The Venting Camp

The first soldier appeared above the torn roots with his rifle already raised.

Vera lifted both hands from where she knelt. They would not stay still. Blood had dried between two fingers and was still wet beneath her cuff. She could hear again, but every sound came through a steady high note in her left ear.

"Stay there."

Three others moved into sight. They did not gather around the broken tree. They took positions apart from one another, with earth or roots between them and the center of the clearing. A woman with a worn canvas coat held one hand behind her, palm down, and the nearest soldier stopped advancing.

Her hair had been cut short behind the ears, leaving a pale line where a cap usually sat. She wore the cap tucked into her belt. A broad support followed the outside of her right arm beneath the coat, making that shoulder sit slightly higher than the other. When she needed to look behind her, she turned from the waist.

The soldiers' clothes were different ages and almost the same color. One coat had faded to brown across the shoulders; another retained a green strip beneath its pocket flap. Earth stained their knees. A white mark appeared on each sleeve, broken by stitching on the oldest repairs.

Their weapons had heavy chambers and braided hoses running back to their wrists.

Vera could see the muzzles clearly. Each had a dark opening inside a wider ring, with a small sight standing above it. The hose on the nearest rifle passed through a leather loop before reaching its owner, leaving enough slack to lift the weapon but none to trail on the ground. He adjusted the loop with two fingers while keeping his eyes on her.

"Anything still feeding?" the woman asked.

"I don't know," Vera said.

The woman looked at her hands, her torn clothes, the space beside the rock.

"I'm Sergeant Venn. Keep your hands still. Did someone go out here?"

Vera understood what she meant only because of what she had just seen.

"A man. He said his name was Lio."

One of the soldiers lowered his gaze. The sergeant did not.

"Where were you standing?"

"Here."

"Before."

"Here. I touched his shoulder."

The soldier on her right took a step back.

Venn waited. Vera found herself wanting to explain faster: that she had found him alone, that he had been falling, that she had thought she could help. None of those things changed where her hand had been.

Her fingers were spread too far apart. She let them relax without lowering her arms. Behind Venn, something loosened in the damaged tree and fell through the branches. Every weapon moved toward the sound, then came back. The soldiers were frightened too. They were better at making the fear take a useful shape.

"He told me not to," she said.

The sergeant's gaze shifted briefly to the cloth caught on the rock.

"Are you connected to anything?"

"No."

"Any implants? Collar under your sleeve?"

Vera shook her head.

Venn drew a small instrument from her coat. It hung from a wooden handle, a cloudy bead suspended inside a metal hoop. She extended it toward Vera without approaching within arm's reach. The bead darkened on one side. A faint ticking came from the handle.

"Bren," Venn said, "mark this place. Nobody picks anything up until survey clears it. Pell, watch the lower path."

Then to Vera: "Can you walk?"

"Yes."

"Slowly. The way I go."

Vera pushed herself upright without reaching toward anyone. Her legs held. The relief lasted until she saw the red print her palm had left on the rock.

They did not bind her. They also did not turn their backs.

Venn led. Bren followed several paces behind Vera; the other two kept to the higher ground when the trees allowed it. Their spacing expanded on open stretches and compressed only at the crossings. Once Vera stepped aside to let Bren pass a narrow root, and he stopped too. Venn waited until they had sorted themselves out without coming close.

The clearing disappeared behind a screen of fans. Vera caught one last strip of torn cloth between the leaves, then the path bent and she could no longer see it.

The path wound through gullies that looked much alike to Vera. The soldiers followed painted marks on the underside of roots. At one junction Venn stopped, watched a row of closed leaf-fans, and chose a longer way around. Nobody argued.

The detour climbed away from the water and crossed a slope littered with pale, empty shells. Rain had collected inside them. Pell used the butt of his rifle to move a fallen branch off one of the marks, then put the branch on the downhill side where it would not cover it again.

Vera began to understand how they found their way. They did not look only at the path ahead. Venn checked the sides of trunks, the motion of leaves higher up, a patch of bare stone at each crossing. Some checks took a glance. Others made the whole patrol wait. By the time the light moved to the other side of the gully, Vera's clothes had dried into stiff creases against her skin.

Vera asked whether there was a harbor nearby.

"South," Venn said.

"A radio station?"

The sergeant glanced back. "A what station?"

Vera let the question go.

One of the men, Pell, had a brass tag tied above his wrist device. It tapped against the housing whenever he moved. He caught Vera looking and tucked it under the strap.

"My daughter thinks it keeps the needle down," he said.

"Does it?"

"Best thing I've been issued."

The tag was roughly circular, though one side had been filed flatter than the other. Its shallow scratches might have been a picture. Vera could make out three long strokes and a smaller shape between them. Pell smoothed the cord where it met the housing, then caught himself doing it and dropped his hand.

"What is it supposed to be?" she asked.

"The house. That's me beside the door. Apparently I have very short legs."

He looked down at his boots with an expression of private disagreement. Vera found that she could almost smile at it.

Venn told him to watch the path. He did, but Vera heard him quietly hum three notes that seemed unrelated to any alarm.

The camp occupied a low rise above a shallow valley. From a distance it resembled a works yard: sheds, a tall exhaust stack, piles of rail, earth cut into terraces. Closer, Vera saw the warning wire and the firing positions. A crane held a broad section of broken machinery over a concrete pit. Two workers were guiding it with ropes while a third watched an instrument rather than the suspended load.

The approach brought them along the side of the rise. From there she could follow the camp's levels: the ditch and wire at the bottom, a strip of bare ground, the workshop yard, then the dark mouths of rooms cut into the higher bank. A narrow paved route climbed from the firing positions to the largest entrance. Its corners were rounded, and there were no steps. She watched two people push an empty wheeled stretcher down it without lifting either end.

Beyond the crane, the wire had been opened to make room for the repair. Posts and a rolled section of barrier lay flat beside the track. A worker was unwinding a rope to mark the exposed lane. The equipment above the pit turned slowly on its hook, showing a broad black fracture along the underside.

An old sign on the gate bore a large 9 and smaller script she could not read.

The numeral had been painted several times. New white stopped short of an older curve, making it look doubled. Under the script, someone had hung a board with movable strips in grooves. The gatekeeper shifted one strip after checking Venn's wrist, wrote on a slate, and waved them through. His own sleeves were rolled back over bare arms.

Beyond the gate a boy no older than sixteen carried a tray of cups. A woman in stained work clothes took one, shifted it awkwardly around the mass on her forearm, and passed him a token. Laundry hung beneath the eaves of a storehouse. Somebody was arguing about a missing wheel.

The argument was taking place over a cart that had been propped on bricks. A man under it insisted that borrowing was different from losing. The woman outside asked him to explain the difference to the cart. The boy with the cups turned his head to listen and nearly walked into Pell, who steadied the edge of the tray with a knuckle.

Steam smelling of root vegetables escaped from a kitchen shutter. On the sill, three bowls had been set over a cloth to dry. One was upside down over a small object, with a note pinned beside it. A cook lifted the bowl, checked whatever was underneath, and put it back with exaggerated care. Pell raised two fingers to her. She raised a wooden spoon in reply.

People noticed Vera in stages. The torn coveralls earned a glance, the absence of cuffs another. A worker watching from the crane track stopped rubbing dust off his palms. Venn's presence kept most of them from approaching. It did nothing to stop their eyes following her across the yard.

Vera had expected the camp to be only frightened. Its ordinary irritations were harder to place.

Venn led her to a room cut partly into the hillside. The entrance turned twice before opening into a ward. Light came from high windows and shallow glass lamps. There were twelve beds in the main room, ten occupied. Most of the people in them had no visible wounds.

After the glare outside, Vera needed a moment to see their faces. The beds stood far enough apart that an attendant could work on either side. Each had a narrow shelf and a loop of tubing secured away from the floor. Under the loops, a painted line ran along the wall toward a low covered channel. Someone had painted flowers beside one section of the line, then stopped when they reached a cupboard.

The ward smelled of clean damp cloth, warm metal, and a fruit being peeled somewhere she could not see. Near a window, a patient held cards in a little wooden stand because both hands lay inside supports. His opponent had arranged her own cards so he could not see them reflected in the glass. When Venn passed, neither offered to get up.

A man in the far bed had turned his instrument toward the light and was studying it with the attention of somebody waiting for a late train. He looked up at the sound of boots, saw who had entered, and went back to the dial.

A woman at the nearest bed was tightening a screw on an external frame around a patient's forearm. She finished, watched his face, then loosened it a fraction.

"Tell me if the fingers change," she said.

"They always feel like that."

"Then tell me if they feel different from that."

The patient made a face. Iona waited for him to try moving the fingers before she stood. Her sleeves were pinned well above her wrists; the pins did not match. There was a shallow indentation beside her nose where some kind of lens had rested, and a pencil had left a gray line across the heel of one hand. She rubbed at the line while listening to Venn, making it larger.

She stood and saw Venn.

"No."

"You haven't heard the question."

"If it's Kett, the answer is still no."

"Different question."

The woman's attention moved to Vera. She noticed the bare wrists almost immediately, then the torn sleeve and the blood drying through the dust on her face.

"Outside," she said.

She took them into a narrow examination room with a heavy table and a door opening toward an empty earth bank. Venn stayed near the entrance.

There were hooks on the wall for instruments Vera did not recognize. Iona took only a small light and a folded cloth. She moved a stool until Vera could sit with her back supported, then angled the lamp away from her eyes before starting the questions. Outside, someone called for another pair of sheets. Iona answered without raising her voice, and the footsteps moved away.

"Iona Vale," the woman said. "I run this ward. Have you been in a release?"

"If that's what happened in the woods, yes."

Iona held the folded cloth where Vera could take it herself. "Is any of this blood yours?"

"No."

Vera rubbed at one finger. The cloth came away red. She put it down and looked at the floor until Iona asked the next question.

"Pain?"

"My ear is ringing. I swallowed seawater. Before the woods."

Iona paused over a sheet of paper. "Before the woods."

"I woke on the beach. An animal bit me. Then I found a man who was ill."

Vera told her the sequence. Iona did not interrupt until Vera described touching Lio's shoulder.

"Did he have an open connection?"

"A tube by his foot. Blue liquid at the end."

Iona set down the pencil.

"You didn't recognize it."

"No."

"Do you now?"

Vera looked toward Venn's wrist. "Not well enough."

Iona seemed to accept that as a useful answer.

She examined Vera's eyes and ear without connecting a device. Before touching her arm she asked, "May I?"

Vera said yes. She watched Iona's fingers settle gently on the place the animal had bitten.

Nothing happened.

Iona's thumb was warm. A rough place beside the nail caught lightly on Vera's skin as she turned the arm. Vera could see the tiny dent each fingertip made, could feel the ordinary pressure of another person's hand. Her attention narrowed to it so completely that Iona had to repeat a question.

"Sorry," Vera said. "What was that?"

"Whether the feeling changes when I move it."

"No."

Iona looked at her face, then eased her grip before asking Vera to move the arm herself.

That should have reassured her. Instead she felt the absence of an explanation more sharply.

Iona turned the arm, checked the skin, and asked her to push against her hand. Vera did so cautiously. Her own strength felt ordinary. When Iona asked whether she had a certificate, Vera had to ask what kind.

By the end of the examination, the sheet contained more unanswered questions than answers. Iona folded it rather than pretending otherwise.

"I can say you are breathing comfortably and responding normally," she told Venn. "I cannot say she is safe to connect to anything."

"I need to take her statement."

"You can take it without putting a collar on her."

Venn nodded. There was an old disagreement behind the exchange, but neither woman needed to perform it for Vera.

They gave her water in a chipped cup and a place to sit under the workshop awning. Pell brought the cup himself. He had found the one with an intact handle and seemed mildly pleased with it.

The water tasted faintly of stone. She drank half, made herself stop, and sat holding the cup while the chill moved down behind her breastbone. A strip of sun reached under the awning. She put both boots in it.

The workshop smelled of heated oil and cut wood. Its benches faced outward, where the light was good. Parts were arranged on shallow trays lined with cloth, and the floor beneath each bench had been swept clear enough that a dropped screw would show. Tavi's bench was the least tidy, but the tools around its edge all pointed in the same direction.

Across the yard a patient was being helped down three shallow steps. He moved carefully, one hand on the helper's shoulder. On his wrist, a pointer rested just above a black mark. Every few moments he looked at it.

"What's it measuring?" Vera asked.

Pell settled on a crate opposite her, keeping the rifle across his knees.

"Burden. What you've taken through you."

"And the device takes it out?"

"Eventually."

His regulator clicked. A brief thread of vapor escaped beneath a little shield.

"That looked fast."

Pell laughed once. "It likes to look busy. A point a day, if the bed's quiet and the core isn't sulking."

"How much can you carry?"

He turned the face away from the sun. "Depends who's signing the paper."

Vera waited.

"Six was my last proper test. You don't plan to use all six."

A young person emerged from the workshop with a ring of small parts held against their chest. They looked at Pell's instrument, then at Pell.

"You moved the outlet shield again."

"It catches my cuff."

"Because your cuff is too loose. Leave the shield alone."

They set the parts down and adjusted it while he complained. Their hands moved with an economy Vera recognized. They checked the return movement twice before letting go.

Tavi was slight through the shoulders, with a leather apron tied twice around their waist and hair held back by a strip of blue cloth. The cloth had slipped over one ear. They moved it with the back of a wrist, leaving both the tool and the regulator untouched. Pell used his free hand to pull the cuff clear before they asked him again.

For a few breaths, the repair held all three of their attention. A thin piece of metal turned under Tavi's tool. The shield settled into position with a definite little snap. Pell flexed his hand, trying to make it catch. It did not.

"Tavi," Pell said to Vera, as if introducing a difficult relative. "They believe the rest of us exist to damage things."

"The evidence is excellent," Tavi said.

They noticed Vera's empty wrists, looked at the examination note in Venn's hand, and chose not to ask a question in front of the whole yard.

Venn returned with a clerk. Vera gave her name, described the beach, and repeated Lio's last words as exactly as she could.

"Nell," the clerk said. "Orr?"

"He didn't give me another name."

The clerk wrote something. Vera asked what would happen to the message.

"It will go with the incident report."

"Will she get it?"

Venn looked at the clerk until he stopped writing.

"We'll find out who she is," the sergeant said.

Behind them, a bell sounded twice. The work in the yard did not stop immediately. Then a third note came, longer than the others.

Pell stood. Across the yard a soldier carrying a meal put it down on the nearest step without looking for somewhere clean.

Vera watched the crane operator release the suspended machinery back into its pit. The repair would have to wait.

Venn pulled the hose on her rifle free of a retaining loop.

"Stay under the awning," she told Vera. "Away from the doors."

At the wire below the camp, something pale slipped between two posts.