Pawn by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

eleven

Nicole had hoped that Allyce would be on duty at the med center. Unfortunately, Sam turned out to be the doctor on call.

And the doctor wasn’t happy with her at all.

“Tripped and hit your head, like hell,” he bit out as he carefully wrapped Nicole’s ankle. “You went back into the arena, didn’t you?”

Nicole threw a quick look at the door. But Jeff was already on his way back to the work site, and there was no reason for anyone else to be in this part of the hive right now. “You said Bungie had disappeared,” she reminded him in a low voice, squeezing the edge of the table as a jolt of pain shot through her ankle. She was not going to gasp or cry or make any other sign of distress. Not in front of him. “I thought he might have gone inside.”

“Had he?”

“Not that I ever found,” Nicole admitted. “But it’s a big place. He might have gone into hiding somewhere. It’s possible he fell asleep and didn’t hear what was happening.”

Sam grunted. “What was happening, I gather, was you getting yourself beaten to a pulp. I hope you learned your lesson.”

“What lesson is that?” Nicole countered. “That the next time I go in I should be better prepared?”

“That there’d better not be a next time,” Sam shot back. “Whatever’s going on in there is none of your business. Or mine, or anyone else’s. Got it?”

Nicole looked away from him, glowering into a corner. He was right, of course. Whatever the Masters or Shipmasters or whoever were doing with the Micawnwi and Cluufes, it wasn’t her job to get involved.

Especially since, judging from today’s performance, it wasn’t a job she was very good at. She’d do well to take a deep breath and just forget the whole thing.

Only she couldn’t.

Mispacch and her children were starving. Amrew and his fellow dominants didn’t seem to have a clue about how to get more food for them. Hunter and the Cluufes, in contrast, seemed calm and professional. They also seemed perfectly happy to let every last Micawnwi starve as long as they had plenty for themselves.

And on top of that, the Fyrantha had sent her in there. Practically ordered her to go, in fact. Nicole still had no idea why, but it had.

“What about Bungie?” she asked.

“What about him?” Sam countered. “Come on, he’s fine. His injuries weren’t life-threatening, and I patched them up properly. Wherever he is, he’ll come back when he gets hungry or bored.”

Nicole didn’t answer. Especially since he was probably right.

Sam finished his work in silence, sealing her ankle inside something he called a pressure-retention cast, cleaning and dressing her two head injuries, then treating the abrasions, bruises, and scratches on her palms and knees where she’d crawled over the rails and through the undergrowth.

She could tell he was particularly intrigued by that last set of injuries, especially the tiny cuts she’d picked up from the dead leaves. But he didn’t ask how she’d gotten them, and she wasn’t in the mood to volunteer explanations.

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