Dressed, Wind Blossom turned her attention back to the noises that had awoken her. From the sounds outside, she suspected—
“My lady, my lady!” a girl’s voice called. Wind Blossom didn’t recognize the voice. It was probably one of the new medical trainees. “Please come quickly, there’s been an accident!”
Although there was no one in the room to see, Wind Blossom did not let her face show her amusement at being called “my lady.”
“What is it?” she asked, rising and moving toward the door.
“Weyrleader M’hall from Benden has brought in a boy,” the trainee answered, opening the door as she heard Wind Blossom reach for the latch. “He was attacked.”
Wind Blossom’s heart sank. Her face remained calm, but inwardly she quailed. The look on the girl’s face was all she needed to identify the attacker. The youngster continued resolutely, “It was a watch-wher.”
Wind Blossom passed through the door and marched past the apprentice who, though much younger, towered over her. “Bring my bag.”
The trainee paused, torn between guiding the frail old woman down the steps and obeying her orders.
“My bones are not so worn that I cannot walk unaided,” Wind Blossom told her. “Get my bag.”
There was only one clean room in the infirmary. It was too primitive to be considered anything like a proper operating room but it was well scrubbed.
Wind Blossom registered how the people outside it were grouped: Her daughter and a musician were in one group, M’hall and a man she thought she should know were in another group, and two interns were in a third.
The interns looked up when she arrived, but M’hall spoke first. “My lady Wind Blossom, my mother told me that you are the most skilled in sutures.”
When had everyone started with the “my lady” ’s? Wind Blossom thought acidly.
“How is the patient?” she asked Latrel, the nearest intern.
“The patient has severe lacerations on the face, neck, and abdomen,” he answered quickly. Wind Blossom noted but did not comment on his ashen appearance and the way he licked his lips. Latrel had attended a number of major injuries—clearly this was worse. “He is a ten-year-old boy. He’s been dosed with numbweed and fellis juice, and was suitably wrapped against between during the journey from Benden Hold. His pulse is thready and weak; he shows signs of shock and blood loss. Janir is attempting to stabilize—”
Wind Blossom interrupted him with an upheld hand and walked over to the large basin outside the clean room. She pulled back her sleeves. “Gown me, then scrub.”
Latrel nodded, pulling sanitized gowns out of a special closet. Once she was robed, Wind Blossom started carefully scrubbing her arms and hands to clean off as many germs as she could. She motioned for Latrel to continue his report.
“We cannot type his blood—”
“It’s O positive,” the man beside M’hall interjected.
Wind Blossom turned to face him, her expression showing interest.
“I’ve been keeping track of our bloodlines; it can only be O positive,” he repeated.
Wind Blossom matched his face to her memory of a young boy she had spoken with long ago. “Peter Tubberman.”
The man winced at the name. “I am called Purman now,” he corrected. “The boy is my son.”
A crease formed on Wind Blossom’s brows. Ted Tubberman had been considered a dangerous renegade in the early days of the Pern colony at Landing. He had “stolen” equipment to conduct biology experiments, one of which had killed him and orphaned young Peter at an early age. Wind Blossom could understand why Peter Tubberman would want to remove himself from memories of his father.
“Purman. Benden wines,” she said to herself. “Modified vines, no?” She waited only long enough for his body language to answer her before she said to the other intern, “Purman scrubs with us.”
She turned her attention back to Latrel. “The old needles, you kept them, right?” When the intern nodded, she said, “Have them sterilized and bring them in. What about sutures?”
The young trainee—Carelly, Wind Blossom finally put a name to her—arrived, breathless with Wind Blossom’s medical bag. “My lady,” she gasped, and gathered in another breath to say, “there are no more in Stores.”
Wind Blossom grunted acknowledgment. She looked at the Benden Weyrleader. “M’hall?”
M’hall approached the diminutive geneticist. He bent over her when she beckoned him closer.
“I have one set of sutures left. If I use them on this boy, others will die later. Probably dragonriders,” she said in a voice that carried only to his ears.
M’hall nodded his understanding.
“I saw this day coming,” she added. “We are losing our tech base. These sorts of wounds are rare enough that soon no one will even know how to treat them.”
“Then let us use these sutures now,” M’hall said, “while there is still someone with your skills.”
Wind Blossom nodded. She turned to Carelly. “Go back to my room, girl, and bring down the orange bag.”
As the girl ran off, Wind Blossom turned to Purman. “The last of the sutures and antibiotics are in my orange bag. Your son will be the last one treated with such medicines on Pern.”
“For how long?” Purman wondered, as if to himself.
“A long time, I fear,” Wind Blossom answered. “There are so few of us who have the skill and the knowledge. And now, without supplies, the skills will become useless.”
In the clean room, Wind Blossom found that the boy’s injuries were every bit as awful as she’d feared. His right forehead, nose, and left cheek had been opened by the three-clawed paw of the watch-wher. The claw-marks continued down the top left side of the boy’s chest, near the shoulder, and into the biceps of the upper left arm.
Wind Blossom leaned closer to the boy’s face. Before the incident, he had been as handsome as his father at the same age. Now . . . she shook herself and checked his pulse.
“He is in shock,” she announced. Janir nodded, saying, “I’ve been keeping him warm, but he has lost a lot of blood—and going between . . . “
The doors to the ready room swung open as Latrel, Carelly, and Purman entered.
“He will need blood,” Wind Blossom announced. She looked at Latrel. “Get the other bed set up close by.” She turned to Purman. “He will need at least three units. You can only donate one.” She patted the bed that Latrel brought up. “Get on it—you’ll be first.
“Carelly, find Emorra and tell her we have need of her,” Wind Blossom ordered. “And have someone make me some peppermint tea with a dash of arnica.”
The young apprentice waved an arm over her shoulder in acknowledgment as she sped off on her mission.
Purman’s face was clouded with fear. Wind Blossom explained, “We need to stabilize him, and irrigate the wounds to prevent infection.”
She looked closely at the boy’s nose.
“He has lost a lot of cartilage. Rebuilding the nose will be difficult.”
She gestured for a probe from Janir. Gently, she examined the boy’s cheek.
“The damage to the left cheek is severe. Immobilizing it while it heals will be a major concern.” She continued her examination, adding, “Fortunately, there is no sign of damage to the underlying bone.”
She sighed and looked at the boy’s chest wound. “The chest cavity is intact—that is good. It is a flesh wound. We will have to leave it open and irrigated to ensure that there is no infection.”
She turned her attention to the boy’s arm. “Some of the muscle has been removed here,” she said. She looked at Janir. “You will irrigate with saline solution and bandage here, too.”
“Him? What about you?” Purman asked, sitting up on his bed.
“We need three units of blood,” Wind Blossom repeated in answer. “You will give the first.”
The door opened, and a competent-looking young woman entered the clean room, bringing with her the faint smell of s
tarsuckle, the Pernese hybrid of honeysuckle.
“Emorra”—Wind Blossom nodded to the woman, and Purman was struck by their resemblance—“will donate the second unit, and I, the third.”
“But—” Purman objected.
Wind Blossom silenced him with her upheld hand. “I will stitch his facial wounds before I give the blood.” Her lips curved up in a shadowy grin. “It is fitting. Kitti Ping’s daughter and granddaughter should help Tubberman’s son and grandson.”
“And,” she added as Purman started another objection, “she and I are the only other two suitable blood donors available.”
“You are too old, Mother,” Emorra objected. “I shall donate two units.”
“Who is too old?” Wind Blossom snorted. “What do you know? You never studied medicine.”
“You know better,” Emorra corrected. Carelly arrived with a tray and a cup of tea.
“That was genetics, not medicine,” Wind Blossom said. Emorra’s eyes flashed.
Purman and Janir looked askance at the two women. “Please,” Purman said anxiously. “My son.”
Wind Blossom spared one more moment to glare at her daughter. “Always a disappointment you were to me,” she muttered before she bent over the boy. She worked quickly, starting with the lacerations of the forehead. Gently she teased the open wounds together.
She stitched the dermis and subcutaneous fat together with polydioxanone—a synthetic absorbable suture—and closed the epidermis with synthetic polyester sutures. She made her stitches small and as few as she could; there was even less suture material than she had feared.
Janir monitored the boy’s vital signs, while Latrel supervised the direct transfusion of first Purman’s and then Emorra’s blood.
When both units had been transferred to the boy, Wind Blossom said, without looking up from her work, “Carelly, take Purman and Emorra out of here, make sure they both have wine and cheese, and take some rest.”
An hour later, Wind Blossom laid aside her tools and walked wearily to the other bed. “My turn now, Latrel.”
Janir and Latrel exchanged worried looks. “The boy is—” Janir began.
Wind Blossom cut him off. “He needs the blood. I don’t.”
Latrel pursed his lips. “Emorra may not have studied medicine, but I have. A unit of blood at your age is not a good idea.”
Wind Blossom looked up at the young intern. “Latrel, there is nothing more I can teach you to do with the supplies we have left,” she said slowly. “The boy’s wounds came from a watch-wher, my ‘mistake.’ If it’s to be, then nothing would suit me more than for my blood to redeem my error.” When she saw that the intern still looked unconvinced, she added, “And it’s my choice, Latrel.”
“Very well,” he replied, his tone resigned but his face showing his worry.
Wind Blossom winced as he inserted the needle into her vein. As her blood began to flow into the mutilated boy, she sighed, and remembered nothing more.
It was always the same dream.
“How could you say that the Multichord songbird of Cetus III is my greatest success?”
That honors had been heaped upon Kitti Ping for her work in developing the hybrid, which had so neatly averted the worst ecological disaster of the Nathi Wars, was not answer enough.
“When are we done?” Kitti Ping prodded when Wind Blossom would not answer her first question.
“Never,” Wind Blossom heard herself dully repeating.
“Why is that?”
“Because today is the mother of tomorrow,” Wind Blossom said, spouting another of her mother’s sayings.
Kitti Ping’s eyes narrowed. “And what does that mean, child?”
“It means, my mother, that our work today will be changed by what happens tomorrow.”
“And only those who anticipate tomorrow will find rest in their labors,” Kitti Ping concluded. She sighed, her symbol of utmost despair in her daughter. “The Multichord was nothing compared to the leechworm.”
Wind Blossom schooled her face carefully to hide any trace of her thoughts: Here it comes again. Aloud she said, “I consider the Multichord the obvious representative of the entire symbiotic solution you created, my mother.”
Kitti Ping allowed her gaze to soften—a little. “You are in error. The leechworm, the ugly eater of unwanted radiation, was the true solution to the problem. The Multichord was a felicitous symbiont embodying both a guardian for Cetus III’s pollen-spreading systems, and a suitable predator for the leechworms, allowing us to quickly concentrate the deleterious radioactives in a controlled sector of the biosphere.”
Wind Blossom nodded dutifully. Behind her eyes she remembered the awards citing the Multichord of Cetus III as the First Wonder of the Universe. They had been such an elegant solution to the radiation left by the nuclear horror that the alien Nathi had rained down upon Cetus III in their attempt to eradicate all humanity—an attempt that would have succeeded if not for Admiral Benden.
Wind Blossom remembered the marvelous multitonal choruses that had thrilled the night air and brought smiles to all the survivors of that horrible war, the sheer beauty of the rainbow-colored birds, built upon the original hummingbird genotype, as they flitted like the little bees they protected from one plant to another, pausing occasionally to eat any stray leechworm that threatened to transport radioactives into those areas already reclaimed.
The dream changed. “Why did you make the watch-whers?”
Mother, Wind Blossom thought, you know why I made the watch-whers. They were part of the original plan.
“Why did you make the watch-whers, Wind Blossom?” The voice was not Kitti Ping’s: It was deeper.
Wind Blossom opened her eyes. Sitting beside her was Ted Tubberman’s son, Purman.
She sat up slowly. She was in her room. Purman was seated beside her bed, looking intently at her.
“Your son, how is he?” she asked.
Purman’s eyes lightened. “He is recovering. Your Latrel had to dose him with fellis juice so that he wouldn’t talk and dislodge the sutures in his cheek. His chest and arm wounds are healing nicely.”
Wind Blossom raised an eyebrow.
“You have been unconscious for nearly two days,” Purman told her. “You really were too old to be a donor.”
“My daughter?”
Purman’s face took on a gentler expression. “Emorra did not leave your side until she collapsed into sleep herself. I had Carelly take her to her rooms.” His expression changed. “I think you treated her harshly. Was Kitti Ping like that?”
Wind Blossom examined his face before slowly nodding. “It is a great honor the Eridani bestowed on us.”
“It’s a curse,” Purman growled. “This whole planet’s a curse.”
“How did your son come to be mauled by the watch-wher?” Wind Blossom asked, sidestepping his outburst.
Purman glared at her before answering, his lips pursed tightly.
“Tieran loved that thing. He played with her, and spent all his time with her,” he replied. He sighed. “She was sleeping and Tieran came over to her and tried to scratch her head, like he’d seen M’hall do with his dragon.”
Wind Blossom sat upright and tried to get out of bed, but Purman stopped her, looking at her questioningly. Her fatigue did not diminish the fire that fanned in her brown eyes, as she said, “That one must be destroyed. Immediately.”
Purman recoiled. Instead of asking her why, he furrowed his brows in thought.
“An instinctive reaction?” he guessed. “Why?”
The door to her room opened and M’hall and Emorra entered.
“An instinctive reaction,” Wind Blossom agreed. “I thought I had bred it out.” She turned to M’hall. “That watch-wher must be destroyed before she passes on the trait.”
M’hall shook his head. “Bendensk went between already, Wind Blossom.”
Wind Blossom sighed. “She was very old.” She looked at Purman. “Perhaps if she had been younger, she could
have controlled herself.” She looked up at M’hall. “How is the wherhandler?”
M’hall crossed the room and seated himself, frowning. “That may have been part of the problem, too,” he said. “Jaran—now J’ran—had been Searched and Impressed the week before.”
“The watch-wher would have been confused and seeking out a new wherhandler,” Wind Blossom said to herself. She looked at Purman. “Probably your son.”
“How is the boy?”
“He is doing well,” Emorra replied. “Janir has him in a fellis-laced sleep.”
“We shall have to wake him soon,” Wind Blossom said, making a face. “And we must keep his jaw as immobile as possible.”
“That will be hard on him,” Purman said, flashing a smile. “He is a talker.”
“Then someone who can outtalk him should be at his side when he wakes,” Wind Blossom replied. She looked at her daughter. “Emorra, see to it.”
“My lady!” M’hall protested, “Emorra is the administrator here. She should not be ordered about—”
“She is my daughter,” Wind Blossom replied, as if that were enough. Emorra bit off a bitter response, nodded curtly to her mother, and left.
“Mother or not—” M’hall’s indignation suffused his face.
Purman was unmoved. “Why did you send her out?”
Wind Blossom stared at M’hall until the Weyrleader let out an angry sigh. “How much has your mother told you, M’hall?”
M’hall shot a pointed glance at Purman. Wind Blossom motioned for M’hall to continue. The Benden Weyrleader relaxed, looking only at Wind Blossom.
“My mother,” M’hall said, giving the second word slight emphasis, “has told me everything she knows.”
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