Emma Bull (29 page)
Authors: Finder
Whatever this was, she'd gotten it from Linn, all right. She had that same dimmed and faded look. I put a hand on her forehead, and it was hot under my palm. "I don't know much about diseases of elves," I said apologetically.
"Neither do I, to speak truth," the Ticker said. She spoke softly, maybe to keep the cough at bay.
"Though oddly enough, we are healthier in the Borderlands than in the lands that gave us birth. The evil airs that bring disease are ill-suited, perhaps, to this hybrid place."
I went back to the stove, poured water into the teapot, and brought it and all the accessories over. "How much honey do you want in it?"
She shook her head. "I suppose it had better be a lot."
That's what I gave her. We found ourselves dwelling over the commonplaces—"Careful, it's hot," and
"Set it down over there," and all the rest of them—and 1 thought of Rico and Linn, and the giving and taking of orders. And instead of telling her about my visit to Rico, I said, "This isn't a cold, is it?"
She looked up at me, and I could see the fright in her eyes. "I don't know. It might yet be."
"But you don't think so."
"I don't know. I've so little experience of sickness—it could be nothing, and I might fancy myself at death's door."
"Linn's in bed with it, and Rico thinks that's odd. J think it's odd."
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She tur
ned her head away roughly, which set her to coughing until her eyes streamed with tears. I
made
her dri
nk some tea, and after a bit she could say, in a small voice, "I think it's odd, too."
"What do you want me to do?"
"I think…" She closed her eyes, and for a few moments lay still, only the rise and fall of her chest keeping me from panic. At last she said, "I think you should bring Ms. Wu."
Ms. Wu was not, strictly speaking, a doctor, though she knew a good deal of medicine. But she
was
a powerful magician, certainly the equal of Milo Chevrolet. For all anyone knew, she had been here since the Elflands came back; she might have been created all of a piece with the Borderlands themselves.
"Then you
don't
think it's just a cold." She caught at my fingers, her hands still warm from cradling her tea. "I'm afraid. Orient," she whispered. So was Rico. So, for that matter, was I.
The Transformation Blues
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Bordertown: the land where doctors and high-powered magicians run Chinese grocery stores. I didn't actually run all the way to Wu's Worldly Emporium, in the sense that untrained people use "run." I used the gait I'd learned as a cross-country runner in high school and had enough use for over the years that I'd never forgotten it. It ate miles in a hurry, and it tended to drop you into a light trance, in which you could stand a little back from your worries—who was behind you, who was ahead of you, or, in this instance, why you felt the need to be in such a rush.
So I arrived just a little short of breath, and with the aura of someone who'd been doing honest work, rather than being overcome with panic. Elsewhere, the bookstore that Wolfboy and Sparks ran, was right next door. I had an urge to stick my head in, to tell them that Tick-Tick was sick—but that would be silly. There was nothing to worry about. People got sick all the time, and I was taking care of it by consulting Ms. Wu, so why should I bother Wolfboy and Sparks unnecessarily?
I hadn't been in Ms. Wu's store for a month or two, and when I pushed through the door, I expected a few changes. Like every other retail establishment in B-town, Wu's is at the mercy of the elements, the Border, the independent haulers, and the luck of the draw for its stock. Ms. Wu probably did her own importing, rather than rely on the maverick buyers who set up temporary wholesale dealerships on
Mondays in the old Raven Ice Company warehouse down by the river. Still, you never knew when a
truck would go unaccountably astray in the Borderlands. It happened often enough that a fair percentage of the Ticker's and my business was in rescuing lost truckers and their cargo from the Nevernever.
I counted on garlic, and jasmine soap, and ginseng tea, and glazed pottery jars of candied ginger; umbrellas, pearls, ebony boxes, bunches of leeks, and sticks of ink. I also counted on Ms. Wu, who looked like Claudette Colbert, smiled like a skinny female Buddha, and laughed more often than anyone else I knew. She would be concerned when I told her about Tick-Tick, but she wouldn't frown; she'd say,
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"Of course," and turn to the antiq
ue apothecary's chest behind the counter and sel
ect things from it, put
them in her bag a
nd come with me to Tick-Tick's. There she'd make my partner
drink weird-smelling
things, prescribe an unpleasant change in her diet, tell her to wear nothing but blue until all the symptoms were gone, mess with the
feng shui
of the room, and leave, and everything would be better.
Wu's was much the same as it always was. The change was in Ms. Wu.
She'd never looked middle-aged, though it seemed as if she was; she'd always had one of those terrific 1930s movie heartthrob figures, and her silk-black hair never showed any gray. She dressed with
practical elegance, and I'd imagined her coming from a wealthy Hong Kong family, bringing her sense of style and
noblesse oblige
to straitened circumstances on the Border.
Now she sat behind the counter with her head in both hands, her face hidden. Her white blouse sagged, and her trousers were wrinkled and limp. Her hair was dragged back into a twist at the back, and wisps of hair were springing out of it at odd intervals. There was a bell over the door that rang as I came in, but she hadn't looked up.
"Ms. Wu?" I said.
She lifted her head and didn't smile. "Orient." She said it the way one might count off mileposts by the highway, saying them aloud to fix them in place. "Can I help you?"
"I hope so. Tick-Tick's sick with something."
For an instant, her face went slack with despair. Then she shut her eyes and said, "Tell me the symptoms."
I did. She turned to the apothecary's chest in a parody of the scene I'd imagined, sliding out the little drawers and bringing calico-wrapped parcels or crushed leaves in waxed paper bags or tiny brown glass vials out of them. Her hands trembled a little, and the veins stood out in the backs of them.
"What do you think it is?" I asked.
She pushed all the things she'd taken out of the chest into a tight pile on the counter, and stood staring at them. "I think," she began, slowly; then she stopped herself. A much-diluted version of her smile flickered on her face. "I think that not even you would be so silly as to ask the doctor for a diagnosis when her patient is halfway across town. How did you get here?"
"On foot."
"I have a bicycle, so I'm afraid I can't give you a ride back. Tell me the address, and I'll meet you there."
"I could lead you—"
"I'm sure you could, but it would be much slower, really."
I figured out that what she really wanted was to be relieved of me hanging over her shoulder and
worrying while she packed her bag. So I did as I was told, and loped off to Tick-Tick's again.
We arrived at our destination at pretty much the same time. Ms. Wu did it on a particularly nice all-
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terrain bike with
fifteen speeds, well-suited to the uncertain topography and paveme
nt of Bordertown.
She hoisted her black leathe
r bag out of the wire basket over the back wheel and told me, "Lead the way." I'd remembered, when I'd left to fetch her, to take one of Tick-Tick's keys to the front door, so I did that.
When we came in, the Ticker was sitting propped up against the raised end of the fainting couch with an Arabian Nights-ish shawl spread over her legs, looking tidy and composed. The cough spoiled the effect a little, and the weakness of her voice when she said, "Gracious, that was quick." But it galled her to receive company in a state of disarray, and I knew that, however much effort she'd gone to to make it look as if she wasn't sick, it was necessary to her peace of mind.
Ms. Wu sent me away, which was fine with me. I took a cup of tea out to the front stoop, sat in the ruddy light of the setting sun, and tried to think sensibly about Rico's offer. Unless Tick-Tick recovered immediately, it seemed as if I could ignore it. My first responsibility was to make tea and run errands for my partner, or whatever needed to be done for the duration. What's more, looked at simply as a job, the last thing I wanted to do was police surveillance, or anything like the things I'd already done with Rico. I didn't like the suspense. So I didn't understand why I kept coming back to the question. It was as if I'd flipped a coin on it, come up negative, and found myself wanting to make it best two out of three.