Free Earth Thirst by Mark Teppo Page A

aubergine and plum.
    “How may I help you?” he asks, setting aside whatever he had been pretending to be working on as I had approached.
    “I need some money,” I say with just enough bluntness that he hesitates for a second, his eyes flicking across my attire and general scruffy condition. I smile, and it is my pristine dentition that convinces him that I'm not some homeless person who has come in to rob the bank.
    “Certainly, Mister…”
    I tell him the family name Callis and I had been using during our jaunt through late-nineteenth-century London. “Call me Silas though,” I say.
    He pulls out a keyboard tray and clacks on the keys. “Do you know your account number?” he asks.
    I stare at him and he fidgets for a moment, his eyes flickering back and forth from me to his computer screen. “Oh,” he says as he spots something on his monitor. “Oh,” he says again as he starts to read. “Yes,” he continues, licking his lips nervously, and I imagine he's gotten to the part where the account history goes back a hundred plus years. “Certainly, sir,” he finishes. “There's… ah… there's a password.”
    “Of course there is,” I say, briefly wondering what it could be. Genevieve,” I settle on. Callis hadn't warned me, which meant it had to be something obvious to both of us. The name of the banker's daughter who Callis had a thing for, for instance.
    Rupert nods. “Well,” he says, placing his hands on his desk. He smiles. His dental work isn't as good as mine, though it looks to have cost his family a great deal. “What can I do for you today?”
    Finally, some good news. “I'll need some cash. About this much.” I hold two fingers several centimeters apart. “And a debit card of some kind. Something I can use to get more. Oh, and the name of the place where you get your suits.”

TEN
    W here Rupert gets his suits turns out to be a place a few blocks away. The stack of cash is easy enough—that only requires a looping scrawl that passes for a signature—but the card will take an hour or two and so I spend it being fitted for a suit I'll never pick up. I buy other clothes too, an outfit that makes me indistinguishable from any other fashion-aware man in Adelaide. Afterward, I stop at a juice shop on the way back to the bank. A mega dose of chia and wheatgrass powder. Processing kills a lot of the green but in large enough quantities, it'll help keep the thirst at bay.
    I'm heading to the hospital next, and I can't afford to lose control there. Regardless of what it smells like, most of the blood in the building is going to be compromised. My immune system is already under enough stress.
    The Royal Adelaide Hospital is located in North Adelaide, on the south side of the River Torrens, and I cross the gently flowing water on a pedestrian foot bridge near the zoo. I'm tempted by the plethora of aromas wafting out of the Botanical Gardens and I promise myself that I'll scale the fence and admire the sleeping flowers later. The hospital is a brightly lit contrast to the dark embrace of the Botanical Gardens, and I find my way into P wing where the burn wards are located.
    The scent of the chemicals makes my skin crawl. Western medicine relies on its science too much. If it comes out of a laboratory and cost more than a billion dollars to create, then it must do something. And these products do, but it's not what these patients need. They need to know their skin will heal, that they'll be able to wear clothing without having to worry about how the synthetic fabric is going to irritate their flesh. They need to know their families won't look away when they enter the room; that someone will look past their melted skin and see the person inside. The creams and salves with the trademark names won't do any of those things. The pharmaceuticals will only make the pain go away. For a little while. But it's okay; there's a solution for the pain that persists after the creams have done their work. It has a