Old Mars

Tilda leaped up and hugged him. “Thank you. Thank you.” She brushed away the tears that sprang into her eyes.

“Don’t thank me yet, but I think it’s going to be okay. Neanderthals did trepannings, and I’ve got an uplink on my Ring to the Lowell Medical Center, and a neurosurgeon is going to walk me through it. So let’s get started. We need to shave his head and disinfect the skull. And I need a drill.”

The prep took longer than the actual procedure. Daddy-Kane steadied his husband’s head while Tilda held a towel at the ready to mop up blood. Ali inserted the drill. The whine edged the teeth, and made the back of Tilda’s eyes hurt. She tightened her sweat-limned hands on the towel as the drill bit slowly through the skin. A burning scent as it hit bone, then Ali was through and a geyser of blood hit him in the chest and face. Tilda jumped forward to block it with a towel, only to have the older, white-haired woman doctor in the ScoopRing holo say shrilly, “No, let it bleed. We want the pressure reduced.”

The spurting blood slowed to a trickle, then stopped. Ali scrambled to his feet and held his ScoopRing over the hole in Noel’s skull for the surgeon in Lowell City to inspect. Dr. Bush was leaning forward as if she could step across the hundreds of miles. Ali pulled out his earbud so that they could all hear the woman say, “Nice job, Ali. Looks good. Clean it, get a pad and a bandage on it, and he should awaken in a few hours.”

Tilda hugged first her father, and then flung herself into Ali’s arms. He bestowed an awkward kiss that pretty much missed her mouth, but it was still really nice.

Tilda went to her room to change into a clean shirt. Some of the spouting blood had hit her. She was rather proud of herself that she hadn’t fainted or reacted to the gore. Maybe she could have been a soldier. Of course, she wasn’t going to have a chance to find out now. What was going to happen once Noel-Pa awakened? she wondered. But that line of thought was too fraught and filled with pain and dread. She returned to her fathers’ bedroom.

Hours passed. The pupil in Noel’s eye returned to normal. His blood pressure dropped, his pulse was normal. He didn’t awaken. Ali called Dr. Bush back. She had him test muscle reflexes on the bottom of the soldier’s foot. It all tested normal. But still he lay like an effigy, and with each passing hour, he seemed to fill out the sheet less and less, as if he were diminishing before their eyes. Kane’s face sagged and went grey. Ali made hurried calls to Dr. Bush, but nothing she suggested helped.

The storm screamed itself out. Ali’s father wanted to fly over and collect him, but Ali refused. “Not until my patient wakes up” was what he said, and Tilda wanted to kiss him again. Grandpa Stephen came by once and gazed with a bitter expression at the prone form of his son-in-law. Tilda was glad then that Ali had stayed; it kept all the hate and bile from being spoken aloud.

Tilda retreated to her bedroom and lay down. She was just going to rest her burning eyes for a few minutes—

Noel-Pa and Miyako were sitting on either side of Ozymandias on the top step of the temple. All three of them looked at Tilda as she walked down the long boulevard. The air around Tilda pulsed and—

She was suddenly elbow deep in a tea bush, carefully stripping off the tender leaves. Her hands were tiny, a child’s hands, and the skin was pale almond. She glanced up at her father, who smiled over at her.

“This tea will be drunk in the White House and Buckingham Palace. It’s as if we’ll be there when they serve it,” he said, and Miyako felt a shiver of excitement.

Her hands were larger now, gauntleted in armor, and they gripped a heavy rifle. There was a flash as a laser gouged a new crater on Ceres. Her faceplate darkened so that she wouldn’t be blinded. She threw herself in a long dive into cover.

“Delia? Sam? Matt? Sound off. Talk to me, people.” Her voice was a deep baritone.

Tilda had reached the foot of the steps, and she walked up to Ozymandias.

“Do you understand now?” he asked.