With the Professor was an attractive, intelligent-looking woman with cream-gold skin and silky black hair tied back in a bun. She wore a pale green lab coat. He was vaguely aware of having sensed her presence before while half-conscious, heard her explaining things that he had been too muzzy to grasp.
Now, she smiled in relief at seeing her patient awake. 'How are you feeling?' she asked.
'Apart from being dead?' he asked.
'Yes, apart from that,' she agreed, completely unruffled.
'I have been worse.'
'I'll say! I've had to replace practically every organ in your body. They're around ten-year-old-sized at the moment, so they'll mould themselves to fit their cavities as they finish growing. Now, I realise this may be a harder question, but who are you at the moment?'
He hesitated for a moment, picturing Luke's face willing him to remember. 'Anakin.'
'Excellent!' She was genuinely pleased – because he could remember a name, or because he had made the right choice over which identity to choose? 'Have your hosts told you who they are?'
'No.' He began to cough again, and the conversation paused while the man in brown moistened his tongue with a little more of the watery paste.
'Well, this man here,' she indicated the older man, 'is Sergeant Konstantine Bothari, formerly of the Barrayaran Imperial Service, and then liege-sworn Armsman to House Vorkosigan. This,' she indicated the younger, long-haired man, 'is Professor Severus Snape, of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Earth. And I am Dr Rowan Durona, formerly of House Fell, Jackson's Whole, and now of the Durona Clinic, Escobar. Next question: do you know where you are?'
He had been considering this. There was a thin, translucent curtain covering the window, but since it was open, he must be somewhere with not only a breathable atmosphere but a temperate climate. The air felt mild and pleasant, and he had only a light sheet covering his body. As far as he could tell while wearing shades, and with painfully oversensitive eyes that weren't used to looking directly at anything, there was gentle golden sunlight trickling through the fabric of the curtain.
'Is this the afterlife?' A memory ambushed him, reminding him how close this was to calling someone an angel. He shoved it back.
'Sometimes,' Dr Durona said. 'Those who die in the course of their stories can come here to retire, at least until they find another story they want to be reborn in. Or sometimes they come for respite if their author is pushing them a bit too hard, or if they need medical treatment that they can't get in their own universe. For example, in thrillers written by authors with no medical experience, if the protagonist gets hit in the course of three books with PTSD over seeing his wife murdered, a head injury that leaves him with amnesia, being captured and brainwashed by the villains into trying to murder his boss in Chapter One of the latest instalment, and is sent to hospital for an intensive course of electro-convulsive therapy, and his author expects him to be well enough to return to active duty by Chapter Two – this place can offer him somewhere to convalesce until he's ready to decide whether he even wants to go back.' Beside him, Anakin could sense Sergeant Bothari's mind wincing with recognition at this description.
'But there are plenty more people who just visit to socialise from time to time, or to join support groups,' Dr Durona continued. 'And in my case, I was asked to come here to treat your injuries.'
Something occurred to Anakin that he had seldom needed to think about before. As a slave child, he had never been taken to a medcentre, though there were various home remedies that everyone on Tattooine knew. As a Jedi, he had been taken to the Temple's hospital wing when he was injured in battle, without having to worry about how to pay for it. As Darth Vader, he had been allowed sufficient medical treatment to keep him alive and functional without being happy or healthy. But among free people, he was fairly hazy about which planets had a Planetary Health Service and which ones left you to die unless you had the money to pay a doctor or your job came with medical insurance. 'I have – no credits – to pay you,' he rasped.
'Don't worry, Cheiron and I have already settled the Deal,' Dr Durona explained. 'The bacta cultures I'm taking back with me are quite enough to pay for your treatment. Besides, I have what a Barrayaran would call a debt of honour.'
'To me?' How could this have anything to do with him?
'In a way. And to Konstantine. It's a long story, but – well, Konstantine used to be bodyguard to a young boy, mostly to protect him from his grandfather who was trying to assassinate him.' She said this quite casually, as if this was a part of normal family life. Well, considering Anakin's relationships with his family – both his biological family and his Jedi adoptive family – that wasn't far off. 'And much later, when this boy, Miles, was grown up, I met him under quite dramatic circumstances. He saved my kid sister's life – which wasn't easy, when she had been brought up to believe that being reared to be a human sacrifice was the highest honour she could aspire to,' she added with a flare of rage, 'and his brother bought our family out of slavery and lent us the money to start our own business on another planet.'
Anakin could sense the thought Lord Miles has a brother?! How did that happen?! but when he cast a quick glance at Bothari, the man's face was as shuttered as a durasteel mask.
'And how does this relate to me?' he asked.
'Well, for one thing, if it hadn't been for Konstantine, Miles wouldn't have survived infancy and therefore Mark – his clone-brother – would never have been created. And apparently Miles went through a phase as a child of being nearly as obsessed with Star Wars – that's a series of holovids about you and your descendants – as he was with Barrayaran holovid series like Vorthalia the Bold. Which, of course, meant that his bodyguard had to sit through them as well, and he took a liking to you for some reason, so when you turned up here, Konstantine decided that he and Severus ought to take you in.
'But it goes back a bit further than that, and this is why I owe a debt of honour to you, as well. I hadn't encountered Star Wars when I was younger – it doesn't really fit into Jacksonian culture – but it's part of the mythology that forms the culture of many of the planets in my galaxy, whether Beta Colony or Escobar, or, by the time Miles was born, even Barrayar. So, if it hadn't been for your story, I don't know whether Miles would have made such an effort to befriend his brother who wanted nothing to do with him – without which, I wouldn't have met either of them – and I don't know whether Miles's mother would have believed that there was still good in Konstantine and befriended him, without which none of this would have happened. Our galaxy owes your galaxy!'
