On Dolvia, Lt. Mike Shaw demands Dr. Greensboroâs doctoring skills at the hospital, forcing the closure of her bush clinic. She witnesses forced labor, forced migration, and the threat of an epidemic from bad water. She sees how tribal womenâoften wearing burkasâfind solutions for saving the children in a conflict zone, and she commits to the their cause for Home Rule.
Brianna Miller is an isolated girlâa mixed-blood orphanâamong the Dolviet tribes. With the lessons from Dr. Greensboro, the abuse from soldiers, the sisterhood among victims, Brianna prepares for a future she will choose for herself. But first she must travel offworld.
On Dolvia, Lt. Mike Shaw demands Dr. Greensboroâs doctoring skills at the hospital, forcing the closure of her bush clinic. She witnesses forced labor, forced migration, and the threat of an epidemic from bad water. She sees how tribal womenâoften wearing burkasâfind solutions for saving the children in a conflict zone, and she commits to the their cause for Home Rule.
Brianna Miller is an isolated girlâa mixed-blood orphanâamong the Dolviet tribes. With the lessons from Dr. Greensboro, the abuse from soldiers, the sisterhood among victims, Brianna prepares for a future she will choose for herself. But first she must travel offworld.
âTHE WHITE SKY OVER MEKUCOO LAND IS SO DIFFERENT FROM the golden savannah,â Hakulupe Le said as we walked together in the humid afternoon.
This local medical work slowed my research. I was looking for an exit, any excuse to call the duty complete. I had a lorry full of supplies waiting for the drive to my bush clinic.
We skirted the empty refugee camp. The stench was nauseating; not of death since morgue crews had passed this way, but of human and animal offal. Black insects buzzed near tent poles in the haze of heat. I saw discarded gallon containers of molded plastic, mis- matched hemp-soled shoes, and damaged guns.
We saw him sitting on a stump by the road. Perhaps age fourteen, he wore ripped dungarees and a ragged tunic. Deep-set eyes watched us while he shooed insects by swishing a makeshift grass fan over a long gash on his leg. A sheen of sweat made his dark skin glisten. A karkar waited nearby; boy soldiers were never without their automatics even when ammunition was scarce.
Hakulupe Le approached him speaking in his dialect. She was age twenty, hair coiled at her neck and a linen skirt hanging to her ankles. I caught a few words of their exchange. She turned back, fixing me with forest-green eyes.
âDr. Greensboro, can you look at his wound?â
âHe should come with us to the hospital.â
âHe must wait.â
âHe cannot stay here. Heâll be dead in two days.â
Hakulupe Le came back to me. âHis name is Karlyhi. His mother sat him here to wait until she returns. So he waits.â
I took a disposable camera from my backpack and clicked Karly- hiâs photo before he could object. e square print rolled from the cameraâs front. âLeave this photo with a note,â I instructed. âIf his mother returns, which she wonât, she can find him at the hospital.â
Karlyhi frowned at the photo that Hakulupe Le showed him.
âThis is Edna Edwina Greensboro, a Softcheeks doctor,â she began. Then I lost her meaning in the stream of strange words.
While Hakulupe Le talked, Karlyhi considered me. His steady gaze caused me to take stock. My jacket and skirt were caked with road dirt. My canvas shoes had lost their shape from the needed walking. Wisps of sandy hair had come loose from the binding cord.
Karlyhi calmly shook his head in the negative. Against my will, I admired his resolve. I took an energy bar from my pack, broke it in half, and bit into one section. I extended the other part to Karlyhi. His expression changed, but he saw my smile and looked away.
I gave the food to Hakulupe Le. Karlyhi accepted it from her hand.
He glanced over my backpack while he chewed and looked at the photo. He would make his own decision. He stood to place a hand-made crutch under his arm, and slung the karkar over his shoulder. He held out his other hand in a curt gesture, indicating that I should give him the backpack.
âYou must,â Hakulupe Le said, âso he saves face.â
Hakulupe Le scribbled a note and fastened it with the photo onto the stump that had been his station. We walked past him for several yards. With determined strength, Karlyhi hobbled behind us. I was glad my backpack held only the dayâs necessities and was not a burden for him.
We heard sounds ahead, shouted commands and vehicle engines. We rounded a corner and came upon the remains site, older than the deserted camp. All Siibabean males, the grouping of bodies spoke to a massacre. It appeared that they had been made to stand on the rim of a pit and were eliminated by a barrage of automatic gun re.
Investigators from the Westend Consortium of Planets had fashioned a matrix of sorts, partitioning the area with thin wood slats and string. They wore surgical masks, and their arms and hands were covered against the stench and filth. A lieutenant spoke into the low-fic of his headgear and directed a backhoe operator where to dig among the decomposing bodies.
Acrylic remains cases were stacked nearby. Only three had been filled by the backhoeâs robotic arm. The driver of the anchored machine, seated in an enclosed cockpit, measured a certain length of grave material, slicing through the jumbled mass like a cookie cutter to lift and gently drop that section into the amber-colored container.
Karlyhi spat into the dirt. He hobbled back to the road where he stoically waited.
Dr. Leslie Abercrombie approached, removing his surgical mask and gloves. We had served a race-diversity residency in the same hospital at Two Forks on Cicero. He had pushed his idea of combining grant funds with mine to be er serve the tribes, and had disembarked in a cycle ahead of me. I recently had spent the rainy season serving on his hospital sta and, when the billabongs finally receded, I opened my own clinic in the foothills of Mekucoo land.
âYouâre late,â he told me. âYou have thrown us completely o schedule.â
âNobody cares about your schedule, Leslie.â
âYou can walk back to the hospital,â he said. âYou wouldnât last twenty minutes on the open savannah.â
I stuck out my chin; an unattractive gesture, or so I had been told. âI could make it.â
âYouâre too valuable forââ
âYeah, yeah,â I said. âWhat did you find?â
Dr. Abercrombie paused, leaning slightly forward with one hand
on his hip. âAn impossible situation,â he said in quieter tones. âWhen news spreads about this massacre site, the Siibabean will mount a new offensive. Your bush clinic is not safe.â
âI decide when my work is in jeopardy.â
âYou cannot justââ
âWill you stop? You manage the hospital. I run the clinic.â âLook, Ednaââ
âIâm Dr. Greensboro. In front of all these, Iâm a doctor. Equal to you.â
âYou just called me Leslie!â
I stared into his face, a gesture Hakulupe Le had called evil-eye. Dr. Abercrombie looked around at the questioning faces of tribesmen and technicians. Hakulupe Le stared at the ground. âWell, then. I must remain here to make a record,â he said, âand notify the local authorities. You can grab a ride on the airbus.â
The airbus was a new addition to the savannahâs travel options, imported with Consortium funds. A cushion of forced air levitated the wide-bodied chamber eighteen inches o the ground. Only four of the original seven were still in service. Their engines ran hot while the swirling dust clogged their moving parts. three air- buses were abandoned metal frames on the red desert providing shade for snakes and pincher scarabs.
In the cooler and grassy Mekucoo region leading to a low mesa where the hospital was established, the sectioned buses were still in service. The rear truckbed was crowded with starving stragglers. I climbed into the air-conditioned patient section behind the cab, signaling for Hakulupe Le and Karlyhi to join me. e Consortium driver stared hard at the boyâs karkar while I pulled the heavy door closed.
The airbus powered up. Soon we were gliding over uneven terrain. Seated across from me, Hakulupe Le and Karlyhi were silent. Hakulupe Le was from the olive-skinned Arrivi tribe, serving as nurse and interpreter at my clinic. She was ostracized by the Arrivi, a shame they called goulep, but I had not yet learned her true history. Her special gift was to easily pick up languages. She was indispensable to me, and a good friend.
I had heard old stories told in chants across family camp resting outside my clinic entrance. Each telling was different. Certain heroes grew in stature whenever tribespeople steeled themselves for some impending fight. One short tale was about the ghost Spindel who wandered the savannah as a giant ketiwhelp. I had heard chants about the Mekucoo warrior Cyrus who rivaled legends of Oria for bravery. I had asked which were real and how much was embellished, but Hakulupe Le only shrugged. âWho can see with the eyes of Dolvia?â she said.
âTell Karlyhi Iâll look at his leg now,â I instructed.
While Hakulupe Le explained in his dialect, I prepared an anesthetic wash and searched through the drawers for an abrasion maser. Karlyhi braced himself and stared as I placed his foot in a hospital bucket and poured the wash along his wound. e liquid bubbled with a white froth and ran into the bucket, turning yellow and gelatinous.
I held up the elegant maser, shaped like a stun gun with a row of indicator lights near the concave head. âThis will make him slightly nauseated. A current runs through his body.â
Hakulupe Le spoke a few words in his dialect. Karlyhiâs eyes skirted left and then right, but he made no protest. I passed the maser over his wound and watched the flesh pull together to form a healing pink shape.
âTell him to favor it for a few days. I can look at the mark again tomorrow.â
She nodded and they both stared. Modern medicine held the allure of magic for them.
Situated on a low blu overlooking the parched savannah, the hospital was a three-story red brick building with wide hallways that allowed a breeze. The airbus stopped in front. An orderly approached the crowded flatbed to direct new arrivals.
âKeep Karlyhi apart from the others,â I directed Hakulupe Le as we stepped down.
The orderly stuck his head into the patient chamber, showing a bloated and ruddy face. âWhat were they doing in there?â
âHeâs a patient,â I said. â atâs a patient chamber.â
âWhich pieces did you use? Iâll need to sterilize everything.â âSo I should leave him bleeding on the side of the road to save you some work?â
âYou cannot justââ
âOh, get off it, Reggie,â I said.
We guided Karlyhi around the buildingâs side to the employee entrance. In the supply room, Hakulupe Le instructed Karlyhi to bathe, find something to eat, and get a good nightâs sleep. She explained that we would travel to my clinic at dawn, and added that he was responsible to me now. Karlyhi said nothing, but the next morning he waited by the lorry loaded with my supplies. He still carried the black karkar.
For the occasional drive from my clinic, I preferred the diesel-powered lorry. My thinking was that when the engine broke down, tribesmen could figure a quick fix. Most Dolviet machines were unreliable Consortium issue or scrounged Chinese-made army surplus quality, vehicles included. Only the hospital wards and Dr. Abercrombieâs branch offices had computers and high-tech surgical equipment. At the bush clinic, I maintained a low-tech presence in all concerns except research.
We left early to make the most of the cool morning hours. I drove the lorry with Hakulupe Le at my side and Karlyhi seated on the canvas top. e gears were grinding as we drove up the steep grade. A winding road led around the many knolls of Mekucoo land. Long grass flopped left and then right in the unruly wind, a metaphor for the struggle to maintain my clinic. I rolled my shoulders against the tension.
Once we were on higher ground, a steady twenty-mile-an-hour wind troubled the canvas cover of the truck bed. We stopped and Karlyhi crowded into the cab with us. Trees bowed their heads and snapped back, and their branches swung as if cheering at a sporting event. When wind gusts pushed us onto the shoulder of the road, I glanced out the side window at the danger.
Hakulupe Le was sanguine. âWe have many windy days before the rainy season begins in earnest. A blessing of Dolvia.â
By the time we were stopped by Consortium soldiers, I was ready to stretch my back. The officer who approached our vehicle stood in a wide stance against the blowing wind, a chinstrap securing his hat. He looked over my travel papers, holding them tight in a meaty hand.
âEdna Edwina? Did your parents stutter?â
I was accustomed to jibes about my name, but this lieutenant irritated me more than most. A burly Hardhand from Cicero, the closest inhabited planet, he had dark eyes and dark hair. I was certain he smoked kari root and forced native women for sport. His men pulled Karlyhi out of the cab and confiscated the karkar.
âYou have a orphan soldier,â the officer accused.
âMy assistant.â
âWhere are his papers?â
I shrugged slightly without meeting his look. âWhatâs one tribal kid, more or less?â
âDid you issue him this gun?â
âLieutenant Shaw,â another soldier called, pointing at the hill-crest where Siibabean tribesmen stood in a long line silhouetted against the white sky. Siibabean were easily identified by large head-dresses made of black murmurey feathers forming a mock halo from shoulder to shoulder. The winds seemed calm at their position, maybe an illusion caused by distance.
âYouâll have the pleasure of our company at your clinic, Iâm afraid,â Lt. Shaw said.
âI wonât be cover for your reconnoiter.â
âStop me,â he said with a dark smile. They pulled an open jeep in front of the lorry, and their two trucks fell in behind. Karlyhi scrambled to his high seat, still favoring his raw leg. We completed the long drive without incident.
My clinic was an adobe and thatch building with a secure store- room, set back from the slope and less exposed to gusting winds. The grant funds had seemed generous when I first committed to this project. But as Dr. Abercrombie explained, the costs to ship equipment through a region with no infrastructure had forced some difficult choices concerning comfort. There was fresh water, however, and edible local produce, grains and olives mostly. We had excellent herbs for tea and fresh erriv meat for strength.
Usually I treated patients on the verandah while family members watched. Laundry was on the left , shaded by the spreading catalpa tree. The remnants of tribal campers, individual and communal, littered the yard. Traveling family groups sometimes rested overnight before the long trek back to their erriv herds.
The military trucks pulled around back. I stopped the lorry at the entrance. Many tribespeople waited, but they were not desperate and crowding like in the refugee camps.
Hakulupe Le greeted the women with reassurances that I would see patients the following morning. She spoke to Karlyhi concerning the laying-in of supplies. Two tribesmen joined Karlyhi and, surprisingly, took his instructions for the unloading.
Lieutenant Shaw and two soldiers came around the building. The women backed away. âWe will camp behind,â he said to me. âWe can throw up a perimeter. My detail will be gone by morning.â
"Thereâs a stream down the way.â
âWe saw it.â He curtly nodded to Hakulupe Le and joined his men.
Inside the clinic were three patient cots and a desk from where I dispensed medication. On the side and behind a decorated Chinese screen were a closet and bed as well as a table and a small stove. My servants had laid out a formal Arrivi tea there.
My research room was in the back, a twelve-by-twelve sterile space lined with Cicero acrylic, light and cheap. A generator kept the room cool and well lit. My test equipment and monitors were Earth-engineered and manufactured in Westend, but certain pieces had been imported through the wormhole.
I stepped behind the screen that was a gift from Leslie Abercrombie, something he had scrounged from a Company re sale. I removed my jacket and billed hat. I soaked a cloth in a gourd of water that hung from a spike, and used it to refresh my face and arms. My blouse was soaked through. I put on a fresh one from the closet and peeked around the screen.
Hakulupe Le waited near the cots. âPlease join me at the table,â I murmured.
She held a palm high in the greeting of her tribe and came around the screen. She poured tea and waited. I must be the first to taste the dried sh on salty flatbread. I sat at the table and tried to look appreciative concerning the tea service. After I took a bite, Hakulupe Le also sat, and she sliced some fruit that we shared.
âLupe, do you know those soldiers?â
âLieutenant Shaw trains Dolviet recruits. A man of some restraint.â In their culture, her phrase meant sexual restraint.
âYou donât mind if I donât believe you.â
âMy words are not law,â she whispered. I saw a flash of those green-green eyes.
âI can see patients for an hour or so if you will select them,â I said.
She made the motions to end our tea and return to work. âAfter a while,â I quickly added. âAfter you have rested.â
âWe sat all day in the lorry. The activity will do me good.â
I opened each of the French-style windows beside the empty cots and looked out at the misty sunset. I was glad to be home. My clinic was less than one season established but I felt I was home within my function, in my correct place.
In a time when Earth has discovered the means to travel to other worlds, Dr Edwina Greensboro finds herself looking at the white sky over Mekucoo land. Doing research on curing local illness and saving lives where she can from her bush clinic, she has to learn to navigate this world. With tribal laws and customs, where men are warriors and women are sidelined. Bonding to two gualareps, large lizard-type creatures as companions, she navigates the world as best she can. Brianna is a young local girl who, with Edwinaâs help, learns her talents and that there is much more to the world than she had believed.Â
Though set in a different world, it very much reminded me of Africa and the tribes within it. The laws and traditions make little sense to the western world but are their way of life. Firstly we follow Dr Edwinaâs viewpoint as she learns about these communities and the struggles she has as a woman in them. Then we switch to Brianna, who is from the tribes and knows the traditions and her adjustments as she learns the new ways. They have opposite views but the same journey, trying to understand and fit in the other world.
The story is written well, but I found it a bit slow. I didnât really connect to Edwina, though I think that was the point as that world also didnât, but I did have sympathy for Brianna. I also enjoyed the three âgualarepsâ, described as familiars, with their personalities and ways of communicating. I thought that livened the story up a bit. There are some trigger scenes the reader should be aware of but nothing too graphic.
This book is recommended for fans of tribal stories, stories about women fighting for a place and recognition in a world dominated by men. It contains a bit of sci-fi with a different world and a little fantasy with the lizard familiars. A little bit for everyone.