Indentured (Book 2 of the Dana Halliday series)

SPACE SCURVY. ANNA AND BUDDY. AIN'T DOIN' RIGHT.

The Qir had the top floors of one of the brick apartment buildings. We met one of the little folk, a teacher named Ti'fel'na, in the building's lobby, and she took us up to the rooftop.

V'tru'kri, the Matriarch, sat in the fading sunlight on a padded bench, among raised garden beds and containers full of exotic vegetables and herbs. A familiar young Qir sat next to her. The rooftop had a different feel than the garden area outside; a distinctly jungley sort of vibe. 

"Wow." I nodded to the old female Qir. "This is wonderful, ma'am."

To my surprise, the kid next to her spoke, apparently translating. The Matriarch smiled and extended her hands for me to clasp. I took her hands as I would my grandmother's: very, very gingerly. 

V'tru'kri spoke in her own chattery language, and the kid translated in perfect tandem with my Earwig: "Do you like it? This is all vegetation from our own world."

The child's English was heavily accented, but I could follow it just fine. "Kri'ah." She had been one of the sickly kids; she looked so bright and healthy now that it'd taken me a minute to recognize her. "You've been busy, haven't you? How are you feeling, hon?"

We had a pleasant visit. The Qir resembled slightly anthropomorphic raccoon-lemurs, and besides being adorable, they turned out to be cheerfully hospitable. While Adrian and Flynt discussed the ongoing repairs with the technical staff, Kri'ah, her mother, and the Matriarch gave me a short tour of the rooftop. They had decided to grow some of their own food while staying there, and, as I had predicted, the affected children were improving. The adults felt better for it, too.

I told them what I suspected, that they had a vitamin C deficiency. Space scurvy, y'all. Many of the fruits, which formed a large part of their diet, were obviously citrus-like, adding weight to my conclusion. I thought maybe the adults developed an ability to synthesize the vitamin as they matured, or possibly it was particularly vital to young growing Qir. At any rate, they were improving, and I gave myself a mental pat on the back.

I collected more blood samples, and the Matriarch promised to send some kids over to repeat x-rays. They also gave us a bag of assorted sweet-smelling lumpy fruits and a thing that looked a bit like a disturbingly large blue zucchini. I had to remind myself I should run the produce past my Sickbay's toxin detector before taking a bite.

As we were heading toward the stairs to leave, an Earther with a dog appeared. She was a young woman, maybe early twenties, and had a pleasantly homely face. "Hello. I'm sorry to intrude, but the Qir promised to let me know when you were here. I was wondering if I could have my dog looked at?"

* * *

The woman, who gave her name as Anna, had loose ties to Yuri's crew on the mining ship Akula, and the word was spreading that one of their own had been treated by a veterinarian. Anna was the superintendent of the Qir building.

"Small world," I said, and cracked up. "Well, not exactly."

It was the next day, and I was examining her dog in Sickbay's treatment area.

"Small population.  What do you think? Can you help him?"

The dog was a huge, placid golden retriever named Buddy, whom she had taken in after his first owners moved off Maggie B and onto an orbital station. A significant percentage of golden retrievers are named Buddy, apparently another rule to be conserved in the Earth Colony universe. He was ten years old and responded with great dignity to Billie's attempts to entice him to play, mainly by pinning her down and drooling on her head.

Anna had a tenant who was a physician, and he had diagnosed Buddy with a large tumor in his abdomen. I had taken x-rays of my own and confirmed it, most likely on the spleen. "The doctor said he wouldn't operate?"