Chapter 20 Chapter Nineteen

The human body is always under the invasion of various organisms in the surrounding environment, most of which are harmful to the human body, so the human body has a complex and very effective defense system.Once that happens, antibodies form first.The glands send preventive factors throughout the system, and then the body mobilizes; defending against invaders.This defense system is very effective, which is why life has survived on the earth for 4 billion years.Sometimes, however, this activity of the defense system itself causes fever, pain, sneezing, formation of pimples, water scars or red spots, even fainting, and sometimes death.This symptom is called "anaphylaxis" and it may be more serious than the attack of foreign organisms.

One of the air EMTs stopped to explain the situation to Sandy, and he got the hang of it.All he knew was that Margeley's condition was serious, so the paramedics were busy.The helicopter flew towards the city of Hudson, and 10 minutes later it quickly landed on the roof of a house marked with a square red cross.Margerie was wrapped in a blanket, had a tube inserted through her nose and another tube was connected to a needle inserted into a blood vessel in her arm, and her face was completely covered by a mask. She stopped talking, even gibberish.She remained unconscious.The paramedics stopped talking, at least not to Lasander Washington, except to explain something to him at first.No one paid him any attention until they shoved the trundle bed on which Margery lay in one elevator and hurried Lasander into another, and he was instructed to wait in the emergency waiting room.Afterwards, the only people who paid attention to him were the people around him. Some of them were on crutches, some were holding babies in their arms, some were half asleep, and some were pacing up and down anxiously, waiting for the friends or family members inside. Medical condition notification.

The seats in the waiting room are made of light and thin aluminum tubes with canvas backs.Sandy didn't trust them to hold his weight.He preferred to join the pacers, because the whole thing was so horrible and mysterious to him that he couldn't help thinking that the whole thing was his fault, but he couldn't figure out what. No one told him anything either. A little girl in gym shorts and tennis shoes was watching a sitcom in front of the TV in the waiting room when she was attracted to Sandy and looked straight at him.She was holding a box of popcorn from the vending machine in her hand, and she was not eating, but she was holding her thumb in her mouth.She held her fingers out for a moment and asked, "Sir, are you the spaceman?"

He frowned at her.Now he is not in the mood to chat. "No," he lied.Everyone around him is lying, why should he tell the truth? "I'm, uh, just an ordinary earthling, I'm waiting for my wife to have a baby." "You're not right," said the boy, who debunked his lie. "Birth is going to the other side of the hospital. I'm waiting for my brother, and the doctor is taking a bullet out of his nose. He's so stupid. You want to eat it Is it rice flower?" He shook his head and walked over to the drinking fountain.He peered into the hospital's off-the-beaten-path corridors, painted gray-green and white, and parked with small carts loaded with unplugging instruments and piles of laundry.People in gray-green overalls came and went in a hurry.He didn't care that the little girl was still paying attention to him, and walked to the reception desk again. "Can you tell me about Margerie Dapp?" he begged.

"The doctor will let you know as soon as he's free," said the receptionist, looking at Sandy curiously. "There's a movie room down the hall, if you want, you can go there and watch TV while you wait." "Is there a suitable chair there?" he asked curtly. The receptionist took a look at his physique. "There's a sofa there, and I think it's strong enough," she said. "I'll go then," Sandy mumbled, but he decided to go to the men's room first. He kept thinking.The world is full of unexpected crises!He was tired of being surprised again and again.It wasn't the way he'd grown up; at least on a starship you always knew where you were, never had to think about what to do next, the elders would tell you.

He didn't want to face the curiosity of these people in the waiting room anymore.He found the movie room, where the sofa seemed strong enough to support him.When he sat down and looked at the screen, he couldn't help being surprised again.There is a familiar face on the screen, this is his old teammate Burton!Like Polly, he was standing on a podium, and he was also speaking to an audience invisible on the screen.Certainly not about astronomy, his topic was biological control of radioactivity and poisons.He put some microscopic photos of microorganisms, showing that these microorganisms specialize in feeding on harmful substances, and can concentrate harmful substances in their bodies, and then people can capture them for disposal.The result: clean water and soil.

As soon as the shock of suddenly seeing an old friend wears off, Sandy finds the subject dull.He'd heard enough of that stuff during his formative years with his teammates.Still, he was surprised to find that Earthlings weren't interested either, at least he was alone in the movie room.He finally couldn't stay any longer, and returned to the waiting room, where sitcoms were still playing on TV. The little girl was still waiting for him. "I know you're the spaceman," she said triumphantly, pointing to the door, "otherwise, why is that scary guy looking for you?"

Yes, Polly was striding and jumping towards him from the door, followed by a uniformed hospital attendant, looking confident.Perhaps, he thought, she was a little more confident than usual, because it was almost time for her bedtime "cookie milk," which of course she wasn't going to be eating here. "Lysander, what stupid thing have you done?" she asked rudely, speaking in Highkli, so as not to be understood by the nearby Earthlings who were paying attention to them. "Why do you get into trouble and I have to run all the way to this hospital?" "I didn't get in trouble," Sandy said, hoping he was telling the truth. "I didn't do anything. Margery's sick." He said the last word painfully.

"What's the matter? I heard you forced her into the water. A man on oxygen can't live in water. You're doing it wrong, not at all! Why did you do that?" "I didn't force her at all! And it wasn't my idea." "Then it was her idea. Really, why?" "Because she wanted to find a secret place and tell me something. I just found out that you guys have been lying to me!" Polly was not offended, but interested. "Why do you say that?" she asked curiously. "Because what you told me about my mother was all false and not even true. She was not American! There was only one spaceship in space at the time, and it was Russian."

Polly scoffed at that. "Are you upset over this trivial, unimportant issue? What's the difference? Russians, Americans, Chinese—they're all Earthlings, aren't they?" "The difference is..." He stretched his face and said, then paused again.He felt there would be some strategic advantage in hiding what he knew.He decided not to mention the gender of the two Russians, saying only: "The difference is that you didn't tell me the truth." She looked at him contemptuously. "I?" "No, you," he corrected, "you Heckleys! My teammates, and everyone else, including the elders, you lied to me."

"My dear Lysander," she said bitterly, "listen to what you say? You contradict yourself, and how can the senators lie? The senators speak the truth. If a senator says Husik It's not Husik, but a Haikeli at the level of 'Ro', then that's the truth, otherwise the elder wouldn't have said that." She yawned a lot and announced: "This kind of talk is useless. Or Tell me about your own unsatisfactory behavior. Why didn't you listen to Bolton's lecture on detoxification from the soil?" "You didn't listen either. He's still talking." "I know what he said, you don't." Lassander shrugged, "I just looked at it a little bit, and it didn't make much sense." She scoffed reproachfully. "How can you be so judgmental? But," she said in an almost mournful tone, "Earthlings don't seem interested either, I don't understand them. You know? Almost no one asks me about thrusters, as if they I am not grateful for this great gift from the Haikeli people." "Oh," Lassander reminded her, "maybe they didn't think it was a gift. After all, you told them that there would be Hykri overseeing, not just Earthlings." "Of course it must be supervised by the Haikeli people! Otherwise, who knows what the earth people will do? Lasander, they are very barbaric and have not fully evolved into civilization! Think about what you have learned before! They are too good at All technology turned into weapons." "How can a railgun be used as a weapon?" he asked rationally. "That couldn't be easier! They could send a big rocket out at breakneck speed and hit our ship! Can you imagine what would happen if that happened? Our ship wouldn't have time to dodge because the main engine They're completely shut down now." She yelled angrily, "And worse! They could fire nukes, the kind of weapons they've always used against each other." "They haven't used any nukes in years." "Years!" she imitated him, "just years! And, maybe they think it's time to use this weapon again." She glanced over Sandy's shoulder and behind him , made a face. "We'll talk about that next time if you like. Now that I'm leaving, my guard dog is here again, and I don't want to talk to him." She staggered away in a huff.But to Sandy's surprise, Hamilton Boyle seemed more interested in him than Polly.He just nodded to her and walked straight towards Sandy. "Margerie will be all right," Boyle said, patting Lysander on the shoulder reassuringly. "It looked bad, and it was. You certainly saved her life by getting her out of there." .She's just having an allergic reaction and they've been on histamine allergies. Margery's come back to life. I just came from her." "I'm going to see her," Sandy said, turning and heading for the door of the emergency room.Boyle reached out and took his arm. "Not now," he said. "She, uh, doesn't look too good right now. She'd rather wait until she looks better before you see her." Sandy stared up at him, and made a noise that was somewhere between "oh shit" and "wow!", happy that Margerie wanted to look good for him, angry that He couldn't go in. "What's an allergic reaction?" he asked.After Boyle explained, he asked strangely, "What is she allergic to?" Boyle tapped his pipe, brooding. "There can be a lot of things that can cause allergies," he said finally. "Like mold spores. That vault has been flooded for years and it's probably full of mold spores. How are you?" "How about what?" "Do you have any allergies? Like sneezing, aches, dizziness, hoarseness? Look, since you're in the hospital, why don't you get checked by a doctor?" "I don't think there's a need for a test," Sandy said. "But Margerie would love you to check it out," Boyle advised him. "It only takes a minute to sample, and it doesn't hurt." The sampling took much longer than a minute, if you count the time to take off your pants and lie face down; Boyle told him that it didn't hurt, and it was fake, a man in one of those light green overalls, chewing gum The young woman poked her hand up his fleshy buttocks, looking for a soft spot.The woman's finger poking annoyed him—no, "disturbed," because Sandy was acutely aware that she was a woman and he was exposed; No other Earth female has ever touched this intimately.When she finally found a spot she liked, there was a pop and something went in, followed by a sudden, piercing pain that Sandy felt like a rattlesnake had bitten him in the ass. Instinctively, he rolled over to the side, and cried out in shock and pain.He looked up and saw the woman holding a needle the length of the first knuckle of his thumb. "Please don't move," she ordered angrily, "It's just a cell sample...well, you can go now." Sandy returned to the waiting room ruefully.When he saw Hamilton Boyle standing under a big "No Smoking" sign and puffing, his face grew long. "Not too bad, is it?" Boyle asked kindly. "That's bad enough," Lisande muttered, rubbing his ass. "Can I see Marge Lee now?" Boyle shook his head regretfully. "I'm afraid not. She's asleep. They don't want to be disturbed." Sandy blinked, suddenly worried. "But didn't they say she was getting better?" "She's on the mend, my boy! It's just that she's just gotten away with it, and they're keeping her in the hospital for observation until they get the test results. She'll probably be fine tomorrow morning, I'm sure, and you'll see her then, maybe even send her home." "Send her home?" Sandy suddenly felt a burst of joy, "That would be great." He thought for a while, and suddenly had an idea. "Flowers! People on Earth have the habit of sending flowers to the sick, don't they? Where can I buy flowers?" Boyle was amused and shook his head indulgently. "Sandy, it's too late," he said. "The flower shops are closed. You can buy them tomorrow morning, but now I think it's time to take you home. My car is in the garage." They got into the car, and Boyle drove fast and steady, and when they got to the hotel, he stopped for a moment before getting out. "One more thing I'm curious about, Sandy," he said, "Did you watch your friend Bolton's speech on TV?" "Not much. I didn't pay much attention." Boyle nodded. "Most of what he said was corny, and if you don't mind me saying this, we've done a lot of research ourselves on soil and water detoxification. You know, it had to be done. One little thing caught my attention, Bo Ton said the Heckleys were going to conduct field experiments themselves." "Really? Why not?" Boyle pursed his lips. "I can't give a reason. But he said he wanted to go with the railgun project they had us build, in Africa." Lysander shrugged. "Why not? There's no harm in there anyway, is there?" "But it's no good, Sandy. Africa is probably the continent with the least pollution from acid rain, heavy metals, etc. The Heckley people seem to be very interested in it, do you know why?" Lysander shook his head. "You'll have to ask Tych Lo about that." In fact, he knew quite well what the answer was, more believably than Hamilton Boyle could get from Tych Lo.