Chapter 6: Not in Wisconsin Any More

Nyk looked at the clock on the lab wall. It read five, and Suki hadn’t stopped by to chat. She hadn’t met him for lunch, as he had expected. He locked the filing cabinets and the door to the lab, walked to her apartment building and pressed her button. Nothing happened. Again and again he pressed it and paced around the doorway.

A junior professor came from the building and acknowledged him. “Have you seen Sukiko?” Nyk asked.

“Not since this morning. She may be clearing out her office. She and four other lecturers were let go.”

“Let go?”

“Fired. The new humanities head wants only full or associate profs teaching classes. He treated them rather shabbily -- their students were notified over break the classes were cancelled. He dropped the bombshell on them today. She took it pretty hard, I heard.”

Nyk slipped through the front door before it latched and climbed the stairs. On the door to her apartment were taped two envelopes, one addressed, “Mom,” the other “Nick.” He took down the envelopes and opened the one bearing his name.

Inside he found a door key and a note, moist with tears.

Dear Nick,
Thank you for all you’ve done to try to help me. Deep inside, I knew I was a lost cause. You gave me moments of hope, moments in which my worthless life actually seemed worth living. I’ve been beating my head against a wall for three years. It’s time to stop and find some peace. Suki

He unlocked the door, walked in, slipped off his jacket and looked around the apartment. “Suki?” Her bedroom was empty. “Sukiko?” The bathroom door was closed.

He rapped on it. “Suki? Suki, it’s Nick,” he called out and tested the knob to find it locked. Nyk sprinted to the kitchen, found a paring knife, and used it to jimmy the door.

Suki was slumped in the bathtub, naked, covered with blood and bleeding from both wrists. He shut his eyes and pinched his lips together.

She was still warm but pallid and he could find no pulse. He pocketed the door key, ran to his house and opened the garage door.

Shortly, he was pulling up to the apartment building in the shuttlecar. He hopped from the shuttle carrying a stasis canister. With her door key he let himself into her apartment, ripped the top sheet from her bed and spread it on the bathroom floor. Kneeling by the bathtub, he slipped his arm around her shoulder blades. She fell backwards as he attempted to put his other arm under her knees. Her body was limp. Blood made her skin slippery and the narrow tub restricted his leverage. He stood, averted his gaze and gagged.

Nyk slid her into a lying posture in the bottom of the tub, lifted her legs by the ankles, then bent over and grasped her forearms. He pulled her from the tub and rolled her onto the floor. After popping the cover off the canister, he dumped its stasis capsules onto the floor, slid the device over her head and switched it to its internal power cell. Then, he straightened her arms and legs and wrapped her in the sheet, folding it over her head to secure the canister.

He slung her over his shoulder, carried her to the shuttlecar and placed her in the passenger seat. The shuttle responded to his touch on the unistick and he piloted it from the parking lot. He sped away from the university section and headed toward the outskirts of town.

A vehicle was following him. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted flashing red and blue lights. He increased his speed -- the police car kept pace. Nyk grasped the shuttle’s unistick and jerked it left and right to make tight turns. The craft’s inertial sink permitted it to corner briskly. By taking a zigzag route he put some distance between himself and the squad car.

He reached the main highway leading toward the country road he used as his launching pad. A push forward on the unistick increased his forward velocity. The police cruiser was still with him and closing in. He sped past his turnoff, increased his speed and hurtled down the highway.

The shuttlecar zigged and zagged around other vehicles as Nyk used the inertial sink to change directions instantly. The squad car began to fall behind. He crossed a small bridge. Then he pressed a control to increase the Z- component of his thrust vector and create some lift. The shuttle rose off its wheels. Pulling the stick full to the left, he executed a tight U-turn and headed back in the direction he had come.

As he approached the bridge from the other side he saw the squad car, stopped and pulled across both lanes of the highway. The officer had jumped out, pulled his service pistol and was crouching by the guardrail.

Nyk pushed the unistick forward again for more speed. He aimed the shuttle directly at the stopped police car. The officer jumped behind the guardrail and braced himself for impact. Nyk increased the Z and flew over the top of the stopped cruiser. The shuttlecar touched down, tires screeching and smoking on contact with the pavement.

He sped down the highway, pulled onto the side road and stopped behind a deserted school. A touch on the control panel began pre-launch diagnostics. He was awaiting the orbital trajectory coordinates from the navigation computer when he saw flashing lights in the distance, coming his way from two directions. The door safety catches engaged with a snap.

The shuttlecar nosed up and shot skyward. Nyk manipulated the navigational computer as he ascended through the stratosphere. He fired the subwarp coil as soon as he was beyond the atmosphere. The craft’s sensors detected the relay station’s transponder and he headed toward it at maximum sublight velocity.

The spacedoor opened and he saw the flashing approach lights. He pulled back on the unistick and guided the car into the bay. The shuttle touched down on the deck and he initiated bay repressurization before he came to a halt in the parking stall.

Shuttlebay repressurization required only a couple of minutes but it seemed an eternity. He heard the door safety catches release and he jumped out, picked up Suki and headed into the station’s workroom.

Nyk opened the hatch to the station’s emergency stasis chamber. He switched off the portable stasis canister, removed it from her head and slid her in. The control panel indicated good stasis. He went through decontamination and placed a vidphone call to Veska, marked it urgent and paced back and forth before the vidisplay.

“Hello, my friend and son.” He saw Veska’s image on the vidisplay. “What is so important?”

“I need the first available inbound vessel for a medical emergency. Also, a portable stasis chamber for patient transport. We have a grave injury here.”

“Who’s injured?” Veska asked.

“Someone on the comm station. It’s very serious. I have them in the stasis chamber now.”

Veska shook his head. “Those comm techs shouldn’t be permitted to work alone. They should have a buddy with them. It’s a good thing you happened by. Let me consult the packet schedule ... Nothing I can divert ... There’s an inbound colonial courier. I can’t order them to divert, but I’ll transmit a request. Please stand by.”

The vidphone session suspended. Nyk paced back and forth. Veska reappeared. “Nyk, it’s a courier from the Lexal colony. They have a stasis chamber on board, and they’ve agreed to divert to transport the patient. Expect their hail in 1.2 segments.” The display went blank.

Nyk resumed his pacing. He looked into the stasis chamber and at its control panel. The hail came over the vidisplay, then the courier docked with a gentle thud. A pair of attendants came through the docking port, dragging a field stasis chamber on a levitating pallet.

“Over here,” Nyk said and directed them toward the comm station’s chamber. He switched it off, opened its hatch and withdrew Suki. The attendants helped him maneuver her into the portable chamber’s transparent tube.

“Man or woman?” the attendant asked.

“A woman.”

“She’s certainly bleeding badly,” an attendant said noticing the red splotch on the sheet.

“We have good stasis,” the second attendant said upon activating the portable unit. “We’ll take her directly to the Floran City shuttleport. A skimmer’s standing by to transport her to the Central Clinic.”

“I’ll accompany her,” Nyk said. “Call ahead, ask for Dr Kurso Aahhn.” He followed them into the courier. The attendant pressed a control and the pallet settled onto the deck.

Nyk looked at the bulkhead separating the courier’s cabins. The door to the forward cabin was closed. “The chancellor’s in there,” the attendant said. “It’s good we’re ahead of schedule. He’s needed on the homeworld for an important meeting -- and he hates being late.”