by E. E. Knight
They put earth and trees between themselves and the Reaper, threw a wide loop around—
And Valentine sensed another one, a dark star on his mental horizon.
It reminded him of the installation he'd come across with Gonzo in Wisconsin, before their disastrous encounter with a sniper.
He and Ahn-Kha backed off, put another half mile of woods and wildlife between themselves and the sentry Reaper.
"I might be able to get through them alone, old horse," Valentine said. "You don't make human lifesign, but you make enough for them to get curious."
"I could go first. When it comes to investigate, you—"
Ahn-Kha was no fool. The Golden One knew exactly what he was saying, that he was willing to draw a prowling Reaper and trust Valentine to dispose of it before it killed him.
"No. A Reaper goes missing and they'll know someone's poking around. Go back to the house, keep to thick cover, and wait for me. Or Duvalier."
"What will you do?"
"I'm going to get past the Reaper sentries. Then keep down until the day watch comes, if any. If I'm lucky, I'll be inside the sentry line and outside the wire, and I can get a real look at the place by daylight. At dusk I'll creep out again."
"If you're not lucky?"
"You and Ali get back to Southern Command. Hopefully they'll try again with a better-prepared team."
"I remember having this conversation before. We only just found you. Would it not be better to look around from inside the wire, my David?" '
"Of course. How do we do that?"
"It is a hospital. One of us just has to be sick enough."
Valentine nodded. "I know a couple of old tricks. One or two can even fool a doctor. Let's get back to Ali first. If this blows up in our faces, I have a feeling we'll never get outside that wire again."
* * * *
Valentine, Ahn-Kha, and Duvalier stood at the crossroads. The river road stretched off east and west, the road leading to the well-guarded hospital branching off.
She didn't discuss her "date" the previous night—save to deny that she got anything of use out of the soldier. "He's going on a long patrol. He offered to see me again in four days."
"Are you going to wait for him?" Valentine asked.
"Depends if you and the jolly gold giant here go through with this insanity."
"It will work," Valentine said.
"Price left us a bass boat," Duvalier said. "And I've still got our Spam. How much action do you want?"
"Just a little fire or two on the other side of the river. Tonight. Nothing too hard."
"And your illness?"
"A little ipecac and other herbs with unfortunate pharmacological side effects."
"Will that be convincing enough?" Ahn-Kha asked, scanning the road and woods. "I think I see your dinner, Alessa. My David, may I see your pistol?"
Valentine handed over the gun. Ahn-Kha checked it over, then pointed it at his neck.
"Ahn—"
The gun went off with a sharp crack. Valentine and Duvalier stood dumbfounded. Blood and flesh flew from the Golden One's neck. He lowered the gun to his elbow and shot himself through the arm. Then again, at the hip point.
Valentine tried to wrestle the gun from Ahn-Kha's grip, burning his hand on the barrel, but the Grog was too strong. It fired again.
"Urmpf," Ahn-Kha grunted, releasing the gun.
"What the hell, man?" Duvalier asked.
"No need for insults," Ahn-Kha said. "I just decided—"
"You wounded yourself to get into the hospital?" Duvalier asked.
"Why not just shoot yourself once?" Valentine asked, putting the gun back on safety and digging for his first-aid kit.
"One bullet wound with powder grains around it might be self-inflicted. How many desperate cowards avoid combat by shooting themselves four times? But I fear the last penetrated my intestines."
"I'm sorry," Valentine said. "I thought you'd gone mad."
"I knew what I was doing. Pass me that disinfectant."
"You should get going," Valentine told Duvalier. "If you pass some of our local constables, have them send an ambulance."
Duvalier gathered up her stick and pack, and wheeled her bicycle over to Ahn-Kha. She kissed him on the ear. "You taste like a muskrat. Don't let him leave you."
Valentine glared at her.
"I'll hang around at Price's motel," Duvalier said. "They made him pay for a month because of the Grog. If you make it back out you can find me there. Unless, of course, I get the feeling I'm being watched. Then I'm gone."
* * * *
Valentine applied dressings, then sat Ahn-Kha on the saddle of the bike. The tires immediately flattened, but it served as a convincing conveyance for a wounded Grog, with one long arm draped around Valentine's shoulder. Birds called to each other in the trees; they both could lie down and die and the birds would still sing on.
"How you doing, old horse?"
"The wounds burn."
"They'll get you patched up. Hope that supply truck passes soon."
"I can walk all the way there if I must."
No supply truck came, but a white ambulance snapped deadfall twigs as it roared through the riverside hills. It didn't employ a siren, but there was no traffic to hurry out of the way.
Valentine sat Ahn-Kha on the weed-grown shoulder and stood in the roadway, waving his arms. The ambulance, tilted due to a bad suspension, came on, unheeding, lights flashing—
Then swerved and braked, stalling the motor.
The driver spoke through the wire grid that served as his window. "You almost got yourself killed, quirt." His associate used the stop to light a cigarette.
"We're trying to get to the hospital. My friend's wounded."
The clean-shaven pair in blue hats exchanged a look. "A Grog? Try the—"
"I'm hurting too. Can we—"
"On a call, sir. We'll radio back and have you picked up." He nodded at his associate, who touched a box on the dashboard.
"Thank you. Thank you very much."
"Don't move. Another ambulance will be along." The driver got the engine going and moved off.
"Curbside service," Valentine said, taking out his pocketknife.
"My David, what are you going to do?"
"We're both going in wounded."
Valentine raked the knife twice across the outer side of his left hand. He'd been anticipating the pain, which made it all the worse.
"Defensive wounds," Valentine said.
"I hope we have no need for a real dressing. This is our last one," Ahn-Kha said.
"Just give me some surgical tape and a scissors. I'll close them with butterfly dressings. Those two in the ambulance might have noticed that I didn't have a big dressing on my hand."
"I will cut the tape. You're bleeding."
Valentine spattered a little of his own blood on his face to add to the effect.
Ahn-Kha deftly cut notches into each side of the surgical tape and handed the pieces to Valentine one at a time. A butterfly bandage used a minimal amount of tape directly over the wound, gripping the two sides of skin with its "wings." Valentine splashed on stinging disinfectant, then used three bandages on one cut, two on the other.
It took twenty minutes for the second ambulance to arrive—a gateless pickup truck painted white. The driver was a single, older man with a ring of flesh adding a paunch to his chin.
"You two're the walking wounded, I'll bet."
"That's us."
"Hop in the back. There's a water jug there, don't be afraid to use it. Bring your bike if you want."
A yellow plastic cooler with a cup tied to a string was stuck in one corner of the pickup with a bungee cord. Valentine put the bike in, then he and Ahn-Kha climbed into the bed. The truck sagged.
"Hoo—he's a big boy, your Grog. Now hold on, I'm going to drive gentle but I don't want to lose you when I turn."
The driver executed a neat three-point turn.
Valentine spok
e to him through the open back window of the pickup. "I'm Tar Ayoob. What's your name, sir?"
"Beirlein, Grog-boy. I never seen his type before. He some special breed?"
"They got them up in Canada," Valentine said. "They're good in the snow. Big feet."
"Oh, Sasquatches is what he is, huh? What do you know."
"I'm told this is the best hospital south of Columbus," Valentine said. "Hope they're right. My friend's got a bullet in him."
"We'll patch him up. Don't worry."
The pickup negotiated the hairpin turn, climbed out of the gul-ley in second gear, then came out of the trees and Valentine finally saw Xanadu.
It filled all the flat ground in a punchbowl ring of wooded hills. Most of the structures were salmon-colored brick or concrete, save for some wooden outbuildings.
Duvalier was right; a triple line of fencing, one polite, two lethal, surrounded the campuslike huddle of structures. Guards at the gate made notations on a clipboard and handed Valentine and Ahn-Kha stickers with red crosses on them. In the farther corners of the expanse of grass between buildings and fence Valentine saw dairy cows. There looked to be a baseball diamond and a track closer to the gate.
The four biggest salmon-colored buildings looked like apartments Valentine had seen in Chicago, except those had been built with balconies, and large windows. Each one was as long as a city block, rectangular, and laid out so they formed a square. Valentine counted twelve stories.
A long, low, three-story building of darker brick extended from the four, and was joined to a concrete jumble, tiered like a wedding cake, that had ambulances and trucks parked in front of it.
The ambulance didn't stop in front of the hospital. It continued to drive around back, past what looked like three-story apartments.
"Hey, what about the emergency room?"
"Your Grog goes out to the stables. Don't worry, our vet's treated Grogs before."
The pickup drove to a pair of barns, giant old-fashioned wooden ones with an aluminum feed silo between. The truck pulled up to a ranch house with a satellite dish turned into a decorative planter. Valentine saw another, distant barn. Fields with a group of Holsteins and a group of Jerseys were spread out to the wire. A guard tower, hard to distinguish against the treetops, could just be seen.
Xanadu's footprint covered several square miles, perhaps the size of downtown Dallas. If it was a concentration camp of some kind, it was a pleasant-looking one.
A blond woman in a white medical coat, a stethoscope around her neck, came out on the porch of the ranch house and walked to the back of the truck. A man in overalls followed her out, holding what looked like a set of shackles. "This is Doc Boothe, Tar."
Doc Boothe had one of those faces that hung from a broad forehead, progressing down from wide eyes to a modest nose to a tiny, dimpled chin. "How cooperative is he?"
"Extremely," Ahn-Kha said. The vet let out a squeak of surprise. "Unless you try to put manacles on me."
"A patient who can talk. You're a DVMs dream. What's your name?"
"Ahn-Kha."
"I'm Tar," Valentine said. "We're out of Kentucky, Bulletproof tribe."
"And another Kentucky quirt shows up looking for Ordnance medical attention," the man with the shackles observed. "They need to patrol the river better."
The vet ignored both her helper and Valentine, except to say, "Leave your guns in the truck for now. We've got a safe inside. Ahnke, come into the operating room."
She led them in past kennels filled with barking German shepherds and pointers. She unlocked and opened a gray metal door. The tiles inside smelled of disinfectant. Dr. Boothe checked to see that they were following, then turned on a light in a big, white-tiled room. A heavy stainless-steel berth, like an autopsy table, dominated the center of the room.
"It's not right to treat him in a vet office," Valentine said.
"I've got experience tranquilizing large animals. And I'm comfortable around them. I know you're worried, but he's in better hands here than in the main building. They slap bandages on and send everyone to the sanitarium in Columbus. Okay, Ahnke, on the table. Do you want to lie down? Make it easier for me to reach. You ever had a reaction to pain medication?"
"I've only had laudanum," Ahn-Kha said.
"This is better, it takes the edge off." She opened a cabinet and took out a box of pills, shook three out, and poured him a cup of water. "Pepsa!" she called. "Gunshot tray."
Ahn-Kha swallowed the pills.
A plump woman in blue cotton brought in a tray full of instruments. Valentine recognized a probe and some small forceps. The doctor removed Ahn-Kha's dressings.
"Pepsa, take a look at the legworm rider," Boothe said. "He's got some cuts on his hand. Unless you object to being treated by a vet assistant."
"I'd rather stay with my tribemate."
Pepsa gestured into a corner, and Valentine took a seat. She took up Valentine's hand and looked at the self-inflicted wounds, then got a bottle and some cotton balls.
"Does that hurt?" Boothe asked Ahn-Kha as she cleaned the wound on his neck.
"I'm not worried about that one."
"We'll get to your stomach in a moment. Neck wounds always worry me."
"He has a lot of neck," Valentine said.
"Must have been some brawl. You've got some graining."
"We walked into the wrong room," Valentine said.
"It happened in Kentucky?"
"Yes. A few hours ago."
"Uh-huh. I can still smell the gunpowder on you, Bulletproof. You two didn't get drunk and get into a fight or anything?"
Pepsa professionally dressed Valentine's wound without saying a word. By the time she was done the doctor had a light down close to Ahn-Kha's stomach, injecting him just above the wound.
"You've got a lot of muscle in the midsection, my friend," Dr. Boothe said. She probed a little farther and Ahn-Kha sucked wind. "Uh-huh. I think we can forget about peritonitis. I don't want to dig around without an X-ray."
Xanadu had no shortage of medical equipment.
"Is Pepsa a nickname?" Valentine asked as the nurse gave him his hand back. She nodded.
"Pepsa's mute, Tar. You done there, girl? Get him the forms. Put down whatever bullshit you want, Bulletproof, then we'll talk."
Valentine liked the doctor. Her careful handling of Ahn-Kha impressed him. That, and the fact that apparantly she gave a mute a valuable job in a land where disabilities usually meant a trip to the Reapers.
Pepsa led Valentine to a lunchroom. A quarter pot of coffee— real coffee according to Valentine's nose—steamed on a counter in a brewer. Above the poster a placard read "FALL BLOOD DRIVE! They bleed for you—now you can bleed for them! Liter donors are entered in a drawing for an all-expense-paid trip to Niagara Falls." Valentine filled out the forms, leaving most of the blocks empty—like the eleven-digit Ordnance Security ID, which occupied a bigger area on the form than name.
The vet dropped in and sat down, rubbing her eyes. "Calving last night, now your Grog. He'll be fine, but I will have to operate."
"Will it be a hard operation?"
"Toughest part will be opening up those layers of muscle. But no. Kentucky, since you're not Ordnance you'll have to pay for these services, cheap though they are. What do you have on you?"
"Not much."
She stared at him. "I know there are a lot of rumors about this place. That it's some kind of Babylon for high Ordnance officials. Or that strings of happy pills get passed out like Mardi Gras beads. I've heard the stories. I'm not saying you two jokers tried to get in here by doing something as stupid as putting some small-caliber bullets into each other. But Xanadu's no place you want to be.
"What it is, in fact, is a hospital for treating cases with dangerous infectious conditions. Anti-Kurian terrorists got it in their heads to try a few designer diseases lethal to the Guardians, and there's been some weird and very dangerous mutations as a result. That's why we've got all this ground and livestoc
k, the less that passes in and out of those gates, the better. Just in case. Do you know how diseases work, microorganisms?"
"Yes, little creatures that can fit in a drop of water. They make you sick."
"Uh-huh. So every breath you take behind these walls is a risk, and the closer you get to the main buildings, the more danger. So you should thank your lucky stars you were treated out here."
Valentine nodded. Interesting. Is it all a cover? Or is there a project I don't know about?
"After I operate we're going to keep your friend here for three days of observation. Don't worry, you'll have a bed, but you'll work for it. Consider it paying off your debt for your partner's medical treatment. Once you're out of here, go back to Kentucky and tell your buddies. This isn't a drugstore, it's not a brothel, and it's not a place to come get cured of the clap with the Ordnance picking up the tab. It's a scary lab full of death you can't even see coming. You understand, or should we start writing it on the sides of the leg-worms you sell us?"
"I understand," Valentine said. "Thank you."
Chapter
Eleven
Xanadu, October: Summer lingered that year between the Great hakes and the Appalachians. In eastern Russia and Mongolia the bitter winter of '72 came hard and fast, leading to starvation in the Permafrost Freehold. In the Aztlan Southwest El Nino blew hot, making a certain group of aerial daredevils licking their wounds in the desert outside Phoenix ration water. Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas drowned under torrential tropical storms hurtling out of the mid-Atlantic one after another, ushering in what came to be known as the mud fall.
Ohio could not have been more idyllic, with cloudless days reaching into the midseventies and cool nights in the high fifties, perfect weather for sleeping under a light blanket. There was plenty of time for apple picking and blueberry gathering, and the turkeys had grown extra large in that year of plenty.
David Valentine always remembered that first fall of his exile as a grim, disturbing business under a kindly sky. Perhaps if he'd been lazier, or argumentative, or a thief, he and Ahn-Kha would have been thrown out of Xanadu with the Golden One's sutures still weeping. But after his first day in the fields he found the bio warfare scare story implausible, and became determined to find out what lay behind the neatly tuck-pointed facade of those reddish bricks.
