They got ready to separate for the rest of the day, with Joseph and Sela set to make the long haul up to the Garment District as planned. They each recited back to Marina the instructions on what kind of additional gifts for his mother to be on the lookout for.
Marina would rest a while and then make her slow and laborious way up to IT. A second wire had been sent letting them know the situation but no response came and Marina didn’t know what to think. She would do her best to go up, however late she might arrive.
Before they could say their goodbyes there was a sharp rap on the door. Joseph popped up to answer and two porters, well-muscled and hulking young men, entered.
“We’re here for the transport.” He consulted the slip of paper in his hand and said, “For Marina Patrick.”
Marina lifted a hand tentatively. “That’s me. But I didn’t wire for a transport.” She turned to Joseph. “I didn’t. Did you?”
He shook his head and turned to the porters, a small frown creasing the space between his eyes, “Who sent you?”
The porter who had spoken slipped the paper back into his pocket. His shock of very dark hair, shadow of an even darker beard and thick eyebrows made him seem older than he probably was. “IT ordered a person transport. We’re supposed to get you there express, so if you’re ready…” The sentence trailed off since it was obvious that Marina, lying on a couch with her legs elevated by couch cushions, wasn’t ready.
“Uh, okay, well…”, Marina began.
Joseph stepped in, much to her relief. “Great. Can you gentlemen just give her a couple of minutes to get her things together? We’ll meet you on the landing. Will that do?” His hand reached out to herd the two porters from the room but his expression was all deputy, soothing and calm and authoritative. It worked because they shuffled out, polite nods to Sela and Marina as they left.
“Well,” Joseph said as he closed the door. “That I didn’t expect. What kind of meeting is this again?”
“Yeah, Mom, you’re getting carried like an old person. What’s up?”
Marina threw a little glare toward her daughter for the age reference as she sat and started gathering the things she needed to take with her. Most of their belongings were in the hotel but Marina had brought everything she would need for her business today.
She tied the top of her pack closed, pulling the loop tight as she did so. Joseph gave her a hand standing up. The stiffness was there and she could feel some echo of the pain just waiting for the injection she had received to wear off. She grabbed the vials of pills off the low table and jammed them into the protected pocket on her chest, hoping the feeling of them there would remind her to take them on time.
Marina felt guilty about leaving those men to wait for her so she turned to her family and talked quickly, checking the folded chits in her front pocket and all the other assorted things she carried as she spoke. “This is actually good. I mean, good once I get over the humiliation of being ported, that is. Anyway, you two do what we talked about and I’ll go get the business out of the way. That means we can keep our schedule. Tomorrow, I’ll already be halfway up to our next stop and all will be well.” She ended that last with a smile she hoped looked confident and shouldered her pack. She leaned in to give each of them a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Good? Okay?” she asked when she got no verbal response from either of them. She hadn’t answered Joseph’s question and she knew that he was aware of it. The question he was probably considering was whether or not she knew that he knew or if it was an accident brought on by her need to hurry. She wanted to nudge him toward thinking the latter.
He nodded, apparently satisfied that it wasn’t intentional and the duo saw Marina to the landing. Sela let out a laugh when her mother settled into the porting chair and then grabbed the sides in alarm as it rocked free when lifted. The frame was such that the two porters, one in front and another behind, could hold the handles even when angled by being on different stairs while the person seated swung free and remained level. The seat constantly adjusted no matter the angle of the carry. It was an ingenious design but a little shocking to a new rider. Joseph nudged Sela into silence and waved as Marina began to disappear up the first spiral up of the stair well.
Marina felt her face redden repeatedly as people peered at her, some discreetly and others not, during the first few levels of her portage. It was just as she had told her family, utterly humiliating. If she were very old, ill or in some other way infirm then this wouldn’t be an issue for her. That is really what the transport chair was for. One couldn’t even get the service without medical authorization and she hadn’t gotten one from the medic. She assumed that IT had gotten one and that embarrassed her even more.
A young family passed by, the couple not older than their mid-twenties and very fortunate in their fertility as they had two children in tow. They were young to have already met their quota of two children and were, no doubt, in the lottery for any extra births that might be permitted. The little girl, perhaps five years old, Marina guessed, pulled her thumb from her mouth and asked in a loud voice, “Is she going to clean too?”
The mother mouthed an apology, her face a horrified mask at her child’s rudeness, but Marina just laughed. The mother moved the child to ride on her hip, whispering scolds at her as they passed the chair. Before they spiraled out of sight, Marina called back to them, “No, little one. I just hurt my foot by not being careful on the stairs.”
The little girl looked back at Marina and she saw the thumb slip back into her mouth before they disappeared around the curve. It was sad that a girl so young even knew what cleaning was. Perhaps it had been explained when someone in her own family took ill, a grandparent perhaps. It was possible that little girl had already faced the peculiar mixture of honor and sadness that came from the gift of cleaning. Marina doubted anyone so young could truly understand the relief of knowing someone beloved would be spared the terrible pain of a lingering death and give the gift of knowledge in the doing of it.
It took a surprisingly short time to travel the six levels and neither of the porters seemed even remotely out of breath as they lowered the chair to the landing, well away from the traffic of the stair well and near the open entrance to IT. When Marina felt the braces that kept the chair from swinging free click home she let out a sigh of relief and caught the porter who secured the lever giving a little grin.
She braced herself to try to rise but the porters, experienced with transports for the decrepit, each held out a hand for her. She gripped their calloused yet gentle hands and stifled a groan as she rose to her feet. She assured the young men that she was fine going alone from there but they informed her that they were to wait for her and return her to her lodgings for the night.
She flushed a little at that, relieved that they would do so yet feeling as if she should be capable of doing that herself and not tie up two people who were probably much needed elsewhere. When she reached for her small pack, one of the porters grabbed it and then held out an arm for her. It was just the same way as her husband had for her the night before as they went to the Wardroom for a meal, yet the intention so completely different she almost laughed.
Before she could protest the porter said, “Sorry, but it’s required for transports. You don’t have to take my arm but I have to walk with you. Just in case.”
She didn’t take the proffered arm, but she did let him carry her pack and they walked slowly toward the open doors of IT. As was tradition, the doors were held wide with metal loops wrapped around the door handles at the end of a long bar. The other end of the bar hooked through another loop of metal screwed into the concrete of the wall. There had been various times throughout the years when the suggestion was put forward that the doors should simply be removed to open more space, but the fire codes wouldn’t permit such a thing. There was actually a breaking link in the bar of metal, a band that was more brittle by design, and a sledge hammer mounted to the wall nearby. If a fire should happen, someone would grab the hammer and break those links and then those fire doors would close for the first time in living memory.