The First Protector

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Ma'el Report. Day 113,062…

I am increasingly concerned about the way I continue to reveal more and more Taelon technology to beings whose presently low levels of intelligence and culture might be seriously affected, if not destroyed, by it. As a planetary investigator my behavior in this matter will be considered reprehensible by the Synod. My only defense, which is a scientifically unsatisfactory one even to me, is that up to now both of them have demonstrated a flexibility of mind which suggests that they will be able to adapt to the new situation without mental damage. Nor, 1 feel sure, will they pass on the knowledge they have discovered to others of their species if I request otherwise, so that a complete obliteration of their memories can be avoided.

"I am at a loss to understand my growing emotional attachment where these two subjects are concerned. It is a recent development because, during the Finisterre. incident, I was willing to sacrifice their lives and those of the others on board Orla to the attacking Romans. But it was the quick and original thinking of Sinead, with minimal assistance from me, that saved everyone's lives.

"There have been other instances of unusual and even intuitive thinking from both of my servants and it is these abilities of which I will be able to make use. My lengthy separation from the main body of the Commonality has caused my timesight to diminish, and I shall be forced to abandon my investigation if I cannot develop a local source of accurate precognition. That is the primary reason why so much of our technology is being revealed and used in order to keep Sinead and Declan alive. I still have hopes of her acquiring a dependable timesight faculty.

"If they prove to be forlorn hopes then I will be forced reluctantly to wipe their minds clean and look elsewhere."

–

He felt cold, colder than he had ever felt before or would have believed it possible to feel. With his teeth chattering uncontrollably he pushed himself up onto one elbow and opened his eyes to look around.

The awning of a tent was shading him from a sun that was reflecting off the rippled surface of a large, clear pool that lay a dozen paces away, and shining down on the thin, uneven carpet of short grass between the water's edge and the strange, pale gray litter on which he was lying. A hot but gentle breeze was warming his face and bringing with it the scent of the few desert flowers that were pushing up through the short grass. For a moment Declan wondered if he had died and had awakened in Paradise, but he quickly discounted that idea for three reasons; he had never believed in any kind of heaven; his wounds were still hurting; and Sinead was on her knees beside him observing unnecessarily that he was awake at last.

"I'm c-cold," he said, still looking around him. He saw that they were in a narrow ravine with an uneven, grassy floor. The horse and wagon were about twenty paces behind him and Ma'el was looking down at them from the driving bench. "What happened? How did I get here?"

"Your body is still thawing out," she replied, "and Ma'el says you will be warm again very soon. So ease your mind, save your strength, and don't tire yourself asking questions that I'm about to answer. Lie down again, onto the same side because that's the only part of you that wasn't punctured with arrows. I cut the shafts away as close as possible to the entry wounds, but the heads are still in you. They were barbed and will have to be cut out carefully rather than being pulled out so as to avoid causing even more damage. Do you think you can hold still without fidgeting while I'm doing that?"

Declan stifled a groan as he lowered his raised shoulder back to the litter, discovering that his body was covered by one thin and impossibly white sheet and nothing else. At least he wouldn't have to suffer her pulling off his tunic and boots because that had already been done.

"Yes," he said.

"Good," she replied, folding back the sheet. "And it would make you feel more comfortable if you don't try to look at what I'll be doing to you. Weil start with the easy ones, the hip and buttock wounds…"

He fixed his eyes on what from his position was the vertical edge of the pool and did not reply because his teeth were already clenched. He felt her fingers pressing gently around the wound in his buttock, then the sting of two short, deep cuts on opposite sides of the arrowhead, then it being moved gently from side to side and drawn out. She transferred her attention to the hip wound and he tensed, knowing now what pain to expect. Her voice was brisk, confident, and reassuring as she went on talking, but there was an undertone of concern in it that made him wonder if she thought she was working on a body that was expected soon to die.

"… I shall allow the wounds to bleed themselves clean for a few moments before I stitch, cover, and bind them," she said, tossing the bloody arrowheads onto the ground close to his face. "Do you want to keep those in memory of your battle?"

"No," said Declan firmly, "I hate the sight of blood

…" he tried to laugh but instead the body movement made him gasp in pain, "… especially my own."

"I hate the sight of your blood, too," she said, and added quickly, "or anyone else's. We owe a lot to Padraig of Cashel; his leather tunic stopped the arrows from penetrating deeply. Now for the shoulder. Your muscles are like rocks. It will come out easier if you let the arm go limp. But to return to your earlier questions, after Ma'el's djinn frightened off the raiders, he moved you into his wagon and put you into what he called hibernation anaesthesia…"

"What's that?"

"… I asked the same question," she went on, "and he said cold sleep. I haven't seen inside his wagon. What's it like?"

"I don't know," said Declan. "I was sleeping, remember."

"You sarcastic son of a…" Sinead began angrily, then she shook her head and went on in a voice filled with growing wonder, "Indeed you were. For nearly four months you were sleeping while Ma'el used the large and two of the smaller djinns, he calls them soft-landed sensors, to seek out the medical knowledge that was needed. The big djinn is the one that usually remains very high and sends down the pictures to the magic chart. It found the libraries in Athens, Rome, Alexandria, and one in Xian in Far Cathay, and another in a vast country that nobody knows about where they make human sacrifices to a god called Huitzilopochtl so that he will allow the sun to rise each morning, but they have great knowledge about the internal arrangement of bones and organs and the workings of our bodies.

"The two small djinns that live in the big one's belly," she rushed on, "came down at night to look at the scrolls and pictures and send all they saw to Ma'el's chart for us to study. Sometimes it was difficult for their long, iron fingers to find and open the books at the right place, and scrolls were knocked from the shelves, but the disturbance was usually blamed on robbers. Once Ma'el had to find and question a scholar through a small djinn which he used to make the other believe was the manifestation of a strange god. But he gave us the knowledge I needed…".

"Wait," said Declan weakly, shaking his head and immediately regretting it because his shoulder muscle also moved. "What are you talking about? Where is this place, what has happened apart from djinns coming and going, what knowledge are you talking about, and why do you need it?"

She continued answering him quietly while she eased the arrowhead out of his shoulder and threw it away so violently that it might have been a disgusting reptile. She left the wound to bleed for a few moments while she returned her attention to the other two, pressing them closed with gentle fingers before stitching their edges together and covering them with pads, soaked in something that smelled strongly, that were held in position with firm bindings.

They were not very far from the scene of the battle, she told him, and when Ma'el had told Bashir that the wagon would remain behind for a while he had told the truth without being accurate about the exact duration. With the help of the chart their master had found a suitable ravine, moved the wagon into it, and performed a spell to ensure that nobody would ever stumble across it, or even see it or the comings and goings of the djinns that visited them regularly with charms that Ma'el said he needed. One of them had been a strange, glowing staff that he had pushed into the sand saying that it was drilling an opening into a stream that was flowing deep underground. When he removed the staff a few moments later, a spring of clear water had bubbled up to form the pool he could see beside them. Time and the dried-out but still-living seeds in the ground had produced the young grass and desert flowers that were growing all around them.

"Are you sure it's been that long since…?" Declan began.

"You were cold sleeping," she answered shortly. "Weren't you listening to me? Now roll over a little onto your stomach, but without hurting your side. I have to work on the leg, now. The arrowhead went in behind and above the knee. There is an important vein there and I mustn't cut it when the barb is coming out

…"

"Why not?"

"Because you might bleed to death," she replied, "or end up with a wooden stump like Tomas the helmsman. Unfortunately there is none of Brian's wine to ease your hurting so I will understand if you make noises or use unseemly language. I would do both in your place. Just be sure to hold the leg steady while I'm working on it…"

He began by biting his lower lip until he tasted his own blood and changed to clenching his teeth instead, but he did not make a sound. It seemed that she was spending a much longer time on the back of his leg than she had on the other wounds. He felt her fingers moving the barb back and forth by tiny amounts and sometimes twisting it before it was drawn out and he felt the gentler, regular pricking of the stitches that pulled the edges of the wound together. But at last he felt the firm binding being wound on and heard her sigh of relief.

"Good," she said. "Now for the side wound. Roll slowly back onto your other side and… Your mouth is bleeding. Surely you're losing enough blood from other places without chewing off bits of your lip?"

"I was hungry," said Declan, forcing a smile. "I still am."

"And that's how you're going to stay," she said firmly. "How long is it since you ate anything, not counting the time you spent cold sleeping in the wagon?"

Declan thought for a moment. "At the caravanserai I was too tired to eat," he said, "and I overslept and had to leave quickly to catch up to Bashir's men and so missed breaking my fast. Since then there wasn't a chance to… Please, I'm starving to death."

"That's good," she said looking relieved.

"That's cruel, heartless," he replied. "I tell you, my stomach thinks my throat's been cut… What is that thing?"

"Another device of Ma'el's," she replied. "It resembles the chart except that instead of showing where we are it lets me see what is happening inside your body. Lift yourself, gently now, onto your elbow and look into it. Isn't it wonderful? My father would have sold his soul for a device like this. I may want you to hold it in position if I have to use both hands."

It was a flat, square box more than a hand's length on the side and no thicker than a man's index finger. Instead of a motionless picture the upper surface of the box showed a landscape that seemed to be in regular, twitching motion. Bright and clear at its center was the short length of arrow and barb penetrating his flesh while around and behind it there were many thick and thin lines, which from the operation of Tomas's leg he recognized as veins, and even thicker masses that curled about each other in a wet, slippery tangle.

"It's horrible, disgusting," he said, easing his good side back onto the litter. "My belly looks like it's full of serpents."

"Hopefully they are empty serpents," said Sinead, "and ensuring that they remain that way is what may keep you alive. If the subject doesn't disgust you too much, would you like to know why?"

"Yes," he said. "You talking about it is better than me having to watch it. But why are you always angry with me? I haven't done anything to deserve it, especially not to you."

She hesitated for a moment while looking at him with a strange and very serious expression, and Declan had the feeling that when she spoke the words were not those she had originally intended to say. "You make me angry because you give me so many wounds to treat, and because most of them are yours.

"The snakes inside your belly are in fact a long, continuous tube," she went on before he could reply, "which takes out the good part of the food you eat and allows the poisonous waste that remains to be passed out of your back passage as excrement. The arrowhead made a small cut in this tube and it may have allowed a quantity of the fecal matter to leak and gradually find its way into the rest of your body. If that happened you would die, just the way that young boy shot with a poisoned arrow died on the ship. The fact that you haven't eaten for a long time, and will not be allowed to eat until the cut in the tube is healed, is good because the amount of poison in there should be small.

"Now I'll need both hands for the next part," she added, "so hold the seeing box over the wound, just here. That's it."

Again he gritted his teeth as the arrowhead moved from side to side and was coaxed. The pain eased as he felt but did not see a warm trickle run down and onto his stomach.

"And now," he said through dry lips, "you're letting it bleed clean?"

"No," she said, bending low over him. "This one will need more than that."

Declan felt her fingers pressing and pulling the wound open, then her lips being placed around it and the painful but strange sensation of the blood and he knew not what other poisons being sucked out. After a moment she raised her head, spat onto the ground, and bent over the wound again.

"Wait!" he said urgently. 'That is stupid. If the blood is poisoned you shouldn't be…"

"Stupid yourself," she said angrily, "I'm not stupid enough to swallow it!" She continued the process for what seemed to Declan to be a long time even though the tiny movement of the sun's shadow indicated otherwise, before she straightened up and said, 'That should do it. Any more of that and I'll end up sucking you inside out. I'm going to close and cover the wound now. After what has gone before it won't hurt you much. This has gone well, Declan, but now you must try to ease your mind, cover your body again, and let yourself sleep."

"I don't want to sleep," he said. "I want to talk."

"What about?" she said.

He remained silent until she had finished binding the wound and returned from the pool where she had rinsed out her mouth with cupped handfuls of clear water, washed the blood off her lips, and splashed some of it onto the back of her neck. From the sight of her perspiring face he realized that the sun must be hot even though he himself was just beginning to feel warm.

"About you," he said, "and why, after all you've just done, you're angry with me? You would be nicer to the horse if it had been wounded by arrows."

–

"Yes," she said, "because the horse wouldn't talk back to me. Please change the subject…"

She broke off suddenly to bend over him again, one hand going to his forehead and the other resting lightly on his chest. Muttering to herself, she moved to the opposite end of the litter and lifted it from the ground, unfolding a support that kept it in that position. Declan chose his words carefully and was surprised by his teeth chattering when he spoke.

"I'm not c-calling you stupid," he said, "but what h-healer's reason had you for t-tilting my feet up?"

"Because you're growing cold," she said, "and sweating, and your heart is beating fast but weakly. I was afraid of this happening. Despite your physical strength, the pain and duration of the surgery is sending you into shock. The treatment for shock, which is agreed upon by stupid healers from Hibernia to Cathay, is to elevate the feet so that the blood your heart is able to pump goes to your chest and brain where it is most needed. You must also be kept warm…"

She fell silent because Ma'el, whose hearing must have been very good, arrived beside her carrying another one of his strange, thin, but very warm blankets. She took it from him and draped it over Declan, tucking it around him as if he had been a child close to slumber while being careful not to press it against the underlying wounds. Ma'el spoke as soon as she was finished.

"Will he live?"

Sinead's face was angry, Declan saw, and her eyes were opening and closing rapidly. If he hadn't known her better he would have thought that she was blinking back tears.

"I don't know," she said.