Learning to Dance

was foul, “shouldn’t have dropped the news on you the way
he did, and his stimulants nearly killed you. I wasn’t on
duty, or I would never had let him anywhere near this room.
He may run the Galactic League now, but you’re my patient
and he has no jurisdiction over you here.”
“What did he do to Up?” Taz asked, quietly, but
impatiently. She had to understand.
“You are aware that Dr. Claw is a specialist in robotics?”
Some kind of cold dread gathered deep in Taz’s stomach.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “He’s built a new body for the
Commander, or part of one anyway. He’s found a way to
fuse human tissue with robotic wiring. Silicone and flesh,
blood and wires, and a human heart, that’s what’s left of
Commander Up.”
The ball of dread burst, and its edges were sharp.
“But he’s alive,” she managed.
“They don’t know that yet, whatever Claw told you, and
whatever the nurses are gossiping about,” the doctor said.
“He’s in stasis. They haven’t attempted to revive him yet –
they’ve been waiting on you.”
“Me?”
“That’s why Dr. Claw was so eager to see you – he
wants a familiar face there when they wake him. If Up
remembers you-”
If Up remembers me?
“- then it proves his – treatment – worked. It proves that
he’s still alive – still human.”
Somehow – impossibly – this seemed worse than death.
The possibility that Up would not be human, that he could
go on as a shell, a robotic husk, and nothing more... “Do
you – do you think he’s still human?” she asked tentatively,
hating how weak she sounded, hating that it there could
even be a question of it.
The doctor looked sadder than ever. “I don’t know,