After a moment he pushed it back. 'Kid fallen off High Wall near Watling. Luckily, only a broken leg. Want to come?'
'Of course!' She rarely got a chance to see him work, and it always delighted her.
Hand in hand they ran across to the nearest tram line and Dan waved one down, his uniform his authority. He seemed to have a map of the lines in his head. They jagged rapidly across town to the west wall, where they found a boy on the ground with two nurses in attendance and a small crowd of gawkers.
The patient was about thirteen, with freckles and ginger hair. A tubby, dark-haired lad hovered, looking more shocked than his injured friend. It turned out that the patient had already had something for the pain.
'Right leg,' said the nurse who was kneeling beside him. 'Tibia and fibula, I think. Might be spinal, too. Name's Jeff Bowlby.'
'Thought you could fly, Jeff?' said Dan, sitting cross-legged beside him.
'Just fell. Will it hurt?'
Dan smiled at him. 'Not at all. Relax.'
He put his hands on the boy's leg, which was still covered by his jeans. Jenny knew the rules. Everyone did. In case of an accident do nothing except pain relief until the fixer comes, unless it's necessary to prevent death.
The youth tensed anyway, but then his eyes widened. 'It tingles.'
Dan didn't say anything. There really was nothing to see of what he was doing except a stillness that was very un-Danlike. But this time, Jenny realized, she could feel something.
Tingling? That was one way to put it. What she felt was in the air, or in her mind — or rather, in a part of her mind she hadn't known was there. Oh, she didn't like this. She didn't like it at all. She wasn't a fixer!
A man rushed up. 'Jeffy?'
Jenny and the second nurse took an arm each before he could interfere.
'He's fine,' said the nurse, his voice steady. 'Mr. Bowlby, is it? No great harm done, and it's being fixed. We'll just need some details from you.'
The young man led the father away to comfort him with record taking, and sting him with a bill. Copayment for foolishness.
'All right?' Dan said.
Jenny turned back to see a slight shudder pass through him as he raised his hands from the boy's leg.
'That's good as new, but take care of my work, okay, Jeff? Let's see if you've done any other damage.' He passed his hands over the boy, pausing for a moment in one spot, then rose easily to his feet. 'All clear.'
The boy started to sit up but the nurse beside him held him down. 'Oh, no you don't. We'll help your father take you home and keep an eye on you until the shock and medicine wear off.' She looked up at Dan. 'Good job, Fixer.'
Dan gave the nurse his tally, and she typed the code in that would authorize his payment from Anglia's health program. Jenny let him guide her toward the tram stop, thinking about fixing. Really thinking about it for the first time.
'Does that take a lot of your power?'
'Not particularly. A string of those, and I'd be wiped for a while. Normally.'
She thought about querying that, but he went on. 'As it is, I welcome the work. If I don't use the energy, it tends to…flare.'
'Flaring's bad?'
'It can turn me a bit wild.'
'Wild's your greatest charm, Dan Rutherford, and you know it.'
He laughed. 'I like it when you call me that. I know people like my energy, but there's an edge there.'
That put her worry into words. She thought he danced along an edge.
Flaring. Good word for it. Flaring high spirits that led to exciting times, but that threatened a conflagration, perhaps mostly of himself. Though fixers could fix so many problems, they rarely lived to a hundred.
'It's the magic,' he said, putting an arm around her.
A shiver rippled up her back at his touch. Not particularly unpleasant, but a shiver, and for a moment she thought that was what he was referring to. But then she realized he meant the flaring. 'You mean fixing?'
'Magic's a better word. A more realistic one.'
'Realistic? It doesn't exist.'
'Who knows? Why so many Earth stories if it never existed? And they show it as dangerous stuff. Magic creatures who lurk in dark places and trick people to their deaths. Or seduce them with gifts and feasts, then keep them prisoner forever. Or make them dance themselves to death for amusement. That fits.'
She eased out of his arm. 'That's superstition, and it's nothing to do with what you do. With fixing.'
'Isn't it?'
She didn't want this, not now, with her stomach queasy and her mind jangled by his touch, and by an illusion of ashes on the wind. But his silence demanded something, and friends should be friends, so in the end she asked, 'Well, is it?'
He leaned against the tram shelter. 'There's no way to compare, is there? They say it doesn't work on Earth, but I'm not sure when they tried. I've thought of going back to find out, but who can afford it? Someone once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That's another way of looking at it.'
The tram glided up, and they climbed on. He led the way to the back, where they used to sit as kids, but he talked quietly, even though there was no one close.
'Fixers aren't normal, Jen. You have to see that. They warn us to be solitary, that it's safer. Not to return home. To keep aloof wherever we go.'
'Aloof?' It pulled a laugh from her. 'Failed that part of the course, didn't you?'
'Abjectly. And I insisted on coming back home.' A fleeting grin faded. 'But sometimes I think they're right.'
'No, they're not. Bad enough that you had to go away for years.'
'People marry out. Your mother did. Or in, in that case.'
'That's different. That's love. And I wonder how people can love enough to do a thing like that.'
'So do 1.1 didn't like it, Jen.'
It was the first time he'd said that, and he'd been back two years.
2
The tram stopped in Market Square then, however, and they got out and crossed to the Merrie England Pub. Gyrth, Polly, and Assam were at an outside table with a bunch of the others. Everyone hailed Dan as if he was rain in midsummer, asking where he'd been. Chairs shuffled. Yas, who looked like a princess from the Arabian Nights, snagged Dan's sleeve and towed him down beside her. Jenny went to a seat at the other end of the table, between Gyrth and Rolo.
She needed space. Things were shifting, and she didn't know what to do.
Magic.
Seduced with gifts and feasts.
Driven to dance to death.
For some reason Dan had wanted to tell her about that, and now it was scarily easy to imagine when she remembered some of the wild times, often here, at the Merrie England. Not tonight, though. Beneath chatter, the mood was definitely not merrie, and it wasn't just her group. The tavern, even the square, seemed subdued. Thoughts of war returned to trouble her. People didn't flee their homes for no reason.
A quarrel started behind them, then Yas complained about 'some bitch' who'd stolen a promotion from her, and the means she'd used. Back in the tavern, a crash suggested someone had dropped a whole tray of glasses. Raised voices…
But then it changed. Being so aware of Dan, Jenny saw him do it, saw him open his gifts and set everyone
