The Outcast nodded. “I guess so. I didn’t know what they would do.”
“They can do much more,” said Wyungare. “But for now, ignore them.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“It always does.” Wyungare shaded his eyes, staring up at the proliferating air bursts of translated missiles. He shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” said the Outcast. “I thought better they should come here than kill more of my people.” He hung his head.
“All right,” said Wyungare, “then let me give you something to distract you.” He reached over and passed his right hand across the Outcast’s eyes.
“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” said the Outcast glumly.
They stood in the dimly lit tiled hallway of a hospital. All in white, two nurses and a doctor bustled past them without a glance. The medical personnel pushed hurriedly through a pair of swinging wooden doors.
“What’s this?” said the Outcast. “I already know it’s a hospital.”
“Specifically it’s Atelier Community Hospital.” said Wyungare. “We’re in Jack’s province of the dreamtime, remember. Follow me.” He led the Outcast toward the swinging doors.
“Shouldn’t we stay out of there?” said the Outcast nervously.
“It’s the emergency room,” said Wyungare, “but we are effectively ghosts. Come along.” They passed a boy sitting miserably on the bench outside the double doors.
“It’s Jack,” said the Outcast.
“Stay close to me,” said Wyungare. The wooden door felt hot against his fingertips, as though the pores of the wood itself were sweating.
The young girl’s scream stopped the Outcast dead in his tracks. He halted just inside the emergency room’s doors and stared. Then he looked away. “What is this?” he said. “She’s so young.”
“Eleven,” agreed Wyungare. “Not even a teen and she is bearing a child herself.”
The girl lay with the sheet across her chest, one nurse holding her right hand tightly. Her sticklike legs were spread wide, and there was a dark tide of blood.
“Who is she?” said the Outcast, looking back at the girl, then glancing quickly away.
“Jack is her older brother, but not much older. Considering that their stepfather sired the child, I have no idea what that turns Jack’s relationship to her baby into.”
More piping screams from the soon-to-be mother ripped through their ears. The Outcast looked back toward the table and shook,
“Hemorrhage,” said Wyungare neutrally. “There are complications. She was beaten. This is a small hospital with a competent staff, but I’m afraid”
The wail from the table was echoed by the cry from out in the hallway. The boy’s sorrow continued. His sister’s did not.
“The baby is dead as well,” said Wyungare quietly. “Come.” He took the Outcast’s arm firmly and steered him toward the door. In the hail, they passed unnoticed by the boy. He looked suddenly as though he carried the weight of mountains on his back.
“What… happened?” said the Outcast.
“Before now? Simply the sort of family violence you know in your own fashion.”
“And what’s going to happen next?”
“Jack has no magic sword,” said Wyungare. “He will fight his demons inside himself. He will blame himself for the rest of his life, unless”
The Outcast looked over at the Aborigine with sudden hope. “Unless what?”
Wyungare stared back for a long moment. “Unless there is a gesture of healing.”
“Like what?”
“Empathy,” said Wyungare. “Like to like.”
The Outcast stared, mute. The surface of his eyes glistened.
“Think about it,” said the shaman.
“Empathy … Think about it …” The echo of Wyungare’s voice drifted through Teddy’s thoughts, relentless.
“I don’t want to think about it,” Bloat wailed. “I don’t want to remember any of it. Stop making me.”
He suddenly realized that he was back in the throne room, that he was Bloat once more. It was difficult to keep his eyes open — a sapping weariness held him, made it nearly impossible to concentrate or move. Something was going on — jokers were scurrying across the mosaicked tiles of the floor like ants whose nest had been stirred with a stick. Kafka was directing traffic under the stained-glass central dome. The mindvoices of the Rox were yammering and shouting; Bloat was too exhausted to even try to sort them out.
Kafka had stopped waving his arms to glance up at Bloat. Under the carapace, his eyes glistened. “Governor?”
“I’m going back to sleep, Kafka,” Bloat said. “I don’t want to have to think about it, okay? I need… need to find the Outcast…” Bloat’s eyes closed, but he kept mumbling, not quiet sure what he was saying. “Don’t want to go back with Wyungare again… need to find something pleasant… something of mine…”
He realized that he wasn’t in the throne room anymore.
He fell into memory…
“I’ll… I’ll tell my dad,” Teddy said. “Really. He’ll do something about it.” Teddy didn’t know what his dad would really do. Actually, he couldn’t imagine his father doing anything, not really, especially not standing up to Uncle Alan, who looked like the brawny steelworker he was. Teddy’s father looked like, well, Teddy; soft, overweight, and not very brave.
A slug.
Teddy just wished he were back home. He wished he’d never come to stay overnight with his cousin.
“No!” Rob half shrieked, half whispered in the warm darkness under the covers. His voice sounded like Jack’s. Teddy hoped desperately that his uncle and aunt didn’t hear them. “If you tell, then your dad’ll say somethin’ to mine, and he’ll just make it worse for me. So shut up, Teddy.”
“Rob —” The image came back to Teddy, the quick frightful glimpse of Rob’s tear-streaked face crushed against the bed, of his uncle… I should have said something but you never say anything to grownups. They can do whatever they want. That’s why I just went back downstairs to the porch and waited until I saw Uncle Alan come downstairs buckling his pants. I didn’t mean to see it. I didn’t want to see it.
“Just shut up, I said. There’s nothin’ you can do about it. Nothin’. Don’t your dad never hurt you?”
“Yeah, I guess. He’s spanked me before.”
“Well, what would your dad do if my dad told him to stop spankin’ you?”
Teddy knew the answer to that. His dad would give that stupid, nervous half laugh and say “Sure” because he wouldn’t want to fight, but it wouldn’t change anything. “Nothing much.”
“Yeah. Right.” Rob huddled in a fetal crouch under the covers, hugging himself. “So don’t you say nothin’, you hear? Never.”
Teddy heard. And he never said nothin’, even though he somehow knew he should and even though the guilt gnawed at him and even though it was awfully hard to joke with Uncle Alan the way he used to. He stopped asking to see Rob. He never asked Rob to spend the night with him, not after that night. After a few years, when Uncle Alan and Aunt Eileen and Rob moved away, Teddy even believed he’d forgotten the entire incident. Damn Wyungare. Damn him for making me remember. Damn him for expecting me to do something.
There was a continuous roar from the Jersey Gate. Things sounded pretty bad there.
But still the bombardment was not as effective as it might have been. Patchwork’s prediction of shoot-and-scoot tactics had been correct: each battery fired no more than five shots per barrel before shifting position. And the fire hadn’t been terribly accurate — the fog and the radar spoofing had diminished accuracy considerably.