Read Boneyards for Free Online

what I can do.”
    “We need to get him back.” Boss ran a hand through her short cap of chestnut hair. “He needs a medic.”
    “I am a medic,” Rosealma snapped.
    Turtle looked at her in surprise. The two of them had been sleeping together for six months, and Rosealma hadn't told Turtle about her background. Or, rather, Rosealma hadn't told Turtle much about her background, including her medical training and her various scientific degrees.
    “Then get to it,” Boss said. “I don't think he'll appreciate getting an infection on top of losing the eye.”
    “He's not going to lose the eye.” Rosealma grabbed the skip's medical kit from beside the control panel. Then she took her own tools from the bag she carried on every single trip.
    “He's going to lose the eye,” Boss said stubbornly, and she didn't sound sympathetic.
    Rosealma wasn't sympathetic either. The guy really was an idiot. He had a tiny knife and he had been gesturing with it, explaining to Boss how he would cut just a small bit of the historic wreck as a souvenir, and how it wouldn't hurt the wreck at all.
    Boss had gotten angry and told him that if he was going to cut up the wreck, then she wouldn't take him to it. He had leaned toward her, shaking that little knife, blade up, and said, I'm paying you, honey, to take me to that wreck, and if you don't put me on it, then I'm not paying for anything.
    You already paid a deposit , Boss had said.
    I'll take it back.
    Just try , she had said, and smiled.
    He had leaned toward her, waving that blade, and the skip had lurched just enough so that he had lost his footing. He had let out a little squeak and had fallen forward, the knife skittering out of his hand, leaving a tiny blood trail on the skip's floor.
    Rosealma had glanced over her shoulder at the crucial moment. Turtle had been standing near the control panel, but she hadn't been touching it.
    Or at least, she hadn't been touching it a moment after the skip lurched. What she'd been doing a second or two before the lurch no one would ever know.
    “The idiot sliced through his own eyeball,” Boss said.
    “I don't know why you let him come on board with a weapon,” Turtle said.
    “I didn't,” Boss said. “The thing was small enough for him to conceal.”
    “Doesn't matter,” Rosealma said. “If you move away, I can help him.”
    “I almost wish you wouldn't,” Boss said.
    “Then you'll get sued,” Rosealma said, although she didn't know if that was true.
    She crouched over the stupid tourist, tilted his head back and cleaned the blood away from the eye. Then she used her handheld to magnify the eyeball.
    Just like she thought. He had nicked it, making it bleed. Most of the blood came from the socket, not the eye itself.
    She had an entire stash of lenses. Too many cases of laser blindness had made her cautious. The lenses would graft onto the eyeball and serve as a protection until the victim could get to a real medical facility.
    Boss was watching. Turtle leaned over.
    “Squishy,” Turtle said.
    “What?” Rosealma asked.
    “It looks squishy. Is it?”
    Boss uttered a shaky laugh and looked at Turtle. “For a minute, I thought you were calling her Squishy.”
    “Why not?” Rosealma muttered. “One name is the same as another.”
    She worked on the eye—and noted that it was a little squishy—but she didn't tell them that. Then she patched him up, but she didn't give him anything that would wake him. He needed to heal, and they didn't need to listen to his bluster. He wasn't going to get to dive his precious little historic wreck, and Rosealma doubted he would get his deposit back, no matter how hard he protested.
    Boss turned the skip around and headed back to her larger ship, Nobody's Business. For the rest of the trip, Turtle called Rosealma “Squishy,” and giggled.
    The name stuck.

T he corridor was empty. The sirens continued to wail, and the androgynous voice repeatedly informed Squishy that she had only five minutes