The infirmary corridors were teeming with new personnel and new equipment, and the building itself had been enlarged with newly attached modules at either end. Technicians were feeding data to computers, and medical personnel were stocking shelves and unpacking boxes. Yana wondered briefly why, with a half-empty infirmary, they were adding to it. She didn’t like the look of that, actually. They must be expecting a great many more troops-and casualties.
They said their farewells, Torkel taking leave with just a hint of a lingering look in his eye for her as he strode off to do whatever it was he was going to do. Which Yana had a pretty good idea was not confined to simply seeing that the Margolies-Metaxos boys were comfy.
She and Bunny climbed in the snocle just as he turned around and waved, and Yana waved back until he was out of sight.
Then, as Bunny started the engine, Yana said, “Develop a mechanical problem, Bunny. I’m going to go back in there for a bit. If anyone challenges you, or stops to help you, drive off and come right back on base after a few minutes. I shouldn’t be long.”
Bunny gave her a hard, measuring look, then shrugged. “Okay, but whatever you’re up to, be careful.”
Yana flipped her an abbreviated salute and headed into the clinic.
For the first time since her release, Yana felt fortunate to have spent so long in a large medical facility. She walked back in as if she knew exactly where she was going. Purposefully, she pushed back thoughts of what would happen if she was discovered and her presence in the facility officially queried: Torkel might not even be able, much less wish to, bail her out, and she could easily lose her pension with Integral and face time in a detention center. But right now was the best time for her to obtain a copy of Lavelle’s autopsy-before anyone thought to doctor it up for official reasons.
She entered the Staff Only lounge, which was as empty as it was bound to be with so much activity going on outside, pulled off her new blouse, and hung it on a hook beneath a patient gown. Pulling on a scrub top and a paper cap, and paper shoes in place of her cold-weather boots, she hung a surgical mask around her chin and, taking a deep breath-without a hint of a cough, she noted distantly-to ease the tension in her guts, padded briskly back down the hall.
At Andromeda, as at most company infirmaries, convalescing patients did routine, nondemanding chores to save the professional staff work. Even officers did it, and were glad of it, for it helped stave off the boredom of being separated from their own work and their own lives. During her own convalescence, Yana had spent considerable time helping in medical records, requesting and transmitting data from central files. She could at least see if the autopsy had been performed on Lavelle yet-and if it had become a classified file or not.
She walked straight into the vacant ward opposite the one containing Diego’s father, careful to keep her back to the boy and his guardian, and sat out of sight, around the corner, at the nursing-station computer. She typed in the access code she remembered from her days in the hospital-no longer than six weeks ago, which seemed incredible, considering how well she felt and how far she had come. She breathed a sigh of relief as the code worked. In a closed system, where for the most part only company troops and employees had access to the facility, the need for security was not as tight as it would have been on a world containing a variety of corporate or military entities. On shipboard, space station, or wholly owned planetary subsidiary, Intergal was the only game in town.
Then the machine purred along for a moment and she punched in AUTOPSY REPORT, and suddenly the screen filled with data. She hit PRINT, scanning while the document printed.
The lungs had been congested, so Lavelle had indeed had pneumonia, but that was not listed as cause of death. Her immune system had suddenly and fatally collapsed, unable to cope with half a dozen systemic viral infections. The autopsy noted that this alone was surprising, since tissue samples-muscle, blood, skin, and bone marrow-all indicated that she had been in the physical shape of a woman half her chronological age. Also, a small inexplicable node had attached to the medulla oblongata. That was strange enough, but the autopsy report also cited the presence of an unusually large and highly developed lump of “brown fat” weighing an astonishing 502 grams: its blood vessels had ruptured. A footnote by the examining physician explained that while two hundred grams of brown fat were normally present in human babies at birth-to ensure NSHP, nonshivering heat production-the substance atrophied when babies grew big enough to adjust their own temperatures to cold. It was odd enough to find the brown fat active, and far odder to find it so enlarged. There was also a thin subcutaneous layer of a dense fatty tissue. A minor mutation to protect inhabitants against the cold? Then she remembered seeing a similar fatty layer, thin but present, in the animals she had skinned after the trapping expedition.