The woman who was reaching up to test the damage done to my nose was fully matured, but there was no way of telling how old she might be. Her hair was dark and her complexion had a peculiar bluish tint. Her eyes were blue, but a darker shade than I had ever seen before. She was wearing a smartsuit; it wasnt fashionably cut, by the standards of my time, but it looked at least to my uneducated eye far more like the ones commonly worn in the twenty-second century than the one Id been fitted with on Excelsior.
Hold still, she said, as she rolled back my left sleeve and wrapped something around the bare forearm. It was an elastic bandage made of some kind of smart fabric, connected by bundles of artificial nerves to a box. I didnt feel anything, but I guessed that it would send feelers into my arm to test the blood pressure.
Its my face that needs the treatment, I pointed out, ashamed of the thickness of my voice and roughness of pronunciation.
Its already been reset, albeit crudely, she told me. Ill put a dressing on it to reduce the swelling and apply local anesthetic, but theres not much I can do at present to compensate for the blood loss. I dont have repair nanobots ready to hand itll take until tomorrow,
at the earliest, to produce an emergency supply. Fortunately, the blood loss doesnt seem to have been too bad. The spill looked worse than it was.
She showed me the dressing she intended to apply. It just about qualified as smart, but it was a kind that had virtually disappeared in my time, even in parts of the world where nobody had decent IT or worthwhile medical insurance.
That isnt going to do much for the pain, I complained.
She picked something up from a nearby shelf and handed it to me. It was a plastic bottle containing pills perhaps twenty of them.
What is it? I asked.
Codeine, she told me.
Codeine! Thats antediluvian. What the hell is this place?
We hadnt expected you to start trying to kill one another as soon as you woke up, she countered, drily. Her tone changed, though, as she kept talking. Im afraid youre going to have to serve as an example, to warn the others to look after themselves and one another a little bit better. If I had something ready to hand Id give it to you, but I dont. All thats presently in the stores is pre-nanotech medical apparatus whose evolution, as Mortimer Gray will doubtless be pleased to explain to you, virtually petered out as soon as the first IT suites came on to the market. I can get something better, but itll take time. Quiet now.
I shut up while she applied the dressing and unwrapped my arm, but as soon as the local anaesthetics in the patch of synthetic skin began to kick in I was able to concentrate my attention much more effectively.
I dont suppose youd consider telling me who you are and what the hell youre playing at? I said, trying to sound conciliatory. Whatever war youre fighting, Im not involved. I only just got here.
Im sorry you got caught up in this, she said, after a moments hesitation. We know that its not your fault, and that you cant begin to fathom the situation. I wish I could explain, but were involved in delicate negotiations, and Ive been forbidden to disclose anything that might affect their outcome. I hope Ill get permission to explain whats going on in the near future, but well all need to be patient.
So why not let us go on sleeping? I asked.
She actually bit her lip a little as she suppressed the impulse to answer. It seemed to me that she was very unhappy about her own situation, whatever it was. She was just a pawn, no more in control of the bizarre kidnapping than I was or she was putting on a good act. She couldnt stop me talking, though, so I made my own guess hoping, of course, to be able to deduce something from her reaction.
If you dont want to talk to us, I said, and it appears that you dont, you must want to observe us listen in on our conversation, see how the accusations fly. You want to know how Lowenthal and Horne react.
She remained stubbornly silent.
I changed tack. Okay, I said. How about helping me out by offering me a few hints as to what I ought to ask Lowenthal and Horne, in order to help both of us get what we want. What kind of a war is it that weve stepped into?
That was a better move. It made her pause, to consider the offer. There were things she wanted to know about Lowenthal and Horne. When I used the word war her expression darkened a little, but I couldnt be sure what the change signified.
While she thought it over I scanned the racks, trying to pick up clues as to what might be in the packages especially the ones that looked as if they had been here long before the pirates moved in. Unfortunately, almost all the labels I could see were numbers and meaningless jumbles of letters. Everything was identifiable from the outside, but only if you knew the code. There were only a handful of real words, and all but one of those were etched on the more recent packaging. A lot of those packs upwards of fifty allegedly contained manna or water, just like the packs that were stacked up in the room into which the cell doors opened. The only interesting word that I could see on any of the ancient plastic wrap had been scrawled on a piece of sealing tape in ink.