All kinds of interesting muscles contracted, but she knew — perhaps had always known — that her friend Dan Fixer was too strong a drink for her. Spontaneous combustion.
"You should have gone with Yas, then."
The streetlight two doors down showed his smile. "I don't think so." He raised her left hand and kissed the palm — a lover's move, designed to invite without words. "Anytime you'd like, Jen. Sleep tight."
She watched him walk away.
Anytime?
She had only to ask?
She turned and pressed the lock, her exhausted mind staggering around perilous possibilities.
She stumbled up the stairs and fell into bed thinking she'd probably dreamed the whole thing. For that and a bundle of other excellent reasons, she couldn't imagine taking him up on the offer.
3
For a few days everyone spent time on the wall watching the stream of refugees, but then they lost interest There was nothing new to see, it was depressing, and Anglians were growing more worried about their own security. The town was overcrowded, but that wasn't the problem. It was worry about whether they, too, would end up on the road north.
An occasional group of refugees had a citizen in the family and had to be let in. Those people told tales of whole families ashed. Angliacom showed charts and maps that tracked the hellbane wave, though the announcers assured everyone that the fixers down south had everything under control and that the refugees should be able to go home any day.
However, part of the screen constantly showed the warning that refugees must slaughter large animals before leaving. It was presented as a kindness — the animals would lack care and possibly be victims of a terrifying death — but it was, of course, to starve the blighters.
Jenny wondered how many people recognized that. She also wondered how many saw how the news was sugaring everything and sensed the darker truth. Was she the only one to feel she could taste bitter ashes on the wind, who sensed the peril in the earth, thrumming stronger and stronger, coming, coming, coming…
If the starve-them-to-death plan was working, why did the pressure grow day by day?
Attempts to contact settlements near the affected areas either failed or found people frightened and planning to move. Gaia Central was having trouble keeping track of who was where. Just possibly the first settlers had made a mistake when they'd rejected Earth's efficient communication system and strong, centralized government.
Paradise didn't need that, they'd said, but Gaia wasn't paradise anymore.
Tension was making her jumpy and queasy. Drops got her through her workday, but she stayed home at night, watching the screen with her family.
Dan came over once. He checked her out, but said there was nothing he could fix. He looked worried, and she knew then that the way she felt was to do with the blighters. He looked fine, however, and she heard that every night at the Merrie was a wild night.
She decided all that energy might help her and went there after work, but it was nothing like the music night. Dan flared with too much energy, edgy energy that screamed down her nerves and twisted up her spine, giving her a crashing headache. No one else seemed bothered, but she fled for her own salvation, and because she thought Dan might burn himself to ash.
There was nothing she could do.
Or nothing she wanted to do.
She'd caught his eyes on her once. He'd held the moment before looking away. There must be a hundred women ready to have sex with Dan Fixer, especially now, and she couldn't. Not now.
Spontaneous combustion.
Then Polly's baby was born sick. Jenny was at the hospital with some of the others, waiting for the exciting news. She caught a glimpse of the baby being rushed from delivery room to intensive care in a red pod incubator. It looked tired of life already. A word came into her mind. Blight.
A tight-faced nurse came out of Polly's room. Jenny stepped in her way. "Has the fixer been called?"
"It's not a problem that can be fixed." The nurse walked away, and Jenny turned to the others.
"There must be something Dan can do!"
Yas gave her a look. "This isn't a broken bone or a gash, Jenny. You think he walks on water."
The sharpness of it took Jenny back. "It wouldn't hurt to ask."
"If you want to chase him down…"
Jenny controlled an angry retort. "I do."
She strode to a wall phone and punched in his code. Nothing. She left a message, then tried Ozzy. Dan wasn't at the Merrie. She tried three other possible places. Nothing, nothing, nothing. If only she had his buzzer code, but that was for official business.
She'd always thought Gaia's ways right, but on Earth and most other worlds everyone had a buzzer. They could phone and be phoned anywhere, anytime. A horrible thought, but right now she wanted it.
She should give up, but Yas was looking at her with something close to a smirk, so she went out to search. She hopped a tram and rode it around Low Wall, then took another in to Market Square. Where the hell was he?
He might be at the hospital by now! She leapt off the tram at the next stop and ran to a phonepost. He wasn't there, and the baby was fading fast. She turned from the post — and found Dan there. She knew from his face, but asked anyway. "You heard?"
"Yes."
"So what are you going to do?"
"There's nothing I can do."
"What do you mean? You're a fixer."
He looked worn. Not so much tired, but fined down, burned down.
"I can't do anything, Jen. Do you think Assam and Polly want me there to toss out platitudinous comforts?"
"No, they want you there to do something, no matter how small."
"Think!"
She jerked back, feeling for a moment as if he might shake her.
"My father died last year. I'd have fixed that if I could do miracles, wouldn't I?" He sucked in a breath and ran a hand through his hair. "This is why they recommend that fixers don't return to their homes. Too many personal pressures."
His resistance was like a hand pushing her away, but she said, "Since you do live here, can't you at least try? Come on." She took his hand and tugged. After a moment he went with her, but she felt his reluctance like a weight.
She pulled him onto the West Street tram, but stayed standing near the doors. She couldn't bear to sit down. "Are you all right?"
"Of course."
But he looked almost as weary as the sick baby and she was going over his words. He'd said he couldn't do anything. Had he lost his powers? Had he blasted them away?
They got off at the hospital stop, and she steered him toward the main entrance. But then he balked and turned aside.
"Dan!" She hurried after. "Dan, stop. Please!"
He turned down a side street, and she caught him at a small door. "What are you doing?"
He pressed a lock. Hand print, not code. He used this door often.
The door opened, and she followed him in, watched as he took a set of hospital grays off a shelf and pulled them on over his uniform. "Jen, think. What happens if Dan Fixer walks around the hospital?"
"Everyone wants you to heal them." Why hadn't she thought of that?
He added a stretchy helmet, one designed for a man with a beard, which left only his eyes uncovered. He looked older, harder. Or perhaps he was.
"Why don't you, then? Heal everything."
"For a start, there's not enough of me to go round. But I can only fix things to make them right, which means mostly injuries. Disease is part of nature, like death. I can't fix nature."
He was angry. At the limits of his powers, or at her?
"I'll look at the baby," he said, "but I doubt it's fixable." He turned and headed out of the room.