He rose a full meter in a second, the wound at his side feeling as though someone ripped a massive piece of duct tape from it. Dangling gear weighed him down and knocked about his legs. Something very bad had happened to his left calf. Still in the water, his boots stirred a circle.
Another upward jolt as Minerva found the proper throttling for a full cargo load, and then everything smoothed out, the vined walls of the sinkhole falling around him.
MINNIE: You OK? I can’t see you.
JOHN: Fine, let’s finish this.
MINNIE: Meaning set you down? I can set you down, have you lay on the platform, or I can carry you like this to the new spot. It’s a 2-minute ride.
JOHN: Just go please.
He was sure he came off terse and snappish, but the pain was unbelievable. She’d make him pay later, but for now he could think of little else but escaping this pulling, stretching, tearing. At any second his flesh would rip free and drop with the gear to the ground, his skinless body somehow remaining bound to the rope.
MINNIE: I’m so sorry! Going now. Just keep taking deep breaths.
A whole new Minerva.
John’s body dangled from the chest loop and oscillated as they flew above the forest. To redirect his screaming mind, John tried to imagine how this would look to an observer on the ground. He’d probably appear dead. How high up was he? He didn’t want to know. Some other distraction. A song? He couldn’t summon a single tune.
His eyes remained shut tight for most of the way, intermittent peeks revealing only a purple mountain, growing larger with each glimpse.
It felt much longer than 2 minutes, but he was measuring by pain time, an abstract measurement existing outside normal space-time. No, his clock confirmed more than 5 minutes had passed. Probably a 2-minute ride without a spec-defying load.
When his feet finally touched something, his legs followed, folding beneath him, his body spreading out on a crunchy, semi-soft surface until all of his weight rested on his enflamed side. It was as though he’d been lowered into a brim-filled bathtub of agony, and time ceased to exist at all.
Minnie liked this new cave. Its wide-open nature brought obvious security concerns, and the distance from a water supply was rather inconvenient, but the abundance of life-sustaining air, lack of determined parasites, the ability to come and go without negotiating an obstacle course, and not-to-be-discounted killer view made up for it all. They’d moved into the Hynka Country equivalent of a penthouse apartment, and if Ish had been correct about Mount Duck Rock’s sacred nature, Minnie and John wouldn’t have to worry too much about security. Surely this had been Ish’s thinking when she selected this site. Her EV had landed precisely where she intended.
Minnie sat leaning against the smooth stone wall at the cave’s entrance, watching the sun set on another Epsy day. Far to the north, the towering front of a major storm loomed beyond the mountain valley. According to historical weather patterns, the cell would gain significant strength when it reached the mountains. The new cave was in no danger, but floods were likely in the basins below. Their old sinkhole would surely overflow.
“Hey,” John’s voice from the darkness. He’d been unconscious for several hours. She’d given him a couple rounds of pain meds.
Minnie smiled and walked inside, grabbing a heater and flipping it on. Orange light slowly brightened the cave. “Welcome to our new abode.” She reached the bend and sat down beside him, curling her feet under her legs. She rested a hand on his survival bag. “How’s your pain? Best to wait another hour before another dose, but if you’re in agony—”
“No, no, I’m fine. How about you?”
“Me? I have no issues at all. I was lucky… well, being in the tent…” She sighed, feeling guilty once more for making him sleep outside the tent. Well, she hadn’t made him, but by telling him he could have the tent to himself, and then him insisting she keep it—she knew it was her fault he was injured. “The parasites only got to you because I didn’t want to share a bunk.”
John was quiet a moment, tentatively feeling around inside his survival bag. She watched the lump of his hand inspect his side, move down to the left thigh, and then the hand appeared at his neck, gently probing the shiny glaze of sealant she’d sprayed on all of the wounds. He turned his head on the fluffy coat she’d bundled into a pillow for him, and peered up at her.
“I meant, have you been able to… well… purge?”
Minnie laughed and slapped a hand over her mouth. His expression suggested she looked like a looner, but it was just so inexplicably great to hear John being John again. “Funny you should mention that. Been handling that business for a while now. Even handled one just a couple hours ago. Feel like a new woman.”
He cracked a small smile, then resumed the professional, mature tone. “How’s the regularity been? Since the first?”
She shook her head, amused by the preoccupation. “Well, that was only just a few days ago.”
“Wow. So—”
“Hey, I know it’s your favorite subject matter, but we’re done with this topic, boss.” She grinned and patted his arm. “Back to your wounds. Sensors show you’ve regrown about ten percent of the lost tissue. In terms of mobility, it looks like your right calf is still pretty much useless. I don’t see that changing without some kind of implant. If Pablo was still around, he might have had better ideas.” She watched his face slowly sober. Perhaps she wasn’t relaying this news with the best bedside manner, but he already knew most of this, so it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise. “As for the ribcage, I honestly don’t know how that’s going to work out. It worries me more than any of the other ones. If not for the sealant on there, the bones would still be exposed.”
John blinked purposefully a few times in a row, licked his lips, and tried to speak. “Min—” He grimaced as he tried to swallow. Minnie stuck a straw in his mouth and he drew a few pained gulps of water. “Thanks… Minerva, but what… what exactly happened to me?”
He didn’t remember.
It was all gone.
Minnie spent the following hour recounting the events of the past weeks. John seemed to gradually stow away his surprise and fear, thanking her at the end for everything she’d done to save his life.
Following an uneasy silence, while John peered under a couple of his bandages, Minnie decided to leave him alone with his thoughts and venture out to hunt.
“I’ll keep an eye on you in mapping,” he said as she left.
In the valley, she came across a pair of bunnies nibbling at a root bulb they’d dug out. With the bunnies in her pocket, she inspected the root. Like most non-fungi plants on Epsy, the seeds grew from roots, acting as both fruit and storage organ, and where they were most accessible to seed-spreading helper animals. This one was a dark aqua hue, had the exterior texture of a carrot, and a squishy tomatoey pulp inside. She unearthed a few that hadn’t been nibbled, and brought them back to the cave.
Despite her insistence that he rest, John lay on his side and used one hand to help rig up a rotisserie using the heater and some IR emitters.
After a chemical analysis, it turned out that the root’s outer crust was both edible and safe, while the pulp and seeds were human incomp. The nontoxic part tasted like a pickled shallot or onion. Unimpressed with their “vegetables,” they moved on to the meat. Both agreed that the bunnies, indeed, tasted like chicken.