Hearing him, understanding him, I knew him. He was one of the men who had helped me into the hut the night before, one of the strangers who had touched the amulet, and he was trying to save me. His aura was cyanotic with fear of being thought a traitor, but it also bore a blue brighter than that of his superior, blue that spoke of a part of his spirit that had been revived. When he touched the amulet, when he helped heal his comrade, he had healed a little, too. Furthermore, he was still a little linked to me, even though time had passed and contact was broken. He carefully avoided looking at me.
The colonel strode in front of me, glared at me, nodded abruptly, and I was manhandled back to the village. The little creep who held my arms had to bend me over double to keep my wrists between my shoulder blades, because he wasn't tall enough to reach my shoulder blades easily when I stood up straight. So I stumbled ahead of him to where Hue sat painfully erect, watching our progress with an aura cloaked in battleship-gray and her eyes desperately hard. Something gleamed in the mud: her gold tooth.
The others had disappeared-including Ahn. The villagers were still protecting him, which I took to mean that the young soldier who had spoken to the colonel was right. The village was too frightened of the VC to try to save me, but the colonel would be pushing his luck to
. ,, streat me here. Damn. William knew I was here and there was a slim chance he might have found other men, that I might still be rescued, although I wasn't sure that by the time that happened I would be in any shape to know the difference.
While I was thinking this over, surrounded by small people who were smirking at me, poking, groping, and otherwise trying to make me Jump so that my arms would hurt even worse, the colonel stooped and extended a hand to Hue. He said something gruff and disapproying to her. She looked up at him and spoke again. And again I understood what she was saying without translation. The words of my captors, except for the boy who had talked to the colonel, were still a blessed mystery to me.
Obviously, a detached part of me decided, the amulet formed a link between those who touched it, one that conferred understanding-I supposed it must simply get clearer and more literal with practice, or length and intensity of contact. Or perhaps I simply underltood more because of the urgency of my need to know what was being said.
Hue's face was swollen, bleeding, and covered with filth, but she said in the calm, soft voice appropriate to a well-bred Vietnamese girl, "I have done nothing incorrect, Father. You are mistaken about the woman.
She is not really an American. She's a magician who has made herself look like an American, to test us, if you ask me. She saved my miserable life. Would you have me dishonor our ancestors by betraying her?"
The colonel stood, and just for a moment the brilliant yellow of his aura flickered with indecision; then he marched us out of the village.
I couldn't keep up. The VC trotted through places my body wouldn't fit, and the branches tore at me. I kept closing my eyes to try to protect them, because bent over as I was, my face was even with the backlashing brush that hit me when the others passed. Small hard bodies crowded me on all sides, shoving so that I was afraid of being trampled. Finally I fell.
I fell forward, face down into the mud, without being able to use my hands to break my fall. My teeth bit into my lips and cheeks and my nose started bleeding. The little bastard who had been holding on to me fell onto my back and I rolled over angrily and dumped him. "Let me alone, dammit," I squalled. "I haven't done anything to you." My feelings were hurt as badly as they had been in my dream when I found out I was in hell. And even while I was bellowing, I realized how stupid it all was. I was going to get killed in an undoubtedly nasty and painful fashion by people I had absolutely no quarrel with. How many of their relatives had been killed the same way? How many of my patients had survived the same sort of thing? It was all so dumb. I screamed something to that effect.
The young soldier who had tried to help me that morning knelt beside me, placatingly, but the colonel backhanded me the way he had done his daughter. I saw the blow coming and ducked away from it. That was a mistake. He knocked the young soldier out of the way and reached for me with both hands. His aura didn't change, except for a few sparks of red, and I knew that he didn't really care about me personally one way or the other, but was angry that Hue had taken my side against him. And though no one else could see, I knew from the foggy gray encompassing his aura that he was mourning his wife, the woman who was killed by the snake. His movements were precise and mechanical as he cut his way through a swamp of shock and loss.
He grabbed my hair first, but it was short and slick with mud and rain, so he switched his grip to the theng that held the amulet around my neck and jerked on it. The theng cut across my windpipe and I started to cough, then didn't have the breath to cough, gagged, and felt my face swell with unoxygenated blood. My lungs pumped like crazy, my whole chest burning, and water streamed from my eyes and nose. My ears rang and everything started to cloud over.
And that detached part of me thought: Oh boy, the press is going to love this one-Kitty McCulley, girl martyr. I wonder how many extra innocent people are going to get wasted as payback for me? The thought did not fill me with a savage thrill of vengeance. It just made me sadder and angrier and more frustrated with the whole miserable mess. I was going to die poorly and stupidly and senselessly. Shit.
Deadness tried to enter through the amulet, but my own fear and anger cut through it like a red-hot chain saw.
Oxygen flooded back into my lungs like water poured over a burn as the theng was released. My head kept swimming for several moments, but no blow, no questions followed. The little bastard with the hot-lava aura griped in a high-pitched voice and was very plainly saying something like "Let me at 'er, let me at 'er," but nobody was touching me anymore, and I was allowed to bury my face in my hands and gasp until my heartbeat and respirations resumed something like normal function.
When I finally looked up, the coloel was half a step from me, staring at me. He looked as shaken as I felt. When I looked at him, he looked away. Lava-aura made a disgusted noise in his throat and growled something at the colonel, which earned him a glower. The colonel did bear a family resemblance to Hue, especially in his truculent expression and the intelligence in his eyes. But he was baking on top, and his sharp cheekbones and chin triangulated to give him a closer resemblance to the snake that had killed his wife.
He seemed to come to a decision and, elbowing aside both lavaaura and my ally, squatted down before me and spoke clearly, distinctly, and loudly-in Vietnamese. My ally protested that I didn't know Vietnamese, so the colonel raised his voice and spoke louder. But it wasn't necessary. While his individual words didn't make sense to me, I still was able to catch his drift. He looked into my eyes, pointedly away from the amulet.
"They say you have healing hands, woman. I should cut those hands off to keep my people from falling under your spell. But my ignorant daughter says you mean no harm, that you use this power to help our people-that you are a compassionate person. If that is so, you have other power to help us. You come up North with us, you talk to your American press, you tell them that your men rape our women, murder them, but we treat you with respect. You tell them how wrong this war is. You say to them that your healing hands can make no difference when for every person you save, thousands die. You do this, woman, and earn your life. Do not think to trick us. Up North they have good speakers of English."