The Trouble With Heroes.... (5 page)

She pulled him onto the West Street tram, but
stayed standing by the doors. "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'd pressed a lock. Hand print not code. He
used this door often.

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."

"Right."

He added a stretchy helmet that only left his
eyes uncovered. He looked strange -- older, harder. Or perhaps he
was.

"Why don't you, then? Heal everything."

"I told you. I can't. For a start, there's
not enough of me to go round. But as well, 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.

Jenny followed, wincing. How arrogant to drag
him here as if she knew better than the hospital. She ached for
Polly, for Assam, and for Dan who must want to make their baby
healthy as much as she did.

At the intensive care nursery he was given a
gray coverall and cap. She didn't want to face this, but she had
forced him here.

She walked through the steriline into a
gently lit room where soft music played that was surely to the
rhythm of an adult human heart.

It was so peaceful. Surely it couldn’t be a
place of death.

Thank heavens Gaia accepted the latest
medical technology. Jenny counted four inhabited red incubators.
Two nurses moved between them, checking monitors.

Dan paused at each incubator, then stopped at
one. He signaled a nurse and she hurried over. Jenny saw the sudden
light in the nurse's eyes, and tears pricked at her own. Dan had
found something he could fix. The name card, however, said
Smithers. It wasn't Polly's baby.

She went over anyway, and saw a tiny baby
under a multicolored mesh. It’s chest labored, and it seemed gray
instead of pink. Dan pushed his hand through the membrane and
touched the child.

The baby clutched Dan's finger as babies do,
but to Jenny it looked as if the mite recognized a lifeline. The
little chest still rose and fell, but less desperately, and the
fingers and toes began to turn pink. The mesh slowly retracted.

"Heart." A nurse had come up beside Jenny.
"Valve. I was hoping it would be fixable when Dan came around. I'm
glad he's early. It's always special to see him work."

"He comes every day?"

"Or when we call. We wait if we can. He has
to have a life."

Yes he did, and Jenny was ashamed that she
didn't know his real life at all. Some friend she was.

He eased his finger out of the baby's clutch
then touched the round cheek, smiling a little. But the smile faded
as he moved on to the last incubator.

"He won't be able to help there," the nurse
said, obviously surprised.

Jenny trailed after to see the flaccid,
laboring baby. It already looked ancient and withered. Dan put his
hands on the shell and leaned there. Jenny tried to believe that he
was doing something, something miraculous, but she knew it was
simple grief.

She wanted to say, "Sorry, sorry,
sorry...."

He turned and walked out. She hurried
after.

"Since I'm here I might as well do my rounds.
You'll want to be with Polly and Assam." It was dismissal, but he
added, "If they ask, tell them I'm sorry."

Then he was gone, and Jenny fought tears, for
him as much as for the baby, as she worked her way out of the
hospital gear.

^^^^^^^^^^

After that, things only got worse. On top of
the overcrowding and the blighters, Polly and Assam had been the
first of Jenny's friends to choose pregnancy and the disaster
appalled them all. Pregnancy was supposed to lead smoothly to a
beautiful, healthy baby. That's the way it was. The other babies in
the ICU had shown that problems happened, that perhaps disaster was
natural, but it felt all wrong on top of so many other all wrongs.
She couldn’t help thinking that it was blight, carried on the
wind.

Polly and Assam didn't blame Dan, but they
avoided him. Jenny was tempted to tell them that he'd visited the
nursery, but would it make it better or worse? Two weeks after the
birth they decided to visit Assam’s family in Araby, even though it
was further south. The goodbye party was subdued. Dan attended, but
briefly.

Jenny looked at him and thought his flame was
dying. Was it drowning by the blighters growing power? Or was he as
sick as she was of the bitter catch at the back of the throat, the
amorphic taste of ashes on the wind?

Or was it simply the dead baby?

She couldn't fight off strange thoughts about
that.

Had Dan struggled for a moment over that
incubator? He’d talked about hard decisions. He’d used the word
"can't?" That didn't just mean able to; it could mean allowed
to.

She cornered him just outside the room.

“
Could you have saved little
Hal?”

He looked at her, eyes sunken. “Yes.”

“
What?”

He put fingers over her lips. “Not here.”

He grabbed her arm and drew her out of the
house, into the street. “There are rules, Jen. We can’t fix what
shouldn’t be fixed.”

“
Who says? Who says what shouldn’t be
fixed?”

He shook his head as if it buzzed. “The
rules. There’s a difference between one thing broken and a systemic
problem. Nature must rule in the end.”

She stared at him. “You let your father die
because of rules?”

He didn’t answer, but she knew it was
true.

She turned and walked away, walked home to
find her parents talking about it being too long since they'd
visited Cousin Mike in Erin. Obviously the soothing reports of
"progress" and "imminent solution" weren’t working anymore.

Or the soothing had stopped. When she turned
up the sound on the screen she heard the announcer say that the
blighters were "swarming". It made them sound like maniac bees.

Where then was the honey?

“
Clearly we will soon see victory in
the Hellbane Wars.”

That was the first time Jenny had heard it
described as war.

She knew war. They'd studied it in school.
Armies and battles, diplomats and negotiations. One side knew what
the other side was, knew what the enemy wanted. If this was war,
what did the enemy want? Where were the negotiators with whom they
could bargain for mercy?

Then one day a news camera accidentally
caught an ashing. The camera was panning a deserted settlement, but
then switched to a person in the distance, walking toward the road.
The woman, in dusty shirt and trousers, a knapsack over one
shoulder, waved and hurried forward, probably hoping for a
lift.

Then she looked around as if they'd heard
something, or caught something out of the corner of their eye. And
she became afraid.

Jenny watched, tasting that fear as the woman
began to run, calling for help, but constantly turning and twisting
as if trying to track an attacker. She stumbled, scrambled up, but
then froze, mouth wide in a scream of terror. There was nothing to
see of the blighter, not so much as dust stirring in a breeze.

The picture juddered, though, showing the
operator's fear. The mike caught his mutters along with the scream.
"Can't do anything. Can't help. God help us. Gotta go. Gotta
go..."

But he stayed, holding the camera as steady
as he could, to record the anonymous victim's abrupt translation
into empty clothing and that small pile of ash.

No explosion, no fire, no wind.

Just dissolution.

Jenny’s mother broke down in tears, then
declared that they were all leaving, now.

Jenny protested. "I don't even know Cousin
Mike."

"That's not the point and you know it!” Her
mother turned to Jenny’s ashen fifteen-year-old brother. “Charlie,
grab some clothes. Not too many."

"I have work to do," Jenny said.

"Gaia can live without another brochure or
handbook. No you can’t take all those books. Bill!” he yelled to
her husband. “Pack for Charlie, will you? Jenny, love, please. You
saw that film. You want to stay for that?"

"I don't think we can run from it, Mum. If
the fixers can't stop them, the blighters are going to eat us
all."

"Not my family, they aren't." Her mother
dashed around, gathering little things -- photographs, documents.
"Of course the fixers'll fix it. It’ll just take a little more
time. And during that time it's stupid to stand in the way!"

"You're probably right, mum, but I can't go.
I'm sorry."

She realized then that part of the reason was
Dan. She was so angry at him, but she couldn't abandon him.

She helped them pack and went with them to
the station, and bit back tears as she waved them off. She didn’t
regret her decision, only her mother’s tearful despair.

She wandered back home, but she couldn’t
stand the empty house, so she went to the Merrie.

She went to the Merrie every night, but it
wasn't very merrie. It was never more than half full, and people
often asked for melancholy songs. Rolo and Gyrth had left. Yas was
still around, perhaps because she seemed to be firmly attached to
Tom now, and he couldn't leave, being a policeman.

So who was with Dan these days? From the look
of him the odd time he turned up at the pub, perhaps no one. He was
Anglia's sole defense when the blighters arrived. Perhaps she
should...

But she felt too fragile now. She thought
she'd break under any pressure beyond even Dan Fixer's ability to
mend.

^^^^^^^^^^

Jenny was playing a Scottish lament when she
saw the Urgent News! line scrolling across the bottom of the
screen. Ozzy switched the sound up and she stopped playing.

"In a new move to put an end to the
blighters, all the fixers have been called to the front. Reports
from Hellbane U...."

"What the heck's the front?" someone
asked.

"Old Earth war term," replied Ozzy. "The
place where one army meets the other. Don't reckon it can be far
from here now."

As if in answer a map popped up, showing the
red tide lapping at Anglia's borders.

"Load of codswallop," Ozzy said, muting the
sound again, but then he added, "Perhaps it's time to close the
bloody dismal England."

Jenny could only think that Dan was going to
leave.

To fight blighters.

And Gaia was losing the war.

"Any idea where he is, Ozzy?"

"Haven't seem him in a couple of days, luv.
Perhaps he's on his way."

"No." Could she sense him, or was it wishful
thinking? She left her fiddle there on the bar and went in search.
Stupid, stupid, stupid to have kept her distance all these weeks!
He was probably right about nature. He’d told her, hoping for
understanding, and she’d walked away.

The pubs were quiet, the music somber, and
Dan was nowhere to be found. Not in the square, not at his place,
not at the hospital. Not at his family's home. His mother and
brother looked as if they already had news of his death. Jenny
stopped outside the house, fighting tears. Dan had wanted something
from her, and she'd run as if he were a blighter. And now he was
going to "the front."

Weeks ago he'd mentioned that the experts
from Hellbane U were going to help the local fixers in the fight.
Since then the blighters had only grown in strength. If the experts
had failed, what could simple fixers like Dan do?

Die, that's what.

She remembered an old war term. "Cannon
fodder."

Perhaps he was already on the way, but she
wandered the streets looking for him, hoping against hope that
she'd have a chance to say something, do something to help before
he left.

Eventually, she gave up, stopping to lean
against some railing. Then she realized they were the railings
around the Public Gardens -- the place where the one solitary
blighter had dared to pop up in Anglia.

The perfume of herbs and flowers played
sweetly on the night air and she thought how strange it was that
all of this -- all the simulations of Earth humanity had created --
would survive when the people were ash.

Chapter 4

She turned in through the wrought iron gates
and followed the wandering path toward the lake and the statue of
the little victim. And there, near the statue, stood Dan, tossing
stones into the water.

Jenny paused, purpose tangling into
uncertainty. Perhaps he wanted to be alone. He'd have no trouble
finding company if he needed it.

Then he turned and held out a hand.
"Jen."

There was welcome in it, but there was more.
After a teetering moment, she went forward and put her hand in his.
"Are you going to have to go?"

"I am going."

"You're not called?"

"I'm not sure there's anyone left to call
me."

"The news...?"

"I gave Angliacom that press release."

He slid his hand free and went back to
tossing stones into the glassy water. Plop. Plop. Plop. Each stone
made a mesmerizingly slow arc into the water, as if the air was
denser than it should be.

"What do you mean, no one’s left to
call?"