Terminal World (30 page)

‘How many wounded?’ Quillon asked.

‘Seven at the last count. We were already carrying four seriously injured men.’

‘I presume there was an earlier engagement?’

‘This is the first close action we’ve seen on this mission, actually. The injured men came from a semaphore station. Swarm’s always maintained good relations with the signal guilds - it’s the only way we can communicate when our fleet is separated. We were supposed to be delivering antizonals when the storm hit. The station was overrun with Skullboys; most of the signalmen were killed before we could get to them. We extracted eight survivors, of which six needed medical attention. Two died shortly afterwards, despite Gambeson’s best efforts.’

‘He’s a very good doctor, but he’s still just one man.’

‘So are you, Quillon. Do you really think you’ll make that much of a difference?’

‘I’ll do what I can. You rescued us; that places me in your debt.’

‘Half the crew still think you should be thrown overboard, along with the mother and daughter. People are beginning to wonder what you are. You think wearing those goggles is going to put an end to the scuttlebutt?’

‘If you know why I wear them, what’s to stop you telling everyone else?’

‘Doctor Gambeson asked me not to.’

‘It’s that simple?’

‘When a man’s saved your leg, you do as he asks. But I can’t speak for everyone else.’

‘We’ll just have to win them round, won’t we?’ Quillon said. ‘Speaking personally, surviving to the end of the day would be a good start.’

The airman pushed doors open and led him through into the sickbay. Quillon reeled, momentarily unable to process the sight that greeted him. The shuttered room was much too small for the number of injured men that had been squeezed into it, their beds and bunks locked together like the pieces of a child’s puzzle, with scarcely any room for Gambeson to pass between them. The air reeked with chemical disinfectant, barely disguising an underlying stench of disease and decay. Yellow bandages, blood- and pus-stained, littered the floor. Quillon’s feet crunched on the broken glass of a bottle, a sticky brown residue of spilled medicine oozing from it. Bullet holes riddled the wall. Death was loitering in the room, Quillon thought, awaiting an opportunity to pounce.

‘Ah, Doctor Quillon,’ Gambeson said, looking over his shoulder as he bent down over one of the men, inspecting a chest dressing. ‘Good of you to come.’ He gestured in the vague direction of a shelf. ‘I’ve had your bag brought down. I trust everything’s still in it, and you of course have my authority to use any of our supplies as you see, um, fit. Might I rely on you to proceed without my direct supervision?’

‘Of course,’ Quillon said.

‘The gentleman in the furthest bed may be the one most urgently in need of your attention.’

Quillon collected his bag and went to the man. He had been shot in the arm, and judging by the amount of blood on his bandages he appeared to have received only the most basic attention.

‘Mister Cudgel,’ Gambeson said, directing his remark to the airman who had accompanied Quillon. ‘You may leave us now. I’m sure you have more pressing business to attend to.’

‘I was told to keep Quillon under guard.’

‘And I’m countermanding that order, even if it came from Captain Curtana herself.’ Gently he added, ‘I need hardly remind you that I have that authority, at least in the sickbay.’

‘Ask the captain to let Meroka fight,’ Quillon said urgently. ‘I promise none of us will do anything to endanger the ship.’

‘The doctor speaks good sense,’ Gambeson said. ‘I believe we would do well to take him at his word.’

Quillon opened his bag and reached bony fingers into its black heart. Very quickly he was lost in the business of healing, all sense of time and his own needs eclipsed by the exigencies of the task. It was not the first time he had dug bullets out of people. Fray had occasionally called on that skill, when his own men had need of back-room surgery. Then, as now, the work had called for a steady hand, scrupulous detachment and a willingness to improvise with less than ideal instruments and supplies. Gambeson’s sickbay was at least as well equipped as Fray’s back-room clinic in the Pink Peacock (the same room where Fray had cut Quillon’s wings away) but it could never have been intended to serve this many sick and wounded.

The fighting continued, although he was only distantly aware of it. The ship swerved, dived and lurched. The engines roared and quelled. Gunfire sounded from just outside the gondola, from the defensive positions along the railinged balcony. Once, a pair of little silver-edged holes appeared in the metal walls on either side of the sickbay, neat as full stops.

‘It’s not always like this,’ Gambeson said, looking up from his patient.

‘You don’t have to apologise, Doctor. I’m just grateful for the chance to be doing something.’

‘Your being from Spearpoint hasn’t helped your cause, I’m afraid. Rightly or wrongly, there’s still a good measure of animosity within Swarm. I wish it were otherwise, but people will be ... people. Grudge-bearing is part of our nature.’

Gambeson had been careful not to mention Quillon’s angel nature in the sickbay.

‘Spearpointers don’t see Swarm in quite the same light,’ Quillon said ruefully. ‘Most of them haven’t even heard of it.’

‘Out of sight, out of mind. We’ve never had that luxury, Doctor. Even when we’re halfway around the world, Spearpoint’s influence is still present. Even in the way we talk.’

‘Your accent is unfamiliar, but we don’t seem to have much difficulty understanding each other.’

‘We shouldn’t. What you call Spearpointish we call Swarmish, but in truth it’s the same language. Spearpoint split from Swarm less than a thousand years ago. That’s really not that long, compared to how long some of the ground communities have been out there, going about their own business. The woman - Kalis? Swarmish isn’t her first tongue. She can speak it, but it’s awkward for her. The girl has a little more fluency - she’s probably been in contact with the dirt-rats ... the surface communities ... that speak Swarmish, or a variant of it. Most of the signalling guilds use it, and their influence tends to spread out from the semaphore stations.’

‘You seem well informed,’ Quillon observed.

‘Too many late-night discussions with Ricasso, I suppose.’

Quillon raised a nearly hairless eyebrow. ‘A name I’ve heard twice already.’

‘He and I share similarly unfashionable interests. With Ricasso it’s the deep history of our world, its origins and ontological underpinnings. For reasons that I need hardly elaborate on, I’ve long been fascinated by the history of medicine, as practised throughout the zones. There’s no shortage of common ground.’

Quillon thought back to what had happened at the Skullboy ambush. ‘Which still doesn’t tell me anything about Ricasso, or why he would be interested in a live carnivorg.’

‘Ricasso’s the leader of Swarm,’ Gambeson said. ‘The closest thing we have to a king, I suppose. He’s also Curtana’s godfather. Whatever she says Ricasso takes as gospel. You couldn’t drive a hair between those two.’

‘And if she doesn’t think I’m trustworthy?’

‘You’ll be lucky to see Swarm, I’m afraid.’ He glanced back down at the work his hands were doing. ‘There’s no one I’d rather serve under than Captain Curtana. She’s the bravest woman I’ve ever known, and the best airship commander in Swarm. There’s nothing she doesn’t know about dirigible flight. But she’ll do whatever she deems necessary to protect this ship and bring her crew back alive.’

‘Up to and including disposing of her clients?’

‘I’ve known her take far colder decisions than that, and not lose a minute’s sleep afterwards. And she’s right, as well. Too much depends on us. There’s no law out here except Swarm. We’re all that’s holding back the darkness.’

‘There’s always Spearpoint.’

‘Just a city, Doctor. That’s all. It may be the last city, but it’s not the world. And the world is what’s at stake now.’

‘You make us sound like parasites, leeching away at a dying patient while Swarm struggles to keep it alive.’

‘That’s how most of us see it.’

‘And you?’

‘I’m prepared to see things in a different light.’ Gambeson looked at Quillon with a thin smile. ‘I’ll need persuasion, of course ... rigorous proof. One doesn’t take such things lightly.’

The doors opened and two airmen brought in another patient, cradling the slumped and bloodied form between them. The injured airman wore a heavy coat, a helmet and goggles covering most of the face. ‘Took a shot in the shoulder!’ one of the men said, lifting the lifeless form onto the only vacant bunk in the room, laying it on sheets that were still sodden and stained from the last patient. ‘Fell back against the gondola and knocked herself out.’

‘It’s Meroka,’ Quillon said numbly, as the helmet was removed from the unconscious form. Even from the other side of the room he could see that her eyes were closed and her breathing shallow.

‘Captain gave her permission to use one of the fixed-mount spinguns,’ the airman explained. ‘She was giving it hell, too. Took out at least two Skullboy gunners, from what we could see.’

‘I knew she’d prove her worth,’ Quillon said.

‘Do you want to attend to her?’ Gambeson said, tying off the bandage he was applying. ‘I can take over your patient now.’

‘It might be for the best if you look after her. She certainly won’t thank me for touching her.’

‘She won’t know, either.’ Something shifted in Gambeson’s expression. ‘In fact I insist on it. You’re my colleague now, Doctor Quillon. I authorise you to treat this patient.’

He could not have said precisely when the engagement ended, but there came a point when he realised that the airship had been flying smoothly for some time, and that it had also been some while since he had heard a discharge from any of her weapons. The cloying fog had dispersed, although it was now far too dark to see any surface features.

‘We’re in the Night Maze now,’ Gambeson said, when he queried the other physician as to their position. ‘The captain knows this landscape better than the back of her hand, and she likes nothing better than the challenge of dead reckoning, nosing her way through canyons with only a map, gyroscope and starlight for guidance. She’s very good at this sort of thing. Mark my word: by morning she’ll have shaken the Skullboys off our tail.’

‘Is that the last we’ll see of them?’

‘For now. They don’t usually come east of the Three Daughters, or west of the Long Gash. It’s all too close to the Bane, which is about the only thing that frightens them.’ He was using the dregs of a bottle of sterilising solution to clean his fingers. ‘You did well, Doctor Quillon. I’ll personally vouch for the fact that you saved lives in this room.’

‘I hope someone vouches for Meroka as well.’

‘No need, I suspect. The crew will respect anyone who shoots down a Skullboy, no matter where they’re from. Taking a bullet won’t have hurt her cause either.’

Meroka was still unconscious. The bullet had gone clean through her shoulder without damaging any major structures, but the wound had still been deep and required thorough cleansing. They would need to be on guard against sepsis now. He did not think she had suffered any serious head trauma after falling - it was just shock and exhaustion taking their toll now - but he was also quietly relieved that she had not yet woken.

The engagement heralded a change in the status of the new clients. Quillon was allocated a bunk in one of the small storage rooms near the chart room. He was still not at liberty to wander the airship freely, but it was a definite improvement on the earlier arrangements. With Meroka still in sickbay - barring any other complications, she would remain there for the remainder of the journey - Kalis and Nimcha had the tail-end compartment to themselves. The battle damage had been repaired in a makeshift fashion, and when he visited them he found that they had been given extra clothes and bedding to fend off the cold.

‘I think we’ll be all right now,’ he said, when he was certain no one was listening. ‘Meroka was hurt, but I’m certain she’ll make a good recovery. As for the rest of the crew, they seem to be willing to accept that we mean them no harm.’

‘They will not accept Nimcha if they learn what she is,’ Kalis said quietly, her daughter sleeping on the bunk, her form barely discernible under blankets.

‘Then we’ll just have to make sure they don’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve done my best to convince Gambeson that neither of you requires any medical attention. Given everything else on his hands, I doubt he’ll trouble you now.’

‘And later?’

He could only offer the truth, as disheartening as it was. ‘I have no idea what will happen to us when we reach Swarm. I don’t even know exactly what Swarm is, or how they’ll welcome us. But I can guarantee something. I’m always going to be the one who will draw their attention, if it comes to that. Nimcha looks like an innocent girl. I look like a freak.’

She nodded slowly, perhaps wary of agreeing. ‘Will you be all right?’

It was, as far as he was able to recall, the first time Kalis had shown any concern for his welfare.

‘I’m adaptable.’

‘You have been kind to us, Cutter.’

He realised that she thought that was his name, after hearing Meroka use it so many times. ‘Quillon,’ he said. ‘And no, I haven’t been kind. I’ve just done what any decent human being would do. Even one with wings.’

He saw that part of Nimcha’s blanket had slipped off and bent down to gather it up. She murmured something in her sleep, then turned slightly on the bench. She seemed restful, not at all in the grip of night terrors. He felt a gush of intense protectiveness towards her, but at the same time he sensed that he was close to a ticking bomb. She was just a girl. But if he had harboured any doubts before, he now believed with the utmost conviction that there was a power in her head that could remake the world, and just as easily shatter it again.