She was being civil. Professional. And marginally polite. David was afraid to push it further and kept his own comments to the same level.
There was a lot to distract him, out in the desert, like the roasting heat or the burning sun. Freefall refused to land after their first touchdown, since the sand and rocks were also searingly hot. David called him a wuss; Freefall understood the tone, if not the word, because he squawked and did a barrel roll that almost spilled David from the saddle.
By the time the sun was beginning to ease toward the far horizon, they'd made it back to the outer canyons carved by the Amu River and its tributaries. Here the canyons were only a few hundred feet deep, as opposed to six thousand, but they sprouted mesas just like the main canyon. He was trying to come up with a good way to approach Romana - lock her in a room until she 'fessed up, maybe? - and also worrying about making it back to Canyon City before nightfall. They were a long way off.
Still, it wasn't a bad flight, and being in the air was probably the most calming experience he could name.
One second everything was perfect, and the next Freefall screeched in pain and one wing abruptly stopped flapping, pulling in close to his body. David gripped the saddle in a moment of wild panic as the skybax plummeted toward the ground, and then his training overrode instinct and he jerked sharply on the leather connecting him to Freefall. "UP!"
Freefall screeched again, a truly agonized sound that made David wince in pity, but the skybax managed to slow their descent to something approaching reasonable speed. It was still too fast.
A mesa rushed up at them, and Freefall did his best to slow further as they neared the inevitable impact. David ducked his head down and braced himself as well he could, calculating furiously all the while. Impact was going to hurt Freefall more than it was himself, unless he fell off the edge of the mesa's top, and then he would have to find some way to catch himself before he fell all the way to the river -
Freefall jerked backwards into the proper landing position, but it was too late and too fast for a good landing, and they slammed into the mesa's flat top with a force that jarred every bone in David's body. He lost his grip on the saddle and felt himself hit the rock, hard enough to knock the wind from his chest, and then there was frozen moment of trying to suck air back into his lungs.
When he finally did, he staggered to his feet, wheezing, and looked for Freefall. The skybax was sitting up in a cloud of dust and sand, clearly dazed. David forced himself to walk the short distance between them and check Freefall for damage. The membranous wings could tear so easily, and they took forever to heal - if they healed at all.
Freefall squawked at his approach, shaking sand from his head. David, still breathing hard, ran a hand along the length of his beak to comfort him. "Are you okay?"
Freefall made a series of caws that sounded like an affirmative answer, although the undercurrent of pain that ran through the communication made it obvious that "okay" was relative.
There was a sudden whoosh of wings and wind behind him, and then Romana said, "David! What happened? Are you both all right?"
David was not all right. He'd had the wind knocked out of him before, and it hadn't taken him this long to recover. No, the tight feeling across his lungs and throat that was making it so difficult to breathe now had nothing to do with the impact. "Check his wings for me," he said, sitting down on the nearest available patch of rock.
Romana gave him an odd look but did as he asked. Freefall, normally distrustful of other people, made no protest; he was probably still dazed. "They're fine. No damage." She rubbed Freefall's beak and added, "You're one lucky skybax."
Freefall bobbed his head in agreement.
David closed his eyes, trying to remember what he was supposed to do. Stay calm - but that was easier said than done when your respiratory system was trying to suffocate you. Every new breath was a labor, and less oxygen got in each time. My kingdom for an inhaler, he thought, not joking in the slightest. Why in God's name had he gotten on that plane without an inhaler?
"David?" Romana said, very close to him, and he opened his eyes to see her concerned face hovering in front of his. "David, what's wrong?"
He hated to waste the breath, but he said, "Asthma. Can't breathe."
Her expression changed from concern to alarm, and then she stood and ran to Stratus, who was sitting next to Freefall and looking over the other skybax with concern. She opened one of the bags on the saddle and came running back with a small wooden box marked with red footprint letters. "I hope I still have some..." she muttered, flipping the box open and rifling through its contents. "Hold on... Yes, here it is!"
She withdrew a small vial filled with green liquid and a bulky glass syringe. With swift, practiced motions, she fitted a needle to the syringe and stuck into the vial's rubber-looking stopper, drew liquid from it, and tapped the glass to dispell air bubbles or whatever the reason was people did that. Then she reached up, took his arm in her hand, positioned the needle over the vein in his elbow, and said firmly, "Hold still."
David, not at all sure about the validity of this treatment or Romana's qualifications to administer it, pulled back. She grabbed his arm again, this time with a strength that startled him. "This will help. Be still."
And before he could do anything else, she stuck the needle into his vein and depressed the plunger smoothly.
David, more irritated than anything else, waited until she had withdrawn the needle before pulling his arm back again. A small amount of blood welled up at the injection site, but nothing too bad. Romana was better than most of the nurses he'd encountered.
"There. It shouldn't take long," she said, dismantling the syringe and replacing it in the box after wiping the needle clean with a small white cloth.
To his surprise, it didn't. The constriction in his throat began easing almost immediately, and he felt himself relaxing slightly - which, of course, helped the whole process along.
Romana sat back on her heels and watched him, not saying anything aside from the occasional murmured word of comfort, until he was breathing steadily again. Then she handed him her canteen, and he took a long drink of the water.
He handed the canteen back, saying, "Thank you. What was that stuff?" It worked about as fast as the bronchodilator inhalant he was used to.
She smiled and looked a little embarrassed. "I'm not sure, honestly. My brother makes it from a plant that grows on Ko Veng."
He thought back to his round of geography classes; Ko Veng was one of several small islands off the eastern coast. Busy remembering, it took him a second to comprehend the other part - and when it did sink in, he blinked in surprise. "Brother?"
"Yes - Arthur." She paused, appearing to realize something for the first time. "I didn't tell you, did I?"
"No, you didn't." Now that he wasn't dying, he looked more closely at the letters on the top of the box, and saw they spelled out MEDICINE; a smaller string of letters on the inside of the lid said FOR MANA - FLY HIGH, BE SAFE. A AND A.
"Sorry. I also have a sister named Almestra. They're inventors, like Great-grandfather," she said, standing and picking up the box. "What happened to Freefall?"
"I'm not sure," he said, standing as well - cautiously, but with success. There went their conversation, it looked like. But at least he'd gotten something out of her, and that felt like a major victory. Arthur and Almestra, and they called her Mana. As far as nicknames went, it sounded better than "Davey."
"I didn't see any damage to his wings," she said. "Perhaps it's something internal - a pulled muscle?"
"Maybe. You're the expert here," he said. Freefall took a shuffled hop-step toward him, croaking concern, and he reached out to pat his beak. "I'm okay, buddy."
"I'm hardly an expert," Romana said with a backwards glance at him. "I'm still a cadet, just like you are."
"But you grew up here. I'd never seen a dinosaur until a few months ago."
"All the more reason to put your new skills to the test." She gave him an evaluative look. "What do you think happened to Freefall?"
Was being put on the spot better than being ignored? He wasn't sure, but she had just saved his life, so he was inclined to play along. He gave Freefall a final stroke and sat down again. "Maybe a pulled muscle. Maybe it's something bigger - internal, like you said."
"A very good non-answer," she said, hands on hips. "You'd do well as a diplomatic ambassador. It doesn't tell me anything about your opinion of his injury, though."
"When I can get up and dance again, I'll give you my opinion."
That brought a flicker of a smile to her face. "Dance here and you'll likely take a nasty fall."
He shuddered in only partly feigned horror. "Don't remind me. So when does the rescue party get here?" he asked, hoping to keep this new conversation going.
Romana shook her head. "Not for two days, at least."
"Two days?" he repeated, incredulous.
"They won't send anyone out today, because we won't be overdue until dusk. Then it will be too late. They'll wait all day tomorrow in case we limp in during the morning or the afternoon." She gave him a smile, a stronger one this time. "The good news is that Stratus can fly home and bring help much sooner."
Stratus, though, screeched in vehement protest at that.
Romana turned around and gave the skybax a glare. "What? Why not?"
Stratus dipped his beak, then waddled closer to Freefall and cawed.
"Oh, for goodness' sake," she said crossly.
David shook his head, not quite believing it and delighted at the same time. Freefall, being an albino, had always been something of an outcast among his fellow pterodactyls. To see Stratus, an older skybax and one of the more preeminent of the flock, now acting protectively towards the younger Freefall, was heartening. He might be accepted into the tightly-knit social hierarchy after all - assuming, of course, that they got out of here. "If he doesn't want to go, that's okay. We'll be rescued... eventually. You said so yourself."
She bit her lip, looking unhappy. "I really have no desire to stay out here for two days. For one thing, we haven't got that much food or water."
He hadn't thought of that, but taking a quick mental estimate of the contents of their saddles, he came to the same realization. "Oh yeah."
"Stratus," she said, facing down the large skybax, "the sooner you return home, the sooner Freefall will get help."
Stratus gave a series of squawking noises that made it perfectly clear that he already knew that, and didn't like Romana implying otherwise.
"You could leave tomorrow, at first light," Romana suggested. "Make sure he's doing well tonight, and then go for help."
"It's our best chance," David added, coming to stand behind her.
Freefall took a bobbing step toward Stratus, who tossed his head from side to side, and then they started cawing and clicking at each other. The skybaxes' conversation went on for a few more minutes, and then Stratus turned back to Romana and tapped her shoulder with his beak.
She broke into a broad smile. "Thank you."