.

“What will you do about anesthetic?” asked Mary. For the first time, she was grateful that Ponter wasn’t here. Knowing his sense of humor, he would have doubtless quipped, “Anesthetic? What is that?”—to be followed, of course, after a suitable pause, with “Just kidding.” She was nervous enough as it was.

“We will use a neuronal interrupter,” replied Korbonon.

“Really?” said Mary, the scientist in her coming to the fore, despite her apprehension about the operation. “We use chemical agents.”

The surgeon nodded. “We used to do that,” she said, “but they take time to become effective, time to wear off, and are difficult to localize precisely. Also, of course, some people have allergies to chemical anesthetics.”

“Yet another technology my people will doubtless want to trade for,” said Mary. A second female loomed in—Mary didn’t know anything about Barast medical hierarchies; she might have been a nurse or another doctor, or held some position that had no counterpart in the Gliksin world. In any event, she wrapped an elastic metalized band around Mary’s left forearm just below the elbow, and then attached another one just above the wrist. Then, to Mary’s astonishment, she took out what looked like a fat Magic Marker, and started drawing a complexseries of lines between the two bands. Rather than ink, though, what looked like liquid metal came out. But it wasn’t hot, and it quickly dried, gaining a matte finish as it did so. The color was wrong, but the effect was like that chocolate syrup for ice cream that hardens quickly into a crust. “What are you doing?” asked Mary.

The Barast with the marker made no reply. But the surgeon said, “She is tracing the appropriate nerve trunks in your forearm. The lines form electrical co

After a few minutes, the second female nodded, apparently to herself, and moved away, approaching a small control console. She pulled out a series of control buds, and Mary felt her forearm go numb. “Wow,” she said.

“All right,” said Korbonon. “Here we go.” And before Mary knew what was happening, the surgeon had dived in and made a long incision parallel to Mary’s radius. Mary almost threw up as her own blood welled out, spilling onto the little table, which she now noted had a raised lip all around its edge.

Mary was shocked—and was worried about going into shock. In her world, great efforts were taken to keep patients from being able to see themselves during surgery. But here, no thought had been given to that. Maybe having to kill your own food, even occasionally, was enough to put an end to such squeamishness. Mary swallowed hard and tried to calm herself; it really wasn’t that much blood…was it?

She wondered what happened during thoracic surgery. Gliksin surgeons were presented with a patient whose face was covered, and had only a tiny, exposed surgical field. Did the Barasts do it that way, too? The main reason, after all, wasn’t to keep the patient from getting covered with blood. Rather, Mary had been told by one of her doctor friends, it was a psychological aid for the surgeon—a way of keeping him or her focused on the problem in cutting and splicing, rather than thinking of themselves as carving into the home of another human soul. But the Barasts, with their complete lack of Cartesian duality and their indifference to gore, perhaps had no such need.

Korbonon slipped several blue springlike things into the wound that apparently did the same job as forceps, holding it open. Other little clips and doodads were attached to arteries, veins, and nerves. Mary could clearly see into the opening in her skin, cutting through fat and meat all the way down to the slick grayish solidity of her radius.

Moments later, the other Barast—the one who had painted the nerve-deadening lines on Mary’s forearm—moved in. The Barast doctors were wearing short-sleeved yellow shirts and long blue gloves that went past their elbows; Mary thought perhaps they went that high to keep blood from getting matted into their hairy forearms.

The second Barast picked up Mary’s new Companion and removed it from its sterile wrapping. Mary had gotten used to the look of the faceplates, but had never seen the other side of one. It was sculpted like a topographic model, with highs, lows, and cha

Mary winced, wondering how Vissan Le

The surgeon next used a laser scalpel, similar to the one Mary herself had had to use when Ponter was shot outside the United Nations. The two ends of Mary’s radial artery were attached to two different apertures on the underside of the Companion. She knew the Companions had no power source of their own; they were fueled by bodily processes. Well, the pumping strength of blood through the radial artery was certainly a good source of power; apparently the Companion had a hydroelectric—or would that be sanguinoelectric?—generating plant built in.

Mary kept meaning to turn away—just as she always quickly hustled past the TV series The Operation on The Learning Cha