Between the Strokes of Night

The woman who leaned over the panel outside the chamber was about thirty years old. Her dark hair was cropped short over a high, smooth forehead that now creased with frown lines as she studied the monitors. She was watching one digital readout as it flickered rapidly through a repeated sequence of values. She was in her stockinged feet, and her toes and feet wriggled nervously as the digital readout values moved faster.

“It’s no good. She’s still getting worse. Can we reverse it?”

The man next to her shook his head. “Not without killing her faster. Her temperature’s down too far already, and she’s below our control on brain activity. I’m afraid we’re going to lose her.” His voice was calm and slow under rigid control. He turned to look at the woman, waiting for an instruction. She took a long, shuddering breath.

“We must not lose her. There must be something else to do. Oh my God.” She stood up, revealing a supple, willowy build that emphasized the thinness of her stooped shoulders. “Jinx might be in the same condition. Did you check on his enclosure, see how he’s doing?”

Wolfgang Gibbs snorted. “Give me credit for something, Charlene. I checked him a few minutes ago. Everything is stable there. I held him four hours behind Dolly here, because I didn’t know if this move was a safe one.” He shrugged. “I guess we know now. Look at Dolly’s EEG. Better accept it, boss woman. We can’t do one thing for her.”

On the screen in front of them, the pattern of electrical signals from the bear’s brain was beginning to flatten. All evidence of spindles was gone, and the residual sinusoid was dropping in amplitude.

The woman shivered, then sighed. “Damn, damn, damn.” She ran her hand through her dark hair. “So what now? I can’t stay here much longer — JN’s meeting starts in less than half an hour. What the hell am I going to tell her? She had such hopes for this one.”

She straightened under the other’s direct gaze. There was a speculative element to his look that always made her uneasy.

He shrugged again and laughed harshly. “Tell her we never promised miracles.” His voice had a flat edge to the vowels that hinted at English as a late-learned second language. “Bears don’t hibernate in the same way as other animals do. Even JN will admit that. They sleep a lot, and the body temperature drops, but it’s a different metabolic process.” There was a beep from the monitor console. “Look out now — she’s going.”

On the screen in front of them the trace of brain activity was reduced to a single horizontal line. They watched in silence for a full minute, until there was a final, faint shiver from the heart monitor.

The man leaned forward and turned the gain as high as it would go. He grunted. “Nothing. She’s gone. Poor old Dolly.”

“And what do I tell JN?”

“The truth. She already knows most of it. We’ve gone farther with Jinx and Dolly than JN had any reason to hope we could. I told you we were into a risky area with the bears, but we kept pushing on.”

“I was hoping to keep Jinx under at least another four days. Now, we can’t risk it. I’ll have to tell JN we’re going to wake him up now.”

“It’s that, or kill him. You saw the monitors.” As he spoke, he had already switched to the injection control system for the second experimental chamber, and was carefully increasing the hormonal levels through Jinx’s half-ton body mass. “But you’re the boss. If you insist on it, I’ll hold him under a bit longer.”

“No.” She was chewing her lip, rocking backwards and forwards in front of the screen. “We can’t take the risk. Go ahead, Wolfgang, bring him up all the way. Full consciousness. How long had Dolly been under, total time?”

“One hundred and ninety one hours and fourteen minutes.”

She laughed nervously and wriggled her feet back into her shoes. “Well, it’s a record for the species. We have that much to comfort us. I have to go. Can you finish all right without me?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I? Don’t worry, this is my fourth hour of overtime already today.” He smiled sourly, but more to himself than to Charlene. “You know what I think? If JN ever does find a way for a human to stay awake and sane for twenty-four hours a day, first thing she’ll do is work people like us triple shifts.”