Scavenger Alliance

by Janet Edwards

  “That’s very good news, but survival first, medicines later.”

  “Sorry.” He closed the cabinet and activated the field again. “I’m looking at the building plans now. We’re currently in hall 3, which is part of the main medical supply area.”

  I studied the room carefully. “The roof is leaking in a couple of places, there are three broken windows down the far end, and cockroaches have been nesting under the cabinets. Are there any smaller rooms in this place where we could store our supplies and sleep?”

  “There’s a whole row of offices.”

  Tad led the way across the room, through a door, and into a corridor. Windows ran along the wall to our left, while there were a series of doors to our right. I opened the nearest one and saw a small room with a grimy desk and half a dozen flexiplas chairs. The vital thing was the ceiling was unblemished by damp, and the windows were all intact. I did a circuit of the room, carefully inspecting where the walls met the floor.

  “What are you doing?” asked Tad.

  “Checking the rats haven’t gnawed a way in. Everything looks fine. I can’t even see any cockroaches.”

  “That’s good,” said Tad. “I don’t want rats and cockroaches running over me when I’m asleep.”

  “The problem isn’t rats running over you, but them stopping to bite you,” I said grimly. “Rat bites can get infected or give you fever.”

  There was a two second pause before Tad made a noise of revulsion. I guessed he’d just looked up rat bite fever on the Earth data net.

  “You can pile the empty stasis boxes in hall 3 for now,” I said, “but you’d better bring the bedding and stasis boxes of food in here. Be careful to keep the door closed after that. If rats get in, they won’t be able to chew their way into an active stasis box, but they’ll destroy the sleeping bags.”

  Once Tad had unloaded the boat, he finally got his chance to explore the building. The place was far bigger than I’d realized, with corridors linking multiple warehouses together. Tad strode purposefully through the vast halls, while I trailed uselessly after him, trying to ignore the painful throbbing in my left arm and shoulder. Occasionally, he’d stop to open one of the stasis cabinets and peer inside, before closing it again, re-activating the stasis field, and moving on.

  I assumed Tad was checking what medicines were available so he could choose the best ones to take back with us, but then he stopped in an area where there was a whole row of glass-fronted cupboards filled with gruesome surgical instruments, and the stasis cabinets contained syringes, tubes of liquid, and other things that I didn’t recognize at all.

  After ten minutes of watching him open and close the stasis cabinets, I got restless. “We’ve used a few medicines in the past that have to be injected into people, but tablets and ointments are much simpler and easier.”

  “I realize that,” said Tad. “I’m planning to take back tablets and ointments, but while we’re here …”

  He turned to face me. “I didn’t argue about us carrying on with this trip, because I knew this place held a whole range of medical supplies. I thought I could use them to treat your arm.”

  Treat my arm? I glanced at a fearsome array of surgical instruments in a nearby cupboard, and took a nervous step backwards.

  “It’s entirely your decision whether you allow me to treat your arm or not,” added Tad hastily.

  “You’re an expert on portals, not a doctor,” I said. “What are you planning to do? Rewire me?”

  “For the last hour I’ve been using my web to discuss your case with a qualified doctor at Earth America Off-world,” said Tad. “I’ve told her I can set things up to send the sounds I’m hearing, and the images of the view through my eyes, to a wall vid for her. She thinks that should be enough for her to talk me through the treatment procedure.”

  Tad wanted me to let one of the leeches at America Off-world talk him through messing with my arm! “Is this doctor watching us now?”

  “Of course not,” said Tad. “I wouldn’t let her watch us without warning you what was happening.”

  “You’re sure she doesn’t know what I am?”

  “Perfectly sure.”

  “Because if she finds out I belong to the Earth Resistance, or that my mother was on the wrong side of the barricades in London, she might try to make my arm worse rather than better.”

  “She’s a doctor, Blaze,” said Tad. “All she cares about is that you’re a patient who needs help.”

  I closed my eyes, struggling to think. My left arm and my shoulder were throbbing painfully even when I kept them perfectly still. Was there any chance of this injury healing naturally, or was this my only hope of ever using my arm again?

  “I realize this comes as a big shock to you,” said Tad. “I couldn’t warn you about my plan, because it would have been horrible to raise your hopes and then find the vital regrowth fluid was gone, or the stasis field preserving it had failed. I’d like to give you time to consider the decision, but we don’t have it. If we’re going to do this while we’re here, we must start work now, because the healing process will take a couple of days.”

  Did I trust an unknown off-world doctor to give Tad the right instructions? Did I trust Tad to follow those instructions correctly?

  “We could take everything back to the Parliament House and try to fix your arm there,” Tad continued, “but it would be difficult to explain the situation to your father, and Cage might do something to complicate things.”

  I pictured Tad trying to explain this to my father. I wasn’t sure if Donnell would throw him off the roof or just go and get drunk again, but there was absolutely no doubt that Cage would do something to complicate things. If I didn’t agree to his demands the second I arrived back at the Parliament House, then he’d launch his attack on me and Donnell.

  The pain from my arm must have been stopping me thinking properly, because it was only now that I realized the obvious point. Cage would start his attack by calling general justice against me for hiding an injury to my arm. If there was any chance that Tad could heal my arm before then, I had to take it.

  “Let’s do this,” I said.

  Tad took a bag of ominously red fluid from the nearest stasis cabinet, then moved to another to get two tubes. “Local anaesthetic and hibernation trigger,” he muttered. “Now I need …”

  I watched him get a couple of syringes, one small and one terrifyingly large. When I was a small child in London, I’d seen someone have an injection. He’d screamed a lot, but he’d been screaming a lot before that as well.

  Tad walked towards the aisle with the cabinets of terrifying medical instruments. I was relieved to see him walk straight past them to collect some cotton wool swabs and a bottle of antiseptic lotion.

  “Let’s go back to the office,” he said. “That’s just as filthy as the rest of this place, and there’s no way we can clean it to hospital standards, but there shouldn’t be a danger of infection if we can avoid using an open wound procedure.”

  I didn’t know what an open wound procedure was, but it sounded like a very good thing to avoid. The only time precious old medicines had been used on me was when I first arrived in New York. Donnell had simply spread ointment on my burned hands back then. I’d been stunned by the way my pain had instantly vanished, and the skin had healed perfectly in twenty-four hours, but fixing my arm was bound to be far more complex than that.

  I followed Tad back to the small office where we’d left the mattresses and sleeping bags. He shoved the dusty desk and chairs out of the way, and laid out one mattress and sleeping bag in the centre of the room.

  “I told the doctor you broke your arm last summer,” he said. “She wants to know if your new injury is in the same place.”

  “It seems to be higher up this time,” I said. “It may be the shoulder itself that’s injured, but I’ve got a lot of pain in the arm too.”

  “The doctor says we’ll need to examine your arm to locate the injury.” Tad looked embarrassed. �
��We’ll need you to take off some clothes for that. I’ve never seen anything other than a woman’s face and hands uncovered here, so you obviously have very strict rules on clothing, but I’m afraid it’s unavoidable.”

  “Strict rules on clothing?” I laughed. “Tad, everyone’s been bundled up in coats, even indoors, because it’s midwinter and we’ve little heating.”

  “Oh,” said Tad. “Many of the Alpha sector worlds were settled from specific parts of Earth, and some have strong cultural traditions about clothing, so I thought …”

  “There are a few people in the alliance who have strong cultural rules about clothing,” I said, “but I’m not one of them. Donnell and my mother both identified as Irish, I suppose I do too, though I was born in London and my ancestors aren’t all from Ireland or even Europe.”

  I started unbuttoning my coat, but it was a struggle one-handed. “Chaos take it! Tad, can you help me with this?”

  Tad helped me take off my coat and the thick top beneath it. I was wearing a clinging top with long sleeves underneath that, because several layers kept you warmer during cold winter days. It was perfectly respectable, but Tad looked at me with an odd expression on his face.

  “What’s the matter? Haven’t you seen a girl before?” The words slipped out before I realized I might have made the wrong assumption myself. “Sorry, I hadn’t thought … Do people on Adonis have strict rules about clothing?”

  “No,” said Tad. “It’s just that I’d only seen you wrapped up in coats. I hadn’t realized you were such a delicate thing.”

  I nearly said something extremely rude, but realized at the last moment that Tad’s tone of voice meant he thought the word delicate was a compliment rather than an insult. Possibly people on Adonis admired a totally different type of figure in a girl than people in our alliance.

  “I’ve seen plenty of girls before,” continued Tad. “Far too many of them, in fact. For the last couple of years, I’ve had to attend a succession of parties where every aristocratic family on Adonis has paraded their daughters in front of me. Most of them wearing the minimal possible clothing.”

  The set of buttons on my long-sleeved top were much smaller and easier to undo, so I could handle them myself without any problems, but I paused and frowned at Tad’s words. It had been a shock to discover Tad could flatten Cage. Hearing that Tad had been pursued by hordes of girls was even more disconcerting.

  Tad sighed. “Of course they’re parading the girls in front of my name and my fortune, not me as a person. I hate the insincerity of it, but my grandfather insists I attend the parties. He wants me to marry and have children as soon as possible because of what happened to my father.”

  I slipped off the long-sleeved top, so now I was just wearing a sleeveless vest with tiny straps.

  “Well, there’s a good side to me being caught stealing that aircraft,” said Tad, in a more cheerful voice. “Even if I return to Adonis instead of going to Zeus, I’ll be in disgrace. No more parties. No more functions. No more having to be polite to endless identical girls decked out in the latest fashion of glittering wigs. They all look the same. They all ask the same boring questions. They’re all grovellingly polite to me. That’s one of the things that attracted me to you. You’re so different.”

  “I certainly wasn’t grovellingly polite to you,” I said.

  Tad laughed. “No, your reactions to me were gloriously genuine. You weren’t impressed by me and you showed it. That stung my pride to start with, but then I realized this was the first time in my life I’d ever had an honest interaction with a girl.”

  I lay down on the sleeping bag. “Surely you’d had honest interactions with Phoenix? She doesn’t wear a glittering wig either.”

  “Phoenix is a hard-working research assistant, not an aristocratic party girl, but she was as dreadfully polite to me as everyone else when we were on Adonis. She only started telling me what she really thought of me after we arrived in New York.”

  Tad knelt down beside me. “I’m setting up contact with the doctor now. As I said, I’ll be showing her the images I’m seeing on a wall vid. She’ll be hearing our voices too, and I’ll be hearing what she says to me and relaying it on to you. Understand?”

  “I think so. That means we have to be careful what we say now.”

  “That’s right. I’ll let you know when I break contact and we can talk freely again.”

  There was a short pause. “I’m talking to the doctor now,” said Tad. “I have to check your arm bones to locate the injury. Tell me if there’s any pain, how much, and exactly where it hurts.”

  I had the urge to look round the room, as if the doctor was hiding in the corner watching us. “It already hurts everywhere. Shooting pains running up and down my arm and shoulder.”

  “Then tell me when the pain changes.” He held my arm steady with one hand and ran the other up and down it. “Anything?”

  “No, just the same pain as before.”

  “I’ll be squeezing your arm in different places now,” said Tad.

  He squeezed my wrist with one hand, lightly at first then harder, repeated that half a dozen times as he worked his way up my arm, and then sat back. “No especially painful area in the arm at all?”

  “No.”

  “The doctor thinks the main problem is in your shoulder. She’s working out what to do next. I’ve cut the sound and vision stream while she does that, because I wanted to check … Does this situation, me examining your arm, feel as awkward to you as it does to me?”

  “Yes.” I pulled a face. “The invisible doctor watching us isn’t helping either.”

  “I hope it’s not creepy.”

  “It’s not creepy.”

  “Good,” said Tad. “I admit I’ve pictured the possibility of … touching you, but this isn’t how I imagined it happening. I’m doing my best to be as distantly polite as the circumstances allow.”

  I laughed. “You’re being icily impersonal.”

  “Ah, the doctor’s sent me a lot of instructions.” Tad frowned. “I’m opening the sound and vision stream again. I’m afraid this is going to hurt.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “Are you awake?” Tad’s voice asked. “It’s time for me to check your pulse and temperature again.”

  I opened my eyes, glanced across at the windows, and saw the red light of dawn in the sky. “Chaos, I hadn’t realized it was morning already.”

  “Oh, you’re back to just politely saying chaos now. You really surprised me yesterday. I’d no idea you had such an extensive vocabulary of rude words.” Tad seemed to be struggling not to laugh.

  I blushed. “I spent the first eleven years of my life as a member of London division. Of course I know plenty of rude words. I don’t normally use them myself, but I was in a lot of pain.”

  “I’m really sorry about that,” said Tad. “We didn’t have a body scanner to show what was wrong inside your shoulder, so we had to see what movements were physically possible and how painful they were.”

  “I understand it was necessary, and I apologize for calling you names.”

  “The one that really confused me was when you called me a skunk. How do you know about Cassandrian skunks?”

  “I don’t,” I said. “When I said skunk, I meant an Earth skunk, some of which live in New York. If you ever meet something with black and white stripes, then I strongly recommend you leave it alone. One of the Manhattan division children teased one once, and even throwing the boy in the river didn’t get rid of the smell afterwards.”

  Tad had the characteristic, distant expression that meant he was checking something on the Earth data net. “Ah, yes. Humans can smell the skunk spray in concentrations as low as ten parts per billion. Anyway, I didn’t mind you calling me names when I was hurting you. I was just as relieved as you were when I could inject you with the local anaesthetic.”

  I was too embarrassed to admit it to Tad, but I hadn’t gone quiet then out of relief, but out of pure terror. I’d b
een totally panic-stricken when I couldn’t feel or move my arm, worrying that it had died. If I’d had any sense, I’d have asked Tad if that was what was supposed to happen with an anaesthetic, but I’d been much too afraid to put my fear into words.

  “That injection will be wearing off now, but I can give you another, slightly smaller dose,” he added.

  “I don’t think I need any more local anaesthetic,” I said hastily.

  “You still can’t feel your shoulder and arm?”

  “Only a bit,” I lied. “They feel warm.”

  The truth was that my shoulder and arm felt hot, like I was outside in the sun on a very warm day instead of huddled in a sleeping bag in a freezing cold room. There was also a strange, throbbing sensation that felt as if it was deep inside the bones. The feeling hovered somewhere on the edge of pain, but it reassured me that my arm was still alive and part of me.

  “Well, all right,” said Tad, in a doubtful voice. “Anaesthetics do last longer on some people than others, but let me know if it starts hurting you.”

  “I will,” I said, though I was determined that I wouldn’t.

  “Just remember that you must stay perfectly still until the full thirty-six hours of healing is complete. The bones knitting together is a relatively simple process, but any disruption to the muscle regeneration phase could leave you with a paralyzed arm.”

  Tad had been checking my pulse and temperature every hour during the night. Every time, he’d given me the same lecture about the need to keep perfectly still. The constant repetition was unnecessary. I could hardly forget the need to keep still when Tad had borrowed both our knife belts to buckle round me, holding my left arm rigidly immobile against a piece of wood at my side.

  The repetition was unnecessary, but I understood why Tad was acting this way. He’d appeared perfectly confident when he was working on my shoulder and arm, perhaps he’d truly been perfectly confident back then, but now he was suffering the strain of waiting thirty-six hours to find out if the treatment had worked. His mind was coming up with a host of things that could have gone wrong.