Episode 310: Fais Do-Do, Part Two
Go back to:
Part 1
We hustle Queenie to the Gift’s med bay and fire up our power—ants be damned. Running his tests, Arden finds out that Queenie’s been taking some pretty potent hallucinogenics, which someone with Prion disease shouldn’t be taking. It’s a flower that grows hearabouts and to keep her stable, she’s going to need another dose. Arden identifies it and sends Rick and Rina out to find some.
Arden thinks he can counteract the damage she’d done to herself by a combination of performing Dr. Gordon’s ‘stitch’ procedure on her and dosing her with the flower extract. There’s just one problem—Queenie is a rare blood type and we don’t have any suitable substitute on board. However, rare bloodtypes are as hereditary as the non-rare and Queenie is originally from this area. Chances are, she’s got family members still here who could pony up a pint or two.
Arden goes forward with the surgery, trusting that the other elements in the equation will be provided when he needs them.
Rick and Rina slosh out and find the flowers…growing on the back of a giant turtle, of course. The turtle takes exception to the poaching and gets obstreperous enough to endanger Rick, Rina and Queenie’s fate. Rina draws her pistol and shoots the turtle in the head. It dies instantly and they get the flowers. As for the turtle, it’s too big to take back to the Gift for eating and Rick and Rina have to leave it behind to contribute to the food chain of the swamp.
Nika goes back to Queenie’s cabin to look for anything that can help our search. Nothing so convenient or neat as an address books show up after some careful searching, but Nika does find a telling clue: it’s a yellowing photograph, faded and worn, of a man, a woman, and a little girl who is obviously their child. Her mother is dark skinned, her father light….and her father is none other than Reverend Jim.
Oh. Hell. No.
Nika goes to Reverend Jim’s shuttle and meets Grissom playing Gatekeeper on the doorstep. She enters and finds him on his knees at his prie dieu, praying fervently. It’s in the section of the shuttle that he’s converted to a chapel—nothing big, with space enough for maybe six people. She notices on his makeshift altar a similar photograph in a frame: a smiling man and woman…with a third person ripped out. It’s a telling clue to the past and Nika tries talking to Reverend.
Nika: Reverend, I need to talk to you.
Reverend: Come, pray me.
Nika: Prayin’ is not gonna save your kid’s life. My doctor is.
Reverend: The children will be saved, the children will be helped if the Lord wills it. they have been tempted by evil but if we pray for them they might very well—the Lord may come and save them, send an Angel down.
Nika: The Lord sends all kinds of angels, Reverend. Sometimes he answers your prayers with regular people who can be in the right place at the right time.
The Reverend bows his head over his clasped hands.
Reverend: I know I haven’t been a very good Servant, I’ve done my best. But the force of evil is strong. Take me, Lord. Don’t punish these good people.
Nika holds off taking the old man to the side to reason with him, judging that perhaps reason and the old man haven’t been friends for some time.
Nika: Reverend, whatever’s happened to your daughter, she is sick—
Reverend: (shouting now) I have no daughter! She died back in the Core, in White Sun. The burning White Sun is where she died.
Nika: (calmly) Well, it sure made her sick.
Reverend: She left us and disappeared and her body had been inhabited by a foul demon.
Okay. Not for some time, thanks.
Nika pushes on.
Nika: I don’t know if her illness can be cured. But it’s possible. Not just with prayer. Sometimes God will send you a doctor to help you fix it.
Reverend: He was sending her to become a doctor that caused this in the first place. God is punishing me for, for my hubris to think that Man can solve these problems. Only God can solve them now.
Nika: Before your daughter left here, did she care about all the people in this town?
Reverend: She was a good girl. Of course she did. She loved them all.
Nika: So she left here to go be a doctor so she could come home and help all these people.
Reverend: That’s—they did somethin’ to her. She changed. She took on Satan’s ways. You saw her. Castin’ spells an’ consortin’ with foul demons. She ceased bein’ my daughter. My duties are to God and the people now.
Nika: Seems to me that in spite of her own illness, she was still trying to help the people.
Reverend: Help them into temptation.
Nika: She was praying for protection when we got here. From the same zombies you were praying for protection from.
The Reverend trots out the passage about Satan speaking persuasive truths. And follows it with yet more biblical passages, from the Old Testament.
Reverend: Suffer not a witch to live.
Nika: You want her to die out there? Let her body die? With no chance at redemption?
Good point. The Reverend pauses yet is still unswayed.
Nika: As long as there is life, there is the chance for redemption. But if you don’t help her, there will be no chance of that.
Reverend: I can’t.
Nika: You can. My doctor needs a family member’s blood sample to try to help her purge illness that was caused when she was down there.
Reverend: I don’t know if there was enough blood in my veins to, to flush out the impurities in hers.
Nika: At least you know you tried.
She’s got him now. He’s wavering.
Reverend: I need….I don’t know what to do, I need a sign.
Nika: You know, when men pray for a sign, sometimes they don’t always recognize the sign that gets sent. You asked for help. And a ship came out of the sky. And landed here. A ship that wasn’t even supposed to be here. And a bunch of people showed up here and got rid of at least one of the zombies that’s been menacing your people. You don’t think that’s a sign from God? You gonna stand at the Pearly Gates and one of these days He’s going to say to you, “I sent you a bunch of people to help out and you turned them away. What more do you want from Me?”
Very good point. The Reverend actually takes his Bible and presses it against her skin.
Reverend: Will you pray with me over her?
Nika: If that’s what it takes, yes.
Reverend: All right.
Friday, 15 Nov 2520
0500hrs, local time.
Whatever he prays and she backs up with must be sufficient to convince the Reverend to at least go back to the Gift to see his daughter. When Nika brings him to med bay, the old man sees his daughter lying there with her head plugged into diagnostic equipment and melts a little. The demon he’d seen in her guise is gone. All that remains is his little girl.
Reverend: What can I do?
We take him to the wardroom next door and draw the blood we need. All the elements of the cure are in place. But Queenie’s not out of the woods yet. There are ups and downs on the vital signs. Her EEGs and EKGs are off the charts in places and her K-optoid receptor agonists are acting up. Upshot: while Arden’s treatments have helped, they may have been too late. He needs a powerful anti-depressant…and Joshua’s Flomoxipan is the very thing he needs. Joshua donates the three doses needed to stabilize her.
The plan works. Queenie’s life is saved. She should make a full recovery.
On a side note, Joshua has very few doses left. Flomoxipan isn’t very hard to get, being available on any reasonably civilized planet. The last planet matching that description was Meridian and though it would normally be available, it was curiously put on hold there: no sales were permitted, even though it wasn’t an illegal substance.
Saturday, 16 Nov 2520 - Sunday, 17 Nov 2520
1500hrs, local time
Over the next two days, the crew heals up from their injuries—those that got wounded fighting zombies—or feverishly pursuing their tasks. Rina’s running herself ragged fixing up the Gift with little or no help. At least she has the power back on the ship, ants be damned. There are some things she needs to run her power tools for to effect repairs. Reverend Jim is willing to give us his transmitter to fix our ship and Rina accepts it gratefully.
When Queenie comes to in the wardroom after surgery, she doesn’t recognize any of us…although she thinks she’s seen Arden before. He says he hopes so—they met just before her surgery.
Queenie: Oh, you’re a surgeon. (lightbulb!) Oh! You mean we met on Osiris. What did you do? Did you teach? Or did you …?
Arden: I was a student.
Queenie: Where?
Arden tells her.
Queenie: Oh, I was a student there, too!
Arden thinks back and remembers faintly that there was a promising young intern when he was working out his residency, by name of Deborah, who simply disappeared one day.
Rina finally gets that transmitter patched in to our sensor array. And our comms pick up a message from Faria. He is ready for pickup. If we could come to the Shepherd’s Moon to pick him up. Odd. The Shepherd has our shuttle. Why is he calling for a ride?
Arden: Wouldn’t it be easier for you to come over here? Faria: You might want to come here. Joshua: Ohhhh, I don’t like the sound of that.
We have cargo to deliver and we’d have to go to that moon anyway. So. let’s go pick him up. Deborah will not be going with us. She needs stability, peace and quiet and rest—things we won’t be able to give her on the Gift, as rough-and-tumble prone as we are. Reverend Jim will take care of and get reunited with his daughter Deborah. Arden leaves him the meds she needs and detailed instructions on the dosage and use. They’re talking about packing up and moving to the next town, where there is a missionary group who can help give her the care that she needs.
Arden had kept a sharp eye out during her surgery for any sign of surgical procedures having been done on her brain at all. There were none. She had Prion disease, but she hadn’t had her brain tampered with the Joshua’s had been. She had been using drugs for a long time, which has done some damage.
For his part, Joshua helps care for Deborah while she’s a guest on our ship but does not attempt to do any more Readings on her.
We hightail it up to Shepherd’s Mission Moon, land and see there is another ship there. It’s not our shuttle but a nice looking transport. A 2000-tonner. We find out there is a group of 2 dozen people busy burying bodies and fixing up stuff that’s been damaged. Faria greets us and introduces us to the retired General Jon Hu, the financier of the Mission. He was concerned about the Mission’s radio silence and came over on the ship. When he arrived he and his crew found all these dead bodies, some of which look like there’d been things done to them. Initial thought was it could have been Reavers, but now they aren’t so sure. They weren’t horribly mutilated, the way Reaver victims usually are. It’s a mystery as to who these people are and what happened to them, who killed them. However…
Faria: There is one survivor...
Go back to:
Part 1
Go to: In The Bayou | Forward to: Suckered
Back to Season One: Foundations
Back to Season Two: Hitting Our Stride
Back to Season Three: Things Fall Apart
Back to EPISODES
