IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume I: Welcome to The Charadoc!
Chapter 35 Wounds
Monday, April 6, 2708 Cici's all right.
She didn't even raise an eyebrow when I broke down and opened up the
bottle before the sun reached noon, just kept her eyes straight forward,
minding her own business like somebody trained her that way. I offered her a sip, but she only shook her
head in polite, nonjudgmental silence--I'll just bet she used to be in domestic
service; she has all the proper graces and mannerisms. I'm still an agent after all; these nuances
don't escape me. So I didn't say a word when she lit up a cigarette
and drew on it thoughtfully, her mind obviously far away as we traveled. She bought it on my money, no doubt--but she
doesn't know where I hide all my wallets.
Agents aren't fools. After awhile, when the forest all around us looked
less menacing, when the plodding of the mules beneath us began to take on a
happy rhythm, I felt comfortable enough to talk to her. "What do you believe?" I
asked. It seemed like a basic place to
start. "In what sense?" she replied. "Religious, political, scientific, or
personal?” “Let’s try religion.” “I'm Catholic, I forget which rite
officially--whatever happened to be the church in my village, pretty much like
anybody else, I guess." "So it doesn't matter much one way or the
other to you? You believe in whatever
your family raised you to?" "I wouldn't go that far." She gazed off into the twisting road ahead
and all the trees it wound around, like she gave the question serious
thought. "No, I believe very strongly
in the justice of God, in a heaven and a hell, just as my mother taught me--but
how I put it into action, that's entirely different from what she had in
mind." "I daresay!" I laughed so hard and
suddenly that I nearly choked on the chaummin.
"Sleeping with revolutionaries for the greater glory of God!" She bristled, but only a little. "Believe me, I've seen stranger--people
torturing other people in the name of God and Government, which they devoutly
believe to have merged some time between now and Gethsemane." It caught her by surprise when I dropped the
bottle, shattering all over the road, our mules skittering away from the glass
and stinging liquor, but my stomach hurt so badly that I could have gladly died
right there. And then how coolly she said, "Ulcers again,
huh?" Again?
"How'd you know about that?" I growled, bent around this djinn
in possession of my vitals. "You don't remember? "No, I don't remember!" I snapped, my
face burning like shame could still touch me. "The night we met. You got sick.
You woke me, insisting that we had to leave right then and there. You have a time limit, you said." How coldly she blinked those ice-blue,
over-kohl'd eyes. "You're
dying," she told me. Politely. Nonjudgmentally. Trained to glacial manners. * * * I
carry another hod of stucco up the ladder to slap into the cracked wall, my
chain scraping noisily against the rungs.
Must've been a fierce earthquake to have torn so many of these buildings
this way, but they don't call this country the Charadoc, the Mountains of Fire,
for nothing. Volcanoes smolder all up
and down the range. I see bare metal
inside the cavity where the stucco shivered away from the rebar; it could've
been much worse. Even the peasants
around here know enough to reinforce adobe huts with home-grown bamboo, and no
one ever stores anything heavier than blankets on the higher shelves. Suddenly the thought of sleeping in a library
becomes fraught with peril. It's
funny, but for some reason as I shove the thick goo into place I feel like I'm
filling some gigantic tooth; for a second I worry about the exposure of that
iron nerve. The sucking of spackle in
the stucco sounds a little bit like one of those things that the dentist hangs
in your mouth to vacuum out saliva. Then
I shake my head and laugh--weird notions, that's my specialty. "Deirdre,
what are you doing up there?" I
look down at Alysha who stands at the foot of the ladder, smoking, strands of
smoke twining up towards me. "My
work assignment." I wave my chain
at her with a clatter and say, "You act like I'm doing this on my own
initiative." "Come
on down, then. Marduk, take over
plastering the wall--go on, we need your strength." As I descend he strips off his shirt to work,
and then he loads another hod with twice the weight I'd carried, with a haughty
glance my way. Muscle strains to grow on
his skinny frame; he has already gained a pound for every day we've been here,
none of it fat. I
make a point to wipe the sweat from my brow and grin at him, for Alysha’s sake. "Thanks," I say, "You'll do a much better job than
me." As
soon as we turn a couple corners, out of earshot, Alysha says to me,
"Anyone big can do manual labor.
But I hear you were an agent of the Tilián." "Am,"
I say. "Always." "Then
you would have some degree of medical training?" "All
agents learn the basics--first aid, simple nursing, even emergency procedures
like setting bones and stitching up wounds.
I'm not a doctor, but..." "Good. That's better than any of us have except
Rashid. You'll work under him in the
infirmary." When she smiles I
notice a split lip that I hadn't seen the day before, and a little
discoloration that hasn't yet fully blossomed into bruise. "God bless the day we recruited an
herbalist born and bred--before Rashid we had no healer at all." And I avert my eyes from her mouth, regretting
my flattery to Marduk. She
leads me indoors, down a dark hallway, its lights long since disconnected. Some horrible feeling hits me just now, I
don't know what, or even why, maybe just the dimness of the haunted old halls,
but I break out in a fresh sweat that has nothing to do with my labors, so that
I have to stop, to lean against the wall.
Just suddenly all this...sickness, and pain, grief and rage and utter
lack of hope, and a desperate grasping after hope as well, all of it at once,
pounds into me like a storm, like a wind you cannot see that can tear your roof
off no matter how invisible. "Deirdre? What's wrong with you?" I
grasp for something that she'd understand.
"Could you please put out your cigarette? I think the smell disagrees with me." She
inhales deeply and blows smoke my way.
"Live with it," she growls.
She jerks my chain and we go forward.
"I can't believe you're this weak, Deirdre, not after all we've
been through together." She
practically drags me along till I master myself. "You got some scruple against healing
injured people if their politics don't happen to agree with yours?" "No! Not at..." She throws the infirmary door open and the
smell hits me hard. "...all." Now suddenly my feelings of a moment ago all
make sense and I can handle them. Every
pain, every sickness, fear, or anger has a face--rows and rows of them, each
ill or injured child lying on clean mats all lined up along an old classroom
with the desks removed. Every surface
looks scrubbed to the ruination of its finish, yet still the odor of infection
hangs heavy on the air. Rashid moves on
his knees from mat to mat, cleaning and treating wounds that nobody knew what
to do with till now. He looks up at me
desperately, sweat in his gingery curls from sheer emotion--and so do all the
others look up at me, row after row of gray faces, sunken eyes, and fever-cracking
lips. Bullet wounds, knife wounds,
infected whip weals, bones broken in ways that no mere accident could cause; I
seem to know the diagnosis just by looking at them, though I can't see how
that's possible. Humbly
Rashid asks, "Can you help me?" "I'll
do my best." I glare at Alysha till
she unclips my chain. |
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