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THE HEALER
Sofia
It’s hard to believe Earth wasn’t always like this. And yet, unless the few writings that survived the Great Catastrophes are full of lies, this is the worst possible time to live on this planet.
As a human, that is. Fish are having a fantastic time.
It is said that once upon a time, thousands of years ago, the tides could be predicted with precision, even several years in advance. That even in the most extreme conditions, the water would not rise higher than fifty feet. That dwellings—villages, towns,cities—were constructed in places that would never be submerged, and dry soil could be taken for granted. A constant presence. Solid ground.
Now everything is rootless, slippery, ever-shifting.
My mother died when I was still too young to make memories of her, but she enjoyed history. She left behind several holos tucked neatly in a metal box with the House Kellen crest embossed on it. In the vids, I saw more kinds of plants than my imagination could ever conjure, many of which died because they couldn’t tolerate the salt water. Not just mangroves and seagrasses, glassworts and salt marshes. Not forests made exclusively of kelp, or stone walls coated in slick, slimy algae and latching barnacles.
Centuries ago, the trees would stand high and proudly reach for the sky. They didn’t need to twist and gnarl toward the ground to avoid being swept away by the next current. And the rhythm of their lives—the rhythm ofeveryone’slives—used to be measured not by the tides but by the light of the sun.
I know that technically hasn’t changed. I’m well-read, and my father was a man of science: Iknowthe sun appears in the east every morning and sets in the west every evening, that a day is made of twenty-four hours, and that calendars and watches and artificial illumination work hard to keep its time. Still, I’ve always found the idea of adaymeaningless. After all, light travels poorly through water, and it rarely reaches us in any significant way when we’re submerged. It’s the tides that always dictate my sleep, my work, my moods. The Highs mean being stuck inside with recycled, over-filtered, dry air in too-close quarters. The Lows are precious adventures, the scent of salt air, the unique combination of cool breeze and sun against my skin.
The Lows are a good time, but they never last long.
In the past century, engineers have tried to use ancient technologies to prolong them: dams. Submarines. All kinds of watercrafts. But after the melting of the glaciers and the increased cyclones, after the pillaging of the seabed and the shift of the tectonic plates that joined the earth, the ocean is not what it once was. The currents are too strong and unpredictable, and the only hope of survival when they rise is to retreat within the stronghold and pray that the All-father won’t let the water-tight sealing system fail.
According to the histories, humanity once tried to understand and change the world by which it was surrounded. It looked with curiosity at its place in the universe, pondered ways to better itself as a species, sought to travel and explore new worlds.
Now it would be great if we just survived till the next Low.
“Everything okay, Healer Kuznetsov?” Ulf asks, pulling me out of my reverie. “You’ve been staring out the windows and preparing those bandages for a while.”
“Yes. Yes, sorry.” With an apologetic smile, I make myself focus on his weathered face. “I’ll have you patched up in no time.”
Ulf is a soldier who has been in the engineering corps for a long time, but I’ve never treated him before. I’ve been seeing him more often since General Agard announced the start ofefforts to ensure that the stronghold be safe at all times and able to humanely accommodate people at all social strata. Ulf, like most engineers, is enjoying this new mandate and finally getting credit for his hard work. I don’t blame him one bit—in fact, I know that if Dad were still here, they’d celebrate together. Probably get injured together, too.
Hence my presence here.
A few feet away from us, his fellow soldiers are resealing one of the portholes after finding early signs of stress fractures. Not quite a code red, but a situation urgent enough to warrant the dispatch of an early dedicated team here to the north wing.
I wasn’t supposed to come in today. But the stronghold spans miles, so it can take a while to reach the infirmary, and another one of General Agard’s rules is that a healer should always be on site. Since most of my colleagues are currently attending the expansion efforts by the south tower, I volunteered to go into the field.
AndthenI remembered what today is.
I better not get caught, or I’m screwed.
“Something on your mind, kid?” Ulf asks.
I don’t bother telling him that at twenty-two, I haven’t been a kid for a while. “No, no. I always get distracted when Highs go on so long.”
He snorts. “Don’t I know it. And it’s getting worse. My mother said that when she was born, the water wouldn’t even reach the peak of the east tower. These days, it submerges thesouthtower by several feet. Then again, my mother also kept insisting that unsubmerged dry land still existed. Othercontinents, she called them. Deep in the south. Lots of odd notions in that woman’s head.”
I hold back an eye-roll. I had this very argument with Lennart last week, and his reaction was as condescending as Ulf’s.
“It’s notthatodd. Some even think that there might be other strongholds like ours, with even more people than in this one.” I gently remove the army-blue Kevlar cuisse from his thigh, setting it to the side and uncovering the thin engineering suit underneath. “Isn’t it nice, the idea that we might not be alone?” That if we’re not happy here, in this stronghold, there might be another place where we could be?
“Hard to believe, with Highs like these… The last one rose so suddenly, it destroyed lots of the expansion progress we made during the previous Low.” He sighs, then points at the gash in his leg, just under where his cuisse ended. “And now I’m injured, wasting precious time.”
“You’re doing great,” I reassure him. “I can coat your wound in collagen, but first I’ll need to use acid disinfectant on it. We are so low on anesthetic, we’ve been ordered to ration it for major surgery until we can collect more raw materials during the next Low. The other option is less painful, and it involves tape suturing your cut, but it’ll take much longer to heal?—”
“I’ll take the collagen. I can handle it.”
I bow my head to hide a smile. I’ve been taking care of the engineering soldiers for nearly ten years, first as an apprentice, then as a healer. Not one has ever selected the second option. “Okay, then. I’m going to restrain you, just to make sure that you don’t accidentally move during treatment. That’ll minimize the scar tissue, and?—”
