“That is the last box, Mistress Rigi,” Makana said as he pushed a very small, heavy crate into the tent. Rigi wondered what it was, but saw Tomás’s tag on it and shrugged a little. Probably scout things, like so many of the other interesting items tucked into any possible space in the tent-like shelter. Makana’s belongings took up far less space, thanks be.
“Thank you, Makana. Please scoot it over that way, and I’ll—” She heard the sound of hop-running and stopped.
“Medic! Mistress Medic!” a male Staré called. Rigi snatched the appropriate bag from the camp-table near the door and rushed out. A fourth-Stamm male stopped, bowing to her and hand-bowing to Makana. “Scald in the fifth-Stamm canteen, Mistress Medic. Bad scald.”
“I come.” Rigi and Martinus followed the light brown male as he hurried through the camp, into the Staré section. The tents were colored by Stamm, making things a little easier, and Rigi reviewed the protocols for scalds as they trotted down the row of shelters. Why had he come to her, since there were Staré medics on site? She heard screams and grabbed her skirts, breaking into a run, Martinus accelerating and clearing her path. They skidded around a corner and saw the problem.
“Oh shed fur and scales,” Rigi hissed under her breath as she assessed the scene. Staré medics took care of two injured, while a third writhed on a tarp, moaning, then screaming each time her tail and one hind leg touched the ground. Rigi opened the bag and pulled on sterile hand and forearm covers before kneeling beside the tarp. Since the patient’s airway seemed very clear, she was not bleeding from anywhere but the scald, and she seemed conscious, Rigi decided to treat the pain first. She found the right spray bottle by touch. When the female thrashed toward her, Rigi spritzed the raw area on her tail with numbing spray. She counted to three, and watched the female slow her frantic rolling. Rigi grabbed the uninjured end of the female’s hind leg and held it long enough to spray that wound. The female gasped, then shuddered and went limp as the pain stopped. Rigi breathed a prayer of thanks and looked around for help.
“You and you, roll her onto her pouch-side, please.” The males blinked at her, then did as ordered. “Good.” Rigi shifted to her knees and moved closer so she could inspect the scalds. She winced at the damage. The skin on the tail was sloughing off, with blisters already forming above the open area. The back of the hind leg had lost its fur and was blistering, but did not seem as badly injured. Rigi sprayed the wounds again, then replaced the bottle in her bag and found the antiseptic spray. With one hand she misted the female’s tail, and with the other she found the pulse inside the uninjured hind leg. High, but she expected that, given the stress the female had been under. Rigi set the bottle down on the tarp and removed the little vital signs monitor from her bag, slipped a cover onto it, and clipped it to one of the female’s hindfeet. Next she took out the trimmer and shaved the fur closest to the blisters and open wound, brushing it away from the injuries as she worked. Wounds cleaned, fur cleared, now Rigi could see about bandaging the injury. The female would probably need a skin graft for the tail.
“What’s this?” a human male bellowed. “What’s going on here?”
“Accident in the canteen, Captain Lowen, sir,” a Staré replied as Rigi considered which spray bandage would do the least damage. The blue stuff with the name she never could recall, she decided, and applied a first layer with the spray attachment, then got ready to brush on a second cross-layer once the first set. It would let in air but not moisture or dirt. “Two males had a spat and crashed into the table with pots on it. Two pots fell over, landed on one male, splashed this male and that female.”
“What was in the pots?”
“Boiling cass-taters, sir.”
Rigi winced. The starches in the water probably explained part of the problem. How hard had the males hit the table and pots? Very hard, or the table should have been a lot stronger. The female’s pulse had settled down to near normal, and Rigi took a moment to inspect the rest of her while the bandage spray set. A broken hindfoot claw, and two broken forefoot claws, and an old ear-break, judging by how the female’s left ear flopped in the middle. Speaking of flopped… “I need a half-bed, please,” Rigi called in Staré. “She needs to be supported pouch-down.” Leaving the female with her head and neck extended like that for too long could cause problems.
She heard steps and saw a pair of black boots with tattered laces. “Who are you?” Rigi looked up and saw Capt. Lowen, one of the army officers assigned to the Staré. “Oh, your pardon Mrs. Bernardi-Prananda.”
“No apology needed, Captain.” Rigi did her best to sound as calm and gracious as if they were at a dinner party. “I fear I am a trifle busy at the moment, or I would show you my certificate.”
“No, no; no need, ma’am.” He backed up, making room for two Staré with a chest-support bench. One of the Staré had a medic’s bars on his modesty apron and vest, and Rigi leaned back out of the way as he directed the other male to lift and arrange the female. Rigi’s monitor beeped, then flashed orange.
“Pulse and blood pressure dropping,” Rigi announced, still calm.
“Numbers?” the other medic asked.
“Pulse fifty and falling, pressure one twenty over eighty and falling.” Rigi took a deep breath. “I’ll finish the bandage if you will treat the shock.”
“Agreed, ma’am.” Rigi concentrated on spreading an even, smooth layer of blue-tinted compound over the now-dry initial layer as the Staré male treated the female’s shock. Two more Staré came up with a thermal wrap and Rigi shifted her weight from her knees onto her heels, then stood and moved clear. She cleaned the brush and put it in a bag for sterilization, then capped the bottle and replaced it in her satchel. The Staré medic, a low second Stamm, handed her the monitor before he finished encasing the female in the thermal blanket. “Yes, we’ll move her, but she’s the least injured. Those two have priority, and as long as she remains stable, she can stay here until there’s space,” he informed someone. //Annoyance/satisfaction/concern// surrounded Rigi like a musky fog and she wished the wind would move the smells out of the way.
“Do you have further need of me?”
The medic ear bowed, both forefeet busy working on the patient. “No, Wise One. Thank you for your swift arrival.”
She hand bowed in return. “You are welcome, and I will file my report this afternoon.” Rigi turned, stripping the hand covers off and tucking them in an exterior pocket with a five stitched to it. She’d sterilize them and put them back in her bag. Sterilizing freed them from her "contamination" and lack of Stamm so that she could re-use them. The gathered Staré all bowed or ear-bowed, clearing a path for her and Martinus. She hand-bowed and returned to her tent, Martinus pacing beside her. The scents faded as she left the crowd and Rigi breathed deep of the warm air. She smelled dust, and plants, and something cooking that she did not care to sample if it tasted like it smelled.
Makana had cool water waiting when she got back to the tent. “Thank you, Makana.” Rigi drank, then put Martinus on his charging pad before she and Makana walked to one of the secondary medical shelters so she could file her report and have her gear cleaned. Luckily, a batch was about to go into a sterilizer so she added hers equipment to it, then found a computer and sat down to enter the information. She did not have patient name, but someone could fill that in. Fifteen minutes later, she reclaimed her things and found Makana outside talking with another third Stamm male.
“The males fighting will be punished,” he informed her on the way back to their shelter. “They had been told to go to the appropriate area, and refused. Your presence is not needed, Mistress Rigi. And Slowth has been groomed, fed, and watered.”
“Ah, thank you.”
Once back at the shelter, she dismissed Makana to take care of his things and to get something to eat at the canteen. Since he’d taken care of Slowth, all she needed to do was get supper ready. She went through the packets of food and spices that she’d packed to supplement the official rations th
ey’d been issued. Not cass-tater, not today. Perhaps yam, since she and Tomás both liked yam. Rigi yawned. She’d unpack later.
The next day Rigi went to check on Slowth and to get a better sense of the camp and its surroundings. She also wanted to confirm for herself that the sanitation section was not near any of the four water supply points. They’d brought waste burners and composters, along with water processing, but wombows generated a great deal of manure, and thus far all attempts at training wombows to use a proper waste disposal box had proven unsuccessful. Uncle Eb claimed that he’d been told that the wombows understood what humans wanted, but refused to comply out of spite. Rigi noticed that he used only mechanical transport if at all possible and suspected that he greatly overestimated the beasts’ forethought and capacity for rational abstraction. She sniffed as she walked. Some food smells reached her nose, along with the moist and slightly bitter odor of a wetland half a kilometer north of the current camp, and the dusty and musky scent of wombows. Why did they always smell dusty, she wondered, trying to recall if she’d ever read or heard. Unless they got sopping wet to the point that their fur soaked through, they always smelled like powder-dry ground on a hot day.
Tomás had borrowed Makana for something, and Mr. Jonko, the livestock supervisor, had ordered Martinus to stay away from the wombows. “Don’t trust dogs, m- or bio. Always cause trouble, mark my words Miss, they’re always trouble.” Mr. Jonko reminded Rigi of a go-fast stick with a sun-shade propped on one end, he was so tall and thin. He seemed lazy, not moving unless forced to, but she’d discovered that his “laziness” kept both people and wombows calm while he watched, listened, and learned. Rigi slowed her steps as she neared the enclosure to which Slowth had been assigned. Individual wombows could be phlegmatic to the point of apparent torpor. Seven or more wombows would bolt if startled or rushed, sprinting as fast as their thick, round legs would carry them and not caring who or what might be in their way. Rigi had seen a wombeast rush once and suspected that deep in their DNA, wombows retained more wombeast than many people cared to admit. Rigi slowed her steps even more, looked around for the cart parking and the view gate, and turned to the left.
Rigi waited until the man on duty finished checking a six wombow hitch out to one of the teamsters with a big freight and timber wagon, the kind with mass-lifters on it to ease the load on the animals. Once the third pair of grey-brown wombows marched past, she pulled her animal-identity marker out of her belt-bag and handed it to the man on duty. “Mrs. Bernardi-Prananda to check on Slowth.”
“Slowth, Slowth, hmm,” he ran a calloused, slightly crooked finger down the digital list. “Ah, yes, gelding Slowth Prananda, all shots, pen six, section four.” He returned the matte green marker disk. “Do you know where to find that pen, ma’am?”
“Yes, sir. Center aisle, left side, with the other single-hitch wombows.”
“Correct.” He lowered the blocking shield and opened the metal-pipe gate.
“Thank you, sir.” She touched the brim of her sun-shade as she inclined her head.
He smiled and touched his forehead with two fingers. “You are very welcome.” Rigi heard the faint sound of the field switching back on before wombow “chatter” muffled it. Munching noises, mutters of complaint or commentary about life as a wombow, grunts of some mysterious significance, stomach gurgles, and a few sighs arose from the hundred or so animals. And this was the smallest of the four corrals! Rigi moved slowly but steadily, head up but glancing at the ground every few steps so she could avoid any droppings.
She found Slowth dozing, his long eyelashes fluttering a little as he snored. Or was that just the normal sound all wombows made when they slept? He looked fine, and she couldn’t discern any missing fur or other signs that one of his pen-mates was causing him trouble. The other four animals still in the pen also seemed healthy and uninjured. One had pierced ears, with bright pink ribbons tied to the ear-clips. Rigi blinked, rubbed her eyes, and peered again. The pink ribbons remained, and Rigi decided that she could understand why the light grey and black mottled gelding looked rather morose. Even if pink and pale yellow were good luck colors with the Staré, pink on a gelding? She shook her head a little and wondered what her mother would say about such a thing.
Rigi left Slowth to his slumbers. He’d need his energy once the civilian camp shifted to the settlement site, and Rigi could go sketching and exploring. The first cart-tracks were already finished, and she looked forward to taking him out with the cart so she could draw. She blinked at the pen containing nothing but black wombows, and wondered if the eight were a heavy hitch, or if someone had just decided that sorting them by color was easier for some reason. Did color affect temperament? She couldn’t remember.
The gentleman at the gate let her out, and Rigi went around to the other side of the wombow enclosure to make certain that her cart was where Makana said he’d left it. It wasn’t, and she had to go through several rows of carts and small wagons before she found the one she and Tomás had been assigned. It needed the axles greased, and she’d told Makana to put in a work request. She crouched down and saw that no, the metal remained dry. Rigi sighed to herself and stood. She did not like to pester, but neither did she desire to cause a stampede, to go deaf, or to ignite the grass with sparks from unlubricated metal on metal.
“What are you—? Oh Mrs. Prananda.” Rigi turned to see a well-built man with a very trim waist bowing a little.
She inclined her head in return. “Major LeFeu.” She remembered him from the meeting, his pale red hair and very pale eyes.
“I am surprised to see you here, Mrs. Prananda. Well met, none the less.”
“I placed a request for the wagon manager to grease the axles of the cart assigned to my household, and I came to see if the work were completed yet.”
He stepped closer and she eased to the side a little, in case he wanted to look for himself. It seems that he did, because he bent down and peered under the small cart’s bed. “Ah, yes, I can see why that could be a matter of concern.” He straightened up, resting one large hand on the side of the cart. “As are you. Is your husband treating you well?”
Oh dear, was he one of those individuals who believed that neoTraditionalists abused their wives? She dearly wished that rumor would die, once and for all. “Yes, sir, he treats me very well.”
“Hmm.” He looked at something over head, the horizon perhaps, and pursed his lips before looking at her again. “He will be away, in the future.”
And? Rigi waited. Was he going to assure her that once Tomás left, if she wanted to claim abuse, he understood her reticence and would be willing to help her file for a safety-separation? If so he was in for a polite but firm correction.
Instead he changed the topic. “My lady did not come with me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Major. I trust she is not ill.”
“And with Capt. Prananda away, possibly for an extended period,” he stepped toward her, then gave her a suggestive sideways look. “your sharing my company as—hostess—would not be taken amiss. Indeed, it could be beneficial to all parties involved.”
Aghast, Rigi fought to stay calm and polite. Aunt Kay had warned her about that sort of invitation, but she'd not imagined it might happen here of all places. She wanted to slap Major LeFeu for daring to suggest such a thing. Dear Creator, what should she say? The truth, but carefully, pretend she’d misunderstood. She hoped that she had misunderstood. Surely she had misunderstood. “I fear you misunderstand me, sir, for which I apologize. I merely wished to inquire into the state of your lady’s health, nothing more.”
He moved sideways and forward, blocking her departure and forcing her against the cart. “And you fail to understand me. I control your husband’s career and the ease or difficulty he faces as he approaches the next turning in that career. Your—let us say cooperation—with my efforts can assist his progress greatly. The converse is also true. I suggest that you consider my situation and observation with the seriousness it des
erves, Mrs. Prananda.” He leaned forward, grey-green eyes dilated with repulsive passion. Rigi’s hand eased down to the hand-shooter concealed in the folds of her skirt. Major LeFeu backed, bowed, and left her staring, heart racing with fury and disbelief.
She had to tell Tomás, had to warn him. And she had to stay away from the major. Rigi recited the short prayer for discernment, followed by a plea to the Creator and Creatrix for wisdom and strength. Then she set out of the tent-shelter, head high, considering how she was gong to warn Tomás.
When Rigi reached the tent-shelter, she found Makana and Martinus waiting. “These were left on the card table, Mistress Rigi,” Makana pointed to a stack of rectangular cards. “And Capt. Prananda and first-Stamm sir have departed on a long-distance scout. The captain left a message there,” he gestured toward the main work and dining table.
Rigi glanced at the top card and rubbed the bridge of her nose, eyes closed. Her husband had just been sent into the wilderness, his commanding officer had attempted to seduce her, and she had tea invitations to consider and respond to. She sat down rather firmly on the camp chair beside the dining table. Martinus got up, walked to her, and put his head in her lap. She petted the synth-cloth pad in top of his head and said, “Makana, I do believe I would rather be on the Kenusha Plains at the beginning of the wombeast migration than dealing with some humans.”
Woman's Work: Shikari Book Four Page 8