Caretaker - L. A. Graf [59]
Then she swayed sickly and made a blind grab for one of the tables as her knees began to go. Kim lunged from his seat without thinking. He reached her only an instant ahead of his own nausea. "Should I call for some help?" he asked, clinging to her and half-hoping she'd say yes.
Instead: "No!" Torres clung to his arm in turn with fingers that Kim knew would leave bruises for weeks--assuming they both lived that long.
"Are you in pain?" another voice asked worriedly from behind them.
If Kim hadn't expected Torres to whirl the instant he heard the stranger's voice, the Maquis's violent reaction might have knocked him to the ground. As it was, they collided as they both turned, and Kim ended up mostly in front, his arm thrown out to herd Torres behind him--more for fear of what she might do to their unexpected visitor than because he harbored any illusions about protecting her.
"Are you watching us?" Torres pushed against him from behind, but made no real effort to muscle past him. The Ocampa woman who'd startled them recoiled a step all the same, as though sensing how much trouble the bigger Maquis could cause. "I thought we weren't supposed to be your prisoners."
Kim saw the Ocampa blink and shake her head slowly, and realized that she didn't have to imagine how Torres could be if she went out of control. This was the same nurse who had smiled down at Kim on that first morning--the one who'd watched Torres nearly tear apart every attendant in the infirmary on her way toward the door. She knew exactly what she was dealing with.
"I wasn't watching you," the nurse said softly, taking a step onto the plaza. "I was coming to give you something." She glanced nervously left and right, then minced the rest of the way toward them as though speed would somehow hide her actions.
Caught by the earnest anxiety on her waiflike features, Kim came forward to meet her halfway. She took his hand and pressed a small green vial into his palm. "I don't know if it'll help," she admitted in a near whisper. "It's a medicine." She glanced over Kim's head with an uncertain smile as Torres moved up to join them. "There are people who have broken from tradition and left the city. Their colony grows fruit and vegetables. They discovered quite by accident that the moss that grows on certain fruit trees has healing properties." She touched the vial with one finger, and a fearful unease settled over her face again.
"I'm... sorry for what's happened to you."
It was the first time any of the Ocampa had indicated that this illness, these growths, had somehow been done to them, and weren't just something they'd arrived already carrying. Kim was intrigued by the significance of this changed attitude.
"We appreciate this," he told her, closing his fingers gratefully around the vial. "But the only way we're going to survive is if we can get to the surface and find our people."
An expression that was almost bitterness pressed the nurse's mouth into a line. "The elders would say that's against the Caretaker's wishes."
"What do you say?" Torres pressed. Her voice was challenging, but surprisingly gentle.
The nurse looked abruptly away, and Kim saw her easy skepticism of a moment before give way all too quickly to childlike confusion. "The Caretaker..." She shook her head slowly, biting her lower lip. "The Caretaker has been behaving strangely for the past several months..."
She shrugged uncertainly. "...
abducting people, increasing the power supply..."
Kim exchanged a glance with Torres. "Power supply?" he asked the nurse.
The Ocampa looked at him as though surprised he had to ask.
"He's tripled the energy he sends us. They say we have enough stored now to run the city for five years."
The thought reminded Kim too much of the Armageddon hideaways from the crazy days at the end of the twentieth century. It wasn't a pleasant image. "Nobody knows why?"
"When we ask, we're told to trust the Caretaker's decisions."
She fell silent suddenly, turning away