The motion did not even make the pain worse, but the pain was already fiercer than the tribune could have imagined at any time before this awakening.
There was something beneath him, a bench or a floor, but he could not tell where it joined the walls that must surround him. He tried to roll to his feet, screaming and scratching at himself in a fury of frustrated disbelief. He had been somewhere just before he became here, and he could remember nothing of that other place except that he wished he were back in it.
Heat spread over the surface of Vibulenus’ body and, like a blanket on a fire, suffocated the pain. His skin rippled as tremors pulsed through the muscles beneath, but that feeling — though disconcerting — was in no way kin to the agony of moments before.
The tribune did not even realize that he had flopped back on the floor — there was no furniture in what must be the room — until he started to get up again. The tension that his muscles had released by trembling left them feeling normal, though extremely weak. The sensation of heat vanished as suddenly as it had come on, and the pain did not return. He stood cautiously.
Instead of a door opening, the wall in front of Vibulenus dissolved completely. The room had shape and dimensions; it was a paraboloid little more than the man’s height and twice that on the longer horizontal axis. One end was now open, like an egg topped by a knife, and a man — well, a figure in a blue skinsuit who was not the Commander or the Medic — lounged there with an expression of mild interest.
“C’mon, walk,” the figure said, making walking motions with two of the three fingers of either hand. “Do they work or don’t they? Let’s see ’em move, cargo.”
“Where am I?” Vibulenus demanded, walking toward his questioner. He had heard the question clearly — the words were in the flawless Latin spoken by everyone on the vessel except the legionaries themselves. Many of the line soldiers were of Oscan or Marsian origin and had learned Latin as a second language. The tribune’s nurse had been a Marsian, and he still framed some thoughts in that ancient Italian language himself. . . .
He was alive, and he was the man he had always been. All he needed to know now was where, in the name of all the gods, Gaius Vibulenus was standing at the moment.
“Where am I?” the tribune repeated at barracks-square volume, striding out of the egg-shaped room in which he had awakened. The room beyond was the yellow-orange of clean flames, a circular hall into whose sidewall bulged eleven man-high convexities — the twelfth was the opening through which Vibulenus stepped.
“Hey, hey there!” yelped the other, skipping back from the tribune. “That’s no way to treat the fella who’s saved your life, now. Look at yourself and think what ye were before I put the new tissue on ye.”
Vibulenus had not been angry, only disoriented — and perhaps as dangerous as the figure in blue seemed to think he was. That thought gave him pause. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, grimacing away the brief mixture of emotions he felt when he saw the whole limb was stained a red which only time would fade.
“Look,” the Roman said, feeling for the first time that he dominated a guild employee because of his greater size, “I’m not angry with you, my man, but I need to know where I am. Are you the new Medic?”
A tunic with a narrow red border flopped from the ceiling, making both parties jump and then relaxing the atmosphere.
“Naw, I’m the Pilot,” said the blue figure, bending to pick up the tunic and toss it to Vibulenus. It was not an act of friendship, exactly, but at least a form of accommodation. “He gets the walk-ins, I drive the meatwagon and fetch home the ones like you.”
He looked at the tribune and sucked in his lips to express wonderment. “Don’t believe I ever brought in anybody like you exactly, though. Just look at yourself.”