By next morning, he was almost too weak to stand. He had to lean on Thok's shoulder when he went out to the pit, and thereafter he just lay on the smelly heap of bedding and waited to die.
Onkenvier would not let him die. She stripped off his clothes, wrapped him in his blanket, piled ancient furs over him to keep him warm. From time to time she bathed his face and rubbed foul-smelling grease on his chest. She forced him to sip a thin soup while Thok held his head up. When he needed to relieve himself, Thok held a gourd for him.
He slid into delirium. "Fools!" he told them. "You are fools. Let him die and you can bury him and keep all the money. It isn't much to him, but it's more than you have ever seen in your lives." They did not understand, so they continued to nurse him.
In his lucid moments he wept at his incredible weakness. He could hardly find the strength to cough, although the pain in his chest was unbearable and every breath rattled like a cart on cobbles. He did not want to die lost among strangers in a strange world. He would never tell Euphemia how sorry he was. She would never know what had happened to him; he would never know what had happened to her. To have lived through the Great War, to have adventured to another planet, then to die like a rat in a sewer . . . it wasn't right. It wasn't fair.
Night came again. He faded in and out of consciousness, but always when he stirred, Onkenvier was there. Did she never sleep? Breathing was an impossible effort. He was drowning in mucus. Eventually she seemed to realize that, for she roused the boy so that together they could pull Julian up to a sitting position. They propped him there somehow, and then he could breathe. Just. He wandered away into delirium that was worse than the pain. He was a kipper in a smokehouse, being eaten alive by earwigs.
Morning at last . . . He was aware of sunlight streaming in at him when the door opened, which it did a few times. Onkenvier was still fussing around him with her broth, but he was too weak to swallow it. He was dying—dying nastily, messily, irrelevantly, as everything must die. King or worm, it always came to this. He had been granted more time than those poor sods at Ypres or the Somme. A lot of them had died more disgustingly even than this, but at least they'd had the consolation that they were dying for King and Country. The universe would roll on without Julian Smedley and never notice the loss. He would leave no fame, no children, no great works: Laugh all you want at this fevered, suffering relic, but your turn will come. . . .
"Tyika Kaptaan!"
Julian prized his sticky eyelids open. There was nothing there but a blur. How stupid of Dommi to wander into such a nightmare! How stupid of himself not to hallucinate someone more interesting.
"Tyika!" Someone was shouting. Someone was trying to rub the skin off his hand. "Hold on, Tyika! He is coming, Tyika! The Liberator is coming. We have sent word for him to hurry."
Julian tried to explain that it was too late, but he couldn't make the words. It didn't matter. He didn't care. He wanted it to end. Come to think of it, a chap couldn't possibly accept a favor from a man he'd accused to his face of being a murderer, so it was just as well that prophet chappie wasn't there, couldn't help, wouldn't arrive in time. . . . He had probably died already anyway. See you when I get there, old man.
When the release finally came, it was almost sexual in its intensity. The end of all the harsh, labored breathing, the pain and striving, the pounding fever, the desperate effort—the sudden peace, the wonderful, wonderful peace . . . the unbearable joy.
There was a cool hand on his forehead. There were a devil of a lot of people making a damnable lot of noise outside somewhere, and the door was open again, although the sun wasn't shining on his face anymore. He opened his eyes.
He licked his lips. He swallowed. He forced himself to meet that familiar smile. "Thank you."
The blue eyes sparkled strangely. "My pleasure entirely," Exeter said. "You are a thousand times welcome."