Ian Rankin - Westwind

The light was diffuse and coloured the burnished gold of... The description ended there. His mind wasn’t up to it. He decided to open one eye, just a little, and saw an underwater blur of greys and blues and whites, bathed in the same golden light. He blinked, opened both eyes and saw that he was lying in a hospital bed. A private room. Lavender paint on the walls, machines standing beside the bed, a drip feeding his left arm. Through the slats of the blinds streamed the day’s raw sunshine. Golden light.

He was alive then.

A nurse sat dozing in the heat, a paperback novel on her lap. Where was this? Why was he so sore? His mouth was raw. Then he remembered — the shuttle had crash-landed. Couldn’t get the undercarriage down. Couldn’t get anything to work. Total shutdown of the onboard computer. Now how the hell could that have happened?

And what about Heinemann, O’Grady, Marshall, Wilson, Adams? Were they alive or dead? The fate of Hes Adams especially interested him. He let out a little whistle of air, as much as he could manage without feeling pain. It was enough. The nurse stirred, opened her eyes and smiled at him. Then closed them again as she stretched. A good big early-morning yawn, and then another smile, as though they were waking up in bed together; lovers.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Dreyfuss. How do you feel?’

Dreyfuss. That was his name. It was as good a name as any. He tried answering her question, but his throat was dry and sore. He swallowed painfully, and she seemed to understand. Rose from her chair and poured some water from a jug into a glass. There were flowers on his bedside cabinet. Not many of them, a couple of small bunches.

The water was tepid. He had trouble swallowing.

‘Thanks,’ he rasped. ‘Needed that.’ Speaking was like rubbing something raw against sandpaper.

‘You’ve been asleep a long time.’

‘How long?’

‘Several days, I think. I’ve only been on shift a couple of hours.’

‘Where am I?’

‘Sacramento General.’

It sounded like the title of a bad western. He supposed it was a hospital in Sacramento. He’d never been to Sacramento before. One of his reasons for wanting the shuttle mission was so he could see a little more of the States. He’d only been three times previously, and then never for long. As a child, growing up in the rapidly disappearing slums of east Edinburgh, he had dreamed of all this, of spacemen and of America, playing out the dream with toy spaceships that he would send hurtling to their doom.

‘The others...’ he began, but already the nurse had pushed at a buzzer above his bed. God, her body looked good, wrapped in the flimsiest layer of white cotton. He could almost taste... What was it he could taste in his mouth, right there behind the caked dryness and the lees of water?

It was smoke, blood, fear. And hands tearing at him. Why were hands tearing at him?

‘Good afternoon, Major Dreyfuss.’

A man in a white coat, stethoscope swinging reassuringly around his neck, had pushed open the door. Behind him came two others, one in a general’s uniform, the other looking like a worrier from the State Department. They stood slightly to left and right of the doctor, like tumours growing out of his sides. Good, thought Dreyfuss: his powers of description were coming back.

‘Hello,’ he said, but the doctor was studying his chart, and then studying the nurse. He smiled at her.

‘I don’t think I’ve seen you before, have I?’

She smiled back. ‘No, Doctor. The name’s Carraway.’

‘Well, Nurse Carraway, has the patient been behaving?’

‘Yes, Doctor.’ Now she was looking towards Dreyfuss, and there was that smile again. The doctor turned towards him too.

‘How do you feel?’

‘One hundred per cent, Doctor. When can I get up?’

The doctor laughed. ‘Not for a while yet, I’m afraid.’

‘What’s the rush?’ snapped the general. It was a serious question.

Dreyfuss closed his eyes.

‘I’ve had a relapse, Doc,’ he said. ‘I’m allergic to goons.’

‘Why, you sonofabitch—’ started the general, only to be stopped by the civilian’s upraised hand.

Dreyfuss opened his eyes and stared at the slats of the blind, trying to recall where he had seen that colour before, that golden colour, and heard those words before, too.

A ball of flame. Fuel igniting. And the voice of Hes Adams in his ear: you sonofabitch .

‘Leave him be, Ben,’ the civilian was saying. ‘He’s traumatised, probably doesn’t know what he’s saying.’

‘He knows all right.’

‘Come on,’ the civilian insisted, leading the general towards the door. ‘I’ll buy you a drink and you can bore me with the story of Bonn.’

The doctor watched them go and seemed to relax a little. He approached the bed.

‘Nice chaps,’ Dreyfuss commented. The doctor seemed not to understand, then smiled.

‘You mean General Esterhazy and Mr Stewart.’

‘If that’s who they were.’

‘That’s who they were.’ The doctor watched Dreyfuss sip more water. ‘Throat sore?’

‘A little,’ said Dreyfuss. ‘Listen, I meant what I said back there. When can I get up?’

‘Just hang on in there.’ A pencil-fine beam of light shone into Dreyfuss’ left eye, then his right. ‘What do you remember about the accident, Major?’

‘What accident?’ Dreyfuss smiled at the doctor’s look of alarm. ‘Only joking,’ he said. ‘I remember a ball of flame; it really did look like a ball, too. I felt like I could have given it a kick. I didn’t, though. It kicked me instead. Then I suppose I must have passed out.’

‘And where were you when this happened?’

‘On the shuttle, of course. The shuttle was called Argos , and we were coming in to land, and there were six of us.’

‘And what had the shuttle been doing?’

Dreyfuss made a show of trying to think.

‘Major?’

‘I... don’t seem to remember that,’ he lied, though why his instincts told him to conceal his returning memory was a mystery.

‘Well, don’t worry about it.’ Dreyfuss caught Nurse Carraway staring at him fixedly. But when his eyes met hers, she slapped a smile onto her face again. ‘Do you remember the names of the other crew members?’ the doctor was asking.

‘Let’s see.’ Dreyfuss tried to look as though he was thinking hard. He wondered why Nurse Carraway was so intent on his answer. ‘Heinemann,’ he said at last, ‘Adams, Marshall, O’Grady, Wilson.’

‘Good, Major Dreyfuss. Now think back.’ The doctor began to check his pulse. Dreyfuss had the idea that this was less even than a routine check; that it was a cover under which the doctor could ask his questions. Without knowing exactly why, he had the feeling that there was a good reason why he shouldn’t tell him everything he knew. ‘What,’ the doctor was saying, ‘is the next thing back that you remember before the fire?’

This was perfect: they expected — wanted — him to have amnesia.

‘Major?’

‘Well...’ Dreyfuss started, licking his lips. He stared at the lavender walls, at a concerned Nurse Carraway, at anything that might appear to be jogging his memory. ‘I remember taking off, the whole thing with ground control, with Cam Devereux — he was my contact on the ground. Everything was going according to schedule. But... I’m not sure why we were up there in the first place. No, wait, we were launching a satellite, right?’

The doctor smiled.

‘That’s right, Major. Launching one of our communications satellites. Don’t worry.’ He patted Dreyfuss’ shoulder. ‘It’ll come back to you in time. This sort of thing is quite usual in cases of trauma. And you took a few nasty bumps when you landed.’