Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (35 page)

"I've called the
mosstaas
. I've
called them."

There was a moment of
silence, of stillness, the ranas for an instant unmoving, and then
the leader laughed behind his mask. More slowly, another rana mimed
laughter, and then a second, and a third.

"We don't need to
worry about that," the leader said, and pointed his stick at
Haliday again. The window slammed down again behind them. "So what
are you,
jillamie
?
We can't tell."

Haliday glared at him.
"I'm a herm."

"No such thing, not
on Hara," the leader murmured.

"I'm still a herm."
Haliday stood braced and rigid, fists clenched, ready to take them
all on.

Warreven recognized the
blind fury, had seen it before and knew enough to fear it, to fear
what 3e would say or do. "Hal--" he began, and bit off the word before
it was formed.

The rana leader said,
"We don't have herms on Hara, just titticocks who can't make up
their minds. So which are you,
jillamie
,
or do we have to decide for you?"

"I'm a herm,"
Haliday said again.

The leader shook his
stick, and it bent at the three joints, cracking loudly. Three of the
ranas lunged for Haliday, who swung to face them, one arm raised to
block the first blow, the other striking for the nearest rana's
stomach. Warreven grabbed for another rana's shoulder, pulling him
partially away from Haliday, felt hands on his own shoulder and,
painfully, on his hair. He drove his elbow into someone's ribs,
heard a gasp of pain, but the grip on his hair didn't loosen. A
fist slammed into his kidneys; something else--something harder, he
caught a blurred glimpse of what might have been a knobstick or the
end of one of the clubs--caught him a glancing blow along one
cheekbone. Pain exploded in his head, down his neck, sharp yellow
lights flowering across his vision. He tried to kick the ranas
holding him, but his knees buckled instead, and he sagged bonelessly
in their grip. He heard Haliday cry out, a short, meaningless sound,
saw through a haze of tears and doubled vision 3im
stumble and fall huddled to the pavement. The ranas moved in, but not
too close, taking turns and leaving each other plenty of room to
swing their clubs.

"Boy or girl?" the
leader said, and laughed aloud.

"Hal!" Warreven
struggled to get his feet under him, to shake himself free of the
hands on him. Someone hit him again, twice, body and head; he tasted
blood, and knew his legs wouldn't hold him. His sight was going, or
maybe the house-lights had gone out, and then a whistle sounded, and
the ranas abruptly let him go. He fell to his hands and knees, shook
his head in a desperate attempt to clear his vision, but only set off
another wave of light and pain, knifing down his neck and spine. He
heard footsteps, running away, the sound flattened by the fog, and
thought the street was empty again--except for Haliday.

Ȝe
lay crumpled, body drawn in on itself, arms still lifted to protect
3er head. There was blood
on the pavement, smears and a spreading pool, almost black in the
house-lights. Warreven dragged himself to 3im,
not daring to try to stand. He heard a window open, and then another
and another, but didn't bother looking--he doubted if he could
have seen that far--reached awkwardly for Haliday instead. Ȝer
face was a mess, swollen and bloodied; one arm was visibly broken,
bent between wrist and elbow. He touched 3er
neck, feeling for a pulse; 3er
skin was cold under his fingers, and he felt nothing. He thought 3er
chest was moving a little, but couldn't be sure. Please don't let
3im be dead, he thought,
and heard a door open behind him. This time, he did turn, newly
afraid, to see a woman standing there, poised to slam the door shut
again if there was more trouble. She looked old and frail,
shaal
pulled tight around her shoulders.

"I called the
Emergency," she said, and he thought she might have been the person
who had called the
mosstaas
before. In the distance, he heard the sound of a siren, drawing
rapidly closer; he hoped, vaguely, that they would see him and
Haliday before they came too far down the street. Red lights flared
through the fog, and the noise of the siren was suddenly
overwhelming. He tried to turn, to call to them, but the world seemed
to swing under him, and he collapsed sideways on the cold paving.

Gay: (Concord) one of
the nine sexual preferences generally recognized by Concord culture;
denotes a person who prefers to be intimate with others of exactly
the same gender.

Mhyre Tatian

Tatian woke to a wail of sirens
and lay for a second in the red- pulsing darkness of his bedroom
before he realized that the sound was coming from the communications
system. He swore under his breath, and fumbled for the remote that
lay beside the bed, touching the keypad to bring up the lights and
accept the incoming message. He grimaced as the light hit his eyes,
blinked hard, and jammed fingers into his tangled hair. The air from
the environmental system was dank and smelled strongly of the sea. He
heard the media center come on in the main room, and then the relay
screen on the wall beside his bed lit, asking if he wanted to
establish a reciprocal transmission.

"Not likely,"
Tatian muttered, and then, because it was an older system, jabbed
blindly at the remote.

The screen blinked
confirmation--I/T VIDEO AND AUDIO, O/T AUDIO ONLY--and opened like
a window on bright lights and white-painted walls and a face that he
didn't immediately recognize. He recognized the background
first--hospitals were the same all over human space--and only then
realized it was Warreven beneath the bruises.

"Tatian?" Ȝer
voice sounded small, lighter than usual, distorted by 3er
swollen mouth.

"I'm here,"
Tatian answered. "Jesus, what happened to you?"
Or
do I need to ask? I warned you there would be trouble
--
He killed the thought, startled by his own response, frightened by
the ugly swellings. One eye was covered with a dark bandage, the
cheek- bone beneath it puffed and misshapen, 3er
lower lip split and swollen into an ugly pout. Ȝe
was standing close to the sending unit--it would be a cheap
pay-as-you-go unit, and they were close-focus at the best of times, a
poor substitute for real privacy--but Tatian thought he could see
the iridescent shape of a neck brace below the bruised chin. "Are
you all right?"

Improbably, one corner
of Warreven's mouth twitched up in what might have been a smile. "Very
sore. But I need your help."

"You got it,"
Tatian answered, and flung back the covers. "What do you need?"
Only then did it occur to him to wonder what he was doing, and he
shoved the thought aside, impatient with himself. Warreven was a
friend as well as a business partner, and 3e
was hurt. That was enough for anyone.

"It's Haliday,"
Warreven said. "We were together, he--3e's
a lot worse than I am. I want to get 3im
into the off-world hospital, where they know how to deal with herms.
I need your help, Tatian."

"You got it,"
Tatian said again. He was reaching for his clothes as he spoke,
pulling on trousers and a shirt. He fastened his trousers and picked
up the remote again, wishing he had been able to get his implants
repaired. He touched the control pad, and a side screen lit, date and
time prominently displayed--0358/9/14, nearly dawn. Beneath it, a
cursor flashed its silent query. "Where are you?"

"Terminus Hospital,"
Warreven answered.

Tatian shifted his
fingers on the remote, wishing he were at his office, with the
shadowscreen and the fall system at his disposal. Then, impatiently,
he triggered a secondary line and watched the side screen flush red
as he waited for the connection. The red faded to pink as the office
systems came on line, vanished completely as the link was fully
established and he touched keys to send the proper passwords. As the
screen cleared, he entered more commands, calling up his annotated
map of the city. It flashed into view a heartbeat later: the system
was slow, its response coming through too many ports for real
efficiency, but it would do. Terminus Hospital was close to the
massive railroad complex just north of the city proper, maybe twenty
minutes' drive from the Nest; he wondered how far Warreven had had
to come to get there. "I can be there in half an hour. Do you need
me to bring anything?" Our doctor, he added silently, and probably
money.

Warreven started to
shake 3er head, winced,
and said, "I don't think so. I've called Malemayn, too, he's
bringing me some clothes. And cash."

I'll bring metal,
Tatian thought.
Just in
case
. He swept a handful of coins off the shelf beside his
bed, already calculating its worth and the value of the larger cache
of coins in the apartment safe. He would bring those as well, he
decided. It would be easy enough to repay the company. "I'll be
there in half an hour. We have a doctor on retainer at the port, I'll
alert her. What exactly are you concerned about?" You mentioned
clothes, he thought suddenly. Does that mean rape? The thought was
literally sickening. He swallowed bile and touched the remote to
record Warreven's answer.

"Hal--he's beat up
pretty bad, the bastard ranas kicked him in the groin a few times,
and in the stomach, zhim--3im,
I mean, 3e's herm."
Warreven stopped, took a deep breath. "Like me. I don't know how
badly 3e's hurt, but I
don't know if the doctors here will treat 3im
right."

Tatian nodded again,
not particularly reassured, but knowing better than to betray that.
"I'll alert our doctor," he said again, "and I'll be there
in thirty minutes. Are you sure you don't need anything else?"

"Sure," Warreven
echoed, and managed another wincing smile. "Reasonably, anyway.
Tatian--" Ȝe stopped
again. "Thank you."

"I'm on my way,"
Tatian said, and cut the connection. He touched the remote again,
brought up the list of emergency codes, and scrolled down until he
found the listing for the clinic that had NAPD's contract. He
hesitated--neither Warreven nor Haliday could by any stretch of the
imagination be considered NAPD employees--but clicked the selection
switch anyway. If necessary, he would pay any costs himself, and
figure out where to get the money later.

The screen lit,
displayed the subtly patterned screen of an expensive answering
system. "Please enter your clinic code and state the nature of your
problem." The sweetly synthesized voice was echoed by icons and a
string of print across the screen. "If you do not have a clinic
code, please enter star nine-nine-nine for emergency access."

That, Tatian knew,
would throw the call over to Bonemarche's emergency response teams.
He called up his own code instead, and dispatched it; the screen went
momentarily blank, and then the synthetic voice said, "Please
state--"

It cut out in midword,
and the holding pattern vanished to reveal a rumpled-looking woman.
"Jaans Oddyny here."

"Mhyre Tatian--"

"I know." The woman
scowled at him, looking from secondary screen to the communications
systems. "You look all right. What's the problem?"

"It's not me,"
Tatian said. "A friend of mine, an indigene, is hurt--3e
was attacked on the street and badly beaten. I'm concerned about
3er treatment. Ȝe's
in the Terminus Hospital right now. Can you take an interest?"

Oddyny's eyes
narrowed. "Is this trade?"

Tatian bit back an
angry answer. "It is not. Those damned ghost ranas of theirs--"

Oddyny lifted a hand in
apology. "I had to ask. And it's important, can affect
treatment."

Tatian nodded slowly,
admitting that she was right--but the assumption that anything
between an off-worlder and an indigene had to fit into the category
of trade was still infuriating, especially when it was trade that had
caused the attack on Warreven. "I understand," he said. "It's
still not trade. Warreven's a colleague."

"So your account
pays?"

"For now--" Tatian
began, but Oddyny swept on unheeding.

"Sort that out later.
All right. There's a small matter of professional etiquette
involved, but if your friend asks--or if the people over at Terminus
have the brains to ask for an outside opinion-- use my name. I'll
have the call patched to me directly. Good enough?"

Tatian nodded. There
would be no problem getting Warreven to make the request.

"Since 3e's
a herm," Oddyny went on, "I'd encourage you to get 3im
to seek outside treatment. These people--" She broke off, shaking
her head. "They're competent enough, but not for the intersexes.
What they won't see, they can't treat."

"I'll tell 3im,"
Tatian said. It wasn't something he'd thought of before, but he
could see it clearly once Oddyny had pointed it out to him. If Harans
didn't willingly distinguish five sexes in their daily lives, saw
three of them as abnormal, defective, Haran doctors would always be
tempted to ignore them, concentrate on the resemblances to the "real"
sexes rather than the differences among them. "Thanks, Doctor."

"I'll be waiting,"
Oddyny said, and broke the connection.

Tatian turned off the
secondary screen, went out into the main room, and uncovered the safe
to initiate the release sequence. He entered the necessary codes and
waited, watching the lock-lights flicker, suppressing his
uncertainty. He needed the advantage that metal could bring--Warreven
needed that advantage, at any rate, and Warreven was at the very
least a valued supplier. The door sagged open at last, and he reached
into the narrow compartment, brought out the first of the prepared
packages. It was heavy--three kilograms, according to the neat
label-- and the coins moved uneasily in the wrapping, shifting
against the cloth. He weighed it thoughtfully, decided he didn't
need more, and closed the safe again. He shoved it into a small
carryall, stuffed a furoshiki on top of it to muffle the sound of the
coins, and headed for the door.