Nicola Griffith - Ammonite

“Three hours.”

“Then we’ll leave in four. That gives us two hours’ daylight.” She turned to Nyo.

“I want that satellite moved north. I need communications.”

“I can do that. And keep you updated on the weather. There’s an unusual weather system building up there. Severe storms.”

“Very well. Dr. Hiam, we might need a physician.”

“I’d be happy to come along.”

“And T’orre Na, and Day. I’ll need you to liaise at Holme Valley.” She remembered they were guests. “If you’re willing.”

Danner strode out of her offices, the adrenaline of rage singing light and hot through her veins. Rage that soon became a kind of exhilaration.

She was going to get to do her job. At last.

The breeze blowing cool through the Yelland hills eased off as Marghe and Thenike made their way down the foothills and onto the plain toward Holme Valley.

The heat made Marghe feel tired and tense. The air was humid, so thick with moisture that she felt it like spiderwebs across her face, and kept wanting to brush it away, wipe it from her skin.

They stopped at midafternoon. Marghe felt a kind of tension in the air, a tension she might not have been aware of before the virus became part of her.

“I don’t like this,” Thenike said, standing still and sniffing at the heavy air like a pointer. “There’s more than one storm on its way. We need to find shelter.”

Marghe remembered the mad ride on the sled, bucking over rocks as Lu Wai raced for shelter. Remembered the wind building, then the awful, fabulous lightning; Letitia Dogias laughing like a madwoman; the sheer excitement of so much raw power.

But the image that kept recurring was not Letitia throwing back her head and laughing with the storm, but Uaithne. Uaithne with her knife and her horse and her pale eyes, holding up hands stained with blood, laughing and laughing and riding into the storm looking for blood.

“We have to go on as long as we can,” Marghe said. “Uaithne’s going to do something terrible in this storm. We’ve got to keep going.”

They plodded on, on and on, until they felt as though they were wading through heat, alert for the first rising of wind.

Marghe told herself there was nothing Uaithne could do against Danner; no way the tribeswoman could hurt Lu Wai and Letitia. It was not possible for Uaithne with her wooden spears and her sharp stones to get past the sleds and slick armor and firepower of the Mirrors. Not possible. But the image of Uaithne with her knife would not go away.

Marghe walked faster. Last time, Aoife had been there to take the knife from Uaithne’s hand. Where was she now? Where was Aoife in all this?

Holme Valley looked like a refugee camp, Danner thought as she stepped out of the field hospital. Women everywhere, talking angrily or sitting apathetically, rocking children, and everywhere dust: dust kicked up by the Singing Pasture horse herds which were skittish and nervous, by the sleds pulling hawsers tight to further secure the field hospital, by Mirrors erecting temporary quarters and technicians hanging solar panels and stringing cable. The dust hung in the still air like particles suspended in a liquid.

The heat, and the way every woman she tried to talk to kept looking nervously at the sky, made Danner irritable.

“Later.” Cassil had said when they arrived, “we’ll talk later. There’s a storm on its way. There’s much to do.” Danner, expecting gratitude, had been annoyed. Now, after a mere six hours in the valley, she was sick of the sight of the place.

Sara Hiam, with Day interpreting, had been talking to the women who had been hurt by the tribes as they swept over the pastureland weeks ago. As Danner passed by, she overheard some of the notes the doctor was making into her wristcom.

“Evidence of higher than Earth-normal recuperative powers. Compound fracture of tibia and fibula sustained sixteen days ago already exhibits evidence of—”

Danner walked briskly. She did not want to hear how goddamn healthy these people were. She wanted the entrenchment phase to be over so she could start planning the native containment.

They were waiting for her in her tent: Captain White Moon, Lu Wai, Letitia, and T’orre Na. Danner was brusque.

“My immediate priority, until that satellite moves overhead and gives us communications with Port Central, has to be the reinstatement of the northern relay.

Captain White Moon, I want you to take twelve officers to escort Dogias and Neuyen to the damaged site. Take Leap and a handful of her crossbow squad along.”

“With the commander’s permission—” Lu Wai began.

“No, Lu Wai. I need you here. A dozen officers are more than enough. It’s only preliminary reconnaissance by the communications team; there should be no danger.” Lu Wai looked like she was struggling with that, obviously unwilling to let Dogias go without her.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Danner wondered what she would have done if Lu Wai had refused.

“Do that now, Captain. Take two sleds.”

“We’ll take the gear,” Dogias said, “just in case. We could at least begin to rebuild while we’re there.”

“No. Examination of the site only. I don’t want my forces split for too long. This is reconnaissance only. Both sleds and all personnel to be back here, with a comprehensive report, this time tomorrow.”

Though the sun sank toward the horizon in bloody reds and oranges, the evening did not cool. Danner tried to ignore the feeling she had done the wrong thing when she saw the drawn look on Lu Wai’s face as the sleds headed north.

She went to find Hiam. The doctor was in the field hospital, sitting on one of the beds, absently tossing something from hand to hand. It was small and, whatever it was, it claimed all the doctor’s attention. Danner cleared her throat. Hiam spun around. “Oh. It’s you.” She dropped the object into the pocket of her white coat.

“You haven’t eaten yet, have you? Cassil wants us to dine with her and her kith this evening.”

“And is this the kind of place where we’re supposed to dress for dinner and overwhelm the natives with our aplomb?” Her voice was high and sharp.

“Are you all right?”

“No.” She fiddled absently with the thing in her pocket. “I’m supposed to be a doctor, but Lu Wai probably knows more about practical treatment than I do. I’m a researcher.” She pulled out the thing she had been playing with. A softgel. “Take a good look at it. FN-17. My only claim to fame. Except it doesn’t work for the whole six months. I still don’t know why. I still don’t understand why it—” She shook herself. “I decided not to take any before I left Estrade ” she said, “and on my recommendation neither did Nyo or Sigrid. It’s too late now, of course.” She dropped the softgel back in her pocket and stood up. “Statistically speaking, one of us is likely to die in a month or two. And that takes away my appetite for dinner.”

Danner did not know what to say. “Marghe lived. I lived. Everyone here lived.

You should, too. With proper care. We’ve learned a lot about the virus since it first struck. Talk to Lu Wai about it.”

“I already have.”

“Then you know that we have a better idea than we did of how to care for its sufferers. The mortality rate dropped as we got more experience.”

“But it’s still high.”

“Yes, it’s still high. There’s nothing we can do about that. But if you want to talk about statistics, think of it this way: you’re much more likely to live than to die.”

“I know, I know. But I keep thinking: what will I do if Nyo dies, or Sigrid? I miss them already. The last five or six years, we’ve lived on top of one another day in, day out. There were times when I came close to killing them both, times when I think I would have given anything to see them make a mistake and explode into a cloud of fatty tissues and globules of blood as they EVAed to some satellite or other. But now that I’ve not seen them for three days, I miss them. I keep looking around, wondering where they are, why I can’t hear them or smell them. I feel lost.”