Where the Ships Die by William C. Dietz Read Free Book Online Page B

registered their discovery.
    Yes, Natalie's parents were special people, all right, which was why she spent as little time with them as possible. The cab pulled up in front of an expensive restaurant. The young woman grimaced, wished she had changed her clothes, and made her way up the steps. The doorman frowned but opened it anyway. Maybe lunch would be good. Maybe her parents had changed. Maybe hell would freeze over.
    Jason looked small and vulnerable on the operating room table. Instruments gleamed as preparations were made. Orr swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat as the doctors and nurses laid sterile drapes back and forth across his son's tiny form. Monitors glowed and machines hummed as the anesthesiologist injected a sedative into the child's IV.
    Jason's eyelids fluttered, he said something about dasas, and then he fell instantly asleep. The anesthesiologist looked at the surgeon, and she looked at Orr. The mask hid everything but her eyes, and they conveyed what? Horror at what they were about to do? If so, Orr understood how the doctor felt, because he felt a distinct queasiness in the pit of his stomach. He nodded. "Get on with it." The words emerged as a croak.
    The initial part of the surgery was simple. An incision was made in the child's abdomen. Bleeders were located and cauterized. The first scalpel was discarded and a second incision was made. It went deeper this time, down through yellow baby fat to the peritoneum, where the surgeon paused again. A laser flashed, and the air grew thick with the smell of burned flesh. A pair of retractors scampered down a sterile ramp, positioned themselves to either side of the opening, and deployed their stainless steel arms. The hole expanded, and Orr felt dizzy.
    He could have avoided the operation, could have waited outside, but had forced himself to watch. Doing so was his penance, his punishment for an act he knew to be wrong, but was determined to carry out anyway. Still, the knowledge that no harm would come to Jason, and that the son would inherit what his father built, salved Orr's conscience. The dizziness receded.
    Orr opened his eyes and saw that the surgeon had cut down through the peritoneum and into the abdominal cavity. There was a pause as blood was sponged away, bleeders were cauterized, and the roboretractors repositioned themselves. The surgeon looked at the anesthesiologist, received a nod, and rinsed her gloves in a basin of sterile water. "Okay, people, let's get a move on. Is the organism ready?"
    The industrialist looked across the operating table and into a Traa's tawny yellow eyes. Which one was it, anyway? The aliens were swathed in OR greens like everyone else, and the specially designed face masks made it difficult to tell them apart. The creature nodded as if to confirm the moment of contact. His voice was muffled behind the mask. “The organism is ready."
    A nurse placed the specially prepared symbiote in a kidney basin. It was small, no larger than a prune, and similar in appearance. It pulsed with internal life, and the sight made Orr queasy. He fought the sensation with his knowledge of what would happen. Once in place, the alien organism would tap into Jason's blood supply and extract nourishment from it. In return for such sustenance, the symbiote would inject naturally produced antibiotics into the child's circulatory system, making both organisms resistant to disease. The only problem was that if left too long, the creature would grow its way out of the boy's abdomen and seek a larger body with which to partner, a process that would kill Orr's son.
    So, to prevent that course of events, and guarantee his son's continued good health, the organism would be removed in three years. The symbiote could and probably would resist such interference, so chemicals would be used to subdue it.
    Orr Enterprises scientists were already hard at work searching for the proper combination of compounds just in case a disagreement arose,