My lungs hurt too. Despite the masks, we must have both inhaled a couple kilos of the dust. I didn't want to keep going. I wanted to lie down and die. But I didn't. Not yet. I started crawling toward the back, looking for the box with the red cross on it. Lizard came with me. We both knew the drill.
We didn't try to pull the jumpsuit off him. We had to cut it. Parts of it were burned. Parts of it were still frozen. Pieces of charred skin came away with the material. The dust covered everything.
I couldn't tell how badly Duke was injured. We got his shirt off him and I started pasting poker-chip-shaped monitors to his chest. I put the last three on his forehead and temples. Then we wrapped him in a medi-blanket. I found another probe and put it in the crook of his elbow. I attached a pressure-feeder to his upper arm and gave him a half-liter of artificial blood. Then I started him on glucose and antibiotics.
That done, I lifted his goggles and mask. His eyes were swollen. His nose was bleeding. Lizard wiped his face gently with a damp towel. I found a clean 0-mask and carefully replaced his used one. We'd found the chopper just in time. The tank was almost empty.
The console said he was in shock. The ultrasonic scanner in the blanket gave a very confused reading. Then it gave up and merely flashed a simple red warning: WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE.
His brain waves were steady though. That was a good sign. So was his heart.
I sat back then, pulled off my 0-mask and flung it at the back of the ship. Everything was covered with pink. A puff of dust billowed where the mask hit.
I still wanted to die. "Give me one of those cloths-?"
Lizard peeled open a new packet and slapped it onto my palm. I unfolded it and buried my face in its cool freshness. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you for the cloth. Thank you for the siren. Thank you for being here. Thank you for saving Duke's life." I didn't know if I was thanking Lizard or God. Probably both. "Thank you." My voice cracked on the last one. Lizard handed me another bulb of water.
"What happened?" she asked.
I sank back against the bulkhead behind me. I sucked water from the bulb for a moment, then looked at her. She pulled off her mask. She was frosted all over with pink powder too-except for her eyes and mouth. The effect was horrible. We both looked grotesque. She sat back against the bulkhead opposite me and waited.
I let out my breath. My chest hurt. I sucked more water. I didn't want to talk. I said, "You are looking at the biggest asshole on the face of the Earth. I screwed it up worse than I have ever screwed up anything-"
"That part I know," Lizard said. "That part is obvious. Tell me the part I don't know."
"I'm sorry," I said. "I led us into a trap. At least it looked like a trap to Duke. I'm still not so sure it was. But the effect was the same." I sucked at the bulb. God, I was thirsty! What was it about this dust anyway? I looked back to Lizard and continued softly, "Anyway, there are creatures out there. We saw them. They surrounded us. They look like little furry men. They're shaped like ducks. They waddle. They have round faces and slitted eyes and floppy ears. They talk like chipmunks. They make faces at each other. They use their hands when they talk. They're too cute to be real. I think they escaped from Disneyland. They surrounded us and wouldn't let us pass. They were keeping us for something. A worm. Three more of them-no, four-came riding up on a Daddy-worm. They held a conference. And then the worm moved toward Duke. It didn't look like an attack to me-but Duke fired anyway. And his torch blew up. It must have been the dust. It's too fine. It explodes-" I shuddered at the memory. I didn't want to talk any more, I didn't want to tell the rest.
Lizard didn't press me. She just sat and studied me quietly. I studied her back.
I didn't know how to be with her. I'd fallen back into this chopper and I'd wanted to bawl like a baby. I'd wanted to cry into someone's arms. That's how I'd always thought of women-that they had an unlimited supply of hugs for the needy-because that's what I thought a woman should be. Because I'd always been one of the needy.
But there weren't any hugs here.
That wasn't Lizard. Lizard was all military. Lizard was as crisp as a brand new banknote. She scared me.
I sucked at the bulb of water again. It was empty.
Lizard went digging in the supplies and handed me another bubble. I took it and bit the nipple open. As I drank, she asked quietly, "Were you scared?"
"That's the funny thing. Not while it happened. Now-" I held out my hand to show her. "I'm still shaking-"
She nodded. "I'm familiar with the experience. People who don't know call it courage."
"Yeah," I said. "It wasn't courage. It was just-me doing what I had to do because I couldn't think of anything else."
Her eyes were too penetrating. I looked away. At the floor, the walls, the ceiling of the chopper.
Did she see how close to panic I still was? She began to speak again, quietly. "I saw an old air force hangar blow up that way once. I was only ten meters from the place where the fire started. It was just a little thing at first. It started in a trash can-some idiot tossed a lit cigarette into it, but the flames suddenly climbed up the wall. I turned for the door just as the fire touched the first catwalk. There was fifty years of dust in the rafters. By the time I finished turning, the fire had already raced ahead of me. In less than three seconds it had reached across the whole ceiling. Somebody yelled at me, so I ran. By the time I made it to the door there was a hot wind pushing me out. I got out of the building, ran twenty meters, turned around to look and saw the whole wall explode outward. I turned around and kept running. The next time I looked back, the roof of the building was just coming off in a ball of orange flame. The whole process of ignition took less than ten seconds. I've been terrified of it happening again ever since. I don't remember being scared at the time. But I've been scared ever since. "
"Yeah-" I said. The bulb was empty. I put it aside. "That's what happened here. I didn't have time to think about it then now I can't stop thinking about it. It's like a video playing over and over in my head and I'm stuck in the middle of it. And I don't know how to stop it. I keep seeing the flames. And the dust. And the worm. And the bunnydogs. I keep wishing I could have done something-"
A flicker of annoyance crossed her face, then she looked at me sternly. "What happened?"
"The flames didn't leap out from the torch like they should have. They leapt back. They enveloped Duke in a ball of fire. I didn't think-I just pointed the freezer at him and sprayed him with liquid nitrogen. The flames disappeared almost immediately. So did the worm and the bunnydogs. I don't know how they navigate in that stuff. I couldn't. I was lost. I grabbed Duke and started staggering in the direction I thought was the chopper. And I was wrong again. If you hadn't turned on the siren, I'd still be out there dragging him around. Or dead. We'd have been out of air by now," I added.
Lizard nodded. She said, "Actually, you did the right thing. That jumpsuit is flame resistant. So is the O-mask and goggles. There wasn't anything else you could have done. You're alive. He's alive. You did it right."
I shook my head. "But it doesn't feel right. It feels like a replay of Shorty-"
"Uh huh," she nodded. "That's what it looks like to you. Haven't you ever noticed? Nothing is ever just what it is? It's always like something else. Whatever happens, it always reminds you of something that happened before. Right?"
She was right. "Uh-yeah!" I found myself smiling.
"I do it too." She giggled back at me. Her laughter was liquid-and startling. "You told your story," she said, "-so I told mine. Do you know that most conversations are nothing more than two people telling their stories to each other?"
Something about the certainty with which she said it made me think of Dr. Fromkin. But I didn't get a chance to ask her-Duke moaned.