“Here, give me one.” Hank’s fingers gently pried back the edge of the wound, and Jackson dabbed away with a sponge.
Hank squeezed the vein shut. It was slippery as a wet noodle under his grip.
“Argh.”
They watched, holding their breath. Fluid was draining into Oscar, Newton saw it with some clarity when he looked up.
“Got it.” Hank pulled the vein, as big as a dime inside by the look of it, and secured the clamp about an inch and a half away from the cut.
The other tissues oozed blood, which kept pooling up in the gash, and Jackson found a hand pump and began sucking it out with a tube.
“Get that out of my way.” Hank pulled a length of the other end of the vein free and snapped a clamp securely on it.
He looked up at Newton Shapiro.
“We need to clean out that wound. We’ll sew the ends together, if your eyes are good enough.”
People crushed up against them, trying to keep Oscar immobilized. Newton hung on.
“I don’t think I can do it.” Hank blinked in the hot sunlight.
“Yes.”
Ensign Spaulding was pulling out packets with pre-loaded needles and sutures.
“Better you than me.” She handed one over and Newton knelt close.
“Move back, move back. I need some light on this.”
Hank steadied the ends with the forceps as best he could.
Brilliant light stabbed into the scene as Semanko held a pocket-flood on the work. Quickly, smoothly, and with his heart in his mouth but with total concentration, Lieutenant Newton Shapiro put a thread and a knot on one side, put a hole through the other side’s length of blood vessel, and pulled the two ends together.
“One knot at a time. Tie it off.”
Shapiro nodded. The knots went on the outside. No kinks.
Their deserter had some medical training. It was in the dossier. It was all he could think of. Other thoughts were too disturbing. He put a dozen stitches in, careful not to kink or buckle the vein. Every stitch took so long, and Oscar’s life was draining out of him.
Finally he had it. There were big knots and dark strings hanging out everywhere, it wasn’t pretty, but it was holding. He steeled himself for more.
“Glue.”
Someone gasped on the periphery, but Jackson poked a hole in the applicator and handed the tube over. He dropped down on the other side.
“Glue the stitches first, then one drop at a time. You don’t want to plug the vein or stick the sides together.”
The instructions called for a generous amount.
Newton glanced up at Hank, covered in gore up to the elbows, as was Shapiro himself.
“Get those clamps out of there.” Hank nodded and complied, but Newton didn’t have time to look up.
“Thank you.” He looked around. “We need accelerant.”
“All right, just keep going.” Hank’s hands shook a little.
He probably could have done it, but he’d forgotten that you didn’t have to thread the needles—it was already done for you.
“What’s next?”
“Disinfect, pull dirt and debris from the wound.” Hank leaned in and pointed at several specks, black now but most likely leaves and grass or bits of wood from the chain. “Glue one line as deep as you can get it, and then halfway up, putting a bead on both sides…”
Semanko waved the laser-disinfector, a hand-held machine, and the wound smoked lightly.
“Go back and do it again.”
Semanko complied, doing a thorough job of it. He still had a cigarette in his mouth.
Their deserter might have signed up at seventeen years of age, done a hitch or two in the Service, and then retired to Third World. It could happen. Newton couldn’t recall the planet of origin listed for their suspect. He sort of thought it was Earth, but he couldn’t be certain until he checked the file.
Jackson squirted the accelerant spray, the second component of the glue, and Shapiro’s eyes watered from the sting of the fumes. A drop of salt water fell on Oscar’s leg.
“It’s all right. Now a double row of glue and press the sides together.” Shapiro put the thin lines of the clear runny glue on raw, oozing flesh.
Hank grabbed the two chunks of hairy meat and pressed them together.
“Ten second should do it.” Finally Beveridge slumped down on his hams again.
“And that’s all there is to it.” There were hisses and hysterical giggles from the onlookers.
Newton grabbed more sutures and put in six big knots to keep the gash closed. Throwing that aside, he dabbed more glue in between the stitches.
Newton looked at Semanko.
“Can you bandage him up for me and get him on the truck?”
“Sure.” Semanko nodded. “I’ll need a stretcher and two people.”
Newton stood up and began issuing orders in a voice that shocked him as much as anybody, by its calmness, assurance, and ability to convey the proper information in the shortest possible time.
Within five minutes, Oscar was on the floor of the cab of Unit Two and there were again two parties of organized mayhem as they fought to clear a place to turn around in the low but dense thicket. They had to get their friend to a hospital as soon as humanly possible and lack of enthusiasm was no longer a problem.
Hank Beveridge stood by a water tank at the side of Unit One, thoroughly washing his hands and looking around at the dark forest on the side away from the work. Thoughtfully, he shook his head.
They wanted him, and they caught him.
Perhaps it was no more than a just fate.
They climbed aboard, a dozen voices and calls coming all at once, on-air and normal jabber.
“Barnes.”
“Yes, sir.” She was behind the wheel of Unit One for the next hour and a half, come what may.
“Take it slow and easy, all we want to do is turn around. The patient is stable and we’re ready to go. Roy. Hernandez.” He waited a half-second. “There’s no sense in having more problems or injuring someone else by being in a big hurry. We don’t want to smash the sump. Got it?”
“Yes, sir!” Kane.
“Yes, sir!” Hernandez.
There was a mere combat-click from Roy’s radio.
“Kane and Roy, I want you to guide her through and watch out for stumps.”
Two combat clicks came this time, as blue smoke belched from Unit One and the rear bumper dropped when Barnes let out the clutch at high revs but in low gear. The thing, arcing left and bumping over a small hummock, crunched inexorably into the brush, now unnaturally bright with the sky and the sun overhead.
He had decided to take the wheel of Unit Two himself, bumping somebody from her spot. She could go next.
Newton needed something to engage him fully, to help him get over the shakes.
Newton waited until they were back on the road and everyone was on the back again. They were heading in the opposite direction before he distracted them with more instructions. He thumbed the microphone key.
“Okay. We’re looking for a side-trail to the left, or south. It should be about six kilometres back…it looks like we go up a ridge or possibly an escarpment, going by the contour lines on the map…”
Behind him, Hank and the others, he had the barest idea of who was back there at this point, looked after the patient and mumbled and whispered amongst themselves in low tones.
***
Headed northwest again, the forest quickly gave way to short grass interspersed with clumps of low-growing weeds, the curving, picky vines that seemed to be similar to rhizomes, in that root clusters grew out wherever they touched the ground. It was the home of the reddish brush with kinked branches that never seemed to get more than two or three metres tall.
The smallest elevation change seemed to wreak big changes in the flora, perhaps the year-round rainy season and constant cool-to-moderate temperatures had something to do with it. The field opened up further, and then after fifteen hundred met
res or so, it began to incline downwards again and the taiga forest of brooding black spruce and leggy green balsam firs closed back in.
The smell even seemed to penetrate into the cab. Newton was studying the map when the vehicle ahead abruptly lurched to a halt. They were just climbing back up and towards what should be more rock ledges and open short-stem prairie.
Newton slammed on the brakes, shoved the clutch in and popped it out of gear. His headphones crackled, something that had been happening more and more often lately.
“Sir?”
“Yes?” It was Unit One.
Someone behind him gasped. An arm pointed, and down low to his right, on Screen Two, the feed from Unit One, there was a line of horsemen, stopped dead in the path and barring their way.
As his mouth dropped and he turned to take it in, a pair of riders, two males, dismounted and began walking towards the driver’s side of Unit One. A third person hurriedly dropped to the trail and another one grabbed the bridle of her fine bay, which had a blaze of white up the nose. He had an unfortunate impression that they were all armed with rifles and shotguns.
“Shit.”
He heard snatches of talk over the open pickup, and then he broke in.
“Send them back. I’ll speak with them. Stand by.”
“Roger that.”
With his heart beating a little faster, and reminding himself to suck in a little air once in a while and control his demeanor, Newton watched the left side of the trail and then they were right there heading for the driver’s side window. He took a good look as their heads passed directly below the bottom frame.
“Trooper. Let them in.”
Chapter Twenty
The First One Was Unarmed
They stopped just inside the door, staring at Oscar strapped to the back seats, help right there at hand, and then looking up and around with some new understanding in their faces. Then they moved closer in to Newton’s seat on the right.
The first one was a middle-aged man, slender and balding. He was unarmed. The second one, much older, would have put Oscar to shame in terms of physical size, and he had a revolver on his belt but it was secured with a thong over the back end. He had shoulders and biceps of such a size that Newton wondered how he got shirts to fit. The girl clambered up and in but was practically invisible back there to Newton, although their prisoner stared like a wild man, biting his lower lip and with the sheen of tears in his eyes again.
“I don’t have a lot of time. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Marty Voortmann. I’m the spiritual leader of Oak River, one of several that is. May we speak to Mister Beveridge?”
“What about?”
The big one’s eyes locked on Newton’s and a frozen shot of something like very strong liquor went up and down his spine.
“I’m Red.” The man had the calmest eyes Newton had seen on anyone in a very long time.
“And you, young lady?”
“I’m Polly Morgensen.” If looks could kill.
Newton Shapiro loved her at that moment, all on his own and for no reason he could ever explain. He kind of hated himself as much as they did, or certainly she did, at that that exact moment in time.
Hank’s sharp intake of breath presaged another loud sob.
“I’m Lieutenant Newton Shapiro of Her Majesty’s Ship Hermes.”
Marty spoke.
“We have made some arrangements on Hank’s behalf.”
Newton’s heart pounded in his chest. Shapiro inclined his head, as his own people held their breaths, and with strangely shining eyes hung on every word. The worst were the ones staring right at him.
“Ah…sure. Why not.”
“Hank…we’ve locked and shuttered your cabin. The animals are being well cared for…”
“Ahhh…” Hank Beveridge, unable to hold it in any longer, in a motion too quick for words, flung himself down in a fetal position and bawled like a baby.
All the while the pale face of the unconscious Oscar and the ghastly look on Trooper Hernandez’s face reminded Newton Shapiro that he didn’t have all day and that he had higher priorities, extremely pressing ones at that.
“We just want you to know the whole town is behind you and we’re all pulling for you, Hank.”
The preacher looked at Shapiro.
“I believe the young lady wishes to speak to him.”
Shapiro, embarrassed, looked at his own people.
“Non-essential people can go.” He engaged Hernandez in a look. “You can stay. She may not give him any, ah, objects, weapons, tools, a cake…anything like that.”
She nodded soberly as the cab cleared slowly, leaving just Hank, Oscar, the young lady and Hernandez.
“Five minutes. No more. We have a casualty.”
Polly Morgensen nodded, with a quick and contemptuous glance at Oscar. Not waiting for Shapiro to go, she went to him.
Wordlessly, Newton headed for the door and the two lovers clung to each other on the seat where Hank Beveridge was back under restraints, but that was the hell of regulations: going by the book wasn’t meant for comfort, it was meant to get results.
The two civilians were waiting on the ground, as if there might be one or two things more to discuss.
Shit.
***
When they found the first side-trail, which wasn’t entirely easy as there were so many parallel and angled paths, the vehicles were stopped again.
A pair of troopers, one from each unit, took their weapons for protection from big game animals and hurried down the trail. They were stopped two hundred metres in by a wall of the blue sponge-coral brush, a local name that was taxonomically-accepted in the official sense.
“All kinds of game paths in here, some man-made…”
“Thank you, keep going.”
“Ah, negative, sir, we’re stymied here…”
What made a decorative and quick-growing hedge on more affluent worlds was merely a nuisance on Third World.
Newton studied the map display, having switched for the passenger seat.
Rotating through the two units, with people officially on and off duty, this time Trooper Roy would be driving. He was at least competent.
Roy looked over.
“The next one’s only three, maybe four hundred metres.”
Shapiro keyed his radio microphone.
“All right. troopers, get back here on the double.”
“Roger that.”
The speaker overhead cracked with a signal from Unit Two, but it was distorted so much he had no idea what they said. He looked at Roy, and then back over his shoulder at a line of pale faces waiting in their seats for the ordeal to end.
The signal didn’t come again.
He had fresh bodies looking after Oscar, with Semanko prominent in the seat nearest the door, next to where the emergency medical kit was lashed down.
They were back in five minutes and the trucks moved on, with Shapiro cursing every delay. Oscar had regained consciousness, but promptly closed his eyes and his vital signs were very low.
They were jamming all the plasma into him that the human body could absorb, and the wound was leaking. The possibility of a blood-clot, or a chunk of plastic from the glue lodging in Oscar’s heart, lungs or brain, haunted Shapiro. The thoughts of opening it up again were not pleasant, but he could do it if he must.
The time dragged on interminably as Roy followed Unit One, keeping fifty metres back at all times for safety.
Unit One lurched to halt.
“Send a patrol.” Shapiro’s voice had a note of urgency.
“Roger that.”
According to the map, the terrain was ten metres higher here, although the slope was so gentle it was imperceptible. The delay was maddening as two soldiers dropped from the back of the vehicle ahead and Roy carefully eased in close and drew her to a halt. Rifles were handed down as Shapiro ground his jaws and said nothing.
At a quick trot, weapons held at the ready, the pair disappeared
into the brush. They watched the minutes roll by, with small talk in the back and Roy sticking a set of private ear-pieces in for whatever music he enjoyed.
Roy looked at him.
“I can hear everything over this.”
Shapiro nodded.
“Good.”
***
A full twenty minutes had passed before Shapiro decided to call them.
“Unit Two here. What’s it like?”
“It’s dry, and a bit soft in the ruts, there’s plenty of those. It seems to climb a bit, but the river must still be up there.”
The map showed that the land dropped back down again. This was most likely the second cross-trail, but one just never knew on Third World.
“Can you hear it?”
“Come back?”
“Can you hear the river?”
There was a pause.
“We’re not sure.”
Shapiro thought on that. It should be a kilometre and half by the map, if they were on the main road and not a side-branch, and if this was the turn-off they sought. Judging by the red dots on the tactical map, they were only four or five hundred metres in. Another God-damned judgment call.
“All right. Hold up where you are and wait for us.”
“Roger that.” The cheerful tone reminded Newton just how young and green some of his people were.
“And no horse-play. Got me?”
Their acknowledgement was equally cheerful, and about as equally reassuring to a very worried Newton Shapiro.
“You know, Lieutenant, I’ve been thinking…” The low rumble of a male voice from behind surprised him.
“Huh?” It was Beveridge, silent for the last hour or so since his lady and his neighbours had departed. “What?”
Mounting up and spurring their horses into a wall of low growth, it was like they just disappeared. Newton had a funny idea they were headed to Capital City rather than just going home.
Beveridge composed his thoughts as Shapiro patiently sought answers behind those tired eyes.
They would be within their legal rights to do that, show up in town or whatever, and it was also entirely possible that they might be ambushed, although Barnes said the talk between the prisoner and Polly had seemed pretty innocuous. She had admittedly found it romantic in the extreme and was taking more solicitous care of him when she could.
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