Free Miles Errant by Lois McMaster Bujold Page B

You all right? Beatrice chased the barbarians off . . ."
    Suegar looked up and smiled briefly, but the smile was reabsorbed almost immediately by distancing pain.
    Beatrice came back eventually, mussed and breathing heavily. "You loonies," she greeted them dispassionately. "You don't need a bodyguard, you need a bloody keeper." She flopped onto her knees beside Miles to stare at Suegar. Her lips thinned to a white slit. She glanced at Miles, her eyes darkening, the creases between her brows deepening.
    I've changed my mind, Miles thought. Don't start caring for me, Beatrice, don't start caring for anybody. You'll only get hurt. Over and over and over . . . 
    "You better come back to my group," said Beatrice.
    "I don't think Suegar can walk."
    Beatrice rounded up some muscle, and the thin man was rolled onto a sleeping mat and carried, too much like Colonel Tremont's corpse for Miles's taste, back to their now-usual sleeping place.
    "Find a doctor for him," Miles demanded.
    Beatrice came back, strong-arming an angry, older woman.
    "He's probably got a busted belly," snarled the doctor. "If I had a diagnostic viewer, I could tell you just what was busted. You got a diagnostic viewer? He needs synergine and plasma. You got any? I could cut him, and glue him back together, and speed his healing with electra-stim, if I had an operating theatre. Put him back on his feet in three days, no sweat. You got an operating theatre? I thought not.
    "Stop looking at me like that. I used to think I was a healer. It took this place to teach me I was nothing but an interface between the technology and the patient. Now the technology is gone, and I'm just nothing."
    "But what can we do?" asked Miles.
    "Cover him up. In a few days he'll either get better or die, depending on what got busted. That's all." She paused, standing with folded arms and regarding Suegar with rancor, as if his injury was a personal affront. And so it was, for her: another load of grief and failure, grinding her hard-won healer's pride into the dirt. "I think he's going to die," she added.
    "I think so too," said Miles.
    "Then what did you want me for?" She stomped off.
    Later she came back with a sleeping mat and a couple of extra rags, and helped put them around and over Suegar for added insulation, then stomped off again.
    Tris reported to Miles. "We got those guys who tried to kill you rounded up. What do you want done with 'em?"
    "Let them go," said Miles wearily. "They're not the enemy."
    "The hell they're not!"
    "They're not my enemies, anyway. It was just a case of mistaken identity. I'm just a hapless traveler, passing through."
    "Wake up, little man. I don't happen to share Oliver's belief in your 'miracle.' You're not passing through here. This is the last stop."
    Miles sighed. "I'm beginning to think you're right." He glanced at Suegar, breathing shallowly and too fast, beside whom he crouched in watch. "You're almost certainly right, by this time. Nevertheless—let them go."
    "Why?" she wailed, outraged.
    "Because I said to. Because I asked you to. Would you have me beg for them?"
    "Aargh! No. All right!" She wheeled away, running her hands through her clipped hair and muttering under her breath.
    * * *
    A timeless time passed. Suegar lay on his side not speaking, though his eyes flicked open now and then to stare unseeing. Miles moistened his lips with water periodically. A chow call came and went without incident or Miles's participation; Beatrice passed by and dropped two rat bars beside them, stared at them with a carefully-hardened gaze of general disapproval, and stalked off.
    Miles cradled his injured hand and sat cross-legged, mentally reviewing the catalogue of errors that had brought him to this pass. He contemplated his seeming genius for getting his friends killed. He had a sick premonition that Suegar's death was going to be almost as bad as Sergeant Bothari's, six years ago, and he had known Suegar only weeks, not years. Repeated pain, as he had