Infinity Smashed: Bodily Reconstruction
Jun. 22nd, 2013 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeBodily Reconstruction
Word Count: 14,658
Summary: Biff wants top surgery, but he can’t get it in Vaygo. Luckily for him, M.D.’s junior healer.
Notes: This is REALLY late in the timeline; M.D.’s been junior healer for a few years now, turns nineteen over the course of this story, and is by all accounts a functioning adult. Biff turns twenty-eight. Medical grossness towards the end. Also, this is all Lee’s fault.
Month Zero
“Biff,” I whined. “You’re out of toilet paper.”
Biff didn’t look up from where he was scrubbing dishes. “Check under the sink. I got newspaper if nothing else.”
I made a face. For someone rivaling me in destitution, Biff could squirrel away a lot of detritus, and it seemed he crammed half of it under the bathroom sink. I pulled out Ace bandages, normal bandages, tape, four half-empty bottles of rubbing alcohol, five different bottles of pills, and after that I got down on my side because it was obvious I’d be at it a while. By that depth, things were starting to get pretty disgusting, and I was just starting to wonder whether I could possibly want anything back there when I felt toilet paper.
It wasn’t much, and it was being used as wrapping for something else, but hey, it was clean—surprisingly so, considering how far back I’d found it. I figured I needed it more, so I pulled it off, planning on shoving the whatever-it-was back under the sink.
I didn’t. Wrapped in the paper were four hypodermic needles, all used.
I don’t know how long I sat there with the needles half-unwrapped in my hand, but apparently it was long enough to make Biff impatient. “Hey,” he barked over the sloshing, “I need more toilet paper or what?”
I tossed the paper aside, jumped to my feet, and stormed over to where Biff was up to his elbows in soapy water, trying to scour the frying pan into submission.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
With an exasperated face, he held up the frying pan. I held up the needles.
He froze. For a few seconds, he just stood there with the frying pan. Then he looked uncomfortable and said, “Oh.”
Which meant it was exactly what I thought it was. And I shouldn’t have been surprised, I knew Biff, I knew his self-destructive habits, I knew—
“You… you…”
Biff dropped the pan with a splash, turned around, and walked away.
It didn’t occur to me to move. Biff never said no to a fight; I figured he was just having a delayed detonation. When he got to the window and looked as though he planned to leave through it, I chased after him. If he wasn’t going to explode, I’d do it for him.
“You!” I didn’t have a word bad enough for him. “You told me you’d stopped, and you just moved on to something harder? And I believed you?”
He began to vanish. I grabbed him by the back of the vest before he could finish the job and shook the needles in front of his nose. “No. You stay here, and you talk.”
Biff didn’t try to shove me away—but then, his arms were still soaked up to the elbow. He didn’t even turn around. He just sighed, shoulders slumped, and said in a tired voice, “Ain’t those kind of drugs, M.D.”
His use of my name and complete lack of anger should’ve cued me, but I was too busy not going completely berserk. “What kind are they?” I hissed.
Biff grabbed an old shirt off the windowsill and began drying his hands on it. His voice was flat. “Testosterone.”
Even then, I was too enraged to get it. “Testosterone? What would you need—”
Hands dry, Biff turned back to face me, grabbed my free hand, and clapped it to his chest. Then he waited for me to figure out what it was I was feeling through my gloves, his vest, and his shirt.
When my eyes went big, he let go of me and waited.
I took a step back. Goggled at him. And it was stupid, I knew better, an illusionist skilled as he was, but I still stared at his chest, trying to see through it anyway. Then I recovered enough sense to realize what I was doing and wrestled my eyes back up to his face. At least I didn’t stare anywhere else. Also, I wiped my hand on my jeans, not because of what I’d felt but because it was him.
Something. I was supposed to say something. This was important, and I was the mouth, the kid who never shut up, so I had to say something. Preferably something intelligent. But nothing was coming to mind. Not even idiotic, impolite things to say. Just… nothing.
Biff didn’t give me anything to work with. He just crossed his arms over his chest and waited, face unreadable.
Finally, I said, “So… can I use this for toilet paper or not?”
Pause. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” I gave the needles to him, kept the paper for myself, and let my legs carry me back to the bathroom. Then I shoved my head back out the doorway. “This conversation isn’t over.”
He didn’t say anything. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do to insure him staying; I really did need to go.
The few minutes that bought me weren’t enough for me to completely reconfigure my understanding of reality, but they were enough for me to come to a short-term solution: ignore it. All of it. What it meant, what it explained about Biff’s personality, how I might feel about it. By the time I came out, scrubbing my hands dry against my thighs, I was in full Junior Healer Mode.
“You shouldn’t keep reusing those needles. I can get you some new ones at work and get your old ones disposed of properly.”
All right, so it sounded pretty weak, but at least it didn’t sound stupid. Biff hadn’t moved from his spot by the window. He still wasn’t giving me much in the way of conversational traction; he just grunted in a way that didn’t really mean anything and kept not looking at me.
I went to the rusty folding chair and sank into it, staring at the card table like it was a how-to manual on how to respond. If Biff was going to punch me in the face and bolt, he would’ve done it already, so he seemed to be staying for the moment, however provisionally. Maybe I should’ve been flattered, but I wasn’t. Punching and bolting, at least, would’ve meant things were normal, that once Biff blew off steam, he’d be fine. This, then, was serious.
For a while, the only sound was the dripping of the leaky sink into the dishwashing suds. We really didn’t know how to talk to each other without using antagonism as ballast, and I was still too floored to come up with anything. Finally, I just went back to Junior Healer Mode; at least it gave me something to say.
“Where have you been getting it from? Black market?”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m not asking to get in your business. I’m asking because you don’t have a doctor, and because I doubt you told Rosenthal about this, so I’m willing to bet you’re self-medicating, which is incredibly dangerous. I’m trying to keep you from coming down with septicemia.”
He still obviously wasn’t happy, but at least he coughed up. “Yeah, they’re street. I got a couple bottles under the sink, you want one.”
“I would like that, yes. I don’t know enough about testosterone to know what’s a safe mix, but I can find out.”
“All the labels’re in Spanish. Think it’s from Mexico or something.”
I grimaced. My Spanish reading skills were abysmal. “I might need Thomas’s help, then—I won’t tell him,” I added when I saw Biff’s face. “I just want to make sure you’re getting what you’re supposed to. You get the same kind every time?” Nod. “Good. All right. If nothing’s wrong, nothing lost. If something is, I can at least try to get you something safer. I don’t know how, but…”
I ran out of pseudo-intelligent words again. For a few seconds, I held out my hands like that’d pull some new ideas out, and when it didn’t, I let them fall to the table with a thud. Finally I let my head join them with a growl of frustration.
“This is ridiculous! This isn’t strange! This is mundane!” I raised my head, looked at him, and added miserably, “It’s just that it’s you.”
Moving like he expected me to jump up and bite him, Biff edged to the other chair, pulled it as far away from me as he could get away with and still have access to the table, and sat down. At least I wasn’t alone in complete conversational inadequacy; he couldn’t even look at me, just picked up the pack of cards from the corner and started shuffling. I watched the cards go in and out and wished my mouth and my brain hadn’t chosen now to give out on me.
Finally, Biff ended up being the one to break the silence. Without looking up from his shuffling, he said, “I ain’t no girl.”
Oh hallelujah, something I could respond to. “Well, yeah, you think? It’s just…” I shook my head. “If it were Raige, I don’t think I’d even be surprised, but you… jeez, Biff, I knew you were wedded to your closet, but I figured you only had one of them…”
He bent the cards so far that for a moment, I thought they’d explode out of his hands. “I ain’t no fucking fag either.”
“Biff, I know we try and keep truth at a nice, safe arm’s length, but from where I’m sitting, you’re either that or a—” realization hit, “oh wow. Wow.”
Biff grimaced but said nothing.
“Remind me to never turn Catholic. Your god has a vicious sense of irony.” I set my elbows on the table and shook my head. “Good grief. After all we’ve been through, how did you keep that from me?”
“I didn’t.”
I blinked and cocked my head, but he didn’t elaborate, too busy pretending to be absorbed in the cards. So I dug back through my memory, all the times Biff and I had spent up to our metaphorical knees in each other’s psychological bull.
When I’d found out about his sexuality, he hadn’t said he wasn’t a faggot—that’d come later. He’d specifically said, “I ain’t no girl.”
It’d never occurred to me to take the words at face value. After all, gender had never quite made sense to me, so if there’d been any cues in his memories, I’d just ignored them. Why wouldn’t I? He’d been so busy bellowing, “I’m alpha male of the manly brigade,” at top volume that nothing else had registered with me.
“Jeez,” I said, “exchange subconsciousnesses with a guy and you still don’t know everything about him.”
Biff glared at me. “No, you didn’t know the wrong shit about me.” He passed me the deck.
I cut it and passed it back without looking at it. “Still, we’ve been fighting for years. I know my sense of touch isn’t great, with the gloves and all, but seriously, the amount of time we’ve spent slugging each other, how…”
He put the deck back together, shrugged and thumped the cards down. “People don’t notice shit if their eyes say something different, and you don’t aim for the chest. Good thing too; it fucking hurts.”
That made my eyes narrow. “Just what are you using to flatten it?”
He didn’t answer, just started dealing a hand. I began rubbing my temples.
“Please tell me you’re not using those Ace bandages I found under the sink.”
Silence.
I covered my face again and groaned. “And here I thought your short wind was from all the smoking. Biff. Biff. There are so many safer ways you could be going about this.”
The last card hit the table. “I ain’t taking them off.”
Quiet. Calm. Utterly immovable.
An idea came to me. “I can get you something better.”
He looked up.
“You need an article of clothing that, far as I know, isn’t mass produced. Here, that’s tough. In Treehouse, it’s the norm. So I can get you something custom fit that would do the same job without possibly warping your ribcage and wrecking your lung capacity. Also, it won’t fall down over the course of the day.”
He seemed to be seriously thinking it over. Then he said, in unusually muted tones, “Hey.”
“Enh?”
“You think your bosses could fix,” he gestured vaguely at his chest, “this?”
It took me a second to realize what he meant, then I shook my head. “Nuh uh, no way, not for a dead whale. Treehouse isn’t like the US of A; we can’t just do surgery. There are non-trivial odds of you dying on the table. Even if my bosses agreed to it—and they wouldn’t—the results wouldn’t be nearly as good as what you could here.”
Biff’s tone started getting testy. “Yeah, well, I can’t get it here.”
“Look, I have no idea what something like that would cost here in Vaygo, but you don’t even have the resources to barter for it up my stretch of the multiverse…”
“It ain’t about the money, okay? Like, you said why they won’t do it, ‘cause it might kill me, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s their only reason, right?”
“You need more?”
He snorted. “Kid, even if I had ten K to blow out my ass, they wouldn’t let me in the door.”
I frowned. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the distinct impression that money could get you anything in Vaygo.”
“Sure, I wanna get carved by some vet student in their basement. I wanna get it done right, I gotta go through the red tape.”
“You don’t have health insurance.”
He smacked the table. “I ain’t talking fucking health insurance, okay, I’m talking red tape. Gotta see the shrink and get ‘em to say what I known forever, only my life of knowing ain’t shit next to some headshrinker getting paid by the hour. And that’s if I had all the paperwork and social security number and shit, which I don’t. So no,” he said, “I don’t give a shit if your bosses leave me looking like Frankenstein. I care that they won’t give me shit about it.”
“You mean the monster. Frankenstein was the creator.” I sighed and stood up. “Well, I can give it a try. But I can tell you what they’ll say right now…”
…
“Never,” Flame signed, ruffling her wings with annoyance. “I don’t know where your friend comes from that surgery can be aesthetic, but here, it’s a serious matter. You told him that, I hope.”
“He’s not my friend,” I replied. “And of course I told him; what do you take me for? He still wants it. To him, it is a serious matter.”
Flame steamed with exasperation and looked to Scorch for support, but he was whuffing thoughtfully.
“It’s true, we’re not qualified,” he signed, “but Ribbonblack might be.”
“You think so?” I asked.
Ribbonblack was healer for the night people. Ancient and chronically ill, she spared her energy for major emergencies, leaving day-to-day business mostly to her senior apprentices. Being in their comparatively robust middle age, Scorch and Flame took most cases themselves and preferred having only one junior healer at a time, while Ribbonblack’s practice couldn’t even run without at least three. Although she’d been nothing but gracious to me, I’d always found her a little unsettling.
“She’s not native to the area any more than you are,” Flame signed. “She used to be a surgeon on a much more technologically progressed society than ours. It’s why we go to her for the delicate work.” She looked to Scorch questioningly. “She has so little energy to spare these days, do you really think it worth it?”
Scorch scratched behind his jaw with his tongue—his version of a shrug. “We’ve been meaning to have a sit-down with her anyway. I have no idea whether this is something she’d want to do, but why not? She’ll at least be curious.”
Flame was obviously not content with this, judging by the steam still leaking from her jaws, but she shook her body like she was shedding all responsibility for the business and signed, “Well, let’s see what Ribbonblack says. Why your friend is coming all the way here, I can’t fathom, but if he’s truly set and determined…” she sighed steam. “Well, bring him along, let’s see what we can do with him.”
Month One
Between Ribbonblack’s frailty and our own chaotic schedules, it took three weeks before we managed to meet, and it ended up being a last-minute deal, as are most things in Treehouse. I blipped to Biff’s place, and it looked like I arrived in the nick of time; he was pulling on his jacket, had a duffel bag over his shoulder, and looked about to leave.
“Hey,” I said, “you’re in luck. We’re seeing Ribbonblack.”
“When?”
“Now.” I glanced at the bag. “You busy?”
He tossed it aside. “Nope.”
“Come on. And ditch the jacket; it’s summer at home.”
He shucked it and followed me out the window.
Biff had been to Treehouse a couple of times, but not enough for it to really sink in. He seemed to assume that Treehouse people only acted differently for the tourists, and that once he left, everyone put the skyscrapers back up and started speaking English again. At least he’d already met Scorch and Flame, so I didn’t need to do introductions. Against all expectations, Scorch even liked him—though that was mostly due to not understanding a word Biff said and thinking he smelled great. For his part, Biff still hadn’t gotten over the idea that my bosses could eat him. He had spent far too much time around dangerous people to ever willingly betray discomfort, but he always kept some distance.
Flame, however, found Biff’s body language unpleasant and disagreed on the appeal of the smell of Marlboro Reds, so she was closing down the practice while the rest of us headed out into the dusk to Ribbonblack’s practice. It was even larger than Scorch and Flame’s, due to the number of apprentices Ribbonblack housed and the number of patients she saw, and the whole place looked like a giant mutant lovechild of a banyan and bamboo.
One of her junior apprentices greeted us at the door. “Welcome,” it signed with rustling fronds, lighting a lamp. The gourd contraption gave off a dim twilight illumination, enough for us to see without blinding the night people. “Please, come in.”
Biff stared at the apprentice. His jaw clenched. I elbowed him hard in the side and hissed, “huge favor,” and that seemed to knock him out of it. Thank god for the language and societal mores barrier.
Scorch tucked in his tail, sucked in his sides, and managed to scrape through the door. His species being a kind that didn’t need much in the way of cushions, he simply lay down directly across from a large hanging basket, while I sat next to him on a cushion that’d been left out for me. Biff followed my lead, though it was obvious he had no earthly idea what anything was.
The apprentice hung the lamp from the ceiling, fetched us water, then faded into the background. I felt a little guilty; such social grace had never been my strong point. Then again, seeing who I was sitting next to, maybe I didn’t have so much to feel bad about.
“So… where’s this Ribbonblack thing?” Biff asked.
I tried not to look like I was in pain; Scorch had been around me enough that he might guess why. “That’s her in the basket, genius.”
“That’s alive?”
Ribbonblack was a flexible, emaciated being whose limbs all consisted of flat, tendriled ribbons—some thick as my thigh, some thin and delicate as spider web strands. Her dull black skin was broken up with veins of blue that pulsed with her vital rhythms. She looked like something out of a nightmare, and though she moved smoothly enough, I got the sense that once upon a time, she’d been able to move a lot faster.
At least communication wouldn’t be an issue. Ribbonblack was a telepath, and not of the haphazard, mortifying variety like me, the more popular “speak coherently through thought” type. Her mental ‘voice’ was always flat and slightly jerky—an effect of her editing out emotions and irrelevant data from her broadcasts.
“Good set to you,” she said. Then she paused. “I can’t broadcast to the newcomer.”
Oh great. “Biff, she’s trying to connect telepathically with you, but it’s not working.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “We gotta do that? Feels like spiders in my head.”
“Biff, now is really not the time to get recalcitrant.”
“Look, you didn’t tell me she was no fucking mind-reader. You sure she don’t speak English?”
“Yes, Biff, I’m positive she doesn’t speak English. She doesn’t have vocal cords.” I adjusted my thoughts to specifically broadcast to Ribbonblack. “I’m sorry, he has… issues. I’ll translate for him.”
That settled, her and Scorch started chatting. Since to Biff, they appeared to be completely silent, he leaned to me and asked, “What they doing?”
“Talking shop. Nothing you’d be interested in, but it’s important for me, so shut it; I’ll let you know when there’s something you need to know.”
Biff was far from the most important part of the meeting; he was simply the most unusual. There was no telling how far Ribbonblack’s energy might stretch, so most of the reason for the meeting was for her and Scorch to catch up. Since she, him, and Flame were the only full-fledged healers in town, it was in their best interest to keep abreast of news with each other’s practices. A little friendly competition was all well and good, but one good plague or one health catastrophe for Ribbonblack, and Treehouse would be wrecked.
I kept my mouth shut unless I had anything useful to add; mostly, I listened. Ribbonblack’s primary apprentice looked to be shaping up into proper healer material. It’d be good to have another around, eh? Help carry some of the burden of the night people… and a new illness among the Dead Carrier Beetle family, had she heard? Only the younger, a breeding issue perhaps…
Biff bounced his knee and fidgeted with his water, but at least he didn’t interrupt. Probably because he knew that half the people in the room could kill him and eat him if he annoyed them too much.
Ribbonblack appeared to be holding up well, and eventually, Scorch said, “You remember that possible case we found beyond our abilities.”
“Of course. That is what the silent one is here for, then?”
Ha. Biff, silent.
“It is. Some friend of our junior healer’s. We wanted to hear your take on it.”
Ribbonblack turned to me—well, mentally speaking. Her body didn’t express emotion in a way I could recognize, but she allowed a thread of curiosity to enter her broadcast. “Speak.”
I nudged Biff. “All right, this is you.”
Speaking aloud in English as I broadcast, I went into my spiel. As I explained, both Scorch and Ribbonblack eyed Biff appraisingly. Seeing how Scorch had big pointy teeth as long as my finger and Ribbonblack pulsed and undulated like a living shadow, I couldn’t blame Biff for looking a bit uncomfortable. I could blame him for asking me, “You sure they don’t eat people?”
I halted my broadcast for a moment. “Of course they eat people; what they don’t eat is customers. Now can it.”
Apparently Scorch could read enough of my body language to get at least a vague idea of what I was expressing, if not the reason why. He chuckled. Since for him, that involved quivering and cavernous wheezing, this didn’t do much to make Biff look any more relaxed.
“Shall I lick him?” Scorch asked. “It works for overwrought hatchlings…”
“Let’s not send him screaming out the door, huh?” I replied.
If Ribbonblack was amused, I couldn’t tell. She was all business, asking questions on Biff’s anatomy and general health. That was a headache, as I tried to explain in a way that was clear, concise, and wouldn’t get me decked for insulting Biff’s masculinity. There were no sudden glares or fist clenching, so I guess I didn’t phrase it too abysmally.
Then came the physical.
I turned to Biff. “Okay, this is the part where you’re going to have to strip down for them.”
He wasn’t paying attention. “Kid, your boss is drooling at me.”
“He can’t help it; you smell like barbecue to him. Just ignore it. He did it the whole first season of my apprenticeship and never once tried to eat me.”
“Jesus.” But he got up and reached for his shirt. “The vanish too?”
“The vanish too.”
No need to ask if he wanted me to turn around. I turned my attention to the wall behind me, giving the sign for ‘local societal more’ over my head, and Scorch and Ribbonblack didn’t protest. After all, I wasn’t going to have anything to do with the surgery, so there was no reason for me to see anything.
I heard the rustle of cloth, and Scorch’s thoughtful whuff. Thanks to Ribbonblack’s broadcast, they could communicate with me out of my line of sight, which allowed me to keep translating.
“Ribbonblack asks if she can touch you.”
“They ask?”
“They always ask here.”
Pause. “Yeah, okay.”
I heard the soft creak of Ribbonblack’s basket, but after that, nothing. I had no idea she’d started until I heard Biff yelp, “Jesus shit, that’s cold!”
The next half hour was more questions and answers: Biff’s health, his goals and intentions for the hypothetical surgery. I kept him honest, and at one point, I even got up and modeled, since for all my biology, I remained flat as a board. I kept my face to the wall, and though Biff sounded like he was talking through his teeth the entire time, at least he didn’t hit anyone.
When I turned back around, Biff was fully dressed, both in clothes and illusion. He came to sit down again, eyes down and back tense, so I punched him in the shoulder. He punched me back and relaxed a little.
Ribbonblack was back in her basket, though I hadn’t heard her return to it. She interlaced her tendrils and her broadcast went blank for a time; she was thinking privately. Finally, her thoughtstream became perceivable again. I tried to translate alongside her broadcast as best I could.
“I’m intrigued,” she said. “It would be an interesting change of pace for me to do art and not just craft. I was an aesthetic surgeon, back on my home.” The word ‘home’ was painfully disjointed, as though she was stripping a lot of emotion out of it. “It would be a challenge. I’d need to do a great deal of research, and of course, my work wouldn’t compare to someone trained in the procedure.”
“No shit,” Biff said when I finished. “Can she do it?”
Using slightly more diplomatic phrasing, I relayed the inquiry, and Ribbonblack said, “Obviously, I have more research to do, but at this current time, I believe I could.”
I looked to Biff. “You’re in luck. She’s going for it.”
“All right,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “What’ll it cost me?”
“Work and service. So… you squeamish?”
The next couple hours were spent hashing out an employment contract—fascinating for Biff and Ribbonblack, mind-numbing for everyone else. Scorch took the opportunity to go out and fetch us dinner, but Biff still needed a translator/diplomatic censor, so I was stuck for the whole thing. Just as well, really; Biff could haggle pretty well… in Arizona. Here, he was a sitting duck.
Even so, it took a while; Biff’s skill-set held little value in Treehouse. For a while, it sounded like Ribbonblack would refuse to take the case because he had nothing to offer, but I took a hand in the proceedings and mentioned American availability of cheap, mass-produced medical equipment. Finally, they settled on a certain amount of Vaygan pharmaceuticals (not street and not stolen), plus two seasons’ worth of set-rise labor, three days on, three days off.
“Meaning?” He asked me.
“A Treehouse week is eight days, a season eleven weeks, and set-rise shift from dusk until dawn. So… you’ll be working the graveyard death march for roughly six months, plus whatever else it is you do.”
No hesitation whatsoever. “Deal.”
Thought the employment contract was bad? Next came the paperwork.
Some people assume that “primitive” societies are above (or maybe below) bureaucracy. They’ve obviously never tried to run a town with dozens of different languages and social mores. I had to go down to bully the record-keepers, and they didn’t like going to Ribbonblack’s place because they didn’t like going anywhere. Then they had to write up the contract, where everyone haggled over the exact wording of it in multiple languages. Once that was settled, the record-keepers made copies (by hand) and everyone signed everything multiple times.
By the time we left and staggered homeward, the moons had set, and I was falling asleep on my feet.
“Ugh,” I groaned, rubbing my eyes. “Biff, you need to either learn some Pidgin Sign or get over your telepathy thing, because I’m never doing that again.”
Biff didn’t seem to care that he’d spent half the night getting prodded by an eldritch abomination and arguing Treehouse contract law. He was as cheerful as I’d ever seen him, rubbing his hands together and chortling trollishly. “Fuck that shit, who cares, I’m getting surgery!”
“I’m glad you’re happy,” I mumbled, fumbling at the door. “Great, and I have work at dawn… do you think you can manage not to assault anyone until tomorrow noon? Because there is no way I’m going through even more paperwork to get you home at this hour.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You got a couch?”
“My hammock’s broken. I’ve got floor, and I’ve got blankets. You figure out the rest.” The door wasn’t coming open. In my condition, this seemed the height of unfairness.
Biff reached over, braced his shoulder, and forced the door. His look was militantly casual. “So hey, I got a couple days to get shit set up, but… y’know. Ain’t no bus going to Dipshit, Nowhere, and I’m gonna be here a lot…”
I paused. I stared at him. Then I shut my eyes, rested my head against the doorframe, and whimpered. Because oh, I knew where this was going. Where he was going.
Thomas was going to kill me.
…
“You’re letting him move in?” Thomas shrieked. “Why?”
I rubbed my temple and grabbed a slice of pizza from the pan on the table. “Look, him moving in is the least inconvenient thing for me right now. He’s working for Ribbonblack half the week, I can’t run back and forth playing taxi all the time—”
“Ribbonblack?” Raige said, grabbing his own slice. “Why’s he working for Ribbonblack?”
Thomas’s eyes lit up. “Does he have cancer? Oh, please tell me he’s got cancer…”
“He doesn’t have cancer! He just is, all right?”
“And can we not make cancer jokes, please?” Raige asked. “Personal sensitivity.”
“Right. Sorry, Raige.”
“It’s okay. So how long will he be staying?”
“Two seasons.”
Thomas let his head fall back against the booth and groaned. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of my sex life—”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said. “You act like I’m the only one with a residence.”
“Yeah, but the walls are like paper at my folks’ place, and Raige’s dad still looks at me like I’m the perv who turned his son gay.”
Raige’s mouth quirked. “No, no, you turned me bisexual. Totally different.”
“Not to your dad. And no offense, dude, but your dorm room’s a postage stamp.”
Raige spread his hands and shrugged. “Random draw. Nothing I can do.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen when you leave it to the last minute—”
“Look,” I interrupted, “Biff’s working the graveyard death march. After that, he won’t have the energy to care about anything, certainly not you.” Then I hastily added, “That said, refrain from having sex in front of him. He might just notice.”
“He’s working set-rise? Harsh.” Thomas plucked a stray thread of cheese and raised an eyebrow. “What’s he need from Ribbonblack that’d cost him two seasons of set-rise?”
Raige didn’t say anything. Judging by his face, he was torn between saying that it was none of their business and asking the same question himself.
“If you want to know that badly, you can ask him,” I said. “As is, staying with me is the least inconvenient for the both of us. My room, my rent, my rules. Cope.”
“Is… everything okay with him?” Raige asked.
“Who cares?” Thomas retorted.
“As okay as Biff ever is,” I said, “but he’s got enough on his plate between holding things down in Vaygo and with Ribbonblack. He won’t have anything left over to bother with you.”
Thomas didn’t look convinced. “Us, sure. What about you?”
“What about me?”
He held up one hand. “You’re fire.” He held up the other. “He’s dynamite. Put you together, and…” he slapped his hands together and pantomimed an eloquent little mushroom cloud. “I give it a week before y’all blow the whole place up.”
“Thomas!” Raige protested. “Be fair. It’ll take at least three.”
“Oh, ha, ha,” I said, and took a cheese-stick.
--continued in Part Two
Word Count: 14,658
Summary: Biff wants top surgery, but he can’t get it in Vaygo. Luckily for him, M.D.’s junior healer.
Notes: This is REALLY late in the timeline; M.D.’s been junior healer for a few years now, turns nineteen over the course of this story, and is by all accounts a functioning adult. Biff turns twenty-eight. Medical grossness towards the end. Also, this is all Lee’s fault.
Month Zero
“Biff,” I whined. “You’re out of toilet paper.”
Biff didn’t look up from where he was scrubbing dishes. “Check under the sink. I got newspaper if nothing else.”
I made a face. For someone rivaling me in destitution, Biff could squirrel away a lot of detritus, and it seemed he crammed half of it under the bathroom sink. I pulled out Ace bandages, normal bandages, tape, four half-empty bottles of rubbing alcohol, five different bottles of pills, and after that I got down on my side because it was obvious I’d be at it a while. By that depth, things were starting to get pretty disgusting, and I was just starting to wonder whether I could possibly want anything back there when I felt toilet paper.
It wasn’t much, and it was being used as wrapping for something else, but hey, it was clean—surprisingly so, considering how far back I’d found it. I figured I needed it more, so I pulled it off, planning on shoving the whatever-it-was back under the sink.
I didn’t. Wrapped in the paper were four hypodermic needles, all used.
I don’t know how long I sat there with the needles half-unwrapped in my hand, but apparently it was long enough to make Biff impatient. “Hey,” he barked over the sloshing, “I need more toilet paper or what?”
I tossed the paper aside, jumped to my feet, and stormed over to where Biff was up to his elbows in soapy water, trying to scour the frying pan into submission.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
With an exasperated face, he held up the frying pan. I held up the needles.
He froze. For a few seconds, he just stood there with the frying pan. Then he looked uncomfortable and said, “Oh.”
Which meant it was exactly what I thought it was. And I shouldn’t have been surprised, I knew Biff, I knew his self-destructive habits, I knew—
“You… you…”
Biff dropped the pan with a splash, turned around, and walked away.
It didn’t occur to me to move. Biff never said no to a fight; I figured he was just having a delayed detonation. When he got to the window and looked as though he planned to leave through it, I chased after him. If he wasn’t going to explode, I’d do it for him.
“You!” I didn’t have a word bad enough for him. “You told me you’d stopped, and you just moved on to something harder? And I believed you?”
He began to vanish. I grabbed him by the back of the vest before he could finish the job and shook the needles in front of his nose. “No. You stay here, and you talk.”
Biff didn’t try to shove me away—but then, his arms were still soaked up to the elbow. He didn’t even turn around. He just sighed, shoulders slumped, and said in a tired voice, “Ain’t those kind of drugs, M.D.”
His use of my name and complete lack of anger should’ve cued me, but I was too busy not going completely berserk. “What kind are they?” I hissed.
Biff grabbed an old shirt off the windowsill and began drying his hands on it. His voice was flat. “Testosterone.”
Even then, I was too enraged to get it. “Testosterone? What would you need—”
Hands dry, Biff turned back to face me, grabbed my free hand, and clapped it to his chest. Then he waited for me to figure out what it was I was feeling through my gloves, his vest, and his shirt.
When my eyes went big, he let go of me and waited.
I took a step back. Goggled at him. And it was stupid, I knew better, an illusionist skilled as he was, but I still stared at his chest, trying to see through it anyway. Then I recovered enough sense to realize what I was doing and wrestled my eyes back up to his face. At least I didn’t stare anywhere else. Also, I wiped my hand on my jeans, not because of what I’d felt but because it was him.
Something. I was supposed to say something. This was important, and I was the mouth, the kid who never shut up, so I had to say something. Preferably something intelligent. But nothing was coming to mind. Not even idiotic, impolite things to say. Just… nothing.
Biff didn’t give me anything to work with. He just crossed his arms over his chest and waited, face unreadable.
Finally, I said, “So… can I use this for toilet paper or not?”
Pause. “Sure.”
“Thanks.” I gave the needles to him, kept the paper for myself, and let my legs carry me back to the bathroom. Then I shoved my head back out the doorway. “This conversation isn’t over.”
He didn’t say anything. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do to insure him staying; I really did need to go.
The few minutes that bought me weren’t enough for me to completely reconfigure my understanding of reality, but they were enough for me to come to a short-term solution: ignore it. All of it. What it meant, what it explained about Biff’s personality, how I might feel about it. By the time I came out, scrubbing my hands dry against my thighs, I was in full Junior Healer Mode.
“You shouldn’t keep reusing those needles. I can get you some new ones at work and get your old ones disposed of properly.”
All right, so it sounded pretty weak, but at least it didn’t sound stupid. Biff hadn’t moved from his spot by the window. He still wasn’t giving me much in the way of conversational traction; he just grunted in a way that didn’t really mean anything and kept not looking at me.
I went to the rusty folding chair and sank into it, staring at the card table like it was a how-to manual on how to respond. If Biff was going to punch me in the face and bolt, he would’ve done it already, so he seemed to be staying for the moment, however provisionally. Maybe I should’ve been flattered, but I wasn’t. Punching and bolting, at least, would’ve meant things were normal, that once Biff blew off steam, he’d be fine. This, then, was serious.
For a while, the only sound was the dripping of the leaky sink into the dishwashing suds. We really didn’t know how to talk to each other without using antagonism as ballast, and I was still too floored to come up with anything. Finally, I just went back to Junior Healer Mode; at least it gave me something to say.
“Where have you been getting it from? Black market?”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m not asking to get in your business. I’m asking because you don’t have a doctor, and because I doubt you told Rosenthal about this, so I’m willing to bet you’re self-medicating, which is incredibly dangerous. I’m trying to keep you from coming down with septicemia.”
He still obviously wasn’t happy, but at least he coughed up. “Yeah, they’re street. I got a couple bottles under the sink, you want one.”
“I would like that, yes. I don’t know enough about testosterone to know what’s a safe mix, but I can find out.”
“All the labels’re in Spanish. Think it’s from Mexico or something.”
I grimaced. My Spanish reading skills were abysmal. “I might need Thomas’s help, then—I won’t tell him,” I added when I saw Biff’s face. “I just want to make sure you’re getting what you’re supposed to. You get the same kind every time?” Nod. “Good. All right. If nothing’s wrong, nothing lost. If something is, I can at least try to get you something safer. I don’t know how, but…”
I ran out of pseudo-intelligent words again. For a few seconds, I held out my hands like that’d pull some new ideas out, and when it didn’t, I let them fall to the table with a thud. Finally I let my head join them with a growl of frustration.
“This is ridiculous! This isn’t strange! This is mundane!” I raised my head, looked at him, and added miserably, “It’s just that it’s you.”
Moving like he expected me to jump up and bite him, Biff edged to the other chair, pulled it as far away from me as he could get away with and still have access to the table, and sat down. At least I wasn’t alone in complete conversational inadequacy; he couldn’t even look at me, just picked up the pack of cards from the corner and started shuffling. I watched the cards go in and out and wished my mouth and my brain hadn’t chosen now to give out on me.
Finally, Biff ended up being the one to break the silence. Without looking up from his shuffling, he said, “I ain’t no girl.”
Oh hallelujah, something I could respond to. “Well, yeah, you think? It’s just…” I shook my head. “If it were Raige, I don’t think I’d even be surprised, but you… jeez, Biff, I knew you were wedded to your closet, but I figured you only had one of them…”
He bent the cards so far that for a moment, I thought they’d explode out of his hands. “I ain’t no fucking fag either.”
“Biff, I know we try and keep truth at a nice, safe arm’s length, but from where I’m sitting, you’re either that or a—” realization hit, “oh wow. Wow.”
Biff grimaced but said nothing.
“Remind me to never turn Catholic. Your god has a vicious sense of irony.” I set my elbows on the table and shook my head. “Good grief. After all we’ve been through, how did you keep that from me?”
“I didn’t.”
I blinked and cocked my head, but he didn’t elaborate, too busy pretending to be absorbed in the cards. So I dug back through my memory, all the times Biff and I had spent up to our metaphorical knees in each other’s psychological bull.
When I’d found out about his sexuality, he hadn’t said he wasn’t a faggot—that’d come later. He’d specifically said, “I ain’t no girl.”
It’d never occurred to me to take the words at face value. After all, gender had never quite made sense to me, so if there’d been any cues in his memories, I’d just ignored them. Why wouldn’t I? He’d been so busy bellowing, “I’m alpha male of the manly brigade,” at top volume that nothing else had registered with me.
“Jeez,” I said, “exchange subconsciousnesses with a guy and you still don’t know everything about him.”
Biff glared at me. “No, you didn’t know the wrong shit about me.” He passed me the deck.
I cut it and passed it back without looking at it. “Still, we’ve been fighting for years. I know my sense of touch isn’t great, with the gloves and all, but seriously, the amount of time we’ve spent slugging each other, how…”
He put the deck back together, shrugged and thumped the cards down. “People don’t notice shit if their eyes say something different, and you don’t aim for the chest. Good thing too; it fucking hurts.”
That made my eyes narrow. “Just what are you using to flatten it?”
He didn’t answer, just started dealing a hand. I began rubbing my temples.
“Please tell me you’re not using those Ace bandages I found under the sink.”
Silence.
I covered my face again and groaned. “And here I thought your short wind was from all the smoking. Biff. Biff. There are so many safer ways you could be going about this.”
The last card hit the table. “I ain’t taking them off.”
Quiet. Calm. Utterly immovable.
An idea came to me. “I can get you something better.”
He looked up.
“You need an article of clothing that, far as I know, isn’t mass produced. Here, that’s tough. In Treehouse, it’s the norm. So I can get you something custom fit that would do the same job without possibly warping your ribcage and wrecking your lung capacity. Also, it won’t fall down over the course of the day.”
He seemed to be seriously thinking it over. Then he said, in unusually muted tones, “Hey.”
“Enh?”
“You think your bosses could fix,” he gestured vaguely at his chest, “this?”
It took me a second to realize what he meant, then I shook my head. “Nuh uh, no way, not for a dead whale. Treehouse isn’t like the US of A; we can’t just do surgery. There are non-trivial odds of you dying on the table. Even if my bosses agreed to it—and they wouldn’t—the results wouldn’t be nearly as good as what you could here.”
Biff’s tone started getting testy. “Yeah, well, I can’t get it here.”
“Look, I have no idea what something like that would cost here in Vaygo, but you don’t even have the resources to barter for it up my stretch of the multiverse…”
“It ain’t about the money, okay? Like, you said why they won’t do it, ‘cause it might kill me, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s their only reason, right?”
“You need more?”
He snorted. “Kid, even if I had ten K to blow out my ass, they wouldn’t let me in the door.”
I frowned. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the distinct impression that money could get you anything in Vaygo.”
“Sure, I wanna get carved by some vet student in their basement. I wanna get it done right, I gotta go through the red tape.”
“You don’t have health insurance.”
He smacked the table. “I ain’t talking fucking health insurance, okay, I’m talking red tape. Gotta see the shrink and get ‘em to say what I known forever, only my life of knowing ain’t shit next to some headshrinker getting paid by the hour. And that’s if I had all the paperwork and social security number and shit, which I don’t. So no,” he said, “I don’t give a shit if your bosses leave me looking like Frankenstein. I care that they won’t give me shit about it.”
“You mean the monster. Frankenstein was the creator.” I sighed and stood up. “Well, I can give it a try. But I can tell you what they’ll say right now…”
…
“Never,” Flame signed, ruffling her wings with annoyance. “I don’t know where your friend comes from that surgery can be aesthetic, but here, it’s a serious matter. You told him that, I hope.”
“He’s not my friend,” I replied. “And of course I told him; what do you take me for? He still wants it. To him, it is a serious matter.”
Flame steamed with exasperation and looked to Scorch for support, but he was whuffing thoughtfully.
“It’s true, we’re not qualified,” he signed, “but Ribbonblack might be.”
“You think so?” I asked.
Ribbonblack was healer for the night people. Ancient and chronically ill, she spared her energy for major emergencies, leaving day-to-day business mostly to her senior apprentices. Being in their comparatively robust middle age, Scorch and Flame took most cases themselves and preferred having only one junior healer at a time, while Ribbonblack’s practice couldn’t even run without at least three. Although she’d been nothing but gracious to me, I’d always found her a little unsettling.
“She’s not native to the area any more than you are,” Flame signed. “She used to be a surgeon on a much more technologically progressed society than ours. It’s why we go to her for the delicate work.” She looked to Scorch questioningly. “She has so little energy to spare these days, do you really think it worth it?”
Scorch scratched behind his jaw with his tongue—his version of a shrug. “We’ve been meaning to have a sit-down with her anyway. I have no idea whether this is something she’d want to do, but why not? She’ll at least be curious.”
Flame was obviously not content with this, judging by the steam still leaking from her jaws, but she shook her body like she was shedding all responsibility for the business and signed, “Well, let’s see what Ribbonblack says. Why your friend is coming all the way here, I can’t fathom, but if he’s truly set and determined…” she sighed steam. “Well, bring him along, let’s see what we can do with him.”
Month One
Between Ribbonblack’s frailty and our own chaotic schedules, it took three weeks before we managed to meet, and it ended up being a last-minute deal, as are most things in Treehouse. I blipped to Biff’s place, and it looked like I arrived in the nick of time; he was pulling on his jacket, had a duffel bag over his shoulder, and looked about to leave.
“Hey,” I said, “you’re in luck. We’re seeing Ribbonblack.”
“When?”
“Now.” I glanced at the bag. “You busy?”
He tossed it aside. “Nope.”
“Come on. And ditch the jacket; it’s summer at home.”
He shucked it and followed me out the window.
Biff had been to Treehouse a couple of times, but not enough for it to really sink in. He seemed to assume that Treehouse people only acted differently for the tourists, and that once he left, everyone put the skyscrapers back up and started speaking English again. At least he’d already met Scorch and Flame, so I didn’t need to do introductions. Against all expectations, Scorch even liked him—though that was mostly due to not understanding a word Biff said and thinking he smelled great. For his part, Biff still hadn’t gotten over the idea that my bosses could eat him. He had spent far too much time around dangerous people to ever willingly betray discomfort, but he always kept some distance.
Flame, however, found Biff’s body language unpleasant and disagreed on the appeal of the smell of Marlboro Reds, so she was closing down the practice while the rest of us headed out into the dusk to Ribbonblack’s practice. It was even larger than Scorch and Flame’s, due to the number of apprentices Ribbonblack housed and the number of patients she saw, and the whole place looked like a giant mutant lovechild of a banyan and bamboo.
One of her junior apprentices greeted us at the door. “Welcome,” it signed with rustling fronds, lighting a lamp. The gourd contraption gave off a dim twilight illumination, enough for us to see without blinding the night people. “Please, come in.”
Biff stared at the apprentice. His jaw clenched. I elbowed him hard in the side and hissed, “huge favor,” and that seemed to knock him out of it. Thank god for the language and societal mores barrier.
Scorch tucked in his tail, sucked in his sides, and managed to scrape through the door. His species being a kind that didn’t need much in the way of cushions, he simply lay down directly across from a large hanging basket, while I sat next to him on a cushion that’d been left out for me. Biff followed my lead, though it was obvious he had no earthly idea what anything was.
The apprentice hung the lamp from the ceiling, fetched us water, then faded into the background. I felt a little guilty; such social grace had never been my strong point. Then again, seeing who I was sitting next to, maybe I didn’t have so much to feel bad about.
“So… where’s this Ribbonblack thing?” Biff asked.
I tried not to look like I was in pain; Scorch had been around me enough that he might guess why. “That’s her in the basket, genius.”
“That’s alive?”
Ribbonblack was a flexible, emaciated being whose limbs all consisted of flat, tendriled ribbons—some thick as my thigh, some thin and delicate as spider web strands. Her dull black skin was broken up with veins of blue that pulsed with her vital rhythms. She looked like something out of a nightmare, and though she moved smoothly enough, I got the sense that once upon a time, she’d been able to move a lot faster.
At least communication wouldn’t be an issue. Ribbonblack was a telepath, and not of the haphazard, mortifying variety like me, the more popular “speak coherently through thought” type. Her mental ‘voice’ was always flat and slightly jerky—an effect of her editing out emotions and irrelevant data from her broadcasts.
“Good set to you,” she said. Then she paused. “I can’t broadcast to the newcomer.”
Oh great. “Biff, she’s trying to connect telepathically with you, but it’s not working.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “We gotta do that? Feels like spiders in my head.”
“Biff, now is really not the time to get recalcitrant.”
“Look, you didn’t tell me she was no fucking mind-reader. You sure she don’t speak English?”
“Yes, Biff, I’m positive she doesn’t speak English. She doesn’t have vocal cords.” I adjusted my thoughts to specifically broadcast to Ribbonblack. “I’m sorry, he has… issues. I’ll translate for him.”
That settled, her and Scorch started chatting. Since to Biff, they appeared to be completely silent, he leaned to me and asked, “What they doing?”
“Talking shop. Nothing you’d be interested in, but it’s important for me, so shut it; I’ll let you know when there’s something you need to know.”
Biff was far from the most important part of the meeting; he was simply the most unusual. There was no telling how far Ribbonblack’s energy might stretch, so most of the reason for the meeting was for her and Scorch to catch up. Since she, him, and Flame were the only full-fledged healers in town, it was in their best interest to keep abreast of news with each other’s practices. A little friendly competition was all well and good, but one good plague or one health catastrophe for Ribbonblack, and Treehouse would be wrecked.
I kept my mouth shut unless I had anything useful to add; mostly, I listened. Ribbonblack’s primary apprentice looked to be shaping up into proper healer material. It’d be good to have another around, eh? Help carry some of the burden of the night people… and a new illness among the Dead Carrier Beetle family, had she heard? Only the younger, a breeding issue perhaps…
Biff bounced his knee and fidgeted with his water, but at least he didn’t interrupt. Probably because he knew that half the people in the room could kill him and eat him if he annoyed them too much.
Ribbonblack appeared to be holding up well, and eventually, Scorch said, “You remember that possible case we found beyond our abilities.”
“Of course. That is what the silent one is here for, then?”
Ha. Biff, silent.
“It is. Some friend of our junior healer’s. We wanted to hear your take on it.”
Ribbonblack turned to me—well, mentally speaking. Her body didn’t express emotion in a way I could recognize, but she allowed a thread of curiosity to enter her broadcast. “Speak.”
I nudged Biff. “All right, this is you.”
Speaking aloud in English as I broadcast, I went into my spiel. As I explained, both Scorch and Ribbonblack eyed Biff appraisingly. Seeing how Scorch had big pointy teeth as long as my finger and Ribbonblack pulsed and undulated like a living shadow, I couldn’t blame Biff for looking a bit uncomfortable. I could blame him for asking me, “You sure they don’t eat people?”
I halted my broadcast for a moment. “Of course they eat people; what they don’t eat is customers. Now can it.”
Apparently Scorch could read enough of my body language to get at least a vague idea of what I was expressing, if not the reason why. He chuckled. Since for him, that involved quivering and cavernous wheezing, this didn’t do much to make Biff look any more relaxed.
“Shall I lick him?” Scorch asked. “It works for overwrought hatchlings…”
“Let’s not send him screaming out the door, huh?” I replied.
If Ribbonblack was amused, I couldn’t tell. She was all business, asking questions on Biff’s anatomy and general health. That was a headache, as I tried to explain in a way that was clear, concise, and wouldn’t get me decked for insulting Biff’s masculinity. There were no sudden glares or fist clenching, so I guess I didn’t phrase it too abysmally.
Then came the physical.
I turned to Biff. “Okay, this is the part where you’re going to have to strip down for them.”
He wasn’t paying attention. “Kid, your boss is drooling at me.”
“He can’t help it; you smell like barbecue to him. Just ignore it. He did it the whole first season of my apprenticeship and never once tried to eat me.”
“Jesus.” But he got up and reached for his shirt. “The vanish too?”
“The vanish too.”
No need to ask if he wanted me to turn around. I turned my attention to the wall behind me, giving the sign for ‘local societal more’ over my head, and Scorch and Ribbonblack didn’t protest. After all, I wasn’t going to have anything to do with the surgery, so there was no reason for me to see anything.
I heard the rustle of cloth, and Scorch’s thoughtful whuff. Thanks to Ribbonblack’s broadcast, they could communicate with me out of my line of sight, which allowed me to keep translating.
“Ribbonblack asks if she can touch you.”
“They ask?”
“They always ask here.”
Pause. “Yeah, okay.”
I heard the soft creak of Ribbonblack’s basket, but after that, nothing. I had no idea she’d started until I heard Biff yelp, “Jesus shit, that’s cold!”
The next half hour was more questions and answers: Biff’s health, his goals and intentions for the hypothetical surgery. I kept him honest, and at one point, I even got up and modeled, since for all my biology, I remained flat as a board. I kept my face to the wall, and though Biff sounded like he was talking through his teeth the entire time, at least he didn’t hit anyone.
When I turned back around, Biff was fully dressed, both in clothes and illusion. He came to sit down again, eyes down and back tense, so I punched him in the shoulder. He punched me back and relaxed a little.
Ribbonblack was back in her basket, though I hadn’t heard her return to it. She interlaced her tendrils and her broadcast went blank for a time; she was thinking privately. Finally, her thoughtstream became perceivable again. I tried to translate alongside her broadcast as best I could.
“I’m intrigued,” she said. “It would be an interesting change of pace for me to do art and not just craft. I was an aesthetic surgeon, back on my home.” The word ‘home’ was painfully disjointed, as though she was stripping a lot of emotion out of it. “It would be a challenge. I’d need to do a great deal of research, and of course, my work wouldn’t compare to someone trained in the procedure.”
“No shit,” Biff said when I finished. “Can she do it?”
Using slightly more diplomatic phrasing, I relayed the inquiry, and Ribbonblack said, “Obviously, I have more research to do, but at this current time, I believe I could.”
I looked to Biff. “You’re in luck. She’s going for it.”
“All right,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “What’ll it cost me?”
“Work and service. So… you squeamish?”
The next couple hours were spent hashing out an employment contract—fascinating for Biff and Ribbonblack, mind-numbing for everyone else. Scorch took the opportunity to go out and fetch us dinner, but Biff still needed a translator/diplomatic censor, so I was stuck for the whole thing. Just as well, really; Biff could haggle pretty well… in Arizona. Here, he was a sitting duck.
Even so, it took a while; Biff’s skill-set held little value in Treehouse. For a while, it sounded like Ribbonblack would refuse to take the case because he had nothing to offer, but I took a hand in the proceedings and mentioned American availability of cheap, mass-produced medical equipment. Finally, they settled on a certain amount of Vaygan pharmaceuticals (not street and not stolen), plus two seasons’ worth of set-rise labor, three days on, three days off.
“Meaning?” He asked me.
“A Treehouse week is eight days, a season eleven weeks, and set-rise shift from dusk until dawn. So… you’ll be working the graveyard death march for roughly six months, plus whatever else it is you do.”
No hesitation whatsoever. “Deal.”
Thought the employment contract was bad? Next came the paperwork.
Some people assume that “primitive” societies are above (or maybe below) bureaucracy. They’ve obviously never tried to run a town with dozens of different languages and social mores. I had to go down to bully the record-keepers, and they didn’t like going to Ribbonblack’s place because they didn’t like going anywhere. Then they had to write up the contract, where everyone haggled over the exact wording of it in multiple languages. Once that was settled, the record-keepers made copies (by hand) and everyone signed everything multiple times.
By the time we left and staggered homeward, the moons had set, and I was falling asleep on my feet.
“Ugh,” I groaned, rubbing my eyes. “Biff, you need to either learn some Pidgin Sign or get over your telepathy thing, because I’m never doing that again.”
Biff didn’t seem to care that he’d spent half the night getting prodded by an eldritch abomination and arguing Treehouse contract law. He was as cheerful as I’d ever seen him, rubbing his hands together and chortling trollishly. “Fuck that shit, who cares, I’m getting surgery!”
“I’m glad you’re happy,” I mumbled, fumbling at the door. “Great, and I have work at dawn… do you think you can manage not to assault anyone until tomorrow noon? Because there is no way I’m going through even more paperwork to get you home at this hour.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You got a couch?”
“My hammock’s broken. I’ve got floor, and I’ve got blankets. You figure out the rest.” The door wasn’t coming open. In my condition, this seemed the height of unfairness.
Biff reached over, braced his shoulder, and forced the door. His look was militantly casual. “So hey, I got a couple days to get shit set up, but… y’know. Ain’t no bus going to Dipshit, Nowhere, and I’m gonna be here a lot…”
I paused. I stared at him. Then I shut my eyes, rested my head against the doorframe, and whimpered. Because oh, I knew where this was going. Where he was going.
Thomas was going to kill me.
…
“You’re letting him move in?” Thomas shrieked. “Why?”
I rubbed my temple and grabbed a slice of pizza from the pan on the table. “Look, him moving in is the least inconvenient thing for me right now. He’s working for Ribbonblack half the week, I can’t run back and forth playing taxi all the time—”
“Ribbonblack?” Raige said, grabbing his own slice. “Why’s he working for Ribbonblack?”
Thomas’s eyes lit up. “Does he have cancer? Oh, please tell me he’s got cancer…”
“He doesn’t have cancer! He just is, all right?”
“And can we not make cancer jokes, please?” Raige asked. “Personal sensitivity.”
“Right. Sorry, Raige.”
“It’s okay. So how long will he be staying?”
“Two seasons.”
Thomas let his head fall back against the booth and groaned. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of my sex life—”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said. “You act like I’m the only one with a residence.”
“Yeah, but the walls are like paper at my folks’ place, and Raige’s dad still looks at me like I’m the perv who turned his son gay.”
Raige’s mouth quirked. “No, no, you turned me bisexual. Totally different.”
“Not to your dad. And no offense, dude, but your dorm room’s a postage stamp.”
Raige spread his hands and shrugged. “Random draw. Nothing I can do.”
“Yeah, that’ll happen when you leave it to the last minute—”
“Look,” I interrupted, “Biff’s working the graveyard death march. After that, he won’t have the energy to care about anything, certainly not you.” Then I hastily added, “That said, refrain from having sex in front of him. He might just notice.”
“He’s working set-rise? Harsh.” Thomas plucked a stray thread of cheese and raised an eyebrow. “What’s he need from Ribbonblack that’d cost him two seasons of set-rise?”
Raige didn’t say anything. Judging by his face, he was torn between saying that it was none of their business and asking the same question himself.
“If you want to know that badly, you can ask him,” I said. “As is, staying with me is the least inconvenient for the both of us. My room, my rent, my rules. Cope.”
“Is… everything okay with him?” Raige asked.
“Who cares?” Thomas retorted.
“As okay as Biff ever is,” I said, “but he’s got enough on his plate between holding things down in Vaygo and with Ribbonblack. He won’t have anything left over to bother with you.”
Thomas didn’t look convinced. “Us, sure. What about you?”
“What about me?”
He held up one hand. “You’re fire.” He held up the other. “He’s dynamite. Put you together, and…” he slapped his hands together and pantomimed an eloquent little mushroom cloud. “I give it a week before y’all blow the whole place up.”
“Thomas!” Raige protested. “Be fair. It’ll take at least three.”
“Oh, ha, ha,” I said, and took a cheese-stick.
--continued in Part Two
no subject
Date: 2013-06-23 05:36 pm (UTC)also the phrase "depending on how you like your Biff" is way funnier than it should be
BUT YES WE ARE PAYING YOU FOR THIS NOW
no subject
Date: 2013-07-16 11:35 am (UTC)