The doctor’s office adjoined the barracks outside in a dugout beside the city. The walls were smooth white. RuTing thought the crust below the surface was unbreakable. Fergus told them that metal tools of sufficient hardness could break the crust. Once broken, it didn’t restore quickly, which made for good bunkers. Fresh air was piped in from above ground, and there was a continuous breeze.

  The furniture was handmade, and the countertops were polished stone. RuTing was surprised they didn't use the solid crust for countertops, but apparently, it was brittle after it was mined out of the surface.

  The white film that covered everything was thicker in places and should be easily fixed. It coated the chairs and the padded examination table. The corruption didn’t rub off. The dissolution was embedded in the object.

  Fintan had set a course for them. A course she grudgingly believed in. The ogre had a surprisingly soft step in his human form. She’d made a mistake to let her guard down. She knew Fintan wasn’t strong with his illusions, and she could only protect them from the direction she was seeing. He wasn’t a warrior. She didn’t blame him for their capture, but she had to actively set aside those feelings so they didn’t hamper action. This was an opportunity.

  “Why don’t you fix this?” RuTing asked. She felt the back of the chair before sitting on it. The back felt less dense than the seat, but it was more than solid enough for her to sit on without worry. She tried to appear as nonviolent as possible. They hid their weapons from the ogres. Her sword was sheathed in the back of her camo exosuit, and Fintan’s narrow poniard was up his sleeve. They both looked like Union Free People, although neither had origins of the nomadic hunters. When she sat, the bar pressed into her back, but it was a short sword and well protected, so she leaned nonchalantly, trying to remember how young people casually lay on furniture in the Union.

  “We don’t replace furniture until we need to,” Fergus said. After a few hours, he’d shrunk to normal size. He still wore the baggy clothing, and he waited with them while doctors ran in and out, mixing vials on the counter and presumably taking the contents to the barracks.

  “I’ve seen people make things out of thin air,” Fintan said. Of course, they both knew how to manifest. They could also manifest a seeming, and like her illusions, her seemings were almost impossible to discover.

  “Witchcraft isn’t allowed in the city,” Fergus said. “Science is observation, testing, and theorizing. Magic disrupts science, and it's completely unnecessary. We might be trapped, but food is plentiful. Our food is grown in fields outside the city and they produce at a hundred times the capacity of plants in the physical world.”

  The soldier stood. He was amicable but easily bored and paced back and forth while waiting. He claimed to hate the violence, but Zeusopolans had to be stopped. He was visibly discontented when his commanding ogre told him to accompany the civilians.

  A young doctor rushed into the room. He had long legs and took long steps. When he stopped, his overly large labcoat settled behind him like a cape. Fintan had worn a coat like that when she first saw him.

  “It’s time for a blood draw,” the doctor said. He had a syringe in his hand.

  “Can I at least have your name first?” Fintan asked.

  “Salman,” the doctor said shortly. “Doctor Salman.” He motioned to the pacing Fergus. “I’ll get one from you too, Fergus. You aren’t due, but since you are here, we will get your checkup out of the way.”

  The pacing soldier stopped long enough to listen, nodded glumly, and resumed.

  The syringe went into Fintan’s arm. Blood was drawn into a vile. RuTing was surprised it didn't turn into mist. Whenever they were cut, the blood didn’t last long. She’d removed a finger once, and it came back whole. They couldn’t die in the afterlife, and the pieces of them dissolved only to return later. She’d seen the dwarfs blow up and also watched them return, whole but spent.

  Salman drew blood from her next and then the Fergus. The vials lined up on the counter in order. The vial stand had a color code. The doctor had a clipboard with a piece of metal on it and an etching tool, but he used it sparingly. When he etched letters onto the clipboard. Fintan disappeared.

  The movement was so quick RuTing barely saw it, but the vial with Fergus’s blood in the third position switched with the vial of Fintan’s blood in the first position.

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  The doctor turned around and swabbed the blood onto a glass plate and put them under a microscope one at a time.

  “I see the corruption here,” the doctor said when he looked at Fintan’s blood, or rather what he thought was Fintan’s blood. “And here, too.” RuTing received the same diagnosis. “You are clean, Fergus.”

  Fergus shrugged, unsurprised.

  “Healthy living,” Fergus said, “and regular doctor appointments.”

  “What will happen to us?” RuTing asked. She added a bit of nervousness to her voice. Another octave might have helped, but Fintan was too innocent. He would probably gawk if she played the damsel in distress, and there was no need. She already knew what the doctor was going to say.

  “We don’t have a cure,” Salman said. “But we found a way to slow the corruption. Regular doses, one a month for twelve months, then twice a year, and then every year.”

  The doctor opened a cabinet full of stoppered beakers and selected two, removing the stopper. The fluid was completely clear, perhaps two ounces, and measured to a line on the vial. He handed one to Fintan.

  Fintan tilted his head back and drained the vial. He handed the glass to the doctor but slipped, dropping the vial on the floor. The broken glass shot everywhere, and when the doctor’s head was turned, Fintan pocketed the water in a new vial.

  It was clumsy, but Fintan pulled off the manifestation. Fergus was too distracted to notice. RuTing took advantage of glass to disappear. She manifested a seeming of herself standing in shock. She had to be close to keep the seeming moving, but the seeming was so perfect it was like looking at herself in a mirror.

  “Vials are expensive,” Salman complained, “but it's no worries. It will go on your credit report; you can work it off later. Your reaction is not unusual. Most people feel a little bit weak after drinking the serum.”

  Salman brought out a broom and swept the mess. Fintan sat down heavily. He was playing into the weakness. As long as he didn’t overdo it, they should be okay.

  When Salman brought the vial to RuTing, he held her seemings cheek. She reinforced the seeming by manifesting the idea of solidity while caressing her seemings lips, pouring it into her mouth.

  Dutifully, her seeming sat, guided into the chair by her elbow. Such concern. It was a bitter thought.

  After a few minutes, Salman gave Fergus more instructions.

  “They are safe to enter the city, but they need a full workup. They’ve been through a lot. They need appointments in neurology, cardiology, gynecology, urology, proctology, and pulmonology. We will do a basic DNA analysis. I would like you to take them to each of the offices and set them up with their initial appointments.” Salman handed their charts to Fergus. “Return their charts to me once they have temporary quarters.”

  As Salman finished his orders an odiferous breeze wafted into the office, like an animal died not that far away. RuTing avoided wrinkling her nose, but Fergus stopped his pacing.

  “The fans?” Fergus said.

  “Have been going on and off all day,” Salman said. “We will have some outraged soldiers by the end of the day if we don’t fix it.”

  Fergus wanted to take a look at the problem. Instead of walking out the way they entered, he brought them through a long corridor. Rows and rows of beds held people waiting for serums. When they received their dose, they drank. Each bed had its own plumbing, and explosive defecation and flatulence started immediately after the dose. When it ended, they shrunk from full size to half their height.

  “Bomb Midges,” Fergus said. “They aren’t people with dwarfism. It’s the last choice if you can’t find a job elsewhere. The city will pay you a hundred credits a day minus expenses.”

  On the end of each bed, the Bomb Midge had a chart just like theirs, except at the top Fintan recognized symbols for metals.

  “Why are they tracking metals?” he asked.

  “We reclaim metals from feces,” Fergus said. “It’s not a lot, but the serums use metals as a binding agent.”

  “You know a lot about the serum,” RuTing said.

  “I was an endocrinologist,” Fergus said. “One serum makes us incredibly strong and the other incredibly light. Bomb Midges have almost no sense of self. It wears off after a day. They can come back and earn another hundred credits the next day.”

  Bannerburg was less exciting as a patient. The inside of the city walls were coated with a slippery polymer and taller than she could jump. The modern technologies didn’t stop. They were masters of chemistry, if not combustion. Fintan gave the doctor the few gilders he had left. According to the doctor, they weren’t worth much, but they would be credited to their accounts.

  The temporary rooms were government housing without doors in the doorway or bedrooms. The beds were cots, better than the ground but worse than what she could manifest. The other rooms were full of comatose Bomb Midges, Fergus said would wake normal-sized.

  She suspected the mist would sustain them, but every building had combustion-driven fans to suck the mist out before it could form at their feet.

  At the end of the tour, Fergus did his tally.

  “This is going to sound like a large number,” he warned them, “but it's normal. The doctors have to be paid, and the city has to collect taxes. Fintan, your outstanding medical debts are twenty thousand two hundred and fifty credits. The last fifty was for the glass beaker you broke. That’s the only difference between you and RuTing.”

  Fintan wasn’t finished.

  “We have a room, and we know where the doctors are, but do you have a school or a university? How do you become a doctor?”

  “Sadly, after death, there isn’t a way to earn more accreditation,” Fergus said. “There are jobs for everyone regardless of their academic achievement, but until we find a way to retake the Sidh Chaileann, we can’t get a message to the real world. We can’t record personal accreditation without an accredited academic institution.”

  “Where is that?” Fintan asked. “Sidh Chaileann?”

  “The Zeusopolans would have called it Olympus. They believe their false god lives there.”