Systemic Shock Page 14

  He stirred then, and Palma silently made her way back to her office. Though she had not entertained sexual thoughts about the boy, she felt a twinge of the voyeur's guilt. Time enough to talk with him the next day. Thank God, she thought, for objectivity.

  When she returned to her office she was met by one of the Sonora field men with news of the Norway disaster. Palma spent the next two hours at her comm link trying to bridge the supply gap which the delta's loss represented. She did not think of the youth again until the next morning.

  Sunday morning was like any other morning for Palma. A hectic scramble to rejuggle tasks; a radioed promise to use two valuable hours finding and treating one of the field men who, from the sound of it, had taken a massive radiation dose and could not be moved; and ah, yes, the Quantrill boy.

  She checked her pocket, then took her coffee across the half-deserted little cafeteria. He was alone, studying her face as she neared him.

  "It's about my parents," he said. No barely-submerged hysteria there, but no hope either. And no wasted amenities.

  She slid into a chair, willing him to play the man. “I 'm Dr. Catherine Palma, Mr. Quantrill. I've heard about you. Yes," she went on levelly, "I've just had word from—whoever finds out such things. You can't always believe what you hear." Step One: give the poor devil a hint by manner and innuendo.

  He looked away, as though to find some new exit from the room. "That news about the Norway: we have to believe that, don't we?"

  Toying with her cup: "Yes, we sent a team out last night as soon as I heard. Apparently an enemy jet and our delta collided. No survivors. I'm sorry, Mr. Quantrill, I knew some of those men too."

  "I was starting to think of the Norway as home. Even left my scout uniform and backpack in her. Now—look, could I find some other clothes besides these?" He looked down at the bright yellow uniform, his eyes dry, distant.

  "There must be some Aggie coveralls—"

  "No," he said quickly. "Just—just plain old clothes." Her gaze was interrogative. He shrugged into her silence, added, "I'll work for you, Dr. Palma. But I don't want to join anything I like. That hasn't worked out very well."

  After a long thoughtful pause, Palma said, "I suppose it does sharpen one's sense of loss. But you have to make alliances with something, Quant—may I call you Ted?"

  A nod. "I don't have to make 'em with things I love, Doc. And I might like it here. I'm not making that sound very smart, am I?"

  "Look, Ted, sometimes a long sleep and then some hard work can do wonders." She pulled the vial from her pocket, set it before him. "Why don't you wash those down with water and hit the sack? It's not much, but it's all I can do." She had almost added that if he were older, they might have gotten drunk together. But her responsibility, not his age, was the barrier.

  "Maybe I will. Thanks." He put the vial into his pocket.

  Almost angrily she said, “Don't you want to know what I found out?"

  "About my folks? You've already told me. They're dead, aren't they? One, or both?"

  It was curiously difficult for her to say it: "Both. Your father was—in action." She couldn't say 'killed'. "Your mother was admitted to a clinic in Durham, North Carolina, and I'm afraid paranthrax swept the place." More softly: "Do you know what we're doing here?"

  "An antidote for it. Chartrand said that "d make this place a target if word got out."

  "We don't call it an antidote, but you have the idea. Does it make you feel better to know you're helping destroy the thing that destroyed your home?"

  "You want the truth, Doc?"

  She sighed and stood up. "No thanks. There's too much of that going around." His response was a smile, peer to peer, and that was somehow unsettling from a fifteen-year-old. “Not that you asked me, Quantrill, but don't cut yourself off from humanity. We all need somebody, now and then."

  "To dump on?"

  "If you have to put it that way; yes."

  "Who do you have, Doc?"

  "I have the little fellows like the ones I gave you. Mostly so I can get enough sleep to keep going. And why am I telling you that," she laughed. Palma had good teeth.

  "You needed somebody to dump on." His humor was so mordant, so subdued she nearly missed it. This youngster already played the man too well; perhaps that was the trouble.

  "Fair enough," she said. “We take what we can get. See me when you feel better; right now I have to make a house call," she ended with a private cynicism and walked away quickly, dismayed at her prevision of a future full of children grown old too soon.

  Sandys jurnal Aug 25 Sun.

  We got a dr. here, she looked like she could use one herself. She stuck things in my dady. They made me go outside but I heard some and worked it out my ownself. I dont see how a plate could be so small you coud have them in your blood. Mistery!! But thats why my dady is sick but now its just a matter of time, my dady doesnt have many platelets left. I prayed God to take away the rest of the bad platelets to make my dady well again.

  The delta Santos-Dumont, hastily rescheduled to Sonora, brought vital personnel as well as supplies. Cathy Palma, sworn in as a Captain in the Preventive Medicine Division of the Army Medical Department, assumed her lessened duties with undisguised relief. Palma was on good terms with the civilian staff. Since the Army needed a smooth interface with the locals, the graying Palma found herself functioning as a one-woman clinical service. The crisis relocation center in the big Caverns of Sonora had its own clinic; the town itself was almost deserted.

  On Thursday she sought out young Quantrill and handed him a small polypaper bag. "I thought you might need this to keep your nose clean—or whatever," she said, grinning.

  He dutifully opened the bag, shook out the freshly-laundered square of bright cloth, and rewarded Palma with an open smile. "I give up, Doc; where'd you find it?" He was holding his scout neckerchief, with familiar snags now neatly mended.

  She told him of the local people who could not be persuaded to leave their own small underground lairs; of a man who had retreated to a cave like some wounded animal, and was unquestionably dying there; of the little blonde girl who had presented the doctor with a new treasure she had found near the Norway's crash site.

  Palma had instantly realized that a scout neckerchief from the Norway could only belong to one person. "You have to realize that the Grange family isn't the kind that takes charity, Ted. Little Sandy paid me for easing her father's pain in the only coin she had."

  "She had more," Quantrill guessed. "This was in my pack; I bet the little bugger found the whole thing. It's okay, Doc, she's welcome to it."

  This was Quantrill's first sign of interest in anything since their first meeting. Others could move cargo—and this youngster seemed determined to retreat into himself. He hadn't even approached the Santos-Dumont during her brief moorage. "Quantrill, I need a strong back and a driver, and with that gimpy leg you're the one we can spare the most," she spoke the half-lie gruffly. "I'm requisitioning you."

  "I don't drive worth a damn."

  "You will," she promised. That was the day Quantrill first left Aggie Station with Palma. At her insistence he wore a white lab coat; quickly mastered the four-wheel-drive van, more slowly became an asset in Palma's mercy rounds. There were advantages, she decided, in a strong youth who seemed unmoved by the sight of suffering.

  For the first few days Palma used her new assistant sparingly, leaving him in the depot area at times. Soon she was sending him alone on errands to towns like Eldorado, Junction, and Ozona in the filter-conditioned van. She noted without comment that he was picking up the local dialect. Perhaps it would soon be time to introduce him to people whose troubles were more immediate than his own. Sandys jurnal Sep. 2 Mon.

  Mom got new kemlamp. I got musquitefrom the drywash, we bill afire sinse my dady is always cold. He dont want us to touch him even to take him out in the sun. I bet I coud do it myself he doesnt way hardly any more than I do. When I kissed him tonite I thout why if my dady is so good does
he smell so bad. His breth smells like his arms do, they have this watery stuff in the sores. His hair is coming out. He made me get a mirrer and he took a look.and said if he had a dog with a face like that hed shave its a-s and make it walk backwards ha ha. He says more d-ms and h-lls than I ever heard. Its alrite God, at least hes awake again. The emergency call from Salida Ranch came at one of the few times when Palma was near enough to make such a remote house call. Salida, a sheep ranch near the Llano River, was Quantrill's first experience at taking a four-wheeler over such rough terrain. By now he was nearly as adept as Palma at following the map display and found the faded clapboard house with its sheds, pens, and drunkenly-leaning barn a half-hour from the highway. Palma walked through old ruts to the house, Quantrill carrying her medical bag. A gaunt woman, her skin sun-creased like cured sharkskin, welcomed them with a gap-toothed smile. When Quantrill saw her husband, he wondered what she had to smile about; the man's lower leg was a gory mess.

  "You're lucky, Mr. Willard," Palma said as she cleaned the worst wound, a gash in the wiry leg that might have been made by a cleaver. "These tendons will repair themselves if you'll give them a chance. Where were you standing when the boar came at you?"

  "Standin' hell, I was ten feet up a mesquite," Willard said, his voice husky with exhaustion. "I knowed that devil was takin' my lambs, I seen his tracks for a week now. But when I throwed down on him with the thirty-thirty he was in heavy brush. Gawd but he was big!"

  "I didn't know they ate sheep," Quantrill said.

  "I didn't know they clumb trees," said Willard, “but you can tell them peabrains at Aggie Station they've crossed a Russian boar with a sure-'nough squirrel." It had not been a sow, he insisted. " A boar with the devil's own corkscrew."

  Palma: "Did you get him?"

  Willard: "Well, I hit him. Then he rushed me. If he hadn't'a been so heavy that branch would'a held him, and I wouldn't'a been here now. Hon, show the doc what he done to my brush gun."

  Mrs. Willard produced an old lever-action carbine, holding it by the tip of its short barrel. Its stock was splintered and gouged, with bright scars in the blued metal of the receiver. And the rank odor suggested that the boar had anointed the gun.

  "I'm gettin' me an automatic scattergun," Willard said, "and them Aggie fruitcakes can pay for it."

  Quantrill typed Raima's instructions on a pocket printer as she finished dressing the leg; passed the copy to her. Palma repeated everything orally before yielding the copy to the taciturn Mrs. Willard, then paused outside the little house. "If he tries to work, Mrs. Willard, it may fester, and you'll have to get him to town. Can you cope out here alone?"

  The leathery face was placid. "If need be. It's a visitation, Doctor. That boar's the devil's sign, just like the rest of the war. If I have to cope by sacrificin' lambs, so be it."

  Palma bit back an acid reply. "You may be right about offering meat," she said finally. "Do you have poison?"

  "For Ba'al? He'd get us, sure."

  Palma and Quantrill exchanged glances; said nothing. Jouncing back toward the highway, Quantrill could contain his opinion no longer. ' "That poor old woman is plain gaga," he said.

  "She's probably younger than I am," said Palma in jocose warning, "and you'll hear lots stranger ideas. Religious fundamentalists tend to think of the war as a judgment. I must say," she laughed gently, "a bunch of Russian boars loose on the land makes a very likely-seeming link with the powers of darkness."

  "No more than paranthrax or fallout."

  "Hm. Maybe, but a boar has the devil's own face—speaking metaphorically, you understand! And the hooves, and—did you know that a big boar's penis is ridged as though it were threaded? Don't laugh, Ted; that's what Willard meant by the corkscrew. The same sort of thing that was once said of Satan.

  "Stop looking at me that way, you fool, I don't believe a word of it. But when you can hang three or four coincidences together, you get—well, you get Ba'al. The Biblical false lord. I suppose it's logical, in Mrs. Willard's eyes, to sacrifice to whatever god makes his presence felt the most. And maybe it 'll keep that big devil away from the pens at night."

  Palma ignored Quantrill's lifted brow at her repetition of the word,'devil'. He persisted: "Maybe Willard should've used a silver bullet."

  "Maybe—if that bullet were as big as your fist. You wouldn't expect to stop a Kodiak bear with a little thirty-thirty. Those animals that escaped from the Aggie pens were truly enormous; bigger by far than the Asiatic strain that reached over two hundred and fifty kilos; I've seen them. No, what Willard needed was an elephant gun and lots of intelli gence. I'm afraid guns are much more effective on humans than on game of equal size." Sandys jurnal Sept. 3 Tus.

  Mom and me found a store on Delrio road today. It was oful. 2 men and 1 woman dead, looked like sombody shot up the place with a 22. All the licker was gone. We took cans of stuff. Cured ham, medisin, you name it me and mom got it. Mom says it wasnt swiping, I gess it isnt if you have to. When we got back I heard my dadyfrom outside. I never heard my dady like that. Mom made me stay out but I can work the c b and tried to call the dr. and coudnt. I felt so scared I was strong. I drug the stuff I found into my cave by the other hole, you know the one I call the side door. Mom says taking stuff from dead folks isnt swiping but I prayed God to forgive me.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  On Wednesday, Quantrill drove Palma to the Caverns of Sonora where, for the first time, he saw an effective relocation center. Laughing, chattering as though on a peacetime outing, hundreds of citizens exercised briefly on the surface, then returned below to be replaced by others. A few people labored to erect windmill towers, building a complex of twelve-volt lighting systems cannibalized from some of the many cars parked nearby.

  Palma's requisition was quickly filled from the makeshift pharmacy near the cavern entrance. “In another week," said Cathy Palma, leading Quantrill toward the surface by a winding stair, "most of these people will be back home. Unless the Sinolnds hit us again, or we get a duster." A dust storm, she added, would sweep up settled fallout, would make topside breathing hazardous for a day or so even though most of the ionizing radiation had decayed to bearable levels.

  Quantrill squinted in the sunlight, moved to their van. "What was the stuff you picked up here?"

  "Some drugs; opiates I'd hoped we wouldn't need, but the chelates didn't do the job." She coded the display as Quantrill drove along blacktop. "We've got another stop in the canyon a few klicks away. I told you about the Grange family; very tenacious in their ways, right or wrong. I'm afraid we're going to lose Wayland Grange, but he doesn't want the little girl to know that. So you keep her topside while I'm in their cave."

  Quantrill found his orders easy to follow. The cave entrance was well-hidden in a tributary arroyo, and he would not have seen it but for the staunch little blonde figure in the pink dress, waving as they drew near. "Sandy, this is my helper. Why don't you show him the view," Palma said, indicating the broken countryside.

  The girl nodded, her eyes large, solemn with surprise. She was small for an eleven-year-old, almost stocky, with scabs on both knees. She had not yet lost her baby fat, but her arms and legs hinted that she would develop a milkmaid's sturdiness. The little face was that of a worried angel, cheeks pink as her cotton dress, growing pinker yet as Quantrill extended his hand. The memory of another little blonde girl surfaced for an instant, was thrust vigorously back into the recesses of his mind. Endless mourning had not been a feature of the Quantrill family.

  "Didn't expect company," she said, so softly he barely heard. She looked down at her feet, sockless in jogging shoes, as she offered her dirt-smeared hand.

  Quantrill intuited her shyness in the handshake, resisted an impulse to hug the kid, realized he towered over her. He sat on a stone outcrop. "I'm Ted. I've got a bad leg," he said, "so take it easy on me."

  It was the right tack. Soon she was guiding him by the hand, pointing to distant wreckage which had been winnowed for human remains, gro
wing more animated as she showed him the places where she played outside. 'Do you still play, Ted?"

  He grinned. "When I get the chance, Sandy. But I'm no good at 'tag' right now. Give me another week."

  "It's a deal," she chortled, then grew serious. “When my daddy gets well I'll show you the cave. What's the matter, don't you like caves?"

  His face had betrayed him. "Uh, sure. Just got a twinge from my leg. I saw the Caverns of Sonora this morning."

  Pride showed in Sandy's, "Pooh, they're nothin'. My daddy and mom don't know how big ours is. But I do. If I had a real good friend, I might show her what I found. Or him," faintly.

  Charmed by her artless transparency, Quantrill hinted that he knew what she'd found, gradually leading her to guess that the backpack was his.

  She caught her lower lip in her teeth, faltering, "I didn't mean to swipe your knapsack, I mean,—"

  "We call it a backpack, and you didn't swipe it. It's yours, Sandy. From me to you. Okay?"

  "Okay." Studied silence. Then, "I found some other stuff too. One thing like a big dress of ribbons but I think it's a parachute on a big heavy can. Is that yours, too?"

  Supposing her singular treasure was a chute flare, Quantrill shook his head. "Finders keepers, Sandy. Just don't fiddle with the can. It might be dangerous," he said in understatement far beyond his comprehension. "A girl pretty as you could make a terrific dress from a chute. Maybe not as nice as the dress you're wearing," he finished, affecting not to noticelhe holes and smudges in the pink fabric.

  "Aw, this ol' thing," she murmured, and covered her embarrassment by asking how his pack came to be in the delta. Quantrill spun a tale of his journey in the Norway, recognizing that the girl hungered for heroes, willing to present himself as such for a child in need. He did not perceive, as Palma did, that the friendship might be therapy for him as well.

  In an hour, Quantrill and Sandy Grange were talking as equals, punning, exchanging riddles. Palma's call brought them back to the present; but before advancing to meet