Immortal Stories: Eve (6 page)

By the morning of the ninth day she was prepared to surrender the quest and initiate the much more mundane task of seeking employment.  So of course it was on that day she found what she was looking for.

It was an elf, and he had a cold.

Nearly all creatures could get sick.  In one instance—demons—the acquisition of a disease was nearly always fatal, but in most it was dealt with in the same way as it was in humans.  They suffered until they get better, or they didn’t get better and, over time, they died.

The concept of immune systems was a medical one for which Eve only recently developed an understanding, because science moved faster than her attention to it.  But she could draw a correlation between life expectancy and relative immunity. 

Elves and goblins—they were actually the same species, but with different regional identifiers—lived about as long as humans, and so got sick roughly as frequently.  Likewise satyrs.  Incubi and succubi lived about twice as long (and looked twenty-five for most of their lives) so became ill less often.  Imps lived longer still, got sick less, and so on. 

Those were only the most obvious species, the ones that were common and could pass unnoticed fairly easily as human in the light of day.  There were rarer things out there that she knew less about, and didn’t care for an opportunity to improve upon that understanding.  The rakshasa, for instance, she would just as soon not get to know better.  Likewise the djinn, provided there still existed any. 

The elf with the cold was dressed in slacks and a blazer, with a white shirt and tie.  She’d spent enough time in the market by then to recognize the minor differences in formal clothes from man to man.  There were suits where the fabric of the jacket and the pants matched in pattern, color and type.  These were less common and more likely tailored to fit.  The men who dressed like this also tended to have a crisper-looking shirt, a striped tie with a color in it that closely matched the suit, and a piece of metal in the tie to hold it to the shirt.  They also had shinier shoes.  Eve thought it was possible these more thoroughly formal outfits were indicators of status, but she couldn’t be sure.

Much more popular was the dark pants and dark blazer, where the two didn’t appear to have been purchased as a set.  A range of shirt colors went with this pairing, the ties were often more haphazard and free-swinging, and there was, overall, a sort of ruffled quality to the wearers.  The outfit still matched the uniform of the local business industry—whatever that business was—but had a more every-day sense to it.  This arrangement of clothing could have also been linked to status, in the same way as the tailored suits.

Her impression of the elf was that he was not a member of the ruling class of bespoke suit-wearers, yet more important than the people who wore no suits at all.  (Those people often had uniforms as well, but the kind indicating a position in the service industry.)  He carried a white tissue in his hand and appeared either about to sneeze or just recovering from one.  His eyes and nose were red-rimmed, which was all the more noticeable on a creature known for a light complexion.

As was true for everyone else in the market, the elf was in a hurry to get somewhere.  Eve decided to follow.

It became apparent almost immediately that the elf knew he was being followed, due to some skill on his part, a lack of subtlety on hers, or a combination.  His direct route to wherever he had intended to go—it was toward the office buildings so she presumed his destination was one of them—turned into an indirect meander.  It wasn’t until a trip down a side street became an evasive duck behind a dumpster and into an alley that Eve decided she had better exercise caution.

One must always assume, in dealing with an elf, that they have a knife on their person. 

“Hello,” she said, from the edge of the alley.  The smell of liquefied waste in the dumpster was hair-curling.  “I didn’t mean to alarm you, I only wanted to ask a question.”

A long silence followed.  She wondered if he had exited the other end of the alley and she was talking to an empty space.  She also wondered if it would have been a better idea to have Dee with her.

“What is your question?” came his reply.

“May I enter?” she asked.

“With your hands out, yes.”

She stepped past the dumpster, hands at her sides and palms out. 

The elf was a third of the way down the alley, using what little shadow he could find.  The knife she suspected him of carrying was in his left hand.  His right held the tissue.

“I’m sorry to have worried you,” she said.

He looked puzzled.  “Do you dye your hair?”

“No.”

“My eyes are watery and the sun’s bright, but you look like kin, except for the hair.”

“I am no kin to an elf.”

“Human?”

“In a manner, yes.”

“Come closer.”

She approached, until they were only a few paces away.  With his knife still exposed, he looked her up and down.  She kept her hands where they were and did her level best to not appear threatening. 

“What do you mean,
in a manner
?” he asked.

“I’m human, but I’ve been known by names of beings you would not consider human.  An elf might know me as Iounn or Idunna.  I’ve also been called the Way-Finder, and the Gardener.”

He laughed.  “I was a kid when I heard those stories.  Is Zeus with you?  He’s running late, perhaps.”

“No, Zeus is long dead,” she said, entirely serious because it was true.  The proto-Greek man whose stories later became married to the Zeus god-myth was long dead.  “I thought most of your kind kept to the secret stories.”

“You mean, we believed them?”

“That’s what I mean, yes.”

He shrugged.  “I guess there are some that still do.  A pretty redhead in an alley claiming to be a passel of ancient gods is a long way from that, though.”

“Most people would say the same about a man claiming to be an elf.”

He laughed, but the laugh quickly turned into a cough, which became bad enough to grab hold of his entire body.  Soon, the knife was on the ground and he was leaning on Eve for support while waiting for the attack to subside.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.  “I’m glad you aren’t here to mug me.  I think I just gave you the opening you needed.”

“No.  Only a question, as I said.”  She bent down and retrieved his knife.  He took it from her, hilt-first, and slid it into his sleeve.

“Go ahead.”

“Who is your doctor?”

“I’m… sorry?”

“I assume you are seeing one?”

Elves and goblins could pass easily as humans in most arenas of life, but a medical exam wasn’t one of those places.  This was equally so for other species, and it led to a shadow medical industry few were aware of.  If an elf were sick he would go to a doctor who treated elves.  If he wanted his pointed teeth capped he would go to a dentist who specialized in
that
and so on, all the way down to schooling and matrimonial bonds and funeral arrangements. 

“Do you need a doctor?  I thought you said you were human, why don’t you see one of theirs?  They aren’t rare.”

“I don’t need to see him for medical advice for myself, but I do have some questions I believe a medical expert in the more exotic species may be able to answer.  Have you already sought treatment for your condition?”

“For this?  I was there a few days ago.  He gave me some pills.  He said I should be better soon.”

“So… he knew what you’ve contracted?”

“Sure, he called it… I forget.  He did say to expect it to get worse before it gets better, but I should turn the corner by next week, if I keep up with the pills.”

“I see.”

There were questions she could have asked if she understood disease even a little better.  There were different kinds—viral, bacterial—and there was cancer, and surely there were other types still.  She would have liked to ask what the pills were supposed to be doing for him, and how.  But she was certain even if he knew the answer she wouldn’t understand it.

I’ll ask the doctor instead.

“Can you provide me with a way to contact him?”

“Sure, I can give you his name.  So this is for a friend?”

“Yes, exactly.  It’s for an associate of mine who was recently ill.  I was looking for advice on helping them.”

“Be easier if you just brought the friend.”

“Yes, I might.”

The elf pulled out his wallet and extracted a business card.  “I always keep one or two extras with me.  You never know when you’re going to meet another one of our kind looking for a referral.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking the card.  “And I hope you feel better soon.”

“Thanks, I’m sure I will.”

She sincerely hoped that was the case, because when she caught him during his coughing fit, she touched his skin. 

It was sticky.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this?”

Rick was driving.  The car they were using was borrowed from a service he subscribed to, via a process he attempted to explain but which she failed to fully grasp. 

It seemed as if the world had developed indirect substitutes for money, which was confusing inasmuch as money was itself a substitute for goods.  A car was a very real object, but he hadn’t purchased the car, he’d bought time from the company that owned the car.  Except that was also not accurate.  He had bought a lump of time from the company, using an internet-based monetary instrument, which had a value that appeared to be unrelated to the value of a known currency, at least until the day he needed it to represent real currency, and then he could exchange it at whatever rate was current at that moment. 

The acquisition of a lump of time struck Eve as a wholly ridiculous expenditure, as time was even less real than money, internet-based or not.  Nonetheless, he was able to take a portion of this lump of time and transfer it to the company that owned the car, which gave him use of the car for roughly the same amount of time as the lump he’d given them.  It was only approximately the same time lump, as there was something called
free minutes
involved, and that was when she gave up trying to understand.

“I just want to ask him some questions.  I have never seen anything like this before.”

“I know, but this doesn’t seem so much like just curiosity any more.  I mean, happy to do this with you, I just wanna make sure there isn’t anything you aren’t telling me, here.”

They’d gone over this two or three times already.  It was hard for her to put to words what she was feeling, so she had only supplied him with vague responses.  The truth was she could still hear dream-Adam’s voice, now coupled to a strong notion that there was something significantly amiss outside of that dream.

“It
is
more than curiosity.  That is perhaps the wrong word.”

It was late in a weekday, six days after the elf had given her the card, and the first time the doctor—his name was Lawrence Monks—could fit them into his schedule.  She had returned to the marketplace each of those six days to see if there were any other sick non-humans to interrogate.  There weren’t, but she did see the sick elf two more times.  He didn’t look like he was getting any better, but the last time they spoke he promised he
felt
better, and was sure he was turning a corner.

She hoped this was true.  But the same feeling she had so much trouble describing to Rick was also telling her that the elf had gotten worse, and that was the reason she hadn’t seen him again.

“An instinct, then,” he said.  “A gut instinct.”

“I suppose.”

They were on a highway and traveling at a preposterous speed.  It was late afternoon, so the road was heavily trafficked by people who had gone into the city to work in the morning and were now evacuating.  Given the distances involved, the whole concept struck her as ridiculous.  She knew of entire civilizations whose citizens never traveled as far in a lifetime as one commuter here might go in a day.

“I’ll tell you how it feels,” she said.  “Imagine you enter your home one night.  All the lights are off and you live alone.  Something isn’t right, but you can’t figure out what, until you notice one end of your couch has been moved backwards by a hand’s width.  That’s what it feels like.”

“Okay. Okay, that’s a start.  Let’s call that confusion and dread.  And the world is your living room?”

“This world is someone else’s responsibility.  But I know where all of the furniture is.  Metaphorically.”

“Yeah, okay.  And the rest of that story is, if I’m in my living room and my couch has been moved, and I didn’t do it, maybe there’s someone else in my living room.”

“Yes.”

“Got it.”

The electronic woman in the car’s front panel informed Rick that they were nearing their exit.  Eve understood that the woman was a talking map, but that didn’t make her comfort with this technology any more manageable.  Maps used to have borders, and beyond those borders were exciting new lands.  The woman’s cold certainty couched in a United Kingdom accent only the map’s borders had run out of monsters.

This could be why I’m chasing a vague feeling
, she thought. 
Something new.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  “I shouldn’t have involved you in something like this.  I’m sure I am overreacting to a simple thing.”

“Hey, no, this is fun!” he said, as they took the correct, clearly marked and fully expected highway exit.  “I just wanted to make sure I understood all the pieces, in case you were, I don’t know, forgetting to tell me anything.”

“I don’t believe I am, but I am unaccustomed to sharing information as well, so… I apologize if I seem that way.  I didn’t intend on staying so long.”

“I told you, stay as long as you like.  Just keep in mind there’s probably a bunch of things you don’t know I don’t know.  But I enjoy having you around just the same.”

She smiled.  Rick liked having her to take care of.  She didn’t mind terribly
being
taken care of, but also knew that no matter how he felt about it, this was a temporary arrangement at best.

The road exit led to a large main street, and then—following a lengthy series of talking map commands—along side roads and into what appeared to be a residential neighborhood.

“You’re sure about this?” Rick asked.  “This is pretty
Leave it to Beaver
out here.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“I mean this doesn’t look like a… oh, hey, never mind I guess.”

The termination of the directions was at a house on the corner of two streets.  The lawn extended to the sidewalk, and there was a sign embedded in the lawn, which bore the doctor’s legend next to an artfully rendered caduceus.

“There’s your doctor’s office,” Rick said.  “Guess I shouldn’t have expect something that looked like a hospital.”

*   *   *

The entrance to the medical office was through a side door leading to what might otherwise have been a basement apartment.  They were greeted there by a tall, thin, older (human) man with a warm smile and a cold handshake.  He introduced himself as Dr. Marks and led them to his reception area—a small space with a plywood floor beneath a dozen padded metal chairs, plus another three around a short desk.  The walls were lined with empty bookshelves and the space had a faint scent of mildew.

“Now, which of you is the patient!” the doctor asked with a kind of manufactured enthusiasm.  “I’m afraid the notes I have on this appointment aren’t at all clear.”

“There’s a complicated answer to that,” Rick said.

“Ah, well, in this world of ours there are a lot of complicated things, aren’t there?”  He winked.  “Please, sit!”

Marks stepped behind his desk and sat in a weathered office chair as she and Rick took less comfortable metal chairs on the other side of the desk.  Having never been to a medical doctor for professional reasons, Eve was uncertain how much of the inherent unwelcoming sense of this room was a product of this particular doctor, and how much was standard for all such offices.  Either way, aside from their host’s rehearsed jocularity, she didn’t feel welcome. 

The doctor slipped on a pair of glasses and took a closer look at both of them.  “If I could be a tiny bit forward, here… Rick is it?  And you’re Eve.  I am
terrible
with names, so you’ll have to excuse me if I say them five or ten times over.  But I’m going to go out on a limb and say
neither
of you is here for me.  Professionally, I mean.”

“That’s so, yes,” Eve said.

“Why do you say that, doctor Marks?” Rick asked.  “I mean, it’s true, but what gave it away?”

He smiled.  “Son, if someone handed you one of my business cards, you already know why.  I don’t treat humans down here.  A few times a month I work a rotation down at Saint Jude’s and then I’ll see humans, but out here I serve another kind of client. 
You
are definitely human.  Her, I’m not completely certain.”

“I am,” she said.

“You need some
sun!
” he said with a laugh.  “Someone might come after you with a stake one day.”

“My eyes are the wrong color and it’s still daytime, but I understand your point.”

“Yes of course,
I
know your eyes are the wrong color, but someone else might not.  Thank goodness for those silly movies, people nowadays think much more highly of vampires—”

“Hold up,” Rick interrupted.  “No, you know what?  Never mind.  I’m all the way on the other side of the looking glass already here.”

“Now, were you testing me, Rick?  Was this why you came?”

“Nah, I just wanted to hear someone else say this stuff.  I’ve been getting it from her for a few weeks now, and I figured either I was losing my mind or she’d already lost hers.”

“You look healthy to me,” he said to Eve, in a way that sounded like a compliment and not a lascivious assertion.  This was perhaps a talent a medical doctor would have to develop, given how often he had to ask people to remove clothing for clinical reasons.

“So, now that we all agree the world is full of stranger things than us, what can I help you with?”

“I have a number of questions,” Eve said.  “But we actually
have
brought you a patient.”

“Oh!  Are they still in the car?  You can bring them in, certainly.”

“No, they’re here.  Dee, would you say hello to the doctor?”

Dee hovered in front of his face.

“H’lo,” she said.

Dr. Marks nearly fainted.

*   *   *

“I’d heard of them, of course, but I never expected to
meet
one!” Dr. Marks said, a little later.  He was looking at Dee under a magnifying glass, and Dee, to her credit, was sitting still for him.  It helped that Rick had mushrooms in his pocket for her once this was over.

They had moved to the doctor’s examination room, which was a brightly lit and far more impressively antiseptic area behind a cheap wooden door near the desk in his waiting room.  This had more of the feel Eve was expecting on a visit to a medical practitioner: stocked shelves full of sealed containers of clean objects, all the surfaces silvery and gleaming, and the ever-present aroma of rubbing alcohol.

“And they’re self-aware, you say?” he asked.  “And intelligent?” 

“Of course,” Eve said.  “You conversed with her.”

“So I did.  Hello, little pixie, aren’t you remarkable!”

“H’lo,” Dee said.

He put the glass away.

“The condition you described the other one in, have you seen anything like that in this… Dee is it?”

“No, but we saw Cee in an advanced stage of deterioration.  I couldn’t say how it began, or what that beginning looked like.  But you’ve never treated a pixie before, so I imagine you wouldn’t know what to look for either.”

“I’m afraid I haven’t.  Intelligent or not, if she has no way to way to pay for treatment, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be customary for me to offer care.  A veterinarian, possibly.”

“You think the pet shop has a pixie doc?” Rick asked.

“Probably not.  I also don’t think it would occur to one to seek medical help.”

“She looks healthy to you, though?” Eve asked.

“Sure.  But as you’ve pointed out, I don’t know what to look for, so I’m not sure how much help I can really offer.”

Eve considered asking if he had ever witnessed a dead demon, but decided against doing so.  It seemed unlikely that the man who lived in this large house and nice suburban neighborhood would be familiar with the likes of a demon.  A battlefield surgeon might have more applicable experience. 

“The elf who gave me your card, he was sick.  He’d been to see you recently.”

“I see lots of elves, sure.  I’d ask you to give me a name to narrow it down, but we’re going to hit a real problem with patient confidentiality.  I really can’t talk about anyone’s sickness without them here to provide consent.  You understand.”

“I do.” 

She had never even asked the elf for his name.  The idea that he might be difficult to re-locate or that he may not be sufficiently unique and therefore require a title was one that hadn’t occurred. 

“This was… it would have been over two weeks since you saw him.  You provided pills for his condition.  I’m not asking for details on his disease specifically, but if there was another being in your office displaying symptoms for a similar disease as that which killed Cee... I’m asking if you see any evidence of that in Dee.”

“Like I said, she looks healthy, for whatever that’s worth.”

It was such a simple question: did the elf have the same disease as that which she described?  The doctor seemed constitutionally incapable of responding to direct questions because of his odd confidentiality rules to protect a patient whose identity she couldn’t even provide.

Rick gave it a try.  “Doctor, what we’re basically wondering is if you’ve ever seen or heard of a condition like the one we’re talking about.  Whether you saw it in this one patient or in any patient of yours ever.”