第47节
The long peak was frayed and the woven badge was missing.
'Are you sure?" asked Yellow-Hat.
'What kind of damn fool question is that?" Beaver looked up at
Yellow-Hat and chuckled. 'You think I've forgotten what they look
like? Start moving that shit off her legs."
Yellow-Hat went to work. Beaver pulled the stopper out of his skin
water-bottle, eased Jodi's head off the ground, and tipped a little
water onto her parched lips. Jodi licked them dry and opened her mouth
for more.
'Thanks..." she wheezed.
'She don't look so hot,' said Bone-Dome flatly.
'No. She's broke up pretty bad,' admitted Beaver. 'But she'll mend.
Make no mistake, this is one tough lady."
'She'll need to be,' said Bone-Dome. He seized hold of the dead coyote
and flung it aside. 'Okay, let's get her to Medicine Hat."
Jodi had been found by a scavenging party from a band of Tracker
renegades. S he had known about them for years. As a youngster, she
had seen several who had been captured and brought back to the
Federation for trial, confess the error of their ways before being shot
on tv. Later, during her time as a wingman, she had also seen the
bodies of about a dozen renegades killed by patrols from The Lady. Men
and women that she had helped hunt down. Beaver and his two friends
were the first live ones she had ever met face to face.
She remained conscious until they lifted her onto a makeshift stretcher
then slipped into a coma. For a time, Jodi knew nothing of the outside
world, but deep within her subconscious mind the ordeal continued. Her
inner eye was continually assailed by jagged, abstract images of pain;
a limitless form of mental torture that drove her, screaming
soundlessly, to the edge of madness. Eighteen hours later she emerged
from the fevered coma to find herself in the hands of Medicine Hat.
Someone holding a clean worn rag mopped her brow. She looked up at the
sky and took a deep breath, savouring the sweetness of the air. Oh,
Columbus! It hurt. Her whole body burned from head to toe. It didn't
matter. She was going to live/ For Steve, the next weeks seemed to
blur together, making it hard to place specific events. He could only
remember being fed a thick soup twice a day from a wooden bowl held by
Cadillac, Mr Snow, and a number of female lumpheads who ranged from the
simply plain and unattractive to the hideously grotesque. At first,
the thought of eating Mute food filled Steve with revulsion. He
refused it for a couple of days then became so hungry that he ate what
he was offered - and was promptly sick.
After several more days of mental and intestinal discipline, he found
he was able to keep the food down without feeling nauseated and,
eventually, began to look forward with growing relish to the next
strongly flavoured dish. He did not, however, ask what he was
eating.
His progress was rewarded by a meal he could recognise - a fish with
succulent pink, flaky flesh, roasted over a wood fire.
Exactly as in that flash of memory he had had at Roz's side in San
Jacinto Deep. As he ate the fish, he wondered how he could have
acquired that knowledge. Perhaps, he conjectured, it did not stem from
a memory of past events but was a glimpse of the future. Perhaps he
had foreseen this moment - in the same inexplicable way that he had
often been able to predict the direction of the course marker lights
when flying in the Snake Pit.
Mr Snow visited him from time to time to inspect and dress his
wounds.
Sometimes Cadillac came with him; at other times, the straight-limbed
Mute would enter alone and squat silently by his side. Occasionally,
Steve would engage them in desultory conversation; desultory because he
was given regular small doses of Dream Cap which kept him in a state of
drowsy euphoria. Twice, or maybe three times, Steve was vaguely aware
of being lifted onto a stretcher of wood and skins which was then
carried through the darkness. He half-remembered feeling the cool
night air on his face; seeing the wondrous twinkling brilliance of
countless points of light scattered across a black velvet sk