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.These people clearly didn't want to live in a rural backwater; they wanted a town.They just didn't want it to be on Earth.Some of the inhabitants were out and about.People waved and called out to them from the doorways of bars as they rolled past, and Trent slowed down so he wouldn't splash mud all over them.The streets downtown were churned to a froth by all the traffic, to the point where Trent wondered if he was going to get through the muck with only three drive wheels, but the pickup wallowed through it in fine form, and a few blocks past the river they rose up onto drier ground again.Greg talked them in to the hospital—a squat log building on a side street about six blocks north of the center of town.The exterior looked like a dude ranch bunkhouse, but lights blazed from its windows, and big blue signs pointed to the emergency entrance.Trent parked close to the doors and set the brake."The ambulance arrives," he said, opening his door and stepping down to the ground.He went around to the other side and helped Katata and her children down, wiping his hands on his pantlegs when he was done, then he reached up for Donna, but she took one look at the slimy seat and scooted out the driver's side.It was hardly worth the effort.Her entire right side was already wet with the aliens' slime, her white T-shirt practically transparent from her shoulder to the middle of her chest except where streaks of orange sap from the bushes Trent had cut by the stream had stained it.It was clear that she wasn't wearing a bra.A tall, gangly Asian guy met them at the door."I'm Doctor Chen," he said in heavily accented English.He wasn't dressed like a doctor—his blue jeans, red flannel shirt, and hiking boots made him look more like a logger or a construction worker—but he had a stethoscope draped around his neck and a little fanny pack with a red cross on it.Trent made the introductions."I'm Trent.This is Donna, Katata, Talana, and Dixit.Talana's the one with the hurt.whatever."Dr.Chen looked apprehensively at the aliens.It was hard to tell what the aliens thought of him.If they were scared, they didn't show it, but they didn't say anything, either.They just stood there, Katata holding the baby in one tentacle and draping the other over Talana's shoulder."Come inside, and we have see," Chen said.The building might have had a log exterior, but the inside was clean and bright, with smooth white walls and a tile floor.The emergency room took up at least a third of its space, and there was a hallway leading to several smaller rooms beyond it.The emergency room had two exam tables with crinkly paper sheets covering the cushions, and curtains on rails that could be pulled around them for privacy, just like in any other hospital.An Asian woman dressed in drab green scrubs ran some kind of high-tech instrument on the far end of the room.She looked up when she saw people entering, did a theatrical double-take, then waved"hello" and went back to her work."Please sit patient on table," Dr.Chen said.When Katata didn't respond, he motioned setting Talana down, and she did.He reached out and gingerly touched the alien child's slimy right tentacle at the bruised spot just above where it was cradling it with its left.Talana shivered under his touch, but whether it was from pain or from the idea of being prodded by a curious alien was hard to say."Where does it hurt?" Chen asked.Katata spoke to the child, and the child responded by pointing with the tip of its uninjured tentacle.Both tentacles were maybe three inches thick at the shoulder and tapered to about the size of a person's little finger at the tip.The injury was about two-thirds of the way down the right one, where it was maybe an inch thick.Chen brushed his fingers gently along Talana's skin.Ta-lana quivered again, then winced when he got to the injury.Trent wondered what the doctor could do for what was essentially a snake with a broken back, how he could even tell what was wrong, but Dr.Chen acted like he knew what he was doing.He reached for Talana's other tentacle and felt the same spot there, squeezing fairly hard to feel the underlying structure."There are bones," he said."Like vertebrae." He flexed the uninjured tentacle in an arc, then tightened it into a loop about eight inches in diameter, getting a feel for how it normally moved.Then he put his hand inside the loop and said, "Squeeze." He clenched the fingers of his other hand to show what he wanted.Talana tightened the tentacle around his hand, the slimy skin sliding noiselessly, like a velvet rope being drawn into a knot.The knot slid down the length of the tentacle a few inches until it was narrow enough for a good grip, then Talana squeezed.Chen nodded appreciatively."Very good.Strong.Harder, please." He flexed his free fingers again, and Talana obliged."Ah! Okay, stop now.Stop!" He tugged his hand free and shook it, and Talana jerked the tentacle back as if it had touched something hot."Toca," the child said."You okay," Chen replied."You do just what I ask." He took the other tentacle and draped the end of it over the same hand."Now do again."Talana tried to wrap the tentacle around his hand, but the end of it slid less than halfway around before Talana cried out in pain and stopped."Okay," Chen said, lowering his hand."No need to try again." He turned toward the woman across the room and said something to her in what sounded like Chinese, of which the only word Trent could understand was "X-ray."She looked up from her equipment and replied in Chinese, then came around her workbench and wheeled the mobile x-ray unit away from its parking spot against the wall.It looked like the bottom half of a refrigerator with a computer keyboard and monitor set at an angle on top, with a hinged arm holding an oblong plastic emitter overhead.Trent looked at the arm, then at the arms of the woman pushing the unit toward the alien child.Both were built on pretty much the same principle, which made him wonder if an alien x-ray machine would have a flexible arm.Dr [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]