The man whose life I had to try to save had been hit by a chunk of rock. A cave had collapsed in on the miners; a pretty typical occurrence. He'd been lucky, missing the burial that had come to his comrades. But he'd still been knocked out and he'd be fortunate to regain at least some of his cognitive abilities, I thought, when I looked at the back of his skull.
We worked for a long time on him, me and the nurse who'd been assigned to his case. We put him back together as best we could and at the end of it I turned to find that my patient was looking at me. It made me start: he shouldn't have been conscious at that stage. I had the sudden, fleeting impression that something was staring out of his eyes, wearing his battered skull like a mask. Then I told myself not to be stupid. He'd woken up, was all.
He whispered, "Have you seen it?"
My assistant was asking me a lot of non-verbal questions. I raised my eyebrows at the man on the bed and said, as gently as I could, "Seen what?"
"Oh," he said. He sounded quite lucid. "You haven't, then. What a shame. I pity you."
"I'm sorry. I don't understand."
"It's out there. All silver and black. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen." It was as if he was tasting each word, speaking slowly, savouring them. Then he closed his eyes and smiled with a great contentment. It took us a couple of moments to realise he'd gone.
The incident disturbed me, and not just because we'd worked for four hours to fail to save a man's life. I felt as though I'd been talking to a ghost, that he'd never really been alive to start with. I had the impression that the universe had somehow pulled a fast one on me, a sleight of hand, but I didn't get either the effect of the conjuring trick or the deceit.
That night, I had a dream. I was walking through a yellow land, with a bandana tied around my face. It felt more like a gag. I was stumbling; I thought that I might have been injured, but I couldn't seem to remember. Dust was blowing all around me and I could see faces in the dust, howling visages that were shouting messages at me, but I couldn't hear them above the wind. I didn't know where I was going but I knew I had to get to the tower, because in the tower was the thing I most wanted in the world.
I woke up, panting. It was very hot, the dormitory stifling as always. Around me, men were snoring and grunting in their sleep and I got a whiff of the latrines, chemical and stinking, but drowning out the smell of sweat and farts. There was nothing reassuring about the dormitory but better that than sleep. I lay awake, trying to reorganise my swirling thoughts. The memory of the dead patient's smiling face, the small smug smile of someone who has realised a great truth that will forever be hidden from oneself, floated before my mind's eye like an untethered moon. I felt that he was somehow taunting me, that his hasty burial in the red earth had made him part of this planet.
Eventually, I fell asleep and passed into an uneasy recurring dream. Once again I was standing before a viewport, watching my planet engulfed in neon light. Once again, I relived the death of everything meaningful to me. The lottery, your name coming up in the palm of your hand. You hold it up. The palms of your family remain blank as the purple sky roils overhead. Go. I can't. You must! I'm not going to leave you. You must. Arguments, then: well, if you're going to stay, I'll make you some tea, said my wife. The last thing I remember. She drugged me; I woke up on a shoveller, groggy and not understanding, already at the spaceport. My family had saved my life, sending me out into the void.
When I woke up, sweating, it seemed for a moment that everything after 'that' had been no more than an illusion.
In the morning, I came to my makeshift surgery to find a woman waiting for me. She was sitting patiently on the bench in front of the locked container, wrapped in a bundle of russet and ochre scarves that made her look as though she had emerged from the earth itself. Her face was hidden in them and she sat with her head bowed and her fingers twisted in her lap. Her hands were wrapped in leather strips: it was impossible to tell how old she was.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I hope I'm not late today." It didn't mean much, trying to keep time here, but for me it was a way of trying to impose a fragment of order, of routine, upon chaos.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "I have all day. But doubtless you don't." She had a strong, rather deep voice.
I smiled. "No. I have patients to see. But you are the first."
"There's nothing wrong with me," she said. I still couldn't see her face. "I want to talk to you about the man you saw yesterday. The man who died."
Then she looked up. She was young, with skin darker than mine and pale eyes, the colour of water or very light jade. I felt my heart sink. A relative, perhaps a wife.
"I'm so sorry," I started to say, but she cut me off.
"I don't care about him. I met him once. I'm sure you did your best." She spoke perfunctorily, getting the niceties out of the way before coming down to business. I found myself at a loss for words, and conscious of a shameful relief.
"Can we talk inside?" She rose. She was tall, I realised.
"Of course, of course."
Within the surgery, she unwound one of the scarves, revealing a tight cap of black hair. She had an austere, unsmiling face. The scarf gave out an odd, strong smell, almost like the seaside. It alarmed me, but I couldn't have said why.
"I won't take up too much of your time. That man – his name was Hal Moria – did he tell you anything? Or was he unconscious?"
He was dead, after all, and she wanted to know. I told her what he'd said to me, trying not to go too deeply into the issue of why he'd woken up since I could not answer that. The story did not take long and when I'd finished, there was a silence.
"I thought it might be something like that," she said to herself.
"You said you'd met him once?"
"Yes. He took something from me. I hoped to get it back, but I suppose that's unlikely, now."
"His personal things will still be at the mining compound, I suppose." This was not a world on which anything got thrown away, after all.
She gestured assent. "I'm sure you're right. Never mind."
"What was it that he took?"
"Nothing that would make sense to you."
"Was there anything else? Anything that struck you?"
"No." I spoke slowly, but I did not want to tell her about his smile, or my dream. It all seemed too subjective and fanciful, especially in this hot morning light with the hard-edged shadows all around us. Somehow power had been exchanged between us: even in these extreme circumstances, I –with my medical training, my tin shed of an office – should have been the one with the status. Yet I did not feel that way.
"Well then," she said, and rose. "Thank you for your time, Doctor. I won't take up any more of it."
I opened my mouth to say something – perhaps 'wait,' or 'don't go' – but she was already gone, fading into the day as if the light had swallowed her. She was on my mind for the rest of the day. I couldn't seem to conjure up her face and this bothered me – I'd always noticed women, after all, often with appreciation. I thought of the man on the rescue ship and his talk of tribeswomen. Had she been beautiful? I couldn't say. She'd never even told me her name.
The days after that were tedious and stressful. There was some sort of half-hearted investigation into the mining disaster: two men from the commission came to talk to me about Moria's death. There was no reason to suspect he had died from anything other than his injuries. I put aside any strangeness about it – that smile, his question – and said he'd died on the operating table, which after all was true. But I did mention the woman. I thought they might know who she was. They did not.
"She must have been one of the nomads," the commission man said, when I described her. "They look like that."
"They're deep in the south, though," his friend objected. "They keep to the Moon Desert, as they call it: they won't come all the way up here. The women run the clans."
"Who are they?"
"Who knows? They've been there forever. It's a harsh place – I wouldn
't care for it." His mouth turned down in distaste and I thought of the foothills: the fragile land, choking dust, killing winds. What must the Moon Desert be like, then?
"They don't talk much to us. They know what's happening – you know, elsewhere." He gave me a sidelong glance, a delicacy of feeling that I was not anticipating. "They say it's a prophecy of their people, an ancient legend about the world's end. They seem proud if you talk about it, like they've been vindicated."
Perhaps they had, I thought. Perhaps they had.
I had another visitor, after that. I assumed he was from the same organisation, but it soon became apparent that he wasn't. He had a thin, hungry face, anonymous monochrome clothes. But when he raised a hand to greet me, I glimpsed something under his grey sleeve: something shining. His hand wasn't bionic, but… I tried to see more and he folded his hands primly in front of him. I couldn't place him. I didn't recognise his accent. He did not give his name, and he asked me some strange questions.
"How do you feel about the Maelstrom, Doctor? How has it affected you? Your whole family, you say? Such a great loss – a terrible thing." He shook his head sadly, but I did not think he was sad at all. He, too, asked me what the dead man had said. I gave him the same answers. I asked him who he was, but he simply smiled, again sadly, and murmured something about being a bureaucrat. Eventually, he went away; it seemed to me with reluctance.
A month went by. I did not stop thinking about the nomad woman. Certainly, there were girls in the compound; the world of the refugee means that attachments are commonplace, often brief. Everyone wants to escape from where they are and I was no exception, but my route to doing so had changed. The woman was with me constantly, a talisman in my imagination. I did not imagine having sex with her, which was odd enough in itself, nor even of loving her. She was not an infatuation. She was just there.
And then, one night, she really was.
I honestly had not expected to see her again. The day had been a normal one: a woman with a nasty hand injury from one of the makeshift packing plants, a small outbreak of a routine childhood fever among some of the compound's infants. I'd been to the bar for a quick decompression, got some food from one of the compound stands, and gone to bed without thinking over much about my life and what it had become. Sometimes the present is almost enough.
At some point in the night, I woke up. The dorm was full of light: the planet's huge moon was up, casting a greenish silver over the floor. The woman was standing at the foot of my bed. At first, confused, I thought she was a ghost, or that I was about to be attacked. Then I realised who she was.
"Don't make a sound," she said. "I need to talk to you."
I pulled on my clothes and ushered her outside. It was late, but voices were coming from one of the nearby sheds; a card game, probably.
"Someone is hurt," the woman said.
"What's happened? Who is it?"
"My – my friend. Not here. Up in the hills. Are you willing to come?"
"I'm a doctor," I said, maybe stupidly. "It's my job."
"Thank you."
"But it would help if I knew what was wrong."
"That's the problem. I don't know. He's fallen ill."
I packed a medkit quickly and together we walked to the edge of the road which led up to the mines. Even this late, traffic was still rumbling by so I flagged down a truck and said we needed a lift. We clambered into the back, which was empty on the return run to the mine.
It was a strange journey. The nomad woman had wrapped her scarf around her face again, in protection from the dust. I soon felt hot and filthy, but you got used to that here. Yet the moon's light was water cool. When I looked back, as the road began to rise, I could see the illumination from the compound, strung out along the highway. It seemed very small and far away. Since I had no idea where we were going, or what I would find when we got there, I tapped a quick message to the compound head, explaining the situation and saying I'd return when I could. The two nurses would have to handle things until then. I did not want to admit to myself that I welcomed the adventure; the break from routine.
The woman sat with her head bowed. When the truck had slowed a little and I could be heard, I said, "What's your name?"
"It's Hanerah. It's a common name with my people." She looked up. "We must be nearly at the entrance to the mine by now."
"I think so." The truck had slowed to a halt and we jumped down. It was still dark, with no betraying grey glow of dawn in the sky. Moonlight allowed us to see and Hanerah led me up a track, a stony path that led into the hills. The air felt heavy, dense with chemicals and dust, and I remembered, uncomfortably, the fragility of this land. I imagined myself stepping unwarily and plummeting through. I voiced my concerns to Hanerah.
She laughed. "It's full of holes, below. It always was, before your miners came. But don't worry. It's only in certain places and this path is a very old one."
Only slightly reassured, I took care to follow her footsteps. At the height of the ridge, she turned. "We rest, for a moment, then we'll go on."
"Is it far?"
"Three hours walking, or more. I am sorry – I know your people are tied into time, they have 'things to do,' they are 'busy.' But I would not have called you if this had not been an emergency." She grimaced. "Now I am time's slave, too."
In the past, I suppose we would have had ambulance copters and swift vehicles, but not here, for someone who was not, I supposed, a dignitary.
"Tell me about your friend," I said, as we sat sipping water. "Who are they?"
"He is – not one of my clan. He does not know this land very well. Perhaps it is this which has made him sick."
"What is he doing here? Is he attached to the mine?"
"Not really," she said. "Are you ready to move on?"
We headed up into the hills, soon leaving the mine behind. It was very quiet, the dust from the workings settling now and the air was clear, if warm. No-one was visible, yet I kept glancing behind me. I thought I could feel eyes on the back of my neck. I felt I needed to keep watch on Hanerah, too, just in case.
I looked up at the great green moon and wondered what was happening up there: a single firefly spark was crossing its calm face. And here was I, planet-bound. It is hardly a revelation to say that there are many bad things about becoming a refugee: loss of home and family are top of the list, but there are also things like the keen awareness of one's own ignorance. On the ship that brought us here, I told myself that I'd find out damn everything about this new world: fauna, flora, geology, everything. But your day gets sucked into staying alive and scratching a living – there's no time for research. Now, of course, I couldn't help wondering what might be lurking up here behind some of those ridges and boulders, especially with that odd sense of being followed.
"Don't worry, Doctor," Hanerah said. "Nothing will touch us."
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure. My people have lived here generation upon generation."
"I thought your people came from the Moon Desert."
"It is the same thing. This is the north of that desert, the far north, it's true. And we moved south some hundreds of years ago, when your people first began to come. We have no quarrel with them, or they with us, but we keep to ourselves."
Unless you need help, I thought, but did not say.
We both fell silent. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of another. I didn't want to risk turning a heel on that stony path. Slowly the sky began to lighten. I hadn't had more than a few hours of sleep but strangely, I did not feel at all tired. It was as though I had been plugged into some unknowable energy source and was drawing upon it. I sucked down a tube of protein paste and felt even more alive.
With the growing light, the landscape around me fell into relief. The rocks were yellow, covered in a thick sulphurous dust. I was thankful that there was no wind, but the day promised to be typically hot. The sky was already milky with heat. I no longer looked behind me, but I could not help feeling that we
were not alone.
"We're not far away," Hanerah said over her shoulder.
"Over there – are those ruins?" We had come over the top of a ridge and were looking down over the yellow plain. I could see what looked like a structure: low and roofless, built out of blocks of ochre stone.
"Yes. There was a city here once, a city of my people."
"I thought your people were nomads," I said.
"Not always."
"What happened?" For if all that was left was this little low cottage…
"There was a sandstorm. It buried everything. Most people died, but those that remained fled south, where we still are."
"Except you, and your friend."
"Except me," she replied, blandly.
We picked our way through what had once been that city. Hanerah's steps were precise, occasionally veering sharply away to left or right. I followed as carefully as I could. I had a horror of being buried, but once we were past the city, the ground became harder and stonier again. Perhaps a half hour later, when the sun was now fully risen and the heat was beginning to beat down on my face, something shimmered up on the horizon.
It was tall, cylindrical: a tower. As we drew nearer I could see that it had been built of a dark red stone, strange in this yellow land. I could smell the same chemical odour that had floated from Hanerah's scarf during that first meeting; it was evocative, but I did not know why. Hanerah glanced over her shoulder and for the first time I saw uncertainty in her pale, fierce eyes.
"This is the Mizen Tower. It used to mark the beginning of the desert."
"And now?"
"The desert has come past it."
The stone was smooth, a marbled skin. The tower's shadow lay long and black on the sand, looking sticky, like oil. I felt my skin crawl and again, did not understand why. It was as though the tower was staring back at me.
"Listen," Hanerah said. "Can you hear it?"
For a moment, all I was aware of was the soft hiss of the wind over the dunes, and beneath that, the vast quiet of the desert. But there was something else, too. Not in my ears, but in my mind. Not a voice, not as distinct as that, but an essence, a soul.
Tales from the Edge: Escalation: A Maelstrom's Edge Collection Page 21
