It was a fair distance to the base proper. Jim, Selena, and Hannah sat in the back seats of the black rolling behemoth; in the Humvee's front compartment, the man named Charles McKeown spoke quietly into a walkie-talkie. Logistical stuff, from what Jim could make out. Time of their arrival, their number and type, notify the base doctor, things like that.
Selena said: "I want a meal of food that didn't come from tins. Or from tins that I opened, anyway." She leaned forward, tapped Hannah's knee. "How about you, girl?"
Hannah slouched back on her seat. "I want a shower with the hot and cold on. Not a bath from water heated on the stove that I have t' share with two other people."
Jim grinned at her. "It's not like we were all in at the same time."
"You wish," Selena quipped, looking out the tinted side window.
"Gross." Hannah pulled a face.
Selena, chuckling, turned to Jim. "How about it, then, Jim? What do you want?"
He met her eyes, and his face went quiet. "Just t' know you're safe. You an' Hannah."
Hannah tugged at the visor of her cap. "Bo-ring."
"Oh, really?"
"Naw, it's sweet." With her eyes, Selena added: Really. I mean it. Out loud, she prompted: "There must be something else."
His eyes said, that clearly: You. I want you. He smiled. "A decent shave. With a fresh razor."
Charles McKeown said, "I'm sure we can manage that, Jim. We're here."
"Here" was a low building in chocolate-colored brick fronted with darkly tinted glass. It was built into a low hill capped with broken chunks of stone; from the air, Jim realized, they'd seen only the outbuildings. This structure would have been nearly invisible.
"Not standard military issue," Selena observed.
"No, it's not." McKeown climbed out and down; they followed. He led them down a concrete path toward dark glass doors. "Actually, under more normal circumstances, this is a petrochemical research facility."
"With its own air base."
McKeown smiled thinly. "Petroleum exploration and production calls for air support. Company practically has its own fleet."
"What company's that?" Jim asked.
"Western Star Oil and Gas. American-British co-venture."
"What's with the setting, then?" Selena gestured at the support walls extending back into the hill. "Expecting the Luftwaffe to take a pass?"
McKeown led them through automatic doors. "We're in West Yorkshire. A hotbed for ground-strike lightning. Company president is, umm, afraid of storms." He laughed drily. "And you did not hear me say that."
"Not the corporate HQ though, is it?"
McKeown gave Selena a look that as much as said, You ask too many questions. "No. But Mr. West has relatives in the area. Had. He had--" A frown flickered on his thin face. "Mr. West likes to feel secure when he visits."
"We're under military jurisdiction here?" Jim looked around. The place looked more corporate than military, and more American Southwest than Yorkshire. The lobby was appointed in reddish-gold sandstone and polished brass. A dark curved reception desk that would have looked right at home in a luxury hotel was directly ahead of them. Behind it sat a matched set of beefy young men in green and black fatigues, looking distinctly out of place.
"American military, yes." McKeown looked around. "Someone was supposed to-- Ah, Corporal Jeffries."
A trim young fellow in fatigues, ginger-haired and carrying a clipboard, approached from the right. "Mr. McKeown. How are you, sir?"
"Never better. Corporal, meet our guests." He stepped back, said to Jim, "I leave you in Mr. Jeffries' capable hands."
Their names and original addresses they gave to Corporal Jeffries, who smiled easily while he listened and made brief notes; when he finished, he tapped his pen on the top of the clipboard and led them back the way he'd come. The American Southwest glow gave way to an area of offices and conference rooms. Farther still, and they found themselves in a taupe hallway, which opened suddenly into a mess area spotted with women and other men, mostly young and mostly all in fatigues, eating at rectangular tables.
"The fellas who work up front, they eat back here?" Jim asked.
"No, no." Jeffries grinned, showing white even American teeth. "Western Star personnel, guys passing through to the rigs up north, pilots, they stay here. Science guys down in the labs, too, they come up for pie and coffee. Cook makes a hell of a pecan pie. Through there--" He pointed to the right of the mess. "-- there's a TV lounge and a rec room. Couple old arcade games, pool. Magazines, some books. This way." He led them through a double-wide doorway. "Your quarters'll be down here." Another thirty meters or so, past a duty desk manned by the triplet of the twins in the reception area, and Jeffries stopped at the first open door in another taupe hall. "You first, Jim; then Hannah; then Selena. Standard kit and clothing." He drawled his ays, softened his rs; East Coast, Boston possibly, Jim guessed. Like the American Kennedys. "Give you time to shower and change, and then you're to see Doc Main. Quick checkover, then dinner. See if we can't find you some decent grub."
A plain room, not unlike a college dorm. Dresser, small square mirror, digital clock. Single frame bed with a wool green coverlet. On the coverlet, neatly folded clothing in approximately Jim's size: olive army trousers, a dark gray cotton blend sweater, black socks, boxers. A plastic box of toiletries: soap, a safety razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss.
Jeffries led Hannah and Selena away; left by himself, Jim stripped in the room's tiny bathroom. The shower was a shock, marvelous, stinging, hot. He lingered, lathered his hair twice with green shampoo, nearly dozed in the warm spray. He wrapped a towel around his waist, swept steam from the mirror with the side of his hand, shaved.
Hannah and Selena, dressed like him in gray and green, were waiting for Jim in the hall with dampish hair and their clipboard-toting guide.
"Corporal Jeffries thought you might have fallen asleep," Selena said.
"Nearly did." Jim smiled. "Time for the doctor, then?"
Jeffries nodded amiably. "Right this way."
He led them along the back of the mess-- all roads leading to Rome, thought Jim-- to an adjoining hallway, wide and well lit. As they walked, Selena squeezed Jim's hand; he tipped his head toward her.
"Clean up nice, you do," she said softly.
"Mm." He smiled, catching her scent, warm, soap-tinted.
They stopped with Jeffries outside an open door flanked by steel-framed chairs. "Hey, Doc!" he called.
From inside, a woman's voice, husky and rough. "Hey yourself, Red. What can I do ya for?" The woman herself appeared in the doorway a moment later. She was of average height, middle-aged, solidly built. She wore a doctor's white coat, and her coarse auburn hair was pulled back in a bun. She would look not at all out of place, thought Jim, in an old American western, clattering a steel triangle and yelling, "Come and get it!"
She looked at them over the tops of half-glasses anchored to a black lanyard around her neck. "These them?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Could be worse. Okay, kids: who's first?"
Hannah shuffled her feet, raised her hand at the elbow. "I'll go."
"Aw, come on, honey, it ain't a root canal. Come on in." She glared good-naturedly at Jeffries as Hannah passed her in the doorway. "You even tell these folks my name, Red? Betcha didn't. Have her out in a jif," she said to Jim and Selena, and shut the door.
They hadn't seen other people in over a month; Jim felt like he'd met someone's entire extended family in the last forty-five seconds. He looked at Selena, smiled at her smile. Jeffries checked his watch. "You visit with Doc; I'll swing back in about forty-five minutes."
Jim and Selena seated themselves side by side, tipped their heads against the wall. Hannah did emerge, as promised, in the proverbial jif, relaxed and unharmed. Selena went next. Hannah took a chair on the other side of the door from Jim.
"She's well okay," she said. "Says she's from Kansas."
"Sure as hell not in Kansas any more, is she?"
Hannah leaned forward, grinned over at him. "That's what she said. You listenin' or what?"
Selena re-emerged, looking wry, about a quarter-hour later. "You're up, cowboy," she said to Jim. He pushed up out of his chair. Dr. Main was seated at a low laminate desk, writing in ballpoint on a multi-lined form, when he entered. She glanced at him over her glasses, pointed with her pen at a paper-topped exam table. "Have a seat."
Jim boosted himself onto the table, sat, legs swinging. He glanced around the examination room. Usual complement of cut-away anatomy charts, muscles striated in red, veins in blue, surprised exposed eyeballs. Jars of cotton balls, swabs, pads. A brown bottle marked "Alcohol." It felt very ordinary, distinctly civilian. He looked back at Dr. Main where she sat on a swivel chair, writing.
"You're not military, are yeh?" he said.
"Nope. Usually I'm a shack doc. Way up north, on a drilling platform. Just on loan here. Oil demand in the U.K. drops off by about ninety percent overnight, rig goes on standby, an' they need medical personnel down south, so here I am. You want to take your sweater off, please."
"Ah-- right." Jim pulled off the sweater, flinched in the cool air.
Dr. Main finished writing, stood and turned. "Well, let's-- Good grief." She peered at the scar on Jim's torso. "You were shot."
"That's a good guess."
"Oh, smartass, huh? Let's have a look at that." She placed a hand on Jim's shoulder. "Lie back, honey."
Jim lay back on the crinkly paper covering the table padding, scootched to place his head on the thin pillow on the end opposite his feet. Dr. Main felt around his wound. Her fingers were warm and rough. She pressed, paused, moved her fingers, pressed again. "That hurt?"
"No."
"How about there?"
"No."
"Wound looks clean. No discoloration. No swelling. How long ago did it happen?"
"About a month. Five weeks, maybe."
"How'd you manage it?"
"Hm?"
"Surviving. Injury like that should have killed you. Should have left you full of sepsis at the very least. Ain't a through-and-through, so my guess is that the bullet hit the costal cartilage and lodged near the eighth rib. Without ripping the stomach sac. That's a damn miracle. Muscle and rib absorbed the shock. Who got the slug out?"
"Selena."
"Makes her a double hell of a gal. Not every fella's got a girl could do something like that."
"She's, umm, not exactly my girl."
"She ought to be, then. Knack for abdominal surgery: that's a step above being able t' darn socks, ain't it?" She jotted notes. "You can sit up now. Any other tragedies you survived on a whim?"
"I, uh--" Jim sat up, rubbed his head where he'd been trepanned. "Just this."
"Just--" Dr. Main moved his hand, replaced it with hers, peered through her half-glasses. "Jesus, Mary, an' Joseph. Master of understatement, aren't ya? How the hell long were you out?"
"Days-- Weeks, maybe. I'm not exactly sure."
"Hell." She felt around his skull. "They teach you any Dickinson with your Dickens, Jim? In school?"
He smiled. "Excuse me?"
"There's one comes t' mind. Emily Dickinson." She turned to a wall rack, selected a scope, fitted it with a rigid black plastic cone. "'My life closed twice before its close.'" She turned back, gazed through the cone into Jim's right ear. "'It yet remains t' see--'" She moved around the table, scoped his left ear. "'--if immortality unveil a third event t' me.'" She set the scope aside, pressed fingers up under his jaw. "'So huge, so helpless t' conceive/As these that twice befell.' Open up. Lemme see your throat." Jim opened his mouth wide; she looked. To his tonsils, she said, "'Partin' is all we know of heaven/An' all we need of hell.' Looks good. You can close."
"That's nice," he said.
"Hope so. It's the only damn poem I know. 'Bout the only one anyone'd need, I figure. You're a darn lucky fella, you know that?"
"Yeah, I know."
"Good boy. Just need t' listen to your heart an' lungs, draw a little blood, an' we'll be done. Not afraid of needles, are ya?"
He wasn't; a tiny jab in his arm, an ampule of warm deep red capped with a green stopper. Doc Main labeled the tube while Jim put his sweater back on. Jeffries returned just as he emerged. "They gonna survive, Doc?"
"Should hope so. Them two gals, they're healthy as horses. An' this one--" She smacked Jim's shoulder, smiling broadly. "-- he's too dumb t' die. Get some food in him, though. Kid's all bones."
The mess had largely cleared out when they got back. Obviously, dinner was pretty much over; a digital chronometer above the main entrance read 19:41. They followed Jeffries to the end of the serving line. He leaned over the stainless steel counter, called back through the kitchen entrance: "Hey, Wally! Front!"
"Front yourself, Red. We're closed!" From the kitchen swaggered the man who had to be Wally, wiping his hands on a white towel. He looked not unlike a straightened gorilla in a heavy apron.
"Corporal Wallace, these people are in need of food."
Wallace smiled from his lower jaw out and looked at them with tiny devilish eyes. "That a fact?"
"Feed 'em right. They're refugees." Jeffries patted Hannah's shoulder. "Leave you to it, then. Enjoy your dinner. Need anything later, I'm at the duty desk 'til twenty-two hundred hours. Have a good night."
He walked off. Wallace focused on Jim. "What'll ya have, kid?"
"What yeh got?"
"Got your choice. Beans, stewed tomatoes, and toast, 'cause we've been told you Brits like that kinda crap, or--"
"Let's hear the 'or.'"
"Steak cooked to order, green beens, salad, toast, cake, and fruit."
"I don't know--" Jim frowned thoughtfully, half-turned to Selena and Hannah. "The first one's right tempting--"
Hannah punched him in the arm, hard, and smiled sweetly at Wallace. "I'll have my steak well-done, please."
They settled themselves with beverages at one of the rectangular tables. Corporal Wallace whistled sharply when their food was up, loaded on compartmented steel trays. On seeing the sheer tonnage of edibles, Jim found himself thinking the U.S. Army the provence of gargantuans; he nearly looked around for the other three to six people who had to be joining them, to eat all of it. Then the scent of steak went from his nose to his stomach and echoed in the emptiness it found there, and before he knew how it had happened his tray was nearly cleaned out. The same thing happened to Selena and Hannah. They glanced at each other in satisfied shock, exchanged magnificent unabashed belches, laughed. They slowed for dessert; at the drinks station, Jim re-filled his mug and Selena's with a hot brown liquid that did a more than passing impersonation of decent coffee. Hannah tucked into a moist wedge of blackish-brown chocolate cake. Jim alternated between his own cake and the night's fruit: fresh strawberries, washed but still wearing their green tops. Selena's loyalty was solely to the berries. She looked just short of ecstatic.
"Taste these. Just taste these-- Good God, I've died and gone to heaven."
Jim grinned. "Don't know what's better: eatin' 'em, or watchin' you eat 'em."
Selena smiled slyly, flicked a stem at him. Hannah winced.
"Get a room, you two, yeah?"
"Hey." Jim sipped his coffee. Then he set his mug on the table, looking past her shoulder. "Look-- It's Piotr."
Hannah went deep red. "It is not."
"No, really--" Jim waved. Hannah looked-- and there he was, large as life, six rectangular tables away, a white mug in his hand. His co-pilot sat with him, his helmet now off. He was fair-haired, brush-cut. Piotr returned Jim's wave, rose, and came over, mug in hand. Hannah returned her eyes to her cake, her red going even deeper.
"Hello," Piotr said.
"Hi," said Selena, smiling. "Weren't properly introduced before, were we?" She offered Piotr her hand, shook his. "Selena."
"Piotr. Is good to know you, Selena."
"Hello, Piotr," said Jim, a moment later, receiving a firm shake of his own. "I'm Jim."
"Jim." Piotr smiled. He was younger, Jim realized, than he'd first appeared, the heroic giant at the croft. He was still gigantic, but he couldn't be much beyond twenty. The Russians-- the Danes, by the red flag patch on his uniform-- had to be recruiting young if kids his age were flying their own birds. He looked down at Hannah politely, expectantly. She looked up.
"'lo," she mumbled.
"Hello."
Something of desperate importance pulled Hannah's eyes back to her cake. A moment of silence followed: a teaspoonful of it would have weighed many tons.
Jim cleared his throat. "You stationed here?" he asked the big Russian.
"No. Repairs only. Frustrating: we lack parts. Breaking to coffee, yes?"
"Sure. Care t' sit down?"
Hannah shriveled in her chair. Piotr glanced at her, smiled. He said to Jim, "No. I thank you. Andrej is wanting to return to work." He glanced back at his co-pilot. "We stop only so he is not so crazy to smash things."
"I understand."
Piotr looked again, briefly, at Hannah. Then he said to Jim: "You are feeling better?"
"Pardon--?"
"You were looking most green when we landed."
Jim looked blank. Hannah smirked through her blush. Piotr said, "Is good. Excuse me, yes?"
He ambled off. Jim drank his coffee and avoided their eyes.
"Think you got got," Selena said.
Hannah smugly forked up the rest of her cake, pushed back from the table. "I'm gonna check out the game room. Laters."
"Later, Hannah." He had to stop himself from adding, "Be careful." Selena was looking at Hannah thoughtfully, and he knew: she was thinking it, too. After the girl had gone, she paused a moment, sipping at her coffee and watching the tabletop. Then she raised her eyes and sat for a sweet extended minute, simply looking at him. Jim sat simply looking back at her. More than hot water, chocolate cake, clean clothes, electricity even: a glorious luxury, looking. We're safe, he thought. She's safe. Hannah's safe. Thank you, God. He leaned back in his chair, comfortable and full, and rested his fingertips at the table's steel edge.
"Funny, isn't it?" Selena glanced at the wall chronometer. It was now half eight. "My internal clock's all messed up. Think I got used to it, going to sleep when the sun goes down. I'm sitting here, and I'm bloody exhausted." She stood. "Think I'm for bed. How about you?"
Every atom in his body shouted YES. "Umm." Jim swallowed, gazing up at her. He warded off a stammer. "Thought I'd stay up a bit, look at the telly."
"You know what'll happen, don't you?" Selena reached over, ruffled the hair away from his right temple. "Even now, the blood from your brain is heading south to your stomach to do battle with that steak. You'll be asleep in, oh, fifteen minutes."
Jim smiled. "Twenty, and it's a bet."
"You're on." She pressed her lips to his forehead, tenderly. "Goodnight, Jim."
"'Night, darlin'."
A flatscreen television hung from the ceiling in the lounge. Jim settled himself in the cushions of a stuffed chair and watched. CNN. A semi-hyper parade of images, announcers with American accents, headlines, sub-headings, graphics. Today's top stories: British armageddon. World economy continues to take a hit as banking, insurance, etc. An international coalition heads the effort to bring order to England and Scotland. A bid for colonization from-- Hong Kong! Jim grinned at that, sleepily. It all seemed unreal, the images alien. The CNN cycle churned on; Selena won the bet; he dozed. Just before he went under, a map showing the locations of relief stations in the British Isles flashed on the screen. His last thought before he slept was Why didn't they take us to Leeds...?
He woke abruptly, blinked, shook his head. He looked again at the TV; the CNN cycle had re-started. Hong Kong was claiming England as its colonial property, turnabout and all that. Jim yawned, stretched, got up. Time for bed, yeah. Before he left the lounge, he reached up and poked the channel button at the base of the TV. He found nothing on the other channels but eerie static.
The lights were lower now in the mess. In the dorm hall, he passed his room. He stopped outside Selena's room, raised his hand, paused with his knuckles on the door. No. She was tired; she wanted to sleep. At the croft, they'd shared a bed almost every night. Not like that, no: he'd been savagely wounded, and she'd stayed with him in case he needed anything in the night. That had been the first argument waylaying strenuous intimacy; the second had been a complete lack of protection, both in their humble adopted abode and anywhere else they'd managed to range, scavenging. Not that it had been tops on their supplies list-- see the claim of savage wounding above, and his legitimate need to heal-- but he'd come to wonder, in their last few days in the glens, what the denizens of Cumbria did for recreation. He was nearly certain of something they didn't do; Selena had been more blunt: "Would be our luck, taking refuge in an orgy-free zone."
In the dim light of the hall, Jim lowered his hand without knocking. No doubt she'd welcome a night alone, without his rangy carcass hogging the bed and the blankets. He made his way to his room, pulled off his sweater, clambered under the sheets and green coverlet. His sleep was deep and heavy. He woke only once, at the sound of a helicopter in the distance; he wondered muzzily if Piotr and his co-pilot had found their parts and gone on their way. He kneaded his pillow, rolled onto his side, wondered again, Why didn't they take us to Leeds?
He slept.
