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He was still wearing his lab coat, and a ghostly odor of blood, death, and hospital disinfectant was following him.
'You stupid bastard, why aren't you in a hospital?'
Nohar was still wearing the Vind, but from Manny *s attitude, more concerned than angry, Nohar knew Manny hadn't connected him with the rodent attack yet. Guiltily, he didn't explain.
Manny released a whistling sigh from his front teeth. 'I wonder what would happen to you if I wasn't a medic. Can you walk?'
'I got here, didn't I?'
'That's not what I asked. How long have you been sitting there?'
Manny had a point.
Nohar tried to get up, but a shivering wave of agony rippled up the entire right side of his body. He collapsed on to the floor, pulling the bloody windbreaker after him. Both girls underwent a brief panic, but Manny shooed them away as he pulled out a sheet and laid it on the floor. It took all three of them to help roll Nohar on it.
'I hope you've already written off the clothes ... '
Manny walked out of the living room and in to the kitchen where he kept his medical equipment. Manny came back with a loaded air-hypo and a medical bag.
He set the hypo down, next to the sheet.
'Introduce me to your friends.' Manny started shredding Nohar's jeans with a pair of scissors.
Nohar tried to ignore the pain of the clotted blood tearing out his fur. 'Angel, Stephanie Weir, the doctor doing violence to my pants is Manny, Mandvi Gu-jerat.'
Manny nodded. 'Pleased, I'm sure.'
Angel twitched her facial scar. 'You were really a combat medic?''
Manny had laid open Nohar's pants leg and was examining the remains of Maria's shirt that still bound the gunshot wound. 'Five years in the Afghan frontier 752
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before New Delhi got nuked—You, Stephanie? Hand me those forceps.' Stephie removed them from the bag. Manny took the forceps from her and used them to start peeling away the outer layer of the makeshift bandage. 'Nohar, if it wasn't for that engineered metabolism of yours—'
Manny shook his head at the mess of Nohar's hip. 'No, forget it, I'm not going to get through to you anyway.''
Manny stood up. 'I'm going to wash up. I've got to do some cutting and stitching on this obstinate lump of stupidity.' He looked at Angel. 'You know, when this bastard was six, he broke his arm and forced me to set it myself? A compound fracture yet ... '
Manny left the living room and soon there was the sound of running water from the kitchen. Stephie looked at Nohar. 'What is this with you and hospitals?' Nohar looked down at the gory mess on his right hip and suppressed a shudder. 'I don't trust them—'
Manny came back, pulling on a pair of gloves. 'Yes, he'd rather trust himself to my floor. Who needs a sterile environment?'
Manny turned to Angel. 'Pick up that hypo I brought in here?'
Angel did as she was asked. Manny turned to Stephie. 'It's probably a futile gesture, but would you tie on my mask?''
Stephie tied the conical face mask around Manny's muzzle, muffling his voice. 'Angel, can you handle that thing?'
Angel nodded and there was a mumble behind Manny's mask that sounded like, 'Doesn't surprise me.'
In a louder voice trained to be heard from behind a jaw immobilized behind the restrictive mask, Manny told Angel to empty the cartridge into Nohar's arm. Angel rolled up Nohar's right sleeve, there was a slight sting, and the world floated away.
CHAPTER 14
Nohar had an intense fear he would wake up in a hospital.
However, no disinfectant assaulted him when he awoke. He could smell alcohol, a much sharper and cleaner scent. There was also the faint coppery rust smell of his own blood. There was the dry dusty smell of old cloth and paper.
And nearby was the smell of roses and wood smoke.
Nohar opened his eyes.
He was in the attic. His old room still had no air-conditioning, and should have been hotter than Hades—but the omnipresent rumble and the breeze through his whiskers told Nohar the old ventilation fan still worked, pulling a crosswind through this two-room insulated oven. His eyes quickly shifted into nocturnal monochrome.
Her scent had betrayed her presence. Stephie Weir was asleep in a claw-scarred recliner across from Nohar's bed.
He gave the room a brief scan and was thankful Manny wasn't overly sentimental. The chair and the bed were the only remains of his old furniture. The attic was now a haven for boxes, old luggage, and older clothes.
Nohar's gaze lit on the small end table that jutted out the side of the antique headboard. After a decade and a half, the table was still familiar. Nohar remembered the scratches that marked its surface. His name and idle crosshatches had clawed through five layers 254
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of paint to reveal the black finish underneath. The desk lamp was still clamped to it, still with three or four knots of electrical tape holding the cord together.
Orai's picture was still in its cheap gold-plated frame, cocked at an obsessively perfect forty-five degree angle toward the bed. Its lower edge rested in a groove worn in the last two layers of paint. The gold was flaking and rust spots dotted the gray metal beneath. The glass was hazy with dust and, in the dark, Nohar could barely make out the picture.
Nohar sat up on the edge of the bed—his hip objected, but only slightly—and turned on the desk lamp which, to his surprise, still worked. Now he could see the picture. In it, Orai was in her combat harness, but unarmed. She was center frame and holding up one end of an American flag. The other end was being held by some friend from her unit. In the background he could see the Statue of Liberty and part of the Manhattan skyline. Orai and her friend, both tigers, were smiling, totally oblivious to the show of teeth. Orai was already beginning to show her pregnancy. The writing on the old picture was faded a bit, though the picture itself was still in good shape. It read, 'Rajas-than Airlift—March 2027.'
Nohar sighed.
He realized Stephie was awake now. She was leaning forward in the recliner, probably trying to get a glimpse of the picture. Nohar didn't know what to feel about that. It was a personal part of his life. But Stephie was just sitting there. She seemed to know it was his decision to tell her. She didn't ask.
Nohar realized he liked this pink woman.
He handed her his childhood icon. 'She's the one on the left.'
Stephie took the picture. 'Who is she?'
'My mother. She was already pregnant when the company defected. Her name was Orai.'
Stephie's eyes raised from the picture. 'You used the past tense.'
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Nohar was about to evade the question, but why shouldn't she know? He cleared his throat. 'Died when I was five, just old enough to remember. She'd gotten inseminated, wanted to give me a little brother or sister. She'd saved for the procedure since getting to the States. Things went fine. Then, three months in, she went for a
