Passages

by Olan Thorensen

  “All right,” called out Runmen. “You all know the rules. Let’s get to it.”

  With that, the noncombatant members of each party melded into the crowd. Mark and Bomlyn were alone for all of two seconds before Tungel’s man charged, arms wide to grapple.

  Mark ducked and dodged to his right, a big arm brushing across his head.

  Damn! Mark thought. He’s faster than he looks. I can’t dick around with this guy.

  Bomlyn whirled and pursued Mark around the space for the next minute—long enough for muttering to arise from the onlookers and long enough for Mark to judge the man was fast but not agile. He also saw that Bomlyn had taken to reaching out with his right arm to attempt to grab Mark before he got away.

  The next time Mark evaded, in lieu of going to the opposite side of the space, he stopped in the middle. Bomlyn charged, reaching out with his right arm. Instead of dodging, Mark stepped inside the outstretched arm, grabbed the wrist and elbow, and pulled down and forward. He rotated his hip into the man’s body and threw him to the floor, similar to what he’d done when first accosted by the Tungel group.

  Bomlyn rolled to one side and went to his hands and knees to prepare for rising.

  Remember, this is not a Marquis of Queensbury fight, Mark thought.

  He delivered a strong kick to the man’s lower ribs.

  An Oof! expelled from Bomlyn, who clamped a hand to the offended ribs but kept rising. Mark waited until the man rose to one knee, with his torso vertical, before delivering another kick, this time to the solar plexus. Bomlyn’s face turned an interesting shade of purple, as he struggled to breathe.

  Mark looked at Tungel, shrugged, and gave an open hand gesture toward Bomlyn. He could continue hurting the big man, but it was no longer a fight. To continue would be brutality.

  Tungel glared back without looking at his man. Sighing, Mark grabbed one of Bomlyn’s big arms feebly waving around as he searched for air. He held the man’s wrist and elbow and slammed the wrist to his knee. Most of the closest spectators heard the snap of bones, even above the audience’s shouting.

  A moan came from Bomlyn. Mark could have as easily broken the elbow, but he didn’t want to cripple the big man.

  A shout came from Tungel, who strode into the combat space waving his arms. “Enough, enough. I declare Bomlyn defeated.”

  Two of Tungel’s other men rushed to tend to their injured coworker. Tungel ignored Mark and addressed Hamston.

  “All right, your man won, Hamston. Damn you. Where did you get him?”

  “I believe Mark told me he came to you for work, and you laughed him out of your shop.”

  “What—”

  Then recognition washed over Tungel’s face.

  Tungel slapped his thigh with one hand and looked closer at Mark. “Damn again, Hamston. You’re right. I’d forgotten about him. I can’t stand you, Hamston, but I like to think I’m an honest man. I made a mistake and lost this bet fairly. Here’s your large gold.” The loser’s employer reached into a tied pocket in his belt, withdrew one of the large gold coins, and flicked it to Hamston, who caught it with one hand and nodded.

  Tungel turned to Mark. “Next time I’ll bet on you. Kaldwel’s your name if I remember right. If you ever get tired of working with Hamston, come see me, and I won’t make the same mistake twice. Oh, and I recognize you could have hurt Bomlyn worse, so thank you for that.”

  After the Tungel party left to find healers to treat Bomlyn, Hamston came up to Mark as he was putting his shirt back on. “Don’t let that asshole’s offer of employment fool you. He’d change his mind when he fully realized you really don’t know shit about blacksmithing. However, if we were in one of the bigger towns or cities, we could make a fortune by you fighting. Not that I’d suggest you be tempted that way. Such fighters eventually either get beaten senseless from fights or killed by those who bet heavily on their opponent.”

  “What, no congratulations on the win? No thanks for winning your bet for you and upholding the honor of your shop?”

  Hamston laughed. “Good fight. Thanks for the win, and one beer for all of us before we go home. Tomorrow’s another workday. As for the honor of my shop, I don’t think anyone in Tregallon has any questions about that—no matter what Tungel’s opinion of me might be. And about your share of the winnings—I don’t have all the right coins with me. I’ll pay you tomorrow at work.”

  Mark figured it out in this head. Frangelese money started with the smallest coin, composed mainly of copper with a small amount of silver. Ten copper/silvers equaled a small silver, five small silvers equaled a large silver, five large silvers equaled a small gold, and five small golds equaled a large gold.

  Half a large gold coin winnings would be two small golds, two large silvers, two small silvers, and five copper/silvers.

  He whistled and thought, That’s equal to six hundred and twenty-five copper/silver coins—my first income here was that single copper/silver on my first day working for Haral.

  CHAPTER 6

  BEWARE THE STIRKIN

  The altercation at the Blue Murvor solidified Mark’s position in Hamston’s crew, more as an accepted coworker and less an out-of-place oddity. The shop continued fashioning ironwork for the mayor’s house, alternating with other orders, some of which were delayed.

  Within another month, Hamston grudgingly admitted Mark learned faster than expected, though he was not likely to be trusted to produce finished products for a year or more—a time window Mark did not expect to reach. He was thinking of his next step for innovations. By now, Hamston was paying him equal apprentice wages to Felamer.

  “You may not be able to produce as much as Felamer by yourself,” said Hamston, “but the two of you work well together and produce as much as two apprentices or better when you’re working as a team.”

  “Hah,” said Felamer, laughing when he heard the news. “My brain and your muscle almost make us a journeyman blacksmith.”

  Mark eased into a convivial work routine. His intention to begin introducing innovations never left his mind, but a sense of urgency lagged until a series of three events occurred. They were spread over a month’s time and provided a jolt that reminded him of his opportunity to reshape a new life and that time passed was never recovered.

  Hamston finally surrendered to Mark’s entreaties to teach him how to shoe a horse—a skill Hamston didn’t consider a priority for his large “apprentice.” This task was usually done in Tregallon by the other two blacksmiths and several dedicated farriers in their own shops.

  Mark watched Hamston change two shoes on one of the blacksmith’s own horses. As Mark was being talked through another shoe, he leaned to picked up a tool while holding the horse’s leg bent. The horse objected, jumped forward on the other three legs, and kicked Mark in his lower left thigh.

  Mark hopped to a bench and rolled up the pant leg.

  Hamston examined Mark’s leg. Redness and swelling were already apparent.

  “Gonna be a nasty bruise,” Hamston said. “You’re lucky it’s not broken. Take the rest of the day off and see how it is tomorrow.”

  Mark limped to the Hovey house, where Gwanel ministered to him. She tsk-tsked him for an hour while preparing a poultice purported to reduce swelling. He slept fitfully that night, waking in pain every time he turned on the bed. The next morning, a black-and-blue bruise covered half of his left thigh from knee to hip. It was the worst bruise of his life. Comparing it to other major bruises he’d had, including those from football, he assumed it would be a sixday or more before he could work again.

  Thus, he experienced a minor shock when that afternoon he noticed less pain and checked the bruise. The coloration matched his memory of past bruises after five or six days post-injury. By the next morning, the bruise was a fraction of its original size, and he could move freely with no pain.

  “The nanites?” he asked aloud in English. “Although I suppose it could just be that the bruise wasn’t as bad as it initially looked and on
ly broke some blood vessels near the skin.”

  He returned to work the next day, to Hamston’s surprise. Exactly a sixday later, the second event occurred. An overnight windstorm damaged a storage shed behind the workshop severely enough that the blacksmith assigned Mark to tear down one wall and part of the roof in preparation for repairs. He was using a crowbar to loosen planks, and as he pried at a particularly recalcitrant section of the wall, the wood split. Mark stumbled backward at the sudden release of resistance. He tripped and fell, his back landing on an ax propped against a wheelbarrow. His butt absorbed most of the impact, but he felt a searing pain as a corner of the ax blade dug into his back. He scrambled to his feet. There was blood on the ax blade.

  He walked outside and called to another worker. “Come look at this, I think I cut myself.”

  Mark pulled off his shirt. Blood soaked the cloth around a three-inch gash.

  “Holy Sholster!” exclaimed Felamer. “That looks bad! We need to stop the bleeding until we can get you to a medico.”

  “Use my shirt,” said Mark. “I can’t reach the wound.” He sat on the ground, feeling light-headed.

  Hamston hurried over, saw the injury, and ran off to hitch up the shop’s wagon while Felamer pressed the folded shirt to Mark’s back.

  It was Mark’s first experience with Frangel medical practice. He cast a wary eye on the man in his thirties who arrived wearing a brown cassock and carrying a large leather satchel.

  “Ah, here’s Medico Fulmon,” said Hamston. “I’m glad it’s him and not Wylout. That old man’s hands shake so much, the stitches would zigzag in all directions.”

  An hour later, the Frangel doctor, as Mark interpreted the medico role, finished the stitches.

  “That’ll hold you for now, Ser Kaldwel,” said Fulmon. “I cleaned it as best I could. It’s not likely to get a Markal’s Curse infection, but pay attention if it isn’t healing within a sixday. It’s not bleeding, so I won’t put on a bandage. Just be careful not to do anything to break the stitches. Unless things change for the worse, come back in a sixday, so I can look at it.”

  Mark had never heard of Markal’s Curse, but the alien AI said he would be immune to infectious organisms. When he returned to the Hovey house, he borrowed two mirrors from Gwanel, so he could see the wound. He was glad he checked after the stitching, rather than before. A three-inch line with stitches lay in the middle of a reddish swelled area just under his left scapula. Tolerable constant pain turned to intense jabs if he moved his left arm too fast.

  Gwanel fussed over him during evening meal, and he slept ten hours. The next morning, he looked again at the wound. The redness and swelling were gone, but it was odd that the stitches seemed to extend beyond both ends of the gash. He adjusted the mirrors and looked closer. A thin line was barely visible, extending from both ends of the gash.

  My Lord, it’s healing like gangbusters, Mark thought. First that nasty bruise from the horse and now this. It must be whatever the aliens did to me. The AI didn’t say anything about healing faster, but it must be the nanites.

  The next evening, even with mirrors he couldn’t see the wound, and the stitches appeared to have been sewn onto uninjured skin. Assuming this example was indicative of the course of future injuries, the obvious advantages were tempered by a significant negative.

  What if people see that I heal faster than anyone should? Mark wondered. Could it trigger a backlash that I’m unnatural, a minion of whatever devil they have, or just plain so different as to be feared?

  He never went back to Medico Fulmon or allowed Gwanel to check the wound again. When he returned to work after a sixday, he told anyone who asked that the wound wasn’t as deep as originally thought.

  He waited an additional two sixdays to visit a different medico for stitch removal.

  “Very clean healing, Ser Kaldwel. Very nice for less than a month.”

  Mark didn’t tell him the wound had looked completely healed after four days.

  That settles it, thought Mark. Whatever the aliens’ nanites were supposed to do, it includes fast healing. Pretty cool. I wonder if it’s purposeful or a by-product of what the aliens intended? Either way, it’s a good deal—immunity and fast healing. A twofer.

  The third event happened a sixday after he returned to work. The other workers had repaired the shed, but scattered wooden debris needed to be salvaged for reuse or unusable pieces piled to burn. An hour after starting work, Mark leaned down to pick up a piece of broken window sill and felt a prick on the back of his hand. A creature vaguely reminiscent of a large green cockroach with a tail scurried away and disappeared under more debris. Mark looked at his hand. A dark pinpoint was surrounded by white. As he looked, the white changed to red, and he began to feel a sting.

  He cursed the creature, whatever it was, and tried to return to work, only to find that the stung hand wouldn’t respond. The blacksmith happened to walk out from the shop and saw Mark first shake his hand, then grasp the wrist with the other hand.

  “What’s wrong, Mark?” Hamston called out.

  “Some damn little pest stung me. It’s starting to hurt.”

  In the seconds it took for the owner and the other workers to gather, the pain intensified, and the pinpoint was now centered on a swollen lump that seemed to spread as Mark watched.

  “Merciful God!” someone shouted. Mark couldn’t tell who it was because his vision blurred, and the pain faded to numbness.

  “I haven’t heard of anyone being stung here for almost a year! Someone run get a medico. I don’t know if anything can be done, but maybe there’s a new treatment.”

  That was the last thing Mark heard before he faded away.

  He later remembered having moments of awareness and delirium. The next time he was fully aware of being conscious, he found himself in his bed at the Hovey house. Ulwyn, Gwanel, and a man he didn’t recognize stood by the bed.

  “Can you understand me, Ser Kaldwel?” said the man.

  “Ye . . . Yeah. What happened?”

  “My name is Nossum. I’m a medico. You were stung by a stirkin.”

  “We were certain you were going to die like everyone does who gets stung by that awful creature,” cried Gwanel.

  “Well, not everyone dies,” said Nossum, “but about three-quarters do, and many who survive have permanent physical impairment. In cases where the sting is on an arm or leg, it’s often best to amputate the limb as soon as flesh begins to die.”

  “Ampu—” Mark hurriedly pulled up his hand. It was still there, but wrinkled skin surrounded a nasty scar running from the base of the forefinger two-thirds of the way to the wrist.

  “Never saw the like,” said Nossum. “Your hand swelled so much, the skin broke. Usually, flesh begins to die and the body turns chill. It was the opposite for you. Instead of looking like a poison, it was like your body fought an infection.”

  Nossum and the two Hoveys continued to talk, but Mark had stopped listening.

  The nanites? he wondered. The AI said I wouldn’t get an infection. Maybe it wasn’t an infection the nanites fought, but the healing, replacing tissue killed by the poison until it washed out of my system. And the scar? It looks new, but did they see it heal abnormally fast?

  “How long was I out?”

  “Over a sixday,” said Ulwyn.

  “The scar looks like it just healed,” blurted Mark without thinking.

  “Of course,” said Nossum, puzzled. “Why wouldn’t it? Oh, maybe a little faster than for most people, but you obviously have a strong constitution.”

  Something’s wrong, thought Mark. He’s obviously been seeing the hand regularly, and it only healed slightly faster than normal?

  Two days passed before Mark was alone long enough to find a knife and nick a thigh to draw blood. When he had first noticed fast healing, he had done the same thing to check healing speed. A similar nick had quit bleeding in about thirty seconds and was imperceptible by four hours. This time the nick bled for an estimated four
minutes and was still visible as a healing scar the next morning. Something had changed. It was unnerving.

  Over the next two months, he repeated the nicking test once a sixday and kept a record of how long it bled. By the end of the first month, the time had slowed to a minute, then stayed the same.

  Whatever the stirkin poison did, it impacted the nanites’ ability to heal me. I suppose only time will tell if there were other effects, but I’ll definitely be wary of encountering the little bastards from here on.

  He was disappointed. It looked like the healing effect had been attenuated. However, the consolation was that he still healed faster than normal, and the nanites had almost certainly saved him from death or loss of the arm.

  CHAPTER 7

  FIRST INTRODUCTION

  Even before the main shock had passed of waking up aboard an alien spacecraft and learning he’d never set foot on Earth again, thoughts had edged into Mark’s consciousness about which innovations he might introduce to a culture with Earth’s circa 1700 technology. Naturally, such ideas depended on him surviving the transition, and assuming he could fit into whatever societies he found himself in. He trusted that Hal’s technology estimate was accurate. He was well aware of the list of assumptions, each with its caveats.

  Now he had been in Tregallon more than an Anyar year—about an Earth year. His health was better than ever in his life. Total immersion in Frangelese and his dedication to learning the language gave him confidence he could communicate satisfactorily for complex interchanges.

  The previous month had been dramatic: the recognition of faster healing, the potentially fatal stirkin sting, and the loss of some, though not all, of the enhanced healing. Days of hiding the ax cut while it healed and then recovering from the stirkin poison had given him time to think of the future. He had become almost too comfortable with his daily routine. His conclusion? It was time to stop thinking about making the introductions and doing them.