Tem navigated the empty corridors, the darkened wards, for one last time. The engine at the heart of Io was under constant power now, and she was increasingly disturbed by the seismic throb rising from the building’s foundations—and by the sense that her entire world lay on a tilt, like a capsizing boat.
The medical complex was already beginning to be starved of power. Even now the complex was not entirely deserted; she knew her staff still patrolled the wards. Tem could imagine the conversations, as she’d had to conduct several herself: “We don’t know what it will be like, in the end. But if you wish to be spared it, we can put you under now . . .”
Put you under. Such a lovely, comforting euphemism. And what a climax to Tem’s own medical career. If only she had been born in different times, she thought—if, if.
But her career, such as it was—or her careers, including her overt medical profession and her more secretive activities—her careers were not finished just yet.
In her office, Tem staggered to her desk. It was comforting to sit, not to have to keep her balance in the shifting apparent gravity.
She found mail waiting for her: that purported case note query. She checked that the message was indeed from Surgeon-Adjutant Purvis on Ganymede. And so wasn’t a case note query at all.
She snapped, trying to stay in character, “Accept the call.”
The Surgeon-Adjutant’s face appeared on an area of the wall, tired, grey, the collar of a sterile medical tunic still buttoned around his neck. “Surgeon-Commander Tem. I’m sorry for the interruption, but I needed to discuss a case with you. I know it’s not a good time.”
That was a scripted line—she fretted briefly that “not a good time” was too obvious, something of an absurd understatement in the circumstances—but that couldn’t be helped now. She gave her own scripted response. “It’s never a good time, Surgeon-Adjutant. But we have our duty, don’t we? Please show me what you have.”
“Just a moment.”
Purvis held an image up to whatever camera was capturing his face. It was a medical scan, and he pressed the image closer, so that it filled the entire field of view. The scan was the lacy outline of a skull, walls of bone as thin as the folds of gas around a nebula.
“This is the patient,” Purvis said, again following a word-perfect routine.
“I see,” she answered carefully.
These behind-the-scenes channels were meant to transmit medical data, supposedly subject to patient confidentiality—and, more important, data too routine and too technical for the Springer-Soames’ monitors to tap into. But they were now, and not for the first time, being subverted for other purposes.
The image began to change. The scan of the skull thickened out, gaining depth and texture. Bones knitted together, then smothered themselves in meat and nerves, muscle and tissue.
A face was looking back at her. A moving image now, grinning.
But it was not a human face.
It was a Pan face.
It was Boss.