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Sweat burst from Rance Auerbach’s forehead. “Come on, darling,” Penny Summers breathed. “You can do it. I know you can. You done it before, remember? Come on-big strong man like you can do whatever he wants.”
Auerbach gathered himself, gasped, grunted, and, with an effort that took everything he had in him, heaved himself upright on his crutches. Penny clapped her hands and kissed him on the cheek. “Lord, that’s hard,” he said, catching his breath Maybe he was light-headed, maybe just too used to lying flat on his back, but the ground seemed to quiver like pudding under him.
His arms weren’t strong, either; supporting so much of his weight with his armpits was anything but easy. His wounded leg didn’t touch the ground, and wouldn’t for a long time yet. Getting around with one leg and two crutches felt like using an unsteady photographic tripod instead of his proper equipment.
Penny took a couple of steps back from him, toward the opening of the Lizards’ shelter tent. “Come on over to me,” she said.
“Don’t think I can yet,” Auerbach answered. This was only the third or fourth time he’d tried the crutches. Starting to move on them was as hard as getting an old Nash’s motor to turn over on a snowy morning.
“Oh, I bet you can.” Penny ran her tongue across her lips. She’d gone from almost completely withdrawn to just as brazen with next to nothing in between. When he had time to think, Auerbach wondered if they were two sides of the same coin. He didn’t have time to think right this second. Penny went on, “You come on over to me now, and tonight I’ll…” What she said she’d do would have sent a man hurt a lot worse than Auerbach over to her in nothing flat, maybe less. He let himself fall forward, hopped on his good leg, brought the crutches up to help keep his balance, straightened, did it again, and found himself by her side.
From outside the tent, a dry voice said, “That’s the best incentive for physical therapy I’ve ever heard.” Auerbach almost fell down. Penny squeaked and turned the color of the beets that grew so widely in Colorado.
By the way his own face heated, Auerbach was pretty sure he was the same color. “Uh, sir, it’s not-” he began, but then his tongue stumbled to a halt even more readily than his poor damaged carcass had.
The doctor stepped into the tent. He was a young fellow, a stranger, not one of the Lizards’ POW medicos. He looked from Auerbach to Penny Summers and back again. “Look, folks, I don’t care if it is or it isn’t-none of my business any which way. If it makes you get up and walk, soldier, that’s what matters to me.” He paused judiciously. “In my professional opinion, an offer like that would make Lazarus get up and walk.”
Penny blushed even redder than she had before. Auerbach had had more experience with Army docs. They did their level best to embarrass you, and their level best was usually pretty damn good. He said, “Uh-who are you, sir?” The doctor had gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps.
“My name’s Hayward Smithson-” The doctor paused. Rance gave his own name and rank. After a minute, Penny Summers stammered out her name, too, her right one; Auerbach wouldn’t have been surprised to hear her come up with an alias on the spot. Major Smithson went on, “Now that the cease-fire’s in place, I’m down from Denver inspecting the care the Lizards have been giving to wounded prisoners. I see you’ve got a set of government-issue crutches there. Good.”
“Yes, sir,” Auerbach said. His voice was still weak and thin and raspy as all get out, as if he’d smoked about fifty packs of Camels in the last hour and a half. “I got ’em day before yesterday.”
“They came in a week ago,” Penny said, “but Rance-uh, Captain Auerbach-he wasn’t able to do much in the way of moving around till just the other day.”
Auerbach waited for Smithson to make a crack about Penny’s having done most of the moving before then, but, to his relief, Smithson had mercy. Maybe nailing her again would have been too much like shooting fish in a barrel. Instead, the doctor said, “You took one in the chest and one in the leg, eh, and they’ve pulled you through?”
“Yes, sir,” Auerbach said. “They’ve done their best by me, the Lizards and the people they’ve got helping them. Sometimes I’ve felt kind of like a guinea pig, but I’m here and on my pins-well, on one pin, anyway-instead of taking up space in the graveyard back of town.”
“More power to you, Captain,” Smithson said. He pulled a spiral-bound notebook and a fountain pen out of his pocket and scribbled a note to himself. “I have to say, I’ve been favorably impressed with what I’ve seen of the Lizards’ facilities. They’ve done what they could for the men they’ve captured.”
“They’ve treated me okay,” Auerbach said. “Firsthand, that’s all I can tell you. I got outside this tent yesterday for the very first time.”
“What about you, Miss, uh, Summers?” Major Smithson asked. “Captain Auerbach’s not the only patient you’ve nursed back to health, I expect.”
Auerbach devoutly hoped he was the only patient Penny had nursed back to health that particular way. He didn’t think she noticed the possible double entendre there, and was just as well pleased she didn’t. Seriously, she answered, “Oh, no, sir. I get all over this encampment. They do their best. I really think so.”
“That’s also the impression I’ve had,” Smithson said, nodding. “They do their best-but I think they’re overwhelmed.” He sighed wearily. “I think the whole world is overwhelmed.”
“Are therethat many wounded, sir?” Auerbach asked. “Like I said, I haven’t seen much outside of this tent except through the doorflap since they put me here, and nobody’s told me there’s all that many wounded POWs here in Karval.” He sent Penny a look that might have been accusing. To the other nurses, to the harassed human doctors, to the Lizards, he was just another injured POW; he’d thought he meant something to her.
But Smithson said, “It’s not just wounded soldiers, Captain. It’s-” He shook his head and didn’t try to explain. Instead, he went on, “You’ve been upright a good while now. Why don’t you come outside and have a look for yourself? You’ll have a doctor at your elbow, and who knows what Miss Summers will do for you or to you or with you after that?”
Penny blushed for a third time. Auerbach wished he could give the doctor a shot in the teeth for talking about a lady that way in front of her, but he couldn’t. And he was curious about what was happening in the world beyond the tent, and he had been standing here a while without keeling over. “Okay, sir, lead on,” he said, “but don’t lead too fast, on account of I’m not going to win any races on these things.”
Hayward Smithson and Penny held the tent flaps open so he could come out and look around. He advanced slowly. When he got out into the sunshine, he stood blinking for a moment, dazzled by its brilliance. And some of the tears that came to his eyes had nothing to do with the sun, but with his own delight at being unconfined. If only for a little while.
“Come along,” Smithson said, positioning himself to Auerbach’s left. Penny Summers immediately put Rance between her and the doctor. A slow procession, they made their way along the open track the Lizards had left between the rows of tents sheltering wounded men.
Maybe there weren’tthat many wounded men, but it still made for a pretty fair tent city. Every so often, Auerbach heard a man moaning inside one of those domes of the bright orange slick stuff the Lizards used. Once, a doctor and nurse hurried into one a good ways away on the dead run. That didn’t look good, not even slightly. Smithson clicked his tongue between his teeth.
The way he’d been talking, though, half of Denver might have been here, and that didn’t look to be so. Auerbach was puzzled till he came to the intersection of his lane with one that ran perpendicular to it. He hadn’t come so far before. When you looked down that crossroad in one direction, you saw what was left of the tiny town of Karval: in two words, not much. When you looked the other way, you got a different picture.
He couldn’t guess how many refugees inhabited the shantytown out beyond the Lizards’ neat rows of te
nts. “It’s like a brand-new Hooverville,” he said, staring in disbelief.
“It’s worse than a Hooverville,” Smithson said grimly. “Most Hoovervilles, they had boxes and boards and sheet metal and what have you to build shacks with. Not much of that kind of stuff here in the middle of nowhere. But people have come anyhow, from miles and miles around.”
“I’ve watched that happen,” Penny said, nodding. “There’s food and water here for prisoners, so people come and try to get some. When the Lizards have anything left over, they give a little. That’s more’n people can get anywheres else, so they keep comin’.”
“Lord,” Auerbach said in his ruined voice. “It’s a wonder they haven’t tried coming into the tents and stealing what the Lizards wouldn’t give ’em.”
“Remember that gunfire the other night?” Penny asked. “A couple of ’em was tryin’ just that. The Lizards shot ’em down like they was dogs. I don’t reckon any more folks’ll try sneakin’ in where the Lizards don’t want ’em to.”
“Sneaking up on the Lizards isn’t easy anyhow,” Dr. Smithson said.
Auerbach looked down at himself, at the much-battered excuse for a carcass he’d be dragging around for the rest of his life.
