Woodsman by Thomas A. Easton

Author:Thomas A. Easton [Easton, Thomas A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: science fiction
ISBN: 9780441908714
Google: hTtcrFIoVUYC
Amazon: 0441908713
Goodreads: 1376163
Publisher: Ace
Published: 1992-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

“This,” gasped Sheila. “This is a helluva way to get to talk to my husband.”

“Hush,” said Sam. “We’ve both been busy.” He positioned a light blue leech on the side of her throat. Then, while he waited for it to secrete its dose of painkiller, he used a scrap of clean bandage to wipe blood from the snakeskin along her jaw. When the pale green of her skin—it would have been white with her pain if she had been an unmodified normal human—began to darken toward its normal hue, he stroked her cap of orange and brown feathers and began to work on the damage.

“So have those snipers.” Her wound was low on her ribcage, a tear in the skin, a broken rib, blood. By the time the bullet had penetrated the corridor wall to find her, its force had been more than half spent.

The children she had been leading toward the elevators to the basement squatted quietly by the wall, low, below the level of the windowsills in the apartments to either side, so that bullets would be less likely to find them as well. The youngest children, still too young to withdraw their roots from the soil and walk, even too young for their stalks to begin the changes that would give them legs, had been transplanted into earthenware pots that now rested on children’s wagons shaped like miniature Tortoises, Armadons, and Beetles. The older children held the wagons’ handles; until their guide had been shot, they had been pulling them down the hall.

Except for Sam’s mutterings as he worked, the few words he exchanged with his wife, the noises that bullets made as they punched holes in walls and plaster fragments rained upon the floor, the hallway was silent. The younger bots in their pots could not yet speak. The older ones did not.

Sam finally looked up from his wife’s wound. “Jackie,” he said. “Get these kids downstairs. And stay down there yourself.”

“Uh-uh,” said the young bot. “I’ll be back.” But she obeyed his first command, gesturing to the others, starting the parade once more moving down the hall.

When the last of the wagons had passed, Sheila stared yearningly after them. “They’re making shields,” she said as her husband applied a last clip and began to wrap her chest in yards of bandage. “For the windows, you know? They’re using doors. Some are steel. Most are just wood, and there won’t be enough, but that’s my next job. As soon as all the kids are downstairs. Gotta get the adults down there too. All except the marines.”

“The marines?”

“They have a few…” She gasped as he tightened the wrapping that would help her rib heal. “A few who have studied war. No experience, but they’ve read a lot. They’ve got weapons. And plans.”

“Good,” said Sam. “I hope it works, but…”

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