Bebe (6 page)

Boots crunching through the thin layer of icy snow that had fallen the night before, he was just thinking he might spend tomorrow celebrating his good fortune by walking the perimeter fence in search of more human-sized escape holes when, under last night’s thin veil of snow and a smattering of dead leaves, his idle eyes spotted something...unusual...lying at the base of a large tree.

Curiosity being the hallmark of a good zoologist, he adjusted his course and wandered over for a closer look. It was pale. Almost pinkish, and nothing found in nature was pinkish this time of year. Tral paused over it, his mind trying to make sense of what he was seeing. A piece of wind-blown garbage, maybe. He was just about to prod it with his foot when it shivered, shaking the leaves and snow, and the slightly pinkish thing suddenly formed itself into a recognizable knee. It bent, pulling upward and deeper into the insulating layer of leaves and his eyes rounded in surprise. This wasn’t garbage. This was human!

Tral swore, much louder than he should have considering how well sound carried in the Preserve. He also dropped everything he was carrying, including his government issued, on-pain-of-death-don’t-you-dare-lose-another-one (or so his uncle had told him, although he liked to think that last part might have been an exaggeration—one could never be sure with his uncle) camera. Dropping to his knees, he shoved through the layer of leaves, brushing back the snow and ice until his bit of “wind-blown garbage” was revealed.

“Oh baby,” he groaned, his face crumpling at the cruelty of it. “Who could do this to you?”

She was just a little thing, obviously female and just as obviously as far from ‘wild’ as any household pet could possibly be. She was well fed, and although she was also battered, dirty and bruised, someone had spent time and money to have her tiny finger- and toenails manicured into sharp little claw-like points and painted pink. Even without a stitch of clothing on her, it was easy to see that at one time this had been someone’s treasure. At one time,
someone
had loved her.

And then they had dumped her out here. As far from society as any Preserve could possibly be to avoid poachers. No, there was no way a house pet became this lost without help.

“Shit,” Tral swore again, vehemently. He looked around, as if he might still catch glimpse of the irresponsible culprit lurking in the surrounding trees. “Shit, shit,
shit
!”

Shrugging out of his coat, he quickly threw it over her, scooping her up into his arms. She barely did more than crack open her eyes, unwilling or unable to drag her head around even just to look at him.

Somewhere in the audible distance behind him, a twig snapped.

Suddenly remembering the wild pack, Tral snapped around. The snowy landscape was utterly vacant of humans. He could see the spot where they had been. The carcass was still there. So was the fire, trailing a thin stream of smoke into the winter air. But of the humans, there wasn’t so much as a hint beyond the shadow of footprints disappearing back into the trees.

That was not a good sign. It would be just his luck to have an armload of semi-conscious, half-frozen pet when he ran head-long into a pack of spear-wielding savages.

He stood, listening intently, wondering if that snapping twig he’d heard had broken under the weight of last night’s snow, or if the humans were trying to circle him behind the heavy curtain of wintering trees, looking for the safest angle from which to attack. And did he really want to be standing here like a frozen idiot with one of their own in his arms when they finally caught up to him? A female at that.

Oh no, this was not good at all.

Trying to juggle her in his arms, Tral squatted to gather his things, saving the dart gun for last. He checked to make sure that he could see the red tufts of the tranquilizers peeking out of the barrel before turning and heading out through the crisp snow for the station house.

He hurried as best he could, but still her little pink-painted toes were all but blue by the time he got there. Tral kicked open the door. He also just as quickly kicked it shut again and hit the locking code with the end of the dart gun. He had learned very quickly on that while most humans had no difficulty opening an unlocked door, a simple keypad could make all the difference between sleeping in safety and waking up in the middle of the night to discover a spear growing out of his gut.

And that was providing, of course, that the temperature didn’t drop low enough to pop the lock open.

Dropping his equipment on the floor, Tral tested the latch. Nope, the lock was working perfectly. For now, anyway.

Shifting to the nearest window, he paused to shuffle the female in his arms just enough to part the curtains with two fingers. Nothing but white-smothered landscape stretching out over the hillside and through the trees as far as he could see. All those snapping twigs he’d heard rustling up behind him thorough his harried sprint home had been nothing more than the normal sounds of winter. Great. He shook his head at his own foolishness. He’d just been chased two clicks uphill through the snow by his own overactive imagination.

Stepping back from the window, he glanced down at the semi-conscious female in his arms. Her head dangled backwards over the crook of his arm and she stared up at the ceiling, her eyes fixed and almost glazed. If it weren’t for the fact that she was shivering so violently, he’d almost have thought her dead.

He had to get her warm.

Rushing into the bathroom, Tral sat down on the edge of the tub. With her draped across his lap, he ran a hot bath, filling the basin halfway before stripping his coat off her limp, unresponsive frame. She was so small, both dirty and discolored from cold, and covered in thistles, dead leaves and bruises. He touched his fingers to her wrist, and then her neck. Her pulse was faint, but sporadic. Like the spasms of shivers that still ravaged her. Hard one minute, and then absent the next. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not, and so he held her in his lap while the basin of the tub filled with water.

“Oh baby,” he tsked, picking bits of twigs out of her tangled hair and brushing at the dead leaves stuck to her skin. Everywhere he touched her, he encountered another thorn. “Someone must have forgot to tell you not to roll in the
vouka
plants.”

Half-hidden thistles pricked his fingers, leaving them tingling ominously as the toxin seeped in through his skin. By the morning, his hands were going to be itching like crazy. But while the
vouka
toxin was little more than a mild irritant to his kind; to humans, the prick of a single thorn could fester quickly into a life-threatening infection. And she’d been stuck by hundreds of them. Literally hundreds.

Tral shook his head, looking at all the black sliver-sized thistles imbedded all over her—her arms and legs bearing the thickest accumulation—but in the end, it all came down to what he wanted more: to warm her up before she slipped any deeper into shock, or deal with the toxic thistles while she quietly died of hypothermia right here in his arms.

Lowering himself to one knee, he lay her into the bottom of the tub.

She reacted as if he were trying to boil her alive.

Tral very well remembered the one time in his life that he had been so cold that immersing his hands in lukewarm water had felt as if he were instead dousing them in liquid fire. So he was not without sympathy for the agony he knew her to be feeling. But he also knew that he had to get her body temperature up or there was a very real possibility that she could die. Planting the flat of his hand upon her chest, he pushed her down on her back, holding her in the water despite her piercing screams and the weak thrashing of her arms and legs as she struggled to pull herself out. He—indeed, the whole of the small bathroom—were absolutely drenched by the time the burning effects of the water had waned and the last of her strength was exhausted. After that, she lay huddled in the bottom of the tub, gripping his wrist with both hands, staring up at him through slightly glazed eyes, shaking so hard her teeth chattered.

She barely did more than blink when he slowly withdrew the pressure of his hand from her chest. She gripped his wrist with both hands, her fingers locked around him until he physically peeled himself free. He checked her pulse. It felt stronger, not quite right but not as weak and intermittent as it had been before.

“Stay,” he told her, and went back out to the main room to fetch his medical kit from the bottom of the pile he’d dumped just inside the front door. He brought it back to the tub to open it up. She was lying limp as a rag in the bottom, surrounded by about four inches of dirty water.

Lowering himself to kneel beside the tub, he emptied the water out and then filled it again with fresh hot water. Unlike the first time, she barely blinked as she was gradually engulfed. Fishing a hand out of the water, he draped it over the lip of the tub.

Feigning cheerfulness, he said, “Fortunately for you, I actually paid attention during my six weeks of training.”

He sterilized a needle and then, with the help of a small pair of tweezers, began to pluck the thistles from her fingers and palm. Her skin was red everywhere he found one, making them easier to spot, even the very small slivers.

Finishing with her hand, he followed the trail of thistles up her arm to the elbow. There were more in her left hand, two underneath her chin, and a whole slew of them sticking out at all angles from the milky-white plain of her belly. She lay as still as something dead while he plucked and plucked and rinsed the wounds and plucked some more, working his way down her legs, and never so much as flinched once. Not even when he rolled her onto her side to remove an especially nasty patch of quill-like thorns from the base of her spine and buttocks. His neck and shoulders began to ache from hunching over the lip of the tub while he worked on her, but he doggedly kept at it until he could run his hands over every part of her without encountering a single thistle.

Now, all that was left to pluck were her feet. Rolling her onto her back again, he fished each ankle out of the water and hooked her legs over the lip of the tub. It was the closest that he’d come to losing his temper in many years. Worse than the slivers and prickling
vouka
thorns were the dirty bruises and cuts from walking on jagged rocks with nothing to protect the soles of her soft bare feet.

Tral got up and walked away from the tub then, shaking his head and laughing, about as far removed from amused as a man could get. He clenched his fist, gripping and flexing his stiff fingers before, shaking his head again, he returned to finish the job. With a steady, careful hand, he removed the last of the thorns before rinsing each foot in turn. He ran the dirty water out of the tub again, and refilled it one last time. She didn’t react at all when he removed a needle from his kit, filling the syringe with antibiotic.

“Here comes the poke,” he warned, rolling her onto her side so he could swab her hip.

She blinked twice, but never so much as flinched when he stuck her with the needle.

Positioning her back on her back, Tral braced his arms on the lip of the tub and looked at her. Sighing, he let his hand rest a moment on her stomach before offering her an awkward pat of comfort. “I think I could use that cup of tea now. How about you?”

Leaving her to soak and grow warm, he left the bathroom. He got as far as the cold fireplace before allowing himself to become momentarily overwhelmed. Hands on his hips, he stood staring at this morning’s coals and trying to think. What was he going to do with her? He was not a trained vet, and this was not a hospital. This was a one-man station in the middle of nowhere. An observation post, stocked with very few supplies and boasting only the most basic modern conveniences. He had electricity, a computer and a coffee-maker. That was it. In all other aspects, he may as well be living in the stone-age.

A stone-age made somewhat easier through pre-packaged foods and a handy dart gun, sure, but he only had just enough of either to guarantee his life would become a logistics nightmare if ever he ran so low as to call in a supply-drop in the middle of winter. Small as humans were—and as his little female stray certainly was—Tral was still fairly certain that she’d probably want to eat on at least a once daily basis. So would he frankly. So unless he wanted to supplement this year’s winter stores by learning how to hunt—if four humans could bring down an
ank’ta
bull, then surely it couldn’t be that hard, could it?—he had two choices: get rid of the human or start flecking rocks into spearheads.

She might die in the night, his subconscious whispered. As many
vouka
spines as he’d picked out of her, with all that poison seeping through her system, dying was definitely a strong possibility.

He should call in the morning for a transport to run her to the nearest shelter. At least there she’d get good—well...fair, maybe—medical care from a qualified vet.

If, his subconscious whispered again, they didn’t take one look at her in her present condition and have her promptly euthanized.

How grossly unfair. To be euthanized for the crime of being dumped on the side of a road.

Frowning, Tral glanced once at his computer, but he already knew he wasn’t going to do that. He couldn’t. He’d found her. He’d pulled her from the snow. He’d started her medical care, and although he wasn’t remotely qualified, he’d see it through to the end. The very grisly end, if she actually did succumb to
vouka
poisoning, but if it came to that, he’d do his best to make her as comfortable as possible. And if it really came to that, there was always the axe out in the woodshed. One quick chop would bring her suffering to a much more humane end than anything else he had lying around.

His dark brows beetled together as he wondered aloud, “What did I come out here for?”

Oh yeah. Tea. He reoriented himself towards the dark fireplace.

“Get a fire started.” After six years alone, talking to himself had became something of an occupational hazard. And yet, so long as his answers didn’t spark arguments, he figured he was probably still okay. He turned halfway around, his eyes sweeping over the cluttered stacks of clothes, dishes and papers. Unfortunately, the station’s list of modern conveniences did not include automatic temperature controls, but he did have an adjacent woodshed, stuffed full of firewood, and in short order he had stirred the morning coals back to life with the application of a little tinder and a lot of gentle puffing. Once the flame caught, he added as many logs as would fit upon the grate before returning to the bathroom door to check on his little stray.