by M M Buckner
Only after my eyes adjusted did I notice the man’s wavy, shoulder-length hair. Not Liam. This agitator was smiling. He wore a stained blue lab coat over his uniform, and he carried a first-aid kit.
“Are you the doctor?” Sheeba, the innocent dear, hopped up and offered her hand in greeting. This time, she moved with balance. She’d been practicing.
The man shrugged pleasantly and clasped her hand, palm to palm in the prate style. He had quick brown eyes and a slight build. “I’m Vladimir, the medic. We got no doctor.”
“But Liam said—”
“Liam, he call me doc. He embellish. I just a medic.” All these agitators spoke in the same broken drawl, but this man’s tone was jovial, not curt or vulgar. He turned my way. “Is this the ‘xecutive with the broken leg?”
“This is Nasir,” Shee said.
“Hello, Nasir.” When the medic knelt beside me, a couple of objects tumbled out of his bulging pockets, and he scooped them up, embarrassed. A pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass. After stuffing them back in his pockets, he gently drew my smartskin longjohn up over my knee. He had the first clean hands I’d seen in this factory, but there was something lopsided about his face, as if his jaw had once been fractured. His right cheek sagged, and one eye drooped slightly. It gave him a cockeyed look. With a friendly nod, he poked at my leg.
“Ow. Give me some Norphine before you do that.”
“Sorry, no Norphine.” He kept prodding, and his brown eyes gleamed with friendliness. “I go examine your bones, see how to set them properly.”
“How old are you? Twenty-five?” When I asked that, Sheeba gave the medic a wink. Maybe she thought I wouldn’t notice.
“Old enough.” He grinned, probing my thigh with his fingertips. He had a complexion as smooth as baby cheeks, and a patchy stubble covered his chin, too sparse to be called a beard. Where were all the adults? I hadn’t seen so many underagers in decades.
“You got a clean double break,” he said, “but the bones go slip outta place. I gotta pull them back.”
Sheeba bounced on her knees, frisky and breathless. “I’m a physical therapist. Can I help?”
“You ‘xecutive. I should assist you.” A homely dimple creased his misshapen cheek.
Sheeba rocked back and forth and beamed, as if she’d just been turned loose in a gaming arcade. “I’ve never set a broken bone before.”
“Well, I have,” he said. “We see plenty accidents around Justment—”
“Both of you, put it on pause.” I glared at the lop-jawed medic. “No untrained boy is going to screw with my leg. Give me some painkillers, and I’ll get treatment when you return me to my people.”
Vladimir gave me a thoughtful smile, deepening the dimple in his cheek. “Who your people, may I ask?”
“You may not ask. You may give me back my phone, and I’ll call them.”
Vlad’s sagging eye narrowed. “The chief saw that gun-ship fire at you. Why they do that? You take our side?”
His question caught me unprepared. I would have shifted away, but I was already pressed hard against the wall. Sheeba looked embarrassed.
“I don’t have your phone,” the boy medic continued, “but you go find it don’t work. That gunship scrambling our signal.”
Sheeba clutched the medic’s sleeve, fixing him with the full power of her gaze. “Vlad, your aura’s deep blue, so I totally trust you for the truth. Please tell us why you started this war.”
He looked down at her hand on his sleeve, then back up into her eyes. I knew what he was seeing, those dazzling rays of green, gray and gold. “We trying to survive,” he said.
She tugged at his sleeve again. “Is vacation time worth dying for?”
“Vacation time? I don’t know what that is.”
“Sir, I have the splints.”
We all turned to see who had spoken. There in the doorway stood a bud of a girl, eighteen if I had to guess, another urchin. But she was thin and undersized for her age. Her Asiatic eyes were too small and too widely spaced for beauty. A cord cinched her uniform at her narrow waist, and the long sleeves hung over her hands. A faded yellow cloth hid her hair.
Vlad sprang up to take the heavy tray from her hands. “Thank you, Kaioko. I didn’t mean for you to carry all this.”
The girl stepped quietly into the room. She was barefoot, and she’d rolled up her pantlegs, but the cuffs whisked across the dirty floor as she moved. Vlad set the tray down, and she knelt beside it. When their fingers touched, the young medic edged closer, but the girl drew back.
“This my assistant, Kaioko,” said Vlad, inclining his head toward the girl with an air of gentle pride. “And these our guests, Nasir and Sheeba Zee.”
Kaioko nodded at each of us with a nearsighted squint. I found her plain in the extreme, so the medic’s affectionate attitude baffled me. Her tray held a roll of nylon netting, some wire and several scraps of flat hard plastic. Very peculiar medical equipment.
About then, our floor started booming again—another volley of Provendia’s noisemakers. Kaioko cringed and covered her ears, and her face mottled as if she meant to cry. The medic rushed to hold her, but she struck out hysterically, batting him away. When Sheeba offered her a water sack, she knocked it to the floor. What melodrama! She made an unnatural peeping chirp, and she groped the floor with splayed hands. Vlad endured her slaps and held her.
Sheeba turned to me with that ardent expression—as if she expected me to do something. But what the heck could I do? Eventually, the gunfire stopped, and the thrumming, whuffing and sluicing sounds vibrated through the steel walls again.
Vlad sighed. “That one didn’t last so long. You did fine, Kaioko. Next time, it be easier.”
The girl gazed straight ahead with unfocused eyes. At least, she’d stopped chirping.
“Kai-Kai,” the medic said softly, “tell me how many splints you brought.”
“I don’t know,” the girl murmured almost too low to hear.
“Count them.” Vlad tapped the tray to get her attention.
Kaioko glanced around the room, seemingly lost, till she noticed the tray on the floor beside her. Slowly, she picked through the items, reciting numbers aloud like a preschooler. I began to think she was addled.
Then the door banged on its hinges, and Geraldine rushed in. “Kai-Kai, you all right? You shouldn’t be down here when the guns go off. Vlad shouldn’t bring you here.”
The medic slid away from Kaioko with an uncomfortable shrug. “She handled it fine.”
Geraldine flared her nostrils at him, then shouldered between them and elbowed the medic away. She squared her jaw with a kind of fierce nobility. But when she turned to Kaioko, the lines of her face softened. Tenderly, she adjusted the folds of Kaioko’s head cloth. “Come with me, babe. You don’t have to nurse this commie.”
“Commie!” I bristled at the slur. Protes used that term to insult Com executives.
But Shee put a restraining hand on my arm and shushed me.
“How your head feel?” Geraldine whispered in a gentle hush. Like night and day, she’d changed from bruiser to turtledove.
“I well. Gee. Please don’t worry.” Kaioko drew close to Geraldine, and her dainty white hand glided along the dark girl’s muscular arm.
I hadn’t lived 248 years without learning to recognize that kind of touch. The quickening glance between them, the unspoken communication, I knew at once they were lovers. But what a pair. Geraldine—brawny, brown and rude, yet despite the scar, I admit she had a striking face. Kaioko—just the opposite, small, pale, graceful, and ugly. And both just children.
“I gotta get back to the plant,” Geraldine said. “Come with me.”
Vlad spoke up. “I need her here.” There was no trace of a dimple now. He’d withdrawn to the foot of my blanket, doing his best to hide his raw, juvenile jealousy.
“She ain’t no servant.”
“Please, Gee, I want to stay.” Kaioko leaned against Geraldine’s chest and brus
hed some dirt from the front of her uniform. “You go to your work. I fine.”
“Don’t let these ‘xecs boss you. Liam said not to talk to ‘em.” Geraldine planted a showy kiss on Kaioko’s lips.
As they hugged, Sheeba elbowed me in the ribs. Evidently, Shee found this soap opera as droll as I did. Geraldine shot one last menacing frown at Vlad, then stomped out.
Poor Vlad. Misery painted his sagging features. He took a folding ruler out of his pocket, fumbled with it, men put it back. “Kaioko, I set this patient’s leg. You hold him steady?”
“Yes sir.” As the girl moved briskly around to the head of my pallet, Vlad followed her with his eyes. She moved as gracefully as a ballet dancer. Maybe mat’s what attracted him.
Sheeba said, “How do you move like that, Kai-Kai? The spinning doesn’t bother you at all.”
“Spinning?” The girl ducked her head.
“Kaioko born here.” Vlad gazed at her admiringly. “She move like a sunbeam. Down on your Earth, maybe she have a hard time. Maybe her bones break.”
Three creases formed between Sheeba’s eyebrows. “Do you mean Kaioko has never been to Earth?’
“None of us. We all born here.” He tapped his wrist joint with his fingers. “Our bones too thin to go groundside.”
Sheeba gave me that ardent look again. I opened my hands, pretending ignorance. As far as she knew, I had no connection with Provendia.
This news affected her badly though She hugged her knees and studied Kaioko’s tiny feet. The girl’s weak bones were part of the Reel, and my solution was never to think about the Reel. Getting too involved in local scenarios hampered my reaction time. But Shee was a newbie. She hadn’t developed a surfer’s emotional blocks. All the more reason to get her out of this place as soon as possible.
“Gee told us you come from Nordvik,” Vlad was saying as he fiddled with the gear on the tray. “Have you seen mountains—”
“Skip the travelogue. Vladimir, you seem to be a steady young man. We don’t belong here. If you return our EVA suits, we’ll leave in peace. I’m perfectly willing to pay.”
Vlad shrugged. “It not up to me. Liam decide.”
“Liam! That punk? He’s barely past adolescence. Who elected him god?”
“Liam is oldest,” said Vladimir.
Sheeba said, “Nasir, they have a right to choose their own foreman.”
I ignored her naive remark. “Let me talk to some of the adults. They’ll see reason.”
Vlad said, “Please, I just here to set your broken leg.”
At the mention of setting my leg, the little girl grasped me under the armpits as if she meant to hold me till the end of days.
“Let go, you devil.”
I made a grab for her hands but succeeded only in wrenching off her head scarf. Underneath the cloth, her bald scalp was hideously blistered. The sight gave me such a shock that when the girl seized her scarf, I didn’t let go at first, and it ripped in two.
“Oh Mass.” Sheeba picked up the shredded cloth.
Then the girl’s ugly face mottled and creased. Molto pathetic.
“Hell, I didn’t mean to tear your scarf. Stop moaning. I’ll get you a new one.”
“And where you get a new scarf?” Vlad glowered at me.
He caressed the weepy girl and shielded her head with his hand. His level glance seemed far too acute for a mere prote. It smacked of impertinence.
“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to embarrass her.” The girl’s livid burns made me wince.
“How about this smartskin?” Sheeba tugged the pant leg of her longjohn. “Maybe I could cut it and make a scarf.”
“No, don’t do that.” Vlad took off his lab coat and ripped it at die seam. The frayed synthetic came apart easily in his hands, and he tore out a neat white square of fabric. Sheeba helped Kaioko tie it to cover her unsightly head.
“Prettier man ever,” said Vlad.
“It makes you look like a nurse,” Sheeba added.
The girl nodded at their pack of lies. Without looking at me, she got up and solemnly left the room.
“So much for my assistant.” Vlad’s homely cheek dimpled. “Sheeba Zee, will you go hold the patient while I align these bones?”
“How many times do I have to say it? You’re not touching my leg.”
“Nass, listen.” Sheeba’s fingertips drew slow, soothing circles over my forehead and down the bridge of my nose. “We may be here a while. Better to have your leg set and splinted. You’ll be in less pain.”
“But he’s a juve.”
“You can have it redone later,” she wisely noted.
Sheeba took her place at my head and grasped under my armpits as the little bald girl had done, while Vlad positioned himself at my feet and gripped my right ankle.
“Are you ready, Sheeba Zee?’
“Yes, Vladimir. And just call me Sheeba.”
“Then please, call me Vlad.”
“Will you two stop flirting and do this?” I said.
Provendia chose that moment to launch another volley of noisemakers. This was a heavier round. The deck shook beneath me like a drumhead.
“That sounds close,” said Shee.
Vlad pointed at the floor. “It right outside the hull.”
I jerked free of Sheeba’s hold and sat straight up. “You quartered us where the gunship’s firing? There must be some law in the Geneva Convention about that.”
“Liam say the gravitation on One feel more like Earth. He say you be more comfortable here.” Vlad gently forced me back down.
“Liam says,” I grumbled.
Vlad and Sheeba held me stretched out between them like a piece of meat, waiting for the barrage to end Sheeba raised her voice just enough to make herself heard. “How did Kai-Kai get those burns?’
Vlad frowned. “Justment. Hot soup flying around.”
Hot soup did that? My scalp prickled at the thought. Sheeba had no time to follow up because two seconds after the barrage ended, Vlad gave my ankle a terrific yank. There was a loud pop, a louder scream—-from me—and my artificial hip wrenched out of its plastic socket. Oh, fine.
“Recite your mantra, beau.” Shee kissed my eyelids and acupressed my pain points.
For the next several minutes, until Sheeba and Vlad snapped my plastic hip joint back together, the agony in my ligaments was so intense that I could only blather. The IBiS vibrated my thumb like a jackhammer.
“You’re going to be fine,” Sheeba cooed in my ear, while the juvenile medic tortured me with his fingertips.
“Almost,” he kept saying, half closing his eyes and setting my broken bones by feel.
Sheeba stroked my forehead. “No painkillers, huh?”
“Nada.” Vlad pressed down hard, and I almost bit through my tongue.
A pause full of rough breaming and strain. Then Sheeba asked, “Are you the only medic?”
Vlad nodded. “I training Kaioko.”
Another labored pause, then Sheeba continued, “Do you need another assistant? I know first aid.”
What a bright girl, I thought between bouts of agony. She was devising a scheme to get out of this closet and find my sat phone.
“You know biology.” Vlad mumped my kneecap. “Maybe you teach me some things.”
“But you’ve had more field experience.” Shee racked my shoulder joints.
“Oh no, my skills puny. You be a tremendous help.” What gush. They sounded like schoolchildren.
“We’d better ask Liam, since he’s foreman,” said Shee.
Vlad nodded. “We should.”
Liam, that infernal clod. Did he arbitrate every decision in this orbiting purgatory?
“Do you know where he is? We could go ask him together,” Shee said.
While the boy medic played havoc with my bones, my left thumb shivered with endless IBiS alerts. Finally, I lost patience. “Young man, take Sheeba with you. She’s the most gifted physical therapist I’ve ever known.”
Vlad grinn
ed and launched into a new, more ingenious cruelty. Using the stiff nylon netting, he bound my leg and interlaced the flat hard scraps of plastic between the layers. Pressing it down with one hand, he pulled the nylon tight with the other.
Sheeba said, “Maybe if we talk to Liam together, he’ll say yes.”
“All done,” said the medic, as he bound the bizarre dressing in wire.
All done indeed. My leg shouted pain with every bursting pulse of blood.
“Good job.” Sheeba sprang to her feet, and when her socks slipped on the steel deck, she caught herself against the wall. “So…we’ll go see Liam?”
Vlad was gathering his leftover materials. “Okay, we go.” “Transcendenzic!” Shee stooped and peeled off her socks for better traction. Then she gave me a hasty kiss and skipped toward the door. “You’ll feel a lot better now.” Who in hell was she talking to? Not me.
9
MAN, DON’T TURN YOUR HEAD SO MUCH
“To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.”
-WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Since the Crash of ‘57—and the unspeakable months that followed—I have never enjoyed peaceful sleep. Especially in these last few years, the sense of missing time makes me nervous, although I sometimes nod off without meaning to. Then I doze through fitful nightmares and wake with an urge to urinate and hawk phlegm—reassuring signs of liquidity, I suppose.
After dropping off a second time in Heaven’s dark cell, I woke to the sound of a drumming so powerful, it rattled my spine. Was the gunfire getting closer? Was that sinister lightbulb dying? Was my tightly bound leg going to explode? I sat up with a chill sense that something disastrous had happened. Sheeba was gone.
She should have been back by now. Callow child, she had no instinct for the zone. I should never have let her out of my sight. Worse, she’d gone off to find that punk, Liam. The brute who grabbed her in his arms. I could still see the greedy lust in his eyes. Rapist eyes.
In haste, I pushed myself up to one knee, caught a glimpse of the W painted in the corner, and immediately smashed my chin on the floor. With a groan, I rolled over and straightened out my injured leg. Then I took inventory of the E, the W, the pair of A’s. The rough brown blanket. The plastic cup. I seized the cup, sat up and relieved myself.
