Si Vis Pacem Read online

  I take a big breath, steel myself, and walk into the room.

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. The room is one of the smaller offices, barely big enough for a desk and a dozen chairs. There’s only one Patrolman in here, lying in a transparent tank, a molded support holding his neck and head so his face is out of the liquid. He’s covered with a translucent sheet from the neck down, but the sheet doesn’t go all the way down the sides of the tank, so it’s doing nothing for his modesty. At first, I think it doesn’t matter because he’s wearing some kind of skin-tight blotchy undersuit, then I realize he’s naked. His legs and arms are covered in a pattern of red and brown splotches that look nothing like skin. He could be a mannequin or a corpse, totally hairless, laying there limp and still, if it weren’t for his face. His face is definitely alive, though it’s as white as the walls. He’s looking up and out the window with an expression perfectly suited to someone witnessing some kind of supernatural apparition. That wouldn’t faze me if there was something out there, but there isn’t. I know that for a fact, because he’s staring so intently that I can’t stop myself from looking out, too. Beyond the scratched pane is one of the back alleys. I can see a tiny sliver of the bubble wall by the space port in the distance. There’s nobody out in the alley and nothing of note anywhere out there, but he’s still staring. He is so completely involved in whatever the hell he’s seeing that he’s not noticed me walk in.

  I clear my throat to alert him of my presence and instantly regret it. He snaps his head around to face me and snarls so viciously that I take a step back. His eyes are steel-grey, burning in bruise-dark pools. I can’t tell if he’s recovering from a broken nose or showing the symptoms of days and days of sleep deprivation. He blinks a couple of times while he checks me out and breathes himself into relative calm.

  “Are you lost?” His voice is croaky, as if his throat was sore, but he sounds friendlier than he looks. That’s not saying much, though. It’s clear that he doesn’t want me here.

  “What?”

  “This isn’t a place for children.”

  “I’m not a child. I work here.”

  “Yeah, right,” he sniggers through a half-grin.

  “I’m a cadet.”

  “You’re pulling my… How old are you? Twelve?”

  He starts chortling, a half-amused, half-strangled sound. He looks nicer when he laughs, almost human, but he’s laughing at me. That would piss me off at the best of times, and these aren’t the best of times: I’m bone-tired and I have had too much of this. I’ve been riding an adrenaline wave that is starting to crash, and I know, I just know, that very soon I will need to find somewhere quiet where I can throw up, cry, and pass out, hopefully in that order. I don’t need this.

  “I’m old enough to be a cadet, so no.”

  “Why exactly are you here? It’s the middle of the fucking night.”

  “Kind of you to point that out. I’d not fucking noticed.”

  “Look, kid…”

  That does it. I’ve had enough of this. “I’m not a fucking kid. I’m a medic assist. If you don’t like that, that’s too bad. There are two of us on duty right now and you just made the other one run away.”

  “I didn’t do shit! She walked in, took a look at me, and walked out. Not terribly professional of her.”

  My anger goes up another notch. That’s Dee he’s talking about. “That would be just terrible if we were professionals, but we’re not. We’re fucking cadets. I fucking told you. We’re doing our fucking best. We’re also all you’ve got right now. The medics are doing everything they can, but they are a bit overstretched.”

  “Overstretched? That’s the understatement of the year.”

  “If you’d like to have a chat about the shortcomings of the Fed’s emergency responses, I’m totally up for it, but I’d prefer to have it tomorrow, after I’ve had some sleep. I’m here to settle you down for the night. Check your vitals, perform your ablutions, and all that.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “If you really are working here, which would be utterly ridiculous but sadly unsurprising, all I need you to do is let me out of this fucking tank.”

  He gestures with his chin and wiggles his fingers underwater. His wrists and forearms are strapped to the sides of the tank. The straps are loose enough not to touch the skin, but they look solid.

  “What the fuck?”

  “They felt the need to wrap me up for transport and then they apparently forgot about me. I’m perfectly fine. Just undo the straps and I’ll sort myself out.”

  He’s talking calmly, but the way he’s staring at me is really giving me the creeps. He is hungry or desperate for something. I don’t know what it is, but being at the receiving end of his stare is tying my insides into knots.

  “I’ll have to check your chart.”

  “All you’ve got to do is undo the fucking straps. It’s not complicated.”

  “Sure. As soon as I’ve checked your chart.”

  He looks like he’s about to scream at me, then all the fight goes out of him. He goes limp in the tank and rolls his head to the side. He’s staring at the window again, but I don’t think he’s seeing anything.

  It takes me only a couple of minutes to go through his notes, even though I have to read them twice. I don’t quite believe what I’m reading.

  “Says here you’re supposed to stay in the tank until you’re given the all-clear on your skin grafts. It also says you’re mostly skin grafts right now.”

  He doesn’t even bother turning to look at me. “Shit happens. All I want to do is wash my own face and take a piss unassisted. I don’t think that’s asking too much.”

  “You’re asking me to risk messing up your grafts. I can’t do that.”

  “The hell you can’t. Say it like it is: you won’t.”

  “It’s not up to me.”

  “Sure. Does it feel good, being so powerful? Does it make you feel big and strong?”

  I don’t know whether he really means it or he’s trying some cack-handed reverse psychology on me, and I don’t fucking care. I’m tired, I’m grossed out, I’m about to cry, and I’d rather rip my eyes out than do that in front of him.

  “If you think I give a fuck about you as a person right now, then you’ve got me all wrong. Taking care of you is my job. There are forty-one Patrolmen at various levels of fucked up that I’m supposed to help look after. You’re just one of them. You’re nothing special. The longer I spend on you, the less time I can spend on them. Or, you know, doing stuff like sleeping. You might think you’re being all independent and resolute, but what you’re actually doing is sucking up time and resources from other people.” He looks at me like I’ve slapped him, but he doesn’t say anything, so I carry on. “I’ll tell you what: I’m going to sit here, close my eyes, and rest. Maybe I’ll even nap, the gods willing. When you’re done going through whatever you need to do to prove to your ego that you’re a manly man, wake me up.”

  I’m just about to sit down when he croaks, “I am sorry. I temporarily forgot my place.”

  He’s lying in the tank completely limp, staring up at the ceiling. His eyes have gone distant and glassy, as if he was trying not to cry.

  I think about being in that tank, tubes going in and out of me, no privacy, no right to decide what happens to me, so damaged that anything I could do to protect myself would end up hurting me worse, getting handled by strange people I have no reason to trust…

  Fuck this shit. Whatever I do to him can’t hurt him half as bad as he’s been hurt already.

  I peel the sheet off the side of the tank, stick my hands into the gloop, and start to undo the strap on his arm.

  He snaps back into his body. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “What does it look like? I’m undoing your fucking straps.”

  “You just said…”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use this opportunit
y to fuck yourself up. If you hurt yourself, I’ll get it in the neck. And if you get out of the tank and fall over, I can’t get you back in there. Not on my own, anyway. This place is not sterile, either. If you think third-degrees burns are no fun, I promise you that you don’t want to try sepsis. But I’m not leaving you here tied up like this. This is all kinds of fucked up.” I undo the straps a couple of notches, just enough that he can slip his arms through them. “There you go. Do me a favor and pretend you’re still tied up if anyone checks on you. I seriously cannot afford to get in the shit over this.”

  While I walk over to undo his other side, he slips his free hand in and out of the straps, as if he couldn’t quite believe that he can move it. After he has done that a few times, he snaps his eyes up to meet mine.

  “I don’t want to get you into trouble. If it comes to it, I’ll tell them I made you do it.”

  “Nobody would buy that.”

  He snorts. “Yeah. I can believe that.” He looks down again and starts to wave his arms in the liquid. It’s not water: it’s some kind of semi-liquid gel that ripples thickly around him. “Gods, this feels good.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

  “A bit. But it’s a good kind of hurt. I’m shot full of painkillers, anyway.”

  “Glad to hear it. Anything else you need?”

  He looks up at me. “You got a name?”

  “Pax.”

  “McGee. Thank you.”

  “Don’t. I didn’t do it for you. I did it because this was fucked up. Just try and take care, OK?”

  “My track record isn’t great, but I’ll do my best.”

  “I’ll come and check on you in the morning. Or someone will, anyway. If you need anything during the night, yell. I mean it literally: they’ve not set up an alarm system yet.”

  “Only the best for the conquering heroes, hey?”

  I think he’s trying to be funny, but his eyes are going glassy again.

  “Apparently so. Let me know if there’s anything you need, OK? We’ll be just down the hall.”

  “You know the first girl who came in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you tell her that I’m sorry?”

  “Did you do anything you should be sorry for?”

  “No. But that doesn’t stop me from being sorry.”

  All of a sudden he looks very young, very tired, and very scared. I can’t stand being near him anymore.

  “You can tell her yourself. You’ll see her tomorrow. She’s cool.”

  “Sure. Thank you anyway.”

  I leave him to it and walk halfway down the corridor. I lean on the wall and let my legs slide out from under me. It’s as good a place as any to take a break. This way, if anyone needs me I should hear it.

  The screaming wakes me up. For a moment I can’t remember where I am and why. The blinding lights and blank walls give me no clues whatsoever, and the animal noise filling my ears sends me straight into a panic. Then I see Dee running down the hallway at full speed and I remember everything.

  She slows down just long enough to squeeze my shoulder, then races down the hallway and through a door. She comes back a few minutes later at a more sedate pace. When she reaches me, she stops and smiles down.

  “That doesn’t look comfortable.”

  “That was the idea. I was trying to stay awake. What happened?”

  She slides down next to me, her arm over my shoulders, and her soft heat makes me realize how cold and cramped up I am.

  “Nothing, honey. Someone had a nightmare.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I could see it when I was asleep. It was bad, and so deep that they thought it was real.”

  “Alright. Now what?”

  “Nothing. The Bens will be up soon. I’m sorry about dumping you earlier.”

  “Don’t mention it. What’s wrong with that tank guy, though? I mean, he’s clearly an asshole, but that’s hardly unusual around here.”

  She gives me a giant squeeze. “I couldn’t stop reading what he was thinking, and I couldn’t handle it. I’ll be OK. I think I was just too tired. My brain played me up.”

  “Alright. Don’t go in there if it doesn’t feel right, though.”

  She laughs softly. “Oh, honey: you’d never take your own advice, would you?”

  “That’s completely different.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I say so.”

  “Alright, boss.”

  We stay on the floor, huddled together for warmth, until Martyn and the Bens emerge and send us to our bunks. In the morning we get up, load up with coffee, and face another day in the med bay.

  I don’t see the tank guy until two days after his arrival. His care is mostly handled by the tank itself and the rest of the Patrolmen keep me too busy. Even without considering medical needs, forty mouths to feed and bums to wipe is quite a lot. I’m so busy that I hardly think about him at all, apart from when I do. It’s not as if I want to talk to him, anyway: our first meeting wasn’t a load of fun. When Martyn sends me over to the tank room, I know that there’s no reason I should be looking forward to it, which is why I don’t understand why I do. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m bearing good news; that’s rare enough around here to be novel.

  As soon as I walk through the door, I know that he’s already heard. He turns around, recognizes me, and throws me a dazzling grin.

  “I told you I was fine.”

  “Yeah, sure. You were so fine that they kept you in there for a full two extra days, and you’re so fine now that I’m going to have to coat you in gel from head to toe before you can go anywhere.”

  “Gel?”

  “Yeah. Liquid bandage. It will protect your new skin from infection, minor impacts, and the like.”

  “Everywhere?”

  “Everywhere you’ve been burnt.”

  The grin fades. “That’s… comprehensive. Can’t I do it myself?”

  “Short answer: no. Look, you can do the gruesome bits, ‘cause I sure as hell don’t want to, but I have to do the rest. I can’t miss anything out.”

  The grin comes back. “Gruesome bits. You sure know how to make a guy feel good about himself.”

  “That’s outside the scope of my duties.”

  “That’s a relief. You’re going to do it now?”

  “No time like the present. If I start with your hands, you can do your, you know, whatever, while I do your back.”

  He pulls his right hand out of the soak ever so slowly, breaking surface with a grimace. As the gloop slides off his skin, his scars are revealed in all their vivid glory. He stares at his hand as if he couldn’t quite recognize it*, wiggles his fingers around, and flinches.

  “Are you alright?”

  “Yes. No. The air hurts.”

  “That’s why they kept you in there.”

  “Hurting is better than being stuck in here.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, so I shut up and start to paint his fingers with the gel. He’s staring at me so hard that my hands are getting clumsy, which is next-level annoying.

  “You look like you’ve never seen liquid bandage before.”

  “I haven’t. We used actual bandages or went without. Can I touch it?”

  “It’s your body. You can do what the hell you want with it.”

  “That makes a nice change.” He lifts his other arm out of the gloop.

  “Just wait until it’s set or I’ll have to do it again. It goes translucent when it’s ready.”

  “Huh. So I’m supposed to stroll around the place covered in see-through gloop? That’ll keep folk entertained.”

  “You’re not supposed to stroll around at all. You’re supposed to rest in the tank, occasionally stepping out to perform gentle exercises as per prescribed by your medic to get your new skin stretching.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “So does having your skin grafts fail.”

  “I get what you’re saying, but I’m bored shitless.
”

  “Read a book.”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “You don’t have a reader?”

  “They haven’t sent my stuff over yet. I don’t have squat.”

  “I’ll lend you mine. I don’t need it while I’m working.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No, I’m just saying that because it amuses me. Just don’t trash it, OK?”

  His eyes get that hungry look again. “Is your reader com-enabled? I haven’t had a chance to message home. I’d use my own code, obviously.”

  “Yeah. Not a problem. Didn’t they sort that out for you?”

  “Nah. It wasn’t a priority.”

  “It wasn’t a…” I take a few deep breaths until I can talk without screaming. “OK. Sure. Is that the case for all the guys here?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve not talked to them. I can go around and ask them when you’re done with me.”

  “No. You’ll use that as an excuse to do all kinds of bullshit. I can do that. Do you think I should ask them if there’s anything else they need? I can’t buy stuff for them, but if they can give me the credit upfront…”

  “Yes. It’d be a help. Thank you.”

  “You say that a lot.”

  “Does it bother you?”

  “Yes. I’m not doing anything I don’t want to.”

  Once his hands are covered and the gel has set, I make him sit up with his ass on his head rest so his body is out of the bath. I can tell by his face that moving hurts him, but he doesn’t complain. I’m conflicted between being impressed or frustrated by his stoicism: we need to know what hurts him and what doesn’t, and he seems determined to keep that to himself. Or from himself, maybe.

  I work on his back while he’s painting his bits. When we’re finished, I make him lie down again with his ass propped up, so he can rest while I paint his arms, legs, and chest. He complains about that, but I think it’s mostly for show because he complies pretty readily.

  I can tell he doesn’t like it, though. I wouldn’t like it either. Even with a sheet across his bits, he’s lying buck-naked in front of me. Maybe it’d be less awkward for him if they’d got one of the guys to help him out, but they all have more critical tasks to perform. I rack my brain for something I could say to make it all less awkward, but I can’t think of anything. I can’t speed the process up either; I have to be thorough or I’ll just have to do it again.