Sean pretty much ignored the firestorm their arrival created. The people they had decked picked themselves up and shook their fists and shouted. The complaints grew louder still when the uniforms arrived. Sean did not understand a word of what was said, not by the passengers and not by the cops. Their uniforms were dark grey and their belts did not carry anything that resembled a gun. But their stern expressions were exactly what he’d have expected from cops back home.
The two cops called emergency services. Sean knew this because soon a young woman rushed through the onlookers carrying what at first glance appeared to be a long white pole, but she flipped it open to form a stretcher. She then knelt over Dillon and checked him carefully. She spoke Serenese and finally got Sean to release his hold, shift over, and help them lift Dillon. But as he started to argue over being allowed to carry one end of the stretcher, the woman muttered to him, “Limp.”
At least, that’s what Sean thought she said.
He glanced at the cops, saw how they looked at him, and figured they were planning to drop off his brother, then go find a cramped little room with bars where they could lock Sean up. So he did what the woman said and limped. It didn’t hurt that he was stained from knees to elbows with his brother’s blood.
It turned out the station had its own emergency clinic. And the woman was a doctor who waited until the station’s uproar was dimmed by the glass portal to ask, “What happened to you?”
“We were attacked. Or trapped. I don’t know how to describe . . .”
“Don’t describe,” the doctor told him. “Just tell.”
Sean gave it to her in words minced by adrenaline and shock. The women, the party, the scream, the chase, and the realization. What he said was enough to cause the doctor to flinch. Like Sean had struck her. Or scared her witless. But the woman recovered swiftly, and when one of the cops barked a question, she replied with a blank professionalism and a few calm words.
The doctor went back to working on Dillon. When she spoke, it was in a voice bland as yogurt. “You are recruits?”
“Yes.”
The doctor placed patches over Dillon’s temples and heart. A screen appeared in the wall above his head, showing his vital rhythms. She spoke a word and a drawer slipped from the featureless wall beside her. She applied another patch to Dillon’s arm, and his vitals slid into the smooth waves of deep sleep. “What planet?”
“Earth?” Sean made his response a question because he assumed from what Carver had told them that the place would be unknown. So he added, “An outpost world.”
The doctor translated the cop’s next question. “Why did you bring your trouble here?”
“This is the only transit point we know.”
The doctor looked at him. And then she smiled. “Really?”
“We have this station on the wall of our bedroom. We’ve been working on it since we were seven years old.”
The cop demanded something, probably wanting to hear her translation. She refitted her blank expression and waved casually, like the whole exchange was unimportant. She checked Dillon’s vitals once more, then stepped over to where Sean was holding up the side wall. “Is any of the blood you wear yours?”
“No.”
She gave him a careful going-over. The doctor was in her late thirties, dark-haired and cute in a highly intelligent and focused manner. The difference between her and the ethereal beauties who almost took them out could not have been greater.
She turned her attention back to Dillon. “I suppose I should welcome you, but that might be out of order just now. What is your brother’s name?”
“Dillon. Will he be all right?”
“Dillon has been wounded and has experienced a severe shock. But unless there are injuries I have not yet identified, he should make a full recovery.”
Sean looked at the branch still poking from his brother’s side. “How can you be sure?”
“Perhaps it is because our medicine has advanced beyond that of your outpost world. Your brother is breathing. His heart rate is strong.”
“Does your medicine work? For Earth people, I mean.”
She seemed to like that. “I am happy to report that all your brother’s organs appear to be in their proper places.”
The cop broke in at that point, halting their momentary calm with a bark of cop speech, and the doctor translated, “He wants to know who attacked you. But I am reluctant to repeat what you said. Your explanation carries . . .”
“Baggage.”
She liked that enough for her eyes to spark. But she kept her expression bland. “Precisely. So may I suggest your official answer be about women and an accident?”
“No problem.” And it wasn’t, since that was exactly what happened. As he gave a simplified version of events, Sean struggled to make sense in his own head of what had really happened.
The cops made notes on a translucent panel, then held it up and took several shots of both Sean and Dillon.
Sean asked quietly, “Why shouldn’t they know—”
“Later, yes? How far along are you in your training?”
“Four days. Unless it’s after midnight. Then five.”
The cops interrupted her response by reaching for Sean. When the doctor protested, one of them actually snarled at her. Sean was tempted to snarl back, but the doctor responded with a sharp retort of her own. When the cop tried to argue, she became more forceful still and pointed them from the room.
Whatever she said was enough to turn the cop’s face beet-red. He snarled a final time, then took plastic cuffs from his belt pouch and reached for Sean’s wrist. The doctor objected, which seemed to please the cop. He cuffed Sean to a wall hook he had not noticed until that moment. In truth, Sean did not mind. He was with his brother. The doctor was an ally. There was a chair within reach, where he could settle when his knees turned liquid. Which happened the minute the cops left and the doctor started working out the branch.
The room was long and angled and narrow and completely white. The front section held a white desk and a padded white chair and nothing else. The desk’s surface was utterly clear. Sean’s chair was white, as was the bed where Dillon lay, jutting like a white tongue from the opposite wall. The room was illuminated by glowing strips set in the walls and ceiling. The doctor spoke a word, and the light angled more intensely over Dillon’s wound. She touched a glowing pad on the side wall, and an electronic curtain slipped across the space between them and the front reception area. Instantly all remaining noise from the station was silenced.
She worked the wooden spike from Dillon’s flesh, spoke another word, waited for another invisible drawer to appear, took out several instruments, gave the wound a careful inspection, and studied the second screen that now glowed on the wall. She must have liked what she saw, because she nodded and spoke words Sean didn’t need to understand before settling the instruments back in their station. Then she rose and walked over to him.
She frowned over Sean being cuffed and hooked to the wall, but all she said was, “You have had a major shock as well. I want you to rest.”
Only then did he notice the patch she held. “Later.”
“Now.” Her song speech carried the authority of a woman who knew she was right. “Two things. First, your brother will be fine. I am good at my job.”
“I believe you,” Sean said, liking her immensely.
“And second, the officer will soon return. I suspect he is obtaining orders to move you. You understand the word cell? If you are unconscious, I can insist you must remain under my care.”
She hummed the words with such friendly intimacy Sean said, “Go ahead, then. Knock me out.”
“Knock out. That is a new one.” She peeled the back off the pad and applied it to Sean’s wrist. “It implies violence when there is none.”
“My world is a pretty violent place.”
She glanced at the blood caking his form. “So I gather.”
He felt the warm tendrils of a drugged sleep begin to filter along his arm and into his body. “Why are you doing this?”
“I told you. I take my professional duty very seriously.”
“No, I mean, being so nice.”
Her smile transformed her from a very intense young woman into a rare beauty. “What have they told you of the significance behind the image you and your brother designed, and how this is your first transit point?”
“Only that it’s part of why we’re being given this chance.”
“It indicates a deep psychic bond with my world. My hope is to become a field doctor for transiters. First I must complete my duty here at the clinic. All doctors are obliged to serve two years at a posting that our government designates. When this is done, I intend to specialize. I want to make a life’s study of the gifted ones.”
His tongue felt thick, the words slow to emerge. “I’ve never been called that before. Gifted.”
“Studies have suggested that transiters such as you actually have two home planets. Where you were born, and where you envision your first transit. This initial transit point is known as your twin world.” She took his pulse in the traditional manner. “I have faced so many difficulties in my research. My world does not welcome transiters, which is why the station guards are so upset. I will have to transfer to another planet to do my work. My family is very much against this. But if I am offered a place, I am going.”
Sean wanted to ask what the name of this planet was. What lay beyond the station. Where all those travelers were going. What the doctor’s name was. How she could be so smart and so friendly and . . .
But the lights were fading, and soon went out entirely.