Death in Winter - Michael Jan Friedman [72]
But the woman proved that her notion was based in wisdom. In the dark days that followed, she studied the medicinal uses of herbs and roots. Then she ravaged portions of her garden, ground their contents into pulp, and administered it to those colonists who began to show symptoms.
They used the remaining supply of medicines too, of course. But it wasn’t long before they were relying exclusively on what Felisa Howard could dig up.
It wasn’t enough-not nearly. Colonists died slow, agonizing deaths. Bobby’s father was among the first. Then Bobby himself caught the disease.
Beverly tended to him every chance she got, day and night. Mostly, he complained of being chilly, of feeling the cold invade his bones the way it had on Sejjel V.
As bad as he felt, Bobby seemed to like all the attention Beverly gave him. He told her how much he wanted to get better, so he could take another walk with her at dusk.
But that wouldn’t happen. The day before the Federation medical team arrived, Bobby died-with Beverly holding his cold, cold hand in her own.
She went on holding it until someone took it away and embraced her, and sent her outside to collect herself. But even in the hot Arvadan sunlight she could feel the chill of Bobby’s hand, a piece of the winter he had carried inside him.
Beverly had sworn then that no one would die that way again if it was in her power to prevent it. And over time, she managed to keep that promise.
But now she had another promise to keep. And I can’t do it until I untie these damn knots….
Pug Joseph stopped for a moment to shift the weight of the biomolecular scanner on his back, then fell back into his plodding forward rhythm.
The scanner had been heavy from the moment he picked it up. But now that he had lugged it around some cold, dank tunnels for an hour, it seemed that much heavier.
“When was the last time you moved your camp?” he asked Jellekh, the Kevrata trudging along beside him.
“Three days ago,” came the response. “But that’s a long time for us to remain in one place.”
“How often do you normally move?”
The Kevrata shrugged. “Every two days. Sometimes less, if we think the Romulans are getting too close.”
“We have no choice,” said Kito, the Kevrata just up ahead of them. “Unless we want the resistance to die a bloody death.”
Kito was new to the group. He tended to be a little more graphic than Jellekh and the other veterans.
“Have they ever found you?” Joseph asked.
“Once,” said Jellekh.
But he looked away, obviously less than eager to talk about it. Sorry that he had made his companion uncomfortable, Joseph dropped the subject.
Looking back over his shoulder-an awkward maneuver with the scanner strapped to his back-he spotted the captain in the back of the procession. Picard was walking backward, his phaser trained on the darkness behind them.
But then, the rebels were terribly vulnerable while they were laden down this way. They needed a little firepower fore and aft, in case they ran into trouble.
Joseph couldn’t see Picard’s face, but he had studied it enough over the last few days to know what was on the man’s mind-in addition to a Romulan ambush, of course.
He was thinking about Beverly.
When Joseph visited the EnterpriseD, he was too wrapped up in his alcoholism to notice Picard’s feelings for the doctor. Or maybe back then, they just weren’t as obvious.
But here and now, they were hard to miss. Every time Beverly’s name came up, the captain’s expression changed. And it wasn’t just a matter of concern for a longtime comrade.
Pretty clearly, it was more than that.
Joseph wished he could ease Picard’s mind. He wished he could say with something more solid than blind optimism that Beverly was alive, and that they would get her back.
But all he could do was root for Greyhorse to finish the job assigned to him-because the sooner he did that, the sooner they could start looking for their friend.
11
BEVERLY’S FINGERS WERE STIFF AND RAW BY THE time she unraveled the knots that had held