by Larry Niven
He said, "I'm here to see Karen Winslow."
She repeated, "Patient?"
"Yes. Emergency, burn patient, four days ago."
"Family only." Her brows furrowed: puzzled at the Spiral Town accent that he'd thought long lost.
"I'm Jeremy Winslow," he said more carefully. "Karen's husband."
She said, "Okay. Okay. We're all speckles-shy here today, and the reason is, the computer went out about quitting time yesterday." Her hands shuffled a stack of printouts, helplessly. "We spent the whole morning trying to keep track with notes on paper. Now we're using the library computer, and that's where you'll find out where your wife is. Through that door and up three floors. There's a lift. Wait. What's wrong with your leg?"
"I hurt my knee surfing."
"Really. Wonderful. Brendan!"
Nothing happened immediately. Schiavo said, "Sit down. How long ago?"
"Almost three weeks." He sat down.
"Is it healing all right?"
"I suppose."
"Come back after you see your wife. I'll have Brendan scan you.
Here," She handed him a card. "Your wife's name, address, age, and whatever you remember about her medical history."
Jeremy began writing.
A barrel-shaped man jogged in. 'ja, mein Führer!" His uniform was very like Schiavo's, with a label that read: Brendan Shaw
Surgery
Duty Doctor
"Brendan, want some exercise?"
"Run up to the library?"
"Yeah, find out where they're keeping a burn patient and get her status. Karen Winslow. You could take the lift. Who'd know?" She took Jeremy's card, glanced at it, handed it to Brendan.
"I go, effendi!" Brendan jogged out, knees high, arms pumping. He slowed to a walk while in Jeremy's sight, but not Schiavo's.
Schiavo handed him another card. "Fill one out for yourself too."
Jeremy filled out what he remembered from his credit rating. Put it in his pocket. Closed his eyes....
Brendan's voice jolted him awake. "Winslow? We've got her in Intensive. Out the door, turn left, it's the next building over, fourth floor, Room Four-ten. Her doctor's Nogales, but she's home today. Come back after you see your wife and we'll scan your knee."
Karen smiled. "Jeremy. Can't move. I can't disturb the skin."
"All right." He went around to her good side and she gripped his hand. The sheet didn't cover much of her. They had her hands tied...
loosely, and padded, but she couldn't reach herself. The skin over half her body was shiny and patchy. It made him queasy to look, but he could well understand why nothing should touch her skin.
"So good to see you, Jeremy. What kept you?"
"They couldn't find my credit record at first."
Her eyes doubted him. He'd always wondered how much she'd guessed.
He told her how matters stood at Wave Rider. No customers, and a good thing too. Himself, walking around brain-dead with worry. The Otterfolk were getting bored; what they brought in was skimpy. Nine days until the caravaners arrived. She listened. . . dozed. .
There was a hand on his shoulder.
He'd gone to sleep with his cheek on Karen's good arm. "Lloyd?"
"Don't wake her."
Karen's hand was slack now, and he disengaged. Their youngest daughter's mate said, "I'll take you back to Gran Harlow's place. It'll hold four for one night."
"Can't go yet. The doctor wants to look at my knee."
"About time."
* * *
Medical was the strangest, scariest place Jeremy Winslow had ever been.
He hoped it didn't show. You're supposed to have seen this before.
He told Brendan Shaw, "The waves were rQlling in from way out there. Little shelled heads all around me. I hadn't been out for weeks because the caravan was in. They like it better when you take chances, you know? I caught this beautiful curl and rode it till my knees turned to water, and then let it break and carry me till the board hit sand and I lit running. I twisted my knee running in sand. Just too tired."
Brendan Shaw had a hand scanner. He moved it around Jeremy's injured knee, and a hologram showed him the inside. He said, "Well, you tore the meniscus."
"Will it grow back?"
"No." He moved to scan the good knee for comparison. "The meniscus isn't alive, exactly. Your body grows this spongy cushion in your knee joint, and it only grows once. Now there's a piece floating free. When it gets between the bones, that hurts."
"Too right. Can you sew it up?"
Brendan wrapped a blue pad around Jeremy's knee. Jemmy grimaced at the cold, and Brendan grinned. "Yes. First we chill you down. I need to wheel some equipment in here. The groper, a fiber-optic probe, the stitcher, some help. . ." He was thinking out loud. "After that cools a little we'll poke some fiber optics into your knee and look around more.
Then we'll position the torn part, which has to be done by hand, sony, and paint the edges for the stitcher so it can sew them shut. That's not real paint, it just marks them in memory. You got a card for me?"
Just like that? Jeremy's teeth were clenched. The cold burned him, but fear did too. But if he put this off, he'd spend days getting his nerve up.. . card? In his shirt pocket.
Brendan took it. "Lie down and I'll put you out. Or I could give you a local, but most patients don't want to be here when this is happening to them."
No telling what he might blurt out while he watched things being poked into his knee. "Put me out."
"Safer, actually."
Jeremy closed his eyes as Shaw settled a skeletal metal structure on his head. Wet pads touched both eyes and the nape of his neck. "Three hundred years old if you figure it was built on Earth, but it still works. Local anesthetic would be a drug. Much cruder."
Jeremy woke up hurting. A bulky cast held his leg stiff and a little bent. A young man handed him pills and a mug of water. Brendan said, "Aspirin. You're not allergic."
"Good. All done?"
"Oh, yeah, two hours ago. You looked like you needed the sleep.
Here. Do you know how to use crutches?"
"No, I've got my stick."
"No, use crutches for a few days. Try standing up. Now, the trick-you okay?-the trick is to never put your weight on your armpits. The crutches go there, but your weight is on your arms and hands. Crutches move first, then your foot. Steady. Try it again."
"Where's Lloyd?"
"Let's go see."
Brendan darted down a hail. Jemmy followed. Crutches, right foot, crutches-he felt unstable. His knee hurt like fury. Brendan darted back.
"Lloyd Winslow? He's got your pack too."
Lloyd saw Jeremy come in and started to laugh.
The bus stopped in the middle of a block to let them off. Lloyd was chattering. "We thought we'd take you to Romanoff's for dinner tomorrow.
After twenty-seven years eating your own cooking? But it's eight blocks from Medical."
Jeremy's wife's father's second wife was Jeremy's age. She was dark with black kinky hair, white showing through now. Her beauty had refined itself. Why she'd married old Harold was something he had never asked.
She was too good for him.
Twenty-seven years ago the vision of Harlow standing in the doorway of Wave Rider had gone straight to his glandular system. He'd held himself polite and diffident, a pit chef looking for a job; but what had she seen in his eyes? He'd never asked.
Had Harold been relieved when Jeremy married Karen? Today. . . she was not much changed, but he knew what she saw from the dismay in her eyes. A young man grown old, fatigued and in pain.
"What on-? I think you'd better have the downstairs," she said.
"Used to be an office."
Harlow leased one quarter of a big two-story building of poured stone. The old office was big enough for a bureau and a big futon-big enough for Brenda and Lloyd, but they'd moved upstairs-and an old computer with a dark screen.
Anything he did to his left leg hurt.
He crawled down the crutches, maneuvering around the leg's rigidity until his back was on the futon. He didn't move again until Brenda woke him for dinner. Getting up again...
Could be worse. He might have lived as a cripple, forever waiting for his knee to heal.
Lloyd's laughter chopped off when Jeremy entered.. He said, "Sorry.
But they were going to look at your knee. You went away with a limp. Next thing, you're staggering in on crutches with your whole leg cased in concrete! It's everything I grew up knowing abput Medical. I shouldn't have laughed, Jer, but I hate that place."
"I share your pain."
Lloyd laughed wildly. "Well. You're here. Should we go home in the morning?"
This was the part-owner asking the pit chef: Is there anyone left to run the inn?Jeremy said, "We're empty. You could take another day or two."
"How's Mommy?" Brenda asked.
Jeremy took his seat. "Hanging on. Brave. Brenda, I don't know anything about Destiny Town medicine. You tell me. How is she?"
"I could lie to you?"
Only one answer to that. "Sure."
"Daddy, she got badly hurt. We're not wizards. Superskin is old settler magic, but it still has to grow on her."
He'd known she could die.
He couldn't speak of that. So: "Brenda, dear, how did they 'find'
my identity?"
"Ask Gran Harlow."
Harlow said, "I wrote it in. That computer you're sleeping with, it died before I moved in here, but one of my friends got it going. Brenda told me what to say. Are we likely to be caught in an inconsistency, Jeremy?"
"That story held up for twenty-seven years," he said.
They all seemed to be studying him: a sudden stranger. Harlow asked, "Was it supposed to?"
"What d'you. . . ?" Then he understood. "Harlow, I wasn't sure what I wanted. I needed refuge. I didn't know what was possible. Maybe I'd follow the Road the rest of the way to Destiny Town and see where Cavorite ended. Maybe I'd go home. Maybe there was a way to serve time in the Winds and come out as a citizen. I didn't know how to do any of that, but I thought I knew how to keep a restaurant and get some breathing space."
"So now you've seen Cavorite."
"Yes." He looked at Harlow in wonder. He hadn't known it, here in his bones, until now. "I've seen Cavorite. I've seen the end of the Road.
Harlow, thank you."
"Is that a big thing?"
"Harlow, what we learn is all wrong. We're told that the Twerdahl contingent got bored. Cavorite went off with all the wealth of the colony and was never heard from again, just like Argos. I followed the Road all the way down to the Neck, and I found it again in the Winds. Cavorite's crew saved Spiral Town. They set up the Windfarm and worked it to grow speckles. They set up the caravans to keep the speckles coming."
"They did more than that," Brenda said. "Ah?"
"Daddy, do they have teaching machines in Spiral Town?"
"Sure."
"There's a computer in Medical, in the library. Look up speckles, Daddy."
*29*
It's the Law
Cavorite calling Base One. We remain camped halfway along Haunted Bay.
We've found aquatic animals like little armored Volkswagons. They like to pull things. The 50~h0~t5' language seems to be mostly body language.
Most of us have nvum with them, and Parnelli has made a surfboard.
Will somebody please talk to me? Are you all right? It's been two months since I talked to anything but a damned recording.
-Oliver Carter, Ecology
Moving only her eyes, Karen watched Brenda help Jeremy into a chair. She said, "That limp's getting worse, isn't it? You should go to Medical."
Lloyd laughed himself into tears. They told Karen what had been done to his knee. They talked about Wave Rider, then about his first return to Destiny Town in twenty-seven years. Had he been to see his old home?
Under Brenda's censorious eye he told Karen, "I haven't been anywhere. The bus this morning was a nightmare. Lloyd and Brenda had to get me on and off. I don't think I want to visit anyplace before I heal a little."
"Not even Cavorite?"
Those first few years he'd talked of burning lights settling on the sea just out of sight; of space and Argos and Cavorite. Spaceport personnel ate at Wave Rider, but Harold didn't want the pit chef bothering them. In time he dropped the subject. But Karen remembered.
He said, "For Cavorite I'd walk on my hands. Would they let me in?"
"I don't know."
"Can just anyone get in there?"
Lloyd said, "Brenda went."
"Mustafa took me through," Brenda said. "Pilots get in. Mustafa came to visit while he was in training and I was at Wide Wade's, Daddy. I used to wonder why you never came. If you ask-" She caught herself.
Yes, he could ask his wife's son the shuttle pilot to guide his stepfather through the old lander. But it was a risk.
He gave Karen a hand massage, both hands, he and Brenda trading chairs. When he had put her to sleep, Brenda stood up. "When are you going to tell her?"
"When she isn't on drugs. When I figure out how to tell her about her sister Barda. When I think it won't kill her."
"Look up speckles. We'll see you at dinner."
He tracked down Dr. Nogales in a third floor office.
Rita Nogales
Surgery
Surgeon and Anesthesiologist
She was reading a computer screen. Jeremy told her, "Karen doesn't look good."
"Karen Winslow?" She tapped at a virtual keyboard. The configuration jumped: a torso with highlighted internal organs, then with highlighted patches of skin; a requisition form; a block of text. Nogales hadn't looked around. "You wouldn't look good either if you'd scalded seventy centimeters of skin off your body. Your wife?"
"That's right."
"We put superskin on. We wait. It's a life-form, you know. Human genes trimmed in some lab in Sol system to make it a universal donor.
Wonderful stuff." Now she looked up at him. "We wait. It attaches itself.
Eventually the patient gets up and goes home. There are old guys walking around with superskin faces and hands. Women too. You can just barely tell."
He knew her. Narrow head, narrow nose, yellow-brown skin, and Oriental eyes: handsome, but an impatient, angry woman.
He couldn't quite remember, and he couldn't just stare. "I know you've got her on drugs. Is she in a lot of pain?"
"Would be. She's taking Novabliss. With that in her she's happier than you are." Her eyes widened in shock. "No birdfucking allowed!"
Oh.
There being nowhere to run, he said, "It's the law."
"I didn't know you till you smiled. Jeremy. . . Jemmy."
"How's Dolores?"
"Died."
"Damn!"
"Igot pregnant. A man killed her after I wasn't there to protect her."
"Anyone I know?"
"No. I'll know him. Everyone comes to Medic~l sooner or later.
Winslow, like Barda? Married Barda's . . . sister?"
"Right."
"Clever. Jeremy, anyone could find out I served time in the Windfarm, but I don't call attention to it."
"Sounds good to me."
She was still studying him. "That's right, you're a Crab shy! How on Earth did you get here at all? Fake records. What's with the knee?"
He told her. She nodded, nodded, used her keyboard. "Okay, it says you're real, and your credit is midlevel. You can buy dinner but not a restaurant."
"Can I go to the library?"
"The computers see you as a surgery patient. You can use the library while you wait for a doctor. I'll take you away from Brendan, and I can't fit you in for. . . is six hours enough? Then I'll look you over and we can talk."
Lisa Schiavo was on duty in Reception and Recovery. Jeremy watched her for a bit. "Got your computer back?"
"Winslow. How's, ah, Karen?"
"Dr. Nogales won't make any promises."
<
br /> "She's good that way. I mean, I'm sorry it's bad news, but Nogales won't lie. How's the knee?"
"Dr. Nogaies wants to look it over later today. Doctor, is everyone here a doctor? Aren't there any nurses or aides or-?"
"Doctor means you're doing something to run a hospital. It's courtesy. Like in a restaurant, saying Herr'ober gets you someone who can bring you food or clean your table? It used to mean headwaiter. But patients get put on diets, so even the commissary chefs are doctors-Winslow, I've got to work."
"I'd like to wait in the library if you're not using it."
"Log on with your credit ident. Doctors get priority."
Up three floors. Lines of office doors along a corridor, all labeled, all closed. At the end of the hall, an open door.
LIBRARY
He found a dozen comfortable chairs and five screens. One wasn't working. Four were in use. One user looked wasted: his eyes had a glassy look. Patient. Three looked healthy and busy: doctors.
Jeremy sat down and waited placidly. He'd waited twenty-seven years.
The patient nodded off; rapped his forehead on the keyboard, jerked up to see gibberish. Staggered upright and went away.
Jeremy took his place. As his fingertips touched the keyboard, Jeremy's eyes stung with tears, abruptly, unexpectedly. The home he'd lost again and again was his at last. He was back in Spiral Town, eight years old again, and it was time for school.
All right. There were things he'd always wondered about. The teaching programs never had enough to satisfy him.
CRAB
There were hundreds of Earthlife varieties. Jeremy could pick one or two that resembled the Crab Peninsula.
OTTER
Earthlife: a mammal, streamlined, with bristly hair. It looked nothing at all like Otterfolk.
OTTE RFOLK
Kismet tegumentum lutrahomines, the first intelligent species ever found off Earth.
Otterfolk were curious about humans.
Cavorite's crew loved that. They ran their Road well above Otterfolk beaches for fear that those who came after would meddle. Jeremy found references to species gone extinct because they attracted human attention. But they'd done some meddling themselves.
They'd taught the Otterfolk how to cultivate Earthlife fish and crustacea, and traded them simple tools for fish. That was a success.
They'd set up a cooperative exploring team.