Chapter Thirty-two
A Temporary Refuge
Elizabeth Cutler
And that's the start of the best part of a year we've spent working and semi-starving with the wretched people in the absurdly-named West Havens. Where the 'staff' in the 'hospital' learn ever more ingenious ways of making do with practically nothing, and where Malcolm risks death every day finding mines with a rickety hand-scanner he cobbled together out of old spare parts (because my Imperial Fleet-issue scanner would attract too much of the wrong kind of attention), and digging them up with a knife and his bare hands. Where we sleep under a canvas lean-to at the side of the hospital, and keep each other warm under Grandmother's blanket while our neighbors shiver under the threadbare ones issued by the camp, and try to forget that there was a time when I'd gorged on chocolate ice cream and Malcolm had his chef's little finger cut off for not cooking his fish and chips properly.
I'm not sure if anyone guesses who we were. By the time we'd been here a while we were practically indistinguishable from anyone else in the camp. People are long past being worried about surnames, so we're 'Stu' and 'Elaine', and if most of our fellow refugees are deeply grateful to us for our work, there's nothing they can do to show it. Often some of them try to give us some of their food, but there's never enough of that to go around; the ground's impossible to work for crops, even if it wasn't hot and dry all summer, and we aren't permitted to leave the camp to forage, otherwise, I'd organize a committee to go out and harvest agave leaves for their fibers. The blanket we could make of them would be rough and scratchy, but still warmer than the rags the government provides. So, we rely heavily on intermittent deliveries from the refugee services. These, of course, are at the mercy of government finance cuts, pilfering and theft en route; and there've been a few times when all of us came perilously close to starvation.
It's on one of these occasions that Malcolm makes contact with a member of the local Resistance. He knows, of course, that there'll almost inevitably be one somewhere in the area – the difficulty will be in finding them, and then there'll be the even graver difficulty of earning their trust. We get the out-of-date stuff that even food banks can't give out, usually, so when the truck drives in containing boxes of stuff that were definitely not labeled up for West Havens Refugee Camp, being prime goods undoubtedly destined for one of the better restaurants in town, Malcolm takes up his usual role of helping a few other leaders among the men to distribute the contents fairly. There's no need to warn anyone to keep quiet about the good food, or even to eat it slowly and sparingly because most people's stomachs would be incapable of dealing with a rich meal however much they might enjoy it; everyone knows the routine by now, and the goods disappear as if by magic, to be secreted away out of view and eaten with the appropriate care over the next few days or even weeks if it will last so long.
The driver, his truck empty, is about to get back into his cab and drive away, but before he can do so Malcolm lays a hand on his arm. I'm helping out in the 'hospital' at the time, splinting someone's broken leg, but through the window I see a short conversation taking place. At first the truck driver's alarmed and suspicious, but clearly Malcolm finds some way to allay his fears. He speaks to a couple of the other guys who've helped with the distribution, nods, gets back into the truck and drives away.
Now, when everything's quiet again, and the camp has subsided into its evening quiet – tonight, no doubt, with the added happiness of having something good to put on the family table, even if divided among so many there won't be much – Malcolm comes into the hospital to find me. His hands are caked with dirt, his face covered in dust except where rivulets of sweat have run down from his hair and exposed the skin beneath. Water's a luxury but we've no sanitizing gel to spare (the medical staff got all there was when they had to deal with open wounds), and so he cleans himself as best he can in half a pailful of water by the door, and keeps his distance as I finish dealing with the broken leg and hand out a few of our precious painkillers.
My day is finished too. Making sure that the four patients occupying our beds are as comfortable as they can be in the circumstances, I accompany my husband out of the building into the hot dry evening.
It's inevitable, of course, that he's refused any share of the food for himself. He'd accepted a very small tin of ham for me, and when challenged on it, pulls a dead Gambel's quail out of his pocket and says he caught it this morning and it will do him nicely.
"Malcolm, you should be eating a minimum of two and a half thousand calories a day," I scold him. "A damned quail and a bowl of rice is not enough!"
"It'll keep me going." We mostly have some kind of porridge sludge for breakfast, and maybe a couple slices of bread for lunch. The only thing we get a fairly regular supply of is fruit, because a hotel a few kilometers away on the main highway lets us have the overripe or bruised stuff their guests won't eat. That mostly gets cut up and stirred into the morning porridge, which means everyone gets some of the sugar and vitamins in it.
But I know it's no use nagging him. He has eyes in his head just like I have, and there are kids in the camp who've never gotten a square meal since they were born. The only reason he's staying and eating any of the rations available is so that he can go on finding those damned land mines, and support my work as the most competent medical professional in the area. A doctor calls by once a fortnight (and not always then), looks over whatever cases are in need of his services, helps them if he has something available in his bag, and goes away again. Mostly he gives shots of antibiotics that need repeated treatments, so this will ultimately achieve little except breeding resistant strains of disease, but then as he tersely informed me when I called him on it, he isn't paid enough to care about the short-term prognosis for his patients here, let alone the future welfare of a colony of people nobody gives a damn about.
I think he and Phlox would have gotten along just fine.
But I know that if I told Malcolm what was going on he'd 'interview' the doctor and probably put a stop to his visits altogether, so I just bite my lip, take whatever help is given, and teach a class in first aid three days a week for anyone who's interested. I might worry about the long-term outlook, but in the meantime even a little help's sometimes enough to set a patient's system on the road to recovery. That said, mostly their prospects would be infinitely better if they had decent food and a bit of hope, but here they've been 'settled' and here the authorities intend them to stay. And if they oblige everyone by dying of malnutrition and disease sooner rather than later, that will be even less of a drain on the local resources, and an excellent outcome all round.
With the degree of poverty at the settlement, and the number of dangers around it (quite apart from the land mines), I have my work cut out most days. Though I can't help the often overwhelming sense of bitterness when for all my efforts I can't manage to save people whom one injection would cure if only we had the most basic laboratory equipment to synthesize it, I do my best. I just have to accept that fewer people die because I'm here than would if I wasn't, which is essentially as true here as it was on Jupiter Station, just with a lot bigger numbers.
Once they get over their initial suspicion of anyone actually giving a damn whether they live or die, the inhabitants of West Havens are pathetically grateful to both of us. Many say they wish they had some means of showing it, but we didn't come here to be rewarded. We came here to make a difference, and we do, even if it's hard, hot, dangerous work for Malcolm and weary and often heartbreaking for me.
The rice that's the evening meal staple is cooked over a small communal open fire (fuel is another thing we're always short of), and we call in to collect our share before we go back to the lean-to. Malcolm lays his despised quail among the ashes at the side of the fire, and will collect it later. On our travels we lost a lot of our reservations about how we like our food cooked, and I doubt whether he'll even notice it if half of the scraps of meat he'll get off it are nearly raw.
Feeling guilty, I open my tin of ham and eat the delicious contents with a spoon, interspersing bites with mouthfuls of the ubiquitous rice. I insist that Malcolm should have the last bite, and reluctantly he takes it from the spoon, savoring the taste of it for as long as possible before he finally swallows. If we had any form of refrigeration I'd save half for next day, but I know that it would go bad by tomorrow night in the heat.
"So what were you talking to the truck driver about?" I ask casually, setting my empty rice bowl down and thinking ruefully of the times when I'd have eaten that meal as a hors d'oeuvres.
"Bloody hell, you should work for the BII," he grumbles. "Didn't you have any nursey things to do at the time?"
I eye him measuringly. When Malcolm doesn't answer a question directly, and especially when he tries to provoke me, he's being deliberately evasive.
"OK, what aren't you telling me?"
He busies himself chasing the last few grains of rice around his bowl and mutters something.
"Sorry, I didn't quite catch that?"
A huge sigh. "That delivery was strictly unofficial," he says at last. "I wanted to know if whoever arranged it had any need of extra help."
I stare at him. "Malcolm, we need your help here!"
"No. Actually, Liz, no, we don't. I've cleared the tracks and the areas where people go, even made a space for the children to run and play. I could clear more, but what's the point? Nothing will grow here. If there was any rain to speak of or any irrigation system, we'd have a chance, but bringing water to the surface means drilling to find it – if there is any – and then treatment to make it safe by getting rid of any contamination that's seeped down into it. It'd cost millions, and I'll tell you now, nobody will even think about doing it.
"So I'm clearing land that's no use to anybody. I'm risking my life, and while I don't mind doing that for a good cause, this is not a good cause any more. Not for me.
"Obviously it is for you. You're needed here, your expertise is needed, they couldn't do without you. But if I can get into the Resistance, I can achieve something. And I want to do that."
I'm so taken aback I can only stare at him. "You mean … leave?"
He sighs, and rubs a hand across his forehead. "I mean 'make myself available for operations where my expertise will come in useful'. So yes, I suppose that will involve me leaving for possibly long periods of time."
"And you didn't think to talk it over with me before trying to make a contact?" I'm hurt and angry, and frightened as well. It's bad enough having him in danger here, but over the months he's proved that he knows what he's doing with mines – and if the worst happened, at least I'd know, and be on hand to treat him, if treatment would achieve anything of course.
With another sigh, he lays his hands on mine. "But this is exactly what we were doing when you were on Jupiter Station, Liz, and I was out captaining Fortress. I was in danger then, and you saw for yourself how much, that day when we got ambushed and shot to hell. You need to feel useful and so do I."
"But you were the head of the MACOs then!" I protest. "You had the best ship in the Fleet to protect you!"
"Yes, and it damn near wasn't enough that day. None of it was enough. I believe that when your time's up, it's up, and nothing you can do or not do will change that. I could stay here and be recognized, and don't tell me nobody here would hand me over for the reward, because they've mostly got families and if one of them was yours, wouldn't you do pretty well anything to get them out of here?
"But there are things out there that still need to be done. And I won't do any of them by staying here disarming land mines that don't even pose a threat."
I bite my lip. "It's Trip, isn't it?"
He bows his head, and then shakes it sadly. "As much as I'd like to, no. I can't justify the risk when I have no chance of succeeding. But even if I can't free him, I can avenge him. And that's the first thing on my agenda."
A long time ago, he told me about the mistake he made by exacting vengeance from Admiral Black on Trip's behalf. I remind him of that now, and ask if he isn't going to do just the same thing again – kill someone that Trip would just as well prefer to be left alone?
"This isn't for Trip," he answers, and he's wearing his executioner's mask, cold and implacable. "This one's for me. The second one may take a bit longer, but I'll get the bitch eventually. They took him away from me, and I cannot let that go."
And I remember that night long ago under the overhang in the desert, and I know that nothing I can say or do will dissuade him.
Ohh, something very ugly is afoot! Is it worth the risk? What if Mal gets caught? Can Liz talk him out of it? Should she try? If you've been enjoying the story, please leave a review.
