fire. It brought him to the edge of laughing, and the tension got him home. lie woke up a little after eight the next morning. When he went down to the dining room, Phasia was there, sitting at the table in a long flowered gown. There was also a man Danny hadn't seen before, wearing shirtsleeves and suspenders; he had short brown hair, large dark eyes behind round-rimmed glasses. He ate scrambled eggs and home fries with his left hand and wrote on a pad of graph paper with his right.
'Hello,' Danny said.
Fay looked up from her egg cup and toast. She was still very beautiful, especially when she smiled and her crystalline blue eyes twinkled, but the fabulous glow was not there. Danny wondered if he had really seen it at all.
The man scratched his head with the eraser end of his pencil and looked up. 'You must be Doc. I'm Stagger Lee. Sit down and join us.'
Danny did. One of the staff was there instantly to take his breakfast order.
Stagger Lee said, 'You're up kind of early. I thought you were out at the club last night.'
'I came back early.'
'Oh. I'm just finishing up for the night.' Danny noticed that Stagger Lee's shirt was badly wrinkled, and one of his suspenders was flapping loose.
Fay folded her napkin and stood up. Stagger Lee was on his feet at once; Danny did likewise.
'Staganess day toll,' she said, or something sounding like that. 'Doc well be dockelnight, sorge do well.' She made a small, nervous gesture with her hand and left the room..
Stagger Lee said gently 'I guess you haven't heard Fay speak.'
'I heard her sing last night.'
'No. Not the same.'
'Phasia,' Danny said, understanding. 'Aphasia'
Stagger Lee said, 'Yup,' dragging the syllable way out. 'I guess we could sit back down now.'
Danny's pancakes and bacon appeared. Stagger Lee said, 'Excuse my company while you eat; I need to get this done before I drop over. You know we're going to be out late tonight. You might want to get a couple of hours' sleep this afternoon.'
'Does Mr. Patrise party every night?'
'Not every night. And I wouldn't call this evening a party, at least not the way you mean.' He worked a while longer, then said, 'Are you a poker player, Doc?'
'I know how.'
'There's a game Monday night. You'll be welcome.' He glanced up. 'Unless Patrise wants you then?'
'He hasn't said.'
'Right.' He sat back, drinking coffee and examining his notes. As Danny finished his breakfast, Stagger Lee said, 'I've got the infirmary keys. You ought to get your bag like you want it before tonight.'
Stagger Lee led the way out of the dining room, absent-mindedly hitching his loose suspender. 'Know anything about magic?'
'They tell me it works here.'
'True. Not always well, but it works.'
The infirmary was in the south wing. It had white enameled cabinets, a desk and examining table out front; in back was a room with two hospital beds, and another room fitted for light surgery. None of the facilities seemed to have seen much use.
Stagger Lee said. 'Some of the staff have first-aid training, so if you ever need a hand down here, give the switchboard I yell.
And there's me.' He disconnected a small ring of keys from a larger one, jingled them in his fingers. 'Glad to pass the buck, to be honest.'
'Are you a doctor?'
'Not an MD.' He unlocked one of the cabinets. It was full of supplies: vials, boxes, syringes, tape. 'I'm just the general tech guy around here. Have you ever heard of Stagg Field?'
'Where the nuclear reactor was.'
'Bingo. It's not there any more, but I went to what's left of the University of Chicago. Just in case,' he said with a grin, 'you thought I'd shot somebody on account of a hat.'
He took some boxes down from a cabinet. 'This is goldenrod unguent, for all-purpose healing; it works best on elves, but you can use it on humans. Pinon gum's for abscesses and infections. Boneset leaf, you may have seen that before in the World…'
He held up a fabric-covered object a little thinner than his thumb. 'This is a tarantelle cap, for serious systemic poisoning. You use it like an ammonia inhaler: crack it under the nostrils, have the victim breathe. And then get clear: they'll start dancing like crazy to drive out the poison.'
'You're kidding.'
'Empiricists don't kid, Doc. I've seen it work. I mean it about the getting clear, too. If the patient's busted up physically, you've got a judgment call, because the tarantelle doesn't care about a few broken bones. But remember that we've got poisons here like nothing you ever saw in the World.'
'Magic,' Danny said.
'These aren't spells. Most of them are old folk remedies on our side of the fire; some even work-pinon kills Staph aureus. They just work better here, like penicillin works better in the World. That's the other thing: magic's unreliable here in the middle, but so is penicillin. The only things you can really always rely on are mechanical closure, sutures and tape, and usually the simpler antiseptics, alcohol and iodine. You're going to see some really bad scarring around here. Don't let it get to you.'
Danny thought of Norma Jean. He thought of Rob, too, of course.
Stagger Lee held up a glass vial of what looked like colored glitter. 'This is fairy dust: broad-spectrum illusion powder. The Shadow uses a lot of this stuff. Did you see people at the club who looked like they were glowing? Dust.'
Okay, Danny thought, that was it. That explained Phasia's appearance, her light.
'It's also a euphoric, psychologically addictive.'
'Psychologically?'
'You can't prove dust has any somatic effects. But it sure does hook people.'
'What am I supposed to do with it?'
'Comfort the dying.' Danny couldn't tell if Stagger Lee was joking or not. 'Meanwhile, back at reality…' Stagger Lee unlocked another cabinet, pointed to boxes of hypodermic cartridges. 'Meperidine, haloperidol, straight morphine-synthetics don't work as well on elves.'
'I can't carry that stuff.'
'Why not? You've got a license.'
'Sure, but I'm supposed to have authorizations.'
'Doc. ' Stagger Lee sounded amused. 'You can carry any of this stuff you want, and prescribe it any way you want, to anybody you want, at least on this side of the Fire. You have all the authorization there is.' Danny got the message. 'Okay. Atropine, lidocaine, most of the rest of it you know better than I do. There's a reference library over there. Down here's bicarb in a heart needle pack, though the only coronaries I've ever seen Shadowside were so coke-boosted they needed the bomb squad more than CPR. It's your call, but most of your cases are going to be trauma, and combat trauma at that.'
'How about IV fluids? And blood?'
Stagger opened another cabinet, revealing racks of solution bags and accessories. 'The plastic bags are hard to come by, even for us. We've got a glass still and autoclavable bottles, though they're a pain to haul around. Remember what I said about trauma?'
Danny nodded.
'So you understand the problem?'
'Yes.'
'Wish I had a good answer for you.'
'Thanks.''
'Don't mention it.'
