to wear clothes in an hour or two, and the wound can breathe. For the next ten days bathe as normal. The plaskin will protect it. I’ll come back to take it off, make sure everything’s all right.” He put two vials of pills on the floor by her face. “This is all I have for now in the way of antibiotics and antivirals in pill form.” She could feel the drying plaskin begin to tug at the healthy skin on her back. “Is the pain very bad?”
“Yes.”
He knelt and Lore felt a cold wipe, then the sliding pinch of a needle in the muscle at her shoulder. She could feel the drug spreading under her skin, like butter. He stood and said to Spanner, “This cream is for when the plas comes off. It’ll need rubbing into the scar three times a day to keep it supple. I don’t have any painkillers at all in pill form.”
“I’ve used needles before.”
Lore wondered how Spanner knew about needles, but it did not seem to worry the medic. He pulled out his slate. “What name do you want to use?” He looked from one to the other.
“Lore Smith,” Spanner said.
He scribbled. “This prescription is for the drug and disposable needles.” He looked up. “Which pharmacy—the Shu chain do?” Spanner nodded, and he pressed the send button, tucked the slate back in his pocket. “They’ll keep it on file for seven days; after that it’s invalid. Keep the dosage down if you can. And don’t give it to her more than every six hours.”
Lore did not like being discussed as though she were not there, but the painkiller was coating her face with ice and her brain with cobwebs. She lay in a daze as they moved off toward the door, still talking. He seemed unsurprised by her injury. She wondered what kinds of trauma he was used to dealing with, and how people usually got the kind of hurts that they did not want disclosing. Knife wounds, gunshots. . .
She fell asleep, woke up to swallow the two pills Spanner held out; a needle, in her buttock this time. She slept again. When she woke properly it was dark and she was covered with a soft quilt. She breathed quietly. Where the cloth touched the plaskin covering her wound, it did not hurt. She smiled at that. Such a simple thing, to not hurt.
Spanner was working at her bench, sharp halogen light pooling in front of her. She reached out, took a data slate from the pile in the shadow, hooked it up to a small gray box, read something from the screen, laid it aside, took another slate.
Lore watched her for a while. This woman knew all about her: her name, age, family. If she cared to check, she could get information on education, hobbies, friends. Yet Lore knew nothing about her, did not even know if she had had any school, if she had ever been hurt, ever seen a medic under her real name. If she even had a real name. Some people, she knew, were illegitimate from birth—the fact of their existence not recorded anywhere. But that line of thought was too frightening. She yawned loudly.
Spanner swung round in her chair. “I was beginning to wonder if I’d given you too many pills. How do you feel?”
“Thirsty. And I need some clothes.”
“Both easily fixed.” She stood up and disappeared into the shadow. Red power points glowed from the dark. She brought back an old, soft shirt, some underwear, trousers. No shoes, Lore noticed, but then she doubted she would be going anywhere for a while.
“We’re about the same size, I think.” Spanner went into the kitchen.
Lore sat up, sucked her cheeks in at the pain but made no noise. She pulled on the clothes.
Spanner brought back water and coffee. She set Lore’s by the judo mat, took her own back to the bench.
Lore watched her awhile.
Spanner turned partway back toward her, impatient now. “What?” Her face glowed oddly in the white halogen and red power indicators. Like one of those late-sixties paintings that looked like a vase and then turned out to be two faces, Lore thought. She shook her head. Probably the drugs.
“If stealing from slates is so easy, then don’t you worry someone will do the same to yours?”
Spanner made a huffing sound, halfway between amusement and cynicism. “I don’t often carry one. Or a phone.”