He squirmed around, delighted that moving didn’t send him into paroxysms of pain. The bed they’d placed him in, to his dismay, was also a relic. Something that The Corporation must have bought for cheap because no one else wanted it. So they’d shipped it off to Donovan where, even if anyone bitched, it would be thirty light years beyond the hearing of whichever bureaucrat had made the purchase. That, or—knowing how these things worked—it had been a political deal. Someone had paid off someone else to take the Torquemada-inspired thing. He was starting to wonder what he’d offer a procurement officer just to have the contraption hauled away and dropped in a black hole.

“It’s early stages,” Talina said from somewhere out in the hallway. “Aching behind his eyes. Rainbow vision. On the way in, he mentioned voices, blamed them on side effects from Dya’s anesthetic.”

“Cheng just ran the blood sample,” Raya Turnienko said in return. “His TriNA predominantly has Flute’s signature, but he’s got others, too, including Rocket’s, Rork’s, and, unfortunately, Whitey’s haplotypes. Any idea on how that might have happened?”

“No, I. . . . Aw, shit on a shoe.”

“What is it, Talina?”

“The guy was dying, Raya. No heartbeat. Had stopped breathing. Probably from shock. I mean, you saw his leg. No human I know should have been able to climb out of that canyon, but he did. Probably took everything he had. Add dehydration to the poison . . . I tell you, the guy was clinically dead. I gave him CPR.”

“Tasted peppermint?” Raya asked.

“Yeah, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I was a hell of a lot more concerned with getting his heart started again.”

Dek bellowed. “I’m eternally grateful that you did, but would you mind stepping in here, so I can be part of the conversation?”

To his surprise, he heard them approach from down the hall. How far away had they been? Down by Raya’s office?

Raya entered, thundered, “How’s the leg?”

“Hey, easy. I can hear fine, all right?”

Raya shot Talina a knowing glance.

Talina, in almost a whisper, told him, “You’ll learn to balance it. It’s the cells that are growing in your inner ear. What your brain hasn’t figured out yet, is how to modulate the signal it’s getting from all of those new nerve cells. It’s a bootstrapping process, takes a couple of days.”

“Can we cut to the chase, here?” Dek asked. “I’m turning into a quetzal, that’s what you’re telling me?”

“You been hunting chamois in your dreams?” Talina asked, coming to sit on the side of his bed. “Maybe had images of the bush? Places you’ve never been? Visions of crazy things that you know aren’t real, but feel so absolutely familiar you just know it can’t be made up?”