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ended
"I could have taken you to the site, and the house, without Stillman's help,"
said
Hewlitt. "Why do you want to go to the house anyway? The real reason, I mean,
not the polite, socially acceptable one that you gave the colonel.
"If we refused the assistance of the local Monitor Corps, friend Hewlitt,"
said
Prilicla, "the colonel would be sure that we were trying to hide something. We
are not hiding anyj! thing, because we still don't know if there is anything
to hide *
except, perhaps, our own future embarrassment
"I have no good reason to visit the house," it went on, "other than to cover
old ground in the hope that a useful idea will occur to us, or to you, while
we are doing so. I feel you radiating disbelief combined with disappointment.
Perhaps you were expecting a more substantial reason. But the truth is that we
have no clear idea of what, if anything, we will find there
"We will proceed with the briefing now.. . .
They might not know what they were looking for, Hewlitt thought, but Captain
Fletcher and the entire medical team were going out well equipped to find it.
His translator was working, but the language was too specialized and technical
for him to understand and make a contribution, so he listened without speaking
until there was an interruption from the wall speaker
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"Communications. The material promised by Colonel Shech-Rar has come in.
Instructions?
"Put it on our repeater screen, friend Haslam, and run the accident report
first,"
said Prilicla. It drifted closer until the downdraft from its wings stirred
his hair, file:///F|/rah/James%20White/Final%20Diagnosis.htm (139 of 266)
[7/1/03 1:38:07 AM]
Final Diagnosis.htm and went on, "You are welcome to remain, friend Hewlitt,
but if at any time you find this material or our conversation distressing,
please feel free to return to your bed and raise the hush field.
"It happened a long time ago," he said. "I was too young to be told all the
details, but now I want to know. Thank you, f but I feel sure that I'll be all
right.
"I will know how you feel, friend Hewlitt," said Prilicla. "Proceed, friend
Haslam.
The report began with the service ID pictures of his parents, which surprised
him because they looked no older than he was now, and in his mind they had
always been so much bigger and older than himself. They had been looking very
serious for the camera, he thought as the other personal and physiological
details unrolled, but that must have been one of the few times when they had
not smiled at him.
The memories came flooding back, sharp and clear and corroborating in every
detail the reconstruction of the accident investigators
At the time his father had been too busy to even to look at him, but his
mother had smiled and told him not to be afraid as she climbed over the
backrest of the copilot's position to squeeze down beside him. She had held
him very tightly in her lap with one arm while her free hand redeployed the
safety harness around both of them. Outside the canopy, the sky and the
tree-covered mountains were spinning around them, with the trees coming so
close that'he could see individual branches. Then she had pushed his head
forward, folding him in two on her lap with the back of his head pressed
between her breasts. There had been a sudden shock that flung them sideways
and apart, a loud, tearing crash, and the feeling of rain on his face and cold
air rushing past as he fell
He remembered an explosion of pain as he hit the ground, but nothing else
until one of the rescue party that had responded to the flyer's automatic
distress beacon asked him where he was hurt
According to the report, the flyer's canopy had been speared by one of the
treetops and was found still lodged in the upper branches, while the rest of
the ship crashed file:///F|/rah/James%20White/Final%20Diagnosis.htm (140 of
266) [7/1/03 1:38:07 AM]
Final Diagnosis.htm to the ground and rolled down the mountain for a distance
of forty-five meters before breaking up and catching fire. Because the local
vegetation was sodden after a day of heavy rain, the flames did not travel up
the slope to the point where the sole survivor, the seven-year-old Hewlitt
boy, was lying. The report went on to discuss at length the technical evidence
gathered by the investigators, which
Prilicla passed over for later study by Captain Fletcher, and ended with brief
details of the autopsy, disposal, and treatment of the victims
His parents had sustained massive trauma, and the indications were that they
had probably died, and were certainly unconscious, before the fire engulfed
them.
Hewlitt had been found in a state of shock and confusion but otherwise
unharmed, and it was assumed that the small patches of blood on his clothing
belonged to his mother. Although unhurt, he had been kept under observation in
hospital for the nine days it took the next-of-kin, his grandmother, to arrive
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and collect him and arrange for the disposal of his parents' remains
His grandmother had not allowed Hewlitt to see the bodies because, he now
realized, the cremation had simply completed the process already started by
the fire
For a moment the old but never quite forgotten pain of loss and grief returned
like a great, dark vacuum filling his . chest, and he tried hard to control
his feelings because Pril-icla was watching him and becoming unsteady in its
flight. He pushed the remembered pain out of his mind and tried to concentrate
on the next report that was coming up on the screen
"Thank you, friend Hewlitt," said the empath, and went on, "As we can see,
this report relates to the medical condition, treatment, and behavior of the
survivor during its nine-day stay in hospital. Even then the younger Hewlitt
was presenting its doctor with problems
"They began," Prilicla went on, "when the base medical officer,
Surgeon-Captain
Telford, prescribed oral sedation. Although uninjured, the patient was close
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