Oilcan pulled the flatbed to a stop, headlights aimed at the front door of Lain's grand Victorian home, and called back, "Tink, we're here!"
Tinker slid into the cab beside him. "He's still alive." She had spent the ride wishing she had asked Windwolf about the cancel spell in his few moments of awareness. There seemed no polite way to say, "What does this do? Do you mind if I cast this on you before you die?" to a man mauled while protecting you. She had kept her silence. Besides, there was still hope. "I'll go see if Lain's home."
"It's four in the morning, Tink."
"Well, if she's in town, she's here, then."
Lain's house had a massive front door with leaded glass sidelights extending the entrance out another two feet on either side. The doorbell was an ancient device—one turned a key located in the center of the door, and the key spun a metal spring coiled inside a domed bell bolted to the other side. Tinker had broken it as a child; last year, she had fixed it in an act of adult penitence. She spun and spun the key now, making the bell ring unendingly.
Lights came on, starting from the lab in the back of the house. Lain came up the hall, her figure distorted by the lead glass and the shuttle accident. The xenobiologist had trained to study the life in the seas of Europa. Crippled, she'd found a second chance studying the alien life of Elfhome.
"Who is it?" Lain called as she came.
Tinker stopped ringing the bell. "It's Tinker!"
Lain opened the door, blinking in the flatbed's headlights, leaning heavily on her crutch. "Tink, what in the world? This better not be another tengu you're bringing me."
"A what?"
"A Japanese elf. Related to the oni. Sometimes it looks like a crow."
"I've never brought you a crow."
"In the dream I had last week, you brought me a tengu, and wanted me to bandage it. I kept on telling you that it was dangerous, but you wouldn't listen to me. We bandaged it up, and it turned you into a diamond and flew away with you in its beak."
"I'm not going to be responsible for dreams you had."
This was the way conversations tended to go with Lain. Tinker was never sure if she liked talking with Lain. They were never direct, easy-to-understand conversations, and were thus an annoyance and a treasure at the same time.
Lain pulled an umbrella out of a stand by the door and stepped out into the wet to thumb it open. "Well, the phones haven't started working yet, so I might as well deal with this emergency now. You couldn't have picked a worse day to bring me something to treat."
"If this weren't Shutdown Day, I wouldn't be coming to you with this."
At the flatbed, Lain collapsed the umbrella, set it inside the chest-high door, unlatched her crutch, put it beside the umbrella, and then reached up and swung gracefully into the trailer. Lacking Lain's height and reach, and with one hand nearly useless, Tinker scrambled up in a less dignified manner.
Running off the flatbed's electric, Tinker had only managed to set up two lights. The dimness hid the worst of Windwolf's condition. Still, the sight of the bandaged elf seemed to shock Lain.
"Oh, my," Lain said. "It is a tengu."
"I am not a tengu," Windwolf whispered.
"Close enough." Lain shrugged, picking up her crutch. "What happened?"
"He was attacked by dogs," Tinker said. "A pack of them—really ugly and bigger than wargs. They were magical constructs."
"They were Foo dogs," Windwolf whispered.
Lain limped to Windwolf and eyed his many wounds. "Foo dogs. Can tengu be far behind?"
"A good question." Windwolf sighed. "Do you understand the strictures of the treaty between our people?"
"Yes," Lain said.
"Do I have your pledge that you'll abide by it?"
"You'll trust my word?"
"Tinker has vouched for you."
Lain threw Tinker a concerned look. "I see. Yes, you have my word."
"Word about what?" Tinker asked.
"The treaty allows for simple first aid." Lain scanned the equipment connected to Windwolf. "It theorized that since we can interbreed, humans and elves must be ninety-eight percent to ninety-nine percent genetically identical. But then, we're ninety percent identical to earthworms, so it's not that amazing, except that this is an alien world."
"We're that close to earthworms?"
"Yes. Frightening isn't it?"
"How close are Earth earthworms and Elfhome earthworms?"
"Do you know how many species of earthworms are on Earth?" Lain eyed the power sink. "Of course primates are also ninety-eight percent identical to us, and we can't interbreed."
"Has anyone tried?"
"Knowing humans," Windwolf murmured. "Yes."
Lain laughed, looking amused and yet insulted. "As a scientifically controlled experiment or a sexual perversion?"
"Both." Windwolf earned a dark look from Lain.
"What does that have to do with anything now?" Tinker asked to distract the two.
"The point is that the elves want to keep it all theory," Lain said. "It's against the treaty to cull any genetic samples from an accident victim. It's why Mercy won't treat elves." She shook her head. "This is going to be tricky. I'll need him in my operating room to properly treat him."
Tinker considered. "I have longer leads. We could leave the sink in the trailer and run the magic into your OR with the longer leads. There might be a drop in power, though."
Oilcan peered through the AC slot from the truck cab. "If I take down a section of the fence, we can back up almost to the OR's window."
"Oh, we can't," Tinker said. "We'll drive over the flowers and ruin them."
"A man's life is more important than flowers." Lain brushed the objection aside. "Will the spell let you disconnect and reconnect?"
"I am not a man," Windwolf whispered.
"Elf. Man. Close enough for horseshoes," Tinker said, shaking her head in answer to Lain's question. "I can print a second spell and activate it in the OR. We'll have to scrub his chest to get all traces of the old spell off."
"Horseshoes?" Windwolf asked.
"It's a game," Tinker told him. "Oilcan and I play it at the scrap yard. When you're better, I'll teach it to you."
"Okay." Lain limped to the door. "Let's make this happen."
Tinker printed off another copy of the spell and found longer leads. Oilcan found help at the Observatory in the form of astronomers. They took down much of the picket fence and eased the truck to the porch. Luckily Lain had a hospital gurney in her lab, and they wheeled it over a ramp into the trailer. After Oilcan and two of the postdocs slid Windwolf onto the gurney, they wheeled it as far as the present leads allowed, which took them inside the foyer of Lain's grand Victorian home.
There they let him sit, while Tink threaded the longer leads out the lab window. Then came the mad scramble of disconnecting leads, pushing Windwolf to the lab, moving the truck, cleaning Windwolf's chest, applying the spell, and reconnecting the leads. Windwolf lay still as death on the gurney even after Tink activated the spell.
"Is he dead?" Tinker had been entertaining herself with thoughts of Windwolf's aristocratic reaction to flinging large metal horseshoes at a metal peg. Would he even come see how the game would be played, she had wondered, or would he vanish out of her life like he had done last time? The thought of him dead and unable to do either sickened her. Oh please, no.
And then after that, an even more horrible thought. Oh, no, the life debt! She patted her shirt pocket, and the cancel spell crinkled reassuringly. There was even magic left in the sink to power the spell.
Lain pulled on latex gloves and then pressed a hand to his neck. "No. He's hanging in there. Barely."
Tinker sniffed as blinked-away tears made her nose start to run.
Lain looked at her strangely.