Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Briefly Koda inspects her other patients in the ward. A flop-eared rabbit with an infected eye is responding to treatment; a Scotty, survivor of an unfortunate encounter with a porcupine, looks morosely up at her over his still-swollen nose. She gives him a scratch between the ears. “Curiosity’s not just bad for cats, bro,” she admonishes him. At least it hadn’t been a skunk.

A tap sounds at the door of the ward. “Dr. Rivers? There’s an elderly gentleman here to see you. A civilian.”

“Tell him half a minute, Shannon. I’m coming.” Stepping in and out of the bleach basin without thinking, Koda pauses to run her hands under the tap. She has a fair notion who the elderly civilian is and an even better notion why he’s here. From the file cabinet by her desk in the cubbyhole designated as her office, she takes two file folders and a small, silver key. Fingering it gingerly, she drops it into her pocket. She has known for days that this moment would come. She hates it no less for being forewarned.

Judge Harcourt stands in the middle of the reception area. He fills the small space to overflowing, standing with spine straight as a plumbline in pinstriped suit and burgundy tie, his salt-white hair combed into waves that brush at his collar. “Doctor Rivers,” he says gravely as she pushes open the door. “I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.”

“Come on back,” she says, gesturing with the files.

Koda drags the chair from the examination room into the postage-stamp size space beside her own in front of her desk. “Have a seat, Fenton.”

He remains standing, silent, until she sits, then follows suit, taking his tobacco pouch from his pocket. Without speaking he loads the pipe, reaches for the lighter and pauses, his eyes darting around the room. “Go ahead,” Dakota says. “The nearest oxygen tank is two rooms over.”

He gives her a grateful look, and it is only when the fragrant smoke begins to curl up from the bowl that he says, “We have a problem.”

Koda snorts. “Just one? Thank you. What did you do with all the others?”

“We have a judicial problem,” he amends, giving her a sharp look beneath bushy brows. “To wit, the Dietrich family, specifically his son.”

“Let me guess. They want charges pressed.”

“The son certainly does. The wife is a mousy little creature who scarcely uttered a word. Either she’s the submissive fundamentalist sort, or she really doesn’t mind being a widow.” He shrugs. “Or both, of course.”

“Domestic violence?”

“It’s possible. Certainly the son seems very sure of his manly place in the universe, and at the moment he sees that place as his father’s avenger. The MP at the gate relieved him of a knife and pistol on his way into the Base. I spoke to him”—he grimaces as smoke streams out about the stem of the pipe, giving him the aura of an oddly domesticated dragon—“at rather unpleasant length. We are going to have to have what amounts to a preliminary hearing-cum-inquest, at the very least. If there were any such available, I would advise that impetuous cousin of yours to get himself lawyered up. Where is he, by the way?”

“He says the Colonel’s made him PLO for life—that’s Permanent Latrine Officer—but he’s actually working maintenance out on the flightline. She’s got Andrews, the other pilot involved, doing the same. Here.”

Koda pushes the files across the desk. “These are the Polaroids I took before and after I treated the two surviving victims of the leghold traps. You can see the results of the treatment in person.”

The Judge opens the folders, studying the harshly-lit, slightly overexposed color pictures. His expression does not change, but Koda marks the sudden clenching of his teeth on the pipe stem as he inspects the photos of the bobcat’s torn and bloody flesh, the tendons hanging loose though the bones beneath had remained, by some fluke, unbroken. Beside it is a second Polaroid, this one showing the wound cleanly shaved and stitched. The coyote’s involuntarily bobbed tail looks less serious, and the Judge cannot quite suppress a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “The Trickster tricked,” he observes, “and escaping with nothing but wounded dignity in the end. Appropriate.”

“Not quite nothing,” Dakota says quietly. “That wound was nastily infected. He could have gone septic and died.”

“You’re right, of course.” The Judge sets the folders down. “Are there other photographs?”

Of the wolf, Wa Uspewicakiyapi, he means. “No. Come out to the kennels, then we’ll open the freezer.”

Outside, Harcourt comes close to smiling again. The coyote lies on his back, forepaws crossed over his ribs in classic mummy fashion, snoring in the sun. His abbreviated tail twitches with his dreams, the wound healed over, leaving only a bare tip of skin to testify to his ordeal. The bobcat lies invisible inside the concrete block shelter at one end of her run, favoring shade for her siesta. But signs of her improvement are obvious. A much scuffed rubber ball testifies to her growing ease at chasing and pouncing; except for a few crumbs and a feather or two, her food bowl is empty. Harcourt shoots Koda a reproving glance, and she says, “She caught a pigeon.”

“Rock dove,” he corrects her absently. “At least that’s a good sign she can begin to fend for herself.”

“With luck I should be able to release both of them in a week or so. I’m going to wait for Tacoma to come back from the wind farm so he can help with her. She’s getting pretty feisty now that she’s doing better.”

“You mean uncooperative.”

Dakota grins at him. “With everyone but Tacoma, I mean she barely tolerates us. She’s picky.”

“And these—?” Harcourt gestures toward the run where the mother wolf lies sunning herself on the concrete, while her pup repeatedly flings himself up the incline of her shoulders and as repeatedly slides downward to bump his stubby tail on the hard surface. A sharp yap announces his frustration, but his mother barely twitches. Finally he trots around her, taking the long way at last, and settles down to nurse, nuzzling at her belly. She rouses, licks him absently, and resumes her nap.

“Wa Uspewicakiyapi’s mate and surviving pup. They’re almost ready for release, too.”

“Excellent,” he says, quietly. “Shall we go in?”

Shall we open the freezer, he means.

Koda feels a chill pass down her spine. She has not unlocked the unit since Kirsten brought her the keys, that day by the streamside. She knows what she will see and knows that, gash for gash and shattered bone for bone, she has seen far worse. The shock was in discovering what Tacoma had done; it is long past and keeps no hold over her. Stiffly her fingers close about the small bit of metal in her pocket. “All right,” she says shortly, and turns toward the door.

Her hands are steady as she turns the key in the lock. As the lid comes up, a cloud of frosty air rises up to meet them like fog, obscuring the contents of the freezer. With it, faint with the cold, comes the sick-sweet odor of death. When the condensate clears, a bundle perhaps a meter long, wrapped in heavy plastic, lies visible at the bottom. Koda bends down to grasp it at the middle, but Harcourt says, “Allow me,” and takes hold of one end, leaving Koda to lift the other. Together they carry it to the metal worktable normal used for such chores as mixing plaster casts or clipping fur from the cuts and scratches of recalcitrant patients. They set it down gently.

A moment’s inspection reveals that the plastic is not wound about the body but folded over it in several layers. As gently as if she were smoothing the bedcovers of a child, she loosens the tape and lays back the heavy, transparent plastic, frosted with the cold. At the last, the outlines of the wolf’s form clearly visible through it, she hesitates for a breath. Then, firmly, she folds it back.