CHAPTER 4 #2
“Excellent. One less thing for me to do.” Minio handed her a wide, flat basket and then tilted his head for a moment in thought before removing the hat from his head and plonking it down over her staticky braid.
“It would be bad for you to burn your skin again. My sister asked me to keep an eye out for you, because stars know Pyo isn’t going to. ”
She kept her disagreement to herself. “Thanks.” She adjusted the over-sized brim to sit higher on her forehead and then followed Minio to a patch of thistly bushes that were bursting with prismatic berries. As the light caught them, they glowed from one end of the color spectrum to the other.
“So just grab as many of these as I can?”
“It’s rudimentary. Take the berries and stick them in the basket. Mind the thorns. And don’t smash them if you can help it. They’re popular on Brasnia Prime and we can charge a high price.”
Minio hummed a low note, scanned back over his shoulder to where Pyo had emerged from the shed seated on a heavy piece of machinery, and then sidled away deep into the waves of grain.
Eleri faced the bush and set to work plucking the berries free and settling them in the basket.
Although he’d described it as ‘rudimentary’, the task was more difficult than it seemed at face value.
The berries liked to bounce with unexpected buoyancy when she set them down with any amount of force, and despite her best efforts, it was impossible to avoid getting scratched by the thorns entirely.
Each berry had to be settled in the basket with cautious precision to avoid knocking them all out.
As she gathered the berries, the heat from the day settled deep into her IA-issued body suit and it wasn’t long before she had to take breaks specifically to wipe sweat away from her brow and the back of her neck.
Eventually, she settled into a steady rhythm.
From her vantage at the edge of the field, she could look out onto a flock of cooing pichari birds and a few of their chicks.
She flicked a line of what they called ‘diesel ants’ back on Gaia off the thigh of her bodysuit, taking care not to use too much force to remove them.
The living insects were harmless enough but would dissolve into an incredibly flammable puddle of goo if crushed.
By the time it was sun-high she felt she’d barely made any progress, but Pyo showed up with an impressed warble at her results.
“Would you look at that? Too bad you’ll only be staying here until you finish your training.
If we had known you would be here at the beginning of the season I would have planted twice as many bushes. ”
“I’ll stick to this then.” Eleri rocked back on her heels, unsure about the praise. It hadn’t seemed like a great feat to her, but she was happy to make herself useful.
“Well come on then, we’ll have Minio give you a ride down to the clinic. I’m sure Aglao is itching to put you to work.”
“I can’t wait.” Eleri stretched and noticed the stiffness in her shoulders.
No doubt she’d feel it more the next day.
After the mindless work of the morning, she was anticipating her work at the clinic with both excitement and worry.
It had been less than two standard years since she’d had to take a hiatus from her IA healer training program back on Gaia, but she feared most of her knowledge had evaporated.
“Is Minio still here?” Eleri asked. She’d watched him vanish into the plumes of grain and hadn’t seen him emerge since.
“He’d better be,” Pyo responded with surprising darkness in his tone.
He emitted a high-pitched series of clicks and then listened for something likely outside the range of Eleri’s own hearing.
As they waited, it became clear Pyo hadn’t received the answer he was seeking.
His wings fanned and then snapped shut with what Eleri was quickly coming to recognize as annoyance.
“Nowhere in range, that useless ravik.” Pyo’s wings cracked again in an ominous gesture of frustration. “No helping it. I’ll take you myself. Then I’ve got some business to attend to.”
“I can walk over myself if you give me directions.”
“What kind of host would I be if I made you walk in this heat?” Pyo’s wings relaxed against his shoulder blades. “None of that now, you’ve done an honest morning’s work, the least I can do is take you down to the clinic.”
When they arrived at the clinic, she hopped off the back of Pyo’s levibike and resisted the urge to wave. Instead, she settled for a head nod, only to have Pyo wave farewell with his three-fingered appendage.
“I’ll see that Minio is here to collect you at the end of the workday.”
“I’m sure I can find my way back on my own.”
“You city folk always have trouble adjusting to the way things work here. We’re glad to help, so let us. I’ll make sure that good for nothing is waiting for you when you’re ready to leave.”
“Thank you, I’ll wait for Minio to pick me up.”
“Good. We’ll see you for the evening meal.” Pyo restarted the engine and sped off back toward his farm.
Eleri turned away quickly to hide the embarrassment blooming on her cheeks. Her gran had always said she couldn’t hide her emotions if she tried. Her rose red blushing always gave everything away.
Eleri was grateful to step inside the clinic and away from the heat.
Once inside, the sterile environment reminded her she’d been crouched on her knees and sweating in her body suit all morning.
Not exactly the cleanliness required for nursing.
She stood awkwardly in the entry way, not wanting to track dust through the building.
“Hello, Eleri of Gaia. You are here; this pleases me.” Aglao’s soft voice came from behind although she hadn’t heard them approach.
She turned to face Aglao with a relieved smile. “You can just call me Eleri.”
“Yes, Eleri. Are you ready to begin your training?”
“Absolutely.” She wasn’t sure she could keep the excitement from her voice, and she wasn’t sure she minded.
“Please remove your boots and then proceed to the hygiene chamber, and I will have a clean uniform prepared for you.” Aglao floated down a narrow hall and opened a small door at the end.
Eleri might have melted with joy when she saw the real, water shower.
It had been so long since she’d been properly clean.
After taking her time in the shower scrubbing all the dirt from her scalp and from under her fingernails, Eleri emerged and stepped into the brand new, forest green scrubs Aglao had left in a basket outside the door.
The clinic was almost unrecognizable when she returned to the treatment area. Aglao had activated every machine and workstation possible, most of which she recognized, and some of which were totally unfamiliar. Eleri’s fingers twitched in anticipation as she repressed the urge to touch everything.
“Come and start here.” Aglao motioned to the central interface console which had unfolded to lay flat. “Tell me what you know about zoa anatomy.”
“Zoa?” Eleri frowned as she crossed the room to stand at the corner of the interface. A strange diagram lay in front of her, and she fanned her fingers over the screen to get a more in-depth view of the anatomy on display.
“I’ve never learned about the zoa,” she admitted. “My training was interrupted before we could cover any species outside of the consortium planets.”
“That is not unexpected,” Aglao burbled and turned a lovely shade of indigo. “We are rare, and we do not have a home planet in the way you would understand it. I ask because I may ask you to demonstrate treatment protocol using my anatomy as an exemplar. Would you like to learn?”
“Anything you have to teach me I want to learn,” she responded earnestly. Eleri squinted to try and understand how the form on the screen could align with Aglao’s anatomy. They seemed fundamentally different, but she couldn’t judge what she was seeing until she had more information.
Aglao bobbed up and down in what seemed to be a motion of approval.
They reached for a nearby console with one of their arms and a holographic display appeared on the table in front of them.
As they began to reorient the image, Eleri realized that what she was looking at was actually an entire pod of zoa, and not an individual like Aglao.
“This is the pod I came from” Aglao said.
“It was rather a feat of photography to capture us in motion, but one of the younglings is very talented with technologies.”
“It’s beautiful.” Eleri stared with rapt attention as Aglao swiped the interface with a tentacle to reveal a more familiar form of a single zoa on the holopanel.
They walked her through the remarkably versatile and flexible anatomy of the zoa.
Each tentacle could flatten or stretch to five times its normal size, and the central body node could flatten or bend into nearly any angle.
“Are many of your people healers?” Eleri asked, although she realized Aglao probably caught the question even before she spoke it.
“Some of us. We are not like the fleyeli who can change their shape at will, but our bodies can change sizes very well after we complete our first hibernation.”
“But you’re not a part of the IA?”
“We are nomadic. The zoa swim the great expanses of space between worlds in pods, and we prefer it that way. Some of us settle on a planet in need, but we only stay for as long as there is a need. Cassiaq-IV has need of physicians, so I will stay here.”
Eleri nodded. It made good sense. IA membership required a home planet.
She was bursting with questions but thought it would be rude to let them spill out all at once, especially since she was here to finish her training, not to learn everything about the zoa.
There would be more time for questions as her training progressed.
The rest of the afternoon was spent reviewing how to use the basic healing tech. Eleri bandaged imaginary wounds and helped suture in a virtual reality surgery. She was relieved to find the skills came easily into muscle memory, despite her hiatus from practicing any real medicine.
They also reviewed the most important medications in the pharmacy as well as the full patient roster.
The two hundred names seemed daunting, especially when added to an additional three hundred in the other nearby settlement of Indras, but she suspected she would learn them well enough before long.
By the time the smaller second sun took prominence in the sky, Eleri was deliriously happy.
She wanted to stay longer and keep learning, but Aglao insisted she needed rest and food.
Reluctantly, Eleri removed the scrubs and left them in the basket by the hygiene room and changed back into her grimy bodysuit.
Once she had some credits to her name, she would ask Myla about going to buy some new clothing.
In the clinic, she could wear the scrubs, but to work in the fields she was in desperate need of something with better ventilation.
It was only once she was outside the clinic and in the center of town that Eleri realized she had no idea how to get back to Pyo’s home.
Given that Minio was less than enthused by the idea of offering her any real help, she suspected no one would remember to come collect her, despite Pyo’s assurances.