Terran Tomorrow

CHAPTER 18

By the time Jason reached base, Elizabeth Duncan had her orders from Strople, brought in from the perimeter by Private Laura DeSoto and delivered as if both of them didn’t already know the orders would not be obeyed.

Jason jumped out of the FiVee in the armory airlock, went through decon, and left Lab Dome for Enclave. Between the domes, soldiers grunted and swore as they cleared away wreckage from New America’s attack. Jason didn’t ask what they did with the enemy bodies; he could see the mass grave at an edge of the charred forest. Carry-bots trundled body bags and sacks of lime. Amid the devastation, the twin energy domes shone almost obscenely bright in the afternoon sun.

At the command post, Elizabeth Duncan said, “You look like shit, sir.”

Jason blinked; she had never spoken to him with anything approaching such informality. He said, “You don’t look great yourself, Major.”

“Do you think Strople will promote me, now that you’re in stockade?”

“Probably.”

But neither of them could sustain the banter. He had been up for thirty-six hours and sagged with fatigue, and banter was foreign to Elizabeth Duncan’s nature—had she rehearsed it to try to reassure him of her loyalty without any embarrassing sentiment? Unwritten rules forbid them to name what they had actually done: falsified information and retained control of a United States Army base after being relieved of command. To name things was to give them greater power—although it was difficult to see how this situation could have more power over either of them than they had already committed to. But they had made their decision, they’d made it together, and for good and sufficient reasons.

Still, Jason had been unwilling for as good a soldier as Duncan to go down with him. If it came to that, he and Specialist DeFord would go alone to court-martial, and Strople would never know that Major Duncan plus four others had collaborated with Jason. But it was not going to come to that.

She said, “Sir, General Strople has ordered me to bring him the Return. I told him the ship is too damaged to fly that far.”

Which might, for all they knew, be true. “Did he believe you?”

“I don’t know. But he pretended to. He’s sending a unit here for the court-martial and to take control of the base.”

“Sending? How?” If they had somehow acquired more planes or functional choppers and the fuel to fly either…

“FiVees. A convoy of eleven vehicles.”

Jason blinked. “You’re kidding.”

“No. I calculate about ten days.”

Over the broken roads, through the desert and up the shattered coast… no way to refuel except with what they carried with them, the possibility—no, the certainty—of attack by New America….

“They want the Return that bad,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Yes. Or they don’t believe that I wasn’t complicit in your decision.”

“Fuck,” he said, knowing that she had never before seen him lose control, “fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We can’t catch a break.”

“You took out Sierra Depot.”

Her voice held uncharacteristic admiration, in which there was nothing personal. In another world, Jason thought, she could have commanded the entire US Army; she had the necessary toughness, control, and intelligence. If the Collapse hadn’t happened when it did, she’d have risen through the ranks faster than he did. Instead she stood a chance of going down with him.

He said, “Elizabeth, when the convoy arrives, I’ll be in the stockade along with DeFord and you will disavow any knowledge of—”

A scuffle outside the closed door. “No!” said the soldier on duty, and Duncan’s hand moved to her sidearm. But when the door was flung open, Claire Patel stood there.

“Sorry, sir… she insisted and I didn’t want to…”

“It’s all right, Private. Dismissed.”

“Colonel Jenner—I’m sorry to burst in like this but you have to be told now… Belok^ is awake.”

For a disoriented second, Jason couldn’t remember who Belok^ was. Then he got it. “Out of his coma?”

“Yes!”

“The others?”

“No, but they’re all being closely watched. There’s more. I examined him, and he’s changed. He can talk now.”

“The coma made him able to talk?”

“It did something inside his brain. No, don’t ask for details because we don’t know. But he’s different now.”

The other v-coma victims had already been able to talk. Jason’s exhausted mind fumbled at Claire’s unspoken ideas. She moved forward a step. “We don’t know what it means, no. But Zack McKay’s spinal-fluid analyses seem to indicate massive alteration of brain chemistry. The kind of chemicals that usually indicate more formation of synapses, more pruning of synapses, the sort of profound changes that are usually seen only in small children and adolescents.”

“Doctor,” Duncan said, “do you mean that the v-coma victims will wake up with increased verbal fluency?”

“We don’t know, Major. That’s the whole point.”

Jason said, “Monitor the situation and keep me informed. Dismissed.”

Claire grimaced; too late, he recalled how much the civilian doctors and scientists disliked it when he addressed them as if they were soldiers. Well, tough. He had more important things on his mind than civilian touchiness.

But then Claire’s face softened. “Colonel,” she said, gently and yet with the note of defiance that said she knew she was overstepping boundaries, “I’m sorry to say this, but you should get some sleep. You look like shit.”

Zack thought that the next v-coma to wake up would be Caitlin, since she had gone comatose at the same time as Belok^. But it wasn’t Caitlin. At evening, the little girl still lay comatose in the same cubicle as her mother, and the nurse said there had been no change in either of them. Zack gazed down at his wife and daughter, reached out, touched Susan’s hand. It felt so warm, so alive…

“Dr. McKay,” said the same nurse he’d sent to find Ka^graa. Only now she looked oddly defiant. “There’s another v-coma awake.”

“Where?”

“Bed on the end.” The nurse turned away… sneering? Why?

The bed on the end held Toni Steffens.

Head Nurse Amy Parker bent over Toni, who batted her away. “I’m fine. Nicole?”

“Still comatose,” Amy said. “Dr. McKay, Major Holbrook will be here in a minute.”

“Zack,” Toni said, wonderingly. And then, “I have the motherfucker of all headaches.”

Well, whatever had been going on in Toni’s brain had not changed her personality. But her broad, intelligent face looked puzzled. Holbrook strode in.

“Dr. Steffens? How do you feel?”

“Headache.”

“I’m going to examine you. Everybody out, please.”

Zack waited, fidgeting from one foot to the other, just outside the curtain, until Holbrook emerged. “Vitals are all fine,” he said. “I don’t think it’s wise to give her anything for the headache until we—”

“I can hear you, you know,” Toni said. “No, I don’t want anything for the headache. And no, I’m not a superhearer now, you’re just loud. Be quiet and let me think.”

Think? Zack pushed his way into the cubicle. Toni struggled to sit up, her nutrient IV bobbing, her puzzled expression replaced by such intense concentration that she seemed frozen all over again. Holbrook said, “It would be good for you to walk now, Dr. Steffens.”

Toni didn’t answer. Eventually she said to Zack, “Tell me what’s happened while I was comatose.”

Where to begin? “New America attacked the base with fighter jets and—”

“Not that.” Toni raised her newly thin arm and waved it, brushing aside New America, the base, and the fighter jets. “What happened in the lab. Not with the v-coma analysis—with the avian gene drive.”

“Nothing. Toni, you know that.” Had her memory been affected? “All work on the gene drive was dropped to investigate the v-coma and try to—”

“Shut up now.”

Zack held on to his temper. He and Holbrook glanced at each other, neither knowing just what they were dealing with, uncertain how to proceed. A minute passed, two. Then five very long minutes.

Toni pushed back her blankets and tugged at her IV. “Get me out of this thing. Out of here.”

“Be careful,” Holbrook said, “your muscles will have partially atrophied and—”

“Get me out and to the lab. Zack, I need your help.”

“With what?”

Toni looked at him. Her puzzlement was gone. She gazed at him with what looked like… was it pity?

Toni said, “I’ll try to explain in terms you can understand. Stop me if I go too fast.”

Jane stirred on her pallet, caught in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, where the real and the imagined cannot be told apart because all things have become possible. She was with her lahk sisters in their house of curving karthwood; she was on Terra under a dome; she floated free in a dark space of cold, glowing stars. Creatures scampered through the walls, through her blankets, through her brain. Voices rose and fell, or were they waves on the beach at Kle^chov^ol¡? No, they were the stars themselves, rumbling before they exploded in novae of gas and speeding particles and the end of everything….

“They’re killing us,” a star said.

“And he’s letting them.”

“Nah, Josie, the old man’s all right. He stopped the attack by the Newsies and pulled off that raid on Sierra that—”

“And he let in them fucking aliens that’re killing us!”

“Nobody dead yet—”

“Might as well be—”

“For two cents, I’d—”

“Watch your mouth, Carl.”

“Quiet, you guys, my head nurse is coming…”

But no one was coming, Jane was alone except for the things scudding through her brain: leelees… no, Terran “mice”… no, something else…

Then nothing, and again she slept.

Another morning, after another long and mostly sleepless night. It might, Jason thought blearily, be an interesting experiment to see how long he could go sleepless without losing the rest of his mind. Parts of it seemed gone already. His thoughts moved slowly, through tarry mud, and in circles.

Eight days until the convoy arrived.

Court-martial.

Running out of supplies.

Toni Steffens. Belok^.

Eight days…

“Sir?” said the private on duty outside the command post. Jason hadn’t even heard the door open. “Dr. Ross asks to see you.”

“Dr. Ross?”

“Yes, sir.” The private peered at him; did Jason look that bad? Probably.

“Let her enter.”

“I’m already in,” Lindy said, pushing past the guard.

Jason said, “Dismissed.”

Lindy closed the door. There were still bruises on her face, but unless she wore some sort of brace or bandages under her clothes, she didn’t seem to be suffering from her reinflated lung. She wore her determined look. Jason straightened for the blow. “What is it? Have v-comas died?”

“No. And nobody else has revived, either.”

“Dr. Steffens?”

“I haven’t been to the lab—Claire Patel is there, examining her yet again. Or trying to, since Toni won’t stop working long enough for much examination. She’s got everybody over there doing things and she’s barking orders like General Patton.”

“Working on what?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a virologist. I’m also not there, I’m here.”

Jason snapped, “Why are you here? I didn’t send for you.” The snappiness, he dimly realized, was cover for a barrage of emotions fired by just seeing her.

“No. I’m here to examine you. Jason—Colonel, sorry—you’re showing disturbing signs of sleep deprivation. Two different people have told me so. And—”

“Who? Who told you that?”

“—as your physician—”

“You’re not. Major Holbrook is. Where—”

“With the v-comas. They’re not waking but they’re stirring. I’m it, Colonel, and I’m going to examine you. Now.” She pulled out a portalab and moved toward him.

Jason submitted. She could give him drugs to keep him going, maybe something that would last until the court-martial was over. Even at West Point, where designer pharmaceuticals had been ubiquitous to ward off sleep, to keep the body going through the physical punishment of training and the mental fog of studying while exhausted, Jason had avoided drugs. He hadn’t wanted to surrender control of his faculties, not even to something that was supposed to enhance them. He’d kept to the same puritanical policy while in combat in Congo. But this was not West Point and the combat here couldn’t be worked out in physical activity, and Jason could see the end of his strength rolling toward him as inexorable as the convoy coming up from Fort Hood.

“Dr. Ross—”

“Be quiet, I’m not done. I’m taking a quick blood sample.”

Could she see how much her nearness disturbed him? She moved close to lift one of his eyelids and he could smell her, that spicy female odor… How long had it been for him? Masturbation was not the same…. He felt his cock rise and how could that be when everything else on him was barely functional? Christ, let her not notice….

“Jason,” she said quietly, “you have to sleep. Your reflexes are off, your skin is sallow and your eyes puffy. You have way too much cortisol in your blood. Soon you’re going to have tremors, impaired concentration, and forgetfulness, if you haven’t already. I’m going to give you something that won’t put you out so completely that you can’t be roused in case of emergency, but will nonetheless let you sleep. And Major Duncan is perfectly capable of taking over for a few hours.”

“Okay,” he said, and watched her eyes widen with surprise.

“Okay? Well, good. You should take two of these at—”

“Sir!”

Hillson, flinging open the door with no announcement, no ceremony. The master sergeant’s face wore the wooden expression that meant extreme rage. His shoulders looked carved from granite. Jason said, “What is it?”

“A homicide, sir. Corporal Winfield is dead. Private Dolin is under arrest.”

Winfield? A member of J Squad, he’d been on the raid at Sierra Depot, he’d parachuted down to extract the Sugiyama kids…. Jason’s mind fumbled at trying to place Private Dolin, and failed. He said, “What happened?”

“Corporal Kandiss—”

“Kandiss was involved? Did he kill Winfield?” A sour stickiness formed in Jason’s throat.

Lindy said, “Is a doctor needed?”

Hillson ignored her; perhaps he didn’t even hear her. “Sir, what happened was that Dolin drew his sidearm on Kandiss, who wasn’t armed, but Dolin didn’t know that Winfield was there, too. Winfield tried to disarm Dolin and Dolin shot him. Then Kandiss disarmed Dolin.”

“Where did all this happen?”

“At the brothel, sir.”

The brothel, where Settler women tried to spread indoctrination of Colin’s nature philosophy. A weird arrangement, but you couldn’t lock soldiers, most of them male, into two domes without a brothel developing, however informally. Colin had found out about it within days of arriving at the base. Jason hadn’t asked its location.

“Where’s Dolin?”

“In the stockade.”

Where Strople thought Jason was. Or maybe not. Did Strople have suspicions that more was going on at Monterey Base than he’d been told? Of course, Jason thought, more was also going on at Fort Hood than Jason had been told. Unless… Christ, he was so tired.

“Sir…” Hillson said, looking suddenly uncertain.

“I’m fine, Sergeant. Begin a formal investigation immediately. Report to me no later than this evening. Dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” Hillson left.

Lindy said, “An investigation? Are you going to… will there be a court-martial?”

She didn’t understand. Jason passed his hand over his eyes, even as a detached part of his mind thought: That, that thing I’ll have to do—I have never done that before in my life.

“Jason? Will there be a court-martial?”

“No. We are at war. Dolin shot a fellow soldier. The investigation will find out why, but it doesn’t really matter why. He did it.”

“And you…”

Jason opened his lips to order her out, to stop her questions, to remove the scent of her that brought back so many memories, but no words came out. He felt his knees give way. He staggered, caught himself, sagged against the desk.

“Jason—”

“Go… away.”

She didn’t. She took another step forward. He stumbled again—how could he stumble when the floor was supporting him?—and she caught him.

Her touch undid him. All of it undid him: the long months, years, of trying to hold together a base of military and scientists who were needed—both groups—to save the world but did not trust each other. The murder of Winfield, which Jason should have somehow prevented. The murder by torture of Sugiyama’s little son and Jason’s failure to rescue Sugiyama in time. His looming court-martial, into which he had dragged six good soldiers. The fruitless work of the scientists in stopping RSA, the mission to which Jason had sacrificed his military honor by defying orders. The wreck of the Return, the wreck of the United States he’d sworn to serve, what he was going to have to do to Dolin, all of it all of it all of it…

Then he was in Lindy’s arms, the sobs shaking his whole body but nonetheless silent because a colonel in the United States Army did not cry.

“Shhh,” Lindy said, “shhhh, it’s all right….”

The stupid statement sobered him. It was not all right. He pushed her away, but she caught at him, her small hands surprisingly strong. He remembered that.

“Listen to me, Jason,” she said, but without a trace of either command or plea. Maybe she still remembered that the best way to deal with him had always been with calm facts. “You are under enormous, even superhuman strain. You’ve done an incredible job, but no one can control everything, especially not in such an insane situation as this. If you keep blaming yourself for every single thing that does not go perfectly, you will drive yourself mad. And you can’t do that, because the base needs you. And I need you.”

That last was said in the same steady, reasonable voice as the rest, without emphasis. For a moment Jason wasn’t even sure he’d heard it. But he had; Lindy was letting the need show in her eyes.

So she was braver than he was, after all.

“Right now, you must sleep. I’m going to give you something for that. Hillson can conduct his investigation and then you can… do what is necessary. You have to have Dolin executed, don’t you? Yes. I’m sorry. But I’ll tell you this—he didn’t kill Winfield over any fight in a brothel over a girl or money or drink or whatever else anybody claims. Dolin was after Kandiss because some of your soldiers blame the star-farers for bringing the virophage to the base and causing the v-comas. They can’t reach Marianne or Jane or the other comatose because you have guards on the infirmary, but they could reach Kandiss. And Dolin wouldn’t have even tried it if he didn’t have more soldiers ready to lie for him about it.”

“I know.”

She smiled, a complex smile he couldn’t read. “Of course you do. Jason, you’re doing the best possible job under the worst possible circumstances. Now, take these.”

She handed him two pills. He took them without water, a pointless piece of macho toughness, and sagged into a chair. Lindy stood over him. He closed his eyes, but she was still there.

“Lindy,” he managed to choke out, “Lindy…”

She went still beside him.

He reached out, groped for her, and pulled her down on top of him, even as he rolled both of them off the chair and onto the floor.

“Lindy…”

“Shhh,” she said.

“I can’t… I want… You’ve always been…”

“Shhhhh.” She reached for his belt, tugging with her small, strong hands at the buckle.

It took a while for the sleeping pills to work.