Teleporter

by Laurence E. Dahners

  Back in the tavern, Tarc took them downstairs to look through the cellar. Then upstairs to look through the bedrooms and the rooms for let. In the main room he showed them the big tank set into the rocks of the fireplace, opening the spigot and partly filling a bucket with hot water. Watson ooohd and ahhhd over that, “And that’s the hot water you use to heat tubs for the baths?”

  Tarc nodded, “And to heat tubs for washing clothes too.” He suddenly realized that he was going to miss taking baths as often as his family usually did. Certainly, he was going to miss getting to wear clean clothes so often. He’d never given very much thought to how living in the tavern made his life a lot better than it could have been, but he was realizing it now.

  Next was the brewing room for the beer and its still for making moonshine. Daum stepped back there to describe the equipment and its functions. Then Daum took them through his realm behind the bar. Daum pointed out a few things while they were back there, but Tarc noticed he didn’t show them the trick lever that dumped coins down into the strongbox in the cellar.

  By the time they toured the kitchen, things had slowed down enough that Eva was able to explain the way she used the equipment in her domain.

  ***

  Their tour of the Watson’s big wagon fascinated Tarc. Sixteen feet long by five feet wide, it had a sealed box that would float so it could be towed through rivers if necessary. A big canvas cover arched over it for protection against the rain. Big wooden wheels were strapped with iron rims to decrease breakage. It was pulled by a team of mules, but the Watsons also had a couple of horses that could be yoked up to assist on steep hills. The horses could also be ridden alongside or on side trips.

  After both families had looked around their potential purchases, they went their separate ways to discuss the deal amongst themselves. Eva was very concerned that the rough ride in the wagon might break some of her precious glassware. “We could pack them in clothing or something if we were just making one trip. But if we’re planning to stop and get them out over and over again, I’m worried that they won’t get packed well enough.”

  Daum said, “Personally, I hope that we get enough business for you to be getting them out frequently. A bigger concern for me is that I can’t make beer on the road and we really don’t have any trade goods. The only way we’re really going to earn our keep is by cooking for the caravan or if you get a reputation for healing.” He shrugged, “I can imagine you getting a reputation after we’ve made a circuit through the same towns several times, but I’m not sure how you’ll get your first customers for healing.”

  Eva said, “The little stalls the caravaners set up in the market have signs telling what they are selling or what they can do. We could paint over the sign that Watson puts up for his stall.”

  Daum frowned, “But will people trust their health to someone on the basis of a sign?”

  “I think you’ll be surprised. A lot of people are pretty desperate for help with whatever health problem they have.”

  Daussie said, “Some of the caravaners sell little treats too. Maybe we could cook up some sweets before we arrive in each town?”

  “Maybe we could,” Eva said thoughtfully. She got a distant look in her eyes as she considered the possibilities.

  Daum got up, “I’m going to go look at the still. I could ferment something in a barrel while the wagon’s moving and then distill some moonshine in the evenings after we stopped, but I’d need a smaller kettle.”

  Eva said she was going to the kitchen to think about whether she could pack everything she needed into the wagon.

  Daussie and Tarc looked at one another for a moment, then by unspoken agreement they headed up to their rooms.

  ***

  Tarc was reading about vascular diseases when he heard someone pounding up the stairs. His mother called his name. Tarc’s initial reaction was a feeling of guilt. Probably he’d forgotten to do some important chore and she was upset about it. He’d already started to get up when Eva burst into his room, “Tarc! Farley and his men are threatening your dad! Have you got your knives?”

  Tarc shot past his mother and down the stairs. Across the room, the bigger of the two large men had an angry looking Daum backed up against the bar with his sword. It looked like the sword was pricking the skin of Daum’s chest. Farley was a step or two behind him and the second guard was standing back just a little bit behind Farley.

  The man with the sword on Daum had his back to Tarc and was wearing a boiled leather curiass. Tarc skidded to a stop just short of Farley’s outstretched palm. He assessed the situation.

  If he threw a knife at the man holding the sword to Daum he wasn’t sure he could be effective. With the man’s eyes facing away, the strikes into the eyes that Tarc had used so successfully against Krait’s men might not work. He wasn’t sure the knife would penetrate the harder bone at the back of the skull. If he struck the man in the back of the neck, it might deflect off of the vertebrae. If he struck him in the chest, it probably wouldn’t penetrate the boiled leather, and even if it did, it wouldn’t kill the man instantly. Whatever he did, he feared the man might thrust the sword into Daum even while he himself was dying.

  Farley glanced back at Tarc and said, “You’d best get outside boy.” He turned back towards Daum, “And you Mr. Hyllis, had best recognize that my little offer the other day was not negotiable. I’m here today to tell you that the town expects you and your family to be gone by the day after tomorrow. My offer from yesterday still stands, but tomorrow I’ll be offering even less. I hope you’ll understand that the fact that I’m offering you any money is only out of the kindness of my heart. As Sheriff, I could just wait until you’re gone and then claim the tavern as… as…” Farley staggered.

  Tarc’s ghost kept back pressure on the flow in Farley’s left middle cerebral artery. The book he’d been reading said that a stroke from occlusion of the left middle cerebral left people unable to talk and paralyzed the right side of their body. Farley was indeed falling to his right, but most importantly he’d stopped talking. The second guard stepped to Farley’s side and grabbed his arm to hold him up.

  Tarc restrained himself from telling the guard to let Farley lie down. When someone was passing out, the last thing you wanted to do was keep them upright, but, after all, Tarc wanted Farley unconscious.

  The big man with his sword on Daum turned uncertainly to see what was happening behind him.

  Tarc reached up behind his neck, sliding his hand inside his shirt to grasp the hilt of his first throwing knife.

  Before Tarc threw, the guard pulled his sword away from Daum and stepped towards Farley. Daum took a deep breath and stepped out of the guard’s reach, catching Tarc’s eye and shaking his head. Tarc let the knife slide back into its sheath.

  Tarc wasn’t sure what the headshake meant, but thought Daum was telling him not to kill the guard. He felt torn, a dead guard could no longer threaten them, but then he’d have to kill the other guard and Farley as well. If he did, Tarc wondered what they would do with the bodies.

  Daum caught Tarc’s eye again, shook his head, then looked at Farley, then looked back and shook his head again.

  Tarc thought, he wants me to ease up on Farley. Tarc felt a little surprised that Daum had so quickly figured out he was the one responsible for Farley’s problem. He let off some of the back pressure and turned to Eva who was wringing her hands a little ways behind him. “Mom, I think Mr. Farley is having a stroke. Is there anything we can do for him?”

  The two guards had been looking Farley over, evidently seeking evidence of foul play. The big one who’d been threatening Daum asked suspiciously, “Did one of them do something to Mr. Farley?”

  The smaller guard shook his head slowly, “No one even got close to Mr. Farley. You think I should sit him down?”

  Eva stepped forward, “He should be lying down! This looks like a stroke and keeping him upright decreases the blood flow to his brain even further.” She took Farley’s other arm and t
ugged him to the side, “Let’s get him lying down on this table here.”

  Uncertainly, the guard helped her maneuver him with his back to the table and then lay him down on it. Tarc dragged over another table to put under Farley’s feet, saying, “Should we be rubbing Mr. Farley’s carotid mom?”

  Eva shot Tarc a glance, saw his microscopic nod, then put her hands to Farley’s neck and began rubbing gently. “Yes, a gentle carotid massage might help.”

  Tarc released the back pressure he’d been holding on Farley’s artery, wondering whether he’d held it so long that Farley would have permanent effects or whether he would recover completely. He didn’t want to have crippled a man, but on the other hand, he didn’t want Farley to resume making their lives miserable.

  The bigger of the two guards stepped over to stare down at Farley’s face, “Aw, man, the side of his face is droopin’ like my granddad’s did when he had his stroke.”

  Eva said, “Yes, it looks pretty bad. But I’ve seen this trick with the carotid massage work before,” she gave Tarc a knowing glance. Making the guards think she’d saved Farley should earn them some good will.

  Tarc tilted his head slightly and gave a minute shrug. Farley didn’t seem to be coming around and Tarc was beginning to think he’d kept the pressure on long enough that it had caused permanent damage.

  Suddenly Daussie appeared and stepped up close to Farley’s head. Tarc assumed that she was probing Farley with her own talent and wondered whether she would be able to figure out what had actually happened. She kept her eyes on Farley for a moment then glanced up at her mother. “It’s a left middle cerebral stroke, isn’t it?”

  Astonishment washed over Tarc. How did she figure that out?! First of all, Tarc found it surprising enough that she knew the name of the artery. He knew its name because he’d just been studying it while wondering whether he could do something like this. Daussie however, must have committed the names of all the arteries in the brain to memory! Then he realized that she had arrived after he had let normal flow resume in the artery. If the flow is normal how had she been able to tell which artery had been blocked?

  Tarc sent his own ghost into Farley’s head. He immediately recognized that there was something different about the brain tissue in the area fed by the middle cerebral. It wasn’t very different, but he could imagine that Daussie found it easy to recognize that something had happened to that part of the brain. Still, without a blockage still present in the artery, he thought it was amazing that she could deduce that something had cut off the blood flow in that area and that was what had made the tissue sick.

  Daussie said, “He seems to be getting better though.” She cut her eyes up to Tarc, narrowing them suspiciously then glanced back at Eva’s hands where they still gently rubbed Farley’s neck. “Massaging his carotid seems to be helping a lot, isn’t it Mom?”

  Tarc sent his ghost back into Farley’s head. It was starting to get hard to tell which part of Farley’s brain had been different.

  Farley let out a groan.

  Eva said, “Yes, I think he’s going to recover! Let’s move him over to the treatment table.”

  To Tarc’s bewilderment, Eva soon had the two big guards picking Farley up and carrying him over to the big table near the kitchen where Eva usually treated patients. She continued massaging Farley’s neck the entire time she was bossing the two big men around.

  By the time they got him over to the table, Farley was beginning to speak. “Wha’ happen’d,” he grunted confusedly.

  The biggest guard said in an awed tone, “You had a stroke Bossman! The lady here,” the guard nodded at Eva who was still gently massaging Farley’s neck, “she started rubbin’ your neck and you been gettin’ better!” He lowered his voice, “I never heard of nobody getting better from a stroke before.” He leaned down a little closer to Farley’s ear and said, “She’s really good! Wish she’d been around for my Gramps.”

  Farley slowly woke up, acting confused like anyone else who’d been unconscious for a while. He kept asking what had happened, and the big guard patiently explained it to him over and over again.

  Eva stopped massaging the man’s neck and slowly wandered away. She seemed to be wandering aimlessly and Tarc looked at her curiously. Her face had a stricken expression so he got up and walked over to ask her what was the matter.

  She stared at him for a moment, then said, “You used your talent to harm another human being!” She looked aside for a moment then turned back to him, “I know, I know, you used your talent to guide knives and harmed a lot of, of, of men when Krait was here. But,” she looked away to gather her thoughts, “those men were… evil.” She turned back to Tarc, “And then… then I… carried out a subterfuge with you, pretending that Mr. Farley had a natural stroke and even worse that I was curing him.”

  Wide-eyed, Tarc said, “But Mom! Farley was threatening dad! That’s pretty evil in its own right.” After a moment he continued, “Besides we didn’t hurt him permanently!”

  “We don’t know that!” Eva said almost vehemently. “Cutting off blood flow to that part of his brain might have some permanent effect we don’t recognize.”

  “Oh come on! People get choked by the neck, which does the same thing, and recover completely all the time!”

  Eva shook her head, “There may be some subtle changes in their mental function that we just can’t detect.”

  Tarc shrugged, “If we can’t even tell it happened, I don’t think the loss of function is very important.”

  Eva looked off to one side and gave a minute shrug, granting that he might be right. Then she turned back to Tarc, a tear running down her cheek, “Even if we didn’t do him any permanent harm, we did him temporary harm. And then I lied to him, well, to the guard, by implying that I was the one that made him better.”

  Tarc tilted his head as he studied her curiously. “Mom, you lie to patients all the time. Your placebos… and telling them you’re ‘thinking’ when you’re actually sitting there sending your talent inside their bodies.”

  Eva stared at him for a moment, then her eyes crinkled a little bit at the corner in amusement. “Well, I guess you’re right. I do lie to patients all the time, but those are “white lies” intended to help the patient. This lie wasn’t intended to help the patient, it was intended to help me.”

  “And your family! It wasn’t just a lie for you.”

  Her eyes drifted away, then returned to him. “Well, that’s true.” She put her arms around him and gave him a hug, Tarc feeling surprised to realize that her head barely reached his shoulder. She whispered, “Thanks. I still feel guilty, but I think I’m going to be able to rationalize it now.”

  Tarc clumsily patted her back, feeling like he hadn’t really done anything except tried to justify his own actions.

  After about five more minutes, Farley said he wanted to get up. To Tarc’s surprise, his guards wouldn’t let him up until Eva came back over and checked on him. Tarc wasn’t quite sure how Farley had gone from being the bossman to being restrained by his own guards at the whim of a woman whose family he’d been shortchanging on a deal.

  Eva proclaimed him ready to sit up and the guards slowly maneuvered him into that position while he protested that he could do it himself. After he sat without trouble for a few minutes she declared him ready to stand. That he did do on his own.

  During this whole time, Tarc hadn’t really looked at his father who’d been standing motionlessly over by the bar. When he looked that way now, he saw that Daum appeared to be seethingly angry. Tarc walked over to him, “Do you think this might change Farley’s mind?”

  Almost through gritted teeth, Daum said, “I can’t believe Eva’s helping that son of a bitch after what he’s been trying to do to us. She’s always been too much of a do-gooder, but this time she’s gone a little far. She should have just let him die!”

  Tarc blinked a couple of times before he realized that Daum didn’t really understand what had just happened. “Um, Dad, I
stopped the blood flow to part of his brain for a couple of minutes. He didn’t have a real stroke.” He paused then worried that Daum didn’t understand the rest of it either. “Mom didn’t really do anything for him. She just pretended to. He was going to get better anyway, as soon as I let the blood flow resume.”

  Daum had turned to look at Tarc, realization dawning on his face. Consternation warred with amazement for a moment; then Daum said, “Oh.” He glanced over at Farley, “If you’d kept holding back the blood flow, he would’ve had a permanent stroke wouldn’t he?”

  Tarc gave a little shrug, his own eyes going to Farley. “I think so, yeah.”

  “Jesus!” Daum whispered.

  A subdued Farley eventually left the tavern. On his way out, he stopped at the door and dug in his pocket. “Thank you for saving my life,” he said pulling out a gold coin and handing it to Eva. He looked at Daum who still stood on the other side of the room staring stonily at him. “Tell your husband I apologize for my actions. My offer for your tavern still stands. If you don’t get a better one, you can take advantage of it so that you don’t leave town without anything. The way sentiment is here in town, I don’t think you’ll want to stay, even though I will no longer support any efforts to force you to leave.”

  After he was gone, Eva stared at the gold coin for a long time. Eventually Tarc said, “Do you think it’s a counterfeit?”

  “No,” she whispered, “I think it’s an ‘ill-gotten gain.’”

  After a pause, Tarc said quietly, “Well then, the next time you provide free care for someone who can’t afford it, think of it as working off that gold coin.”

  Eva looked up at him for a moment, then said, “Sometimes you know just the right things to say.”

  Tarc shrugged, embarrassed. He wandered away to check on the status of his chores.

  ***