Axis

Ibu Diane and some Minang fishermen had hauled the old man back to their village.

Turk bought dinner at a tin-roofed Chinese restaurant at the crossroads, then hitched a ride farther upcoast, to a horseshoe bay turning gaudy colors under the long Equatorian dusk. The driver, a salesman for some West African import firm, pointed Turk at an unpaved road and a sign marked in a curvilinear language Turk couldn't read. Minang village down that way, he said. Turk walked a couple of miles through the forest, and just as the stars were turning bright and the insects bothersome he found himself between a row of wooden houses with buffalo-horn eaves and a lantern-lit general store where men in box caps sat at cable-spool tables drinking coffee. He put on his best smile and asked a local for directions to Doctor Diane's clinic.

The pedestrian smiled back and nodded and called out to the coffee house. Two muscular young men hurried out and positioned themselves on each side of Turk. 'We'll take you there,' they said in English when Turk repeated his request—and they smiled, too, but Turk had the uneasy feeling he'd been politely but firmly taken into custody.

'I guess I was pretty fucked-up when you finally saw me,' Tomas said.

'You don't remember?'

'Not much of it, no.'

'Yeah,' Turk said. 'You were pretty fucked-up.'

* * * * *

Pretty fucked-up, which in this case meant Tomas was bedridden, emaciated, gasping for breath in the back room of the big wooden building Diane called her 'clinic.' Turk had looked at his friend with something approaching horror.

'Jesus Christ, what happened to him?'

'Calm down,' Ibu Diane said. Ibu was what the villagers called her. He gathered it was some kind of honorific.

'Is he dying?'

'No. Appearances to the contrary, he's getting well.'

'All this from a cut on his arm?'

Tomas looked as if someone had stuck a hose down his throat and siphoned out his insides. Turk thought he had never seen a thinner man.

'It's more complicated than that. Sit down and I'll explain.'

Outside the window of Diane's clinic, the Minang village was lively in the dark. Lanterns hung swaying from eaves and he could hear the sound of recorded music playing tinnily. Diane made coffee with an electric kettle and a French press, and the resulting brew was hot and dense.

There used to be two real doctors at the clinic, she said. Her husband and a Minang woman, both of whom had lately died of natural causes. Only Diane was left, and the only medicine she knew was what she had learned while acting as a nurse. Enough to keep the clinic going: it was an indispensable resource not only for this village but for a half-dozen nearby villages and for the impoverished breakers. Any condition she couldn't treat she referred to the Red Crescent clinic up the coast or the Catholic charity hospital in Port Magellan, though that was a long trip. In matters of cuts, cleanly broken bones, and common disorders, she was perfectly competent. She consulted regularly with a traveling physician from the Port who understood her situation and made sure she was supplied with basic medicines, sterile bandages, and so forth.

'So maybe you should have sent Tomas downcoast,' Turk said. 'He looks seriously ill to me.'

'The cut on his arm was the least of his problems. Did Tomas tell you he had cancer?'

'Jesus, no. Cancer? Does he?'

'We brought him back here because his wound was infected, but the cancer showed up in simple blood tests. I don't have much in the way of diagnostic equipment, but I do have a portable imager—ten years old but it works like a charm. It confirmed the diagnosis, and the prognosis was very grave. Cancer is hardly an untreatable disease, but your friend had been avoiding doctors for far too long. He was deeply metastasized.'

'So he is dying.'

'No.' Diane paused. Once again she riveted him with that stare, fierce and a little uncanny. Turk made an effort not to avert his own eyes. It was like playing stare-down with a cat. 'I offered him an unconventional treatment.'

'Like what, radiation or something?'

'I offered to make him a Fourth.'

For a moment he was too startled to speak. Outside, the music played on, something tunelessly alien beaten out of a wooden xylophone and funneled through a cheap loudspeaker.

He said, 'You can do that?'

'I can. I have.'

Turk wondered what he had gotten himself into and how he could most efficiently extract himself from it. 'Well… I guess it's not illegal here…'

'You guess wrong. It's just easier to get away with. And we have to be discreet. An extra few decades of life isn't something you advertise, Turk.'

'So why tell me?'

'Because Tomas is going to need some help as he recovers. And because I think I can trust you.'

'How could you possibly know that?'

'Because you came here looking for him.' She startled him by smiling. 'Call it an educated guess. You understand that the Fourth treatment isn't just about longevity? The Martians were deeply ambivalent about tinkering with human biology. They didn't want to create a community of powerful elders. The Fourth treatment gives and it takes away. It gives you an extra thirty or forty years of life—and I'm a case in point, if you haven't guessed—but it also rearranges certain human traits.'

'Traits,' Turk said, dry-mouthed. He had never, to his knowledge, spoken to a Fourth before. And that was what this woman claimed to be. How old was she? Ninety years? One hundred?

'Am I so frightening?'

'No, ma'am, not at all, but—'

'Not even a little?' Still smiling.

'Well, I—'

'What I mean to say, Turk, is that as a Fourth I'm more sensitive to certain social and behavioral cues than the majority of unmodified people. I can generally tell when someone's lying or being disingenuous, at least when we're face-to-face. Although, against sincere lies I have no defense. I'm not omniscient, I'm not especially wise, and I can't read minds. The most you might say is that my bullshit detector has been turned up a notch or two. And since any group of Fourths is necessarily under siege—from the police or from criminals, or both—that's a useful faculty to have. No, I don't know you well enough to say I trust you, but I perceive you clearly enough to say that I'm willing to trust you… do you understand?'

'I suppose so. I mean, I don't have anything against Fourths. Never thought much about it either way.'

'That comfortable innocence is over. Your friend won't die of cancer, but he can't stay here, and he has a lot of adjustments to make. What I would like to do is discharge him into your care.'

'Ma'am—uh, Diane—I don't know the first thing about taking care of a sick man, much less a Fourth.'

'He won't be sick for long. But he'll need an understanding friend. Will you be that person for him?'

'Well, I mean, you know, I'm willing, I suppose, but it might be better to make some other arrangement, because I'm in a difficult position, financially and all—'

'I wouldn't have asked you if I could think of anything better. It was a blessing that you showed up when you did.' She added, 'If I hadn't wanted you to find me I would have been much more difficult to find.'

'I tried calling, but—'

'I had to discontinue that number.' She frowned but didn't offer to explain.

'Well—' Well, fuck, he thought. 'I guess I wouldn't turn out a stray dog in a rainstorm.'

Her smile returned. 'That's what I thought.'

* * * * *

'I guess you learned a few things about Fourths since then,' Tomas said.

'I don't know,' Turk said. 'You're the only close sample I've got. Not too inspiring, actually.'