Daniels settled into a chair. “So could I.”
She took another sip of the willow bark water before asking. “Well 'pressing concerns' doesn't sound like good news, but if it's all you have, let's hear it.”
Daniels scratched his cheek. “there's no good way to say this. I think something's wrong with Xander.”
Her eyebrows shot up at that. “Wrong? Like what?”
Now it was his turn to sigh. “I don't know for sure. But he's gotten less willing to come by to see me. He used to drop by every month or two and let me check him for any developing problems. And it's gotten worse since I got the see-through.”
“The what?”
He ran his fingers through thinning hair. “You don't know about that?” He rubbed his chin. “It would be easier to show you than to explain it, especially since I don't completely understand it myself. Can you take a break from what you're doing and come to the clinic?”
Finally, a question she could answer without thinking about it! “I'd love to,” she said, and pushed her chair back to stand up. “Lead the way.”
As she followed him on the stairs, Daniels used the time to begin explaining. “Remember when Xander got shot with a crossbow and barely made it back here alive?”
“I'd rather not, but yes.”
“He was lucky that time.”
“Since when is an arrow through the chest lucky?”
“Well, when it misses your heart and other major organs and just punches through a lung, I'd call it pretty lucky. The lung collapsed and was filling with blood and fluid, so I had to suck that out with a swizzle, and then reverse the swizzle to shove air in and re-inflate the lung. But that's not really what I meant by lucky.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“What I really meant was, he was lucky that the arrow point came out his front, so he could snap it off and pull the shaft out of his back. The shooter must have been close to him for it to go right through like that.”
She felt impatience rising. “I still don't see how it was lucky.”
“Well, suppose the shooter had been farther away, and the arrow had only gone halfway through him. He could still have broken it and pulled most of it out of his back.”
She gritted her teeth but held her temper. Snapping at Daniels would not make him a better doctor. “And?”
“And then I would have had to cut into him to get the arrowhead out. The cleanest way would be from the front, because the way those arrows are barbed it would tear a lot of tissue out with it if I tried to pull it out from the back.” They reached his floor and Daniels held the door open for her.
“But that would have been almost as dangerous as leaving it in him! Going in blind, I might cut major blood vessels or other things.”
“How did the doctors of the Ancients do it?”
“They had something called an XRAY machine,” he said. “You've heard about their photographs, I assume? Well this machine could take pictures of the insides of things, using a special kind of light called x-rays that could penetrate tissue.”
“You're losing me.”
“Have you ever candled an egg?”
She nodded.
“Well, it's kind of like that. The x-rays could go through soft tissue easily, but you could get a sort of shadow of the harder stuff like bones. Like candling a body. With an egg you use a candle and a dark room. The XRAY machine produced a bright burst of x-rays that go through the body like the candle light goes through an egg.”
“I see. And the problem was you didn't have one of those machines? I could get my men to hunt through the remains of hospitals for you. They might be able to find you an undamaged one.”
“No,” he said, leading her over to something that looked like a freestanding full-body mirror, except there was no glass in the frame. “That wouldn't do me any good, because those machines needed the electricity of the Ancients to power them. And besides, x-rays, from what I've read, can cause their own kinds of damage. They can alter molecules inside cells and cause mutations, or even cancer. But it's alright, because now I have something just as good, and maybe even better.” He gestured at the tall oval hoop of metal on its stand. The light from several oil lamps in the clinic gleamed off the brass.
She peered at it. “And what is this?"
“The see-through. Lester made it for me, based on something he discovered while he was in prison in Dallas.”
“Looks like a mirror with the glass missing."
“It was. One of your scavenging parties found it for us. It hadn't survived the chaos of the Fall, but that was alright. We only needed the metal anyway.
“When Lester was in Dallas, he found a way to use his pathspace to bend light from outside around the walls of the prison so he could see outside.”
She shook her head. “Makes no sense. “You can go around a pole, sure, and around a wall standing by itself. But no one can go around a wall joined to other walls. That's why we have doors.”
Daniels scratched his cheek again. “That's what I thought. But it turns out that there are directions we can't see, and you can actually use them to go around a plane in four-space, the same way you can swing around a pole in three-space.”
She frowned. “Your explanation is not helping so far.”
Daniels shrugged. “As I said, it's easier to just show you.” And he walked around to the other side of the mirror frame.
What the hell? His skin had disappeared. She could see muscles and tendons on his arms as if the man had been skinned alive. It was sickening.
Daniels took a step forward. To Kristana, it was as if the flayer that had removed the man's skin had decided to keep going. Flesh melted off Daniels and she saw bones where his arms and legs had been. She caught a glimpse of his rib cage, and then it became transparent and she could see his heart beating and his lungs pumping like a slow-motion bellows.
The nausea rose and she had to look away before it made her vomit. Kristana closed her eyes and tried to fight the urge to lose her dinner. Then she felt a hand on her arm.
“I'm sorry,” said Daniels. “I forgot you're not a doctor. Or a butcher. Here, sit down and breathe slowly for a minute. Put your head between your knees for a bit. It'll help keep you from fainting.”
After a minute she opened her eyes. “That was nothing like candling an egg,” she complained.
“It's a lot to take in,” he said. “I guess I should have warned you.”
“And the Ancients had things like this?”
“Not as far as I know. They used x-rays instead. But this is much better! An x-ray photograph is a picture done all in gray, and frozen in time. But this is in full color, and includes motion. You saw my heart beating.”
“Don't remind me,” she said, straightening up in the chair. “And this was Lester's idea?”
“Yes. I was talking to him about how hard it is to know what's wrong with someone when all I see is the outside of their body, and he had an epiphany. He realized that if he could bend light to see out of a cell, he could also bend it to see inside things. And he could anchor the pathspace weave in a piece of metal, so I could see inside things when he wasn't around.”
“But don't you find all that...that imagery distracting?”
“It is tempting to look at everything,” he admitted. “He's going to make me a smaller see-through I can hang down in front of my eyes from a kind of hat. That way I can see inside a particular part of the body instead of the whole thing. But think of the applications!” His eyes were bright. “I can monitor the development of a baby without hurting the mother. I can see exactly where an arm or leg or rib is broken, instead of guessing.”
And I could see if a person or a wagon had concealed weapons, she thought. She stood up. “You said earlier that Xander has been avoiding you more since you got this from Lester?”
“Yes, and it worries me.” Daniels frowned. “It's almost as if he knows there's something wrong and he doesn't want me to see it.”
“B
ut that's crazy! Why wouldn't he want you to see it?”
Daniels looked down at the clinic floor, then raised his head to meet her gaze. “Only two reasons that I can think of,” he said. “He doesn't think I can do anything to help him...and he doesn't want to worry you.”
Chapter 21
Xander: Rage Against The Dying of The Light
“Never, never, never give up.”
– Winston Churchill
He set down the ancient medical textbook and rubbed his eyes. There is always more than one explanation for things we observe. But the book didn't hold any good news for him, not with his symptoms. The probable explanation was one of the scariest words in the English language.
He looked out his window at the darkening sky. A single crow flew by, probably looking for twilight insects. The crow had no worries. It had no concept of lifespan or disease or death.
He himself was not so fortunate. He closed the book and forced himself to stand up and slip it back into its place on the bookshelf. Let it not be so! I need more time, dammit! There is still so much to do.
The trade agreement with New Israel and the Emirates should keep the East stable for the time being. With any luck both countries would decide to join Kristana's Union of States.
Her Union might need to be renamed, of course. Not everyone remembered that 'the State' was the old term for a nation or a national government (which was why politicians and diplomats were called statesmen) so maybe she should start calling her Union something like the Union of Nations instead. Too many Americans might think it was demeaning for a country like the Lone Star Empire or Cali to be demoted to a mere 'state' even though the original country used to be called the United States. No, Union of Nations might be a far better name. He made a note to mention it to the next chance he got.
The thought of the Lone Star Empire started another chain of thoughts. The East was stable, but the South wasn't. With the Honcho Jeffrey deposed, there would be civil war in Texas if they didn't pick a new strongman, and soon. But if they did, one of the first things a new ruler was likely to do was attack Rado again. Nothing unifies a population behind a leader like a war.
But war was the last thing they needed! If Texas committed resources to invading Rado, with a massive conventional army this time instead of a group of restored tanks, that would leave them with fewer troops to defend their other borders. And that would tempt Zona or the Emirates to try to bite off part of the Empire...which would only spread the destabilization.
And if the Texans came to Rado, what then? Would his new crop of wizards, still green and unblooded, be ready to become human weapons? Could he even ask Esteban to fight fellow Texans? Carolyn and Nathan might be too kindhearted to kill the way Lester had. The cold-blooded way Lester had dealt with Brutus Glock had been a bit of a shock, but he couldn't blame the boy, now that he knew the whole story. But Carolyn had no personal grudge to settle. It might be hard for her or the youngest graduate to actually kill soldiers. And it might be deadly for them if they couldn't, because whatever else you might say about Texans, they weren't afraid of fighting and killing.
It was a bad time for Lobsang to be going back to Cali to face the Queen of Angeles. Knowing the lad feared for his family, Xander had not been able to bring himself to forbid him to leave. Hell, he'd even provided him with a vehicle to drive there! But it was still a bad time for him to go, and not just because the boy might not be tough enough yet to survive against Queen Rochelle. When the Texans came, they would be needing every wizard they had. Even one more or one less might be enough to make a difference one way or another.
I need more time!
But his mind answered itself: you only get the time you get. Make it count.
He sat down, then stood up again, restless. He moved toward the coldbox to see if there was another bottle of cider left, but a fit of coughing seized him before he could get there. Xander leaned against the wall as the paroxysm wracked his body with pain. Coughing he was used to, but now it wasn't just coughing to relieve a tickle in his throat. It was surges of unstoppable contractions that made his upper chest burn.
After a brief eternity of pain the fit passed. He staggered to the coldbox, wrenched the door open and seized the last bottle. As he pulled the cork and lifted it to gulp a swallow of blessedly cool sweet cider, a scrap of old poetry came to him:
“...But life is sweet, even the dregs
that we sip from a cracked cup
with shaking fingers. Even the dregs
are better than the empty cup that awaits us all
at the end of the bender...”
Well the cider was sweet, at least. But it didn't soothe the pain completely, because some of it was in his chest, not his throat.
Was life sweet? He remembered the good old days following the General around from town to town, looking for artifacts and admiring Kristana from a distance. Good times, but not as sweet, surely, as now when he had the solace of her love. But even that thought had its dark underside, as it brought back the guilt of that day when he'd been watching her, and had missed that one rebel in the crowd, had missed his one chance to use pathspace to deflect the shot that doomed the General.
One careless moment had allowed Roberto's fatal wounding. One covetous look had missed the danger, had failed his leader, and, ironically, had led to Xander's finally being able to hold the woman he loved. If I'd only been more alert, he'd still be here...and I'd still be there, the weirdo scuttling in his shadow instead of consoling his widow.
But then, also, Aria would not exist. In nearly twenty years of marriage Kristana had never been pregnant even once. Apparently, though, that wasn't her fault, since she'd had no trouble conceiving with Xander. If Roberto had survived the shooting, she might never have had a child. But was that something to take comfort in? I failed my Governor, and then slept with his widow. Was missing that arrow really an accident?
Stop whining, you old fool. Deal with what is, not with what we might want to be.
Chapter 22
Kareef: Head Banging
“Everyone is rewarded for the effort one makes.”
– Quran 20:15
He frowned at the metal sphere. How did Xander expect any of them to figure out an artifact he hadn't been able to solve himself? The idea that they could even have a clue was laughable. Look at it. Featureless. No controls, no markings. Nothing but a metal sphere with a blue sheen.
“Did you say goodbye to Kaleb yet? I mean Lobsang. I hear he's leaving early tomorrow morning.”
He glanced up at Nathan and shook his head. “I must have missed him. If you want to, I heard he's going down to the stables to put his things in the vehicle. He might even sleep down there.”
Nathan stared at him. “Don't you care that he might not be coming back?” He sat down on his own bed. “You're not still blaming him for the whole mess the Queen made by controlling him through that ring, are you?”
Kareef looked down at the sphere in his hand again. “Maybe we're better off without him. He nearly killed three of us. If Esteban hadn't grabbed your ankles, you and I would be dead at the bottom of the elevator shaft.”
“But you know that wasn't his fault! She had him hypnotized.”
“Only because he put the damn ring on.”
“Oh come on! She has his family. The first time he tried it on was just to report that he'd gotten here safely. That time, or the next, she must have inducted him into trance and installed a command to slip the ring on every time he went to bed. He probably was putting it on every night without even remembering he was doing it.”
Kareef didn't look up. “Knowing that doesn't change the fact that Kurt's dead,” he said quietly. “And if the troops downstairs knew what really happened, they'd be demanding that we all be thrown out, too. His mission was to destroy the school, and he very nearly succeeded.”
“Xander would never let them throw us out,” said Nathan. He looked like he was trying to believe it.
“He's wait
ed half a lifetime to start this school, from what I've heard,” Kareef told him. “I'll bet he'd wait another year and start over, if he had to.”
“You don't really think he'd abandon us like that.”
“I think,” said Kareef, “that he'd do almost anything to make sure his School succeeds.”
Nathan sighed. “I don't know what got you in this mood,” he said. “But I hope you're feeling better after some sleep.” he stretched out on his bed and fell silent..
Kareef wondered for a moment what Xander wouldn't do to make the School succeed. Then he put the sphere on the little table and blew out the candle. As he laid his head back movement in the corner of his eye alerted him: the sphere was about to roll off the edge of the table. He flung out a hand and caught it.
Now what? The table must not be level. He pulled back his hand and slipped the sphere under his pillow and put his head down. Tomorrow would be soon enough to figure out a better place to put it.
Chapter 23
Feather: Desperate Measures
“Beware of the man who does not talk, and the dog that does not bark.”
– Cheyenne saying
She was still thinking about the men from the coast when she awoke the next day. How had they come this close to the shrine? Was it simply an accident of wandering? But when she tried to talk to Hidden Flower about it, the older woman had no patience for such talk.
“Talk will not gather herbs. Go and do it. And this time get me the proper horehound! Not black horehound.”
Feather took the leather bag and stalked out into the forest. Yes, tasks must be done, and everyone must contribute. She knew that. But those men were so close – only a few miles away!
But the grandmother had spoken.
She was older than all of them. To disobey her was inconceivable, like drinking sand or burning water. Yet she felt that the grandmother was wrong, this time. The men were near. It couldn't be an accident that they were here. It was as real as the mountain, as real as the sky. And the mountain wouldn't listen to the grandmother and go away.
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 9