Eric Flint: Slow Train to Arcturus

By the time Howard got back with the bandages and both the hot and cooled boiled water, Sister Thirsdaughter had laid out her instruments on his bedside table on a clean cloth, and folded back the blanket. The hands and feet that protruded from Howard's spare nightshirt had the wrong number of fingers and toes. But they lacked demonish talons. They lacked any form of nail at all. The toes were nearly as long as the fingers. Yet… they were clearly fingers-albeit three on each hand, with a broader almost central thumb, and too many joints.

The sight seemed to fill Brother Galsson with horror. Almost as much horror as Sister Thirsdaughter lifting Howard's nightshirt. "Sister! You shame yourself!"

She flicked an irritated glance at him. "I'm a midwife, Russ. I delivered you, among others. If this poor creature is male-then for once I may see something different. Give me a hand here, Howard. He's very heavy for an old woman to move."

"We need to roll him, sister," said Howard. "The principal injuries are to his back and… uh… buttocks. We must just have a care for his right arm."

She looked at the awkwardly bandaged arm. Shook her head. "You did your best, I suppose. Well, let's look at the rest first." She looked at Howard's sheet. "His blood is red enough, whatever he is."

Howard nodded. "If it had been say, black, I don't think I would have dared to touch him," he admitted. "But he seemed so helpless, and so hurt. I couldn't just leave him there."

"It might have been better to treat him first and move him afterwards, Howard," said Sister Thirsdaughter grimly. She was old enough to call nearly every person in New Eden by their first name. Howard wouldn't have dared to do the same to her.

He nodded again, shamefaced. "I know. I just didn't think. He was cold, and bleeding and he asked for help."

She smiled at him again. "What else could one of the Brethren do? But next time think with your head and not just your heart."

"His heart's in the right place," said Elder Rooson heavily. "It's his head that I am not too sure about. Do you need us for this, sister? I think I must convene a full council, to pray and discuss this matter."

"You do that, Elder," she said. "Tell them to pray for this poor fellow's survival." She looked at the exposed wound. "He may need all our prayers and all our skill. There is something lodged in there. I'm going to have to get it out. Ask Sister Melson to come please. I will need her skill with herbals. Not that we know what herbs may do to this…"

"Demon," supplied Galsson. "I shall stay here and protect you, sister."

"Well, then you may occupy yourself in boiling some more water," was all the reply he got.

The being moaned as she gently probed the wound with her forceps. They were old. The fine metalwork made Howard desperately envious. He had done some work in the forge making spades and axes, and he knew just what craftsmanship he was looking at.

"They're a relic of the first Eden," she told him.

Howard could only look at them in wonder. True, the brethren had been surrounded and repressed in that place, and evil had attacked them from all sides, threatening the faith and their way of life. But such craftsmanship…

She drew something out of the wound. A little red blood trickled out of the hole as she held it up, critically.

"What is it?" asked Howard, ever curious. He knew-enough people had told him-that it was his besetting sin.

"A piece of metal," said Sister Thirsdaughter. Her voice was curiously flat. She looked at it carefully. "It is something I have only seen in my medical text, that date from before the creation of New Eden. I think it is a bullet."

"What is that?" asked Howard.

Sister Thirsdaughter answered in the same expressionless voice. "A projectile driven at great speed by exploding gasses in a tube, I believe. The writers of the text seemed to assume that we would know about them. They were obviously common then, and intended to hurt or kill. Somewhere, someone tried to kill this…" She gestured with the forceps at the golden-skinned subject of her surgery. "Person."

Her watchers were nearly rigid with shock. Nothing could be more alien to the Society of Brethren.

"That's not possible," said Galsson, as usual, finding his wind first. "No one in New Eden would do such a thing."

Howard had to agree with him, for the first time ever.

Sister Thirsdaughter looked at both of them, silently. Then she said, "If that is the case, then he must have come from elsewhere. Outside."

If she'd said that all of Howard's neighbors were murderers and that Goody Galsson danced naked and sacrificed cats to the devil she could scarcely have had quite as stunning an effect.

Outside. Beyond New Eden. The first Eden had had evil, idolaters and unbelievers surrounding it. By the writings evil came right into the midst of the brethren, there. But nothing came to New Eden. Nothing ever had before anyway. Not in living memory.

"We have a tradition of keeping ourselves to ourselves," said Galsson stiffly. "It must go back to its kind."

Howard looked at the pale golden-skinned creature on his bed. To his eye it seemed to be developing goose bumps. So he covered it. "We also have a tradition of sanctuary," he said, quietly but with a firmness that surprised even himself. "If the outside is a place of evil, and they tried to kill him, perhaps he has repented, and tried to flee the world of sin."

"Perhaps he was too evil even for them," muttered Galsson.

"We also have a tradition of leaving God to judge," said Sister Thirsdaughter, "and of charity, and of healing the sick, and helping the weak. I," she said pointedly, "will not just pass by on the other side of the road."

"I think we must put it out of the airlock, and return it to its own kind," said Galsson. "I will speak to the council and say so. We have had no contact with the evils outside of New Eden, and we should not start now."

"First, however, let us heal it and allow it to speak for itself," said Sister Thirsdaughter firmly. "Is it not true, Brother Galsson, that there are things that evil cannot endure? Such as the name of the Lord?"

He blinked. That had, obviously, given him serious pause. "I shall go and confer with my fellow councilors on this. Perhaps we can banish evil by spiritual means."

Howard was very relieved to see the back of the man.

"Pass me the lint, Howard," was all Sister Thirsdaughter said. But her tone indicated that she too was pleased.

They worked on in relative silence, with barely a whimper of pain from their strange patient, as the healer adjusted and rebandaged the splint on the broken arm. Eventually they were finished. The elderly woman turned to her large helper and said, "Now, if I do not get a cup of your tea, I will fall over."

Howard tucked the blankets in around the patient's neck. "There are very strict injunctions against fallen women," he said solemnly, "so I'd better make you some."

The healer laughed. "You've a good sense of humor anyway, young man. It's an asset for someone who seems to spend his life in trouble. Come. We can leave him for a few minutes. He seems to be quiet. Whether it is sleep or unconsciousness, one cannot know."

They went through into the small kitchen. "Plenty of food for a bachelor," she said, looking at the strings of dried tomatoes and peppers. "And a clean and well-set up kitchen. I'd think you'd be a catch for any young woman looking for a husband, Brother Dansson."

"I thought it would work better like this," he said, hasty to explain the odd layout, rather than discuss his marital status. "I always needed water when I was cooking and I got tired of fetching it. And I grow fine crops. There is always excess."

"On a holding that was thought to be largely unusable," said Sister Thirsdaughter quietly. "You were expected to end up laboring for your keep."