Mutt

by Evan Fuller

  5

  The Good Doctor

  The new arrival took a tentative step forward and shook Emery's outstretched hand. The boy looked to be about twelve—no, emaciated, fourteen—and his face was a compelling arrangement of features, a blend of Slav and Chukwu blood that was blasphemous here in Rittenhouse. Emery tried to read the boy's expression, wondering as he always did whether this stranger would pose a threat to the estate. His illness certainly provided him incentive enough to cooperate with the rules of the house, and besides, the king had sent him here. But how well could the king possibly know any of the outsiders he sent? Emery tried to summon a smile. “Did the king send a letter with you?”

  Timothy's eyes went wide. “No,” he said. “Did I need one to come here?”

  Emery laughed at the boy's timidity, but it made him nervous that there was no letter. Was all well at the palace? “Not at all,” he told Timothy. “I just correspond with the palace every now and again, so I wasn't sure whether they'd send something. I'll probably forget your name a few times, so just bear with me on that; I do it to everyone. How have Lydia and the others been treating you?”

  “Very well,” Timothy said as brightly as he could seem to manage. “They fed me as soon as I got here. Lydia even came down into the sewers to help me climb up.” His speech was more precise than Emery had learned to expect from newcomers.

  “Well, I'm sure they've already showed you around. The house was my second cousin's,” Emery said, “and it's a bit too much for me. It's not really even mine; he had no direct descendants to manage it when he passed away about three years ago, so my family sent me here from Ambler to manage the property until we decide what to do with it. I spend most of my time here painting or studying in the basement. I'm a bit scared of all the marble and expensive furniture, actually.”

  Timothy laughed anxiously; Emery could only guess he felt the same way.

  “Lydia tells me the king sent you,” Emery continued. “She said you're looking for medicine you can't get outside of Rittenhouse. Can you tell me what kind of sickness you have?”

  Wordlessly, the boy lifted the hem of his new shirt to reveal his stomach and chest. The disease was in its advanced stages already; lesions pockmarked his skin, some so deep that Emery could only assume they had eaten their way through Timothy's muscle mass. Several of them were gray-green with infection; Timothy's journey through the sewers had clearly left its mark.

  Emery's stomach swam; the muscles in his belly clenched. “It's a bacterial infection,” he said. “A lot like leprosy, but more aggressive.” Emery had seen seen it before. “We have medicine here that will slow its progress and make you feel stronger for a while—I'm sure Lydia has already given you some?—but finding an actual cure for this is going to be a bit tricky. See, the medicine for treating this sickness is different than the medication we use to prevent it, and most people in Rittenhouse receive the latter when they're young. The hospital keeps a small supply of the treatment for emergencies, but if you try to get your hands on it, people start asking questions.”

  Timothy's face sank.

  “Fortunately,” Emery said quickly, “I know the person who can get some for me, if anyone can. You've truly come to the right place.”

  “Do you think he'll help us?” Timothy asked.

  “Well,” Emery replied with a little smile, “he doesn't think very highly of me. But we've always been able to…reach a settlement…in the past. I'm sure my late cousin would be aghast if he knew how I was spending his wealth, but truth be told, anyone else in the family would probably have invested it in a new wing for the estate. You can never have too many square feet, you know.”

  Timothy nodded at this, Emery's irony clearly escaping him. “I'll do anything I can,” he began, but Emery raised an open hand in reply.

  “Right now, there's really nothing you can do,” he said, “and you're going to have to be okay with that. Part of the reason I do what I do is because I have the resources to do it. I didn't do anything to earn them, I stumbled into them because I was born into the right family. The least I can do is be the first person in this damnable town to put what I have to decent use.”

  “Thanks,” Timothy said.

  “Well, I'm going to sit down for a cup of coffee before I go down to the hospital to talk to our iatric friend. Care to join me?”

  “Actually,” Timothy said, “I think I need to lay down for a while. I'm feeling a bit better, but I'm still very tired from getting here.” Emery guessed that Timothy was as much overwhelmed as he was tired, so he bade the boy rest well. Oliver and Geneva, who had gathered silently at the doorway to the study during the course of the conversation, parted to make way for Timothy, and Emery watched him out of the room and up the stairs.

  “I put a press on,” Oliver said.

  “Jehovah bless you, child,” Emery replied emphatically, clasping his hands in thanks as he made for the kitchen.

  The coffee press was steaming when Emery entered the room, and Oliver had had the foresight to set three mugs beside it. Emery filled them while the others filed into the kitchen behind him. Geneva went to the refrigerator in search of something more to her taste while Oliver and Lydia seized their mugs. Emery reached up to touch his brow, rubbing his temples with his fingers and thumb while he waited for the coffee to cool; it was always too hot for him to drink right after pouring. Oliver blew at his own cup in three distinct, rhythmic breaths before glancing up to see if Emery had noticed; Emery decided not to bother with starting an argument.

  Geneva made her way from the kitchen into the dining room and Oliver followed. “Try not to spill anything on the carpet,” Emery called after them.

  “Okay,” Geneva piqued.

  “I'm really trying to sound like I give a damn,” Emery added in the same tone.

  Oliver laughed. “We can tell.”

  Lydia sank into the seat opposite Emery at the small glass kitchen table. It hadn't been there when Emery had come to look after the property—he still hated to think he had inherited the estate—but Emery had figured that having a table in the kitchen made things a lot simpler than using the cavernous dining room for everything.

  “Timothy seems like a good kid,” Lydia said.

  “Hmm,” Emery replied, still thinking about the kitchen table.

  “Do you think we'll be able to get him what he needs?”

  Emery looked up at her. “I'm honestly not sure,” he replied quietly. “Hanssen's really not very fond of me. This will be my second time coming to him for medicine he knows I don't need myself, and last time he was definitely suspicious. I'm not sure what exactly he suspects, but I get the impression that he thinks I'm up to something devious.”

  Lydia smiled. “If only he knew.”

  “If he knew,” Emery said, “he'd lead the mob that chased me out of Rittenhouse. He's that kind of man, I think.” Emery sipped his coffee and found that it was much hotter than he had expected; he gulped it down as he felt a burn forming on the tip of his tongue. He touched the burned spot to his teeth, which only made the pain more intense. Emery glared daggers at the pool of infernal brown liquid in his mug.

  “Well,” Lydia said, “there's really no way he'd figure out what you're actually using the medicine for, right? I mean, it's mostly safe—”

  Emery laughed. “Nothing about this is safe. I knew that, more or less, when I got into it, but it seems a little clearer every day.”

  Emery shuddered for a moment as he felt the same panic that hit him every time a new refugee arrived at the estate: how much longer could he keep this going? Sooner or later he'd make a mistake, and when the secret was out, it would be his end and Lydia's end and the end of everyone living in the mansion. Emery forced the fear back down to wherever it had come from, and in a moment he was back in control.

  “Juliet came calling,” Lydia said.

  “Oh?” Emery's only real friend in Rittenhouse was also the only other person Emery allowed to vis
it the estate. “Well, I'll have to get back to her. I should probably get going,” he said to Lydia. “Want to come for a walk?”

  “I'd like to,” she said, “but I should probably stay, with Timothy here and all. It's always good to keep a close eye on them for the first few days.” Emery nodded and rose to leave. “But Emery—”

  Emery turned to face her. A struggle played across Lydia's countenance before she said simply, “Please be safe, okay?”

  “I will,” Emery replied. He realized that they were standing inches apart; he didn't even remember rising. He wanted to say something else but couldn't think of what, and after a moment he decided that his eyes had lingered on her face for too long. “I shouldn't be more than an hour,” he said quickly. Emery was out the front door before he realized that he had forgotten to wash his mug.

  The hospital was a quarter-hour's walk from the estate. The evening was still bright as Emery closed the entry gate behind him and stepped out onto the streets of Rittenhouse, but the sun was steadily descending and would be buried behind the horizon before too long. The first few minutes of the route took Emery through a neighborhood of residences much like his own, massive and imposing, though set on smaller lots. Stacked so closely to each other, the homes looked awkward and uncomfortable, like bodies packed together on the train on a busy day.

  Emery always tried to avoid the train if he could help it, using it to get to the collegio only when he was running late (which was more often than he cared to admit) and in the most frigid months of winter. The tracks ran a single circle around Rittenhouse, so the train was useless for short commutes like Emery's southward walk from his home to the hospital. Emery could also have waved down one of the several automobiles that patrolled the streets looking for passengers, but he found this incredibly wasteful. Taking an automobile almost thirty miles to Ambler through myriad dangers made sense; paying an exorbitant fee to avoid a bit of walking seemed ludicrous to him.

  Between the buildings, which seemed to grow taller and more plentiful by the month, stood lines of trees, tall and proud. Their leaves were brushed in the reds and yellows of autumn, and as the blazing sunlight struck through their branches, they became spires of still flame. The trees were Emery's favorite part of Rittenhouse; Juliet had recently suggested to him that most of them might soon be gone if construction continued. It was a thought upon which Emery cared not to dwell. The trees were more plentiful in the residential areas; as Emery walked southward, they were relegated to single-file lines on either side of the wide cobbled road. Every now and again a breeze would blow Emery's hair into his face and stir the trees, pulling clusters of red and yellow from them to be scattered slowly across the street.

  Emery could see the impressive the shape of the hospital long before he reached its doors. The building was a wonder of recovery, having been found in ruins and since restored to what the architect presumed must have been its former glory. It was comprised of two shapes: its long, low, rectangular south wing met a taller, drum-shaped section that comprised its north end. The brick that comprised the bottom of each of the building's sections was ancient; it had still been standing when Rittenhouse had been established and had provided a foundation for the hospital's rebuilding. The transition to newer materials was a mosaic, climbing upward by bits and pieces: the first patches of new brick appeared a few stories up, bright red against the deep red-brown of the original building. About halfway up the barrel, which was about ten or twelve stories high, the new brick became more prevalent than the old, and another story or two above, the only brick was bright red. Emery reached the staircase leading to the hospital's entrance, where iron lettering above the doors read:

  RITTENHOUSE GENERAL

  A FREE-MARKET HOSPITAL

  FOR A NEW ERA IN MEDICINE

  Emery inhaled deeply, pulled open a door, and stepped inside.

  The cacophony of human voices struck Emery as if he'd hurled himself against the building's brick wall. The long rectangular building, through which patients without appointment mere made to enter, was the “low” hospital, where countless merchants peddled medicine for every conceivable illness. “You, sir!” one man greeted him from behind a termite-eaten wooden table. “You're looking rather pale today. I have a tonic for that, only five rai for a fellow Roccetti!”

  “I'm pale every day,” Emery called back, smiling.

  “Cocaine pills for all ailments!” another physician shouted. “They cure poppy gum addiction, and you'll feel like a new man!”

  Emery waded through the shifting mass of bodies until he finally reached the low hospital's rear doors and passed into the upper hospital. Here, in the grand drum-shaped tower, the bartering and undercutting were performed more discreetly, behind closed doors. Dr. Hanssen's office was on the fifth floor; Emery walked past the gate of the electric elevator—it was Rittenhouse's first, but Emery didn't trust the lurching platform. He found the stairwell and took the steps two at a time.

  “I'd like to see Dr. Hanssen,” he said to the pretty Vorteil secretary who greeted him when he arrived, breathing heavily, on the fifth floor.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

  Emery shook his head. “I can wait if he's not available right now. Tell him Emery Esposti is here to see him, please.” He smiled, hoping it would make her more receptive to his request.

  It seemed to work: the secretary stepped into an office behind the desk, and a moment later she emerged. “Dr. Hanssen is ready for you,” she said. “He told me he was busy, but he wasn't doing anything important, so I told him to take you now.” She tried, and almost managed, to deliver the line with a straight face.

  A much less welcoming countenance greeted Emery when he stepped into the office. Dr. Hanssen was a standard-bearer for Vorteil beauty, and his azure eyes narrowed in greeting. One could call his features chiseled, but to Emery that seemed far too mild a word: his brows and chin and nose and cheekbones were each a monument to the aspirations of his race. “Good evening, doctor,” Emery began. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

  No reply. The doctor's face didn't even move. Emery took a nervous glance around the room as he waited. The office was sterling and spartan as he remembered it: the long, unadorned glass desk; the cabinets at both its ends; and the chairs before and behind it were the only furniture in the room. Its sole decoration was the pair of small hawks, carved of wood and painted gold, that rested on either cabinets, matching the small gold badge the doctor wore on the pristine white double-breasted shirt that denoted his station. Emery waited another moment, but Hanssen did not speak. He cleared his throat. “My walk here was quite pleasant—”

  “I was using the time between appointments to to enjoy some reading,” Dr. Hanssen said, every consonant sharp enough to draw blood, “so if your interruption has a purpose, I would appreciate that you get to it. If you're here to exchange pleasantries, I'll be getting back to my tea and paper.” The doctor's long fingers tapped the single-page newspaper that was distributed weekly to whomever in Rittenhouse could afford the expense.

  Emery cleared his throat. “What you got for me last time. I need it again.”

  Hanssen was not surprised, nor was he pleased. “Sir Esposti,” he said, hissing the honorific, “are you aware of some epidemic of leprosy in Rittenhouse that no one else has discovered? If so, the hospital should be made aware of it so we can deal with the situation ourselves.” He made no effort to mask his disdain.

  “That didn't seem to matter last time,” Emery said, hating himself for the tremor in his voice. “If you want to renegotiate payment—”

  “I would like nothing more, in fact, than to have you leave my office and never inflict your presence upon me again. Do you know how long it took for me, a Vorteil, to secure such a prestigious station in a Farsi-owned establishment? You're scum, sir Esposti, and your even coming into this office is an insult and a threat to everything I have worked to build here.”

  Emery shifted h
is weight as though to exit, but Dr. Hanssen raised a hand to halt him. For a long moment the doctor stood frozen in place, arm still raised, lost in thought. “But it just so happens,” he said at last, “that you've come to me at the right time. The payment, however, will be of quite a different quality this time.”

  “What do you want?” Emery asked.

  “I have a package that needs delivering,” Dr. Hanssen answered, “and the recipient is a hard man to access. Whatever his name may be, he is known as Three Dogs. You've heard of him, I presume?”

  Emery shook his head, trying to decipher why the doctor thought he should know the name.

  “He is employed by a man named Leon Zakarova, of whom you've doubtless heard. Zakarova is the closest thing to a ruler the mutts have; among many other things, he controls all major poppy gum production in New Providence.”

  Emery nodded; it was a name he had heard from the king. The king's power in New Providence, such as it was, was bestowed upon him by those poor who needed what he could provide. Zakarova was the de facto ruler of most of the population: he imposed arbitrary taxes, controlled markets, and employed a loosely organized mob of enforcers that amounted to a small army. Zakarova was the reason the king was always on the move.

  Dr. Hanssen's thin lips finally turned upward at Emery's acknowledgment. “I'm unsurprised,” he said.

  His knowing smile made Emery shiver. Damnit. He knows something.

  “So it falls upon you,” the doctor continued, “to find Three Dogs and make this delivery, and I trust that the package will arrive unmolested.”

  “How do you suppose I'm going to do this?” Emery asked. The demand was absurd. “It's not like I'll be approved to leave Rittenhouse in order to deliver a Vorteil physician's package to a drug lord.”

  Hanssen glared at Emery, not moving. His face was so tense Emery thought the whole assembly of muscle and skin may burst; despite his anxiety, he suppressed a laugh at the thought. “Regardless of whether you choose to take this assignment,” Hanssen said, “you will be discreet concerning this conversation lest you find yourself in a very unfortunate position.” He relaxed somewhat. “And a man like you, sir Esposti, wouldn't need what you're requesting if he didn't have a way out of Rittenhouse and connections beyond its walls.” Hanssen was right about that, though Emery wondered just what devious aim the doctor suspected Emery had in requesting the medicine. Did he know? “I was going to send a Vorteil to do this, someone in whom I could trust, but I'd much rather it be your life and citizenship at risk than that of someone in my own circle. So if you desire whatever it is these antibiotics will earn you, you will take the risk of delivering the package and I will take the risk of securing the medication for you. Are we in agreement?”

  Emery glared at the taller man, wishing his gaze alone was enough to cut the doctor down. “Where is this package?”

  “Its contents are very sensitive,” Hanssen replied, “so you will arrange a meeting with Three Dogs and then come back for the package when you are prepared to make the delivery.”

  The two locked eyes again; for a small eternity, neither of them spoke. “I'll make arrangements,” Emery said at last. “Have a good evening, doctor.” He was out the door of the office before the words had left his mouth.

  The pretty secretary was still smiling when Emery passed her desk, but her expression grew solemn when her eyes met his drawn face. Emery waved, more curtly than he meant to, and retreated to the stairwell. He had no idea where to begin.