Total Eclipse

but the antivenin will help, trust me. I’m going to take a look at the bite on your leg.”

In the great scheme of things, I’d almost forgotten the coyote bite; truthfully, it hardly registered, on the scale of Ow That Hurts right now. But when he started probing the wound, I found myself gasping and guarding, and he shook his head. “Let’s irrigate, get some antibiotics on board, and I’ll need to lay in some stitches. You are some lucky girl.”

I’d have given him the finger if I’d felt up to it.

Someone arrived and handed him a packet of notes, which he speed-read, and as the nurse worked on cleaning the bite, he leaned casually on the gurney and flipped pages. I wasn’t fooled.

“So,” he said. “You’re a Warden.”

“Yes.”

“Not an Earth Warden?”

This was the tricky part, because I was going to have to lie to answer, or explain more than I wanted. “Earth Wardens can’t heal themselves,” I said. “Not easily. It’s a drawback.”

He nodded. “So it is. Is it as bad out there as we’ve heard? Storms, fires, earthquakes? Some people are calling it the end of the world.”

“It’s not,” I said. “But it could be the end of us.”

That sobered him up. He closed the file and tucked it under his arm, looking down at me. Doctors always looked similar to me; there was some kind of posture they had, upright and ever so slightly arrogant, but with good reason. This particular doctor’s name badge read REID, HOWARD. He didn’t look like a Howard to me; he had thick dark hair, a long, thin nose, and smile lines around his mouth. An angular, mobile kind of face. Eyes of indeterminate color, maybe a dark blue. Not kind, though. Assessing and guarded.

“Is that your professional opinion?” he asked. “Since that’s your job, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How serious is it?”

“I wouldn’t go buying any long-term investments.” I coughed, because talking was making me feel sick again. A nurse got me water and a sippy straw.

Dr. Reid stared at me for a few long seconds, and whatever calculations were going on, I couldn’t follow them.

I shut my eyes as he got around to the stitches.

Dr. Reid wasn’t the only person on the base who knew what a Warden was; I could tell from the steady stream of gawkers who found a reason to drop into the infirmary over the next hour. Among them was a tall man wearing casual clothes but with a straight-up military bearing. No rank visible on the badges, but I was willing to bet, from the way people gave him room, that this man was high up.

“Hello,” he said to me immediately, with the assurance of somebody who doesn’t often meet equals, much less superiors. “How are you feeling?”

I wasn’t feeling well at all, and was starting to think that this snakebite ploy was a Very Bad Idea, but I forced a smile. “I’ll live,” I said, and cleared my throat. “Joanne Baldwin.”

He nodded. “I had you checked out. Roland Miles. I’m the director of the plant. I had to give special authorization to get you inside the gates.” By the look he gave me, I’d better humbly appreciate the sacrifice. Oh, and I did. Really. “I’ve given instructions that you’re not to leave this bed for any reason, and that as soon as you’re stable, you’re going in an ambulance to a hospital.”

“I’m a prisoner.”

“If you were a prisoner, you’d be handcuffed to the rail,” he pointed out pleasantly. “We’re just taking all necessary precautions for your health.”

“Including not letting me out of bed. What if I have to go to the bathroom?”

“Bedpan,” he said, and I didn’t think he was kidding. “I take my responsibilities here extremely seriously, Miss Baldwin, and what I see about you in my classified files doesn’t inspire confidence. You seem to have a running feud with the Wardens, and a shooting war going with authority. Now, why are you really here?”

He settled himself in a chair next to my bed, and that put our eyes level. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the very perceptive aura I was reading off of the guy—he was just plain human, but he was nobody to underestimate, clearly. They wouldn’t have put him in charge of what had to be a major terrorist target if he hadn’t been utterly capable.

“Wait,” I said, and gestured urgently to a nurse. She handed me a kidney-shaped bowl, and I retched up what little I still had in my stomach. It wasn’t theater, it was truly that bad, and after I was done I fell back against the pillows, feeling shaky and still in sharp, cutting pain. “So just to be clear, you think I got myself snakebit as part of a clever plot?”

“Maybe,” he said, unmoved by my clearly unhappy condition. “I’m not taking any chances with you in my facility. You do have security clearances sufficient to gain entry under normal circumstances, so I’ll let you stay until Dr. Reid says you can be moved, but the second that happens, you are out of here. With my best wishes, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, and swallowed hard. “Water?”

He was kind enough to fetch the cup and sippy straw, and I drained it in a rush.

“I know what’s happening out there,” he said, once I was done. He refilled the glass, which was a considerate thing to do, and set it within easy reach. “I know how bad it is. And I can’t think it’s any accident somebody like you just happens to show up on our doorstep, snakebite or not. You want to level with me, Joanne?”

“Well, I’d like to, but I don’t think your security clearance is high enough,” I said. “And I’m not in a share-y mood right now, what with all the venom and throwing up and you being a giant prick.”

He laughed. It was a real laugh, genuinely amused. Nice to know I was entertaining, even now. “Now that’s the Joanne Baldwin people told me about. You’d be a smart-ass to Death himself, wouldn’t you?”

I had been before. But that probably wasn’t something to share except on a need-to-know basis. “If you want to know what’s going on, stick your head outside,” I said. “Humanity’s sitting on a bomb, and the timer’s clicking down. That’s what’s happening. Forget global climate change; we won’t be around to see the last of the polar bears drown. That’s why I’m here, Roland. I’m on bailing duty on the Titanic.”

He didn’t like that answer, not at all, and it didn’t spark any kind of laughter this time. He was a smart man; he could identify truth when he heard it. “And why come here?” he asked.

“I didn’t! I was dumped out by the idiot who picked me up. I think he could have been running drugs.” In this part of the country, that was an extremely plausible scenario. Carloads of Mexican Brown were caught all the time, zipping their way up through the Southwest. They weren’t fighting a major drug war in Mexico for nothing.

That was my first real lie; only it was actually speculation. I hadn’t stated it as a fact, only a perception. I waited, and watched Roland Miles’s aura up on the aetheric. It was tougher to read regular people than Wardens, but there was no mistaking the troubled colors that surrounded him. The man was under a lot of stress, and he was wary. I didn’t blame him. He certainly had every right.

Wary he remained, but I didn’t get the sense that he detected any hint of a lie in what I’d said. That was good. It wasn’t that I couldn’t tackle the defenses he could probably bring to bear, but it would be very, very messy. Lives would be lost, and there was a decent chance that I’d end up having to do what I’d planned without evacuating the plant first. I didn’t want that on my conscience. Especially as the last act of my life.

Dr. Reid buzzed in the infirmary door, trailed by another nurse, this one carrying a tray full of the antivenin bottles. He nodded pleasantly to Director Miles, who stood up and moved his chair away from the bed to make room as Reid bent over me, taking my pulse, probing the badly swollen arm, and generally being a nuisance before he nodded. “Second round,” he said, and began loading the antivenin into the IV drip. “I didn’t figure that one dose would do you. That was a nasty bite. How’s the pain?”

“Intense,” I said.

“On a scale of—”

“Ten.” And I wasn’t kidding, it really was. As an Earth Warden I was all too aware of the damage the venom