by Starhawk
Through the first wing now, and, yes, here was the first set of double doors. They were secured with an electronic hand plate, and she paused for a moment. The corridor was empty. Think, girl, think back to those long afternoons of practice in the electronics lab. The mind is an electrical field, that was what their instructor had said. The skin carries electrical currents that can be modified by thought. Madrone had never had a real talent for it, not like Zorah, who undoubtedly would have ended as a crystal programmer if she had survived. But I did it, Madrone thought. I learned to make the lights go on and off, and it got to be easy, just a blip in the current the mind can make, like now, like that, and push, and let it go, yes, no alarms going off, just a glitch on any monitoring screen so slight and fleeting that no one would tag it as anything but random interference. She was sweating.
Now this won’t do, she told herself. Deep breaths, calm. Cool. Close the pores. Walk on, step by step, another endless corridor. Stop the self-defeating thoughts, let the fear be—what was it Johanna used to say? Let the fear be a dandelion puff and blow it away. There. Wasn’t she descended from a long line of warriors? This was nothing. Piece of cake. Keep telling yourself that, girl, and yes, palm on the next doorway and blip, and through.
See, it was getting easy. Nothing to it. Now, don’t get overconfident, just steady. A doorway banged and white-coated men emerged wheeling a gurney where a shrouded figure moaned. They disappeared down the corridor. Madrone kept walking, only letting a slight tendril of her mind search the patterns of the prone figure. It was not Katy but someone else in torment, and Madrone withdrew with a sense of anguish and guilt. Somebody else I have failed and abandoned, who will be another bloody corpse to my credit someday. But I can’t save everybody, she thought. Only if we win, if we have the victory.…
And then what? A voice whispered. Will the Angels run the research labs? How gentle will be the hillboys’ revenge? She pushed that thought away. I can’t afford it now, she thought, and anyway, there is such a thing as justice, isn’t there? Besides, so far we don’t show any signs of winning. Push that thought away too, and open the third door, and yes, just as Marcia said, a red warning light over the second corridor, deep breath now as she turned, count the doors, one, two, three, four.…
The fifth door opened just as she reached it. Without breaking stride, she walked on, steady, don’t vary the pace, reabsorb that sweat before it shows. She heard voices behind her, and footsteps that followed hers. Walk on.
“We introduced X247 thirty-six hours ago and got a satisfactory fever developing, but so far that’s all. I can’t say we’re getting cooperation from the subject, but then we never do with the ones caught wild.”
“Yes, I prefer the bred strains myself, there’s much more consistency in the data.”
“But there’s value in observations on diverse populations, and then the deterrent effect presumably counts for something.”
“I don’t know, that’s a security matter. Anyway, she’s about due to pop, and then we’ll see some action.”
“I was looking forward to some off-duty time tonight.”
“Tough luck. I say we check her again in an hour. We want to observe every stage of progress.”
The end of the corridor was approaching, barred with another door. Diosa, if you love me, get me out of here. Let me stay in the Good Reality, keep El Mundo Malo far away. There was another door on her right, and she turned aside, placing her palm on the lock and opening it, while praying fervently that no one would be there on the other side. She slipped in, letting the doctors pass by. The room was empty. Praise the earth!
I’ve made good time so far, Madrone assured herself. I haven’t been stopped or caught or questioned. I’m almost there. I can afford to stop for five minutes, catch my breath, calm down. They said an hour. Maybe my suerte is running good today; five minutes earlier and I would have walked in on them. But there might be others. I just need to think for a moment. What am I prepared to do?
She was in a small room filled with shelves, binders, stacks of printouts, and humming computers. Some sort of record storage, she thought, and glanced down at the latest stack of printouts. At first they seemed to be simply strings of incomprehensible numbers and symbols and patterns, but as she looked harder, she began to recognize what they were—genetic patterns.
Santa Madre Tierra! she thought, could this be …? She flipped through the printouts, looking at the titles. It could. It was. A worm of revulsion wriggled down her spine. These were the experimental records, the genotypes of viruses and retroviruses and bacteria and spirochetes.
She had come to the Southlands looking for the boosters, hoping for clues to the epidemics. And here it was, a treasure trove of information, more than she could handle or absorb or carry off.
What could she do? If only she had more time! She wasn’t sure what system they were using and she didn’t dare touch the computers—who knew what hidden security alarms she might trigger? The printouts were heavy and bulky, and how many could she carry away? The data slugs? Yes, she could take them, but if the theft was discovered before she found Katy …?
What was more important, Katy’s life or this information? Maybe she should just destroy it—but no, that was bound to be discovered and anyway, they must have backups in other locations. She couldn’t stand here forever trying to make up her mind. At any moment, someone might return. Think, girl. Act.
Elegba, you trickster, God of the creative random act of chance, Mercury, God of thieves and communication, help me. Guide my hand to the right information. Protect me!
She grabbed a pocketful of metal slugs from the storage racks, replacing them with blanks she found in a box down below. From the bottom of the stack of printouts, she took half a hand’s thickness of papers, affixed it to her clipboard, straightened her cap, and cautiously emerged. The corridor was clear. Counting carefully, she made her way back to the doorway from which the men had emerged. Placing her hand on the lock, she entered.
She was in a long hallway, lined with a grid of cages and barred doors. Each cell was just large enough to hold a prone figure and a small waste disposal unit. The light was blinding. On the front of each cell hung a chart, similar to the one she carried on her clipboard. At the end of the corridor sat an armed guard.
Everything was clean, white, sterile, and yet filled with a stench, not so much physical but atmospheric, of terror and pain and horror. Like her own. Dear Goddess, what was she going to do now?
“Who are you? What do you want?” The guard challenged her, laser gun pointing at her heart.
“Oh, I’m sorry, didn’t Doctor inform you?” She attempted a sweet, ingratiating smile but suspected that what she achieved was more in the nature of a grimace. “I’m here to collect the primapara wilding female for transfer to surgical observation.”
“That one?” The guard gestured with his chin toward a cell halfway down the row.
“Let me just check the chart and see if the ID number corresponds,” she said, putting every ounce of glamour into her voice. Accept. Don’t question. This is normal.
“No doctors didn’t say nothin’ to me about this.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, in tones calculated to arouse subconscious resonances of doubt. Breathe. Walk. No sweat, no fear, voice warm with assurance. “Oh, I’m sure they must have told you. Maybe they forgot. Maybe you forgot.”
A quick glance at the chart. The facts fit Katy, but she couldn’t see well enough inside to identify who lay there. Damn, it was a lock needing a key—no electronics here. Damn and double damn.
“I’m sure they must have told you to unlock the door for me,” she said. She had matched his body language and the rhythm of his breathing, she was swaying ever so slightly and pitched her voice with its most hypnotic ring. He reached for the keys, pulled one out of the ring, but in looking down at it the spell was broken.
“Wait a minute, let me see your orders,” he said suspiciously.
Oh, shit, t
his was it. Live or die. “Here they are,” she said softly, and as he came closer and bent to look at her clipboard, she raised her arms and slammed the board into the side of his neck with a sudden jerk, in the sensitive spot that brings unconsciousness. He fell. She hoped he wasn’t dead, but she didn’t have time to find out. She grabbed the key, opened the lock, and entered.
At first she didn’t recognize the woman on the bed. Her hair was plastered back against her forehead, she was moaning and writhing, burning hot with fever and, yes, in early labor. But it was Katy. The same dark eyes, the same elegant cheeks now fine-drawn with pain. Her wrists were strapped down to the sides of the bed, and Madrone wondered how she would ever get her out. But looking closer, she realized the bed was actually a movable gurney. Praise the earth, for once this inhuman efficiency would serve some good end. She flung the cell door open and wheeled her out.
There were moans and cries coming from the other cells, but she couldn’t stop. Quickly, she propped the guard’s limp body back on his chair. He was alive and would be able to identify her when he came to, but if she wasn’t long gone by then it wouldn’t matter anyway. “I’m sorry,” she called, to the souls she was abandoning, to the universe at random, propped her clipboard on the gurney near Katy’s head, and wheeled her out.
Praise Hecate, praise Coatlicue, no one was in the corridor. When she thought of the whole long way back, she felt faint. Her heart was pounding now, she was still weak, and Goddess, I can’t go on with this, I can’t do it. But of course she would. Breathe. The slow, steady walk, step by step, back, and turn, forward to blip the door open, stick a foot in, and maneuver the gurney through. Out into the corridor.
Katy was thrashing and moaning. Madrone whispered to her, but she was delirious. This won’t work, Madrone thought, we can’t possibly get through all this without meeting anyone, and she was bound to attract attention. She pressed her fingers against Katy’s neck, in the spot her self-defense teacher had called the oblivion point. Katy sighed and went limp, unconscious.
Johanna, Madrone said silently, if I never thanked you for my widely varied education, I thank you now. She pulled the sheet over Katy’s head, and walked on, custodian of a corpse.
They were back to the first corridor when Katy began to come to. Madrone heard her moaning and pulled the sheet back. A writhing corpse would certainly attract attention. Maybe if she could just reduce the fever—right, you ninny, she told herself. You’re a healer, so heal. Because how the hell are you going to get her up the stairway, anyway, on this thing? There was an elevator down the hall but Madrone couldn’t bring herself to risk being trapped in a small box, with doctors and tecchies and who knows what able to observe them both closely. She pulled the gurney into the stairwell and placed her, clammy hand on Katy’s brow. Please, Great Mama, don’t let anyone come in here just now. Cold, cold water: she visualized flowing streams, ice pools high in the mountains, currents from the melting glaciers, flooding Katy with so much ch’i that Madrone felt drained, dizzy. Once again she had almost gone too far. Another stubborn fucking thing, this disease, whatever it was, but the fever abated slightly and Katy opened eyes that blinked into lucidity.
“Hush,” Madrone whispered. “I’m taking you out of here. Nod if you understand.”
Katy nodded, then bit her lip as a cramp rippled over her belly.
“I hate to ask you at a time like this, but do you think you can walk if I help you?”
Katy’s lips twisted but she didn’t say no, and Madrone unbuckled the restraints that held her arms and legs and helped her off the gurney. She was naked under the sheet, so Madrone wrapped it around her and supported her as she staggered forward.
“Weak,” she whispered.
“It’s okay. Lean on me.”
It was more than leaning, more like half carrying her, Madrone thought, as she maneuvered her up the stairs. Diosa, I’m never going to make it, I’m still weak myself from nearly drowning. But there’s no choice, is there? Just go, step by step, up and up again, don’t think about how many more are to come, and keep breathing. An old song sang itself in her head,
Step by step, we can climb the highest mountain,
Step by step.…
There were more words, but she couldn’t remember them. No matter, just that phrase, repeating itself endlessly, idiotically, somehow helped her. She was sweating and panting. The blood was pounding in her ears. Pull in ch’i, pour it into Katy, keep her alive, keep herself alive, find it somewhere in these sterile halls. Johanna, help. Papa, help. Yemaya, you seem so far away now. Up, and up again. One flight gone and then half of another. Halfway there. Don’t think about it, just the next step, or this one, or something else entirely. Rock climbing with Bird when they were teenagers, thinking she would cling forever to the side of that cliff, and somehow finding the strength to go up and up. Breathing. Here was air, there was nothing to stop her breathing. In, out. Up, lift. Another flight, only half a flight more to go now, and maybe she should stop and rest, her head pounding, but at any moment this grace of time could evaporate, and she still had to figure what to do when she reached the top. Five more steps. Four. Three. Two. One. Blessed be.
She tucked Katy into a corner. In the Good Reality, no one will come in here while I’m gone, and in the Next Best Reality, they won’t notice her behind this doorway. “Rest a moment,” she said. “Stay quiet, okay?”
Katy nodded again. Madrone wiped the sweat off her face, adjusted her cap down low on her forehead, steadied her breathing not to where she felt rested but to where she could control its pace, and went out.
How do I get her out of here? she thought. As a basket of laundry? Where do I find one, and why would I be taking it out-of-doors? In a wheelchair? Where do I get one? Down by the front entrance, somebody’s bound to be released eventually and why shouldn’t it be now? Yes, there was someone going out, now wait, and watch the procedure, oh, blessed holy mother of everything living—no guards, no forms, just wheeled straight out—and now, if my suerte holds, and no energetic types take the stairs instead of the elevators, and no one notices how I’ve slowed my pace down this corridor so as not to be lurking, and yes, here it comes, back in, now please, Mama, just help me pull this last one off.
“Oh, hey, thanks a heap,” she said, smiling and approaching the tech wheeling the empty chair. “Just what I need! Can I take it?” She blinked at him through her lashes, hoping she looked flirtatious and not simply grotesque. He grinned and winked at her.
“All yours, pretty mama.”
She winked back, hoping she didn’t reek of sweat and fear, and headed back down the hall. There was one more bad moment, when she had to leave the chair to rouse Katy, and guide her out into the corridor, praying that no one was passing to wonder why an obviously sick woman was emerging from the stairwell. But their luck held. Katy collapsed into the chair, and Madrone covered her with a sheet and the hospital blanket from the gurney.
“Try to look happy,” Madrone whispered, and wheeled on down the hall at a brisk but steady pace. Their time must be almost up. The trip up the stairwell had seemed to take an eternity, but even in objective time it had to be close to an hour or more since she had hidden from the doctors in the hallway. Had they returned to check on Katy? Oh, Goddess, let them linger over dinner, let them get drunk, let beautiful women seduce them for the night, let them choke on their food and die instantly of simultaneous heart failure. Yes, heart failure would be a poetically apt end. Breathe, now calm, now smile. Here is the entrance, with much coming and going, and with the last bit of ch’i you can muster up, wrap yourselves in the glamour that this is all entirely normal and expected, you are just wheeling a newly released patient to a waiting car, false labor, perhaps, nothing out of the ordinary, and, yes, there it was, the outside door, opening and closing, opening as in El Mundo Bueno it would open for them, automatically, normally, and yes, yes, with another breath, another step, they were going to make it, three more steps, two, one, pause, let the do
or open, and now, praise the earth, they were walking through.
As they passed through the doorway, the air was shattered with the shrieking of alarms.
Bells clanged, sirens screeched; behind them Madrone heard shouted commands and running feet. She didn’t stop to think but gripped the bars of Katy’s wheelchair and ran, ignoring the winding ramp and bouncing down the flight of shallow steps. A voice shouted out, and a warning beam of laser fire split the air above her head. She continued on. The drive seemed a million miles away. She could see a black car there, waiting. Was it the right car? By the time they crossed the fifty feet of cement walkway between here and there, they might be crossing to the realm of the ancestors. She was so tired she no longer cared very much, as she willed her feet to keep moving, dodging, running, as she called out silently for help.
Another warning shout came from behind. A shot went wild, blasting the ground five yards beyond them. Another shot, and a bush burst into flame. And then they were surrounded by a swarm of bees. The sisters, Madrone thought, and she was part of the humming, buzzing, circling mass, her whole being filled with the scents of alarm and rage. Katy cried out, and Madrone placed a hand on her shoulder, gathered her last strength to protect her, send a mantle of rightness over her, even as part of her felt the swarm urge to kill the wrongness, the sickness, end the disease.
“Not her, not her,” Madrone cried to them, but words were not the way to reach them, only smells and energies and images. They could smell the sickness in Katy, and it was stronger than the sense of danger from behind. She cried out again and covered her face with her hands.
“They’re stinging me,” she cried. “Make them stop!”
Madrone stopped running. Danger here, danger behind, but she needed a moment, no matter what it cost, just to stop, to breathe, to center. She threw herself over Katy, sheltering her with her body, trying to form the image, the scent, of the brood queen, she who must be protected at all cost, and behind them, back at the source of the stinging projectiles, danger, danger! She tried to remember the Melissa’s training. Breathe, form the image, smell the scent, and let it well up as a bead of sweat in the center of her forehead. Yes, there was a change now; she heard screams from behind and could vaguely make out, through the cloud of bees around her, forms swinging and swatting and dashing back behind the safety of closed doors. Thank you, sisters. You have bought us a precious moment of time with your deaths.