Rescue (an Ell Donsaii story #11) Read online

  Viveka gave him one of the brilliant smiles he loved. “OK,” she said, sounding relieved, “I couldn’t have afforded a meal here.”

  The food was good, but Gary hardly noticed. All of his attention was focused on his dinner companion as she enthusiastically commented on the flavors of the meal, how “cool” it was to be weightless, how much she loved the challenges of working with carbon allotropes, and how she missed India.

  It became evident that Viveka was somewhat homesick. She had invited her mother to come visit her and was really looking forward to showing her around America. “When will she get here?” Gary asked.

  “Two weeks, Sunday. She’ll come in on the flight from London. Of course she’ll be exhausted when she gets here. That will be on top of the fact that she has never flown in an airplane before, something that’s frightening her quite a bit. Thank goodness my little sister is coming with her. Nothing frightens Rana, she’s very adventurous.”

  “Maybe…” Gary said, pausing when he wondered whether what he was about to propose was a good idea.

  “What?”

  “Maybe… I could take you and your family out to dinner while they are here?”

  “Oh,” Viveka said, looking startled, “I could never talk my mother into coming out here to the habitat!”

  “No, by here, I meant North Carolina.”

  “Really?” Viveka said, her eyes sparkling, “That would be so nice!”

  ***

  In the morning Viveka awoke feeling wonderful. She decided that everyone should get to sleep at 0.3 G’s sometime in their life. Being so light, you hardly had to turn over to stay comfortable. She had decided that if you didn’t have to turn as often, you slept in longer stretches which left you feeling more refreshed. She loved being out at the habitat and wondered if she would get to make more trips to it.

  After her shower, Viveka packed her little bag, putting the tiny sack of “sand” that was all that remained of the huge bag of Styrofoam beads into the bottom of it.

  After one more stop at the Allosci weightless module to check out with the graphene spinning team, Viveka and Gary climbed into one of the space planes which was about to head back down to the island. This space plane was enormous, so Viveka spent some time gawking around, trying to comprehend the size of the payloads it might have delivered.

  ***

  Jan Rowski studied the baby sitting placidly in his mother’s lap. The baby was surprisingly light skinned considering the color of his mother’s skin. He looked healthy, though overweight, weighing in at the 95th percentile. Jan hadn’t found any abnormalities on the neurologic exam. Something seemed a little off though. Jan just couldn’t put a finger on what it was.

  Suddenly the pretty young mother said, “Is everything all right Doctor?”

  Jan chewed her lip a second, “Seems to be.”

  “One of my friends thinks that Zage doesn’t… do enough. I haven’t been around babies very much so I don’t know if what he does is normal or not.”

  “What he does?”

  “Well, more… what he doesn’t do.” Gardon shrugged, “He can sit in the same spot for hours. Especially if he has something interesting to look at.”

  Rowski tilted her head, “At six months most babies aren’t crawling off on their own yet, though that should happen soon.”

  “He doesn’t cry or even fall over. My friend thinks it’s unnatural.”

  “Unusual maybe, I think ‘unnatural’ might be a little strong. Every baby is different, and each one develops at his or her own rate.” Rowski reached out, “Let me have him again.” She held him facing her and placed him on his feet. He held a little weight on his feet for a moment, then sat, though smoothly, not thumping down like most babies. He looked at her interestedly. She would have sworn for a moment that the baby looked amused. Amused or not, he didn’t avoid her eyes like many autistic babies. After a moment he did turn to look at a screen her office used to entertain the children. At present it showed animals playing. She leaned down in front of him and tried a peek-a-boo. He smiled at her, though he didn’t cackle like many babies would. In fact, she could have sworn he looked indulgent.

  Rowski looked back at the mother, “Really, I think he’s fine. He’ll probably start crawling pretty soon and you’ll think back fondly on these days when he didn’t get into everything. Be sure your house is child proofed ‘cause we’ll probably be laughing about these worries at his next well baby check.” Rowski stood up, “In a minute Eva will be in with his vaccinations and I’ll have her draw a little blood to check his thyroid and the like. Unless anything shows up in the tests I’ll see him in three months.”

  Later Eva said, “You know, the most amazing thing? That little Gardon baby, when I gave him his shot? He just turned his head away, like a grown-up. Didn’t cry at all.”

  Rowski turned to stare at Eva, thinking she might be joking, but Eva looked completely serious. Rowski’d never heard of a baby doing that, but didn’t know what to make of it. Whatever, if it was something wrong, hopefully it will show up in the labs. If not, whatever was wrong would become evident at a future visit and an early diagnosis wouldn’t make that much difference.

  ***

  Stell Simsworth and her mother walked into the Ophthalmology clinic. She squeezed her mother’s hand anxiously, “Do you see Dr. Keller?”

  Julie Simsworth looked down fondly at her daughter. The girl evidenced no stage fright when she sang, perhaps because she couldn’t see the audience, perhaps because the girl understood just how astonishing her voice was. That didn’t mean that doctor visits didn’t make her anxious. “No, silly, we’re not even signed in yet.”

  “Mom! Dr. Keller’s the researcher from Quantum Biomed. The Ophthalmologist we’re seeing is Dr. Jenner. Dr. Keller said he’d meet us here in the waiting room.”

  Julie laughed a little, no longer embarrassed by how much better her blind daughter could keep track of such details. “Sorry, you’re right. I do see Dr. Keller. I’ll take you over and you can sit with him while I sign you into the clinic.”

  ___

  Ryan Keller saw the pretty little blind girl walk into the doctor’s waiting room with her mother. A couple of people nudged each other and turned to look at the girl, obviously recognizing her because of her famous music videos. Mrs. Simsworth saw Ryan and started his way. He wiped suddenly sweaty palms on his pants and stood, wondering how they were going to react to the news that so far the rat experiments had failed. Once again he thought that he should have worked out a way to talk to the girl and her mother somewhere other than here at the doctor’s office.

  It had seemed so reasonable back when he’d set it up.

  The mother and daughter approached and Mrs. Simsworth said, “Dr. Keller?”

  Ryan nodded; then realized with embarrassment that Stell wouldn’t see the nod. He cleared his throat, “Um, yes, Mrs. Simsworth. Hello Stell.”

  “I’m going to go sign Stell in at the desk. Can Stell sit and talk to you Dr. Keller?”

  “Sure, please call me Ryan.”

  Mrs. Simsworth showed Stell the location of the chair and then headed to the desk to sign her in. The little girl turned to Ryan and asked excitedly, “How is the research going Dr. Keller?”

  “Um,” Ryan swallowed, “Not so good thus far, Stell.”

  She frowned and tilted her head questioningly, “What’s gone wrong?”

  “Well, you know what we’ve hoped to do is to hook up the optic nerve of the eye to a camera. So far we haven’t been able to get the axonal fibers of the optic nerve to grow into our neurotrodes like the axons of other nerves do.”

  Stell’s frown became even more worried looking. Though, rather than wearing sunglasses she normally kept her eyes closed, they momentarily blinked open. Ryan saw her corneas were milky rather than clear. She said tremulously, “How many times have you tried so far?”

  “Twice, but don’t give up on us yet,” he said, trying to sound cheerful. “Research like this sel
dom works right away. We’ve got some more growth factor cocktails we can try.”

  “Growth factor?”

  “Yes, they’re substances that stimulate cell growth. We put factors into the neurotrodes to stimulate the axons to grow into the little tubes that connect the nerve to our system and the cameras. The factors we used for regular nerves didn’t work but we’ve still got some other factors we can try for the nerves to the eyes.”

  Stell still had a furrowed brow, but before she could ask more questions they were called back to see the doctor.

  As the doctor reviewed Stell’s records, talked to her mother and Stell, and then examined her eyes it became evident that the problems with Stell’s eyes were unusual. Her corneas, the transparent section over the pupils, were milky and opaque due to a rare congenital condition. Her previous doctors had tried a corneal transplant which usually worked for such conditions, but her new corneas had gradually turned milky too. In addition, when they’d removed her opaque corneas they’d been able to see that the lenses of her eyes were cloudy with cataracts as well. Normally, cataract surgery could repair that problem, but such surgery seemed pointless without clear corneas.

  The doctor was able to determine that Stell’s retinas and optic nerves were functional. He talked to them about the possibility of another corneal transplant, but didn’t hold out much hope that the same problem wouldn’t occur. Finally he leaned back and looked at each of them, “It would be hard for me to consider cutting Stell’s optic nerves and hooking them up to neurotrodes like we’ve been contemplating. If that didn’t work and then later we were to find a solution to the problem with her corneas and lenses, it would be terrible to have destroyed her nerves and retinas.”

  Stell’s face crumpled and tears brimmed over her damaged eyes to run down her cheeks. “So you won’t even try?”

  Her mother gathered the pretty girl into her arms, “Oh Honey,” she said, tears pouring down her own face, “He didn’t say that. Maybe we could try the transplant.”

  “No!” sobbed the little girl piteously, “It won’t work! Nothing will work!”

  ___

  Ryan drove home from the encounter feeling emotionally shattered. He’d been so excited to perhaps be part of restoring someone’s sight, especially someone as special as Stell. Sitting with her while the doctor came in and out he’d found that he really liked her. Now he’d not only failed to get neurotrodes to work for the optic nerve but, even if they did work, it didn’t sound like neurotrodes were something they should try in Stell. If they were going to be tried they should be in someone who’d lost the entire eye so failure to attach neurotrodes to the optic nerves wouldn’t be such a potential loss.

  When he walked into Quantum Biomed, Roger looked up and said, “Who shot your dog?”

  Ryan explained what had happened, though of course Roger already knew about the failures with the rat’s optic nerves. He buried his head in his hands, “Man, I was so excited about what we were going to do for the blind. This is so much worse than a research failure!”

  “Hey, come on now, remember what you’ve done for amputees. Besides,” Roger got kind of a distant look on his face, “neurotrodes aren’t the only trick in our bag.”

  Ryan looked up curiously, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, with Stell’s eyes, the issue is that light isn’t getting from the front of the eye to the back, right?”

  “Yeaah?”

  He shrugged, “So, light goes through ports. And ports-R-us!”

  Ryan frowned, “So you want to what… put a port in front of her eye and another back behind her lens and let the light skip going through her bad corneas and lenses?”

  Roger still had a distant look, “Yeah, something like that.”

  “But… you need a lens to focus the light on the retina correctly.”

  “So, the port in the front passes the light to an optical system somewhere else that correctly focuses it. Then it passes the light into the port behind the lens and on to the retina.”

  Ryan had a stunned look on his face, but then he frowned again, “Wait, if you put a lens on the front of the cornea… then activate it…” he looked at Roger, “the cornea would be bulging through the port right?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Roger said looking disappointed, “and there are a lot of sensitive nerves in the cornea. Nerves sticking through ports produce a lot of pain! I should know, having stuck my finger in a bunch of ports.”

  “Well,” Ryan said with a look of concern, “I was more worrying about the port closing and cutting the cornea right off the front of the eye, but the pain issue would probably be a deal breaker too.”

  Roger shrugged, “Well we could just send video from an AI headband to the port behind her lenses. It doesn’t have to come from ports on the front of her eyes.”

  Ryan quirked his mouth unhappily, “But then she’d have to turn her head to look at stuff, it’d look unnatural.”

  “Better than nothing, my man. Way better than blind.”

  Ryan shrugged agreement, but said sadly, “It’d be great if we could talk to Ell. She… so often… has ideas for things like this that the rest of us miss.”

  Roger lifted an eyebrow, “Yeah, it would be good to talk to her.”

  After Ryan returned to working on his neurotrodes, Roger headed to his office and put in a call to an old friend.

  ***

  Ell sat back after talking to Roger, a distant look in her eyes. A picture of eye contacts floated in her mind’s eye. Contacts weren’t all that common anymore, most people having corrective surgery instead, but she understood them and could picture them floating on the front of the eye. A ring of quantum entangled buckyballs around the edge of the contact could let Ell form a port there, but Roger was right, the cornea would protrude through the port and that would be painful. And, if the port cut off, it would be disastrous.

  She kept picturing a port with a bulging interface that stood out away from the cornea, lying right on the surface of the contact.

  Ell leaned back and laced her fingers behind her head, mind racing. As she worked her way through the math, she realized that nothing said a port had to be flat. She’d never considered the possibility that it might be useful to make one bulge so she had just never investigated the possibility before.

  ***

  Roger and Ryan sat down with Emma.

  Ryan began, “So here’s what we’ve come up with so far. I’ve talked to Stell’s ophthalmologist and he says that since Stell has severe cataracts behind her bad corneas it wouldn’t be unreasonable to do a cataract surgery where he would remove the cloudy internal part of the lens and then normally implant a lens to replace it. The idea with Stell’s surgery is that a port would be inside the lens he’d implant. We’d provide the port that we can then hook up to an optical system which would focus images on her retinas from the cameras on Stell’s headband.”

  Emma frowned, “That sounds pretty straightforward. Sterile port, implanted inside the same material they normally make their cataract lenses out of. Is there something you think we still need to figure out?”

  Ryan nodded, “When her eyes turn to look to the left we need to send her retina images from her left. That way she wouldn’t have to turn her whole head. Presumably from a left facing camera because we think it might look creepy for a camera to be turning whatever direction her eyes turn. We’re thinking that with your expertise in electronics you could provide some kind of sensors to go in the lenses that would tell the AI which direction her eyes were pointing?”

  Emma snorted, “That doesn’t need to be inside her eyes. There are existing camera systems that can tell what direction your eyes are pointing. They’re tiny, so you could just hang them off the front of her headset.”

  Roger and Ryan looked a little embarrassed, “Really?”

  “Yeah, the military’s been using them for a long time, but a lot of commercial enterprises are tracking eye movements too.”

  ***

  Vive
ka jittered nervously around her apartment. Dr. Pace was supposed to pick her mother, her sister, and her up in a few more minutes and take them out to dinner, a surprising kindness. Rana, Viveka’s sister, was very excited to go out with a real American, to a real American restaurant. Viveka’s mother, on the other hand, seemed very reserved, almost worried.

  Viveka sat down from wiping a few more imaginary flecks of dust off of her little dining table. Her sister was across the room staring out the window. Viveka’s mother turned to her and, speaking in a low voice that Rana wouldn’t hear, said, “This man, Dr. Pace, you say he is the boss where you work?”

  Viveka nodded.

  “And why is the boss taking you and your mother and sister out to dinner?”

  Viveka shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s very nice…” she trailed off.

  Her mother pierced her with an eye, “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “No mama!” Viveka practically hissed at her.

  “Does he know you’re adivasi?”

  Viveka shrugged again. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’m not sure he even knows what adivasi is.”

  “But surely he knows you’re not upper caste!”

  Viveka’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I think so,” she said in a small voice. “I think he’s just a very nice person.”

  “And surely he knows that I cannot afford the kind of dowry he must expect.”

  Viveka’s eyes rose again to her mother and in a quiet but fierce tone she said, “I told you I think he’s just being nice. He doesn’t want to marry me! He doesn’t want a dowry. He doesn’t want to sleep with me! He’s just a very nice person.”

  Her mother turned to look out the window again, “We’ll see…”