Against the Tide of Years (35 page)

Swindapa made a gesture with her right hand, palm down. Marian froze, eyes scanning the tangle of jungle ahead. Insects buzzed, some of them pausing to sip at her sweat or to sting; the thick vegetation was full of rustles, squeaks, clicks. A brief wind murmured through the dense green, bringing a little relief from the humid heat.

“There,”
the younger woman murmured, turning her head so the sound would not carry.

The antelope were in the clearing ahead, cropping at bush along its fringe. Fawn-colored with whitish bellies, twin spiral horns, big dewlaps below their throats, about the size of a large ox. They were eland, six of them, a bull and five females. Alston lifted her rifle, careful to make the movement slow and gradual. The sharp
click
as she pulled the hammer back to full cock with her right thumb made one of the big antelope raise its head, still chewing but scanning for the unfamiliar sound. Her mind closed in, limiting the world to a patch of pale brown hide behind the shoulder.

Stroke
the trigger.
Crack!
Swindapa’s shot followed, so close to hers that the two reports might as well have been one.

The eland gave a twisting leap and staggered a few steps before collapsing, with blood running bright crimson and frothy from its nostrils. Its companions had already left at a plunging trot through the scrub and vines, heads held high and eyes wide. Swindapa’s went down even faster; when they had slung their rifles and advanced to the bodies, Alston saw that it had been a neck shot, clean through the spine.

“Show-off,” she said.

Swindapa laughed, then sobered as she cut a branch and dipped it in the blood, shaking it to the four quarters of the compass and chanting. Alston remembered that from the first time they’d hunted together—on Nantucket, back when the Island had to shoot out its deer to protect the first crops. Now she could understand the words in the Old Tongue, apologizing and explaining to the spirit of the animal why this was needful, singing the ghost home to the Mother. She waited respectfully until the ceremony was done, then turned and put thumb and forefinger to her lips to whistle summons.

 

“These are not as the others,” a small brown man whispered to his companion.

“They use the sticks that make a noise and kill,” his companion replied. “Like the other Bad Ones.”

The men—alike enough to be brothers and actually cousins—crouched easily in the upper branches of a tree. Neither was more than an inch over five feet; their cheekbones were high and their eyes slanted in yellow-brown faces. The hair of their heads was naturally twisted into tight peppercorns, that on their bodies was scant. An observer could have seen that easily, since neither wore more than a piece of soft leather drawn up between the legs and over a thong belt; they carried small bows, and quivers of arrows whose chipped-stone heads were carefully wrapped in leaves to preserve the sticky vegetable poison that tipped them. Their language was full of sharp tongue clicks and plosives spat from the back of the mouth.

“See, though, they are women,” the first man said, pointing to the figures in the clearing downslope. “The others were all men.”

“Well, they had to have women somewhere,” his cousin replied. “Unless they crawled out from under rocks, like grubs.”

“And one has yellow hair, while the other has skin black as the rock that burns,” the first man argued. “None of the Bad Ones looked so. The hides they wrap their bodies in are different, too.”

“Perhaps they are another clan of the Bad Ones.”

“Perhaps. We will follow them.”

“Carefully,” the first man to speak said. “These are not quite so clumsy in the bush, either.”

 

King Shuriash was far too proud a man to show emotion before a foreigner, particularly anguish over so slight a thing as a concubine’s likely death in childbirth, and that during a war as well. But Lieutenant (Medical Corps, Republic of Nantucket Coast Guard) Justin Clements recognized it well enough.

“Can you save her?” the Babylonian asked abruptly.

“My lord king, that I cannot answer until I have seen the woman,” the doctor said. “It may be that I can; it may be that it is beyond my powers or that it is too late.”

Shuriash’s heavy-featured face showed somber approval. “It is well,” he said. “So many promise more than they can do, especially to kings.” A wry, difficult smile showed strong yellow teeth. “But I have noticed that you Nantukhtar are more likely to throw the truth in my beard than to dip it in honey. Will you try?”

“It is an honor to help the household of our host, lord king,” he said—or hoped he’d said; this archaic-Semitic language was awkward in his mouth, despite nearly a year’s drill.

“Very well,” the king said. To the eunuch guards: “Show him to the women’s quarters, him and his assistants.”

The journey wasn’t long, although the tall, dim corridors of the palace were a labyrinth.
And the eunuchs make my skin crawl,
he thought.
Poor bastards.
It was mostly the thought of deliberate mutilation that disgusted him, but part of it was sheer elemental repulsion.
And maybe it’s because one reason they don’t look more mutinous than they do is that I’m clean-shaven—
which no man in the land of Kar-Duniash was
—and because, face it, I’m a little plump too.
Objectively the eunuchs knew he was a whole man. Subconsciously, they probably perceived him as one of their own.

The passages of the palace wound inward, hung with bright knotted or woven rugs up to head height while the walls above bore scenes of palm trees, griffins and fabulous beasts, winged hawk-headed men bearing objects that probably meant something if you knew the symbolism. The floor was terra-cotta, covered in woven mats of rush or straw dyed in pleasing colors; the whole effect should have been gaudy but wasn’t, and it lightened the massiveness of the adobe architecture. At last they crossed an open courtyard, and thence into a last suite of rooms.

We should supply them with bicycles or skateboards,
Clemens thought.
This place is bloody enormous.
Although a palace here was far more than a king’s house; it held warehouses, barracks, armories, libraries, and office space for most of the civil service as well.

“Here is the birthing chamber,” one of the eunuchs said.

Clemens’s nose and ears had warned him. Most of the palace smelled slightly of wool and people, with an underlying hint of woodsmoke and incense. Now he could detect sickroom odors—sweat, blood, urine. Two smooth-cheeked guards brought their spears up, then lowered them uncertainly as the escorting eunuchs waved them aside.

The room within was not very large but crowded. Mostly with women and eunuchs, although he recognized a few bearded figures in the fringed shawls of priests, and others who were probably priestesses. They flickered across his consciousness without much impact. It was the naked figure on the birthing stool that caught and held all his focus.

Too young,
he thought at once; fifteen, possibly a little more. Thin, and slender in the hips, so that the swollen belly showed all the more plainly. A ripple went across it as he watched, but the girl was too far gone to scream. Blood dribbling down between her legs, but not the arterial gushing that would mean it was too late—

“Out!”
he roared, turning on the small mob of spectators and flushing them out the door, nearly pushing when they jammed. “Smith, Kelantora”—to his assistants—“get her up on that!”

“That” was a table off to one side; he grabbed it and dragged it into the center of the room. A cloth from one of his bags went over it, and he glanced around.
No time to transfer her. We’ll have to do it here. God help us, what a germ farm.

It was then that he noticed a third figure helping transfer the panting, sweat-slick figure of the girl to the table. A woman, gaunt-faced under a plain headdress but young, in her twenties; a big hooked nose and receding chin, huge dark eyes. In a long robe with a shawl pinned over it, stained with blood and fluids that also splashed her strong, long-fingered hands.

“Who are you?” he snapped. “The midwife?”

Level black eyes looked at him. “No,” she said. “The
sabsutu
”—midwife—“and the
ashipu
”—sorcerer, his mind prompted, or witch doctor—“have left. I am an
asu.
”

That meant “physician,” or as close as Akkadian came to having a word for it. Extremely unusual for a woman to claim such a title, but she couldn’t be lying, not here in the royal palace. Of course, a witch doctor had higher prestige; to a Babylonian’s way of thinking, physical treatments were superficial, a mere tending of symptoms. Only a supernatural approach got at the root causes of illness.

“I am an
asu
as well, of the Nantukhtar, the Eagle People,” he said, as he laid out his instruments on another sterile cloth. “The king has asked me to save this woman’s life.”

“That cannot be done,” the Babylonian woman said flatly. “The child is misaligned and cannot be turned—the midwife tried, and she is skilled in her craft. The woman will surely die within three hours.”

Clemens looked up. He found not the cool indifference the tone suggested, but an utter and burning frustration.

“Perhaps, and perhaps not. Do you wish to help?” he said. She nodded, a single sharp gesture. “Then you must obey my orders without argument.” Another nod. “First, go tell them that I need water. Water in bronze vessels, several of them, heated until it boils—have them put more on the fire and keep it boiling until I need it. And clean cloth—boil the cloth too, first. And wash—rub this on yourself, wash in the boiled water, and dress in this. Put this mask across your mouth.
Hurry!
”

The operation that followed was a nightmare that he never remembered very clearly, except for an occasional question—questions that somehow didn’t distract him, that soothed his mind away from gibbering panic and allowed his training to move his fingers.

Tapping the hypodermic . . .

“What is that?”

“An extract of poppyseed. It banishes pain and makes the patient sleep . . . Smith, is the autoclave heating?”

“Yessir.” The safety valve hissed, and the assistant swung it off the charcoal brazier with tongs and popped it open.

“You will use the
sipir bel imti
?”

His Akkadian seemed to improve under stress; “the way of cutting with sharp bronze” came through easily.

“Yes. The child must be removed from the womb.”

“Then the girl must die, as I said?”

“No. Although it may happen.”

The first incision, and the skin peeling back from the cut like saran wrap under tension. Smith and Kelantora setting up the saline drip . . .

“What is that?”

“Very pure water with salt and a few other things. It replaces some of the blood lost during an operation. Blood is better, but it must be matched or it will be poison.” He switched to English. “Smith, type her. We might luck out. And type
her,
too. I don’t like the way the hemorrhage is increasing.”

Deeper, through the subcutaneous fat. Clamps, the cut held back with extensors, sutures for the spurting veins—clamp and tie off . . .

“What is that?”

“Catgut—thread made from sheep intestine. Kelantora, get the extensor in here—and move that lamp closer, I need to see what I’m doing.”

The Babylonian woman picked up a cloth and imitated Smith, swabbing off his forehead to keep sweat from dripping into the working area.

“Will such a wound not rot, even if she does not die at once?”

“Infection is caused by very small animals, too small to see with the eye—you need instruments such as we have. If you kill the animals with
disinfectants—
cleansing medicines—the wound will heal cleanly.”

“Invisible demons?”

“No! Animals—no more demons than you or I. Just smaller than a mote of dust.” In English,
“Ahhh, got it!”

Christ,
he thought, as the flow of blood increased. The muscles were still contracting, and they must have torn one of the veins toward the cervix.

“Clamp, clamp!”

“Sir, she’s type O-positive,” Smith said, bending over his kit.
God, what’ll we do when those run out?
They were working on substitutes, back on the Island. “So’s the local.”

“Good. You—what’s your name?”

“Azzu-ena daughter of Mutu-Hadki, the
asu
of the palace.”

“Azzu-ena, we need blood to transfer to this girl’s veins. Yours is of the correct type. Will you give of your blood? It will not harm you and it may save her.”

A very slight hesitation, and the Babylonian touched the unconscious girl’s forehead. “Yes,” she said.

“Good. Get up here. Bare your right arm. Kelantora, get her set up, stet! Azzu-ena, squeeze this with your right hand until we tell you to stop.”

At last he reached in and lifted the small form out, hands clearing the mouth and nose. Then one further incision . . .

“What is that?”

“The uterus—the womb. Better to remove it. She can’t bear children normally after this, anyway, and it’s less likely to get infected that way.”

And . . .
oh, hell, sometimes there’s no substitute for tradition.

A swift slap, and a thin, reedy wail.

“Out!” he roared again, as heads poked through the doorway. He handed the baby over to Smith and began the long, delicate process of closing the incisions. When the last running stitch was done his hands began to shake; they always did, and this time worse than usual. The assistants painted the area with a surface disinfectant.

“What is that?”

The Babylonian’s voice was as calm and abstract as it had been that first time as he drew another hypo.

“A cleansing medicine. It kills the small animals I spoke of, in the blood.”

A crude form of penicillin they’d finally stumbled on in the Year 4. It worked—far better than antibiotics did up in the twentieth—although God alone knew how long that would last.