He nodded and followed her out into the soaking garden, where he was not particularly surprised to see the taxi that had brought him here once again drawn up outside the tumbledown gate. He climbed into it after her and sat curled up around the square pie in his stomach, wondering whether to feel hopeful or simply wretched.
4
It was clear that Gladys knew her way around the hospital. She waddled swiftly ahead, encased in her ectoplasmic mac, down an interminable corridor and into an elevator. Mark thought, following her, that only the raindrops on the surface of the plastic showed that she was not in fact being manifested by some medium or other. He was not surprised when none of the people they passed seemed to notice her. He was putting out the same kind of Don’t see, but with an effort. Hospitals always bothered him acutely. They were so full of pain, and of pain’s obverse, cheerful insensitivity — or was cruelty the word?
Gladys turned to him in the elevator. She looked intent and busy, almost cheerful. “They brought this girl in around five in the morning,” she said. “The poor thing was hurt bad, and she put out a call. Only one call. Then she stopped and drew everything in — as if she’d made a mistake. Anyway, she needed everything she’d got just to stay alive with. Luckily I managed to hitch on when she called. I’ve been monitoring her ever since, and there’s something very peculiar there. As a matter of fact, when you turned up, I was sure it was going to be someone come about her. You gave me quite a surprise. I’m not often wrong that way.”
Mark only nodded. The elevator shaft was like a section through the varied pain of the hospital. The lift carried him past the blinding worry of a parent, the grinding of a broken bone, the eating acid of an internal growth, fever dreams, and for a short — mercifully short — instant, the vivid agony of a knife slicing anesthetized flesh. He had to fight to shield himself.
It was still as bad when he left the elevator and followed Gladys down further corridors where they passed beds. This hospital was on some kind of open plan. Every few yards or so, a corner with windows held a cluster of beds. There were wrung faces on pillows. Women here and there sat up and, in the concentrated egotism of mortal sickness, greedily ate chocolates or stared while visitors harangued them. When they came to the place Gladys was looking for, that was a corner too. You could have taken it for a corner where equipment was dumped, had there not been a bed there. And here was relief. It was such blessed silence from the insistent pains of the hospital that Mark did not understand at once.
Gladys nodded at him. “Feel that? Did you ever know such shielding?”
Only then did Mark associate the silence with the bed around which most of the equipment centered. Silly of me! He marveled that the occupant of the bed seemed so young and small. Anyone who could block out that amount of pain while being so sick as this girl must be a powerful adept indeed. He thought he knew everyone throughout the world who had this kind of strength. But the thin, scraped face among the equipment was not the face of anyone he knew.
“Now, who are you, my darling?” Gladys wondered aloud. Her fat, freckled hands fastened on the girl’s free arm, tenderly, gently. Her breathing grew heavy as she concentrated. “She’s come from a long way away,” she said. “Bad, bad. That car that ran into her crushed her in all down the other side, poor dear, and they haven’t given her enough painkiller, the fools. There. There, Auntie Gladys has put in a few blocks for you, my love, so you can spend your strength on getting well.” She turned over her shoulder to mouth at Mark, “What do you make of the color of her?”
Mark considered. The scraped, half-raw little face had the mauvish tinge of someone badly in shock. Carefully avoiding the abrasions, he put his hand to the sharp, unconscious corner of the girl’s jaw. Mordant blue-gray pulsed from the contact, sickening and strong enough to make his stomach heave. He removed his hand. “She’s been poisoned. It’s no kind of poison I know.”
“Me neither,” said Gladys. “Worse and worse. Those fool doctors haven’t even noticed. Give me your hand and we’ll see what we can do.”
She snatched his hand as she spoke. For a while they both concentrated in silence, drawing off the blue-gray sickening waves and feeding them to whichever of the various sumps would accept them, drawing again, casting the venom, drawing — until no more would be accepted.
“It was a massive dose, whatever it was,” Mark said, “and it’s antipathetic to most of the usual sumps.”
“They did their best,” Gladys said defensively. “So did we. Let’s see if it’s helped at all.” She tapped gently at the girl’s skinny arm. “Wake up, my darling. Auntie Gladys is here. Gladys is here to help. Wake up and tell Gladys what needs to be done for you, my love.”
The girl’s eyes had been half-open all along. Now, slowly, they were seeing. A weak but practiced consciousness played over first Gladys, then Mark.
“Friends, dear,” Gladys said.
They could tell that the girl knew that. Her mouth made a mumble. It sounded like “Thank goodness!” But Mark, moving automatically to another plane of being, interpreted it there and exchanged a look with Gladys. The girl had tried to say “Thank the Goddess!”
“And may She bless you too,” he said. “Where are you from?”
The girl’s mouth mumbled again. Gladys, tenderly holding the girl’s wrist in one hand and grasping Mark’s hand with the other, was forced to join Mark, and both had to move to a more distant plane before the sounds made sense. The girl manifested there as a little flame, flickering and guttering, but somehow fresh and sweet.
“The Ladies of Leathe,” the flame fluttered at them. “I wasn’t careful enough and my Lady Marceny found out — found out, my love, my love — it wasn’t done for the Brotherhood — it was wicked, wicked — and I tried to get away and warn you, my love — but I think she poisoned me — and they have traps out — I didn’t know and I was caught — and my love has no idea — I must warn—”
“Where were these nasty traps, my love?” Gladys asked. “Tell Gladys and she’ll take them apart.”
“Through every band of the Wheel,” flickered the flame. “Between the two of them.”
“But where?” Gladys insisted gently. “Where did you come from, my love?”
“Neighbors,” whispered the flame. It was down to a weak phut-phut now. “Next-door universe — the Brotherhood studies yours — but it was wicked—” The guttering light flared desperately. “I must warn him—”
And went out. On the pillow the eyes were still half-open but evidently saw nothing now. A green light that had been scribbling on a screen drew a straight green line.
“We’d best get out,” Gladys said briskly. “They’ll be along to see her any second.”
They passed the nurse hurrying that way as they went. Both of them made very sure they were not noticed either by her or by anyone else they encountered, until they came to the parking lot, where the taxi driver was patiently reading a newspaper spread over his steering wheel. “Back home?” he asked Gladys. “That was a quickie.”
“It takes all sorts,” said Gladys. “And I can’t wave a magic wand over all of them.” The driver laughed.
Mark fell asleep on the way back, into dreams of drugs uneasily seeping and knives lancing, and did not wake until Gladys was heaving herself out of the taxi at her tumbledown gate.
“Well, how about that?” she puffed, somewhat triumphantly, as they walked up the muddy path. “The only way I slipped up was not seeing you and that poor girl were part of the same thing!”