Weatherman by Lois McMaster Bujold

Author:Lois McMaster Bujold [Bujold, Lois McMaster]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Published: 2011-03-27T06:00:00+00:00

* * *

Miles called the base surgeon on the scat-cat’s comlink, urgently requesting his presence with forensic kit, body bag, and medical transport. Miles and his crew then blocked the upper end of the drain with a plastic signboard forcibly borrowed from the empty practice field beyond. Now so thoroughly wet and cold that it made no difference, Miles crawled back into the culvert to attach a rope to the anonymous booted ankles. When he emerged, the surgeon and his corpsman had arrived.

The surgeon, a big, balding man, peered dubiously into the drainpipe. “What could you see in there, Ensign? What happened?”

“I can’t see anything from this end but legs, sir,” Miles reported. “He’s got himself wedged in there but good. Drain crud up above him, I’d guess. We’ll have to see what spills out with him.”

“What the hell was he doing in there?” The surgeon scratched his freckled scalp.

Miles spread his hands. “Seems a peculiar way to commit suicide. Slow and chancy, as far as drowning yourself goes.”

The surgeon raised his eyebrows in agreement. Miles and the surgeon had to lend their weight on the rope to Olney, Pattas, and the corpsman before the stiff form wedged in the culvert began to scrape free.

“He’s stuck,” observed the corpsman, grunting. The body jerked out at last with a gush of dirty water. Pattas and Olney stared from a distance; Miles glued himself to the surgeon’s shoulder. The corpse, dressed in sodden black fatigues, was waxy and blue. His collar tabs and the contents of his pockets identified him as a private from Supply. His body bore no obvious wounds, but for bruised shoulders and scraped hands.

The surgeon spoke clipped, negative preliminaries into his recorder. No broken bones, no nerve disruptor blisters. Preliminary hypothesis, death from drowning or hypothermia or both, within the last twelve hours. He flipped off his recorder and added over his shoulder, “I’ll be able to tell for sure when we get him laid out back at the infirmary.”

“Does this sort of thing happen often around here?” Miles inquired mildly.

The surgeon shot him a sour look. “I slab a few idiots every year. What d’you expect, when you put five thousand kids between the ages of eighteen and twenty together on an island and tell ’em to go play war? I admit, this one seems to have discovered a completely new method of slabbing himself. I guess you never see it all.”

“You think he did it to himself, then?” True, it would be real tricky to kill a man and then stuff him in there.

The surgeon wandered over to the culvert and squatted, staring into it. “So it would seem. Ah, would you take one more look in there, Ensign, just in case?”

“Very well, sir.” Miles hoped it was the last trip. He’d never have guessed drain cleaning would turn out to be so . . . thrilling. He slithered all the way under the road to the leaky board, checking every centimeter, but found only the dead man’s dropped hand light.

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