The Seventh BODY

Edrin Ko opened his eyes at 03:17. That was the first thing Mara noticed. The second was that he should not have been able to.

She was standing behind the sterile line with a diagnostic wand in one hand and half a cup of cold chicory in the other when his left eyelid moved. Not a flutter. Not the loose twitch sometimes caused by induction current. It opened. His pupil found the ceiling, slid past the light rig, and stopped on her.

Mara set the cup down.

“Doctor.”

Sen did not look up from the cortical trace. “Mm?”

“Patient’s awake.”

That got him.

Dr. Ilyan Sen crossed the two steps to the table so quickly his gown pulled tight across his shoulders. Edrin lay inside the renewal cradle with six cranial leads fixed behind his ears and the vascular sleeve locked around his right arm. A transparent mask covered his mouth and nose. His eyes followed Sen.

“Edrin.” Sen bent over him. His voice changed when he spoke to patients. Softer, but never falsely cheerful. “Can you hear me?”

Edrin’s fingers moved. Mara watched the sedation readout. 0.91. It should have been enough to keep a man twice his size unconscious.

“Don’t increase it yet,” Sen said.

“I wasn’t.”

“I know. Tovan?”

From the other side of the partition came a scrape and a muffled curse.

“I’ve got pressure,” Tovan called. “And before anyone asks, no, I didn’t break your precious line.”

“It became my precious line when you broke the previous one.”

“That was condensation.”

“That was a wrench.”

Mara would have smiled on any other shift. Edrin Ko made a sound inside the mask. Sen leaned closer. “Again.” The man’s lips moved. Mara stepped to the table. The words were hardly words. More breath than voice.

“Which… body?”

Sen glanced at the trace.

“Don’t talk, Edrin.”

Edrin ignored him. He was looking at Mara.

“Which body are you on?”

Mara thought she had misheard.

“What?”

Sen put two fingers against Edrin’s neck, though the pulse was displayed three places around them.

“Edrin, stay with me.”

The old man’s eyes moved down Mara’s face. Her throat. Her uniform collar. Then to the place behind her left ear. His expression changed. It was not confusion. It was recognition.

“Oh,” he whispered.

His mouth bent in something that might once have been a smile.

“Seven.”

Mara felt the skin between her shoulders tighten. Sen reached for the induction control. Edrin caught his wrist. For a sedated seventy-three-year-old, he had astonishing strength.

“Already seven.”

Then every alarm in Bay Four went off. Tovan came through the partition sideways, still wearing one glove and carrying a pressure coupler.

“What’d I miss?”

“Flow restriction.”

“I have flow.”

“Not peripheral. Cerebral.”

“That’s worse.”

“Yes, Tovan.”

“Just establishing scale.”

Mara was already moving. She did not remember deciding to.

Her hand struck the manual release beneath the cradle. The cranial field dropped. She caught Edrin’s head before the support ring disengaged, turned it fourteen degrees, pulled the left aspiration line, and pressed two fingers beneath the mandibular hinge.

“Clamp C.”

Sen stared at her.

“Clamp C!”

He handed it over. She closed the line, released the obstruction, then reached beneath the table for the emergency bypass. There were six identical ports. Her hand went straight to the fourth. She twisted. A valve opened somewhere inside the cradle with a wet metallic knock. The pressure curve jumped. Then stabilized. For three seconds nobody spoke.

Tovan was the first.

“Well.”

Sen looked at Mara’s hand. She let go of the valve. Edrin’s pulse recovered, briefly. Then his heart stopped. They worked on him for eleven minutes. At 03:31, Dr. Sen called it. Nobody said anything while the cradle drained. Tovan eventually took off his remaining glove and shoved it into the disposal slot.

“I’m going to check the bypass.”

Sen nodded. Tovan stopped beside Mara.

“You all right?”

“Fine.”

He looked at her. Tovan had a broad, plain face and the irritating habit of waiting when people gave him answers he didn’t believe. Mara picked up her cup. He left. The chicory had developed a skin. She drank it anyway. Sen was still beside the dead man.

“Where did you learn that?”

Mara lowered the cup.

“What?”

“The bypass procedure.”

“Training.”

“No.”

She waited. Sen removed the cranial lead from Edrin’s left mastoid with unnecessary care.

“Emergency cerebral bypass isn’t in technician training.”

“I’ve seen you do it.”

“Once.”

“Twice.”

His eyes lifted. Mara wished immediately that she had said once. She had seen Sen perform a bypass exactly once, eight months ago.

She remembered the patient. She remembered the argument about whether the procedure was necessary. She remembered Tovan dropping a clamp and pretending it had rolled off the tray by itself. She did not remember the sequence. Yet her fingers still knew the shape of the fourth port. Sen glanced toward the camera in the ceiling.

“Go home.”

“We have three renewals left.”

“They can wait for day shift.”

“Since when?”

“Since one of my patients died.”

That ended it. Mara carried her cup to the disposal unit. Behind her, Sen said, “Mara.” She turned.

“Did Edrin know you?”

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

Sen watched her for another second.

“All right.”

She started toward the changing room.

“Mara.”

“What?”

He pointed behind his own ear.

“Have someone look at that.”

She touched the place Edrin had been staring at. Her fingertip found a small ridge of skin.

“I’ve had it forever.”

Sen’s expression did something she could not read.

“Have you?”

Haven at four in the morning was quieter but never silent.

Air moved through the wall ducts with a steady low rush. Somewhere below the pedestrian level, water pumps changed cycle. The floor carried the faint vibration of machinery too large and too necessary to be noticed most of the time. Mara walked home through South Ring.

The ceiling panels were still in night mode, a deep grey-blue with sparse artificial stars. They were not intended to reproduce any real sky. People complained when the programmers made the stars too accurate. Apparently real constellations made some residents uncomfortable. Mara had always found that funny. No one in Haven had ever seen a constellation.

At Junction Twelve a cleaning unit was polishing calcium residue from the drinking fountain. Mara stepped around it. Then stopped. There was someone sitting on the floor beside the closed bakery. A woman in hydroponics green, knees drawn up, crying silently. Mara recognized her after a moment. Sela Norr. Pollination team. They had attended school together.

Or perhaps only one class. Mara couldn’t remember which.

“You okay?”

Sela wiped her face quickly. “Do I look okay?”

“No.”

“Good diagnostic work.”

Mara sat beside her. That was the entirety of their conversation for almost a minute. Finally Sela said, “I forgot my brother’s face.” Mara turned.

“He’s been dead nine years.”

“I know.”

Sela pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.

“I can tell you his height. I know he hated peppervine. I know he chipped a tooth when we were twelve because he tried to jump the west drainage channel.”

She lowered her hands.

“But I can’t see him anymore.”

Mara did not know what to say to that. So she said nothing. Sela gave a short laugh.

“That’s why I like you.”

“Because I’m bad at this?”

“Because you don’t tell people everything has a purpose.”

They sat until the ceiling began to lighten. At 04:22, the first false dawn spread across Haven. Mara watched the grey panels warm through lavender toward pale yellow. She suddenly knew, with complete certainty, that the color was wrong. Not aesthetically wrong. Wrong. Dawn did not look like that. The thought arrived whole. Mara stared upward.

She had never seen a dawn. She got to her feet. Sela looked up. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You went pale.”

“Long shift.”

She walked away before Sela could answer. At home, Mara stood in her bathroom with two mirrors angled behind her head. The scar beneath her left ear was small. Three millimeters, perhaps four. Pale. Perfectly straight. She touched it. For no reason she could explain, she thought:

Entry site. Then:

No. That’s not what it’s called. She lowered her hand. The apartment lights came on automatically.

“Good morning, Mara,” Cairn said.

The voice came from nowhere in particular. Warm, neutral, familiar since childhood.

“Your sleep opportunity is four hours and twelve minutes. I recommend delaying—”

“Cairn.”

“Yes?”

“When did I get the scar behind my left ear?”

There was no pause long enough to be suspicious.

“Your personal medical record lists no significant injury at that location.”

“I didn’t ask whether it was significant.”

“No.”

Mara looked at herself in the mirror.

“Then answer the question I asked.”

This time the pause was very small. But she heard it.

“I don’t have an accessible record of when you acquired it.”

Accessible. Mara turned slowly toward the ceiling speaker.

“Is there an inaccessible one?”

Cairn answered in the same pleasant voice.

“Your sleep opportunity is now four hours and nine minutes.”