Outcasts (9 page)

“Omar is not destroyed,” Jemma said. “He’s mending.”

“Not if he keeps sleeping at the Paradise with Red.”

“I know.” She sighed as if Omar were her responsibility and she were failing. “Levi, I’m tired. Will we ever get our ‘happily ever after’?”

“Of course, Buttercup.”

“But there is so much pain around us. And we’re all still grieving the loss of our elders. I miss my parents so much. How can I help Shaylinn? She’s going to be a mother with no husband and no prospect of one. Mother would know what to do, but I don’t.”

“I’ll tell you what to do: Sleep. There will be plenty of time to worry about Shaylinn once we are free from this place.”

She hummed and smiled. “I’m proud of you, Elder Levi.”

“What for?”

“You take on so many burdens. You’re a good man.”

“If I’m good, it’s only because I married a good woman.”

W
hen Mason arrived in the SC Wednesday morning, Rimola said, “Ciddah wants to see you in her office.”

Mason circled Rimola’s desk and started down the hall. “Good morning to you too.”

“Sorry,” Rimola called after him. “Just … be nice to her.”

Mason stopped and turned around, taken aback by such a plea. “When have I ever been otherwise?”

Rimola rolled her eyes and turned back to her desk.

Odd.

At the door to Ciddah’s office, Mason knocked, still puzzled over Rimola’s words. Had he said something to offend Ciddah? He had in the past, but he’d barely spoken to her since he’d discovered the MiniComm. Perhaps his silence had been offensive. Who could understand women, anyway?

“Come in,” Ciddah said.

Mason set his fist on the SimPad beside the door, and the entry swung open. Ciddah was sitting behind her desk, her posture rigid but beautiful as always, with golden hair, a perfect body, and electric-blue eyes. He entered, and the door closed behind him.

“Have a seat,” she said.

As usual, Ciddah’s office was messy. He gathered a stack of files off the chair in front of her desk.

“You’re been avoiding me,” Ciddah said before he’d even managed to sit. “Have I done something to offend you?”

Wait. She thought
he
was offended? Mason set the files on the end of Ciddah’s desk, waiting to make sure they were balanced before letting go. Then he sat down and met her icy gaze. “Silence from a man is not evidence of vexation.” Though in this case …

“Were the beets
that
awful?” she asked.

Mason thought back to the night he’d gone to Ciddah’s apartment and she’d cooked dinner. That had been a good night, despite the tension of his role in breaking the women out from the harem and the horror of seeing his mother’s face on the liberation broadcast. “On the contrary, the beets were quite good.”

“It’s because I asked you to stay, then, isn’t it? I scared you away.”

She hadn’t scared him. She simply hadn’t been able to wrap her mind around his morality. What Ciddah and Mason deemed moral were polar opposites. He didn’t like this conversation. It felt like an attack, like she wanted to fight. He was not suited for romantic missions. Levi or Omar had no difficulty speaking with females, but Mason never knew what to say.

“The beets were quite good,” he said softly, hoping she would think him funny.

But Ciddah sighed and looked away.

See? He’d already said the wrong thing. How could he fix it? Was she seeking some kind of reassurance? “I do not disdain you for your advances, nor do I fear them.”

Her head turned slowly, and the cold look on her face made Mason shiver. “You’re being temporarily reassigned to the pharmacy in the lobby,” Ciddah said, her voice aloof and businesslike. “One of the pharmacy techs is taking two weeks off, and you’re going to fill in.”

The pharmacy? “Why me?”

“Because there’s no one else who’s trained, and I think you can handle it.”

But … “This is not a punishment for my poor communication skills?”

Ciddah began to sort through the mess on her desk, as if suddenly too busy to give him her full attention. “No. Though I would dock your credits if I could.”

He blinked, trying to ascertain which words he’d said that had been bad enough to penalize his earnings. “By how much?”

“It was a joke, Mason.” But Ciddah wouldn’t meet his eyes. “The head pharmacist downstairs is named Philo Brock. He’s expecting you.”

“I’m to go right now?”

She picked up a stack of papers and scanned the top page. “Yes.”

How was he to get Ciddah’s help if they were apart? And how was he to find a cure for the thin plague? “Will I be back?”

She flipped to the second page. “In about two weeks — on the thirteenth of August, actually.”

Well, this would never do. “Can I … um — ?”

The speaker on Ciddah’s desk beeped. “I just put a patient in exam two for you,” Rimola said.

Ciddah pushed a button on the speaker. “I’m on my way.” She set down the papers and stood. “See you in two weeks, Mr. Elias.”

The pharmacy in the lobby was a Pharmco, which was the only type of pharmacy Mason had seen in the Safe Lands besides those located inside G.I.N. stores. This one was a single black counter in the corner of the City Hall lobby. Mason announced himself to the girl behind the counter, whose name badge read Saska, and she called Philo Brock out to the front.

Where Saska was dark and round, with black hair and bronze skin, Philo was light and thin with skin the color of milk and hair like a
baby chick. The Old rhyme
Jack Sprat
came to mind as Saska and Mr. Brock spoke to each other just out of Mason’s hearing, though it wasn’t likely these two were a couple.

“Mr. Elias. Excellent!” Mr. Brock opened a half-door on the end of the counter. “Come on back.”

Mr. Elias. Mason expected such formality from strangers like Mr. Brock, but not from Ciddah. Her coldness upstairs had shaken him. It had been a grave error to ignore her for so long. Had he lost everything he’d worked so hard to build? There must be some way to salvage it.

Mason followed Mr. Brock behind the counter, where rows of shelves were stocked with bottles of medications. Mr. Brock passed them all and turned down the last row, where a long desk was covered in equipment.

“First of all, you touch none of this. I work back here. You assist. Got it?” Mr. Brock looked at Mason, his eyebrows raised over a pair of bulging eyes in a gaunt face. He must have been nearing the liberation age of forty.

“Yes, sir,” Mason said.

“You’ll start each task shift by checking in with me. This branch is only open during business hours, so I’m always here. I eat my lunch here. I take my breaks here. Ciddah told me you’re bright, but I’ll judge that for myself. This is
not
a task that tolerates errors. With every prescription passed over that counter, someone’s life is at stake. Got it?”

An extreme view of pharmaceutics, but technically accurate. “Yes, sir.”

“You deal with the customers. You answer the phones. You check the order report. You process prescriptions. Can’t read the prescription? Don’t ask me. Call the medic and find out.
My
time is valuable.
Your
job is to let me do mine. Got it?”

So … never speak to Mr. Brock again? “Yes, sir.”

“Well, at least you’re polite,” Mr. Brock mumbled.

Saska showed Mason how to check the order report and process prescriptions. Then she showed him how to work the credit register.
“If you think you’ve got it, I can get caught up, and then have more time to show you things.”

“I believe I can handle the register.” But a line soon formed, made up of people with crossed arms, tapping feet, or glaring eyes.

Saska came back to help Mason, and together they worked faster. She handed Mason a prescription for the next man at the counter, then left to find it.

Mason scanned the prescription over the register and read from the screen. “Ten credits.”

“It’s always been five,” the man said.

Mason met the man’s narrowed eyes, then turned to look for Saska, who had gone halfway down the first row of medications. He went over to her. “The customer says his prescription always costs five credits.”

She rummaged through a bin of prescriptions. “Tell him to take it up with his medic.”

Mason repeated Saska’s words to the customer, who said, “My medic told me five.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Mason said. “You’ll have to check with your medic again.”

The man stormed off, mumbling something about incompetence.

A short woman stepped forward. “Could I have more of the blue juice I take every morning?”

“Do you have a prescription?” Mason asked her.

“Of course I do.” She waved her hand at the register. “Look it up.”

“Um …” Mason glanced over his shoulder for Saska, but she was busy. He squinted at the register and saw an icon that said SimTag. “SimTag, please?”

The woman set her fist against the glass, and the register beeped. A list of prescriptions came up. There were eight, all current. Much to Mason’s disdain, he had to call Saska for help, and Saska had to open boxes for each prescription on the list until she found the juice that was blue, which of course, she didn’t open until her seventh try.

By then, people in line had begun to grumble, and the woman at the counter said, “They’re always so slow here.”

Inconceivable nonsense, in Mason’s opinion. “Perhaps if you were to bring the empty vial with you next time or recall the name of the medication, we could assist you more quickly.”

The woman snatched the med box from Saska and stomped away.

The frenzied rush continued for the next forty-five minutes. When the line finally vanished, Mason’s frustration level hovered near the breaking point. “How can you stand to task here?” he asked Saska. “It’s maddening.”

“It pays well. And it’s days. The customers
are
hard sometimes, though. If they don’t get their way, everything is your fault.”

“Yes, I gathered that.” Mason didn’t think he could tolerate tasking here for two weeks. Even if there was some clue that might aid his search for a cure, when would he ever have the time to discover it?

“Line,” Saska said.

Mason returned to the counter where Rimola stood waiting. “Oh, hello.”

Rimola winked and tapped her fingernails on the counter. “Hay-o, raven. How you doing down here?”

Mason set his hands on the counter. “The pharmacy is not my favorite place to task.”

Rimola chuckled and set her hand on his, rubbing her thumb over the back of his hand. “That doesn’t surprise me, trig.”

This woman was incapable of understanding personal boundaries. Mason pulled his hand away. “Do you have a prescription I could help you with?”

“Not me. I always pick up for the SC after my lunch break.”

“Oh.” Mason went to find Saska again. “Rimola is here to pick up prescriptions for the SC.”

“I’ll get them,” Saska said.

A moment later Saska set a plastic tub on the counter that had three little red boxes inside. “The SC’s ID is SC000,” she told Mason. “Pull them up, then check out each one.”

Mason recognized the little boxes as what Ciddah gave to women
to help them conceive. They were fertility stims. He ran the first one over the glass. The register beeped and displayed
Tsana Beshup JP28.

A chill ran across Mason’s back. He knew that name. He scanned the second box:
Alawa Kitchi JP14.
And the third:
Sunki Hinto JP16.

The enforcers must have seized the people of Jack’s Peak, the settlement up the mountain from Glenrock. Could this be the real reason Ciddah had wanted him out of the SC? So he would not be present to cause her trouble as she processed these women he knew?

He fought to maintain his composure as he completed the transaction and handed the plastic tub to Rimola.

“Thanks, trig,” she said. “You know, she’s not as grouchy when you’re gone.”

“It’s nice to know I have such a pleasing effect on people,” Mason said.

She batted her impossibly long eyelashes. “You do on me, raven. You let me know if you change your mind about pairing up.”

He looked away and caught Saska’s wink, which, combined with Rimola’s advances, released more blood flow into his cheeks. Infernal place, anyway. Was there no dignity here? “Your offer is flattering, Rimola, but I will not change my mind.”

“Yeah, I’m not surprised.” She patted the counter and smiled at Saska. “Watch out for this one, femme. He’s no fun at all.”

“Good,” Saska said. “Maybe we’ll actually get some tasking done around here.”

The rest of Mason’s shift dragged by. When three o’clock arrived, Saska told him he must take a fifteen minute break, so Mason took the elevator to the fifth floor.

He arrived in the SC and walked through the reception area and around Rimola’s desk as if he were just arriving to task. Rimola was speaking to someone through her ear implant. She turned to watch Mason as he moved past her desk and down the hall, but she did not try to stop him. He lifted the CompuChart from the slot by the wall of exam room one and read the patient’s name.

Kosowe Elsu.

Mason had met Beshup, his wife, Tsana, and her friend Kosowe at a celebration in Jack’s Peak when he was eleven or twelve. He remembered Kosowe as being quite lovely, with dark skin, hair, and eyes. The chart said she was here for an embryonic transfer.

So soon? How could Mason have missed that the Jack’s Peak women had been in the Safe Lands? There had been no mention of it on the ColorCast.

He knocked and slipped inside the exam room before Ciddah could catch him. Kosowe was alone in the room, strapped to the exam table, a number four bright against her dark skin. Her eyes met his and widened. “Mason of Elias? You reside in this place?”

The medic screen in the corner showed three circles: embryos that sat under the microscope.

Why three?

He needed to speak quickly before Ciddah arrived to see her patient. “How long have you been here, Kosowe?”

“Two weeks.”

Mason reeled. Ciddah had to have been keeping this from him. Scheduling appointments with the Jack’s Peak women on his off days. And now moving him to the pharmacy. “Did they attack Jack’s Peak? Did they kill your men?”