Page 50 of Throwing Fire

Sylvie’s got the tip of her tongue clamped between her teeth as she works. She glances up at my question, licks her lips nervously. Gig looks like he’s about to swoon. I have to swallow a chuckle.

“I’m just re-attaching the muscle,” she says.

“No newskin?” I ask. Whenever I’ve had a deep wound before, the docs have just poured newskin into it.

“I’ll close up the skin layers with newskin, but you’ll have normal use a lot faster if I re-attach the muscle.”

“Okay.” Sounds more complex than the treatment I’ve had before, but she seems to know what she’s doing, so I let her get on with it.

She finishes with a newskin spray, covers me with the drape again and turns off the sterile shield. “You need to let that set for about five minutes. Then you should be able to walk.”

“Yeah?” That is better than previous treatment I’ve had. When I got my arm nearly shot off on Phogath, I was out of action for three days. And I didn’t even have any pulverized bones. Something to this having-money thing.

“Would you like something to eat now, Sylvie?” Gig asks. He’s practically vibrating against the edge of the medibed.

Sylvie grins, an open, uninhibited grin that strips a decade off her face. She looks about ten standard. “I’d love to. Whatever you have. Oh, if that’s okay with you, Mister Snow.”

I wave them both away. “Fine by me.”

Gig leads Sylvie out of the control center, towards the kitchen. I hear him saying something to her; her responsive giggle.

“Cute couple,” I tell the rabbits.

Chalk watches me for a moment before edging up the bed on her tip-toes, nudging Mix in front of her. Mix doesn’t need much nudging. He’s already wobbling his way around this exciting new terrain, miniature black nose wiggling away at Mach-20. I drum my fingertips against the drape to beckon them. It’s the signal Kez uses. The rabbits don’t exactly come when called; they ain’t dogs.But that signal lets them know that the alpha welcomes their approach.

Chalk presents her head for petting, briefly, then corrals Mix under my hand. The babies are impossibly cute, with their outsized heads, fuzzy bodies and unsteady little legs. Three of Chalk’s litter have red eyes, which, I have to admit, I don’t care for. Mix has little black beads for eyes, which blink at me sleepily as I pet him. Only one of Chalk’s litter inherited her blue eyes: Mingle, a lilac point like her mother, who Kez calls my girlfriend because she likes to find her way into my clothes. I know it’s just a scent-thing. Babies that smell like the alpha have the best chance of survival. But even I have to admit that putting on my clothes and finding a baby bunny snuggled up in my pocket is endearing.

Chalk finally worms her way into the curve of my left arm and flops, a maneuver in bunny-speak that means she’s extremely relaxed. She ends up stretched out along my side from just under my pec to my shin. Damn rabbit’s almost as long as I am. Mix wobbles across my chest to land close to his mother. Whether it’s the anesthetic in the newskin, or the warmth of the rabbits, or looking into Mix’s extremely sleepy black-button eyes, I find myself getting drowsy. Cupping the baby bunny in one hand, with Chalk licking the backs of my fingers, I close my eyes and let myself drift.

CHAPTER 20

Bunker landing on my feet startles me awake. Chalk scrambles into a defensive ball, grabbing Mix by the nape of his neck with her mouth and tucking him under her dewlap.

“Fuck, Bunker,” I growl. Guess it was just a temporary retreat.

I reach down and scratch Chalk behind the ears so she knows it’s okay. Yawn. Stretch and feel the smooth play of muscle down my right side. That feels much too fucking good for having been an open hole less than ten minutes ago.

“I’m gettin’ up, Chalk,” I tell her. Not because I think the rabbit understands what I’m saying, although they do know some words.No, in particular, they understand perfectly; not that they pay one fucking bit of attention. They go off tone-of-voice more. Mine’s soothing, and Chalk begins to relax. Enough that I can slide out from under her and Mix. I pull aside the drape, put one leg and then the other over the side of the cradle and climb out.

Standing, I can inspect my hip. I’ve got a pale swath of newskin about ten centimeters long from my waist to upper thigh. I walk myfingertips down over it. Testing the seal and the muscle underneath. Both feel reassuringly solid.

“C’mon, bunnies, let’s get dressed.” I scoop up Chalk and Mix, put them on the floor. I don’t want Mix trying to jump down from the float-bed. And he would if I left him to it. I’ve had to install a ramp at the end of Kez’s bed so the babies didn’t break their legs trying to leap to the floor. Something I’ve never understood about baby animals: how is it they get themselves up into places they can’t get down from?

Pondering that universal mystery, I walk out of the control center and down the hallway to Kez’s bedroom. It’s not a long walk, but it feels like it. My hip might be solid, but it’s very fucking stiff. My head swims; I’m unsteady. I trail my hand along the wall for balance. The rabbits notice, and keep a little distance, when they normally crowd my feet.

There are more bunnies in Kez’s room. Tigger, the king bunny and genetic progenitor of Bunker’s jumping prowess, is in his usual position: sprawled across Kez’s bed. One of Chalk’s red-eyed babies is with him, consciously imitating its grandfather’s posture. Watching the babies learn from their elders how to be rabbits has been an education in itself.

I make my way to the cubby I’ve installed on one wall. Rifle carefully through the clothes until I find a suspicious lump and extricate Mingle from between two folded shirts. I hold her up at eye-level. “Hey, baby.”

She kicks her fluffy back feet at me. The rabbits don’t like being held off the ground. Except Ronnie, who wouldn’t kick if he was suspended at ten thousand meters, so long as he was tucked under a human’s arm. I put Mingle back in the cubby while I draw on skivvies, fatigues, a tank, and a vest with a breast-pocket. Leave my feet bare because the center of Kez’s house is a greenhouse, and I like walking on the grass barefoot. Once I’m dressed, I pop the baby bunny in my vest pocket, where she sits like a giant sausage, one ear sticking out. She’s a helicopter-bunny at the moment. Only one earhas dropped. Kez says the other ear will drop in a week or two. In the meanwhile, I could twirl her ears and I swear she’d do a vertical lift-off.

I put my hand on the top of the cubby, on a black strip of genSkin with ten pockets sewn into it. The sewing’s uneven. I made it long before I met Kez and her fabricator. But it serves its purpose. It houses my knives when I’m not carrying them. I tap my fingers against the tough skin, considering. I’m behind our walls. Should be safe. But I always feel better when I have a knife.

I realize I’ve made the wrong noise when the bunny in my pocket noses up so she can look at me, and there are two very firm nudges against my calves. “Sorry,” I tell the rabbits.

I compromise, and only take one knife, so I can support the bunny in my pocket with my free hand.

Gig and Sylvieare still giggling in the kitchen when I cross the greenhouse, enjoying the grass between my toes. I feel like I’ve worn boots my whole life. Walked on permacrete and asphalt and stone and cracked, dusty dirt. I’m sure there have been places where I could have walked on grass, but I don’t remember them. Being with Kez is the first time I’ve had the freedom to go barefoot.

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