Art Pact 17 - Vital Repairs


"Come on," I said, "he hasn't got much time."

"You can not rush this," the doctor said testily. She prodded at the corpse carefully, watching at its neck for some cryptic signal. She shook her head. "No good. Find me another."

I was way ahead of her - I'd been peering around before her examination began, trying to make out another whole body from the carnage. There was one a little way down, a middle-aged man in a corporal's uniform who had been separated from his left leg. I thought that would probably have killed him without the need for any other wounds, so it looked hopeful.

"Hmm, yes," the doctor said. "He might do."

She did her prod and look trick again, and this time I did see something - a tiny little pulse fluttering at the throat. For a moment I thought it might mean he was alive, but he was blue around the lips and there hadn't been movement on the battlefield for at least an hour, so I knew that wasn't possible.

"Weak, but that's to be expected," she said. "Right, let's get it... hmm.. should I just take it out here? No, no - pick it up, let's get moving back to the ship."

I hoisted the corpse up onto my shoulder. As if holding onto it for precisely this special moment, a torrent of sludgy blood plopped out of the severed end of the man's leg and over my back, soaking my jacket.

"Oh, gross."

"Suck it up," the doctor told me. She hovered along beside, pinching and poking at the corpse's arm as we walked, chattering away to herself and the central brain back on the ship. The dead man's face was swinging gently, banging into my stomach with every other step. I steadied his head with my right hand, then on a whim turned it to see him more clearly. He hadn't been handsome, even before his death, but he had a sort of bizarre dignity about him. He was wrinkled around the edges of his eyes, and there were two streaks of grey hair - one over each temple. His eyes were blue, but the right one was so bloodshot that it was barely possible to see that there had originally been any white.

We went in through the airlock on the lower deck - we couldn't use the cargo ramp due to the piles of earth and body parts fouling the ground. The navigator was waiting for us inside, clicking his fingers together nervously - so fast that it just sounded like a rapid buzzing noise.

"Come on, come on..." he ushered us in.

"Calm down!" the doctor told him. Nevertheless, she hustled me into the airlock in front of her, then buzzed round me and zipped off towards the infirmary. I tried to jog after her, but it made my charge bounce too much, so I dropped back to a quick stroll. Unlike the doctor I couldn't just hover up through the access port in the ceiling. I took the stairs, hauling myself up each step with the strength of my left arm when my knee joints began to complain.

In the infirmary, the captain was laid out on the operating table. His chest was open, the jury-rigged dialysis machine on its frame looming over where his pump should have been.

"Put it down over there," she directed, waving a scalpel at a clear area in the floor.

"On the ground?" I asked.

"Yes, yes, on the ground. It's dead, it won't be lodging any complaints."

"OK, it just seems a bit.." disrespectful, I thought, but I set the body gently in the corner of the room, where it disgorged another little splash of old blood over the floor. "Now what?"

"Open it up, carefully," she said.

"I don't think I can."

"This is a fine time to discover your capacity for emotions. Get out of the way." She buzzed past me brusquely and extruded another collection of fine limbs from her underside, descending onto the corpse. I heard a few sickening crunches and then a sucking noise, and finally she popped up again. Cradled gently in two of the larger arms was the dead man's heart, cut out as neatly as if it had had dotted lines around its veins and arteries. "OK, let's pop it into the captain."

I stepped back into the doorway as she began her work, bumping into the navigator. The little LEDs under his eyes were flashing rapidly.

"He won't like this," he said. "You know what he thought - you remember: 'those filthy bios!'"

"Well he's getting a human heart whether he like it or not," I told him. "Unless you fancy donating your own pump."

"He'll learn to live with it," the navigator said hurriedly.

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