The Lion in Paradise

by Brindle, Nathan C.

  They got back into the ambulance, shut all the doors, and Don lifted her off smoothly, heading north.

  "Where we going?" inquired Devorah.

  "That little place in the Loop. The one at Clark and Lake."

  "Oh, the steak place."

  "Yep. The one we figure is owned by the mob, since it's still there and the gangs religiously leave it alone."

  "Works for me. I could do with steak and eggs. Elise, are you okay?"

  "I'm better," said the girl. "Just . . . probably not steak and eggs better." She smiled that wan smile again.

  "It's all right," said Devorah, kindly. "They have oatmeal and cereal and other breakfasty things. Porridge. I'm sure they'll have something that will quiet your tummy." She grinned.

  "Tea and dry toast is what I had in mind," murmured Elise, finally succumbing to the waning of the adrenaline rush, and closing her eyes. In a moment, she was snoring, lightly.

  "Is she okay?" asked Dan, from the front seat.

  "She'll be fine," replied Devorah. "She may be out of practice since high school, but she's got what it takes to succeed in this business – both in her EMT abilities, and in her willingness to take up arms in defense of the team. Gotta hand it to her, girl's got guts. I think she may have pulled the trigger before she had the gun lined up, but hitting him in the leg worked out just fine."

  "Dev, you know, she doesn't have your background or upbringing," cautioned the pilot.

  "Yeah, I know," yawned Devorah, stretching. "Maybe I should take her home on leave and let Grumpaw give her his Zen Marine marksmanship course."

  "I wouldn't mind taking that, myself."

  "What do you need it for? USMC Expert Marksman and all."

  "I'm out of practice, too. While it's like riding a bicycle, one still wobbles the first time one gets on, if it's been a bunch of years."

  Devorah laughed, and then looked down at herself, ruefully. "Good thing these suits are red," she grumbled, as she reached for a Hema-Kleen® towel and used it to wipe their last patient's blood off of her leathers. The towels used special nanos that ate hemoglobin and associated compounds, and made quick work of it. She tossed the towel in a recycle bin, pulled out another, and gently wiped off Elise's leathers as well. The girl just sort of murmured and wiggled a little like it was tickling her, but Devorah got her taken care of and tossed that towel into the recycle as well.

  Then she looked at the floor, and sighed. She picked up the mop they used for that, also with the same nanos, and started swabbing. No sense in tracking blood all over the sidewalk and into the restaurant. She figured they'd take a dim view of that.

  "Don," she said, "we'll have to pick up another gurney back at the shop, since the hospital didn't think to provide us with a replacement."

  "Already on it," the reply came back. "They said, not a problem, and they've located our gurney's beacon at Stroger and are sending someone over to pick it up. Or will, as soon as the helipad is cleared. The boss texted, 'Sorry you had to go through that, but good work. Patient is in surgery and they think he'll make it.' So I guess we still have jobs."

  Devorah nodded; the management team would already have pulled the video and audio from their vehicle and body cams, which were identical to the ones the cops used (it was just as dangerous, if not more so, to be a fireman as a cop in Chicago), and she had no doubt the m-team had already been over them a couple of times before sending them on to the department's lawyers for final liability clearance. "What's our ETA at the steak house?"

  "About ten minutes, there's a lot of air traffic over downtown today. Then I have to find somewhere to put down. Obviously not right in front of the place, they hate when ambulance crews do that."

  "Okay, and yeah, that would be a true faux pas."

  It was quiet for a few more minutes, as Don jockeyed the ambulance around, looking for a parking space. Then Don indicated he had a spot, and Devorah leaned across to Elise and shook her, gently.

  "Whazzat. Mom, it's okay Mom, I'm studying, just closed my eyes for a minute," mumbled Elise, as her eyes came slowly open. She did a double-take at her surroundings, then looked at Devorah. "Wow, that was some dream. How long was I out?"

  "Eh, ten minutes or so. I got everything cleaned up. Was easy without the gurney in the way."

  "Oh. Um, hand me a towel, and I'll—"

  "No worries. I cleaned you up, too."

  She looked down. "Wow. I didn't wake up?"

  Devorah laughed, lightly. "You stirred and mumbled a little, but that was it."

  "Oh." Elise blushed. "Sorry I called you 'mom'."

  "Hon, it's no big deal. I'm a hundred and four, and you're what? Thirty? I'm surprised half the EMTs don't call me 'mom'."

  "Twenty-eight, and wow, I'm glad I got my nanos at eighteen if you can still look like a twenty-year-old at a hundred and four, Dev," smiled Elise. "Gives me hope for the future."

  Now it was Devorah's turn to blush. "Elise, I halted my aging at something like thirty-five, so go on with your bad self if you think I look twenty."

  "It's probably the red hair," noted Don, from the front seat. The ambulance shuddered a bit, and was still. "We're down," he said, before Devorah could retort. "You've got room to raise the hatch, or you can use the side door."

  "We'll use the side door," said Devorah. "Oh, Elise, be a dear and open up Storage 3 again, and we'll just load these weapons back in after we safe them."

  Elise held up the S&W she'd never let go of. "Safe," she said, simply, and Devorah noted the safety was, indeed, set. The girl opened the storage locker and carefully placed the pistol inside, then accepted the safed M4 from Devorah and reverently placed it in its holder. "I think I need to learn more about shooting," she said, firmly.

  Devorah chuckled. "Don and I were talking about that," she replied. "I think I know how we can do that, if we take some time off together."

  "How?"

  "You know who my grandfather is, don't you? The one who has the lake estate in southern Indiana, where I live?"

  Elise's eyes got big. "You mean the Space Force Marines commandant?"

  "Yup. We can all take two weeks off, go down there, and take his shooting course while we also relax on the beach."

  "Devorah, that would be so cool!" said Elise, excitedly. "I've been thinking about joining up, to be a medic, and yes, I'd love to go down there and do all that and meet him, too!"

  Devorah laughed. "Well, then, we'll plan to do that when we can all take off together. For now, let's go get something to eat."

  They walked into the restaurant and sat down. It wasn't terribly busy at what Devorah realized with shock was after 3PM – no wonder I'm so hungry! – and they were able to order and be served quickly. While they ate, they caught up on news and other media on their holotabs.

  "Look at this," said Elise, "there was an earthquake in Iraq this morning; well, morning our time, around 11 o'clock. Says it was a 4.1 on the Richter scale, and it was about two miles down, but they have no idea what might have caused it; there are no faults in that area, at least not at that depth."

  "That's weird," agreed Don.

  "Where in Iraq?" asked Devorah, idly.

  "Near . . . hmm. Like, 60 miles east of Najaf?"

  "Huh. My sister Yehudit would say that was close to where Gilgamesh hung out. Larsa? I think that's the classical name of the area."

  "When was that?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Four thousand, forty-five hundred years ago?"

  "Wow." Elise looked stunned. "Your sister studies archaeology?"

  "Some. Mostly it's ancient cultures and languages, but she also has experience with antiquities – what we might call artifacts – and she's been on a number of digs, but she sort of stopped doing them about fifty, sixty years ago; I think she got bored with it."

  "What made her want to go into that?"

  Devorah shrugged. "Our grandmother, many, many years ago, wanted to do something similar. I think Yehudit caught the bug from her. That's our real grandmother,
by the way, not Grumpaw's wife Kat, who's our Bubbe," she added.

  "That's right, your mother came from that other timeline, where she had the same dad but a different mom."

  "Yep."

  "What's she like?"

  "My mother, or my grandmother?" smiled Devorah.

  "Your mother. I mean, a saint! That must be so cool, to be her daughter!" Elise looked a bit starry-eyed, and Devorah sighed.

  "You can rest assured," she said, "that my mother was – well, is – just like anyone else's mother. We had bedtimes, we had mealtimes, we had playtimes, we went to school, we had jobs, and we got punishments and timeouts when we misbehaved like everyone else. In fact, Mom had it pretty easy with us, because none of us were little at the same time. Yehudit was twenty-three and in graduate school when I was born, and my little sister Yael didn't come along till I was fifty-three. Only Raven and Delaney are closer than the rest of us, only ten years between them." She frowned. "That reminds me. Raven was on her way to Devlin's Strike, and was supposed to send me a relay message when she got there. I should have had it by now. Wonder what's up with that?"

  "Relay's probably just late," said Don.

  "Probably."

  "You can afford that?" whispered Elise, wide-eyed.

  Devorah rolled her eyes, but nodded. "Family corporation pays for it. In fact, I think the family corporation owns the relay company." She looked at Elise. "Sweetie, I don't have to work. I work because I'd go crazy if I didn't have something to do, and I actually enjoy being a paramedic. I tried hospital-based trauma surgery and decided I hated it, and got interested in the people who brought me patients, instead. Lived with a paramedic for about twenty years, till we got bored with each other; we still hook up every now and then, but there are other men and he knows it, just like I know he has other women. Bottom line, I just decided this was what I wanted to do with myself, at least at this point in my life."

  "Wow." Elise was all goggle-eyed again.

  Don laughed. "You're just digging yourself an even deeper legend to climb out of, Dev," he told her, grinning. "Elise, don't think you're going to be an EMT, or a paramedic if you go for that, or even a Space Force Marine medic if you go for that, for the entirety of your life. You'll get bored. You'll see something else that looks like fun, or is at least attractive, and possibly will get you out of a rut. Back before nanos, people used to work 30 years for the same company, and come out the other end retired but completely unfulfilled, because it was 30 years of wage slavery and 9 to 5 on the factory floor, or whatever." He paused for a sip of coffee. "I was Marine enlisted for 20 years, before they cut me loose because I didn't want to switch my digs to officer country," he went on. "That was before they understood how significantly nanos were going to affect society. Now they let enlisted stay on as enlisted for hitch after hitch, as long as they can continue to pass examinations and keep their skills up. They also have to do psych evals before every new enlistment, just to make sure it's really what they want to do and they aren't just hanging in because they don't know what else to do. All the services bought heavily into that around 2100 or so, because first of all they didn't want to lose good enlisted who really wanted to stick around because they loved the work and were proficient or better at it, and second they didn't want to turn into a dumping ground for people who couldn't imagine any other life and just tried to hang without really having a direction for themselves. The second type end up either suicidal or homicidal. And that's really bad for morale and PR." He took another sip.

  "How long ago were you a Marine?" asked Elise.

  "Before Space Force had Marines," answered Don. "I served at about the same time as Dev's granddad. We weren’t in the same battalion so we didn't serve together. In fact, I think he was out on his medical discharge before I'd re-upped the first time."

  Devorah raised an eyebrow. "You're nearly 300 years old?"

  "That's such a round number. Closer to 285."

  "Well, I—"

  Devorah never finished what she was saying.

  The ground rocked. A rumble grew and the building continued to tremble as the aliglass panes in the front windows popped out of their frames and landed on the sidewalk, unbroken. Devorah looked at Don, wide eyed, as she hung on tight to the booth seat she and Elise were sitting on. Elise was about this close to panicking, but managed to keep it together.

  Don was counting, eyes closed. The rumbling stopped, abruptly, and the ground stopped shaking.

  A cloud of dust blew past, down Clark Street, filling the front half of the restaurant with a choking haze, which almost as quickly was sucked back out as the gust front passed.

  Amid the coughing and crying for help, Don opened his eyes, and said, "Ten seconds. Came from north of the river. Not sure if it was a bomb or a meteorite, but my guess is a building was taken down. WTC North Tower took 11 seconds."

  "Shit. I hope some asshole didn't finally manage to take down the Trump Tower."

  "Let's see if we can work the immediate problem," said Don. "I'm going to go move the ambulance into that delivery space in front of the restaurant. You two do what you can in here. Unless we—"

  All three of their comms blared an alert, as their screens flashed red.

  "Callout," said Devorah, without expression. She looked at her screen as the others looked at theirs. They looked at each other.

  "Hancock Center?" asked Elise, unbelieving.

  "I don't believe this," said Devorah, equally shocked.

  Don, usually the imperturbable one, exclaimed, "It fell over? That's crazy!"

  "We can't help here," decided Devorah. "I hate it, but we have a contragravity ambulance. They need us on the scene."

  Don threw a GD$100 coin on the table to cover the bill and tip, and the three first responders headed out the door . . .

  . . . as usual, running straight toward the trouble everyone else was running away from.

  Chapter 4

  The Socialite

  "Yael!" cried the uniformed man, "what in the world are you doing on Mars?"

  "'S'cuse me," said Yael Wolff Fox, to the people she was walking with. "It's my Uncle Jack, we never get to see him." And she ran, heedless of propriety, down the ramp from the intrasystem liner she'd arrived in, and straight into the outstretched arms of her mother's half-brother, Jack Wolff.

  Well, sort of uncle. Sort of half-brother. It's complicated. But if Jack and her mother had been born in the same timeline, yeah, they'd be half-siblings – maybe – and Jack and Yael would be uncle and niece.

  Again, it's complicated.

  "Save me from these people," she whispered into his ear, as they embraced.

  "Shipboard companions driving you nuts?" he whispered back, grinning at her.

  "Oh my God, Jack, you have no idea."

  "Come on, come with me, I know a little place near here where we can get a drink and something to eat, and nobody will bother you."

  "I'm in." Yael turned around to face the group, smiled, shrugged, and pointed a thumb back at Jack. They all waved and made the universal "call me" sign.

  "You have no idea," she said, as she fell in with Jack and started walking, "how much a name means in this stupid world. I'm going to have to start traveling incognito. I mean, they find out I'm a member of a family so rich, its biggest creditor is the government and the government will never be able to charge it taxes again, even if the government could charge it taxes, and they get all squealy and clingy."

  "Whoa, whoa, slow down," laughed Jack. "Take a breath. So tell me – all young girls on their first interplanetary trip, I suppose? All about half your age?"

  "Well, sure," said Yael, with a frown. "I mean, I look like I'm their age, right?"

  "Don't worry, honey," soothed Jack, biting back a chuckle. "You'll always look their age."

  "Jack." Yael stopped dead in the passageway. Jack had to stop and turn around to look at her. "You think I'm just a silly little bit, right? A, a, what do they call it, a flibbertigibbet?"

&n
bsp; In all fairness, Jack sort of did, but that was mostly based on long-ago conversations with his father, his mother, and his half-sister – Yael's mother – and he was honest enough to recognize things might have changed. "No, honey," he reassured her. "I have heard that said about you, yes, but I haven't spent enough time around you in your life to form my own opinion. The fact is, you did recognize what kind of people those girls were, and you were able to get away from them. I have no doubt you'd have managed it even if I hadn't been standing right there to see you."

  Which of course I was, because Dad told me to keep an eye out for you, since I was ground-pounding TDY on Mars for a few weeks, while the Georgia refits. He sighed, inwardly.

  "Oh!" Yael looked surprised. "I thought the whole family thought I was just silly and would come to no good."

  "That's definitely not true of your Grumpaw and your Bubbe," said Jack, firmly, as he started walking again. "Or of me, and I strongly imagine your parents don't think that, either. Frankly, I doubt even your sisters really know enough about you to make that sort of judgement. The thing is, even in your fifties, these days, one is just starting out. And your youngest sister Devorah is fifty-three years older than you are, so it's not like any of you grew up together."

  Jack, himself, was two hundred and two this year, and his real sister Sarah was a hundred and thirty-three, so he had some experience in such matters. Other than the fact that his sister Sarah was a Space Force Marine, and had been since she turned 18, but . . .

  "Right? That's what I keep telling people. They want me to make up my mind about a career," she flashed air quotes around "career", "and I don't even know what I want to do with my life! So why not take a Grand Tour and see if something presents itself? Right?"

  "Sure, hon. Why not? Say, if you're still here in a couple of weeks, maybe you can take a ride with me on my ship. She's in port getting some work done, and we'll have to take her out on an in-system check ride. I can get permission to bring you aboard for that."