The Dig (42 page)

Irin’s body began to flip backward as the rocks before him disappeared, and he soared through the air.

I
RIN LANDED HARD, HIS HANDS AND
head slapping down on something soft. His eyes opened and were blinded by the bright of the sun. His k’yot top must have come off during the fall. Closing his eyes, he tried to raise his arms to cover them, but his arms would not move. He tried to move his legs, but they, too, were immobile. Was he alive? Where was he? He managed to move his fingers and felt something soft, like clothes, beneath him. He tried to move his tongue, but it hit something and he realized that something was lodged in his throat. He began to choke, and his mouth filled with saliva and he choked more.

Since his arms would not move, he tried to turn his head, and it moved a little. He felt the thing in his mouth, sticking out and leading somewhere else. He opened his eyes again, and the light was still too bright, though he could see other things above him. He began to feel desperate, unable to move the thing from his mouth. He tried to make himself breathe through his nose—that felt better, and he kept it up. What was that smell, though? Like alcohol or something else medicinal. He blinked again. What was this feeling at his fingers? Soft like a sheet. Wait…
alcohol.
Not Irin!
I’m me! But… where?
He waited for his eyes to adjust to the light.
I’m in a hospital room somewhere. What am I touching? What’s touching me? Obviously, nothing imprinted—I’m conscious.

He rolled his eyes around the room and again began to panic as he realized that a tube was down his throat.
Someone, get in here quick.
Call for someone!
Matt let out a small groan, choked a little, inhaled through his nose, and let out a louder cry, a garbled try at “Help!” Hearing the clip-clop of footsteps passing outside, he let out a good, loud bellow, then promptly began choking on the tube.

He heard a woman’s voice shout, “Doctor!” She had heard him, thank God. “Doctor, thirty-five is awake!”

More rushing footsteps, and faces came into view. He was still choking, and someone was saying, “Hang on… just relax… just relax.” He felt the object coming out of his throat. Dear God, that thing was long! He gagged and choked more and felt the burn of vomit in his throat. He couldn’t swallow, couldn’t get rid of the pain!

And then the tube was out. He could finally swallow, but it hurt like hell, as if he had the worst sore throat in history. Four or more bodies busied themselves around him, saying just to relax, everything was okay,
blah blah blah,
while they shined lights in his eyes and put cold things on him. His feet were
freezing
! He tried to wiggle his fingers, and they responded slightly.

“Matthew,” a doctor with silver hair and bright, white smile said to him, “can you hear me okay?”

Matt nodded a little and was able to manage a “Yeah” with his thick, dry tongue.

“Do you know your last name, Matthew?”

Matt nodded again and said, “Tuhna.” He thought it sounded as if he were talking underwater.

“That’s very good, Matthew. You have no idea how happy I am to hear that.”

“W’cut mm’ms mff?”

The doctor just shook his head. “It’s okay, you’ll be able to speak much better in a couple of hours, and
worlds
better in a couple of days. You probably have a lot of questions.”

Matt nodded. “Nuh sh’t.”

“I’m going to answer some of the easy ones for you, so you don’t have to try to strain yourself trying to form the words. First off, ‘Where am I?’ Always a good thing to know, right?”

Matt felt one side of the bed sink where the doctor sat down.
Don’t touch me, dear God, please.

“You’re currently a patient at the Gribbs Foster Dunham Center in New Rochelle, New York,” the doctor began. “I am your attending, Dr. Ofle. No jokes! Ha-ha. You can call me ‘Matt’ when you are able—should be an easy one for you to remember. Next question: how long? A very short time, relatively speaking—just over a month. Well, a month with us, anyway. You went through a couple of international transfers before we got you. I believe your total length was around two months.”

A nurse lifted one of his legs, bending it all the way to his chest, pushing the wind from him, then put it down gently and moved to the other. A nurse beside him was flexing his arm up and down.

“What happened? Well, we’re not really sure about that, but you are not injured in any way as far as we can tell. You are not paralyzed, in spite of the way your body feels right now. Here, feel this…”

Matt saw him reach for something from beside the bed. He came back with a metal instrument and lifted Matt’s hand.

“Nnnuh!” Matt groaned at him. “Dnnn’t!”

“Oh, it’s quite all right, Matthew,” the doctor said cheerfully. “You’ve had a sort of guardian angel here almost every day, and… well, let’s just say the point was well taken, long ago. Everything in here is new and has never been used on anyone but you. Perhaps when you’re better able to communicate, you can tell us all about these allergies of yours.”

Guardian angel… Tuni! Was she here? Matt felt the object poke his finger.

“See? Full sensation. Let’s see, other questions—how long until I can move around some more? Get up and about… feed myself? Well, I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you you’ve got some work ahead of you. The body needs to be moving around; those muscles and tendons need flexing. When they don’t, well, they sort of go to sleep right along with you. We’ve had a great staff in here taking care of you, making sure you remain limber, don’t lose any flexibility, and also to keep you free from any of the other nasty problems that pop up when the body’s immobile.”

“Wrrrs Tnnneh?”

“Sorry, Matthew, but like I said, we’re gonna get that mouth working real fast. It’ll come around long before the rest, trust me on that.”

Outside, he heard a new voice ask, “he’s awake?” English accent… no South African twist—not Tuni?

A woman with red hair appeared over him and smiled. “Good to see you awake, Matthew,” she said. “I’m Dr. Sylvan, and I’m sure we’ll be talking a lot in a couple of days. For now, a simple nod yes or no will do—don’t fight to get everything off your mind, okay? Let’s try a ‘yes’ nod right now.”

Matt nodded.

“Very good; how about a ‘no’?”

Matt moved his head side to side.

“No? You can’t do that? Ha-ha-ha, just kidding. Old joke.”

Strangers streamed in and out of his room, all very excited to see him. Another woman came in a little later and introduced herself as Breeze, the physical therapist. He wanted to ask her if that was her real name or if it just seemed soothing to her broken patients. She said they’d be seeing a lot of each other in the coming weeks.

So where the hell was Tuni? Did she really come almost every day?

A couple of hours passed, and Matt had begun exercising his tongue and lips the way Doctor Sylvan instructed him. She said it would not only help his speech improve but also help him drink and eat his first real meal a little later.

They had propped him up on his pillow so he could see the room around him. He looked around—no TV, but he did have his own bathroom.
Wait… how have I been doing
that
?
He slowly reached down and felt the tube under his gown.

A nurse he had seen before appeared in the doorway and said “knock knock.” She smiled and tilted her head to the side.

“Hello again, Matthew. Your visitor has returned! I have to say, when you’re able, you’ve got many thank-you’s to bestow on this one!”

Tuni!

“Hello, son,” Matt’s father said as he entered the doorway. “Can’t tell you how good it is to see you awake.”

K
YLE
P
ERKINS SET THE PHONE DOWN
and stepped outside Peter’s RV. He scanned the field for Tuni but spotted only Peter, sitting at a console while DeMotte carted the ground-penetrating radar unit around. In the distance, he saw several people huddled over another monitor. No Tuni there, either.

“Hey, Pete!” he shouted, but Peter didn’t hear him. “Damn it…” He would have to jog out. He walked past the tables and the giant baobab and called him again.

“What’s up, Kyle?” Peter replied over the bleeping of the radar pulses.

“Phone call from the States.”

“You keep going, Jack,” Peter called to DeMotte. “Same pace. It’s recording. I gotta take this.” He jogged over. “Who is it?”

“Not sure. They wanted to talk to Tuni, but I don’t know where she is.”

“She went with Hank and Miles to B site,” Peter told him as they walked to the biggest of several motor homes on the site.

After wiping his feet on the mat, Peter stepped inside.

“Hello, this is Pete Sharma. Tuni is currently off-site; may I ask who is calling?” He listened for a moment. “He
is
? Holy shit! Is he okay, though? This is so wonderful! I’m sorry, who is this again?… Oh, okay, hi. Nice to meet you… yeah… Okay, I’ll tell her as soon as she gets back. Yeah, okay, thanks for calling!”

Peter hung up the phone and slapped Kyle Perkins on the back, shouting, “He woke up!” as he dashed out the door.

“
Who?
” Perkins asked as Peter ran off.

Peter ran across the field to tell Collette, Rodney, and the others the news about Matt. “Rodney, has Hank got a radio?” he asked, breathless from excitement as much as from the run.

“I think he charged it this morning,” Rodney replied. “I imagine he would have taken it.” He handed his radio to Peter.

Peter depressed the button. “A site to Hank, A site to Hank—you there?”

The radio crackled quietly for a moment.

“Hank here—what’s up?”

“Hank, please tell me Tuni is there with you.”

“Tuni? Tuni who?” Hank said, but Peter could hear Tuni’s voice in the background, shouting, “Silly fool.”

“Can you put her on, please?” Peter persisted.

A few seconds later, her voice came through the speaker.

“Yes, Peter, how can I help you?”

“Matt woke up.”

The radio crackled. Everyone huddled around Peter, waiting to hear her response. It cracked again, but Hank’s voice was back.

“Hey, Pete, did you just say Matt woke up?”

“That I did, Hank. Where’d Tuni go?”

“Uh… she’s still in the backseat… just—you okay? Hey, you want to go back to A site? Hang on, Pete. She’s a little, um—hang on.”

“Is she crying?” Collette asked. “I bet she’s crying.”

“So, Pete,” Rodney interjected, “you going to fly him back out here to see what we’ve found so far?”

Pete smiled and nodded. “I wish. I don’t think Matt Turner’s gonna be visiting Africa anytime soon, though. They said it might be a couple months before he’s out of the hospital, and even after that… you think he’s going to
want
to come back? He couldn’t wait to leave!”

“Peter?” Tuni’s voice cracked through the radio. She was sniffling.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“Can I go? Can I see him?”

“Of course! They said you’re the first person he asked for. Wouldn’t shut up about you, or so I gather from the nurse there.”

“Okay… coming back…” They heard the sound of Hank crunching around a U-turn before the radio cracked off.

Tuni dropped her two duffel bags near the RVs and waved to the others at the tables under the baobab. She had really gotten to know only perhaps forty of the sixty-odd people now working the A and B sites. Pete had assembled specialists from all over the world, and more were on their way. No television vans were parked outside just yet, but that would change soon. Peter had told her that the crew would bide their time and keep mapping until the documentary folks arrived next week. He wanted to be sure they captured everything significant.

She stepped inside Peter’s RV. Her request was a simple one, but she feared that his by-the-book mind-set would shut her down. He stood as she entered, while Collette remained seated, munching at her sandwich.

Peter swallowed and said, “So this is it? Tell me you won’t get too comfy over there and leave us out here to rot.”

“Of course not.”

“Great. Well…” He leaned forward awkwardly and hugged her.

“So, Peter… ,” Tuni said with an innocent glance upward. “I have a teensy favor to ask, and you will be simply unable to refuse.”

“Tell me—anything.”

“I want to bring it with me.”

“Uh, okay, I should have said, anything but that! C’mon, how could you even
ask
? You know the laws and everything. We
just
got the okay from the ministry to send that package to Meier, and that was like pulling teeth! The inspections alone took a week.”

“I’m not hearing the emphatic yes I had hoped for, Peter.”

“Emphatically, no,” he replied.

She moaned and rolled her eyes. Peter’s face told her the same as his words, and he sat back down at the little round table to finish his chips.