James Runningbear lay on his bunk. His head ached and he was sweating again. God Damn Others. Everyone else in the crew were in awe of their superior medical technology, but they couldn't seem to figure out what was wrong with him.
He'd told the healer this afternoon that he was still in pain. The woman just gave him a blank look and insisted he wasn't. Could she see how he felt with all that technology? He didn't fucking think so. Yet the other healer had said the same thing.
That last doctor back on Earth hadn't been much better. He, too, insisted that James's pain was all in his head. He would have had to endure the last leg of their tour in agony if Jenkins hadn't had some pills left over from a tooth extraction.
He couldn't ask his bunkmates anymore. He'd borrowed pills too many times and his old friend, Fox was getting suspicious.
God Damn, Fox, he added to his litany. Fucker had always been the same, a cop at heart. Even as a kid on the playground, he always had a chip on his shoulder. His dad was one of the reservation cops, an Navaho who choose the white man's ways and rules over blood.
"Hey we're heading to supper," Riker, his bunkmate, called out.
Runningbear grunted and rolled over.
"Whatever," Riker muttered as the three of them left, leaving him alone with his headache and his dark thoughts.
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The supper mess was already being served by the time Fox got there. His bunkmates, Clower and Davies were facing him. He shushed them with his left hand as he approached their table. Dan, Madsen and Kleppie were sitting with their backs to him. Fox laid his new metallic arm on Kleppie's shoulder. "Hey guys, how's it going?"
Kleppie turned towards his greeting, spied the arm and let out a squeal as he propelled himself back and away. Fox roared with laughter.
"Holy crap!" Clower said.
"Nice, isn't it?"
"And you can control it," Dan said as Fox displayed the arm. "Incredible."
"Yeah, they grafted it to the bone and used some sort of nano tech to hook up all the nerves. Took all day to figure out which nerve was which, but it's worth it."
"So, you going be like a cyborg now?" Kleppie asked.
"Naw, they say the soft tissue, muscle and skin and what not, will grow over this," he explained, "from here." He gestured at the black patch around the stump. "The slang term they use is clacker. Cuz," he snapped his fingers together, the metal on metal making a clacking noise. "But the weirdest part is the sensory nerves. Man, you can't believe it but it feels like my arm. When I look away, it's like...my arm. It's just there again."
After supper the majority of the men excused themselves and headed back to their quarters. They looked wiped, despite having done nothing all day. You couldn't hardly blame them.
But Fox was awake and restless. It had been a long day, but he felt good. He'd spent the lions share of the day in a tank, nutrients and god knew what else absorbing through his skin while they prodded his new arm and attuned the nerves. It was like he'd rested most of the day. He felt as good as he had since the blast and the explosion that took his arm.
Excitement about having this new arm might be part of it as well. He had just started to think about what life as a one armed man might be like. Certainly following his father into the reservation police force would have been out of the question.
It was still hard to believe they'd replaced his arm and harder to believe that his own skin and muscle would some day cover this metallic thing. But it didn't matter. It felt like an arm. He could move it like an arm. He had some problem with fine motor control, but they assured him that would get better as the nano bots and his brain jointly decided where each neural impulse was supposed to go. They had given him some exercises to do, to speed the process.
For tonight, he had the lounge almost entirely to himself. The others had found a channel that showed earth news, but it was a constant repeat of the same crap, like always. And he didn't have the concentration to try to follow the plot on any of the Consortium shows.
He looked up as Nara entered. She grabbed a plate of food just as the cooks were shutting down for the night. She gave him a smile and a nod.
He took that as his cue to go sit with her and talk. He'd learned over the day of talking that the braid at the side of her hair was indeed a marker that she was Kurgara, the ceremonial cult of female warriors sworn to protect the weak. She was both warrior and healer at need. Her healing training focussed on traumatic injuries and she'd seen amputated limbs before. She was serving on the Corelean to boost her healing skills, but she served part time with their security crew as well.
He'd also learned that the Kurgaru weren't technically considered women in the Consortium, but some sort of in between gender. Something akin to the female to male transgender people that Fox had seen on TV. However the Consortium healers had insisted that was translated differently, and treated as something completely different.
Fox had decided he didn't care. Even if she - or whatever pronoun was appropriate - wasn't interested in him like that, she was a kindred soul and that was enough.
As she finished her meal she said, "Hey, I've got an appointment with Shayly tonight. But if you want to come, we could talk while she works."
"Sure," Fox said. As they stepped out into the hall, he asked, "so whose Shayly?"
"The ship's prostitute," Nara said.
Fox froze, a blush creeping up the side of his face. "Umm, are you sure..."
"Oh, no," she said and then broke out into a laugh. "It's not that kind of appointment. Honest. Somebody has got to do something with these corn rows and none of the ship's hairdressers are any good with this kinky hair of mine. Shayly is the only one who can do anything at all with it."
"Okay..." Fox agreed. As they continued to walk he said, "you have a prostitute on board?"
"Sure, why not? It's a big enough ship to accommodate and besides, some times the sick ain't that sick, if you know what I mean."
"But, she's like, part of the crew. Paid for by the ship?"
"Naw, she's a private contractor. The ship has quarters for her but her transactions are private, between her and the client."
"Wow, it's legal in the Consortium?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"It's not on Earth," Fox said. "At least not in my country."
"Really?"
They talked for awhile longer. Nara explained that prostitution in the Consortium was legal but highly regulated. They had different levels, the lower one translated as prostitute and the higher one as courtesan. Men and women both went into the profession, but they had to first complete a series of psychological exams. "Not everyone is fit to have sex with random strangers for money," Nara said with a smirk. "I couldn't do it."
Fox shuddered and shook his head. "Me, either."
"But some don't care. And some people prefer a casual contracted liaison to a relationship. Why not let the two create a contract that satisfies both parties?"
Shayly turned out to be a neanderthal woman with thick kinky red hair. She had a wide round face and broad shoulders. While she didn't fit the standard of beauty Fox had grown up with, she did manage to radiate an aura of sultry sexuality that was unmistakeable.
Her quarters were slightly larger than what he'd seen on the ship before now, but they doubled as her work room so he figured it came out in the end. One side of the fifteen by fifteen foot room contained a low bed where she worked, but he later learned she had a smaller sleeping nook to one side when she actually slept. She had a couple of low cushioned chairs, a small kitchenette and her own private bath.
Nara introduced them and Shayly gave him a sly smile and a wink. At first he felt awkward but once they were seated in the low chairs and Shayly started to work on Nara's hair, she dropped the seductiveness and was surprisingly down to earth. She was also deft, unweaving the corn rows rapidly while she talked.
"By the mother, Nara, your hair is a mess. How many times did you go out into that?"
"Three," Nara responded.
"Three! You could have gotten yourself killed, you know."
"So? I won't have a bunch of civilian healers outdo me in bravery," Nara shot back. Fox bit back a laugh. "Kurgara's know, the only failure is giving up. We never give up," she told him.
#####
James Runningbear rocked on the low stool. Why didn't these people use regular chairs? He knew it was a stupid thing to be angry about, but he couldn't help.
"You've got to do something," he growled through clenched teeth. Sweat dripped from his brow.
"I am trying," the woman said. "There's some strange activity in your brain, but I've never seen anything like it."
"I am in pain," he said for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. "Just give me something for the pain. Some drug or something."
"What's a drug?" she asked.
"Like a pain medication, I don't know. You're the fucking doctor, aren't you? Everyone else says you can do stuff, turn nerves off or something. Why can't you do that for me?"
"None of your pain receptors are firing," she protested, holding out a slate. The holo-display meant nothing to him.
He knocked it out of her hands, sending it flying across the room. It clattered against the wall and fell silent and dark to the floor. He stood and advanced. She shrank back. "Just do something!" he roared.
"I, I need security," she muttered.
"No. You need to do something to help me," he snarled back, raising his fist to her.
The door slid open and second healer appeared. The man was slender and small. James turned on him and he, too, shrank back as she saw James's expression. "Is there a problem?" he stammered.