“Yeah, but c’mon,” I said. “They’re not gonna refuse to treat him in this condition.”
We put Ijiuto in the truck. Dolph called ahead. Five minutes later we were unloading him onto a stretcher at the gate of Dr. Zeb’s, officially known as the Tau Medical Clinic.
This was another corner of Shiftertown free from surveillance, because it dated back to an earlier age. Gravelnuts and devil palms hung over the garden wall. A mulched layer of nuts and dead palm fronds made the sidewalk slippery. Pingos chirped in the trees, and cars jostled for places in the vertical parking lot acros the street. We followed the automated stretcher up the drive to a sprawling colonial mansion. Strangler vines twined up the walls, and defunct solar panels pointed every which way, so that the roof looked like a metal coral reef festooned with seaweed, but the windows blazed with light. A pair of nurses stood smoking under one of the murder oaks in the garden. They crushed out their cigarettes and hurried over to help. They asked whether Ijiuto was a Shifter, but when we said no, they just nodded and rushed him inside. They took his vital signs and got him on a drip to stabilize him until Dr. Zeb could come to examine him.
Dr. Zeb is a saint among Shifters, the eighth-generation head of the Tau family. The Taus were among the first Shifters to arrive on Ponce de Leon. They opened a clinic in their big old house in what is now Smith’s End. It was needed, as Shifters were heavily discriminated against in those days. Later on, they bought the house next door, knocked down the garden wall, and built a roofed cloister joining “Building A” and “Building B,” to keep up with an increasing flow of patients … so what does that say about our society nowadays?
From outside, the place looks charmingly tumbledown, not surprising given its age. Almost all the other early colonial mansions in Mag-Ingat have long since been subdivided into apartments, or torn down and replaced with row housing like where I live. But on the inside, Dr. Zeb’s was far more modern than my apartment. Rafael Ijiuto’s room smelled as clean as the inside of a dishwasher. Monitoring equipment projected a living map of his body onto the screen that took up all of one wall.
“Heatstroke and septicemia,” Dr. Zeb diagnosed, after doing a blood test. “Where did he get this cut on his foot?”
“In the Tunjle,” I said. “We think.”
“That would do it,” Dr. Zeb said. “Ponce de Leon does not like man. Never has, never will. Yet we’re equal to her wiles.” He spoke to the duty nurse. “We’ll put him on antibiotics immediately. Treat the site of infection with antimicrobials, and monitor his blood pressure. He doesn’t need artificial ventilation at the moment, but have a unit on standby.” He turned back to me. “Is there anything else I need to know about the patient?”
This was a question with as many hidden dimensions as a skip field. I said, “Can one of us stay with him?”
Dr. Zeb gave me a measuring look. Tall and broad, in his fifties, he was given to stroking his muttonchop whiskers as if they were a pet. “I don’t want any trouble in my hospital, Mike.”
I lifted my t-shirt and turned around to show that I had left my gun in the lockbox at reception. Dolph and Martin had, too.
“All right,” Dr. Zeb said. “One of you can stay here. The others will have to wait in the cloister.”
“When would you expect him to regain consciousness?” I asked, trying not to reveal how much rode on it.
“Anytime on a spectrum running from now to never,” Dr. Zeb said. “The human body is still a mystery to us in many ways. So much depends on the spirit. But merely to have survived in this condition is a sign of a tough character. So I’m optimistic.”
Martin took the first shift at Ijiuto’s bedside. Dolph and I went to sit in the cloister.
It was a building in its own right, really, with one long glass wall. Desks against the other wall provided out-patient services to a trickle of Shifters, even at this time of night: blood tests, drug tests, prescription refills. Some of the patients came in human form, some as animals. Orderlies trudged through from one building to the other, wheeling bins full of bloodsoaked gauze and linen. Their scrubs were spattered with blood, too. As you might expect, the number one reason Shifters wind up in hospital is mauling injuries and bites.
Dolph and I sat on one of the ripped-up benches. Weeds scraped against the glass at our backs. I yawned and went to get vending-machine coffee for us both. Dolph, that excellent soul, had a flask in his hip pocket. We spiked our coffees, improving them immensely.
“So where were you?” he said.
The memory of Christy came like a sweet breeze amidst the depressing ambiance of the hospital. I smirked.
“Aha,” he said.
“Uh huh,” I said. Like a lovestruck teenager, I struggled to suppress a grin.
“Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“You’ve met her.”
“No way. You finally hooked up with Ember?” This was the friend of Nevaeh’s that she and Dolph kept trying to push me together with. Ember was a nice girl, and her animal form was a sea lion as sleek and curvy as she was. But I couldn’t get interested in a woman who Shifted for money … and probably did other things for money, as well. Maybe that was the self-deluding hypocrite in me at work again.
“Nope, someone different,” I said. “You met her at the St. Francis party at Lulu’s school last year.” Dolph had helped out by appearing as the lowly ox, one of the animals traditionally associated with St. Francis. Try and find a real ox Shifter anywhere on Ponce de Leon. You won’t. Dolph was good enough at Shifting to give it a go, and although his ox came out a bit wonky, with paws instead of hooves, the children had loved it. They’d never seen a real one, anyway. That was one of the times I thought we might have a shot at convincing Dolph to settle down before it was too late. He had so obviously—to me, anyway—enjoyed the children’s adoration, and the kick he got from doing a good deed.
“OK,” he said. “So it’s the anti-Sophia. Helena? Alex? Marlene?” He started naming nice, wholesome Shifter moms I might be having an adulterous affair with. I let him go on like that for a while, and then I told him it was the student life coordinator.
Dolph pulled a sad face and shook his head. “You’re hopeless, Mike.”
“On the contrary, I’m feeling pretty hopeful about it,” I said.
“She’s a normie, isn’t she?”
“So?”
“Clearly, all she wants is for you to fuck her in wolf form.”
I remembered the heat in Christy’s voice when she started asking me about Shifting. But I didn’t want to think of her that way. I said, “You just think that because all the normie girls you’ve dated were fur-chasing slags.”
“Nothing wrong with a fur-chasing slag in her rightful place,” Dolph said. “Under me.” We both laughed. No, it wasn’t very gentlemanly. But we were sitting in a hospital, waiting for a man to die. “Anyway,” Dolph resumed, “you don’t see me dating that kind of girl anymore, do you?”
“No, ‘cause now you’ve got a Shifter slag,” I said.
“I learned my lesson,” Dolph said. “I’m starting to think you’re never gonna.”
“Give me a break,” I yawned, not feeling as casual about the whole thing as I was acting. “I’ve hardly seen anyone since Sophia.”
“That’s what I mean. I would have hoped you learned your lesson there.”
“By the way, did you find out anything?”
“Nice segue.”
“Douche. Did you?”
I knew Dolph had attempted a new data dive in search of clues as to how Rafael Ijiuto had wound up here.
“Nothing new,” he said. “But I figure Ijiuto was planning to sell the contraband on to the Travellers. That could be how they met.”
“Maybe, but why choose that refugee camp for the rendezvous?”
“So the Travellers could pick up some burners at the same time?” Dolph’s expression turned somber. “Speaking of the refugee camp, I almost forgot. Something interesting happened there a couple of
days ago. An outbreak of interstellar variant kuru.”
“What??” I almost spilled my coffee.
“Yeah. They’ve found six cases in the refugee camp. There’s been violence. Someone tried to burn down the local hospital.”
“Let me see.”
We pored over the official news clips and the supplementary accounts that Dolph had found on private networks. Outbreak was putting it strongly. Six cases is not an epidemic. But the reaction among the refugees and natives had claimed a further twenty-odd lives and counting. I remembered the main drag of the camp, lined with the stalls of human entrepreneurs. Now, smoke hazed the wind, while mobs dragged victims by the heels on suspicion of cannibalism. The shocking scenes gave me a new perspective on the asylum department’s decision regarding Pippa. Irrational fear could wreak havoc even in the absence of a real threat of contagion. And kuru evoked an even stronger reaction than your average contagious disease, because it was coupled with cannibalism, one of the last unshakeable taboos.
“Well,” I said, “at least now we know Pippa didn’t get it from eating someone’s brains.”
“Inference unsupported by the facts,” Dolph said, pointing a finger at me. “The natives’ network data is crap, but they’ve managed to trace the outbreak back to somewhere around here.” Dolph pulled up a map of the refugee camp on his phone and pointed to the busy intersection where we had eaten lunch, and Rafael Ijiuto had had tea. “That’s where the movements of all the infected people overlap.” Dolph waggled his eyebrows. “Who knows what was in that stew? I thought it tasted like chicken …”
I grinned, taking the risk as lightly as he did.
But his speculation planted a seed, and in the next minutes I started to question our presumption of immunity. My confidence had already been shaken by the near-fatal mistake we had made with Rafael Ijiuto. That was proof positive that I was pretty clueless about the operations of the human body, much as I liked to think I knew every nerve and sinew in my own body by name.
In the back of my head, I heard Christy saying, You and your crew should get tested … just in case …
I stood up, and tugged Dolph to his feet. “Let’s get tested,” I said.
“Oh come on, man,” he said. “I was just kidding. We’re immune to that kind of stuff.”
“Yeah, but you never know.”
“I don’t like needles.”
“You wimping out on me, Hardlander?” I felt as if I could please Christy by doing as she had suggested, even though I’d walked out on her with the lamest of get-away lines. “Here we are in a freaking hospital. There’ll never be a better time.”
Dolph grumbled, but he agreed to do it, if only because the nurse at the blood test desk was young and cute. Her gentle fingers found the vein in my arm, reminding me of Christy’s touch, and then she stabbed me with a needle big enough for an Ek. I kept my teeth locked so as not to forewarn Dolph. He in his turn came out from behind the curtain grimacing and pressing down on the little bandage in the crook of his elbow.
“Interstellar variant kuru?” the nurse said, lifting her pretty eyebrows. It was not the most common test, obviously.
“Yes,” Dolph said, “and you’d better also test him for the clap.”
I jabbed him with my elbow. “Interstellar variant kuru,” I affirmed. “When will we get the results?”
“Well, this is not a standard test, so we’ll have to send your samples to the lab. You should be able to pick them up in a week’s time.”
“Can’t we just call you?” I foresaw that I’d never get around to coming back for the results.
“No, sir, our policy is that you do have to pick them up in person.”
I left Dolph leaning on the desk, flirting with the nurse, and sat down to finish my cup of coffee-flavored Scotch. My thoughts returned to the refugee camp.
It could not possibly be a coincidence that there’d been an outbreak of interstellar variant kuru at the same time the Travellers were there.
Biological warfare wasn’t their style. There was no percentage for them in killing everyone. On the other hand, they didn’t draw the line anywhere else—not at slavery, or rape, or murder. So nothing actually stopped them from using biological weapons, I supposed, except a certain healthy fear of payback.
But when I pictured Sophia, or Zane, chopping up a human brain procured from some benighted failed world, and smuggling it into a pot of stew at the refugee camp—well, it was laughable. There was no conceivable upside for them in such an outré scenario.
Confirming this, the news reported no more sightings of Traveller ships in the afflicted system.
Ten PM turned into eleven PM, and I began to worry about Lucy. It was irrational to some extent, as I trusted Nanny B to look after her all the times I was off-world. But these were not ordinary circumstances. Never before had I come this close to catching Parsec out in … something … deeply illegal. The other shoe was yet to drop there. What if Parsec came by my apartment looking for me? He knew where I lived. What if he found Lucy home alone, with only a bot to protect her?
Yes, Irene and Rex were upstairs. But factor in Shifter stealth and traffic noise, and upstairs might as well be a world away.
I called Robbie.
“Hi, sir!” He was sitting in a smoky café.
“I didn’t wake you up?” I said.
“Nope. I’m studying.”
“Glad to hear it. This is somewhat irregular, but how would you feel about hanging out at my place tonight? I might have to stay out all night, and I’d like to have someone there with Lucy.”
Robbie cocked his head wolfishly. “I get your drift, sir.” He hesitated. “I heard from Rex that your crew is pretty tight.”
“Yup,” I said. “We’re like family.”
“That’s so cool,” he said. He blinked several times, and lifted a cigarette to his mouth to hide his emotional reaction. “I’ll head over there right now, sir. I’m—I’m honored to have this chance to earn your trust.”
“Thanks, Robbie,” I said. “I’ll call when I know when I’m coming home.” I hung up, and called Nanny B to let her know that Robbie was on his way.
“He gets it,” Dolph said.
“Yeah, I think he does.” Robbie understood that he wouldn’t just be signing up to do administrative paperwork. He’d be signing up to kick ass if necessary. This was his real job training, even if the night passed uneventfully, as I devoutly hoped.
Twenty minutes later, I checked my home security cameras, and found him sitting on my front porch. He had his holobook open on his thighs, but he was watching the street. He got it, all right.
Martin came down to the cloister for a coffee.
Dolph went up to Ijiuto’s room to relieve him.
The hours slipped past.
At one AM I went up to take my turn at Ijiuto’s bedside.
He lay as still as the sketch figure on the monitoring screen. Red pulse points on the figure’s wrists throbbed steadily. The blood pressure indicator on one arm remained dangerously low.
I pulled up the hard chair to the head of his bed. They’d changed him into hospital clothes. The wraparound tunic gapped over his chest. On his collarbone lay a chain with a pendant in the form of a three-inch knife, in a sheath studded with diamonds.
Where had I seen a pendant like that before?
That’s right. Pippa. She had tried to give me a very similar pendant to pay the kids’ way to Ponce de Leon.
“That’s weird,” I murmured. “Y’all know each other? Or were they just selling those things at the camp?”
Something else to ask him about. If he ever woke up.
More hours slipped past. At some point, my ruminations about the refugee camp became dreams that I was there. I was in a mob jostling around an infected victim to tear her apart. I got a hand on the victim’s ankle, and glimpsed her face. It was Pippa …
My startle reflex woke me up and brought me to my feet at the same time.
Dolph stood in
the doorway, in jackal form. His neck fur bristled and his ears were pricked. “Come on,” he said quietly.
“What? Where?” The monitoring screen said it was 03:20. Ijiuto’s condition remained unchanged.
“Place’s shut down for the night.” Dolph nosed at Ijiuto’s bare feet, which stuck out from the sheets, and wrinkled his lips. “Outpatient desks are closed. Everyone’s gone home except the night nurses.”
“And?”
Dolph’s teeth flashed. Slowly and with great emphasis, he said, “Kaspar Silverback is in a private room on the second floor.”
“Ah.”
“Let’s pay him a visit.”
“We can’t start anything at Dr. Zeb’s,” I said, still rubbing my eyes.
“We’re not going to start anything. We’re just going to ask him a few questions.”
Now fully awake, I glanced at Ijiuto. He lay like the dead, only the sheet over his chest moving as he breathed. The whole place was quiet—no more bells, intercoms, or footsteps in the hall.
I had promised Dr. Zeb I wouldn’t make trouble at his hospital. This was the closest thing to neutral ground that existed in Shiftertown.
But.
D’Alencon suspected me of being involved in Parsec’s contraband racket. If I didn’t clear my name, I could end up ruined.
“OK. Let’s do it.” I pulled my clothes off, stuffed them under Ijiuto’s bed, and Shifted.
33
My claws clicked on shiny tiles as I followed Dolph down the stairs. Martin had agreed to stay with Ijiuto. He thought this was a bad idea. He was probably right. All I could promise him was that we would be discreet.
Dolph slunk ahead of me into the second-floor hallway. He was leading me to Silverback’s room, whose location he had learned from the pretty hematology nurse. I hardly needed to be told where it was. My wolf’s nose picked out the scent of bear from amidst the crazy tangle of odors perceptible—to an animal—through the sterile, ammoniac hospital smell. Either the in-patient ward was suddenly full of bears, or Kaspar Silverback had had a lot of visitors.
Each room had a sliding door wide enough for a bed to be wheeled through.
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