Ends, p.19
Ends, page 19
“Corunna,” said Ian, “this is more in your line.”
He was right. As a captain, I was the closest thing to a physician aboard my ship. I moved in and checked the wound as best I could. In the hunt starlight it showed as a small patch of darkness against a pale patch of exposed flesh. I felt it with my fingers and put my cheek down against it.
“Small caliber slug,” I said. Ian breathed out harshly. He had already deduced that much. “Not a sucking wound. High up, just below the collarbone. No immediate pneumothorax, but the chest cavity’ll be filling with blood. Are you very short of breath, Amanda? Don’t talk, just nod or shake your head.”
She nodded.
“How do you feel. Dizzy? Faint?”
She nodded again. Her skin was clammy to my touch.
“Going into shock,” I said.
I put my ear to her chest again.
“Right,’ I said. “Hie lung on this side’s not filling with air. She can’t run. Well need to carry her.”
“I’ll do that,” said Ian. He was still angry, but trying to control it. “How fast do we have to get her back, do you think?”
“Her condition ought to stay the same for a couple of hours,” I said. “Looks like no large blood vessels were hit; and the smaller vessels tend to be self-sealing. But the pleural cavity on this side’s been filling up with blood and she’s collapsed a lung. That's why she’s having trouble breathing. No blood around her mouth, so it probably didn’t nick an airway going through…”
I felt around behind her shoulder.
“It didn’t go through. If there’re MASH med-mech units back at Gebel Nahar and we get her back in the next two hours, she should be all right—if we carry her.”
Ism scooped her into his arms. He stood up.
“Head down,” I said.
“Right,” he answered and put her over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry. “No, wait—well need some padding.”
Michael and I took our our jerseys and made a pad for his other shoulder. He transferred her to that shoulder, with her head hanging down his back. I sympathized with her. Even with the padding, it was not a comfortable way to travel; and her wound and shortness of breath would make it a great deal worse.
“Try it at a slow walk, first,” I said.
“Ill try it. Be we can’t go slow walk all the way,” said Ian. “It’s nearly three klicks from where we are now.”
He was right, of course. To walk her back over three kilometers would take too long. We started off, and he gradually increased his pace until we were moving smoothly but briskly.
“How are you?” he asked her, over his shoulder.
“She nodded,” I reported, from my position behind him.
“Good,” he said, and began to jog.
We travelled. She did not speak; and, as far as I could tell, she did not lose consciousness once on that long, jolting ride. Ian forged ahead, like something made of gears and shafts rather than ordinary flesh, his gaze on the lights of Gebel Nahar, far off across the plain.
There is something that happens under those conditions where the choice is either to count the seconds, or disregard time altogether. In the end we all—and I think Amanda, too—went off a little way from ordinary time, and did not come back to it until we were at the entrance to the Conde’s secret tunnel, leading back under the walls of Gebel Nahar.
By the time I got Amanda laid out in the medical section she looked very bad indeed and was only semi-conscious. Luckily, the medical section had everything necessary. I was able to find a portable unit that could be rigged for bed rest—vaccuum pump, power unit, drainage bag. It was a matter of inserting a tube between Amanda’s lung and chest wall—ana this I left to the med-mech—so that the unit could exhaust the blood from the pleural space into which it had drained.
It was also necessary to rig a unit to supply her with reconstituted whole blood while this draining process was going on. I finally got her fixed up and left her to rest—she was in no shape to do much else.
I went off to the offices to find Ian and Kensie with my report on Amanda’s treatment and my estimate of her condition.
“She shouldn’t do anything for the next few days, I take it,” said Ian when I was done.
“That’s right,” I said.
’There ought to be some way we could get her out of here, to safety and a regular hospital,” said Kensie.
“How?” I asked. “It’s almost dawn. The Naharese would zero in on any vehicle that tried to leave, by ground or air.”
Kensie nodded soberly.
“They should be starting to move now,” said Ian, “if this dawn was to be the attack moment.”
He turned to the window, and Kensie and I turned with him. Dawn was just breaking.
“After all their parties last night, they may not get going until noon,’ I said.
“I don’t think they’ll be that late,” said Ian, absently. He had taken me seriously. “At any rate, it gives us a little more time. Are you going to have to stay with Amanda?”
“I’ll want to look in on her from time to time—in feet, I’m going back down now,” I said. “I just came up to tell you how she is. But in between visits, I can be useful. ’
“Good,” said Ian. “As soon as you’ve had another look at her, why don’t you go see if you can help Michael? He’s been saying he’s got his doubts about those bandsmen of his.”
“All right.” I went out.
When I got back to the medical section, Amanda was asleep. I was going to leave, when she woke and recognized me.
“Corunna,” she said, “how am I?”
“You’re fine,” I said. “All you need now is to get a lot of sleep and do a good job of healing.”
Her head moved restlessly on the pillow.
“Better if that slug had been more on target.”
I looked down at her.
“According to what I’ve heard about you,” I said, “you of all people ought to know that when you’re in a hospital bed it’s not the best time in the world to be worrying over things.”
She started to speak, interrupted herself to cough, and was silent for a little time until the pain of the tube, rubbing inside her with the disturbance of her coughing, subsided.
“No,” she said. “I can’t want to die. But the situation’s impossible; and every way out of it is impossible, for all three of us. Just like our situation here in Gebel Nahar.”
“Kensie and Ian are able to make up their own minds.”
“It’s not a matter of making up minds. It’s a matter of impossibilities.”
“Well,” I said, “is there anything you can do about that?”
“I ought to be able to.”
“Ought to, maybe, but can you?”
She breathed shallowly. Slowly she shook her head. “Then let it go. Leave it alone,” I said. “I’ll be back to check on you from time to time. Wait and see what develops.”
“How can I wait?” she said. “I’m afraid of myself. Afraid I might throw everything overboard and do what I want most—and so ruin everyone.”
“You won’t do that.”
“I might.”
“You’re exhausted,” I told her. “You’re in pain. Stop trying to think. I’ll be back in an hour or two to check on you. Until then, rest!”
I went out, in search of Michael and found him in the supply section. He was going from supply bin to supply bin, checking the contents of each and testing the automated delivery system of each to make sure it was working.
The overhead lights were very bright, and their illumination reflected off solid concrete walls painted a utilitarian, flat white. I watched his face as he worked. There was no doubt about it. He looked much more tired, much leaner, and older than he had appeared to me only a few days before when he had met Amanda and me at the spaceport terminal of Nahar City. But the work he had been doing and what he had gone through could not alone have cut him down so visibly, at his age.
He finished checking the last of the delivery systems and the last of the bins. He turned away.
“Ian tells me you’re concerned over your bandsmen,” I said.
His mouth thinned and straightened.
“Yes,” he said. There was a little pause, and then he added: “You can’t blame them. If they’d been real soldier types they would have been in one of the line companies. There’s security, but no chance for promotion in a band.”
“On the other hand,” I said, “they stayed.”
“Well…He sat down a little heavily on a short stack of boxes and waved me to another, “so far it hasn’t cost them anything but some hard work. And they’ve been paid off in excitement. Excitement—drama—is what most Naharese live for; and die for, for that matter, if the drama is big enough.”
“You don’t think they’ll fight when the time comes?”
“I don’t know.” His face was bleak again. “I only know I can’t blame them—I can’t, of all people—if they don’t.”
“Your attitude’s a matter of conviction.”
“Maybe theirs is, too. You never know enough to make a real comparison.”
“True,” I said. “But I still think that if they don’t fight, it’ll be for somewhat lesser reasons than yours.” He shook his head slowly.
“Maybe I’m wrong, all wrong.” His tone was almost bitter. “But I can’t get outside myself to look at it. I only know I’m afraid.”
“Afraid?” I looked at him. “Of fighting?”
“I wish it was of fighting,” he laughed, briefly. “No, what I’m afraid of is that I don’t have the will not to fight. I’m afraid at the last moment it’ll all come back, those early dreams and all the training; and I’ll find myself killing, even though I’ll know it won’t make any difference in the end and that the Naharese will take Gebel Nahar, anyway.”
“I don’t think it’d be Gebel Nahar you’d be fighting for,” I said slowly. “I think it’d be out of a natural, normal instinct to stay alive yourself as long as you can—or to help protect those who are fighting alongside you.”
“Yes,” he said. His nostrils flared as he drew in an unhappy breath. “The rest of you. That’s what I won’t be able to stand. It’s too deep in me. I might be able to let myself be killed. But can I stand there when they start to kill someone else—like Amanda, and she already wounded?”
He and I walked back to his offices in silence. When we arrived, there was a message for me, to call Ian. I did.
“The Naharese still haven’t started to move,” he said. “They’re so unprofessional I’m beginning to think we can get Padma, at least, away from here. He can take one of the small vehicles and fly out to Nahar City. My guess is that once they see he’s an Exotic, they’ll simply wave him on.”
“It could be,” I said.
“I’d like you to go and put that point to him,” said Ian. “He seems to want to stay, but he may listen if you make him see that by staying here, he simply increases the load of responsibility on the rest of us. I’d like to order him out but I don’t have the authority.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll go talk to him right now. Where is he?”
“In his quarters.”
I found Padma’s suite and spoke to him.
“I see,” he said. “Did Ian or Kensie ask you to talk to me, or is this the result of an impulse of your own?”
“Ian asked me,” I said. “The Naharese are delaying their attack. Once they see you’re an Exotic—’
His smile interrupted me.
“I have my duty, too. In this instance, it’s to gather information for Mara and Kultis.” His smile broadened. “Also, there’s the matter of my own temperament. Watching a situation like the one here is fascinating. I wouldn’t leave if I could. In short, I’m as chained here as the rest of you.”
I shook my head at him.
“It’s a fine argument,” I said. “But, if you’ll forgive me, a little hard to believe.”
“In what way?”
“I’m sorry,” I told him, “but I don’t seem to be able to give any real faith to the idea that you’re being held here by patterns that are essentially the same as mine, for instance.”
“Not the same,” he said. “Equivalent. The fact other can’t match you Dorsai in your own area doesn’t mean others don’t have equal areas in which equal commitments apply.”
“With identical results?”
“With comparable results—could I ask you to sit down?” Padma said mildly. “I’m getting a stiff neck looking up at you.”
I sat down facing him.
“For example,” he said. “In the Dorsai ethic, you and the others here have something that directly justifies your natural human hunger to do things for great purposes. The Naharese here have no equivalent ethic; but they feel the hunger just the same. So they invent their own customs, their leto de muerte concepts. But can you Dorsais, of all people, deny that their concepts can lead them to as true a heroism, or as true a keeping of faith as your ethnic leads you to?”
“Of course I can’t deny it,” I said. “But the Dorsai can at least be counted on to perform as expected. Can the Naharese? You sound a little like Michael when you get on the subject of these people. All right, stay if you want. I think I’d better leave now, before you talk me into going out and offering to surrender before they even get here.”
He laughed. I left.
It was time again for me to check Amanda. I went to the medical section. But she was honestly asleep now. Apparently she had been able to put her personal concerns aside enough so that she could exercise a little of the basic physiological control we are all taught from birth. I left her sleeping.
It was a shock to see the sun as high in the sky as it was, when I emerged once more, on to the first terrace. The sky was almost perfectly clear and there was a small, steady breeze. The day would be hot. Ian and Kensie were each at one end of the terrace, looking through watch cameras at the Naharese front.
Michael, the only other person in sight, was also at a watch camera. I went to him.
“They’re on the move,” he said, stepping back from the watch camera. I looked into its rectangular viewing screen, bright with the daylight scene it showed. He was right. The regiments had finally formed for the attack and were now coming toward us at the pace of a slow walk.
I could see their flags spaced along the front of the crescent formation and whipping in the breeze. The Guard regiment was still in the center and Michael’s Third Regiment on the right wing. Behind the wings I could see the darker swarms that were the volunteers and the revolutionaries.
The attacking force had already covered a third of the distance to us. I stepped away from the screen and all at once the front I looked at became a thin line with little bright flashes of reflected sunlight and touches of color, still distant.
“Another thirty or forty minutes,” said Michael.
I looked at him. The clear daylight showed him pale and wire-tense. He looked as if he had been whittled down—nothing but nerves were left. He was not wearing weapons.
The rifles woke me to something I had noted but not focused upon. The bays with the fixed weapons were empty.
“Where’s your bandsmen?” I asked Michael.
He gazed at me.
“They’ve gone,” he said.
“Gone?”
“Decamped. Deserted, if you want to use that word.”
I stared at him.
“You mean they’ve joined—”
“No, no.” He broke in on me. “They haven’t gone over to the enemy. They just decided to save their own skins. I told you—you remember, I told you they might. You can’t blame them. They’re not Dorsai; and staying here meant death.”
“If Gebel Nahar is overrun,” I said.
“Can you believe it won’t be?”
“It’s become hard to,” I said, “now that there’s just us. But there’s always a chance as long as anyone’s left to fight. At Baunpore, I saw men and women firing from hospital beds, when the North Freilanders broke in.”
I should not have said it. I saw the shadow cross his eyes and knew he had taken my reference to Baunpore personally, as if I had been comparing his present weaponless state with the last efforts of the defenders I had seen then.
“That’s a general observation only—” I began.
“It’s not what you accuse me of, it’s what I accuse myself of,” he said in a low voice looking at the regiments.
There was nothing more I could say. We both knew that without his forty men we could not even make a pretense of holding the first terrace. There were just too few of us, and too many of them, to stop them from coming over the top.
“They’re probably hiding just out beyond the walls,” he said. “If we do manage to hold out for a day or two, there’s a slight chance they might trickle back—”
He broke off, staring past me. I turned and saw Amanda.
How she had managed it by herself, I do not know. But she had gotten up and strapped the portable drainage unit on to her. It was not heavy, or much bigger than a thick book; and it was designed for wearing by an ambulatory patient; but it must have been hell for her to rig it by herself with that tube rubbing inside her at every deep breath.
Now she was here, looking as if she might collapse at any time, but on her feet with the unit slung from her right shoulder and strapped to her right side.
She had a sidearm clipped to her left thigh, over the cloth of the hospital gown; and the gown itself was ripped up the center so that she could walk in it.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said. “Get back to bed!”
“Corunna—” she gave me the most level and unyielding stare I had ever encountered. “Don’t give me orders. I rank you.”
I blinked at her. It was true I had been asked to be her driver for the trip here, and in a sense that put me under her orders. But for her to presume to tell a Captain of a full flight of fighting ships, with an edge of naif a dozen years in seniority and experience that in a combat situation like this she ranked him—it was raving nonsense. I opened my mouth to explode—and found myself breaking into laughter, instead. The situation was too ridiculous.
