Chronicles of Chiron: Pruning the Garden | Scene 3

When the door to my hospital room closes behind Cleve and Xiao, it only highlights how trapped and isolated I feel. It’s not like this room isn’t a good size, and I certainly have never been left alone in it, but try explaining that to my emotions. There’s a window and I’ve got numerous vases with Chiron life, but I’d still rather be outside experiencing the planet personally. Not in here breathing filtered air that leaves me with a constant sense of feeling vaguely thirsty but never being able to drink enough. And they’re making me just sit here resting, when I should be meeting people and talking with them. I have things to do! ¡Ay! I am going stir-crazy in here.

“I really want to track down Jack,” I say, hoping Dr. Citali will let me leave. The words come out tinged with a plea. Marina looks up at me from her computer, and more desperate words tumble out, “Cleve was allowed to leave. Surely I can go out, too.”

“Track down Jack?” Marina mutters, momentarily confused. “Oh, for the cult thing? Really? Of all the things that you need to do, that’s what you want to do now? I thought you would just want to take a walk.”

I laugh without humor. “Yeah, look what happened last time I did that.” I’m no longer hooked up to IVs, though I am sitting here in my tank top and loose linen pants—a compromise with the medical staff that lets them still check my injury sites without me needing to be in patient attire. I’m wired up with leads measuring my heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and I don’t know what else.

“Well, don’t do it alone,” Marina says, clearly implying that she will come along. Which is not really what I had wanted, but it’s better than nothing.

“Jack is a former ranger,” I remind her, though she knows that quite well. “I’d like to know a little of the inside scoop there. But also, something’s going on with him and Deirdre.” My tone grows inadvertently more waspish as I conclude, “So no, I am not simply doing the will of the cult.”

Dr. Citali leaves her research notes at the table and comes over to my bedside, where she spends a few moments checking over my vital statistics readouts. “Okay,” she finally says, “we can go out for a little bit.” She starts disconnecting the leads from my chest. “But we don’t want you to overexert yourself. The general miasma level is not going to be a problem for you, but we still want to keep an eye on you. And stay hydrated. Um, I don’t know where we’re going to find Jack, though. Maybe at the Temple of Chiron?”

“Well, we’re not going to find him in this hospital,” I say. “There’s a whole town out there full of people with whom to socialize. Someone will know where Jack is. All I have to do is happen upon the right person to ask.”

“You know what, sure,” Marina agrees nervously, “let’s do that.” What I’ve suggested is definitely not how she’d approach the problem herself.

Marina hands me my cane and my nicer outfit, which she’s laundered for me. While I change into that, she packs away her notes, locking them up for safe keeping. When I emerge from the bathroom looking presentable again, I find her ready to go, her bag bulging with equipment and notebooks… just in case.

I don’t know enough about Jack (and neither does Marina) to refine our search any further than just going to a bar and casually asking about someone who is potentially prominent. Aside from his own credentials, Jack could be well-known just for being the child of the council leader. Marina takes me to the Mushroom Grove. I’ve never been here before, of course, but I recognize the general part of town because I saw it through briar beast senses a few nights ago.

I’m pretty distinctive myself, given my style of dress, and the bartender greets me by name. “Oh, hey, you’re that Mariah person. Some people were in here asking about you a few days ago.” He then takes note of Marina alongside me. “Oh, I guess you found him!”

Marina puts in an order for two mushroom soups, and while we wait for the kitchen to prep them, I ask the bartender if he knows where I might find Jack Skye. He tells me that “Deirdre’s boy” doesn’t come around here much. “If he does, though, I’ll be sure to let him know you’re looking for him. He likes to do parkour, so if you start up a freerun, he might join in,” he adds with a shrug, turning to the counter behind him to grab our soups.

When he hands us our bowls, I ask, “Are there any parkour courses in town?” It’s a practice that is often done through random urban cityscapes—at least back on Earth—and the Garden of Chiron doesn’t have much of that. “Or parks that have good parkour spaces?”

“Yes, actually. I wouldn’t call it a park, though; it’s more of a wild conservation area. But there are some trees and brambles there that provide good structures for moving over and through.”

It’s a long shot, but after our lunch, that park is where I have Marina take me. Even if we don’t run into Jack, it will be good to get some exercise after having been stuck in a hospital room for days. I haven’t had a good workout in a long time. The park is much as the bartender described. Rather than have the standard metal fixtures for a full exercise circuit, the space is dotted with signs suggesting how various branches and rocks can be used for dips, jumps, step routines, and so on.

There’s a set of branches that are the perfect height and shape for pullups. I take off my vest and carefully set it and the broach down on my satchel, which I’ve leaned against a rock alongside my cane. Then I start to unbutton my dress shirt. I catch Marina watching me with a red tinge flushing her dark cheeks, and it makes me glad I kept the tank top on when I changed earlier. Turning my back to her, I jump up and grab a branch. I start slowly, since aside from the recent involuntary surgery, a siege worm did snap my arm a few weeks ago. In general though, I feel fine, and soon I’m lost in the flow of careful, controlled movement. When I finally drop back down to the ground, I’m quite pleased with the burn in my muscles. It’s not as many as I would have done before the broken arm, but twenty is still pretty good, given how much I’ve been laying around lately.

My satisfaction evaporates when I notice that Dr. Citali has the bioscanner out and directed at me. She’s been measuring me this whole time, and I wasn’t even demonstrating anything chironic for her. Once again, that feeling of being nothing but an experiment—just like in Dr. Gupta’s lab—prickles at my skin and turns my stomach. Even if I were romantically attracted to Marina, things could never work out between us. I’ve always been a scientific oddity to her, ever since she first tested my blood. And at times like this, I wonder if I’m of more interest to her as an experiment than I am as a person.

Head buried in charts and readouts, Dr. Citali says, “That’s pretty good, Mariah. That pullup count is well above average.”

How is she determining that for a choice research project such as myself? My annoyance bleeds through into my voice as I ask, “What is your bar for average?”

Oblivious to my frustrations, she absent-mindedly answers, “Well, for a man your age, five for a beginner or fifteen for intermediate. Twenty is really good.” She excitedly adds, “And it shows rapid recovery! You know, maybe I didn’t appreciate that you’re actually really strong, Mariah.”

“So what?” I snap, uncomfortable with her attention to my physical self, given the other interest I think she has in me.

“Would you rather be really weak?” she asks, sounding confused. “It was just a compliment, Mariah, just a compliment. I’m just stating the facts.”

“I’m going for a run,” I announce. And without waiting for her permission, I take off at speed, gritting my teeth against the twinges in my leg. Let Marina and her facts try to keep up with me. I’m tired of her and every kind of attention she is directing at me. I need some space.