Jahir woke to the realization that sleeping was never going to be as restful as it had been at home, or even on Seersana; lying on his newly issued bed, which was only barely long enough for him, feeling the dragging ache in his limbs and the too-swift coursing of his heart, he drew in a long breath and couldn't even fill his lungs. It would have panicked him to wake feeling so ill had he not been living adjacent to one of the Alliance's premier hospitals. As it was, he resigned himself to the challenge, and did his best to ignore his distress as he painstakingly prepared for his first day. The uniform assigned to him was used the Core over with few modifications for everyone in the medical profession. Called by at least three different names by the people issuing them to him, it consisted of loose and shapeless pants and short sleeved shirt that sealed near the throat; he chose to wear a long-sleeved shirt beneath the latter, since it was cold in the hospital. The gloves were his choice, to help ameliorate the effect of accidental touches, and he removed his family ring for the first time since showing it to the children on Seersana, stringing it on a chain and tucking it beneath the collar of the shirt. With it hidden, his only ornamentation was the plain gray metal of the bracelet Gillespie had issued him.
His hair he braided back, something recommended to him by one of his practicum teachers, for hygiene purposes. Moving his fingers through the motions brought back childhood memories. When he'd graduated from the nursery and to his own room, gaining his own permanent servants, he'd also been permitted—required—to grow his hair, as was customary for the nobility: it was a sign of wealth, and for males in particular, an arrogance that suggested they owned too much power to ever be challenged to a duel, during which long hair would be a handicap. But a year into his newly-minted young adulthood, he had decided it was wrong to make himself into a doll requiring the time of some servant who no doubt had better things to do... so he'd chopped it all off at his shoulders.
His mother had taken him gently aside and explained that without the nobility to employ him, the servant would have neither room nor board; that the servant's family had served theirs for generations and that the Seni Galare had a responsibility to employ them at some task, no matter how trivial; and that by no means should he reduce the dignity of the men and women in his service by suggesting their tasks were beneath them, when they did them with diligence and skill. Ashamed, he had agreed to submit to the care of his body-servant, and apologized to him in private. The man, several centuries older than his young master, had graciously accepted the apology... and then asked if perhaps some length somewhat further down the back would please the youth while still keeping with custom.
Looking at himself in the cheap, simple clothes, with his hair pulled back in a servant's tail and his ring tucked out of sight, Jahir wondered what his mother—his whole household—would think of him now. He smiled a little before heading for his appointment.
The exhaustion dogged Jahir all the way to the hospital's physical therapy facility. He passed the gymnasium used both by patients and staff until he arrived at the office indicated on his tablet.
It was next to a pool. For a long moment he looked at the waters, gleaming in the brassy yellow sunlight let in by the skylights. Then he shook himself and tapped on the jamb for entrance, since the door was already open, attracting the attention of an Asanii woman in a plain blue tracksuit. Her ears perked. "Ah, you're my eight-mark-thirty?"
"Jahir Seni Galare," he said. "I go by my first name."
"Pleased to meet you, alet. Will you sit? Unless it's more trouble for you to rise again, then you can remain standing."
"Sitting is fine," he said, and took the chair across from her desk, which was less a piece of furniture and more a sweep of shelf that hugged the wall and then curled out to offer a place to set tablets and mugs. Her computer was flush to the wall, and she used it while standing—or with one foot on a ball she was idly rolling as she clasped the information projected solidigraphically and moved it physically out of the way. Two years of exposure to the Alliance's interfaces had worn away his wonder at their magic; now what intrigued him was how many different styles there were. Data tablets were as ubiquitous as her device-free set-up, and there were any number of variations in between. That level of personalization suggested an industrial base he still could not grasp, even now. How fortunate these people were, and often did not know.
"All right, I have the note here," she said, scanning a file, which floated in front of her thin and pale as tissue. "But it's just a note… for some reason there's no medical file attached." She glanced at him quizzically, but he said nothing. "Well, we don't need it as long as you can answer some questions for me. Healer Gillespie's given me a good sense of your problem and it looks like she's already put together a diet to serve your nutritional needs. We can start from there—" She paused and shook her head. "Ah, and I haven't even told you my name. I'm Shellie Aralyn. I'm one of Mercy's physical therapy team, and they've assigned your case to me, which means we'll be working together for quite a while. If at any time you'd like to be re-assigned, please tell Healer Gillespie. I know some people have sex or species preferences…?"
"Do they?" he asked, curious.
"Sure," the Asanii said, leaning against the wall and folding her arms. "Physical therapy is rough on people. You're vulnerable, you make mistakes, you break down. It's hard enough without making someone feel self-conscious about other factors. We'd… ah… have a problem supplying you with a same-species therapist, but within reason we can accommodate anything else."
"I'm fine," he said. "I want to be more capable in this environment, and am willing to accept any help to do so."
"Any help?" she asked, with a strange tone in her voice. Testing, he thought.
"I am here to work," he answered. "I can't work well compromised this way, alet."
"All right, good." She nodded. "Down the hall and to the right there's a locker room. Check in and ask the genie for something you can swim in."
"Swim!" he exclaimed, so surprised he let it show.
"Swim," she confirmed. "For what we want to accomplish, it's hard to beat. I take it you don't know how?"
"Not in the slightest!"
"Then you're about to learn," Aralyn said.
The locker room down the hall did in fact have a genie; the apartment in Seersana had had one, and while he'd rarely used it he did know how to operate it. Like that one, this one had limited settings, and seemed only to produce clothing, accessories, towels, the materials one might need in a gymnasium. He thumbed through the swim-gear, wondering if he'd find anything suitable, and was surprised to find full body suits. Rather appallingly revealing, he thought, but better that than to leave himself open to casual touch. It was hard enough on clothed skin without exposing himself completely. He selected one, watched the flash that evaluated his body's size and dimensions, and changed into the result it produced before putting his clothes away and letting the room lock it to his biosigns.
All this would have astounded him two years ago. It still did, and yet he watched his own hands go through the motions of manipulating the environment with unwavering confidence. That those two feelings could live together so seamlessly—the acceptance with the wonder—he no longer questioned. And he found, suddenly and unexpectedly, that he missed Vasiht'h, who would have commented on it.
Shaking himself, he stepped into the hall and did not see Aralyn by her office, so he headed for the glimpse of the water at its end.
By now, the scale at which the Alliance typically built should not have shocked him, and yet it did. The size of the pool, the skylights not so much windows as an entire glassed-in ceiling, the separate little hot tubs clustered along one edge like a series of tide pools, frothing water that spilled into the main tank...
Aralyn waved to him. "This way? I'd like you to meet my co-instructor."
"Your co-instructor?" he asked politely, and then started when a head breached the waters and turned his way. "Oh," he said, soft.
"You haven't met a Naysha yet, I'm guessing?" Aralyn said with a grin.
"No," Jahir admitted. He crouched at the pool's edge, then thought better of it at the protest in his joints and sat. "I am sorry if I stare," he said to the male in the pool, who grinned, lips peeling back from sharp teeth. "And I fear I don't know how to sign."
"I'll translate since I'm here," Aralyn said as the Naysha drifted closer.
Jahir had studied the Naysha along with the other species of the Alliance. Like the first generation Pelted, they'd been engineered on Earth; unlike those species, they were as alien as any of the natural-born aliens the Alliance had since discovered in its explorations. Somehow, the human scientists had managed to create something otherworldly with the Naysha. Jahir no longer remembered how many species had contributed to the DNA that made them up, but the results looked a little like a sleek humanoid torso that flowed into the strong lower body of a cetacean, more dolphin than fish. The face was some hairless amalgamation of human and animal, with eyes half the size of Jahir's fist: luminous eyes, a nearly fluorescent green, so large he could see the striations in the irises.
The Naysha was studying Jahir with as much interest as Jahir was studying him. The alien's grin pushed up the lower lids of his eyes, sudden and merry, and he lifted webbed hands to run them through a set of motions that flickered like schools of fish turning in sunlight.
"He says you're the first Eldritch he's seen so closely, and that everyone's wrong, only an idiot could mistake one of you for human," Aralyn said with a laugh.
"Ah?" Jahir glanced at the Naysha. "May I ask why?"
Another stream of signs, one that ended with a slap on the water.
Aralyn sighed. "Really, Paga?" When he pointed at the water, she laughed. "All right, fine. Give me all the hard things to translate." To Jahir, "You know sea creatures sometimes have different senses than we do?"
"I have heard," he said. The Naysha was still staring at him, so he felt at ease doing the same.
"He says you have a completely different electrical field from a human. Where 'electrical field' is a gross under-translation of something far more complicated that I have no context for explaining any better."
"Fascinating," Jahir murmured. The urge to touch the Naysha was almost overpowering, to get a sense for that alien mind. He shook himself a little and said, "Ah, I do apologize for staring. And as much as possible, please teach me some of the basics of the signing?"
"Of course," she said, and started stripping off her tracksuit. "We have a pod of Naysha here. They help maintain the pool, serve as lifeguards, and, as in Paga's case, also have various degrees that let them work with patients. We don't get a lot of aquatic cases, but when we do they're in charge. I'd like him to help with you because when we landfolk teach first-time swimmers, we often get too focused on the mechanics. Part of the therapeutic value of water is that if you let it get to you, it really gets into you." She glanced at the Naysha. "There's a rhythm to water, and once you hear it, you never lose that. The Naysha are better at helping people tune into that." She smiled. "So I'll teach you how to swim. Paga will teach you how to be. If that makes sense?"
"I hope it will," he said.
She nodded, folding her jacket. "All right. Slide into the water, then."
He glanced at the shimmering surface, feeling a curious inertia. Swimming was not something Eldritch learned to do. The waters of their world weren't any more treacherous than other planets', but the Eldritch themselves had not evolved there, had little sense for the dangers that something natural to the world might have implicitly understood. So no one swam.
But he was here to expose himself to new experiences. And on Selnor particularly to push himself. So he sucked in a breath and shoved himself off the side of the pool and into the water…
…where he floated. And for the first time since arriving—not only to Selnor, but to the Alliance, where gravity was heavier by default even in controlled environments—did not feel the sucking ache of the gravity.
It was a testament to his self-control that he didn't moan, but he did close his eyes until he could master himself. When he opened them, Paga was floating across from him, large eyes even wider than usual. Aralyn was staring at him too.
The Naysha's hands flickered, and Jahir said, "What did he say?"
She laughed. "That you might not need much help from him after all."
He closed his eyes, felt the warm water lapping at his sides, the caress of it along his ribs, the liquescence of it like a long breeze over a field as he stretched his senses out, relaxed. He cleared his throat and said, looking at her again, "I am always willing to learn more."
Her smile was kind. "Well, we're here to teach. Let's get started."
Jahir carried the glow from that session with him into his first shift at Mercy Hospital, and it was well that he did, for no one had understated the challenge. The senior healer-assist for the afternoon shift was a Harat-Shariin pardine, gray with large ragged spots; Jahir's fellow healer-assist was a Karaka'An woman, also gray but with narrow black stripes that bled onto her white throat. He met with them half an hour before the previous shift released in the combination lounge/office where he'd made Levine's acquaintance.
"All right," the pardine said. "We've got our newbie today, finally." He smiled at Jahir. "I'm Radimir, train Yulij, and this is Paige Nettlesdown. Paige, same volunteer corps as yesterday. I need you attached to triage for the first half of the shift. We're going to ease Jahir-alet here in slowly—"
"As slowly as possible!" she said with a chuckle. To Jahir, "We have the busiest shift of the three, most days. Right before dinner?" She shook her head. "Every case of indigestion's a coronary." To Radimir, "I'll go get the run-down on my patients from the people leaving and head there now, catch the turn-over."
"All right, thanks." The Harat-Shar turned to Jahir. "The emergency room is considered part of the crisis care system. We detach one assist there to help triage keep people calm. Otherwise, you get patients as triage decides we're needed. Patients assigned to you during your shift are yours until they leave the section; you hand them off when your shift is over, but their overall care is your responsibility. You'll also be overseeing the patients being left behind by the outgoing personnel. When we put you in triage halfway through the shift, you'll have to snatch time between incoming patients to keep a hand on the ones you've already got. We also have a rotating set of volunteers, and today it's Baird Ghardhoff, a Hinichi priest, and Shelvi, who's a laywoman in the Harat-Shariin pantheistic sect. Plus one human social worker, Jared Weldt, he's secular. If anyone asks for religious counsel, they're there, make use of them." He paused. "It's a lot to take in, but you'll get the feel for it. Good?"
"Good," Jahir said, because there was no other answer.
"Excellent," Radimir said, and lifted a hand as if to touch him on the shoulder before thinking better of it. He grinned, sheepish. "Habit."
"I appreciate the sentiment."
The Harat-Shar chuckled. "All right. I float between triage and assignment all shift, so call me if you need me." A soft ping interrupted them, and Jahir looked down at the pocket tablet he'd been assigned. "Looks like you're up. Get moving, alet. And welcome to Mercy."
"Thank you," Jahir said, and went, as quickly as his taxed physiology permitted.
The first four and a half hours of his shift passed with alarming rapidity. Four patients were assigned to him, including a rather difficult pair, a tearful mother who'd weathered an aircar crash better than the son who'd been admitted to one of the crisis care's extended stay beds. Of the other two, one was an emergency depression case, another a trauma patient who had needed nearly an hour's worth of attention to keep from panicking over the sudden loss of both her feet—the Alliance could attach new ones, but it had been an overwhelming experience. He also oversaw the patients left by the day shift, most of which needed little care save occasional check-ins. When he could, he sat to save his strength, and it seemed to help, though not as much as he wished.
Halfway through the shift, Paige found him. "Time to switch places," she said, and handed him a tray.
"What's this?" he asked, accepting it because he no longer had the energy to protest.
"Dinner," she said. "I noticed you had a hang-tag there and I don't know what you can and can't eat, so I just put a little of everything on it and brought it. There's a genie in our lounge but for the first six months I forgot to use it, and it's no use trying to do this work without fuel. So eat, then go report to triage."
"All right," he said, startled. And added, "Thank you, alet."
She smiled. "It's nothing. We have to look out for one another, and don't let anyone tell you differently."
After eating, he reported to triage, where he was given a stool in a corner of the room, and the four hours he spent there were among the most hectic and the most fascinating he'd had yet; all the people entering the crisis care system went through that room, where the healer-assist took their patient history and their vitals and assigned them treatment priority levels. He saw everything run through that room, from catastrophic injuries to people with hesitant, low coughs. And he'd expected to remain mostly unused, but every case that went through inspired the healer-assist to ask his opinion—quickly. He learned to keep his answers brief, and halfway through his tenure had become accustomed to the rhythm of the speech there, a staccato dense with data and stripped bare of every other ornament.
In one of the spaces between patients, the healer-assist, a woman barely recognizable as Tam-illee by the ears, for she was human in almost every other way, said, "You're doing well."
"Thank you," he said. "Is it always like this?"
"No. Sometimes it's worse." At his expression she laughed and wiped her face with the side of an arm. "But sometimes it's better. Sorry, I couldn't resist. We all end up with a ghoulish sense of humor after a while."
The work continued. He assessed the incoming with her, recommended some for psychological support and let the others pass. The last patient he received was unresponsive, and his tablet flagged him for immediate care. He frowned at it.
The Tam-illee glanced at him. "Something up? Did someone tell you we always assign unresponsives to you all for at least one follow-up?"
"Ah, yes, I was told." Quickly, as he recalled, by Radimir in the hall. "It's a scheduling issue, is all. Paige-alet's full up. I'll go back with him myself."
"All right."
After leaving the room, he paused to lean against the wall. He'd developed a painfully insistent headache and his chest ached from his battle to breathe enough to make his recalcitrant body move its increased weight...but he'd made it through the day, and hopefully—hopefully—each day that followed would be easier. He forced himself after the final stretcher. While waiting on the physical trauma attendants, he assigned this final patient to himself and then joined the others inside. As they worked over him, his gaze traveled the length of the limbs: human, male, and something about him nagged. Jahir had seen something like the presentation before. When the others exited, he hesitated… then ran a hand over the patient's chest, felt the faintest wash of an aura, dense and flat. He frowned and pulled his hand back, then made himself leave.
Back in the lounge, Radimir said, "You made it! Good for you. Ready to do it again tomorrow?"
"God and Lady willing," Jahir said.
The pardine grinned. "Go give the run-down to the people coming in. And remember to eat a bedtime snack."
"Bedtime snack...?"
"It's full night out, alet," the pardine said, brows lifted.
"I had forgotten," Jahir murmured.
"You'll get the rhythm of it."
He nodded and logged himself out, heading wearily for the exit. The staff had its own set of elevators, and he let himself lean on the inside wall of one of them as it began its descent. His eyes drifted closed; it took the floor shivering beneath his feet to jar him alert, and when it did he found the buttons in front of him.
One of them said 'roof.'
So he hit it.
At the top of Mercy's acute care tower, Jahir let himself out of a tiny lobby and onto a terrace overlooking Heliocentrus's skyline. He walked to the edge of the balcony and rested his hands carefully on its rail, looking out. A wind cooled his face, made him aware that he'd been sweating, that some of his hair had escaped the braid he'd pulled it into.
The city was too large for him to hold in his heart or his eyes. He had to turn and turn to see it all, and even then he couldn't encompass it.
He had come from a place where to light a building required candles and lamps filled with oil, and servants to tend them, and it was costly and so it was rarely done. Looking outside his family home at night he'd seen the gossamer of the galaxy against the night's blue breast, and the moon, had heard nothing but a profound silence that seemed to bleed into the dark and isolate everyone in their separate shells of warmth and light.
Here—
So many colors against the dark. The lights smeared in his vision, though the wind dried his lashes as quickly as blinking wet them. There was no isolation here, no silence, no looking out into the night only to be denied. Here was all the connection he'd been longing for without ever having a name for what he was missing.
Standing on the roof so high above the city, he had never felt so alone, and so exhausted, and so alive. His skin pebbled at the touch of the warm breeze, at the salt tang of the foreign air, at the glitter of the lights.
The trudge back to his apartment felt eternal. By the time he reached it, he had to lean on the wall to stay upright and he almost stumbled into the door before it read his biosign and let him in. The last thing he wanted to do was eat, but Gillespie's warnings about his fate did he not increase his caloric intake moved him to the tiny genie in his kitchenette. He drank a sourly-flavored meal replacement and fell into his bed, and immediately passed into unconsciousness.