“So it is!” I used my right hand to rub from my shoulder down to my watch and back up again.
“Can you feel Merrimac?”
“Six pieces in the shipyard,” I answered immediately. “One just down the corridor in the bathroom.”
“And the Puca?”
I thought about it for a second. “No, I don’t feel them in the shipyard anymore. My friend Merrimac must have wiped them out.”
“Your “friend” left you to die. You would have too, if I hadn’t been here to stop you from killing yourself.”
“Yep, he was counting on you. The Puca thought Merrimac would leave the battle to protect me. The Puca aren’t very bright. What time is it?”
“06:30, almost. I can’t get enough sleep even with the day being two hours longer. How’s the wrist?”
“Better, I think.” I wiggled my fingers at her. “Still hurts, but not as much.”
“Do we need to go and cleanup dead Tarakana before someone finds them?”
“No, Merrimac took care of that.” My forehead wrinkled as I thought about it. “They, uh, they…recycled? No, that’s not the right word. They…”
“They ate them all. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“That’s it.” I smiled at her. She was exhausted and frustrated with me. “You’re very beautiful this morning, Winona Killdeer. I want to take a picture of you to send to Kal. He’ll love it.”
She yawned. “Damn Tarakana haze, making you all cheerful for no reason. I’ve been talking to Kal for the past hour. He agrees with you, for what it’s worth. Go take a shower and then we’ll eat some breakfast before getting back to reunification planning, OK?”
“That sounds excellent. I’m starving.” I walked to our door and put my hand on the keypad. Something was bothering me.
“Winn, why did you have that hypospray with you?”
“In case you screamed. Sam gave it to me before he left.”
“Oh.” I stepped out into the corridor.
Winona tossed me my robe and a towel. “Better take these with you.”
“Thanks.” I wrapped the robe around my bare shoulders and looked down at my feet. “Wow. Look what they left us.”
“If it’s part of a Tarakana, I don’t want to know about it.”
“No, it’s a green and white Union Express Service box. Your name is on it.”
“Ooh! Gimme, gimme.”
She hugged the forty-centimeter cardboard cube to her chest and rested her face against the top of it, breathing deeply. “I can smell her. My granma loves me.”
Merrimac was waiting for me outside the showers. He was in another form when I entered, something composed of more arms and legs than body. He shifted, his form melting and reforming into the big German Shepherd shape I was used to. “What was that other…thing? Do you make them up or was it from somewhere?” I knelt and put my forehead up against his.
“There are worlds you haven’t yet seen, and creatures with so much beauty for us to share. You’ve done well, Little Soul.”
My stomach twinged.
“And your daughter is perfect.”
“I thought I would have a son,” I whispered.
“You will. He will need his sister many times if he is to survive. She had to come first.”
“Oh, of course.” I could see it briefly illuminated in the group mind before it slipped away and no longer made sense to me. “And my Samuel?”
“See for yourself.”
It was like watching a spider web of cracks spread through a block of glass, each fissure both real and impossible. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t see it? A pity. You will need to live it in order to see it, one slow moment at a time.” It made him sad for me.
“And what about Winona, and Kal, and…” I rocked forward on my knees and realized I was talking to myself. Merrimac was gone.
Winona had everything unpacked by the time I got back from the bathroom. “I’m ready,” she informed me. “She even sent old-style matches.”
“I’m still dripping, Winn, give me a moment.”
“Damen,” she said to the ceiling, “I’m about to make some smoke. It’s nothing to worry about so please don’t set off any alarms.”
“Smoking is prohibited in the habitat sections of Hoog Schelde,” came the response from the shipyard AI.
“No, I’m not smoking, I’m just lighting something on fire that’s going to make smoke.”
“Lighting fires in the shipyard is prohibited.”
She sighed. “It’s like incense. No flame, no risk, just lots of smell and some smoke.”
“Activities that produce strong odors, such as cooking certain foods, are prohibited.”
She glanced at me while I finished towel drying my hair. “I’m not getting through to him. You want to try?”
“Damen, look up sage as it relates to the practice of a ritual called smudging.”
“I have that information available. Religious ceremonies involving ‘props’ are restricted to one of the three on-site chapels. I can reserve a time for you at the nearest one if you like.”
I shrugged. “Let’s just do it on the Esprit Orageux. I have to go there twice a day anyway.”
“I know you do, but I don’t. It’s a forty-minute walk there and back.”
“But we get to walk past slipway number three. There’s a new Sigma-class frigate in there that was just laid down last month. I looked up the specs. She’ll be a sweet ship. They based the AI on the same core code as their current FACs. Lots of potential for upgrades and customizations.”
“So that’s why it took almost three hours yesterday to have Storm clean your wrist and to run your daily system checks. You spent half of it staring at a ship.”
I blushed. “I met the chief designer, Ingenieur Erich Schatzki, there yesterday morning. I was leaning on the railing, watching the hull sections coming together, and he was doing the same thing. We got to talking and he gave me a tour.”
“You were playing while I was trying to resolve how to install thousands of sensors all over Oranjestad to watch and listen to everyone all day and night, like Gerbrandij wants, while still guaranteeing individuals the right to travel freely and say whatever they damn well please, like Captain Rostron is demanding. Seriously, Duse?”
“I’m sorry. Come with me this morning to keep me on track and we’ll do the smudging while we’re there.”
“I’m going to shove you right over that railing if you so much as slow down while we pass.”
Storm directed us to the Sim Lab after she finished with my arm. “I have additional ventilation available in that space and what you are proposing is not the strangest thing to have ever occurred there. That was the beach party eighteen months ago. Never again, that’s what the Captain said.”
Winona unpacked the box, placed the wrapped sage leaves into a shell and dropped the feather next to it. “Turkey feather,” she told me, “representing the air. Abalone shell for water, smudge stick made from sage and sweet grass coming from the earth.”
“Do I need to wear anything special? Or not wear something?”
“You’re fine as you are.”
“No special words?”
“Nothing specific. Pray to God for healing and the cleansing of all that is impure in your body and soul. Ask Him to heal you, welcome His power, welcome the medicine that Storm has placed into your body and thank it for the healing it is doing. That is the way my granma told it to me.”
“OK. I’m ready.”
Winona lit a match and touched the flame to the end of the smudge stick, using the feather to fan it. “Never blow on the smudge stick or you risk contaminating it with whatever negative energy you are trying to cleanse. Use the feather to move the air and the smoke.”
“Should I close my eyes?
”
“Only if the smoke bothers you. We’ll start with your feet and work up your front side, then turn and I’ll do your back.”
Winona bathed me in smoke while I prayed. It only took a couple of minutes. “Now you do me.”
She gave me the shell and I wafted the smoke over her while she stood with her arms at her sides. I gave the shell back to her when I had finished and she snuffed the smudge stick out. “That’s it. We’ll do this again tonight and then every day until you’re healed.”
“Thanks. I liked that. The smell is like camping in the desert.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I feel good today.”
“Maybe you’ll be able to actually help me do some planning. I’m curious to see if the tension in this afternoon’s meeting is any less with all of the local Puca having been slaughtered.”
“We can hope. If it’s not, let’s smudge the lot of them.”
“How were the negotiations today?”
Sam’s face already filled the display pad I had propped on my stomach, but I kept adjusting it anyway, trying to get closer to him. I fluffed the pillow behind my head and sighed. “Weird, as usual, although it’s been better for the last three days without the Puca around. Our Captain and the Colonel always put on a great show. I thought he was going to slap her across the face this afternoon when she refused to allow shipyard personnel access to Esprit Orageux for a standard safety inspection. Every yard I’ve ever heard of requires an inspection before a ship can dock, and we’re already been tied down for a week without one. He yelled, then she yelled, and now guess who’s an official employee of the Hoog Schelde shipyard, certified to conduct safety inspections.”
“My Mala Dusa?”
“Your Mala Dusa.” I held my new credentials up to the display for him to admire.
“What happened after that?”
“Oh, after that everything was fine. They were back to, ‘Pieter, you really must try this dessert,’ and, ‘Marguerite, you should have seen Oranjestad before the war, it had the best entertainment district in the Union.’ It’s just weird how they can repeat that cycle two or three times every afternoon.”
“Your strategic planning with Winona is going well?”
“Sort of. It’s still the same pattern. We take inputs from the senior officers in the afternoon and spend all night and the next morning trying to turn them into internally consistent, workable actions. It would be easier if all of their ideas made sense and didn’t contradict each other. Colonel Gerbrandij at least seems to have a vision of what he wants to do.”
“You like him, don’t you.”
“I do. He’s in a nearly impossible situation, but he’s still able to keep a sense of humor about it. He respects me and the work I do. It was his idea to make me an employee of the Yards so I could be responsible for doing the inspections on Esprit Orageux. Winn doesn’t trust him, though, and neither does Captain Rostron.”
“You shouldn’t either. One of the doctors, Langstroth, grew up here. He calls Gerbrandij ‘The Chameleon’. He said that you should watch yourself around him. Gerbrandij was assistant director of the Kastanje Home Collective’s Internal Security Division until the surrender. A few years ago, before the Collective seized power, he worked as the KDF’s liaison to the Senate. He was a good Union patriot right up to the moment that he wasn’t. He always seems to know when to switch sides and move up the ladder.”
“That doesn’t sound like the man I sit across from every afternoon.”
“He knows how to play you. You like him because he shows you respect. He laughs at your jokes and provides the praise Captain Rostron withholds from you. Don’t let him drive that wedge, MD.”
I frowned, not accepting the idea that he was manipulating me so easily. “I don’t think he’s doing very well playing the Captain. She hates him most of the time.”
“He knows what he’s doing. The Captain doesn’t respond the way you do. Think about it. She’s shown you more respect every time you’ve defied her and then come back into the fold. When she and Gerbrandij lock horns and tussle, she comes out of it respecting him a little more each time. They might not ever be friends, but he’s building trust and she’ll be willing to negotiate almost anything with him.”
“That’s frightening. I’m not sure I believe it. What about Winona?”
“What does she do when you’re in those meetings?”
“She presents objective data and analyses to the Captain, along with our updates for the plans we’ve been building. Mostly she stares at the Colonel not saying anything.”
“I suspect she’s a mystery to him. She’s a mystery to most people.” He frowned, and I could feel the worry in him across the thousands of kilometers separating us. “You need to take care of her, Mala Dusa. If Gerbrandij is really the person Doctor Langstroth says he is, he might try to eliminate Winona. If he sees her as a threat, or even if he thinks he can’t control her, he might kill her.”
I shook my head. “Your friend has to be wrong. Colonel Gerbrandij’s focus is reunification. I can’t imagine him flipping sides and betraying us. You haven’t been in the meetings with him. It’s not possible.”
“OK. I hope you’re right. Tell Winona what I told you, and promise me that both of you will be careful up there.”
“I will. And look.” I put my left arm up next to the display. “The scars are starting to fade. Even Storm thinks I’m going to keep my arm.”
“Smudging?”
“That’s right. Every night before bed. We have to go back to the Orageux to do it so the smoke doesn’t set off any alarms here. After the smudging we turn up the heat in the Sim Lab and sweat for a half hour.”
“I’m not going to argue the science with you. If it works, it works. You don’t think it has more to do with Merrimac killing all of the pieces of the Puca colony that were at the shipyard?”
“That might have helped, but the Puca are still powerful on Kastanje. I can feel them sometimes even from here. I think it’s the smudging and the prayer that’s healing me. And Storm. She’s refined the treatments she giving me.”
“Tell me about the sweating. Winona guides you through the sweat lodge purification?”
“No, she says she’s not qualified to do an I-ni-pi ceremony. That takes years of training and apprenticeship. I don’t think doing it in a Sim Lab would be right either, so we just sit with the temperature cranked up to forty-five and pray together and talk, like in a sauna. I’ll send you a video of us doing the smudging, but not the sweating. We don’t wear much in there.”
“Thanks. I’d like to see it. Especially the sweating part.”
“I bet you would. Smoke, prayer, faith, and sweat. You should try it.”
“Next time we’re together.”
“When will that be?”
“Don’t know where, don’t know when.”
“You always say that.”
“I do? Oh, I almost forgot. I think I saw your mom today. I was eating lunch at the sidewalk café just up the street from the hospital and she walked right by me.”
“You were eating outside? Unprotected?”
“It’s not that bad here. Really.”
I wasn’t convinced. “What did she look like?”
“She had her face covered, but that’s not unusual with all the sensors being set up. The people here don’t want to be watched, whether by the human monitors the Collective used, or by the AI system we’re helping set up. I didn’t see her face, but you know the way she walks.”
“Fast and purposeful, like she has somewhere to be.”
“Exactly. I’m sure it was her.”
“Did she look at you?”
“No, I don’t think she saw me. She just hustled right by.”
“Mom always sees everything, even things you don’t want her to see. Sam, don’t eat there again, OK? Promise me
.”
He sighed. “It’s safe, MD. I always have other staff from the hospital with me and this district is almost back to normal. People go out at night drinking and dancing. It’s returning to normal and people are happy.”
“Who are you dancing with?”
“What?”
“You said people go out dancing. Are you dancing? I feel you blocking me sometimes, even though you promised me you wouldn’t.”
“I’m not dancing. How could I without you here? I stay at the hospital after dark. If I’m blocking you it’s because I’m trying to block myself from feeling the pain of some of the things I see here. There was a woman last night who’d come down from one of the mining areas north of the city with a baby that hadn’t had anything to eat in three days. There wasn’t much I could do with the OB/GYN and neonatal AIs still down. It’s like being thrown three or four hundred years into the past. That must be what you’re feeling.”
My chest ached because I knew he was lying. I had felt it when he’d treated the woman and her baby. The blocking had come later. “OK. Just be careful when you dance. Some of those women might have dresses like the one I got from Costrano. It will make them hard to resist.”
His eyes looked a little brighter. So blue. “It’s stupid, but I kind of wish we’d found a way to save that dress.”
I blushed and nodded. “I miss it too. I know it’s an addictive response, but…I miss it.” I looked away from him.
“We’ll go dancing when you come to visit me. I don’t think we’ll need the dress.”
I felt his love. Maybe he wasn’t going dancing without me after all. I looked back into his eyes. No, he was definitely doing something and blocking me while he was doing it. What was that Corporal’s name that was part of his team? Kim. Kim Hyun-Ok. She was pretty, not a skinny stick girl like me. She had curves and strong muscles. Small team, dangerous situation, shared struggle over long hours; how could I blame him for being attracted to her? And how could I blame any woman for finding my Sam attractive?
“It’s all right, Sam.” I wiped my eyes. “You can dance with her all you want.”
Wandering Storm Page 23