I open it up, showing him the bandage and the sachets. “I can slow the bleeding and cover it.”
He gives me a nod. “What else is in there?”
“Gloves.” I’m not sure if it’s worth bothering, given that he fell in the stream and is now covered in rock dust. “Different bandage. Pen.” I stare at the piece of paper. The people who packed this assumed that someone would be around to read the casualty card and do something about it. If something happened, and we didn’t get the person back to base, they were fucked. “Injury record, so the hospital knows what they are dealing with.”
“Hospital?” he mimics.
“A building full of healers.”
“And they give you this when you go out?”
“Yeah…” I have some suggested changes. I lift up a plastic vial of dark liquid. Iodine. “This is for wound cleaning. But it can clean water.” I eye up his water skin. “Maybe two skins worth.”
Through the grassland I can see the stream snaking into the forest.
“Could’ve used that down there.”
“No, that water was too muddy. The water needs to be clear.” I frown. “It’s like boiling water, but with a chemical.”
From his expression, that explanation didn’t help. “What is a chemical?”
Oh fuck. I am not a scientist. “It’s what things are made of.” I pick up the wound sealer. “See, here is a list of the chemicals it is made of.”
“I cannot read your writing.”
I pause as I take that in. “You can read?”
“Of course. Even fourth sons learn to read and write.”
I hand him the pen and paper because no one is ever going to need it. “Write your name.”
He looks at me.
“Like this.” I write my name for him. “Ruby.”
He holds the pen and inspects it. “The ink is inside?”
“Yes. It doesn’t last forever and will dry out without the lid.”
He takes the pen with a wince, then writes beneath my name in sharp pointed lines and a few dots, before putting the lid on the pen. “Aldit.”
He examines the writing on the pen. “Chemicals?”
I nod. “Let me do something with your shoulder.”
I’m sure the leaders would not be impressed that I’m wasting limited supplies on an alien. We were always told that we shouldn’t break open the kits unless it was life and death. So many things that we use are limited. Like the pen, when they run out, that is it.
There are people investigating mining and smelting, as well as farming. Basic things. Things like the pen, I can’t see how we can remake them. The same with most of the supplies in the med kit. We can’t make plastic, or latex, or the chemicals. I don’t even know if we can make iodine.
I looked at Aldit and his brothers as backward, armed with swords and wearing leather and roughly woven shirts. Now…fuck, they aren’t just surviving. They are living. He has metal and gemstones in his hair. Someone made that sword. They know how to do all things that we need to learn how to do. We could learn off them.
But I can’t imagine the colony leaders deviating from the plan laid out on Earth a century ago. Why would they when it suits them?
“This will probably sting.”
“No more than it already is.”
I bite my lip and shoulder the blame. When did I go from hating him to wanting to help him? When did I realize he wasn’t the monster I believed?
