He shivered. God, I hate cold. He wobbled over to the glass door. It was snowing outside, tiny scintillant dots whipping by slantwise through the white are of a floodlight. They would be hard, and hiss and sting on bare skin. A weird vision of a dozen naked men standing shivering in a midnight blizzard flitted across his mind’s eye, but he could attach no names to the scene, only a sensation of deep disaster. Was that how he had died, freezing in the wind and snow? Recently, nearby?
I was dead. The realization came to him for the first time, a burst of shock radiating outward from his belly. He traced the aching scars on his torso through the thin fabric of his gown. And I’m not feeling too good now, either. He giggled, an off-balance noise disturbing even to his own ears. He stifled his mouth with his fist. He must not have had time to be afraid, before, because the retroactive wash of terror knocked him to his knees. Then to his hands and knees. The shivering cold was making his hands shake uncontrollably. He began to crawl.
He must have triggered some sensor, because the transparent door hissed open. Oh, no, he wasn’t going to make that error again, and get exiled to the outer darkness. He began to crawl away. His vision blurred, and he got turned around somehow; icy concrete instead of smooth tile beneath his hand warned him of his mistake. Something seemed to seize his head, half-shock, half-blow, with a nasty buzzing sound. Violently rebuffed, he smelled singed hair. Fluorescent patterns spun on his retinas. He tried to withdraw, but collapsed across the door-groove in a puddle of ice water and some slimy orange glop like gritty mold. No, damn it no, I don’t want to freeze again … ! He curled up in desperate revulsion.
Voices; shouts of alarm. Footsteps, babble, warm, oh blessed warm hands pulled him away from the deadly portal. A couple of women’s voices, and one man’s: “How did he get up here?” “—shouldn’t have gotten out.” “Call Rowan. Wake her up—” “He looks terrible.” “No,” a hand held his face to the light by his hair, “that’s the way he looks anyway. You can’t tell.”
The face belonging to the hand loomed over his, harsh and worried. It was Rowan’s assistant, the young man who’d sedated him. He was a lean fellow with Eurasian features, with a definite bridge to his nose. His blue jacket said R. Durona, insanely enough. But it wasn’t Dr. R. So call him … Brother Durona. The young man was saying, “—dangerous. It’s incredible that he penetrated our security in that condition!”
“Na’ sec’rty.” Words! His mouth was making words! “Fire safty.” He added reflectively, “Dolt.”
The young man’s face jerked back in bewildered offense. “Are you talking to me, Short Circuit?”
“He’s talking!” His Dr. Durona’s face circled overhead, her voice thrilled. He recognized her even with her fine hair loose, falling all around her face in a dark cloud. Rowan, my love. “Raven, what did he say?”
The youth’s dark brows wrinkled. “I’d swear he just said ’fire safety.’ Gibberish, I guess.”
Rowan smiled wildly. “Raven, all the secured doors open outward without code-locks. For escape in case of fire or chemical accident or—do you realize the level of understanding that reveals?”
“No,” said Raven coldly.
That dolt must have stung, considering its source … he grinned darkly up at the hovering faces and the lobby ceiling wavering beyond them.
An older, alto voice came in from the left, restoring order, disbanding the crowd. “If you don’t have a function here, get back to bed.” A Dr. Durona whose short-cut hair was almost pure white, the owner of the alto voice, shuffled into his field of view, and stared thoughtfully down at him. “Dear heart, Rowan, he almost escaped, disabled as he is!”
“Hardly an escape,” said Brother Raven. “Even if he’d somehow gotten through the force screen, he’d have frozen to death in twenty minutes out there tonight, dressed like that.”
“How did he get out?”
An upset Dr. Durona confessed, “He must have gone past the monitor station while I was in the lav. I’m sorry!”
“Suppose he had made it this far in the daytime?” speculated the alto. “Suppose he had been seen? It could have been disastrous.”
“I’ll palm-lock the door to the private wing after this,” the flustered Dr. Durona promised.
“I’m not sure that will be enough, considering this remarkable performance. Yesterday he couldn’t even walk. Still, this fills me with hope as much as alarm. I think we have something here. We had better set a closer guard.”
“Who can be spared?” asked Rowan.
Several Dr. Duronas, clad variously in robes and nightgowns, looked at the young man.
“Aw, no,” Raven protested.
“Rowan may watch him in the daytime, and continue her work. You will take the night shift,” the white-haired woman instructed firmly.
“Yes, ma’am,” the youth sighed.
She gestured imperiously. “Take him back to his room now. You had better check him for damages, Rowan.”
“I’ll get a float pallet,” said Rowan.
“You don’t need a float pallet for him,” scoffed Raven. He knelt, gathered the wanderer up in his arms, and grunted to his feet.
Showing off his strength? Well … no. “He weighs about as much as a wet coat. Come on, Short Circuit, back to bed with you.”
Muzzily indignant, he suffered himself to be carried off. Rowan hovered apprehensively at his side across the lobby, down the tube, through the storage chamber, and back into the peculiar building-under-a-building. At least, in response to his continued shivering, she set the bed’s heat-bubble zone to a higher temperature this time.
Rowan examined him, with particular attention to his aching scars. “He hasn’t managed to rip anything apart inside. But he seems physiologically upset. It may be from the pain.”
“Do you want me to give him another two cc’s of sedative?” asked Raven.
“No. Just keep the room dim and quiet. He’s exhausted himself. Once he warms up I think he’ll sleep on his own.” She touched his cheek, then his lips, tenderly. “That was the second time today that he spoke, do you know?”
She wanted him to speak to her. But he was too tired now. And too rattled. There had been a tension among those people tonight, all those Dr. Duronas, that was more than medical fear for a patient’s safety. They were very worried about something. Something to do with him? He might be a blank to himself, but they knew more and they weren’t telling him.
Rowan eventually pulled her night robe more closely about herself, and left. Raven arranged two chairs, one for a seat and one for his feet, settled down, and began reading from a hand-viewer. Studying, for he occasionally re-ran screens or made notes. Learning to be a doctor, no doubt.
He lay back, drained beyond measure. His excursion tonight had nearly killed him, and what had he learned for all his pains? Not much, except this: I am come to a very strange place.
And I am a prisoner here.
Chapter Twenty
Mark, Bothari-Jesek, and the Countess were in the library of Vorkosigan House going over ship specs the day before the scheduled departure.