Chương 82: 74. Field Triage

"The candidates do not understand that the threshold is the audition. They believe the threshold and what comes with it is the reward. They are not wrong about the reward but they are wrong about why it was given." — Codex of the Long Watch, Watcher's Commentary Field Triage Arthur was sitting on the cot with his shoulder out of the harness when Steve started counting cores. Four small blue stones, two in each hand, weighed and pocketed. Steve patted the pouch closed and looked at the rest of them.

"Food run," he said.

"I'm going to see what the quartermaster has and what's new in the camp, in that order."

"How long," Donna said. She was at the tent post with the sharpening stone.

"As long as it takes to not be rude about it." Sarah had Arthur's shoulder in her hands and was easing the joint through its range.

"Bring back something with calories. A lot of it."

"One of the positives of the new world, definitely." He went out through the flap and the canvas settled behind him. * The quartermaster was a man called Mifsud, broad in the shoulders and thinning at the crown, who had run the supply tents at Marsaxlokk since Day Zero.

Steve had been told this twice on the way over: once by Enzo, once by a woman pegging out wash near the latrines, who had added that Mifsud's daughter taught at the secondary school in Birkirkara before everything and now ran the children's tent on the south side. People in the camp wanted you to know who Mifsud was before you spoke to him. Steve was filing that too. Mifsud was sitting on an upturned crate behind a low trestle, going through a ledger with a pencil stub.

He looked up when Steve approached and the pencil paused.

"You are the one with the doctor."

"Steven Parr. I would like to trade for food. Seven days of it, for four of us. I have minor cores." Mifsud put the pencil down.

"Let me see." Steve laid the four cores on the trestle. Mifsud looked at them without touching, then with one finger touched one of them, then looked at Steve.

"You are paying a lot for seven days of food, my friend."

"I am paying for speed. And I would like to ask you some questions while you fill the crate, if that is all right." Mifsud's eyes did not change but something behind them did. He stood up and called over his shoulder, and a younger man came out of the back tent and began packing.

"Ask," Mifsud said.

"The camp has more people in it than it had three days ago."

"Yes."

"Where are they coming from?"

"All over."

"Do you have any specifics?"

"From Mosta," he said after a beat, then added, "From other places too."

"Which ones?"" Mela, you would have to ask the Captain about the full list. I do not write down who is from which village. My ledger is for my supplies."

"And what you give out has gone up."

"What I give out has gone up." They stood there for a moment. The younger man had finished packing the crate.

"My friend. You came back from Tarxien. You and your friends, rifling through our heritage."

"I'm an archaeologist. Rifling is the last thing I do with heritage."

"The Captain has been telling some of us, not all. He says Malta will see something that it has not seen for centuries. That is all I have for you, my friend." Mifsud nodded once.

"Take your food. Saħħa."" Saħħa." Steve picked up the crate. It was heavier than he had expected. A boy of about twelve came round the side of the tent, opened the tent flap for Steve, and followed him outside.

"You came from Tarxien," the boy said, before they were ten paces from the tent.

"Yes."" Iva. My uncle says you are the ones."

"What ones?"

"The ones the Captain has been waiting for." Steve adjusted his grip on the crate.

"How long has your uncle been here?"

"One week. He came from Mosta before the new ones started showing up."

"You mean the people in the new tents?"" Iva, there is more of it now, jew? My uncle says it has grown twice since he came. He says the Captain and the Baron went to Mdina."

"To the citadel?"" Iva." As they passed a cart selling bread, Steve slowed.

"Let me put this down for a moment. Can you wait?"" Mela." Steve set the crate beside the cart. The man at the counter had a face like a bag of walnuts and was sliding loaves into a wicker basket without looking up. Steve smelled a loaf and asked, "What flour is this?"" San Pawl." The hands kept moving.

"Good flour. Where are you from yourself?" Steve said, passing a small core to the man.

"Senglea," the man said, pocketing the core and sliding a basket filled with loaves towards Steve.

"It's a far walk with creatures around."

"We did not walk it, mela. The Captain's men brought us in a cart. With fighters to guard us." Steve chose three loaves and looked at the vendor. After getting a nod, he put them on the top of the crate. A second man was leaning on the far side of the cart with a wedge in one hand. He was younger, and he had been listening.

"You are the foreigners."

"Yes, my friends and I."

"My cousin walks the perimeter." He bit into the bread and chewed without hurry.

"Where are you from yourself?"

"London, originally. Marseille more recently."

"Hm." The man tipped his head, considering this.

"I am from Gozo. The boat across the channel was less interesting than I had hoped." Steve picked up his crate.

"Stay safe."" Iva." The boy had been watching this without comment. They walked on. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Mosta. Mdina. Senglea. Gozo," Steve said, quietly.

"The big man in the brown coat. He is from Cospicua. There are three of them," the boy said. Steve smiled and handed a loaf of bread to the boy as they circled back to the tent." Grazzi," the boy said, his face lighting up. He clutched the loaf and scampered away. Steve stood outside the tent for a moment with the crate against his hip, watching the new line of canvas going up forty metres past the old perimeter. He filed everything and went inside.

* He set the crate down on the canvas mat with the care he used at a dig site and laid the food out, one item per square of space: bread, olives, two jars of oil, a cloth-wrapped wheel of cheese, dried fish, a rope-tied bundle of dried figs, some nuts, a bag of salt, and four clay jars of fish confit.

"Five cores," he said.

"Seven days of this."

"You overpaid," Donna said.

"I did. The quartermaster knew what I was paying for. And I am pleased with what I got in return." He sat down by the food.

"There are a lot of new people in this camp," he said.

"It's not just Marsaxlokk anymore. There are people from all over Malta: Mosta, Senglea, Gozo, the Three Cities. At least four settlements. Probably more. There's also a new perimeter line going up forty metres past the old one, with fresh canvas being erected. It would also seem that Azzopardi and the Baron went to Mdina." When he was finished, Donna was turning a fig in her hands.

"At least four settlements," she said.

"There are probably more. Though isn't it a good thing, if people are coming together? It would keep them safe."

"I don't trust anything that has the Baron's signature on it," Sarah said.

"The people seem to be generally happy, though," Steve replied.

"On the surface, Azzopardi and the Baron working together might not be such a bad thing for Malta," Arthur said, popping a walnut in his mouth.

"This feels larger, almost like a mobilisation," Donna said.

"We should be on our guard."

"When are you not on your guard?" Steve said.

"And that's why I'm alive. You should learn from it." Archie had been silent through the whole of Steve's report. The party turned to him when he spoke.

"The arrangement you are describing is a familiar one," Archie pronounced.

"Which arrangement?"

"The local authority and the local military authority sharing a perimeter under separate command. It is one of the most common structures observed in early post-collapse settlement consolidation. Across the populations I have monitored on this planet alone, I have catalogued it forty-one times. Across all assignments, several hundred."

"And," Steve said, interested.

"And it is unstable. It is the structure species adopt when neither party is yet strong enough to remove the other and both parties still require the other's instrument. Manpower on one side, legitimacy on the other. The arrangement holds until one of the two has accumulated enough of what the other had to make the other redundant. The arrangement is not designed to last. It is designed to function during the period in which it is being decided who outlasts it."

"Are you telling us the Baron and Azzopardi are going to turn on each other?" Arthur asked.

"I am simply telling you the structure of the configuration you find yourself in. The dataset is large but the outcomes are not deterministic."

"How long does it usually take? Before such a configuration dissolves?"

"On this planet, between forty days and twelve years. The variance is wide. I would not stake a prediction on the timing. I would only note that you are not standing outside this arrangement. You are inside it. Both parties have already decided you are useful to one of them. Probably both." Sarah said very quitely, "Wonderful." * After they had eaten it was time for Sarah to distribute her attributes and accept her technique. Steve was probably more excited than Sarah.

Sarah crossed her legs, made herself comfortable, and opened her notification.

"Two in RES. One in ACU," she said.

"I probably should do it the other way, but I want to see what happens when I hit twenty-five in RES." Her first point went to ACU and it was a non-issue. All of them were used to the momentary discomfort that attribute points brought. She then dropped the first point in RES.

"Ok, here it goes," she said, and dropped the second point in RES. They were prepared for a violent physical reaction, but her body did not lock the way Donna's had locked at DEX twenty-five or Arthur's at the STR and CON thresholds. She sat with her hands flat on her knees and looked at Arthur, and her face did not change for about two seconds. Then her shoulders spasmed and every muscle in her upper body began firing at once, contractions running independent of any signal she was sending.

Her fingers were twitching and a small moan escaped her lips. Arthur held her gaze through it. Her eyes were responding. She was inside it.

"I'm—okay—" she said, between two contractions.

"It's just—""It's okay, it will pass. Just hang on," Donna said. It went on for a little over three minutes. Arthur counted seconds because the count gave him something to do. The firing pattern slowed after about a minute and a half, then localised to just her hands at around two minutes, and then stopped at three. She looked at the lamp at the centre of the tent, then up at the canvas.

"Oh."

"Well?" Steve asked impatiently, his pencil poised.

"I'm seeing Ether differently now. There is a layer of Ether sitting above the flame that I have never seen before. I have always seen Ether like steam. Now it is like water. Denser, with more purpose to it." Her eyes went to Arthur's splinted forearm.

"Your healing has stopped doing what I had it doing two hours ago. Your body has moved on to a different repair phase. I could not see that before." Archie brightened a fraction.

"What just happened is something I have seen before. Though this is the first time I have seen it in your species. I was not sure the observations would hold across species," Archie pronounced.

"Sarah's Nadi-Matrix has reorganised the part of itself that handles how finely she can see and control Ether." Archie floated closer to Sarah and pulsed lightly before continuing.

"Before the threshold, she could distinguish Ether structures down to about one and a half millimetres. She can now distinguish them down to under three hundred micrometres. The contractions you observed were her nervous system being rewritten to handle the sharper input. Uncomfortable, but not damaging." Steve was scribbling furiously.

"So a five-fold increase in Ether perception and control," he muttered to no one in particular.

"Welcome to the club. He didn't warn me either," Donna said, looking at Archie. Sarah huffed a half-laugh and accepted the technique. NEW TECHNIQUE: TRIAGE FIELD Mender perception extends from contact to a five-metre radius. Within the field, biological state is read continuously. Cost: cognitive saturation. Sustained use produces mental fatigue. SARAH VASSILOU - STR 7 / DEX 8 / CON 22 / ACU 19 / RES 25. * Sarah sat quietly, no doubt trying to understand the technique within her. Then she gave a small gasp.

"Seems good," Steve said, smiling.

"This is going to be a game changer," she said.

"Up to now, every read I do is one body at a time. If I want to know what is happening inside Arthur, I have to be touching Arthur. If you have internal bleeding on the other side of the room, I have to get to you first and put a hand on you before I know anything useful."

"And now?" Donna said, looking interested.

"Now I can activate this and see everyone inside a five-metre radius. All at once, continuously. I can see who is bleeding, who is going into shock, whose heart is doing something it should not be, who is fine. Without touching anyone. This is field triage as a technique."

"And how long can you hold it?"

"I do not know yet. The notification says sustained use produces mental fatigue. We will have to experiment."

"I want to check something else as well," Sarah said, stretching her hands towards Donna.

"Give me your hand. I want to take a closer look at your Matrix." Donna gave her the hand without question, which Arthur noted, because for Donna that was an enormous leap of faith. Sarah held it for thirty seconds with the focused look of a surgical assessment and then let go.

"I think I can do something else with this."

"What, the technique?"

"No. The threshold breakthrough. The Nadi-Matrix moves Ether through the body. Everybody has it. Humans, creatures. As a Mender, I push Ether into someone else's body to help it do its job quicker. That is what healing is. I am adding to the flow. But now that I see the Matrix and Ether more finely, I think it might be possible to overload the Matrix at certain points. Not for long. The whole purpose of the Matrix is to process Ether, but I can disrupt it for a small window." She looked at Arthur.

"You have the largest CON in the party. If anyone here is going to take a deliberate jolt to the Matrix and feel it as a jolt rather than as a problem, it is you."

"Generous of you to volunteer me."

"You are welcome." Steve already had his notebook open. Arthur put his good hand into Sarah's. Her grip was warm and steady and the warmth had nothing to do with the Ether.

"I am going to try something. Don't be alarmed."

"That is not the most reassuring sentence I have ever heard." She pushed, and the jolt went through Arthur's hand and up his arm and across his chest before his brain caught up. His upper body twitched in a single hard involuntary contraction, the contraction that happens when someone touches the wrong wire. His hand jerked out of hers and he sat there for half a second blinking.

"Jesus. What was that."

"Your Matrix being temporarily overloaded. CON, I think, resists the disruption. A creature whose channels were less anchored would lose control of its body for a while. We would need to test it." Steve was writing as she spoke.

"Touch range, weak stun."

"This is good," Donna said.

"A last ditch for things that might escape Arthur and me. I will feel a lot better knowing I might have an extra few seconds to reach you and Steve."

"Agreed," Arthur said.

"Though you could have told me how unpleasant it would feel."

"I said I'm going to try something. I didn't know what would happen exactly," Sarah replied with a smile.

"And I'm trying to stun monsters, not pet them. Of course it feels unpleasant." Steve closed the notebook and rolled his shoulders.

"Enough for one allocation." * They woke to a grey sky and a camp busier than it had any right to be at this hour. Donna was at the tent flap with the canvas pulled back a thumb's width.

"Someone is coming." It was Enzo, the Baron's man. He stopped at a respectful distance from the tent and called in." Mela, my friends. The Baron is here. He would like a word with you outside, when you are ready." They did not hurry. Donna made them wait inside the tent for a full ten minutes before they got up and went out one by one. The Baron stood about ten metres from the tent flap with seven people behind him, and smiled when Arthur came through." Mela, you are alive, my friends. I'm so glad you are safe."

Behind him the seven people stood in a loose half-circle. None of them looked like soldiers. The Baron gave another smile as Sarah came out.

"Doctor, I came down to see you in particular. I've brought the people you will be training," he said, pointing at the civilians behind him.

"As part of our bargain." ARTHUR ASHWORTH — L16: STR 30 | DEX 12 | CON 29 | ACU 6 | RES 10 DONNA CALLAS — L16: STR 17 | DEX 35 | CON 20 | ACU 7 | RES 8 STEVE PARR — L16: STR 7 | DEX 7 | CON 14 | ACU 37 | RES 22 SARAH VASSILOU L15: STR 7 / DEX 8 / CON 22 / ACU 19 / RES 25