In Heaven and Earth Read Online Free Page A

the most comfortable position on the bed. He
spread his legs a little and winced as the bed’s extensions
telescoped up and probed their way into place. He didn’t want to
wake up swimming in his own waste, but knowing that didn’t make the
damn things any less cold and uncomfortable.
    Across from him,
Chanthavy was administering the first dose of nano treatment to
Vairya. Now she returned to him. The nanites were in sync with each
other, Reuben knew from his training, allowing a doctor with
matching nanites in his bloodstream to direct them through a
patient’s body with only willpower.
    “ I’ll send the
activation pulse in five minutes. You should be safely under by
then.”
    “ Thank
you.”
    She looked down on him,
her brow creased with concern. “Reuben…”
    “ I volunteered.
I’m trained. I’m capable.” He liked Chanthavy, but she worried
through things so slowly it made him impatient. She was honest,
conscientious, humourless, and had been one of the few captains
willing to accept his application. He respected her, but he wanted
to act now, not get caught in her second thoughts.
    Conscience
does make cowards of us all , he thought and
jammed his hand against the sedative pad. “Count me down,
captain.”
    “ Breathe
slowly,” she said, her hand warm on his shoulder. “Ten… nine…
eight…”
    He felt the pinch of an
injection as he drifted away, but by then the sedative was drifting
through him, wrapping him in clouds, and he couldn’t bring himself
to care what else was now working in his blood.
    For a long time, he hung
in that misty place between waking and dreaming, perfectly at ease.
It was quiet here, with no one demanding his attention or judging
him with every frown. Here, he could rest.
    Dreamily, he willed the
clouds away and imagined stars instead, the light-strewn sky over
Rigel. He had loved the stars once, before he set his heart on
medicine, and he could still trace and name every beloved
constellation. He had never really expected that he would end up so
far from home, exiled to the wandering stars, but he had dreamed of
flying through the stars then, as some heroic adventurer seeking
out and saving long-lost outposts of humanity.
    Well, he was doing that
now, in a way. He hadn’t known as a child that most of those
colonies, cut off when Old Earth died, would need rescuing from
their own bodies more than dangerous aliens. Too many of the early
colonies had struggled to adapt to alien soils, or to live on space
platforms made out of gutted colony ships or hollowed out
asteroids, like Caelestia. The strongest— Alpha Centauri, Sirius,
Caelestia, and Deneb— had recovered first and joined together into
a loose federation. Others had vanished, died of radiation,
malnourishment, civil wars like Rigel’s, or any of the countless
dangers that awaited humans in space. Even the stronger cities had
needed a century to recover before they started sending out medical
teams to locate and help the lost colonies.
    Slowly, as he gazed at
imaginary stars, he began to notice streaks of silver across the
sky, sparkling like meteors.
    Each one left a trail of
shimmering light that slowly covered the sky in gleaming cobwebs.
Reuben watched it quietly until it began to cover the stars. Then
he reached up and grasped a handful of threads, willing the scene
around him to change.
    This was the skill that
had made him pass the simulation so easily, the one which others
struggled to acquire. He was the master of his own
dreams.
    He found himself in a
version of his own infirmary, one where the corners of the room
didn’t quite meet and where the wall screen was webbed with
silver.
    “ Connect with
your counterparts in the patient,” Reuben said. In the simulations,
he had always found it better to give verbal commands. It kept his
whims and feelings out of the interface more effectively. “Project
image of patient’s mind.”
    The projection
came up on screen immediately. The nanites were a damn