Scrambled, page 14
part #14 of Directorate Series
***
Another hangover from hell.
He tried to convince himself he was glad to be alive, but it wasn't working. Puking sick was an improvement over the other pain, which had gone away overnight, but that didn't mean it was pleasant.
He whimpered, and crept out of bed, back to the liquor cabinet. Surely he'd seen . . . yes bottled water. Drained one. Opened the next.
I ought to dump it on my head, get cleaned up . . . can't wash my clothes . . . clothes . . . There was a huge closet full of clothes. Men's. Looked . . . about the right size.
"The toilet tanks should have enough water in them for me to get mostly clean." He headed that way, stripping off his filthy shirt. And his pants were binding . . . he adjusted the crotch . . . What? What the heck is . . . that . . .
In some weird surrealistic state he unbuckled his belt and let his pants fall.
Looked like balls.
Felt like balls.
He wobbled down to sit on the floor. Head pounding, stomach roiling.
Definitely scrotum.
Definitely something that was pretty close to what he remembered testicles felt like.
What did Ebsa say? You'll find this useful . . . healing spells for damn near anything.
"No kidding." His voice cracked. He swallowed. "Puberty. Oh. My. God."
"I am . . . a man."
He crawled into the bathroom, shedding clothes, finding towels, soap, shampoo, lid off the tank of the toilet, yep, a couple liters of water. Time to get clean.
***
He raided several apartments, and hauled away bags of clothes, both male and female, in a spread of sizes. Cans, and boxes of dried food. Not much though. The former residents must have shopped often. Or ate out a lot.
It made an awkward burden.
He scavenged some long poles, sheets, piled his makeshift travois high and started back.
Kept seeing flicks of movement out of the corner of his eye, another dog? Or would it really be a wolf, this time? He closed his eyes and looked mentally.
Two. One a human and the other probably a dog.
He stopped for a break, stretching like he actually needed it. An illusion of himself, sitting down, as he threw another illusion on himself of grass.
He circled downwind and stalked that pair of glows.
The dog caught on first, ears up and alert.
The . . . boy snapped around and frowned. "I see you. Sort of."
Nick banished the illusion and the dog rushed him, lips back in a snarl . . .
"Down!" The boy's sharp command stopped the dog instantly. The teeth still showed, and the growl was deep enough to be nearly subsonic.
"Hi. I'm Nick." He kept a cautious eye on the dog. Black with red eyebrows and paws. Short-haired, muscles on a thin athletic frame, hound dog ears, a long thin tail that was definitely not wagging. "Is that a Dobie?"
"Yeah. I didn't let them cut the tail off my puppy."
"A wise decision. Are you alone out here? Did your parents . . . end up somewhere else?"
Hunched shoulders. "Diego and I were in the back seat of the car . . . and then there wasn't a front of the car any more. We crashed off into the grass . . . and then . . . where we came from . . . went away."
"Ah . . . yes. By your accent you're a Oner. There's a couple of places where the One World stuck, if you want to look for family or friends."
A cautious nod. Thinking. Desperate, but still cautious.
The boy swallowed. "Do you have any food? Diego and I finished off the last stuff from the trunk of the car yesterday."
"Yeah. Let me break some out before Diego decides to snack down on me."
Over cold canned soup and crackers—Diego got two cans—the boy finally admitted to a name. "Izgo Withione. I mostly get called Zog."
"Better than most of these stupid name codes." And I felt you lying. Why?
"Yeah, yours shouldn't be allowed . . . Nick."
Nick shrugged. I'm notorious. Even kids recognize me. "What are you, about ten?"
"I'm almost twelve."
"Old enough to decide for yourself. Would you like to meet my family and our neighbors? I doubt you'll find family there, but I'll take you around to the next Oner area tomorrow, if you'd like."
Zog nodded.
Nick picked up his pole ends and started dragging the travois. Keeping his eyes open for more stalkers.
But nothing attacked him until he got back to the camp, whereupon too many worried women yelled at him.
Gamer stopped first, frowning at him. "Where did you get those clothes?"
"Raided some empty apartments." He waved at the bags he'd dropped. "Merry Christmas."
That got half the women off his back.
The others focused on the boy and his big dog.
"Zog is the boy, Diego is the dog. I'll walk him over to the apartments tomorrow, to look for his parents." Diego seemed to be off guard mode, so Nick looked around for the kid nearest his claimed age. "Hakim? Could you find them a place to sleep?"
He slipped away to talk to Abbas, who was with Kirk, some fellow with purple hair, and a couple of Skinners.
"That was a good idea, about the roof panels. And the aluminum beams, easily half of them are undamaged, and we can beat the bent ones back into shape, easy. We figured we'd start with an open pavilion south of here, about halfway between Versalle and the Red Zone. We can camp there, shelter the horses and calves, whatever we need at any given time."
"Sounds good, but should we move away from the cluster fuck? There are sink holes with clean water in them all through the hills south of here. Not that we can't tap the water table from here, if we can scavenge pipe and a pump."
The purple man shifted. "My granny was a power, like me. She had charms she'd put on pipes, to make the water move."
"Really? Hmm . . . We'll scavenge for pipes too. Umm, I'm Nick."
"Marco Felis. Not the ass you kicked out of here."
"Right. So . . . let's get to it." A quick glance over to where Hakim and Zog were laughing. The very well trained guard dog was looking affronted, sitting at attention at Zog's side as Lady Fang bounced and leaped, bowing and wagging her tail, trying to get Diego to play.
Good enough. Because I also recognized you, a bit belatedly, from your, much rarer, pictures "Izgo."
When they returned with the truck full of metal panels and beams, and pipes, plumbing fixtures and windows scavenged from the collapsed barracks, the women and little children had disappeared.
A quick visual check of the older kids . . . Abbas had Hakim and Zog busy building a lean-to. Excellent.
One of the old winos looked around with a toothy grin. "They're all off at that sinkhole you told us about. No men allowed. They took lots of soap with 'em. And guns. Like as not, they'll come back all fancied up and smelling great, and with meat for dinner."
"Ah. Right. So . . . where shall we put this well?"
Black Beauty had a boyfriend hanging over the fence trying to sweet talk her.
"I figure, he probably ran off when the dinosaur attacked." Abbas shrugged. "We can't catch him, but he won't go away."
"Another Black Horse horse." Nick snorted. "And I suspect he got that potion, the way he's acting . . . Abbas, I need to talk to you for a moment."
The boy . . . "You're fourteen, right?"
"Almost fifteen." Outthrust jaw.
Stubborn as his father.
"That healing potion?" Nick's voice squeaked. "That pain in the gut I had, I think that was my testicles regrowing, and moving down where they belong. Last night . . . it hurt so bad I drunk myself unconscious. This morning? I've got two balls, right where they belong."
Abbas's gaze was brightening.
"Think. The Priests said they castrate boys so they'll have more power. So if you wait . . . well, I haven't a clue."
The boy's eyes narrowed. "You always were incredibly strong. I . . . will wait and see if you get weaker. For a while. Maybe a couple of years."
Nick nodded. "Until you just can't take the looks, the pity, the teasing. But remember the power."
Abbas looked speculatively at the new horse. "Let's see if he regrows anything. He's sure acting like a stallion."
"He's got to be uncomfortable. His saddle's crooked, the bit still in his mouth." Nick wafted an unnoticeable spell on himself and strolled closer. Reached and grabbed the short dangling end of a broken rein.
The horse startled as contact broke the effect of the spell. Nick went with himh tugging lightly with his insufficient grip. "Easy boy. Yeah, that's better. Let’s get you unsaddled."
The horse huffed resignedly and relaxed.
Abbas sidled up with a length of ratty old rope and the capture was complete.
Nick took the saddle off and rubbed him down with a hank of grass. A longer rope was transformed into a halter and long line to tie him and let him graze. Stupid horse stayed as close to the mare as he could get.
"Are you going to start acting that stupid?" Abbas ducked away from a shaken fist.
"Already am. Now. Let's see about this well . . ."
A circular slice down, then pull while still holding the frictionless slice spell . . . ten meters down, the water saturated zone was highly porous and snapped off.
Marco remembered his granny’s spell, and Nick applied it good and hard to the pipe as they ran it down the hole
The water mover spells worked a treat. They ran pipes to all the camps and talked about what they needed to do, before they hooked up to the old water main. Mostly a matter of finding cut off pipes and sealing them.
The women returned, all cleaned up and delighted to find water to the camps.
"But that building you're planning? It needs to go up by the pool. That is where we'll build an all new village." Umaya was looking happier than he'd ever seen her.
Nick nodded his understanding. "We're free."
Chapter Thirty- Four
Twins!
18 Jumada 1400 nyp
Ebsa drove the empty truck back out the gate and swung around to the Comet Fall embassy where the next load was waiting.
Xen Wolfson strode up, comm to ear. ". . . have him there in three minutes." He clicked off and reached for Ebsa. "Come along, you're about to be late for something you promised to not miss."
Ebsa staggered as the world changed around him . . . he barely recognized the Oner Embassy Buildings before he was shoved through the gate to One World. "Paer? The babies!"
"Yep."
Stagger . . . into an antiseptic hospital corridor. One door with a Black Horse guard on it. And Paer's voice. ". . . Going to kill the man. He said he'd . . ."
Ebsa rushed in. "I'm here." A glare from a nurse dissolved into horror as she looked him over. "And I'm going to scrub really quickly but thoroughly . . ." he dived for the sink.
A breathless laugh from Paer. "I can't believe you made it back," pant pant, "in time. It's going so fast!" Pant pant, "according to the books, anyway."
Ebsa checked his fingernails and dried his hands and arms. Stepped closer.
"I just got here an hour ago. Oooohhhh!" Paer grabbed his hand. "I was across, and thought I'd have hours of contractions before I needed to head for the hospital, but they ramped up fast."
She eyed the nurse. "Are you sure I can't push yet? It looks to me like the first baby's going to fall out."
Sniff. "I'll take a look."
Ebsa failed to ignore the lady examining his darling's private parts. Especially as her eyes widened. "Don't push."
She tapped a button on her collar. "Dr. Ubny to room 321!" She bustled around the end of the bed, putting in those stirrup things and dropping the end section of the bed . . . "Young man, get around here and help your wife get her feet into the stirrups, while I get out the neonate kit . . ."
Paer's feet were warm, and there was something . . . Ebsa got one hand under the baby's head, and the other under his body as he slipped out.
A huge zing of recognition, and then Ezra Withione Tarsus Ottoman was protesting his change of state with a wail.
The nurse hustled over, the doctor rushed through the other door, and Ebsa reluctantly handed over his son. He stepped up to grab Paer's hands in his sticky ones, dropped one to swipe tears off his face. "One down, one to go."
Paer got a few minutes to hold her son, then the contractions started again.
Ebsa didn't have to catch Poet, and Paer was holding her when he touched his daughter for that first big zing.
"You did it. We . . . We're parents."
Paer grinned. "Now for the hard part."
Chapter Thirty-five
Not Expecting This!
18 Jumada 1400 nyp
Miss Boot eyed the two prostitutes. "Ladies? We need a large number of things. Starting with stores. A lot of the people have been cut off from their homes, and have very little in the way of clothing. But Nick has shown us how to deal with that."
"Those empty apartments all full o'clothes?" Macy looked over at Seuz. "We need to get over there before someone beats us to it."
"I got, like, plenty of clothes."
Macy rolled her eyes. "No, no, no! Miss Boot's right. You have plenty'a clothes now but they wear out, and anyhow, there's plenty'a folk without any but what's on their backs. We oughta open a store . . . One of them warehouse things. Meisha said if the guys really could get the water runnin’, they were movin' someplace with real toilets and sinks and bathtubs. Ah told her Ah didn't think them office warehouse things had bathtubs, but she thought they could fix that, just so they had room tah be together."
Seuz bit down on a fingernail. "Yeah, like, they've been chased everywhere for years. Gamer said she'd been shot, you know, like, just a couple of weeks ago, and that zowie magic wine saved her life."
"Huh. So they're stickin' together. You don't suppose Nick and those old women . . . "
"Eww! Well . . . Fatina and Mona are young enough to, you know, look sexy."
"Ah looked it up on mah comp before the battery died. Azho the Priest Killer is only nineteen years old."
"And he's cute . . . in a, you know, very scary sort of way."
Miss Boot stopped squeezing her nose. Prostitutes. You'd think they'd have no illusions about men, instead they're acting like teenagers.
Not that Nick the Priest Killer wasn't . . . hadn't been . . . I will never drink wine again unless I've seen it sealed, and never let it out of my view.
"Oh yeah! Those eyes! They just stare right into your soul!"
"Like he's gonna just have you for a snack."
"And he sure did clean up nice!"
Double sighs.
"Ladies! Can you concentrate on a clothing store?" Miss Boot looked at her list. "I'll talk to some people about scavenging for solar panels. And water. We're going to need that water well hooked up to the water mains." I'm going to have to ask Nick . . .
Macy shook herself. "Yeah. Let's go shoppin' for a store."
"Yeah . . . Macy? Are we, like . . . working? I mean . . . " Seuz grabbed Macy's arm and then jerked her hand back.
"Oh Seuz, we always worked. This is just honest work, on account'a . . . What're you lookin' at me like that fer?"
"Macy, you're pregnant!"
"What!" Macy yelped, then looked down at her flat abdomen.
Miss Boot closed her eyes and saw the double exposure aura effect of an early pregnancy on the other woman.
"You'll be all right." Seuz patted her shoulder. "Surely there's a doctor around here somewhere."
"Seuz? I think yer preggers too." Macy gulped. "We're going tah need an honest job . . . selling clothes that are just sitting around, abandoned. It ain't stealin."
"I've, like, got a block, not just an implant."
"I gotta implant . . . this ain't that zowie wine agin, is it?"
Miss Boot forced herself to breathe. Wine. Orgy. I had sex! With a mass murderer!
Miss Boot closed her eyes and looked at herself.
Fainted.
They asked around. Every woman who'd joined the street orgy was preggers.
Even Fat Kedy, who was pushing a hundred.
Umaya told all and sundry that it was their fault for drinking alcohol, and then said she'd delivered babies before. "But I suppose you modern women will want to go to some man who thinks he's an expert."
The crowd of women exchanged glances.
Miss Boot cleared her throat. "I think I'll walk over to those apartments and have a little chat with people over there. Maybe take a few presents with me. I wonder what a doctor would need, that he might just trade services for?"
Chapter Thirty-Six
Medical Matters
18 Jumada 1400 nyp
Captain Ahco stared at all the red and yellow lights on the two docboxes and winced.
These two docboxes had been moved from the half-collapsed Ministry clinic to this music store next to the minor emergency clinic that was serving as their only medical facility.
Their half-healed previous occupants had been kicked out early. They lay on two of the beds that lined the long wall of the room. One silent and still, the other moaning faintly.
"And you figure you've got another day's worth of gasoline for the generator?" He bit his lip. "I don't recall seeing any fueling stations in any of our sections, but I'll check the Red Zone."
Zee fielded three hundred men and managed to get nearly forty killed, twice as many wounded in an encounter that probably lasted less than fifteen minutes of actual fighting.
And got himself killed.
Shit, or captured. The way his people cut and run we can't assume any men they left behind are dead. The Earthers took all the bodies away, living or dead.
And One help us Captain Ijje is now the senior officer, panicked and trying to hide it behind formalities. He has his men out piling rubble, raising a wall a third of the way across the mixed up hub.
And the Earthers are doing the same, on their side. Theirs is a lot neater than ours, we're using ruined walls and tide pools for parts of ours.
