The Demon and the City - By Liz Williams Page 0,21

forced him to give her a twist of flat, white pills. He told her that they would cure fever and aches. Robin studied the ingredients, which seemed to represent a diverse range, paid him and left. She swallowed two of the pills at the downtown stop. There was no discernible difference; she still felt awful. She would see the resident doctor when she got to work, money or no money. They might be talked into giving her an installment plan, if her luck held. This did not, however, seem to be her lucky week.

Mercifully, the downtown was not excessively crowded. Robin fought her way to a seat and stayed there, leaning her hurting head against the dirty pane. The city rattled by: Phikhat, Battery Road, Semmerang Anka and at last the Ghenret platform for Paugeng. Robin got off and stood on the platform, trying to clear her head. It was a pearly, damp day, a sudden return to spring after the summer was almost over. A light mist from the sea wreathed the harbor, and the heights of Paugeng were lost as though in cloud. Looking up made Robin dizzy. She walked carefully to the Paugeng steps and as she climbed up into the perfect atrium, she thought she heard something laughing, faint and far away.

She crept in through the Paugeng atrium, hoping no one would see her. For once, the place seemed quiet, and she went straight down to Y lab. George Su would know she was late, because of the log-in readings, but hopefully he had enough to do without worrying about her timekeeping. Robin was flooded with guilt. It was such an important experiment, even though this was a routine phase. For the previous few weeks, Jhai had put her top crew on it, only handing off the testing to Robin for follow-up once they'd finished the main runs.

Nonetheless, the experiment was her responsibility and now here she was, deserting Mhara again and again. She went through the checklist on the main screen, even though it blurred before her vision. She felt as though someone was watching her, sensing an implacable gaze on her back, but when she turned to look at the experiment he was lying serenely still in the bunk. There was no sign that he had moved.

Robin sat down beside Mhara and checked the readouts on the monitor. The experiment was as close to normal as he'd been for some time. He was lying on his side, the pointed face half-buried in the pillow. His skin seemed even paler. The illness was making Robin maudlin, in need of comfort. She stroked the soft, indigo hair behind Mhara's neck. It just showed how little Jhai Tserai really understood people, for Robin's neutrality had been hopelessly compromised on the day that she had first had to administer a half-developed drug to a bound and helpless otherworldly captive. She tried to stifle her feelings: this was her job, the one she'd worked so hard to get, and that was that. She didn't have the luxury of moral choices, she told herself. So she had compromised, made the experiment's limited life as comfortable as possible, and did as she was told.

Mhara's eyes looked dark in sleep, but at her touch he stirred and the eyes flooded with light, like the sun over the sea. Robin felt the cough begin in her throat, and hastily turned her head away to avoid choking over him.

"Robin? You're ill?"

"It's the flu, or something," Robin told him hoarsely. "It came on a little while ago."

"And you still had to come to work?"

"Unfortunately, yes."

"Are we going to do more tests today?"

Robin coughed again. "No . . .just your shots." She fumbled in the drawer and got the sterile packets, then went through the range of jabs. He submitted placidly. She seemed all thumbs today; her fingers would not obey her.

"You might as well try and sleep," she told him. It was what Robin herself wanted to do. She tried to go through the test checklist but nothing seemed to make much sense. She could make coffee though, and drank cup after cup, stumbling back and forth from the machine. The heat was comforting, and she could wash down the hourly painkillers, which still did not seem very effective. She could not face lunch when at last her breaktime dragged around. The coughing fits were becoming more frequent, and by midafternoon, she took refuge in the lavatory and gave way to a bout of choking