Cottonwood (36 page)

“Jesus Christ,” Sam said tightly. “Ruptured…liver? What the hell is that?”

“I have to see her,” Sanford heard himself say. His hand scraped into a fist and punched futilely at the metal wall. See her? The picture in the news-sheet was as close as he would ever get. He may never see her again.

“Liver,” Sam muttered, tearing back paper to find the article’s end. “That can’t be as important as it sounds, can it? Liver…What
is
this? Who cares about the fucking bugs? Why aren’t they talking more about the human with a fucking ruptured liver?”

“I have to see her,” Sanford said again, just as uselessly.

“Yeah? How much money do you have?” And when he looked at him, Sam clicked hard and snapped, “Do you have any money? Human money, not chits, and if it isn’t at least a few thousand, don’t even bother saying yes.”

“Yes,” he said.

“All right.” Sam seemed to relax, only slightly. “I know a guy. A human in the Heap-station. He’ll get you started. It probably won’t come to anything,” he added, wadding the news-sheets savagely and tossing them in the ditch. “But without him, you’ve got no chance at all.”

“A chance at what?”

“It was in the tiny print in some of the papers they made us sign back in Fairfield. I keep telling you, read everything. Now they’ll probably deny it’s there, but I’ve never seen them take it back, so you just keep staring them down. It’s called a visa,” Sam said, just as he was getting ready to lose his temper. “And assuming they don’t shoot you just for asking, you’re going to have to buy it.”

“A visa,” Sanford echoed clumsily. “What does it do?”

“It lets you out,” Sam said and spat chaw. “Under guard. For an hour or two. They won’t let you touch her. I’m not even sure they’ll let you close enough to talk to her. You still want one?”

“Yes,” said Sanford.

Sam nodded, already turning around. “Then get your money and let’s go. Nobody with anything called a ruptured liver has time for you to fuck around.”

* * *

It took three days to arrange a two-hour pass for himself and T’aki. He turned every food chit he’d hidden below into human money, taking a ninety-percent loss in the exchange, just to be sure he’d have enough for the necessary bribes. They didn’t take it all (five hundred dollars to Sam’s ‘friend’ at the Heap-station, fifteen hundred to his friend in IBI’s visa department, and a grueling three thousand to the man who made the final approval), but they took everything they thought he had and then made him wait two more days without telling him anything.

But in the end, it went through, which Sanford had more than half-expected it would not. Before dawn on the sixth day, they came for him, bursting in as for an arrest and laughing at him for throwing up his arms and dropping to his knees.

“You Fred Sanford?” one of them asked.

“And Son,” another added, and they all laughed.

“I am,” said Sanford. He kept his arms up, his hands behind his head, and watched the first man consult his papers. It was a man he knew, a man he’d last seen at Sarah’s block party, knocking her to the ground.

“So you want to see your caseworker,” the man drawled. “That’s so sweet.”

Laughter.

“Well, you’re lucky, bug.” The human folded the papers and tucked them away. “Because I want to see her too. You have no idea how much. If I’d known you roaches could still get a fucking visa, I’d have written one up for you the first day. Let’s go.”

They took him to an armored van, him and T’aki, where they painted both their chests through a stencil in white paint with throat-stinging fumes, stamped the visa six times and finally allowed them to board. They sat in the back with the grinning guard while two other guards rode up front. T’aki was just as excited to ride as he’d been in Sarah’s vehicle. He kept wanting to hop up and look out every window, wanting to know if every building he saw lit up in the darkness was the hospital. Sanford kept his answers short, as if preoccupied, perhaps even angry. He was neither. He was, in fact, very alert and aware of the guard he did not dare to stare at, the guard who had punched a stack of solid ice the last time he’d seen him this close.

T’aki had brought a plant, a little scrub of grass he’d found growing near the aqueduct. He’d packed it carefully in an empty can, which he’d wrapped in paper and painted. He held it against his chest, protective, patting it now and then in his excitement. He had asked ten times at least if Sanford thought it might flower soon. Sanford eventually stopped answering, because he did not know and because any answer he gave made the guards laugh harder.

“They’ll never let that filthy thing in a hospital,” one of those up front said.

“No, they won’t,” agreed the driver. “But they might take the grass if he ties a ribbon on it.”

And they laughed.

After that, T’aki sat quietly, keeping his head down and stroking at the thin, green blades.

The hospital was a much bigger building than Sanford expected, and even so early in the day, was crowded with humans. He’d never seen so many of them who didn’t carry weapons.

But the ones who did were enough. They parked up close to the doors, opened the van, and immediately raised a commotion of gasps and shouts and screams from the other humans. Sanford was ordered down; he knelt and let his ankles be fastened to a hobbling rod, and his arms bound behind him, none too gently. They tried to do the same to T’aki, but had neglected to bring binders small enough, and so in the end settled for tying a collar around his son’s neck and fastening that to Sanford’s waist.

And they took the plant. Perhaps only to get at his son’s little wrists at first, but in response to his leaping and loud protests, they took it all the way away, laughing, and threw it in a bin.

“Now shut up,” the guard said, as T’aki skreed. “Or I’ll march both your butts back in the van. This ain’t the roach motel anymore.”

“Quiet,” Sanford said. “Behave yourself. Be quiet.”

“He took my—”

“I will send you home myself. Be quiet.”

T’aki was, his antennae flat in silent anger, snapping his palps in complaint. Sanford answered them with low clicks, the best he could do, and his son eventually quieted. A tap to the back from the butt of the guard’s gun prompted him to his feet and he started walking.

Humans scattered ahead of him, some only darting back to watch from a safer distance, others in full screaming flight out of the building. The guard enjoyed this as well, playing to his audience by shoving Sanford, yanking on his binders, calling out orders and accompanying them with blows from his gun’s butt, just as though Sanford were a dangerous beast that needed breaking. He resisted none of it and kept his eyes averted as he was taken through the crowded halls, up a metal shaft, and along the acrid-smelling corridors, past rooms filled with machinery and sleeping humans. It did not look like a medical bay to Sanford, but a place of experimentation, of killing. He prayed appearances were deceiving. They often were, with humans.

“What the hell is this?” A human male in white, stinking of fear and adrenaline, stormed over just in time to distract the guard from keeping T’aki on the ground with the butt of his gun. “Get those…
things
out of here!”

“They have a pass,” their guard said, shouldering his gun.

“I don’t care if they have the crown jewels of fucking France! Get them out! This is a hospital! I’m not going to have those disease-ridden parasites in my hospital!”

Sanford kept his head bent, trying to sort the scents of this awful place with furtive flashes of his claspers, needing to know which room was hers.

“Your hospital, huh?”

“I’m not arguing with you, get your bugs and get out!”

“I ain’t arguing either. They got a pass. That means my job is seeing they get their time on that pass,” the guard went on, talking straight over the other human’s angry stammers. He was enjoying this. Good. Any prey would satisfy a stupid man, and as long as it was human, it was not his son. “I like my job. I like it well enough to shoot the guts out of college-boys who want to give me shit over it. Are you giving me shit?”

Anger. Fear. Mean enjoyment. Stink of chemicals. Stink of men. Sanford waited, wishing she would sing.

“You’ve got five minutes,” the white-clothed human said. “Five. Then I want you all out of here or I call the cops.” He backed away, pointing at them with his short human hands. “All of you! Fucking
bugs
!”

T’aki snapped angrily. Sanford hushed him.

“All righty, roaches,” said their guard, in a good mood as only one like him could be. Not as good as if he’d been able to crack a head or shoot someone, but good. He continued on down the halls, smirking at the guards who came skulking out to watch them, until he found the door he wanted. “Knock-knock, Pollyanna,” he called, boldly pushing it open. “You got visitors. Christ, every time I see you, you just look more and more beautiful.”

The pleasure in his voice was as good as a warning. Sanford braced himself and went inside.

Sarah lay in a small bed, surrounded by machines, most of them shut off, as if medics had given up on her healing. They’d put her in an oversized wrap from which her arms and head jutted like two sticks and a rock from a snowbank. Her skin stank of blood and chemicals, and had been dotted by bandages. Her face—swollen, cut, ghastly with damage—stretched into an expression of horror when she saw him.

“What…” She struggled to sit up, caught at her belly with a grimace, and then just stared at him. “What are you doing here?”

T’aki leapt up, jerking Sanford roughly around at the end of the tether. He stared out the window while his son jabbered in Sarah’s embrace, telling her how they’d seen her in the papers, telling her about all the lights on the street driving up here, telling her he’d tried to bring a plant and the mean man—

“Aw, they got rules here, jellybean,” Sarah interrupted, as the ‘mean man’ stuck his head around the door. “The hospital wants you to buy their plants, not bring your own. Besides, I’m sure it was pretty, but you—” She wrapped herself around T’aki and rocked him while he chirped with delight, suffocated in Sarah. The boy didn’t see her face, contorted by pain in this embrace. He knew only her touch. “You are the best present. And you really didn’t have to come. I’ll be back soon.” She smiled, scrabbling her fingers all over T’aki’s chest. Tickles, she called that. It distracted the boy, that was enough. “I’d better, anyway. I’ve used up all the vacation days I have for, like, a year. I’ll be back. Oh, easy! Easy, jellybean, that’s tender.”

“I’ll bet it is. Just have to watch your step for a while, eh, beautiful?” The guard at the door laughed. “Make sure you don’t walk into any more doors? Fall down some more stairs? Or did you trip over your fat mouth?”

Sarah still smiled, but wanly now. Sanford watched the window, watched her pat T’aki’s head, then lift him up and set him down on the floor.

“How could you fall on your mouth?” T’aki asked, baffled.

“I didn’t, jellybean.”

“Oh yeah?” The guard grinned, showing rows of bony teeth. “What did happen? I’m dying to know.”

“Something just as stupid, I’m sure,” Sarah said. She spoke without hesitance, staring boldly at the guard who grinned at her. “I came home while some guys were robbing my place. I’d left the back door open…for my dog.”

“Oh yeah?” The grin widened. “Some guys?”

“I didn’t get a good look at them, but there had to have been more than one. Worked me over pretty good, didn’t they?”

T’aki looked at her, at Sanford, at her. He backed up and tugged lightly at his tether, wanting to be picked up. Sanford ignored him. ‘Be quiet,’ his soft clicks said, and T’aki, mercifully, was.

“Oh, I don’t know,” the guard said. “You could look a lot worse.”

Silence, for a short while.

“They get anything?” the guard asked.

“No. A car pulled in…just turning around, but it scared them off. They split, didn’t take anything.” She paused. “Typical thugs. They’re all cowards at heart.”

‘Oh, be quiet!’ thought Sanford, rigid with dread. Did she think she was safe just because she was here? Did she really believe the other humans in this place would defend her if this man chose to raise the weapon he carried so casually and fire it right into her fearless face?

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” the guard said coolly. “They shot your dog, I hear.”

Another tug at the tether. Sanford raised his bound hands and T’aki crawled beneath them. Now and then, he trembled.

“I heard they hung it up on a fence post and shot it ‘till it looked like, oh, fur and ground chuck.” He whistled, long and low, a mocking sound in any language. “I’d call that pretty bold. Hell, bold bastards like that, they might even come back.”

“If only you’d been there, Mr. Lantz,” said Sarah in a tight voice. “You could have chased them off for me.”

“Well…” He came over to the bed, smiling, to stroke his hand along her bruised cheek. “I can promise you I’ll be keeping a close eye on you from now on. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt again. That would be just tragic.”

She stretched her mouth in the shape of a smile.

“Mm.” Another grin, flashing white in the window. Then, “You got three minutes, buggies,” and he leaned up against the doorjamb to watch them.

Three minutes. Sanford ticked at the seconds to get a measure of them, then turned around and looked directly at her. After a moment, she returned his gaze. Her eyes were damp.

“The boy wanted to come,” Sanford said. “He doesn’t know better.”

‘I am not your friend,’ he thought. ‘You have no friends in Cottonwood.’

T’aki drew back, staring at him in dismay.

“Come here a sec, jellybean. Check this out.” Sarah turned on the television monitor mounted on the wall above Sanford’s head and gave T’aki the controller. “Put it right to your ear,” she said, smiling. “Right on it, okay?”

T’aki did, fascination in every twitch and stutter of his antennae as he stared raptly at the screen above, sound no doubt trumpeting through his head and chest as if by magic, overwhelming every other sound.

“He’s a kid,” Sarah said in a low voice, watching T’aki wring his hands and chirr at the monitor. Her voice was cold as well, cold but strained. “And no, kids don’t know better. But you do.” She looked at him with her damp eyes, only at him and not at the door where the guard waited, listened. “And just because you can use your cute kid to abuse the system doesn’t make it right. I d-duh-don’t w-want you here, you…
bug
!” She clapped her hands over her eyes and pressed them in hard. “What are you doing here?” she whispered, and that at least was honest. It almost bled in the air. “What are you
doing
here?”