She'd always thought Gaia's ways right, but on Earth and most other worlds everyone had a buzzer. They could phone and be phoned anywhere, anytime. A horrible thought, but right now she wanted it.
She should give up, but Yas was looking at her with something close to a smirk, so she went out to search. She hopped a tram and rode it around Low Wall, then took another in to Market Square. Where the hell was he?
He might be at the hospital by now! She leapt off the tram at the next stop and ran to a phonepost. He wasn't there, and the baby was fading fast. She turned from the post — and found Dan there. She knew from his face, but asked anyway. 'You heard?'
'Yes.'
'So what are you going to do?'
'There's nothing I can do.'
'What do you mean? You're a fixer.'
He looked worn. Not so much tired, but fined down, burned down.
'I can't do anything, Jen. Do you think Assam and Polly want me there to toss out platitudinous comforts?'
'No, they want you there to do something, no matter how small.'
'Think!'
She jerked back, feeling for a moment as if he might shake her.
'My father died last year. I'd have fixed that if I could do miracles, wouldn't I?' He sucked in a breath and ran a hand through his hair. 'This is why they recommend that fixers don't return to their homes. Too many personal pressures.'
His resistance was like a hand pushing her away, but she said, 'Since you do live here, can't you at least try? Come on.' She took his hand and tugged. After a moment he went with her, but she felt his reluctance like a weight.
She pulled him onto the West Street tram, but stayed standing near the doors. She couldn't bear to sit down. 'Are you all right?'
'Of course.'
But he looked almost as weary as the sick baby and she was going over his words. He'd said he couldn't do anything. Had he lost his powers? Had he blasted them away?
They got off at the hospital stop, and she steered him toward the main entrance. But then he balked and turned aside.
'Dan!' She hurried after. 'Dan, stop. Please!'
He turned down a side street, and she caught him at a small door. 'What are you
He pressed a lock. Hand print, not code. He used this door often.
The door opened, and she followed him in, watched as he took a set of hospital grays off a shelf and pulled them on over his uniform. 'Jen, think. What happens if Dan Fixer walks around the hospital?'
'Everyone wants you to heal them.' Why hadn't she thought of that?
He added a stretchy helmet, one designed for a man with a beard, which left only his eyes uncovered. He looked older, harder. Or perhaps he was.
'Why don't you, then? Heal everything.'
'For a start, there's not enough of me to go round. But I can only fix things to make them right, which means mostly injuries. Disease is part of nature, like death. I can't fix nature.'
He was angry. At the limits of his powers, or at her?
'I'll look at the baby,' he said, 'but I doubt it's fixable.' He turned and headed out of the room.
Jenny followed, wincing. How arrogant to drag him here, as if she knew better than the hospital. She ached for Polly, for Assam, and for Dan who must want to make their baby healthy as much as she did.
At the intensive care nursery he said something to a staff member, and Jenny was given a gray coverall and cap. She didn't want to go with him, but she'd dragged him here. She must. They walked through the steriline into the gently lit room where soft music played with a beat that was surely that of an adult human heart.
It was so peaceful. Surely it couldn't be a place of death.
At least Gaia accepted the latest technology for problems like this. There were four red-laced incubator pods and two nurses moving between them, constantly checking the sheath monitors on their arms.
Dan paused at each incubator, then stopped at one. He signaled a nurse, and she hurried over. Jenny saw the sudden light in the nurse's eyes, and tears pricked at her own. Dan had found something he could fix, but the name card said Smithers. It wasn't Polly's baby.
She went closer and saw a tiny baby under a multicolored mesh. Its chest labored, and its legs and arms seemed grayish instead of pink. Dan pushed his hand through the mesh and touched the child.
The baby clutched his finger as babies do, but to Jenny it looked as if the mite recognized a lifeline. The little chest still rose and fell, but less desperately, and the fingers and toes began to turn pink. The mesh began to fade and retract…
'Heart,' said a nurse, coming up beside Jenny. 'Valve,' she went on. 'I was hoping it would be fixable when Dan came around. I'm glad he's early. It's always special to see him work.'
'He comes every day?'
'Or when we call. We wait if we can. He has to have a life.'
Yes, he did. Jenny was ashamed that she didn't know his real life at all. Some friend she was.
He eased his finger out of the baby's clutch, then touched the round cheek, smiling a little. But the smile faded as he moved on to the last incubator.
'He won't be able to help there,' the nurse said, obviously surprised.
Jenny trailed after to see the flaccid, laboring baby. It already looked ancient and withered. Dan put his hands on the shell and leaned there. She tried to believe that he was doing something, something miraculous, but she knew it was simple grief.
She wanted to say,
He turned and walked out. She hurried after.
'Since I'm here I might as well do my rounds. You'll want to be with Polly and Assam.' It was a dismissal, but he added, 'If they ask, tell them I'm sorry.'
Then he was gone, and Jenny fought tears, for him as much as for the baby, as she worked her way out of the hospital gear.
After that, things only got worse. Polly and Assam had been the first of Jenny's friends to choose pregnancy, and the disaster appalled them all. Pregnancy was supposed to lead smoothly to a beautiful, healthy baby. The other babies in the pods had shown that problems happened, that perhaps disaster was natural, but it felt all wrong on top of so many other all wrongs. She couldn't stop thinking that it was blight, carried as spores on the wind.
Polly and Assam didn't blame Dan, but they avoided him. Jenny thought about telling them that he'd visited the nursery, but would it make it better or worse? Two weeks after the birth they decided to visit Assam's family in Araby, even though it was farther south. The good-bye party was subdued. Dan attended, but briefly.
Jenny looked at him and thought his flame was dying. Was it drowning in the blighters' growing power? Or was he as sick as she was of the bitter catch at the back of the throat, the amorphic taste of ashes on the wind?
Or was it simply the dead baby?
She couldn't fight off strange thoughts about that.
Had Dan struggled for a moment over that incubator? He'd talked about hard decisions. He'd used the word 'can't.' That didn't just mean able to; it could mean allowed to. She cornered him just outside the room.
'Could you have saved little Hal?'
He looked at her, eyes guarded. 'Yes.'
He put fingers over her lips. 'Not here.'
He grabbed her arm and drew her out of the house, into the street. 'There are rules, Jen. We can't fix what shouldn't be fixed.'
