The Wave and the Flame

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Echoing his dread, Megan muttered beside his ear, “Just pray the live one is Danforth.”

  27

  “Are you out of your mind?” Megan latched onto his speeding arm and hauled back on it with all her weight, jerking him out of the crowd. Stavros swung around, surprised.

  “We can’t let him in there!”

  “What good is making a scene going to do?” she hissed.

  The noisy throng fell back instinctively at the arched entryway to the Physicians’ Hall. Massing against the smooth rock walls, they parted to let the stretcher bearers through. The Master Healer followed, already rolling up the rang sleeves of his smock. Susannah hurried after him, grasping her white medical kit. A step behind them, Kav Ashimmel stopped at the archway and turned to face the crowd. She raised her arms for silence. The long tails of her ceremonial tabard and the stained hem of her robe dripped muddy puddles onto the stone floor. The din in the crowded tunnel abated only slightly. Several of the journeymen priests nosed among those standing nearest her, hushing them sternly. Beyond this small circle of intimidation, pockets of cheerful debate raged around wager-holders calling home bets. The remaining apprentices in Ashimmel’s train slipped away to circulate through the crowd out of her line of sight as the Master Priest launched into a ringing speech that claimed the return of the lost Terrans as a sign of the renewed power of Lagri.

  “Meg, you don’t understand,” Stavros groaned.

  “I understand, better than you realize. But I also understand that a doctor can’t refuse to treat an injured man.”

  “So let her treat him downstairs, or in the Lander!”

  Megan regarded him tolerantly. “Now how are you going to make sense of that to Susannah when Physicians’ is all equipped?”

  Stavros tried to pace in the tight space left to them by the crowd. “That’s just it! He’ll see all of that, the… ah, damn. Damn!” He fell silent, leaning against the rock with his head bowed and his hands balling into fists.

  Liphar elbowed through the throng to join them, looking busy and concerned. He stuffed a well-fingered strip of paper into a pouch under his mud-spattered ritual garb and a pencil into the thick of his curls. He glanced at Stavros, then at Megan, then back at Stavros, frowned and made it obvious that he was holding his tongue.

  Megan waited out the stalemate for a moment, then sighed and shook her head. “You’ve got to learn to keep a lower profile, lad, if you want to slip anything past them.”

  Stavros’s eyes flicked up at her but he offered no comment. Liphar shifted uneasily, keeping an ear open to the transactions going on among the wagerers nearest them.

  “I mean,” Megan continued in a voice like a foot inched out to test thin ice, “Say we go in there and simply contrive to keep him from noticing anything… unusual.”

  “Ummm,” said Stavros neutrally.

  “Well, to begin with, what sort of unusual might that be?”

  Ashimmel ended her speech with a flourish. Gathering her dignity and what small entourage remained to her, she swept off, plowing a pathway through the noise and congestion. Much of the crowd fell in behind her, the excitement over for the time, but a goodly number remained behind, still negotiating over whether the terms of this particular wager or that had been met Liphar drifted in their direction, pulling the pencil out of his hair. Stavros glued his eyes to the floor in a panic of conflicting thought. He knew it would be a great relief to share the burden of his secrets, but he found it hard to break his habits of mistrust.

  “Did you listen to her?” he stalled, tossing a contemptuous gesture at Ashimmel’s receding back. “She’ll have the whole place opened up to him.”

  “As long as it suits her,” replied Megan dryly. “If the weather turns bad again, we could be out on our ears, right? It was smart of you to go after Kav Daven, though. That shows at least some political acumen.” She glanced up as Weng hurried toward them with a bedraggled McPherson in tow. Megan nodded toward the archway. “That way, Commander.” She turned back to Stavros. “So what should I be looking for in there?”

  Stavros took his chance on impulse, caught in a sudden rush of hopelessness. “Little things,” he murmured with a shrug. “Like a pressurized hot-water system, like…” Piped-in gas? “You’ll know when you see it.”

  Megan nodded thoughtfully. “Okay. So let’s go.”

  “You go,” he said quickly. “I’ve got to deal with Aguidran about getting the Sled hauled in. Didn’t I hear him say he’d been in contact with CRI?”

  Megan nodded again.

  “That means we have at least one functioning antenna out there.” Stavros looked away from her stare. “Look, Meg, you’re right. I can’t be trusted in there with him. Low profile, you know?”

  He urged her toward the archway. She went, but her brief backward glance promised that her demands for a fuller explanation were merely postponed.

  “Ph’nar khem,” Liphar muttered, returning to Stavros’s side when she had gone. The corridor was nearly empty but for a knot of hopefuls lounging near the entry, their wagers apparently depending on the skill of the doctors inside. “Kav Ashimmel wrong say Lagri bring this.”

  “You said it.” Stavros rubbed his brow, searching for a coherent plan of action. He paced back and forth a bit while Liphar watched in sympathetic silence. “The only thing I can think of is to bring it before the Kethed. Do you know when the next meeting is?”

  Liphar shook his head warningly. “Big voice of Kethed, Ashimmel.”

  “So we get to the other guild heads separately,” Stavros proposed. Megan’s remark about political acumen haunted him. This sort of maneuvering was her second vocation, not his, though he had not noticed that she had been keeping her political profile particularly low. But that, he realized, was because she had nothing at the moment to hide. “Can you talk to them, Lifa?”

  Liphar’s mouth tightened in concern. Stavros realized he was asking the young apprentice to work behind the back of his own guildmaster, but he could think of no other solution.

  “Then just tell them of my concern. Tell them I must talk to them before it’s too late. Then they can call a Kethed and decide the issue.”

  Liphar nodded unhappily. Stavros knew he would not refuse the request. He squeezed the little Sawl’s shoulder in guilt and gratitude and sent him off. With a final nervous glare in the direction of the Physicians’ Hall, he trotted away to find Aguidran.

  28

  “A touch more light on this one, if you can, Ghirra.” Susannah blotted her forehead on her sleeve, wishing for a good o.r. nurse, then found Ghirra’s youngest apprentice ready at her elbow with a clean cloth. She let the boy dry her face more thoroughly and bent to inspect the last of the serious wounds. Ghirra adjusted the reflector on the battery lamp that Susannah had clipped to the hub of the oil chandelier. The big spoked wheel swayed on its stout rope and the hard glare of the Terran lamp flashed in and out of the darkened corners of the hall like a berserk searchlight. The anxious faces gathered around the operating slab raised hands to shade their eyes.

  Megan slipped in while Susannah stood aside for another apprentice to bring a fresh bowl of the long absorbent fibers Ghirra used as a sponge. Megan smiled at Susannah and remained standing, taking stock of the room. Ghirra’s operating chamber was the smallest of the four adjoining caverns that formed the Physicians’ Hall. It was tall and narrow. In the shadow of deep shelves cut into the rock, ranks of glass jars glinted in long neat rows. The patient lay on the central of three waist-high marble slabs.

  Susannah nodded Megan to a stone bench set along one wall. “We’ll be a while here,” she said, gathering up a fiber sponge. The Master Healer reached a long arm to steady the swinging lamp, then leaned over the patient to take a closer look. His surgical assistant Ampiar, a slim, serious woman, hovered nearby.

  The wound was a near-critical puncture high on the right side. A shard of metal had cut deeply but at an angle that allowed it to just miss the lung. The shard had be
en removed in the field, but bone fragments from a shattered rib remained. The tear had partly closed itself. Infection had set in. Susannah swabbed away the purulence with Ghirra’s herbal disinfectant. She probed for the fragments, then applied an antiseptic from her own supplies. Ghirra shared a guttural comment with Ampiar and wrinkled his nose. Susannah nearly apologized for the flat medicinal smell that cut so crudely across the healthy pungence of his herbal infusion.

  When the wound was cleaned, she set a small section of rubber tube in it to drain any excess fluids, and closed as neatly as she could. There would be a nasty scar, but the patient’s entire body was hot and sandpaper-dry. There were more pressing considerations than cosmetics. Her mouth tightened in dissatisfaction with the aesthetics of the closure, but she moved on immediately to a shallow gash that needed only minor stitching. She cleaned it out, and as she reached for a suture, Ghirra’s hand met hers halfway with the instrument already prepared.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she remembered to murmur. As an intern, she had suffered through many months in chill operating rooms before she had learned to detect the gratitude that lay unvoiced behind the operating surgeon’s mask.

  Danforth stirred weakly under her hand.

  “He’s waking up!” McPherson squawked. She pushed in against the stone table until the plastic sheet crackled. Ghirra frowned absently and spread the wrinkles smooth. He had not objected when Susannah had laid the sheet out to cover his polished marble. Plastic seemed to intrigue him.

  “Soon,” Susannah soothed as she completed a stitch. “But not just yet. Don’t worry. If the gas runs out, Ghirra has other ways to deal with pain.”

  “I prefer him out cold, this one,” said Weng from Danforth’s head. She tipped the valve on the small field canister of nitrous oxide and set the mask to his nose and mouth. “Still a quarter full,” she reported. “Stand aside, Lieutenant.”

  “You won’t improve Tay’s chances by leaning all over him, McP.,” chided a cheerful voice from the next table. Clausen sat jauntily upright, legs swinging over the edge as if at a sporting event. The white therm-suit he had donned three weeks earlier was dusty and stained but still intact, except for the sleeves. Those had been cut away at the elbows and folded back to make neat cuffs. A sandy gray beard furred the prospector’s sunburned cheeks. He looked gaunt but healthy. Only the stout stick leaning by his knee suggested that he had not walked home completely on his own power. He sat calmly peeling back the emergency sealant from a small gash on his forearm. Lying on the slab beside him was a bulging leather knapsack with wide padded straps. Its heavy brass buckles were tarnished from their weeks in the open.

  The young apprentice Dwingen brought a bowl of hot water and gestured a shy offer to help Clausen wash out his wound. The prospector twisted away abruptly, then relaxed and smiled at the boy wolfishly. “Nothing personal, you understand.”

  “He doesn’t speak English, Emil,” said Megan as she slumped onto the hard cool bench.

  “Well, he must learn, my dear Megan, he must learn.”

  Megan watched him with distaste. Looking about the room, she had seen nothing to worry Stavros so far. Ghirra’s setup was clean and simple, and perhaps it would take a doctor to appreciate how skilled the Master Healer’s long-fingered hands truly were, how he and Susannah worked together with the smooth rhythm of doctors long familiar with each other. In Megan’s opinion, the worst of the situation was that Clausen had survived his ordeal with little more than fading bruises and a healing scab or two. There was the minor matter of his ankle, swelling again now that he had stayed off of it for a while, but that was nothing compared to Danforth, who had been stretchered in unconscious with both legs set in field splints. Danforth was sliced up, battered, broken and delirious with fever. Megan’s suspicions were habitually tender and this would have had them more than usually aroused, were it not for the fact that Danforth and Clausen had been allies since before the expedition began.

  Damn Clausen, anyway. Just like my brother, who won every fight he ever lured me into. And like her brother, Clausen seemed to possess more lives than a cat, and had that same unshakable self-esteem that both fascinated and repulsed her. Why is it such confidence is never put to good uses? she mused darkly. Clausen turned his smug grin on her, and she glanced away, studying the glass-stocked shelves to avoid glowering back at him like the vengeful sibling she had been in her youth.

  The operating chamber made up in height what it lacked in width. It had a clerestory like the FriezeHall. A narrow band of amber noon sunlight fell from the high windows onto the operating tables. Megan thought this a rather melodramatic gesture on the part of the builders, suggesting as it did that the tables were favored by nature. But she had to concede that any and all light is useful in a cave, and admired their cleverness in focusing the sun appropriately for at least part of the long Fiixian day. The second cavern adjoined directly, separated only by a thick linen curtain fastened by rings to a horizontal pole. Through the center split, she could see a long double row of pallets set on low platforms of glazed white brick. Now they were mostly empty. Anyone well enough to crawl was downstairs celebrating. One old man reclined with his back to the curtain. In a far corner, a young mother nursed her recently delivered infant under the watchful eye of the Head Midwife, Xifa. Megan stretched her legs and turned her attention to deciphering labels etched on jars filled with substances beyond her imagining. Her eyelids drooped. By her wrist chronom, it was four-twenty in the morning, ship’s time. So many of the important events in the Caves seemed to take place in the middle of the Terran “night.” She wondered how Susannah and especially old Weng remained so steady of hand on so little sleep.

  Little Dwingen came toward her balancing a bowl heaped with bloodied linens. Megan drew in her legs to let him pass. He went through a narrow archway at the end of her bench. Megan slid down and peered around the corner. A white-smocked teenager tended a row of steaming ceramic caldrons. Dwingen emptied his load into a deep sink and turned a large brown wheel that protruded from the wall above. Steaming water flowed into the sink. Megan nodded to herself and studied the caldrons, Tiny blue flames danced beneath them.

  Oh ho, she thought, suddenly very much awake. Gas? Is it possible? Is this what Stav couldn’t bring himself to tell me about?

  She estimated Clausen’s line of sight and judged that he could not see through the archway from his slab. If he were to try walking around, she would have to get imaginative. Megan stretched out her legs again and left them there.

  “Okay,” murmured Susannah, completing a final stitch. “He’s as clean and tight as I can get him for now.” As she checked the drip taped to Danforth’s arm, Ghirra laid two fingers on the wrist. He followed a few moments of concentration with a faint shake of his head.

  “I know,” said Susannah. “He’s very weak. But the antibiotic ought to bring that fever down—that is, if your bugs are anything like our bugs.”

  “Buggs.” Ghirra savored the consonant as he let his spread hands hover over Danforth’s head. “Yes. Explain this, you.” He moved his hands down to the chest and laid them lightly over the heart. “But if this not succeeds, we try…”

  “None of that yucky stuff in the jars!” exploded McPherson.

  Susannah shot the little pilot something uncharacteristically like a glare, but Megan noticed that the corners of Ghirra’s wide mouth twitched to conceal a smile.

  Picks up more than he lets on, this handsome one.

  Weng was scandalized. “One more such outburst, Lieutenant, and you will be ordered to duty in the Lander!” She poised the respirator like a weapon.

  “Worry not, McP.,” said Clausen airily. “You’d be surprised at the useful little medicinals these primitives stumble upon sometimes.”

  Susannah’s hand froze on the lid of her portable autoclave. She let it down very carefully. “Almost as surprising as the emergency care some amateurs can manage in the field.”

  So. She’s got a tongue on her when
she decides to get protective, Megan noted. With her eye still on Ghirra, she saw him flick a long-lashed measuring glance at the prospector. Her slump deepened. Ah, yes. We’d forgotten what it was like to have Emil sniping around all the time.

  Clausen chuckled. “Did the best I could, Doc. The boy would have died without it, you will admit.” He blinked at McPherson and grinned.

  “You did very well, and we’re all grateful,” put in Weng sternly.

  Susannah turned her back. Ghirra readjusted the battery lamp to light the full length of the slab, then nodded to Dwingen, who waited with a bowl of minted hot water and clean strips of linen. He washed and dried his hands while McPherson penitently helped Susannah peel off her bloody surgical gloves. Again, he let his hands hover over Danforth’s body, this time with his eyes closed. His long fingers barely skimmed the white oversheet. As he reached the right leg, just above the knee, he grunted.

  Weng looked interested. McPherson’s expression implied native mumbo-jumbo but she held her peace. Susannah watched unsurprised as solemn Ampiar fitted her with a clean pair of gloves. “Needs to be reset,” she agreed. “The other’s fractured below the knee but it seems to be healing. The alignment was undisturbed.”

  Ghirra’s hands skimmed the left leg briefly and he nodded.

  “Thanks to my expert splinting,” Clausen reminded her.

  “Of course,” Susannah replied, this time with only the slightest show of sarcasm. She folded back the oversheet to expose Danforth’s legs. The right knee and thigh were scabbed and discolored. Carefully, she probed the kneecap.

  Clausen pushed himself along his table to the end nearest Megan’s bench. “Tay’ll be the worst sort of invalid if he ever wakes up,” he confided loudly. “Should have heard him out there at the wreck, whining and complaining.”

  “Yeah, for shame,” Meg growled. “Pain is such a lot of fun.”

  The prospector tilted his bullet head. “Now, now, my own sweet Margaret Meade, do you take me for a sadist? I kept him well stoked up with the Sled’s supply of painkillers. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him, it was the boredom of having to lie there while I was out scrabbling around in the rain and dark. By the time dawn arrived, the fever’d gotten him.” Clausen patted the leather knapsack at his side and announced to the room at large, “I do hope he comes around long enough to find out he was right.”