Authoritarianism -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; South America -- Fiction; Transportation -- Fiction
"How did a cow get in here?" Anna demanded. She was the girl whose
girl-ness had snagged the eyes and riled the hormones of every male in
the car.
"The gentleman is joking," I assured Anna. I glanced toward
Surgeon-General Raimazan, the man whose knees had hammered my forehead.
He was clutching his right forearm, his eyes squeezed shut by pain.
"What happened, Doctor?" I demanded, laying my hand on his shoulder.
"Fractured my arm, my ulna. Get my case under the seat. I want to look
at him." The doctor nodded toward the Bupo man, who was struggling to
sit up. I got out the doctor's bag.
"Morphine?" I asked, finding it.
"Codeine, next tray, will be plenty." I dropped three of the pills
into Dr. Raimazan's left hand. He swallowed them without water. I
used my newspaper for a splint, rolling it tight and bandaging it to
the doctor's forearm. Then I hammocked the arm in a sling made of a
triangular bandage. "OK?" I asked.
"You could make a fortune in orthopedics," Dr. Raimazan said. "Let's
get our friend out of the aisle." I stepped out and pulled the
policeman toward a sitting position. He groaned and opened his eyes.
Though he'd fallen into the fragments of the broken pitcher, he'd
suffered damage only to his dignity and his lower lip. A line of red
dashes below the lip showed where his teeth had bitten through. He
shook his head at our offers of tape and antiseptic and struggled to
his feet. Holding the key to the front compartment before him like a
dagger, he shuffled up there. He unlocked the door. Shouting something
violent, he ducked into the compartment and slammed the door behind him.
* * * * *
I lent my hands to the Surgeon-General's instructions, patching up the
cuts and sprains the passengers had gotten. In a moment Miss Barrie,
the stewardess, took the bandages out of my hands and finished the job
with fewer knots and less adhesive. The passengers sat quiet in the dim
light of the capsule, as though afraid that panic might constitute
a security-violation. The lovely Anna pouted. Though she was unhurt
herself, her precious radio was shattered. It lay under her seat,
its antenna snapped like a slender idiot's-neck, its electronic guts
spilling from its belly.
"Whatever else happens, we're rid of that puling nuisance," Don Raffe
growled, looking at the ex-radio. His mouth settled into creases,
a satisfied line between parentheses. He picked up his magazine
and leafed through it, to prove himself superior to these chance
joltings-about. The lights maliciously dropped till only the bulbs at
either end of the aisle were glowing. These died till they were yellow
coils, magnifying the dark that fogged us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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