Reap the Whirlwind

For the first time since she and Tan Bao had worked together, he balked at her order. His voice betrayed his alarm and suspicion. “Doctor…what are you trying to do?”

“According to Dr. Fisher’s research,” she explained, “this substance becomes inert almost immediately when it expires. It doesn’t break down, like organic tissue—it becomes inert. That suggests to me that it was nonliving matter to begin with.” She nodded toward the limb on the bed. “So if this signal can have that effect on a crystalline matrix, wouldn’t it be interesting to see what it can do for flesh and bone?”

Worry crimped the young man’s brow. “Doctor, I’m not really comfortable with what you’re proposing here. We don’t understand this technology well enough to use it like this.” He gestured toward McLellan. “For all we know, putting her DNA pattern into that signal might create a clone.”

“Fair enough,” Babitz said. “Put her leg back in stasis. We’ll run a test.”

“What kind of test?”

She was losing patience. “Put it in stasis. Now, Tan.”

Reluctantly, he did as she had ordered. While he secured the limb back inside the stasis pod, she reset the signal emitter to the first configuration, the one that had multiplied the crystalline virus. “Set up a sterile containment field around the empty bed,” she said. Once he had done so, she said, “We’ll try sending a pulse of the first signal into a sterile area to see if it spontaneously generates a sample of the virus. If it works, your cloning theory will have evidence to back it up. But if not, then I’d propose that our hypothesis should be that the signal is a catalyst, not a creator.”

Without waiting for him to respond, she initiated the pulse and let it continue for ten seconds. When it ceased, she checked her readings, then invited Tan Bao to inspect them. “No trace of the crystalline virus,” she said. “Bring the leg back out of stasis. I’ll prep the pulse with McLellan’s DNA sequence.”

A sullen expression conveyed his objection to what she was attempting. She knew that it was a long shot; if it went wrong, the head of Starfleet Medical would likely excoriate her for violating numerous safety protocols. Tan Bao set McLellan’s severed lower leg on the biobed and stepped clear.

They might revoke my medical license for this, she thought while she finished preparing the new signal. Or they might give me a Carrington Award. That’s to say they would, if all this wasn’t classified to the nth degree.

She initiated the pulse.

The bulky gray machinery above the bed droned as it powered up. A reddish glow enveloped the leg on the biobed. At first Babitz thought that nothing was happening. Then she glanced at the biobed’s gauges. All traces of necrosis had vanished, and the rigor mortis in the severed limb was reversing. The calf muscle slackened, and the exposed tissue took on the sheen of a freshly amputated limb. She terminated the signal and prepped the version that neutralized the crystalline virus.

“Wrap the leg, then remove Bridy’s signal dampener and focus the emitter above her bed on her wound,” Babitz said. “We’re neutralizing the virus first, then we’re reattaching her leg.”

Even though Tan Bao still wore a glazed stare of shock, he obeyed without argument.

Five minutes later, McLellan’s body was cleansed of the invading crystalline matrix, her wounded thigh was wrapped with a sterile biodegradable cover, and Tan Bao brought over her severed leg and placed it on the biobed in its proper place. “I’ll get the surgical cart,” he said.

“Not yet,” Babitz said. “I want to test one more hunch.”

He looked fearfully at McLellan. “Doctor, this isn’t a test on a severed limb.”

“I’m aware of that, Tan, and I’ll take full responsibility if it goes wrong. Step back.” She pressed the severed leg against the wound, taking care to align bones and cauterized veins and arteries as closely as possible. Satisfied that everything was where it should be, Babitz returned to the control panel for the surgical array, pinpointed its emitter on McLellan’s wound, and loaded the signal pattern with the second officer’s DNA sequence. Please don’t let this be a mistake.

She pressed the button and activated the array.

Then she stood next to Tan Bao and watched a miracle happen. The reddish glow traveled from McLellan’s abdomen to the ankle of her severed leg and back again several times, and then it focused a blinding ruby glare on the space between her body and her detached limb. Bridy Mac’s leg rematerialized by degrees.

One minute after the procedure had begun, Babitz deactivated the array and gazed in wonder at the healed second officer.

“Prep a version of the pulse with Commander Terrell’s DNA,” she said to Tan Bao. “Then start working on a way to make it portable. It might be our only chance to save him.”

Theriault opened her eyes and squinted into the light of day.

The rocks that she had lined up in front of her nook in the cavern’s wall were many hours cold. She was curled in upon herself, huddled against the rough stone wall, lying on a bed of rocky sand. As her eyes adjusted, she looked at her legs to see if the bruises she had suffered during her time in the river had begun changing colors yet.

To her surprise, there were no bruises at all. Her mind replayed all the painful collisions she had suffered with rocks hidden beneath the muddy brown water and her battering impacts against the sides of the underground tu

Beyond the rocks, something was moving.

It was a slow flutter of light and vapor above the water. A colossal humanoid figure dwelled within it, hovering dozens of meters above the center of the cavern’s vast pond. The swirling clouds of multihued mist that surrounded the giant moved like gossamer underwater. A broad vertical column of sunlight, from the opening in the cavern ceiling high overhead, fell upon the ethereal being.

She crawled out of the nook and climbed over the rocks. Her muscles were stiff. At first the luminous titan seemed to take no notice of her; it levitated silently in its shaft of golden radiance, surrounded by the whispers of falling water and the multiple echoes of the vast caves surrounding the pond.

Then it faded for a moment, becoming almost transparent, like a sculpture of smoke losing its shape. Seconds later the entity reincorporated itself, still in the same place but now facing and looking directly at Theriault. The young woman was not afraid; in fact she was mesmerized by the prismatic beauty that floated nearly a kilometer away.

In a halting voice she said, “Hello?”

Its attention fixed upon her, bringing with it a sensation like standing in the merciless glare of the desert sun. Your injuries were deep, he responded telepathically, his psychic voice like a tremor that jumbled all her thoughts into chaos.

“Gently,” was all she could think to say. “Please.”

He spoke in a voice of thunder that shook the stone beneath her feet. “Your mind was not made to hear the voice.”

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.” She took a few careful steps forward until she reached the edge of the water. Looking directly into his luciferous splendor was painful, so she averted her eyes downward, toward his incandescent but wavering reflection on the pond’s surface. “I’m Vanessa Theriault.”

“I am the Apostate.”

20

T’Pry