The Fifth Sacred Thing (51 page)

“She frets,” Begood explained to Big John. “Where she comes from, this doesn’t happen.”

“No? Wounds don’t get infected?”

“People are cared for,” Madrone said, “whatever happens. And nobody lacks water for something as basic as washing.” And then she had to tell them again about the running streams, and the streets planted with fruit trees, and the gardens. My fairy tale, she thought. The sun rose higher, and she was overwhelmed by exhaustion after doing what she could for Joan. They curled into the shadow of the brush and slept.

They woke at sunset, ate some acorns dipped in honey, drank. When darkness fell, Madrone washed Joan’s wound again. She was weak and feverish and didn’t even argue when they left her alone, wrapped in a blanket and provided with all the food and water they could spare. They headed up the path, stopping as Big John and Lately removed a pair of shotguns from a cache in the side of the canyon. Littlejohn and Begood were carrying their laser rifles. Lately handed Madrone a pistol but she just stood, looking at it, feeling its cold weight in her hand.

“I can’t take it,” she said.

“I’ll show you how to fire it,” Littlejohn said. “It’s the simplest thing we’ve got.”

She shook her head. “I know how to shoot a pistol. We learned in school. Our teachers said we had to be familiar with guns to understand history. I just don’t want to kill anyone.”

“Nobody wants to kill anyone,” Littlejohn said patiently. “If all goes well, we won’t. This is just a precaution.”

She remembered the feel of the guns they’d practiced with, the recoil as bullets exploded out, the challenge of hitting a target and the horror at the thought of what that force could do to living flesh. Could she pull the trigger, end some unknown person’s life? If it were a choice, between that and the pens? Or losing her own life? Her hand was shaking.

“I can’t take it.”

“Then you’re an added danger to all of us,” Big John said. “If you won’t defend yourself, and you won’t defend us—”

“I just don’t think I could do it.”

“You don’t know until you try,” Begood said.

“I can’t.”

“Don’t push her,” Littlejohn said. “She’ll be a worse danger to us all if she gets jumpy with a gun in her hand. Leave her be. This is gonna be cake, right? Nobody’s gonna shoot nobody tonight.”

She was grateful to Littlejohn but she still felt shaken, oddly ashamed. Because this is not so much a stand I take from conviction, she admitted, but from some instinctive revulsion. If I’m really such a pacifist, I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be working with them and supporting their fight. But I don’t know that I am, that I would go to the pens rather than let these men kill another man to protect me. And if I feel that way I should defend myself.

But I can’t.

“Come on, then,” Big John said.

The pharmacy was on the edge of the valley on the north side of the mountains. Two hours of fast hiking brought them to a sheltered hollow on the lower slopes of the last hill, where they could look down on a huge metal warehouse, surrounded by chain-link fence with barbed wire strung on top. Armed guards patrolled the gate. Madrone and her companions sat in the dark, reeking of wariness and excitement.

“What are we waiting for?” Madrone whispered.

“Guard change,” Littlejohn said. “Ah, there it comes.”

Below them, two new men approached the gate guards, talked for a moment, and then took their places.

“Who’s our friend?” Littlejohn whispered.

“The tall one,” Lately said.

The taller of the two guards left his post and began making the rounds of the perimeter inside the chain-link fence.

“What’s happening?” Madrone asked.

“He’s supposed to unlock the back gate for us and deactivate the alarm,” Big John said. “He’s part of the Web.”

They waited. Madrone tried to calm herself. She suspected the others were enjoying themselves. But I’m not made for this sort of thing, she thought. I’m not like Cleis, who craved danger and died for it. I don’t want to die or kill.

After a wait that seemed endless, the tall guard returned to the front gate.

“Okay,” Lately whispered. “Littlejohn, you stay here, cover the front entrance. Don’t shoot anyone unless you have to, and don’t shoot our friend whatever you do. If there’s trouble, give the call. Begood, you come down with us, cover the side gate. Any trouble coming, try to get in, give us a warning. Okay, let’s go.”

They ran silently, crouching in the shadows, around the line of the fence to the southeast corner, out of sight of the gate on the west side. A small door opened into the chain-link fence, and cautiously, Lately pushed on it. It opened.

“Come on.”

Madrone followed Lately and Big John, running quickly across the twenty
feet of open space that separated the gate from a small side entrance into the warehouse.

“Pray that our friend really turned off the alarm,” Lately said, flashing a grin at Madrone as he pressed against the blank metal door. It opened inward.

“Home free,” he said.

Inside, the smells of a thousand chemicals assaulted her. She felt dizzy, almost numb with overload. Forests of high metal racks surrounded them, stacked high with boxes and bottles and containers.

“Where do they get all this? Where does it come from?” she whispered, astounded at the sheer abundance. There were more pills here, in this one warehouse, than in all the storehouses of the Bay Area combined.

“They have factories all over the Valley, strictly under military control,” Lately told her. “And farms, up and down the coast, where they grow some of the materials. A few of them are free farms, but a lot of them are labor camps. You can sign on if you’re unemployed, work seven days a week in the hot sun for three years, and live like a dog, but you get all the highs and lows you can swallow. Those houses with their green lawns that you passed up in the hills, this is where a lot of them get their money. And the black market in highs and lows is especially profitable.”

“Nothing is labeled!” Madrone said. “How do we know what anything is?”

“Big John’s gone to get the scanner,” Lately said. “You just sit tight here, let us bring you things. We’re looking for boosters, for highs and lows, and you tell us what else.”

“Why highs and lows?”

“To sell. And give to our friends, keep them happy. We got to finance this somehow.”

She wasn’t at all happy with the answer, but there was nothing she could do about it. Big John returned with the scanner, which looked like a square magnifying glass on a stick.

“Here’s how it works,” Lately said, taking down a box of pills from a shelf. “The labels are all in dot code on the front, see?” He pointed out a pattern of black dots, and she nodded. “Hold the scanner up and look through.”

When she looked into the lens, a name and a price appeared.

“Well, this would be very helpful if I knew what any of these things were,” Madrone said.

“Don’t you? I thought you knew about medications.”

“Some. We use drugs back home that we can culture or distill from what we grow, antibiotics and antivirals and anti-infectins. They’re more effective for some conditions than herbs or acupuncture or our other methods. But the Stewards have things I only know about in theory, and then by their Latin
names or their chemical structure, not their brand names. Maybe I can make some guesses.”

“A lot of stuff, we can recognize,” Lately said.

“Can you find me some boosters? I’d like to examine them.”

“Sure. But if you want something for Joan, you’ll have to tell us what to look for.”

“I have no idea what it would look like,” Madrone said, dismayed. “Capsules, probably, not tablets—if that’s any help.” Her head was beginning to ache with the smells around her. If she could focus her bee sense, put it to use somehow.…

“Wait a minute, I’ve thought of something I could try. Bring me some things, and I’ll see if I can find out what they are.”

She sat down in a corner, with a pen Big John found for her. Touching her bee spot, she let herself go into the trance, but not all the way. I need to keep my human mind intact, to think and name and write, while I open the other senses. Melissa, can I do this?

“Here’s some capsules,” Lately said, placing a box on her knees. She broke one open, sniffed a few grains of powder, touched her tongue to them delicately.

Taste and smell exploded in her brain, she was flying through orange groves, lemons blossomed, fruited, sweated through their pungent skin.

She touched her bee spot again, wrote Vitamin C on the box of capsules, and held out her hand for Lately’s next offering.

By the time she had sorted through fifteen or twenty different drugs, her head was throbbing and the gray metal shelves and boxes swam in kaleidoscopic patterns in front of her eyes. There was so much here, she found herself infected with a kind of greed. Drugs to ease pain and drugs to stimulate tissue growth and drugs to reduce tumors. Drugs to undo the effects of other drugs. If she could only study them, analyze them, know exactly how they worked. Her bee sense could help her recognize drugs that she knew, but there were tantalizing hints of other things here, antidotes to the epidemics maybe, advances as yet unfamiliar in the North. But without more time, more equipment, more backup, she couldn’t know.

“Diosa, I don’t know if I can handle any more,” she said as Big John brought another box to her.

“We’ve got a full load of the pleasure drugs,” he said. “Do you have what you want?”

“I found some antibacterials and antivirals,” Madrone said. “These, and these. And here are some painkillers; they’re always useful. You can take the scanner, load up more of these.”

They brought her boxes and bottles and she sorted frantically. What to take, what to leave?

“Hurry,” Lately said. “We’ve got to be out of here before four o’clock check. That’s ten minutes from now, and we’ve got to clean up first.”

“Put these boxes back,” Madrone said, indicating a pile of her rejects. “If I can just find a good general anti-infectin.…”

Big John returned boxes to shelves; Lately packed their backpacks with Madrone’s selections. She felt her own fear growing, but it was hard to tear herself away, not to try tasting just one more, and one more.

“Here,” she said. “Take this, and—”

“That’s all,” Lately said. “We don’t have room or time for more. Big John, run the scanner back. Take your pack, Madrone. Don’t forget to wipe for fingerprints.”

Her hands were shaking as she picked up the pack. The ground seemed to be moving under her feet, and her head weighed enough to drag her down. Big John grabbed the scanner and ran swiftly through the corridors, returning quickly. “Out,” Lately hissed, and now she could smell real fear in him. Cautiously, he pushed the door open a crack, scanned the pavement outside, and motioned to them to come on. “Fast,” he said.

They ran out, Madrone’s heart pounding. The pavement seemed elastic under her feet, and she could hardly tell which way was up or down. Big John grabbed her hand and pulled her along, but the twenty feet between the door and the gate seemed to stretch for miles. They heard a long whistle, like a mournful bird, as Begood waved them through, shutting the gate behind them and clicking the lock shut. “Down,” he whispered, and they threw themselves flat into the shadows outside the fence and lay there scarcely breathing as footsteps passed behind them, just on the other side of the fence. He’ll smell us, Madrone thought. Her own fear was so strong she was sure it tainted the air for miles. But the footsteps passed by, and when they turned the corner Lately motioned them on again. They climbed silently up the dry hillside to the sheltered hollow where Littlejohn waited. Madrone’s legs felt weak; she was surprised they could bear her weight, but they did.

“No trouble?” Lately whispered to Littlejohn.

“All okay. You?”

“Close, but not too close,” Lately whispered. “If our friend gets that door locked again, and the alarm on, they’ll never know they were raided until they take inventory.”

And now they were enjoying themselves, Madrone thought, like boys playing an exciting game. Would I? If I did this regularly, if I do this regularly, will I get to like it, the adrenaline rush, the fear and relief?