by Ann Benson
The great beast moved in a rhythmic cadence beneath her and she lowered her body to decrease the drag of the wind. Strands of windblown mane-hair stung her face as she leaned closer to the horse’s long neck.
But I’ve never been on a horse! her mind protested. How can I know what these things feel like? She struggled to come awake, but was too firmly a captive of her own imaginings. The pace of the ride became more brisk, and it seemed to her that there was some urgency to it, some great need for the rider to be far from that beach. As the horse’s speed increased, she became aware of the discomfort this caused her, and she wished her breeches …
Breeches?
… weren’t so tight, and that the linen of the shirt she wore weren’t so rough; the exertion of the ride brought forth an uncomfortable dampness and the fabric felt scratchy against her skin. She tightened the grip of her thighs against the side of the horse and was aware of a sharp irritation in her groin. Still riding, she rose up a few inches from the saddle, the muscles of her thighs hardening as she did so, and adjusted her testicles so they would lie more comfortably against the saddle.…
Oh, my God …
She wrenched herself free of the dream and clawed her way frantically out of the restricting grip of the sheets. Once free of her damp mummy-wrap she sat bolt upright in the rumpled bed. She quickly placed her hand between her legs, where she found, with enormous relief, no physical evidence of masculinity. She ran her hand along one thigh, measuring it against her memory of the size it ought to be, and was grateful to find its familiar softness. It was not the hard alien limb she had imagined to be gripping the heaving sides of the horse only a few brain ticks before.
“Sweet Jesus,” she said aloud, her voice shaky. She could have sworn it was all real, all part of her own body, and that it was the most natural thing in all the world for her to be riding along that unknown beach with tight breeches and testicular discomfort. She remembered a companion in her dream, a fellow rider about whom she couldn’t recall any details except that he, too, was a man; his presence lingered, vague but insistent, and she knew somehow that he was important, that her dream-state survival depended upon him. Something about his name … it hovered in her memory, but wouldn’t come through. But she remembered clearly the physical image of the man whose consciousness she had occupied, however briefly, in that dream.
She closed her eyes and let the image flood back into her; it was one of great physical beauty and youthful power. In her mind’s mirror she saw handsome dark Mediterranean features on the serious-looking face of a youngish man, mid-twenties or thereabouts. His face was sunburned and he was tall and wiry, with no fat, lean as an athlete; he had fine lithe hands with elegant fingers, more feminine than she would have expected, but with a few healing cuts as if he had done some demanding work recently. He had long dark hair caught up in some sort of string, a few curly wisps rebelliously escaping at the temples. There was a feeling of surprising strength and of heightened senses about him, and a constant undertone of wariness. Is he running from something? she wondered. His eyes were always nervously in motion, darting here and there and assessing what he saw around him, never resting in one direction. Fear. Worry. Concern. Anguish and grief. Hope so tightly cherished that it was almost painful.
A wave of nausea passed through her and her head began to pound. She opened her eyes and placed one hand on her stomach. Trying to stand, she swayed dizzily. “Whoa!” she said aloud as she steadied herself against the bedpost. Once she was fully vertical, she felt an urgent need to urinate, but after groping her way to the toilet, she managed to produce only a thin brief stream. She left the bathroom quite unsatisfied, still feeling the urge. There seemed to be something pressing on her bladder, although her nightdress was loose and ordinarily quite comfortable.
She went back to bed, where she drifted in and out of sleep. When the day’s first thin rays of light appeared through the window, she’d been in bed for many hours but still she felt unrested and brittle.
With great difficulty she made herself a pot of coffee, but despite her normal addiction to the aromatic dark liquid she found it unsatisfying, and was left with the sense that she’d drunk nothing more than hot dirty water. Her head still ached, and her neck was even stiffer than it had been the previous day. She tried to eat a cup of yogurt but it tasted unpalatably metallic and she couldn’t make herself finish it.
Well, maybe I’ll lose a pound or two before I shake off this … whatever this is, she thought. But even the hope of slightly looser jeans did nothing to ameliorate her growing misery. She went to the closet and extracted the illegal bottle of ibuprofen from the toe of one shoe. She poured out three tablets into the palm of her hand and swallowed them with water, then sat down in an overstuffed chair to wait for the painkiller to take effect. Half an hour later her headache had improved slightly, but had not disappeared altogether; even so, the medication had a slightly numbing effect and she became more relaxed. She went back to bed and was soon asleep again.
The ringing of her phone brought her back to consciousness; Janie, she thought happily, with visions of chicken soup and thermometers. Shell bring me ginger ale and Vicks VapoRub and tuck me in, and I’ll feel better in a day or two. She answered the phone in relieved anticipation of speaking with her employer, and was surprised by the weakness of her own voice. She was even more surprised when she realized that it was not Janie’s voice that she heard on the other end of the line.
“Caroline, this is Ted Cummings.”
Caroline was momentarily confused. She was still not thinking clearly and it took a few moments for her to remember that Ted had promised to look in on her in Janie’s absence. She leapt immediately to the conclusion that Janie must still be absent, and that there would be no chicken soup or ginger ale. She felt almost palpable disappointment.
“Oh, hello,” she said after a brief pause. “I’m sorry if I sounded confused. I forgot you said you would call. I’m still really foggy this morning.”
“No apology needed,” he said, “but you might want to look at your clock. It’s afternoon.”
Caroline started to turn her head toward the bedside clock, but her neck was far too stiff, so she turned most of her upper body and discovered that it was well after three P.M. “My God, I woke up earlier and then went back to bed. I seem to have misplaced about six hours.”
“Are you feeling any better now?” he asked.
“Not really,” she said. “I just tried to turn my head and it really hurt. This is one killer cold.”
You don’t begin to know, Ted thought. “Which is the purpose of my call,” he said. “I’ve just spoken with one of my colleagues in the Institute’s medical office this morning. I mentioned that you might need some attention and I told him you thought you might have some sort of flu. He was quite concerned. He said there’s a bacterial strain we’ve just started tracking, and its initial symptoms mimic the flu. Unfortunately, it gets quite a lot worse than the flu if it’s left untreated. It can be quite deadly and he assured me that it’s nothing to fool around with. They haven’t pinpointed the source of the outbreak yet, so it could be picked up anywhere.”
Caroline began to feel quite panicked and it came through clearly in her voice. “What are the other symptoms?”
“Neck stiffness, to begin with,” he said. “High fever, even at rest. Swelling of the glands around the throat and groin. Dark splotches that look almost like bruises.”
“I’ve got those symptoms! Every one of them! Oh, my God …”
“Now don’t panic,” he said, using his most reassuring voice. “It’s bacterial, and it’s apparently one of those rare bugs that still respond to antibiotic treatment.”
“Thank God,” she said. The relief in her voice was enormous. “What do I need to do now? Do I need a test or something like that?”
“Unfortunately the Institute’s medical offices are going to be closed for a few days, since we have no resident patients in the building right now. I won�
�t be able to arrange for a test until they reopen.”
“But don’t I need a test to get the treatment? You triage everything here.”
“Yes, we do, but that wouldn’t make any difference in your situation. This is an emerging disease and it won’t be in the triage system yet.”
“Why not?”
“Not enough cases, probably. It has to hit a certain threshold before we enter it into the whole system.”
“Then how come there’s a test already?”
He didn’t like the way she was asking all these difficult questions. Of all the luck, he thought. I happen to infect someone with a brain in her head. Be careful, now.…
“It’s not precisely a test. It’s just a means of detecting the specific bacterium we’re looking for. We use something like polymerase chain reaction to grow enough material for identification purposes. It’s very quick and quite accurate.”
Then he hesitated, for proper effect; he wanted her to think he was hiding some important detail from her, something so terrible she wouldn’t be able to cope with it.
Caroline took his dangling bait and jumped right into the silence. “But I’ve got to get this treatment! I’ll have to go to a facility. If this is such a terrible thing, I don’t think I should wait—”
“Now, calm down,” he advised her. “Panicking isn’t going to solve anything.” But panic was just what he wanted from her. He wanted to get control of her, through her own fear if necessary, while Janie was still out of town. He had to keep her in that hotel room and out of circulation. He would get control of her by insinuating himself into the solution of the problem he had created. “That wouldn’t be a good idea for us right now,” he said, joining himself to her with a pronoun. “It might put us in a delicate situation. If a triage unit supervisor thinks there’s something contagious, your alien status would be a great liability.”
“Oh, God! What would happen?”
Another loaded hesitation. Then carefully, “Biopol would be required to quarantine you until a definite diagnosis was made. These days their processing systems are so overloaded that it’s taking several days just to see each patient. It could mean a long wait in a holding facility. And nine times out of ten they deport their detainees even if it’s just a cold. I don’t think we want to get into that sort of spot right now, especially if you’re really sick and you’re in a lot of discomfort.”
She said, “I am. I can barely move my neck.”
And your groin is swelling and your armpits are sore and the skin on your neck is darkening, he thought. “That is one of the symptoms he told me to look for. And there’s another thing to consider. If you haven’t been printed yet, they’ll do it while you’re being quarantined. It’s not a terribly comfortable procedure to begin with. I think it might be quite an ordeal if you’re already ill.”
Caroline’s silence was just the response he wanted. He knew she was imagining the dire consequences of seeking medical treatment outside the channels he offered. Exaggerated and inaccurate images of the horrors of bodyprinting were running through her mind, alongside fearful thoughts of being held against her will while the medical authorities decided what to do with her. He hoped she was imagining cattle pens with unsanitary conditions and lots of filthy, contagious people. In truth the facilities were quite modern and clean, and the detainees were well treated, but he wanted her to think otherwise to solidify her idea that he was her protector. He wanted her so scared that she would do whatever he told her to do, so he could treat her for plague without anyone but himself knowing that she had contracted it.
He continued, drawing her into his web. “I could pay you a visit this afternoon and get you started on the medications. Then you’d need a repeat dose tomorrow.”
“Oh, Ted … I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me. It seems like a lot of trouble for someone you hardly know.”
“Not at all, really. I’m quite happy to help you. I know how troublesome these things can be … things are so difficult these days; you’re in a foreign country and you don’t know the system. It’s really no bother.”
“Are you sure you won’t get into hot water over this? I mean, it seems to me that this all might be illegal.…”
He was quiet for a brief moment. “The legality is questionable, certainly, but I don’t think I’m going to run into any problems. There is a sort of ‘underground’ that happens in medical situations every now and then. Sometimes we’re forced into it because of the complexities involved. I often find myself very frustrated by the burdens that have been placed on us by our government. We figure out our little ways to circumvent them when necessary. And I assure you my colleague will be very discreet. He doesn’t even know your name.” He wished he could give her a smile, but her hotel did not have videophones.
“Well, I guess it’s okay, then.…”
“It will be fine,” he assured her. “Just fine. You must trust me when I tell you that you’ll be all better in a couple of days and no one will be the wiser. Then you can go about your work, and Bruce and I can get started on our project.”
“I didn’t even think of that,” she said, her tone apologetic. “He’s helping Janie when he should be working with you. I guess we just arrived and mucked things up pretty badly, didn’t we?”
He said nothing to dispel her guilt. “It’s all right. I understand that these things happen now and then. Can’t be helped. But you’ll be better soon and things will get right back to normal.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Oh, I know I am. Now we should get this treatment started. I’m going out in a little while and I can just stop by, if that’s okay. Let’s see … it’s about three-fifteen; I think I can be there in about an hour.”
“I really appreciate what you’re doing.”
My pleasure, he thought.
The old dog lay on the grass next to Sarin, his head resting across his front paws and his eyes half-shut. Every now and then he twitched, and his master would look down at him, wondering how fast the bunnies in his doggy dreams might be running.
He looked out over the sloped plain and watched the light of day fade, a recently added habit that had become part of their late-afternoon walk routine. They paused every day to sit in this particular spot and watch the sun slip below the horizon. It was the simplest way for Sarin to envision the passage of time, which had taken on new meaning to him since the arrival of the American women. He knew that his was limited, and he wanted to see it pass.
The sun set; his heart soared. It never failed to thrill him, the wonder of it all. He could imagine each of those who came before him doing the very same thing, all the way back to the very first.
He doubted that the field looked much different now. Except for the city lights in the distance and the scruffy-looking people who always seemed to be loitering on the perimeter, it was essentially unchanged. In this little protectorate things never seemed to change much, regardless of how well one might visualize the passage of time as the sun descended. Time moved on, oblivious to the small intrigues of those on whom it cast its dark shadow.
But time would claim him, he knew, and soon. In the last few days, after the burst of energy that had inspired him to put things right again, he had once more begun to falter, as if the air had suddenly gone thin on him. Each day was closer to his last, and it seemed to him now that the sun literally raced down from mid-sky to plunge madly below the horizon. He was afraid, and he was alone, except for his dog. He looked down at his sleeping companion and envied the gentle creature for the simple peace in which he always seemed to dwell.
Ted walked down the seventh-floor hallway in the old hotel, unsteady as a drunk, and balanced himself with one hand on the wall as he progressed. His condition had worsened dramatically since his earlier conversation with Caroline, and he needed to support himself. By now he thought he should surely be feeling better; he’d taken his first dose of antibiotic many hours previously and it should have start
ed to affect the bacteria that had invaded his body. He could feel no improvement at all, not even the slightest increase in energy, and he was growing more concerned with every hour that passed.
He finally came to the door bearing the number Caroline had given him. Behind him on the wall was a mirror. He turned to look at himself before knocking, checking to be sure that his careful preparations had done the job of disguising his own worsening condition.
Thank God, he thought as he appraised himself. My fever gives me a nice ruddy tone.… He pulled out the cowl of his turtleneck sweater to loosen it. It had become even more tight and constricting than it had felt the day before. He’d managed to get here by cab without arousing suspicion, but no one had really gotten close enough to look into his eyes. He would be in much closer contact with Caroline, but he hoped she would be too concerned with her own situation to pay any attention to his.
He raised his hand to knock but stopped. He looked up and down the hall until he spotted a DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from a nearby door handle, and retrieved it. Holding the sign behind his back, he knocked, then stared at his own feet while waiting for Caroline to answer.
She’s taking her sweet time, he thought nervously, hoping no one would pass by and see him waiting there. If things didn’t go right with Caroline, he wanted no witnesses.
“Who is it?” came faintly from the other side of the door.
He leaned as close to the door as he could and said in a hushed voice he hoped only she could hear, “It’s Ted.”
He was relieved when Caroline opened the door, and relatively sure that no one else could have heard him from within a nearby room. As he entered he slipped the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door handle without her knowledge.
Ted’s jaw dropped in shock when he saw her. Her flaming red hair was matted and snarly and her skin was pale to the point of ghostliness. She looked unmistakably sick, and he was certain that no one who saw her would be fooled. He was filled with shame for having been the cause of her illness, but he slapped the guilt aside, for he couldn’t let it be the overriding concern at that moment. There was damage control to be done, and his first order of business would be to try to get her appearance improved. He needed her complete confidence and didn’t want to alienate her in any way, so he knew he had to be delicate in his suggestions. She’ll be offended if I suggest that she clean herself up, he thought anxiously, but I can’t let her be seen looking like that.
