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22: A Reward

When Dr. Scaramouch died and the jailer's pudgy sister Lily was assigned to tend the clinic, Thomas Island and the surrounding atolls cooperatively fell free of serious disease and injury.

It was as if the islanders knew better than to grow ill without a proper physician in the vicinity. Or perhaps it was that they were developing no fewer maladies than before, but they dreaded surrendering themselves to the ministrations of a woman whose surgical qualifications amounted to hacking chickens in the kitchen and feeding unidentifiable slop to the red-leggers in their cells.

It also was likely that the islanders began turning to the healers who had been operating discretely for centuries on the Out Islands—Rafers, some of them, Jesus People and the like. Such physicians had been pushed into semi-exile by the disbelieving mainland-style "civilization." And now, surely, some under-the-weather islanders were finding superstition-laced treatment preferable to guaranteed modern-day incompetence.

So it was that Lily's only patient that night was delirious and in no position to argue or plead for a change of venue. Leather thongs bound his hands and feet to the four corners of the clinic bed to keep him from scratching at his wounds and breaking open the stitches.

Big Tom, standing bedside, brushed the flecks of white powder out of his moustache, snorted back hard one more time, and pressed his bearded chin to his chest in an expression of horror and disgust. His son splayed out before him had more wounds than a Nganga man's mastabah doll in the dancing-knives ceremony. The tiny rends in the flesh had been stitched closed with fat black thread in wild, random-looking patterns that soured Big Tom's stomach.

"Gonna scar beautifully," Big Tom mumbled, hunching down to stare wide-eyed at the chaos of needlework around his son's left nipple.

Lily was nervous in the presence of the trade master, but she managed to roll her eyes upward in mock annoyance, hoping such familiarity would alleviate the tension. She lifted a corner of the white towel covering Little Tom's crotch and paused for a warning: "Big Tom, now, none of this here's my doing. And I 'spect the infection's dying back some."

Big Tom's eyebrows rose and bounced in a civil manner, inviting her to proceed. Lily lifted back the towel, and suddenly Big Tom felt detached, as if he were viewing the scene from the ceiling of the hospital room. Tracer lights criss-crossed his vision. For scarcely ten seconds he watched as Lily gingerly cleaned the row of black puncture wounds festering on his son's penis.

Big Tom staggered for the door and pushed it open. Lyle and Nob were arguing in the hallway, and the conversation stopped, each of them mid-sentence. Both of them toyed with smouldering stubs of the machine-rolled cigarettes Big Tom had given them minutes before.

The merchant unzipped his fly, reached in, and withdrew a leather wallet. He whisked out a wad of centime notes without counting them, stuffed the wallet away and zipped up again.

"Here," Big Tom said, only glancing at the faces of the two slave-boaters. Big Tom pulled the wad of bills into two, as if tearing apart a lettuce head. "Here," he said again, handing each of them an undetermined reward, "an' thanks for my son. Hmmph."

Big Tom lingered to gaze out the windows onto the black lawn outside, an unknowable powder-inspired meditation, and then he shuffled toward the exit.

"Thought you said he woont have no cash, huh?" Nob prodded his brother.

Lyle was not remorseful. "You work on Big Tom's level," he whispered, lest the merchant was still in earshot, "a few thousand centimes don't matter a whit. But think of it—this here's the same we'd make for bringing in fifteen or more red-leggers. Just for trapping one body." Lyle eyed his brother's fistful of centimes and finished shuffling through his own share of bills. He stuffed his take into his front pocket.

"Hey!" Nob shouted.

"Shhhh."

"Hey!" Nob slapped Lyle on the shoulder. "How much was that? We splittin' this, right? Even?"

"Shhhh."

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