by S. L. Viehl
In the end, when he finally lost the battle with his own need, he pressed my face against his chest, and pulled us both up from the ground. He moved until he stood with his back against the cave wall, his hands on my hips, working me over him. I braced myself with my hands on his shoulders and stared into his eyes.
“You’ll live for me,” he said, his voice hoarse, his lungs dragging in air. “Say it.”
“I’ll live for you. I love you.”
“Forever. Promise me forever.”
“I promise you, Duncan. Forever.”
“Cherijo.” He wrapped his arms around me, shuddering as he cried out and poured himself into me.
I held on, I lived for him. I loved him.
We spent the night on that bumpy, uncomfortable cave floor, and I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever been happier. Duncan and I were together, body and soul, and that was all I wanted. That was paradise enough for anyone.
Hawk’s groans were what brought me back down to earth. Reever watched me as I got up and slowly dressed.
I smiled down at him. “Good morning.”
He folded his hands behind his head. “Yes, it is.”
If he’d been a cat, he would have been purring. “Don’t look so smug. We’ve got work to do.” I found his clothes and tossed them at him. “I need to get to Medical for more supplies for Hawk.”
He pulled on his trousers. “We will all go back up to the occupied levels.”
“But I’m supposed to be dead.”
“We will tell them you survived.”
He walked with me over to where Hawk was. I knelt down beside him. “How are you feeling?”
“Not as good as you, I think.” Hawk rolled over so I could check his back. “I don’t want anyone to know, patcher.”
“No one knows?” Hawk shook his head, and Reever and I exchanged a look. “Duncan and I won’t say anything.” I turned to my husband. “Can you get him up to Medical by yourself? I’ll tell you what you need to do for him.”
Hawk groaned. “You cannot stay here, patcher.”
“Sure I can. Even if you tell them I somehow survived the first fall, they might try to do it again.” I made a face as I helped the Indian to his feet. “And, as thrilling as the experience was, I really don’t care for a repeat.”
“No one will assault you,” Hawk said as I slipped his arm over my shoulders. “You are not the first person I have taken from the pit.”
“I thought you said no one knew.”
“No. The others were unconscious when I took them.” Hawk looked sheepish. “The tribe believes I appealed to the gods for their lives, and they were returned from the spirit world.”
“I’ll try to remember all that. What about Rico?”
“He will not remember what he has done. He never does, when he is in a rage.”
Reever took Hawk’s other arm. “The chief will not attack someone returned by the gods, will he?”
“It is not the way.”
“I hope you’re right.” I looked at the man we had propped between us. “Are you sure, Hawk? You’re not in any shape to defend me or Reever.”
He chuckled. “I was rather hoping to see you defend us.”
“Now he gets a sense of humor,” I said to Reever.
I left the men outside the medical alcove to pick up my cats and more supplies. And walked right in on Milass, going through every container in the place.
“Find what you’re looking for?” I asked, then folded my arms and leaned back against a wall as he jumped to his feet.
Even his scars turned white. “You’re dead!”
“Am I? That would make me a ghost, haunting you.” I raised my arms and made a horrible face. “An angry, vengeful, surgically knowledgeable ghost.”
“He killed you. I made sure he killed you this time.”
So I was right—he’d planted the tunic. “Why did you go to all the trouble of framing me? Do you really hate me that much?”
He didn’t answer that. He yelled, rushed past me, and kept going on down the tunnel until he was out of sight.
The cats came out to stare at me. “Don’t look at me. I didn’t make all that racket.” I turned to the entrance. “Reever, bring Hawk in here.”
I took care of the muscle strains, then Reever helped me get Hawk dressed and back on his feet.
He tried walking and grinned at me. “I have not felt this good in years.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, then couldn’t help adding, “even better, I didn’t have to sing a note.”
Hawk limped out into the tunnel to talk with Reever, so I went over to the containers to put everything back in place. A short time later, the first of my patients walked in.
“Can you look at my leg?” Hawk must have done some fast talking, because the man didn’t look even vaguely spooked. “We’ve only got a week until the World Game.”
I examined the infected burn on the lower half of his leg, cleaned and treated it, then went back to straightening up the mess Milass had made. For a few minutes, anyway. More patients came in to congratulate me on my celestial return, and could I check this or that injury for them?
Milass came back, his face absolutely blank. “The chief wishes to see you.”
“The last time I saw the chief, he wasn’t in a very good mood. Tell him I can’t make it.”
“He does not hold you responsible for the intrusion anymore.” Milass gave me what could be construed as a pleading look.
On another day, I would have needled him a little more but I was still in my glowing-with-happiness mode. “Look, twerp, I’m busy. Get lost.”
“Patcher, it is Ilona he blames now. He is not rational today. You must help her.”
I set down the box of skin sealer I was repacking and sighed. “All right. Give me a minute, will you?”
After telling Reever and Hawk an abbreviated version of the truth, I went to the central cavern with Milass. “What did you mean, he’s not rational?”
“Some days the chief is as you saw him at the arena. Some days he is as he was at the pit, with you.”
“So today is a pit day, not an arena day?”
“Yes.”
“Terrific.”
“He will not harm you. He has exercised his rage many times. Now he indulges himself with drink and food in celebration. Much of what he says makes no sense.”
I got to see that firsthand when Rico hailed me as Milass and I entered his hogan. The chief was dirty, drunk, and acted as if he’d never thrown me down a cave shaft.
I pulled out a scanner. “Looks like he’s really been celebrating. I’d better have a look at him.”
“Do not approach him yet,” Milass said. “Wait until he invites you near.”
“Patcher! We have prevailed over the whiteskin. You should have been there.”
“Sorry I missed it.” No, I wasn’t.
The interior of the hogan was so dark I couldn’t make out who was with him, until Milass got a fire going. The flames illuminated everything—two guards standing behind Rico, who was sitting on the antique chair I’d seen him use once or twice before. Then I looked down.
His feet were resting on top of a body. A bleeding body, wrapped tightly in rope. Ilona’s swollen, battered features were slack, but from the whistling sound coming from her broken nose, she was still breathing. Someone behind me made a similar noise, and I glanced back to see several League troops huddled in chains against the walls of the hogan.
“You’ve noticed my new footrest.”
“Yes. It’s … very decorative.”
“Ilona was the one who led the League into the tunnels to get you. She confessed it to me. She is very sorry she made it seem as if you were to blame.” He frowned. “Did I shout at you for that?”
“Yes, but not very much. So you beat her into confessing, is that right?”
“I found her with the League men, and she got on her knees and told me everything.” He drank from the bottle he held and wiped his mou
th. “Then I beat her.”
“I’m glad we’ve got that straightened out.” How long had he beaten her, and how much damage had he done? How was I going to convince him to hand her over to me so I could find out? “Who are these other men, Chief?”
“Scum who thought they could challenge me.”
“Oh, they’re crazy men.” Casually I walked back to have a look at the wounded troops. One of them was in bad shape, and just my luck, the worst enemy I had in the League besides Joseph. “It looks like you caught a pretty important guy here.”
“The one gasping over there? Shropana, is it not?”
“One and the same.”
“Do not concern yourself, patcher.” Rico waved an unsteady arm. “He does not breathe very much. He will be dead soon.”
“Maybe not.” I knelt down and checked him quickly. What I’d been worried about since I first examined him was about to happen. I rose to my feet. “He’s a powerful man, Chief. One who could possibly prove more beneficial alive.”
“Possibly.” Rico looked at Shropana. “He has not long to live, though.”
“I can keep him alive. He needs a heart operation.”
“Another patient for you, huh? Eventually everyone conies under your hands,” Rico said, then laughed uproariously. “There is nothing you can do for him here. Let him die.”
“On the contrary, I can do a great deal, if you’ll let me borrow your new footrest.”
“Why?”
I gave him a cool smile. “Patril here needs a new heart. Ilona won’t be needing hers much longer.”
The chief gave me an owlish stare. “You mean to cut out my footrest’s heart and give it to the alien?”
“The organs are compatible,” I said, hoping my nose wasn’t getting longer. “The League will pay you a fine reward for his return. Or, you can keep him here as a hostage against future attacks. The worst that can happen is they both die.”
Rico laughed again. “I like how you think, patcher. Very well.” He kicked Ilona’s body toward me. “Take them.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Initiation
Milass helped me get enough men together to carry Ilona and Patril to the alcove, but he made it obvious he didn’t like the idea.
“I got her out of there for you, didn’t I?” I asked him. “What’s your problem now, shortie?”
“You will not harm her to save him,” he said as he directed the men carrying Ilona to a berth. Once she was on it, he took out his knife and began slicing through the ropes binding her limbs.
I left explanations for later. What I had to do now was get Patril prepped for surgery. I thanked the other men for helping us as they left, then did my preliminary scans. The Colonel’s heart could go at any moment. I was out of time and options—if I didn’t do the procedure, he would die.
“Did you hear me?” the demonic dwarf came up and gave me a push. “You will not cut out her heart.”
“I have no intention of cutting anything out of her, you moron. It was the only way I could think of getting her out of there before Rico did anything worse.”
Milass didn’t thank me. I think I would have dropped dead of a heart attack myself if he had. He did agree to go and find Hawk and bring him back to assist me.
Once more I grumbled under my breath about my lack of nurses as I completed the prep work and got Shropana sedated. As soon as he was under, I set up the instrument trays and cordoned off the area. I couldn’t make a sterile field, but I got everything as isolated as I could make it. Before I scrubbed, I went to check on Ilona.
Rico had done a good job on her; she had extensive facial fractures and all of her ribs and fingers were broken. Ilona wouldn’t be weaving anything for a couple of weeks.
She’d regained consciousness, and stared at me as I infused her with painkillers. “You help me—why?”
“I’m a masochist. Go figure.” I watched her drift under, then went to scrub and take care of my other pain in the ass.
Hawk limped in just as I finished gearing up. “Get sterile, we’ve got cardiac transplantation surgery to perform.”
“A transplant?” His mouth sagged open. “You can’t do that down here.”
“I’d better find a way, or this man will die.” I looked into the swollen, canine features of the Colonel who had chased me across the galaxy. “Believe me, his death is one I really don’t want on my conscience.”
Hawk scrubbed while I went to set up the laser rig and the heart-lung machine which would keep Shropana alive while I installed the replacement heart. A couple of scans made me readjust the calibration of the Jarvik biomechanical replacement unit I’d swiped from Joseph’s lab; it wasn’t going to be a perfect fit. Still, it would serve as a temporary fix until I could get him out of the tunnels and up to a regular medical facility.
“You know something, Hawk? I think I’d amputate a limb just to have access to a nice, big, well-stocked medical facility.”
“The gods do not give us more than we can handle. I know this man,” Hawk said as he took position by the instrument trays. “This is the one who has been asking for your execution.”
“Yep.” I adjusted the optic emitter to give me maximum light over Shropana’s brisket.
“Is there anyone you will not operate on?”
“First rule of being a surgeon: You don’t get to pick and choose who ends up on your table.” I powered up the rig and leaned over. “Here we go.”
My first radical decision was not to remove Shropana’s diseased heart, but to perform a heterotopic transplant, which would leave the native heart in place. To do this, I didn’t sever the diseased organ from the atria, but refitted them to pair off with the Jarvik replacement’s connections.
Hawk spotted what I was doing at once. “Why do you put the machine heart on top of the old one?”
“To give Colonel Shropana a heart with eight chambers, instead of four. The Jarvik will take care of circulatory supply and return, and the other four can do whatever they want.”
“Would it not be easier to take the old heart out?”
“Easier, sure, if he was human. He’s not, and this unit wasn’t designed for his species. I’m hoping a better-equipped surgeon can salvage the native heart, and remove or replace the Jarvik.”
If we ever got Patril back to the League.
I started the work on the pulmonary arterial and aortic junctions. From the amount of plaque in his vessels, I’d have to adjust his medication regime and his diet while he was with us. That would make me even more popular with the bad-tempered military mogul when he woke up.
“How will it continue to function?” Hawk asked me. “You said you have no power core.”
“Don’t need one. We’re going to do this the way they did before autonomous power cores were invented. See these air lines?” I indicated the tubes I would be putting in the chest wall. “They’re going to do all the hard part. We’ll rig him to an external compressor that will feed pressure through the lines.”
“I will sing for him later,” Hawk said.
It sounded like all we’d need was a song, but as soon as I tested the Jarvik, things got complicated. The biomechanical heart had to be recalibrated twice before it attained the proper pumping sequence and speed. As soon as I performed the preclosure test activation, an internal safety valve shut the unit down.
“It still thinks he’s human,” I said, scrambling to disable the safeties. I could only pray the components wouldn’t seize up while they were running at three times the set rate. “One more test, and then we’ll plug him in.”
The second test was successful. Now I had to take Shropana off the machine that was keeping him alive, and see if all my hard work would do the same.
Hawk murmured something under his breath as I switched on the external compressor. There was an instant of silence before the Jarvik began to pump. Shropana’s vital signs elevated slightly, then leveled out.
“It worked.” The skin around his dark eyes crinkled i
n a surgeon’s smile. “You made it work.”
“Piece of cake.” I watched the Jarvik for a few minutes, just to be sure. Then I showed Hawk how to close, and suture the long incision.
At the cleanser unit, he scrubbed in silence.
I worried for a minute that I’d demanded too much of him. “Not what you expected?”
“No. It is so much more … beautiful. Like dancing inside a soul.” He glanced over at Shropana, then at me. “How long does it take? To learn to do these surgeries?”
“As long as you want it to take.”
He discarded his bloody gloves. “I want to do more of this. I want to learn more. Will you teach me?”
“We won’t get in any more alien cardiac replacement cases, I think.” I thought of Vlaav, and how I had wrecked that. “Still, if you’re willing, I’ll start you off.”
Hawk didn’t have much time for lessons over the next nine days, as he began the Night Way. I joined the tribe every night for the chanting and ritual sings that, according to my new student, would attract holiness and repulse evil.
I didn’t know about the curative effects, but the ceremony involved the entire tribe, which made it very loud, anyway.
“Explain this to me,” I said to Hawk as I adjusted his back brace on the morning of the ceremonial. “How is it that a tribe who owns a major shockball-team franchise doesn’t give in to the temptation of material wealth? I mean, Rico has to be taking in millions of credit a month, just from the arena ticket sales and advertising.”
“Most of the profits are reinvested in the team. The non-Indian players must be paid, of course. The Night Horse contribute their portion to the tribal fund.”
“I thought Rico used all that to pay for purchasing the Gliders.”
“Now we use it for to provide dowries for our men.” Hawk nodded toward a group of villagers from the surface. “Ten will return to Four Mountains this month, to offer for their brides.”
“I thought you had broken off with the Navajo.”
“Not in marriage. It is forbidden for our men to marry within the clan. We have been sending young men back to the reservation to seek brides and settle down for many years. The Four Mountains clans have welcomed them.”