She wheeled him through the double-door system that separated the clinic from the corridor outside. The first door closed behind them with a soft thud, locking them inside, and then the outer door released, and they passed through into the corridor.
Daniel was at his post.
"Good morning," the Guardian said.
Navuh grunted his greeting.
Daniel nodded a brief acknowledgment to Gertrude and fell in behind them.
Navuh was expecting her to take the right turn that took them past the closed doors and the small common area with the chairs and the magazines, the route they had been doing every day for the last week, but today, she turned left.
"Where are you taking me?" he asked.
"You'll see."
He was not in the mood for surprises, but he was also strapped into a wheelchair pushed by a female he couldn't have stopped if he wanted to, which he didn't, because the alternative was to be returned to his room.
He kept his mouth shut.
They reached the elevator.
He had taken the measure of the elevator on his first outing and had filed the relevant observations even though he had no use for them. Stainless steel doors. Scanner panel beside the doors with two arrows, up and down, no floor numbers visible. A small camera was mounted in the corner of the ceiling above the doors. The cabin would be similarly featureless on the inside. He was almost certain of that without needing to confirm it.
Gertrude waved her hand at the scanner, which was some kind of biometric or signal-based reader, because she was not pressing anything.
The doors slid open. She wheeled him in. Daniel followed. The doors closed.
The cabin moved, but Navuh couldn't tell whether it was descending or ascending. Whoever calibrated the elevator had done so in a way that made it difficult to determine. Either that or his messed-up body couldn't sense the direction.
After about eight seconds, the doors opened onto a different corridor, similar in finish to the one they had left, but the smell was different.
Chlorine.
She pushed the chair forward.
"Why are you taking me to the pool?"
"For motivation," she said. "Something to look forward to. Once you're well enough to begin physical therapy, most of your rehabilitation will take place in the water. It supports your weight while your muscles do the work of moving against resistance."
The thought did not motivate him.
The thought depressed him further.
Until that moment, the image he held of his future self had been conveniently fuzzy, a vague picture of him standing again, perhaps using a walker with little Azul walking beside him. Now Gertrude had filled in some of the fuzziness with an image of his emaciated body in a pool, doing exercises that crippled human patients did in pools, supervised by some random therapist, who might be a male.
He really hoped it would be a female.
"Areana can join you for your exercises," Gertrude said. "Did you ever swim with her?"
The question caught him by surprise.
He thought about lying because anything that touched Areana felt private, but the lie was pointless. Gertrude was just making conversation, and he could choose to either respond or not.
"There was a pool in my harem," he said.
"Of course there was. I bet it was fancy."
"Naturally. It was done in blue and gold mosaic. Areana and her ladies enjoyed it frequently, and I joined them on occasion."
