She chuckled again, and dropped her lower jaw in her Hrruban smile. "Just like me."

 

 

"Huh? You'd stand out a klick away."

 

 

"Not necessarily. D'you know why creatures evolved different exterior colors and patterns? Well, markings and colors help them become invisible to their natural enemies, or their equally natural victims. On your own homeworld, and I'll cite the big felines as an excellent example" - she twitched her dainty whisker hairs to indicate amusement, or was it condescension for us poorly endowed critters?- "tigers have stripes because they're jungle inhabitants; lions wear fur that blends into the veldt or grasslands; panthers are mottled black to hide in tree limbs and shadows. Their favorite prey is also colored to be less easily detected, to confuse the eye of the beholder, if they stand still.

 

 

"A major breakthrough in Khalian biological research suggests that they are blind to certain colors and patterns." She indicated her sploshed flanks. "What I'm wearing should render me all but invisible to Khalians."

 

 

"Ah, come on, Ghra, I can't buy that!"

 

 

"Hear me out" She held her hand up, her lustrous big eyes sparkling with an expression that could be amusement, but certainly resulted in my obedience. "We've also determined that, while Khalian night vision is excellent, dawn and dusk produce a twilight myopia. My present camouflage is blended for use on this planet. I can move with impunity at dawn and dusk, and quite possibly remain unseen during daylight hours, even by Khalians passing right by me. Provided I choose my ground cover correctly. That's part of early Hrruban training, anyhow. And we Hrrubans also know how to lie perfectly still for long hours." She grinned at my skeptical snort. "Add to that inherent ability the fact that Khalians have lost what olfactory acuteness they originally had as they've relied more and more on high tech, and I doubt they'll notice me." Her own nostrils dilated slightly and her whiskers twitched in distaste. "I can smell a Khalian more than five klicks away. And a Khalian wouldn't detect, much less recognize, my spoor. Stupid creatures. Ignored or lost most of their valuable natural assets. They can't even move as quadrupeds anymore. We had the wisdom to retain, and improve on, our inherited advantages. It could be something as simple and nontech as primitive ability that's going to tip the scale in this war. We've already proved that ancient ways make us valuable as fighters."

 

 

"You Hrrubans have a bloody good reputation," I agreed generously. "You've had combat experience?" I asked tactfully, for generally speaking, seasoned fighters don't spout off the way she was. As Ghra didn't seem to be a fully adult Hrruban, maybe she was indulging herself in a bit of psyching up for this mission.

 

 

"Frequent." The dry delivery of that single word assured me she was, indeed, a seasoned warrior. The fingers of her left hand clicked a rapid tattoo. "Khalians are indeed formidable opponents. Very." She spread her left hand, briefly exposing her lethal complement of claws. "Deadly in hand-to-hand with that stumpy size a strange advantage. A fully developed adult Khalian comes up to my chest: it's those short Khalian arms, incredibly powerful, that you've got to watch out for."

 

 

Some of the latest "short arm" jokes are grisly by any standards: real sick humor! And somehow, despite your disgust, you find yourself avidly repeating the newest one.

 

 

"Khalians may prefer to use their technology against us in the air," Ghra continued, "but they're no slouches face-to-face. I've seen a Khalian grab a soldier by the knees, trip him up, and sever the hamstrings in three seconds. Sometimes they'll launch at the chest, compress the lungs in a fierce grip, and bite through the jugular vein. However," Ghra added with understandable pride, "we've noticed a marked tendency in their troops to avoid Hrrubans. Fortunately we don't mind fighting in mixed companies."

 

 

I'd heard some incredible tales of the exploits of mixed companies and been rather proud that so many of the diverse species of the Alliance could forget minor differences for the main objective. I'd also heard some horror tales of what Khalians did to any prisoners of those mixed companies. (It had quickly become a general policy to dispatch any immobilized wounded.) Of course, such tales always permeate a fighting force. Sometimes, I think, not as much to encourage our own fighting men to fight that much more fiercely as to dull the edge of horror by the repetition of it.

 

 

"But it's not going to be brute force that'll overcome them: it'll be superior intelligence. We Hrrubans hope to be able to infiltrate their ground forces with our camouflages." She ran both hands down her lean and muscled thighs. "I'm going to prove we can."

 

 

"More power to you," I said, still skeptical if she was relying on body paint. While I was a space fighter pilot, I knew enough about warfare strategies to recognize that it was only battles that were won in space: wars are won when the planets involved are secured against the invader. "There's just one thing. You may be able to fool those weasels' eyes, but what about the humans and such on Bethesda? You're going to be mighty visible to them, you know."

 

 

Ghra chuckled. "The Khalians enforce a strict dawn-to-dusk curfew on their captive planets. You'll be setting us down in an unpopulated area. None of the captured folk would venture there and all the Khalian air patrols would see is the camouflage net."

 

 

I hoped so, not that I personally feared Khalians in the air or on the ground. For one thing, an Ocelot is faster than any atmosphere planes they operate, or spacecraft. Khalians prefer to fly large vehicles: as far as we know they don't have any small or single-crew craft. Which makes a certain amount of sense - with very short arms and legs, they wouldn't have the reach to make effective use of a multiple-function board. Their control rooms must be crowded. Unless Khalians had prehensile use of their toes?

 

 

"Yeah, but you have to contact the OTS and he lives in the human cantonment. How're you going to keep invisible there?"

 

 

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. "By being cautious. After all, no humans will be expecting an Hrruban on Bethesda, will they?" She dropped her jaw again, and this time I knew it was amusement that brought a sparkle to those great brown eyes. "People, especially captive people, tend to see only what they expect to see. And they don't want to see the unusual or the incredible. If they should spot me, they won't believe it nor are they likely to run off and tattle to Khalians."

 

 

Then Ghra stretched, sinews and joints popping audibly. "How long before reentry, Bil? Time enough for me to get a short nap?" Her jaw dropped in an Hrruban grin as she opened the lid of the deepsleep capsule.

 

 

"Depends on how long you want to sleep. One month, two?" Scout ships are fast but they also must obey the laws of FTL physics, and I had to slow down just as the convoy had to, only I could waste my speed faster by braking a lot of it in the gravity well of Bethesda's sun.

 

 

"Get us into the system. We'll have plenty of time to swap jokes without boring each other," she said as she took two steps to the long cabinet that held the deepsleep tank. She pulled it out and observed while I set the mechanism to time and calibrated the gas dose. Nodding her approval, she lay down on the couch, attached her life-support cups suitable for her species with the ease of long practice. With a final wink, she closed the canopy and then her eyes, her lean camouflaged frame relaxing instantly as the gas flooded the compartment.

 

 

Ghra was perceptive about the inevitable grating of two personalities cooped up in necessarily cramped conditions for too long a time with little activity to defuse energy. We brain ships are accustomed to being by ourselves, though I'm the first to tell new members of our Elite Corps that the first few months ain't easy. There are benefits and we are conditioned to the encapsulation long before we're placed in any kind of large, dangerous equipment. The good thing about being human is our adaptability. Or maybe it's sheer necessity. If you'd rather not be dead, there is an alternative: and if we, who have had bodies and have known that kind of lifestyle, are not as completely the ship we drive as shell people are, we have our uses and I have come to like this new life, too.

 

 

The Ocelot plunged on down toward the unseen planet and its mission. I set external alarms and went into recall trance.

 

 

As the Ocelot neared my target, a mild-enough-looking space marble, dark blues and greens with thin cloud cover, it roused both Ghra and me. She came alert right smart, just as a well-trained fighter should.

 

 

Grabbing a container of the approved postsleep fortified drink, she resumed her seat and we both read the Ocelot's autoreports.

 

 

The detectors identified only the usual stuff - comsats, mining transfer gear, solar heater units - but nothing in orbit around Bethesda that could detect the convoy. The only way to be dead sure, or dead, was to check down below as well. Ghra agreed. Dawn was coming up over one of the water masses that punctuated the planet. They looked more like crater holes than natural subsidences, but there had once been a lot of volcanic activity on Bethesda.

 

 

"How're we going to make it in, Bil? Even with what the settlers put up, the Khalians could spot us."

 

 

"No, I've lined the Ocelot up with the same trajectory as a convenient trail of meteoritic debris. You can see the planet is peeked with craters. Perfect for our purpose. Even if they have gear sensitive enough to track the Ocelot's faint trail, they'd more than likely figure it was just more of the debris that's already come in."

 

 

"I had a look at Het's data on the planet," Ghra said. "Bethesda's spaceport facility had been ample enough to take the big colonial transport jobs. Last recorded flights in before the Khalian capture were for commercial freight lighters but the port could take the biggest Khalian cruisers and destroyers, not just those medium pursuit fighters."

 

 

"What did Het say about Khalian update on the invasion?"

 

 

Ghra shrugged. "That is unknown. We'll find out." She grinned when I made one of those disgruntled noises I'm rather good at. "Well, they could be busy elsewhere. You know how the Khalians are, mad keen on one thing one moment, and then forget about it for a decade."

 

 

"Let's hope the decade doesn't end while we're in this sector. Well, we've got a day or so before we go in, did you hear the one about..."

 

 

Ghra told me some even I hadn't heard by the time I was ready to activate the trajectory I'd plotted. I matched speed with a group of pebbles while Ghra did a geology game with me. I thought I'd never see the last of the fregmekking marbles, or win the game even though we were getting down at a fair clip. Ghra was betting the pebbles would hit the northern wasteland before we flattened out for the last segment of our run. Whose side was she on?

 

 

Ducking under the light cloud cover, I made a low-altitude run over the nightside toward the spaceport and the small town that serviced it. The Khalians had enslaved the planet's small resident human population in their inimitable fashion, but there might just be some sort of a night patrol.

 

 

"Here's our objective, Ghra," I told her as we closed in our landing site, and screened the picture.

 

 

She narrowed her eyes, mumbling or purring as she memorized landscape. The town had been built along the coastline, and there looked to be wharfs and piers but no sign of sea traffic or boats. Just beyond the town, on a plateau that had been badly resculptured to accommodate large craft landings, was the respectably-sized spaceport, with towers, comdisks, quarters, and what looked like repair hangars. Infra scan showed two cooling earthen circles, but that didn't tell us enough. I got a quick glimpse of the snouts and fins of a few ships, none of them warm enough to have been flown in the past twenty-four hours, but I didn't have time to verify type and number before we were behind the coastal hill. I dropped the meteor ruse just in time to switch on the gravity drive and keep us from planting a new crater.

 

 

"And there" - I put an arrow on the screen - "is where I make like a rock. You'll be only about five klicks from town."

 

 

"Good." She managed to make the g into a growl, narrowing her eyes as she regarded the picture. Her tail gave three sharp swings. "May I have a replay of the spaceport facility?" I complied, screening the footage at a slower rate.

 

 

"Nothing fast enough to catch me, Ghra, either in the atmosphere or in space," I replied nonchalantly. I made the usual copies of the tapes of our inbound trip for the Mayday capsule. Commander Het collects updates like water rations. "Strap in, Ghra, I'm cutting the engines. Het found me a straight run through that gorge and I'm using it."

 

 

That's another thing about the Ocelot, she'll glide. Mind you, I was ready to cut in the repellers at any moment, but Het had done me proud in choosing the site. We glided in with due regard for the Ocelot's skin, for we'd be slotted in among a lot of volcanic debris, some of which was, as Ghra had promised, as large as the Scout. No sooner had we landed than Ghra retrieved her bundle and was hefting it to the air lock, which I opened for her. Locked in my sealed chamber, I couldn't be of any assistance in spreading the camouflage net, but she was quick, deft, and very strong.

 

 

"Have you got a combutton, Bil?" she asked when she had returned, her breath only a little faster than normal. She walked past the console into the little galley and drew a ration of water. "Good, then you'll get the gen one way or another." She took a deep draught of the water. "Good stuff. Import it?"

 

 

"Yeah, neither Het nor the admiral like it recycled." I chuckled. "Rank has some privileges, you know."

 

 

Shamelessly, she took a second cupful. "I need to stock up if I have to lie still all day. It's summer here." She ran a claw tip down the selection dial of the supply cupboard and finally pressed a button, wrinkling her nose. "I hate field rations but they do stay with you." She had ordered up several bars of compressed high-protein/high-carbohydrate mix. I watched as she stored them in what I had thought to be muscle but were carefully camouflaged inner forearm pockets.

 

 

"What else are you hiding?" Surprise overwhelmed tact.

 

 

She gave that inimitable chuckle of hers. "A few useful weapons." She picked up the button I had placed on the console. "Neat! What's the range?"

 

 

"Fifteen klicks."

 

 

"I can easily stay in that range, Bil." She fastened the little nodule to the skull side of her left ear, its metallic surface invisible in the tufty fur. "Thanks. How long till dawn?"

 

 

I gave her the times for false and real dawn. With a cheery salute she left the Ocelot, and I listened to the soft slip of her feet as long as the exterior sensors could pick up the noise before I closed the air lock. She had been moving on all fours. Remembering old teaching clips about ancient Earth felines, I could see her lithe body bounding across the uneven terrain. For a brief moment, I envied her. Then I began worrying for her.

 

 

I had known Ghra longer than I knew most of my random passengers and we hadn't bored each other after I roused her. In her quiet, wryly humorous way, her company had been quite a treat for me: If she'd been more humanoid, and I'd been more like my former self... ah, well! That's one of the drawbacks for a gig like me; we do see the very best, but generally all too briefly.

 

 

Ghra had sounded real confident about this camouflage scheme of hers. Not talk-herself-into-believing-it confident, but certain sure-there'd-be-no-problem confident. Me, I'd prefer something more substantial than paint as protection. But then, I'm definitely the product of a high-tech civilization, while Ghra had faith in natural advantages and instinctive talents. Well, it was going to take every asset the Alliance had to conquer the Khalian pirates!

 

 

Shortly before Bethesda's primary rose in the east, Ghra reported.

 

 

"I'm in place, Bil. I'll keep the combutton on so you'll know all I do. Our contact's asleep. I'm stretched out on the branch of a fairly substantial kind of a broad-leafed tree outside his window. I'll hope he isn't the nervous type."

 

 

An hour and a half later, we both discovered that he was not the believing type either. But then, who would have expected to be contacted by what at first appeared to be a disembodied smile among the broad leaves shading your side window. It certainly wasn't what Fildin Escobat had anticipated when his implant had given him the warning zing of impending visitation.

 

 

"What are you?" he demanded after Ghra had pronounced the meeting code words.

 

 

"An Hrruban," Ghra replied in a well-projected whisper. I could hear a rustle as she moved briefly.

 

 

"Arghle!"

 

 

There was a silence, broken by a few more throaty garglings.

 

 

"What's Hrruban?"

 

 

"Alliance felinoids."

 

 

"Cat people?" Fildin had some basic civics education.

 

 

"I'm camouflaged."

 

 

"Damned sure"

 

 

"So I'm patently not Khalian...."

 

 

"Anyone can say they're Alliance. You could be Khalian, disguised."

 

 

"Have you ever seen a Khalian going about on all fours? The size of me? With a face and teeth like mine? Or a tail?"

 

 

"No..." This was a reluctant admission.

 

 

"Speaking Galactic?"

 

 

"That's true enough," Fildin replied sourly, for all captive species were forced to learn the spitting hissing Khalian language. Khalian nerve prods and acid whips effectively encouraged both understanding and vocabulary. "So now what?"

 

 

"You tell me what I need to know."

 

 

"I don't know anything. They keep it that way." There was an unmistakable anger in the man's voice, which he lowered as he realized that he might be overheard.

 

 

"What were you before the invasion?"

 

 

"A mining engineer." I could almost see the man draw himself up with remembered pride.

 

 

"Now?"

 

 

"Effing road sweeper. And I'm lucky to have that so I don't see what good I can do you or the Alliance."

 

 

"Probably more than you think" was Ghra's soothing response. "You have eyes and ears."

 

 

"I intend keeping 'em."

 

 

"You will. Can you move freely about the town?"

 

 

"The town, yes."

 

 

"Near the spaceport, too?"

 

 

"Yeah." And now Fildin's tone became suspicious and anxious.

 

 

"So you'd know if there had been any scrambles of their fighter craft."

 

 

"Haven't been any."

 

 

"None?"

 

 

"I tol' you. Though I did hear there's supposed to be s'more landing soon."

 

 

"How soon?"

 

 

"I dunno. Didn't want to know." Fildin was resigned.

 

 

"Do you work today?"

 

 

"We work every day, all day, for those fregmekking rodents."

 

 

"Can you get near the spaceport? And do a count of what kind of space vehicles and how many of each are presently on the ground?"

 

 

"I could, but what good does that do if more are coming in?"

 

 

"Do you know that for sure?"

 

 

"Nobody knows anything for sure. Why? Are we going to be under attack? Is that what you need to know all this for?" Fildin was clearly dubious about the merits of helping a counterattack.

 

 

"The Alliance has no immediate plans for your planet."

 

 

"No?" Fildin now sounded affronted. "What's wrong? Aren't we important enough?"

 

 

"You certainly are, Fildin." Ghra's voice was purringly smooth and reassuring. "And if you can get that information for me, it'll be of major importance in our all-out effort to free your planet without any further bloodshed and unpleasantness."

 

 

He gave a snort. "I don't see how knowing what's on the ground now will help."

 

 

"Neither do I," Ghra said, allowing a tinge of resentment to creep into her silken tone. "That's for my superiors to decide. But it is the information that is required, which I have risked my life to obtain, so it must be very important. Will you help the Alliance remove the yoke of the oppressor, help you return to your former prestige and comfort?"

 

 

There was a long pause during which I could almost hear the man's brain working.

 

 

"I just need to tell you what's on the ground now?"

 

 

"That's all, but I need to know the types of craft, scout, cruiser, destroyer, whatever, and how many of each. And would you know if there had been battleships here?"

 

 

"No battleships," he said in a tone of disgust. "They can't land."

 

 

If colonial transports could land on Bethesda so could Khalian battle cruisers, but he didn't need to know that. What Ghra had to ascertain from him was if there were cruisers or destroyers that could be launched in pursuit of our convoy. Even a scout could blow the whistle on us and get enough of a head start to go FTL right back to Target and fetch in some real trouble. Only the fighters and cruisers escorting the convoy would be able to maneuver adequately to meet a Khalian attack. They would not be able to defend all the slowing bulky transports and most of the supply pods and drones that composed a large portion of the total. And if the supply pods bought it, the convoy could fail. Slowing takes a lot of fuel.

 

 

I took it as a small sliver of good luck that Fildin reported no recent activity. Perhaps this backwater hadn't been armed by its Khalian invaders.

 

 

"Cruisers, destroyers, and scouts," Ghra repeated. "How many of each, Fildin, and you will be giving us tremendously vital information."

 

 

"When'll we be freed?"

 

 

"Soon. You won't have long to wait if all goes well."

 

 

"If what goes well?"

 

 

"The less you know the better for you, Fildin."

 

 

"Don't I get paid for risking my hide? Those nerve prods and acid whips ain't a bit funny, you know."

 

 

"What is your monetary-exchange element?"

 

 

"A lot of good that would do me," Fildin said disgustedly.

 

 

"What would constitute an adequate recompense for your risks?"

 

 

"Meat. Red meat. They keep us on short rations, and I'd love a decent meal of meat once in a while."

 

 

I could almost see him salivating. Well, there's no accounting for some tastes. A shacking goo!

 

 

"I think something can be arranged," Ghra said, purringly. "I shall meet you here at dusk, good Fildin."

 

 

"Don't let anyone see you come! Or go."

 

 

"No one shall, I can assure you."

 

 

"Hey, where... What the eff? Where did it go?"

 

 

I heard Fildin's astonished queries taper off. I also heard Ghra's sharply expelled breath and then a more even, but quickened, respiration. Then some thudding, as if she had landed on a hard surface. I heard the shushing of her feet on a soft surface and then, suddenly, nothing.

 

 

"Ghra?" I spoke her name more as an extended gr sound than an audible word.

 

 

"Later" was her cryptic response.

 

 

With that I had to be content that whole day long. Occasionally I could hear her slow breathing. For a spate there in the heat of the afternoon, I could have sworn her breathing had slowed to a sleep rhythm. Suddenly, as the sun went down completely, the corn unit erupted with a flurry of activity, bleatings, sounds of chase and struggle, a fierce crump and click as, quite likely, her teeth met in whatever she had been chasing. I heard dragging sounds, an explosive grunt from her, and then, for an unnervingly long period, only the slip-slide of her quiet feet as she returned to Fildin Escobat's dwelling.

 

 

"Fardles! How'd you get that? Where did you get that? Oh, fardles, let me grab it before someone sees the effing thing."

 

 

"You asked for red meat, did you not?" Ghra's voice was smooth.

 

 

"Not a whole fardling beast. Where can I hide it?"

 

 

"I thought you wanted to eat it,"

 

 

"I can't eat a whole one."

 

 

"Then I'll help!"

 

 

"No!" Fildin's desperate reply ended in a gasp as he realized that he had inadvertently raised his voice above the hoarse whisper in which most of his conversation had been conducted. "We'll be heard by the neighbors. Can't we talk somewhere else?"

 

 

"After curfew? Stand back from the window."

 

 

"No, no, no, ohhh." The difference in the sound I now received told me that Ghra had probably jumped through the window, right into his quarters.

 

 

"Don't put it down. It'll bloody the floor. What am I going to do with all this meat." There was both pleasure and dismay at such largesse.

 

 

"Cook what you need then." Ghra was indifferent to his problems, having rendered the requested payment. "Now, what can you report?"

 

 

"Huh? Oh, well..." This had patently been an easier task than accepting his reward, and he rolled off the quantities and types of spacecraft he had seen. I started taping his report at that juncture.

 

 

"No further indication of when the new craft are due in?" Ghra asked. "No. Nothing. I did ask. Carefully, you know. I know a couple of guys who're menials in the port but all they knew was that something was due in."

 

 

"Supply ships?"

 

 

"Nah! Don't you know that Khalians make their subject planets support 'em? They live well here, those fregmekking weasels. And we get sweetdamall."

 

 

"You'll eat well tonight and for a time, Friend Fildin. And there's no chance that it's troop carriers?"

 

 

"How'd I know? There're already more Khalians on this planet than people."

 

 

Bethesda was a large, virtually unpopulated planet, and Alliance High Command had never figured out why the Khalians had suddenly invaded it. Their assault on Bethesda had been as unexpected as it had been quick. Then no more Khalian activity in the area, though there were several habitable but unoccupied planets in nearby systems. High Command was certain that the Khalians intended to increase their dominance in the ASD sector, eventually invading the three richly endowed Alliance planets: Persuasion for its supplies of copper, vanadium, and the now precious germanium; Persepolis for its inexhaustible marine protein. (Khalians consumed astonishing quantities of sea creatures, preferably raw, a fact that had made their invasion of Bethesda, a relatively "dry" world, all the more unexpected.) To send a convoy of this size was unusual in every respect. High Command hoped that the Khalians would not believe the Alliance capable of risking so many ships, materiel, and personnel. Admiral Eberhard was staking his career on taking that risk, plus the very clever use of the gravity wells of the nearby star SD 836/932 and Persuasion to reduce velocity, cutting down the time in normal space when the convoy's "light" ripple cone was so detectable.

 

 

Those fregmekking Khalians had been enjoying such a run of good luck! It'd better start going our way soon. Maybe Bethesda would come up on our side of the ledger. I had screened Het's sector map, trying to figure out from which direction Khalians might be sending in reinforcements or whatever. If they came through the ASD grid, they'd bisect the emission trail. That was all too likely, as they controlled a good portion of the space beyond. But I didn't have more charts, or any updated information on Khalian movements. The Gormenghast would. It was now imperative for the admiral to know about those incoming spacecraft. Ghra was as quick.

 

 

"It would be good to know where those ships were coming from," Ghra told Fildin. "Or why they were landing here at all? There seem to be enough ships on hand for immediate defense, and surveillance."

 

 

"How the fardles would I know? And effing sure I can't find out, not a lowly sweeper like me. I done what I said I'd do, exactly what you asked. I can't do more."

 

 

"No, I quite perceive that, Fildin Escobat, but you've been more than helpful. Enjoy your meat!"

 

 

"Hey, come back...."

 

 

Fildin's voice dropped away from the combutton, although I heard no sounds of Ghra's physical exertion. I waited until she would be out of hearing.

 

 

"Ghra? Can you safely talk?"

 

 

"Yes," she replied, and then I could hear the slight noise of her feet and knew she was loping along.

 

 

"What're you up to?"

 

 

"What makes you think I'm up to anything?"

 

 

"Let's call it an educated guess."

 

 

"Then guess." Amusement rippled through her suggestion.

 

 

"To the spaceport to see if you can find out where those spaceships are coming from."

 

 

"Got it in one."

 

 

"Ghra? That's dangerous, foolhardy, and quite likely it's putting your life on the line."

 

 

"One life is nothing if it saves the convoy."

 

 

"Heroic of you, but it could also blow the game."

 

 

"I don't think so. There's been a program of infiltrations on any Khalian base we could penetrate. Why make Bethesda an exception? Don't worry, Bil. It'll be simple if I can get into place now in the bad light."

 

 

"Good theory but impractical," I replied sourly. "No trees, bushes, or vegetation around that spaceport."

 

 

"But rather a lot of old craters..."

 

 

"You are not crater-colored...."

 

 

"Enticing mounds of supplies, and some unused repair hangars."

 

 

"Or," I began in a reasonable tone, "we can get out of here, go into a lunar orbit, and keep our eyes peeled. All I'd need is enough time to send a squeal - and the admiral'll know"

 

 

"Now who's heroic? And not very practical. We're not supposed to be sighted. And we're to try and keep the convoy from being discovered. I think I know how. Besides, Bil, this mission has several facets. One of them is proving that camouflaged Hrrubans can infiltrate Khalian positions and obtain valuable information without detection."

 

 

"Ghra, get back here!"

 

 

"No!"

 

 

There wouldn't be much point of arguing with that particular, pleasant but unalterable brand of obstinacy, so I didn't try. Nor did I bother to threaten. Pulling rank on a free spirit like Ghra would be useless and a tactic I could scarcely support. Also, if she could find out whence came the expected flight, that would be vital information for the admiral. Crucial for the convoy's safety!

 

 

At least we were now reasonably sure that the Bethesda-based Khalians had not detected those plasma blasts to clear the debris. Now, if only we could also neutralize the threat posed by incoming craft crossing the light cone! We needed some luck!

 

 

"Where are you now, Ghra? Keep talking as long as it's safe and detail everything. Can you analyze what facilities the port has?"

 

 

"From what I can see, Bil, nothing more than the colonists brought with them." Having won her point, Ghra did not sound smug. I hoped that she had as much caution as camouflage.

 

 

Dutifully she described her silent prowl around the perimeter of the space facility, which I taped. Finally she reached the far side of the immense plateau, where some of the foot-hills had been crudely gouged deep enough to extend the landing grid for the huge colony transports. She had paused once to indulge herself in a long drink, murmuring briefly that the water on the Ocelot was much nicer.

 

 

"Ah," she said suddenly and exhaled in a snort of disgust. "Sensor rigs, which the colonists certainly did not bring with them."

 

 

"You can't go through them without detection. Even if you could jump that high."

 

 

"I know that!" She rumbled as she considered.

 

 

"Ghra. Come on. Pack it in and get back to me. We can still do a lunar watch. Under the circumstances, I'd even try a solar hide." Which was one of the trickiest things a scout, even an Ocelot, could attempt. And the situation was just critical enough to make me try. Jockeying to keep just inside a sun's gravity well is a real challenge.

 

 

"You're a brave brain, Bil, but I think I've figured out how to get past the sensors. The natural way."

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"They've even supplied me with the raw materials."

 

 

"What are you talking about, Ghra? Explain!"

 

 

"I'm standing on an undercut ridge of dirt and stone, with some rather respectable boulders. Now, if this mass suddenly descended thru the sensor rings, it'd break the contact."

 

 

"And bring every Khalian from the base, but not before they'd sprayed the area with whatever they have handy, plus launch that scout squadron they've got on the pads."

 

 

"But when they see it is only sticks and stones..."

 

 

"Which could break your bones, and how're you going to start it all rolling?"

 

 

"Judiciously, because they really didn't shore this stuff up properly."

 

 

I could hear her exerting herself now and felt obliged to remind her of her risks even though I could well visualize what she was trying to do. But if the Khalians entertained even the remotest thought of tampering by unnatural agencies, they'd fling out a search net... and catch us both. Full dark was settling, so the time of their twilight myopia was nearly past. If she counted on only that to prevent them seeing her...

 

 

I heard the roll, her grunt, and then the beginning of a mild roar.

 

 

"Rrrrrow" came from Ghra and she was running, running away from the sound. "There! Told you so!"

 

 

I could also hear the whine of Khalian alert sirens and my external monitors reflected the sudden burst of light on the skyline.

 

 

"Ghra!"

 

 

"I'm okay, okay, Bil. I'm a large rock beside two smaller ones and I shan't move a muscle all night."

 

 

I have spent the occasional fretful night now and again but this would be one of the more memorable ones. Just as I had predicted, the Khalians mounted an intensive air and land search. I willingly admit that the camouflage over me was effective. The Ocelot was overflown eight or nine times - those Khalians are nothing if not tenacious when threatened. It was nearly dawn before the search was called off and the brilliant spaceport lights were switched off.

 

 

"Ghra?" I kept my voice low.

 

 

A deep yawn preceded her response. "Bil? You're there, too. Good."

 

 

"Are you still a rock?"

 

 

"Yessss." The slight sibilance warned me.

 

 

"But not the same rock. Right?"

 

 

"Got me in one."

 

 

"Where are you, Ghra?"

 

 

"Part of the foundation of their command post."

 

 

"Their command post?"

 

 

"Speak one decibel louder, Bil, and their audios will pick you up. It's dawn and I'm not saying anything else all day. Catch you at sunset."

 

 

I didn't have to wait all day for her next words, but it felt like a bloody Jovian year, and at that, I didn't realize that she was whispering to me for the first nanoseconds.

 

 

"They're coming in from the seven hundred quadrant, Bil. Straight from Target. As if they'd planned to intercept. And they'll be crossing the eight hundreds by noon tomorrow. By all that's holy, there'll be no way they'd miss the ripple cone. You've got to warn the admiral to scatter the convoy. Now. Get off now." She gave a little chuckle. "Keeping 'em up half the night was a good idea. Most of 'em are asleep. They won't see a thing if you keep it low and easy."

 

 

"Are you daft, Ghra? I can't go now. You can't move until dusk."

 

 

"Don't argue, Bil. There's no time. Even if they detect you, they can't catch you. Go now. You go FTL as soon as you're out of the gravity well and warn the fleet. Just think of the admiral's face when he gets a chance to go up Khalian asses for a change. You warn him in time, he can disperse the convoy and call for whatever fighters Persuasion has left. They can refuel from the convoy's pods. What a battle that will be. The admiral's career is made! And ours. Don't worry about me. After all, I was supposed to subject the camouflage to a real test, wasn't I?" Her low voice rippled slightly with droll amusement.

 

 

"But..."

 

 

"Go!" Her imperative was firm, almost angry. "Or it's all over for that convoy. Go. Now. While they're sleeping."

 

 

She was right. I knew it, but no brain ship leaves a brawn in an exposed and dangerous situation. The convoy was also in an exposed and dangerous situation. The greater duty called. The lives of many superseded the life of one, one who had willingly sacrificed herself.

 

 

I lifted slowly, using the minimum of power the Ocelot needed. She was good like that; you could almost lift her on a feather, and that was all I intended to use. I kept at ground level, which, considering the terrain, meant some tricky piloting, but I also didn't want to go so fast that I lost that camouflage net. If I had to set down suddenly, it might save my skin.

 

 

I'm not used to dawdling; neither is the Ocelot, and it needed finesse to do it, and every vestige of skill I possessed. I went back through the gap, over the water, heading toward the oncoming dusk. I'd use sunset to cover my upward thrust because I'd have to use power then. But I'd be far enough away from the big sensors at the spaceport to risk it. Maybe they'd still be snoozing. I willed those weaselly faces to have closed eyes and dulled senses, and, as I tilted my nose up to the clear dark night of deep space, the camouflage net rippled down, spread briefly on the water, and sank.

 

 

On my onward trajectory, I used Bethesda's two smaller moons as shields, boosting my speed out of the sun's gravity well before I turned on the FTL drive. From the moment OTS had mentioned the possibility of an incoming squadron of Khalians, I had been computing a variety of courses from Target through the 700 quadrant to Bethesda's system. There was no way the Khalians would miss the convoy's emission trail entering from the 700s, and then they'd climb the tailpipes of the helpless, decelerating ships. I ran some calculations on the ETA at the first gravity well maneuver the admiral had planned, and they were almost there. I had to buy them just a bit more time. This Ocelot was going to have to pretend it was advance scout for ships from another direction entirely.

 

 

So I planned to reenter normal space on a course perpendicular to the logical one that the Khalians would take for Bethesda when they exited FTL space. Their ships would have sensors sensitive enough to pick up my light cone and I'd come in well in advance of any traces that the convoy had left. If I handled it right, they'd come after me. It's rare that the admiral's gig gets such an opportunity as this, to anticipate the enemy, to trigger a naval action that could have a tremendous effect on this everlasting war. It was too good to work out. It had to work out.

 

 

I did have several advantages in this mad scheme. The fleet was out of FTL, the enemy not yet. I needed only a moment to send my squirp of a message off to the admiral. The rest of it was up to him. The disadvantage was that I might not have the joy of seeing the fleet running up Khalian asses.

 

 

Once in FTL, I continued to check my calculations. Even if I came out right in the midst of the approaching Khalians, I could manage. I only needed two nanoseconds to transmit the message, and even Khalians need more than that to react. They hadn't yet broken the new codes.

 

 

They had to come out subspace near my reentry window. They were great ones for using gravity wells to reduce speed, and there were two suns lined up almost perfectly with Bethesda for that sort of maneuver, just far enough away to slow them down for the Bethesda landing. My risk was worth the gamble, and my confidence was bolstered by the courage of a camouflaged Hrruban.

 

 

I had the message set and ready to transmit to the Gormenghast as I entered normal space. I toggled it just as the Khalian pirate ships emerged, a couple thousand klicks off my port bow, an emergence that made my brain reel. What luck!

 

 

I was spatially above them and should be quite visible on their sensors. I flipped the Ocelot, ostensibly heading back the way I had come. I sent an open Mayday in the old code, adding some jibber I had once whipped up by recording old Earth Thai backward, and sent a panic shot from the stern plasma cannon, just in case their detectors had not spotted me. I made as much "light" as I could, wallowing my tail to broaden it, trying to pretend there were three of me. Well, trying is it.

 

 

The Ocelot is a speedy beast, speedier than I let them believe, hoping they'd mistake us for one of the larger, fully manned scouts, to make it worth their while to track and destroy me. The closer they got the faster they would be able to make a proper identification. I sent MAYDAY in several Alliance languages and again my Thai-gibber. Until they sent three of their real fast ones after me. It took them two days before their plasma bursts got close. I let them come in near enough for me to do some damage. I think I got one direct hit and a good cripple before I knew I was in their range. I hit the jettison moments before their cannon blew the Ocelot apart.

 

 

"Well, now, Mr. Hansing, how does that feel?" The solicitous voice was preternaturally loud through my audio circuits as consciousness returned. "Loud and clear," I replied with considerable relief and adjusted the volume.

 

 

I'd made it after all. Sometimes we do. After all, the fleet would have engaged the pirates, and someone was sure to search the wreckage for the vital titanium capsule that contained Mayday tapes and what was left of Lieutenant Senior Grade Bil Hansing. Brains have been known to drift a considerable time before being retrieved with no harm done.

 

 

"What've I got this time?" I asked, flicking on visual monitors.

 

 

As I half suspected, I was in the capacious maintenance bay of the fleet's mother, surrounded by other vehicles being repaired and reserviced. And camouflaged with paint. I made a startled sound.

 

 

"The very latest thing. Lieutenant."

 

 

I focused my visuals on the angular figure of Commander Davi Orbrinn, an officer well known to me. He still sported a trim black beard. His crews had put me back into commission half a dozen times. "An Ocelot Mark 19, new improved and..." Commander Orbrinn sighed deeply. "... camouflaged. But really, Mr. Hansing, can you not manage to get a shade more wear out of this one? Five years is not practical."

 

 

"Did the convoy get in all right? Did the admiral destroy the Khalians? Did anyone rescue Ghra? How long have I been out of service?"

 

 

The commander might turn up stiff but he's an affable soul.

 

 

"Yes, yes, no, and six months. The admiral insisted that you have the best. You're due back on the Gormenghast at six hundred hours."

 

 

"That's cutting it fine, Davi, but thanks for all you've done for me."

 

 

He gave a pleased grunt and waggled an admonishing finger at me. "Commander Het says they've saved something special for you for your recommission flight. Consider yourself checked out and ready to go. Duty calls!"

 

 

"What else?" I replied in a buoyant tone, happy to be able to answer, and rather hopeful that duty would send me to retrieve a certain camouflaged Hrruban.

 

 

And that was exactly what duty called for.

 

 

A Sleeping Humpty Dumpty Beauty

 

 

I don't know if we can do anything with what's left of Sleeping Beauty here," Jessup said pityingly.

 

 

"What?" Bardie Makem looked up from the Jefferson militiaman who had bled to death. She wondered why the corpsmech couldn't read its own monitors. Except that it was supposed to return any remains. Families preferred to know their relatives had been duly buried - somewhere. Even space was more acceptable than MIA. With a sigh for him, she consigned the militiaman into the organ-removal slot of the triage area.

 

 

Then she craned her head over to Jessup's gurney and caught her breath. The face inside the helmet was of a very handsome man: tri-d handsome, though the strength of mouth and chin suggested character as well as looks. She rubbed muck and char off the helmet plate. Pilot, Bonnie Parker? Headhunter troop carrier?

 

 

"You know, Bard," Nellie Jessup went on as she continued her evaluation, "I think those new pressure suits actually work. This one's managed to control his bleeding, even if the limbs are mangled. The medikit is drained dry but I'll bet that's why he's still alive. Whaddaya know! Science triumphs over slaughter!"

 

 

Moving swiftly as she noted his vital signs, Bardie Makem fed his ID into the hospital ship's main banks. They must have fixed the glitch that last Khalian missile had caused in the internal system because the terminal printed up large and clear. "O'Hara, Roger Elliott Christopher." An O'Hara? She ignored the service garbage and scrolled down to the medical data she'd need, blood type and factors, latest jabs, previous injuries - and he had a fair number - good recovery from all repair jobs.

 

 

"Another thing, the genital cap worked, too, dented but the Al's all there." "Al" being Nellie's abbreviation for "all important" when dealing with male patients. "Jeez! It's his own face," Jessup remarked, amazed, as she noticed the medical log on Roger O'Hara. "Only the one scar: gives his face a roguish look. But, Stitches, I don't think you can reassemble all the parts of him."

 

 

"What're the cerebral functions like?" Bardie reviewed the medical data.

 

 

"Not bad," Jessup said, scanning the gurney monitor. "Must be a tough mother. Left arm is hanging on by a skin flap just below the elbow, but whatever it was missed the joint. Most of the left bicep is gone and the shoulder joint, left knee crushed, thigh broken in nine places, yeah, and his left foot's off. Left side of the rib cage is smashed, sternum cracked, lung puncture. Right fingers gone, right arm..."

 

 

"Damn." Bardie, aka Stitches for her exquisite skill with the microsuturer and flesh glue-gel, grimaced with disgust at O'Hara's records. "Clearly stated that he's not a brain donor, though he did sign a permit for organ use."

 

 

"Hell," Nellie said with vehemence, "there's more of him still working outside than inside. Spleen's ruptured, pancreas sliced, punctured lung, one kidney, most of his liver's minced, guts are scrambled but they're easy. Eyes are okay!" Jessup liked to say something positive.

 

 

"We can replace those," Bardie said, sighing heavily. "But he wants out...."

 

 

"Shame to lose a guy looks like that. How come you just can't transfer the head?"

 

 

Bardie appreciated team support, but Nellie had a ridiculous notion that her superior could do anything. She glowered at Jessup.

 

 

"You know the rules about that as well as I do, and even if we could, there hasn't been a whole body in here all day. His head is legally out of bounds." She had been watching the vital-signs monitor now that the pressure suit had been hooked into it, thus saving any unnecessary manipulation of the injured man. Once again, Bardie shook her head in amazement. "He's one tough fella. He should be dead from the trauma of such massive injuries."

 

 

"The suit did it. That'll look good in the report." Jessup smiled kindly down at the unconscious man: Bardie was surprised to see the tenderness on the woman's face. Nellie Jessup had developed the necessary tough and callous objectivity essential in triage.

 

 

"He's just not giving up without a fight." His BP was low but steady, the heartbeat was weak but working.

 

 

"He deserves a chance, doesn't he?" Jessup was eager, her brown eyes imploring Bardie.

 

 

"I know I shouldn't listen to you, Nellie..."

 

 

"But you're going to!" Nellie Jessup's face radiated approval.

 

 

"Let's get to work."

 

 

There were twenty teams of highly skilled surgeons and surgical nurses on this theater deck, one of five on the hospital ship Elizabeth Blackwell, though all the teams constantly bitched about being understaffed whenever a flood of wounded arrived from the latest assault on Khalian positions. At the team's disposal were the most advanced, and sometimes experimental, implements and procedures available to martial medicine.

 

 

Bardie Makem was serving her compulsory two-year term as a combat surgeon and was going to be very glad indeed when her stint was up in two weeks' time. She'd had enough of battle gore for the rest of her lifetime. Nellie Jessup was on a ten-year contract - if she survived. She had already been wounded twice riding up the MASH courier shuttles.

 

 

Now Bardie and Jessup walked their patient to the stripper, a machine programmed to remove anything not flesh, bone, or sinew attached to a body. Its antigrav cushion managed mangled flesh as delicately as a spider weaves a web. Its sensors also examined hard and soft tissue, sending the results to the theater hood; weighed and measured the patient; retested blood, bone, and tissue type; and could color-dye the circulatory system to pinpoint punctures or embolisms. The speed with which the injured were prepared for surgery often made the difference between life, half life, and death. They walked him through the sterilization beams that sanitized surgeon and nurse as well. And on into the surgical unit, where Bardie began hooking up the heart-lung machines and the auxiliary anesthetizer while Nellie slipped a shunt into the relatively undamaged right arm to start the flow of supplements into his bloodstream and to service his bodily fluids. She kept up a flow of vital-sign information until the wrap screens in the theater hood took over. By then the pertinent damage was also visible.

 

 

"Not quite as bad as it looked," Bardie remarked, assimilating information and making decisions as to what delicate repair to undertake first. It was her speed in assessment that made her the valuable surgeon she was. She seemed to have an uncanny instinct that had saved many almost irreparable bodies. She slipped her hands into the glove dispenser, for much of her work would involve the highly adhesive glue-gel, or GG. The joke was "Adhere to proper procedures. Stick with the patient, not to him, her, or it."

 

 

"Organ replacements?" She raised her voice to activate the theater wrap system.

 

 

"Ready," said a disembodied voice. And it was, for the intelligence that managed the organ bank had once been a senior surgeon.

 

 

"Red? Got a bad one here. Give me the whole nine yards. O'Hara, R. E. C., spleen, left lung, left kidney, liver, new left shoulder joint, left elbow, wrist, knee, ankle..."

 

 

"He belongs down here, not up there," Red answered, but already the chill-chute signaled arrivals, sacks filled with the fluids that maintained the organs. Jessup began the antirejection procedures that would insure that each replacement adapted to the new environment. The catch-as-catch-can procedures of the late-twentieth century were considered barbaric, cruel, and inhumane. But it had taken the science of several species and several horrific space wars to perfect such repair for the humans who fought them.

 

 

"He didn't want his head on a plate!" Bardie said.

 

 

"What's so special about his head?"

 

 

"You're no longer in a position to appreciate it, Red." Bardie shot a glance at O'Hara's classic profile.

 

 

Jessup had glued the thin face laceration shut while Bardie replaced the lung - his own heart would manage after the rest they'd give it - so the lung lay flaccid in the chest cavity. Well, this Sleeping Beauty was also Humpty Dumpty, so they'd better put the rest of him back together again. They both worked on the shoulder joint, the arm, and the battered sacrum and remolded the crushed ribs with bone-set gel. Liver and kidney, spleen, pancreas. He didn't need a new gall bladder. Now they both began reassembling the intestines, repaired the rip in the stomach wall, glued the skin back in place across the lacerated abdomen.

 

 

"Nicely hung," Jessup remarked all too casually. "Unusual in a tall man."

 

 

Bardie merely grunted. It did not do to encourage Jessup's earthiness. She could go on quite irrepressibly, with endless variations on the theme.

 

 

"Me, I've already preferred short men." Today Jessup was going to be incorrigible. "BP picking up. Hey, he might make it yet. If one of those ET germs don't get him."

 

 

"He might, at that," Bardie said, then began to work on his left leg.

 

 

There were many servomechs, robotics, and other computer-assisted surgical machines, but, as every human being was slightly different from any other, even the most sophisticated machine could not duplicate the instinct of a human surgeon. Even the most gifted of the nonhumans didn't quite have the same knack with this species. Machines did what Jessup called the grunt work, but nothing replaced a human on the work at hand.

 

 

By the time they had finished putting Roger Elliott Christopher O'Hara back in one glued, stapled, renovated piece, they were both exhausted. The monitor told them in its implacable voice that they were to log off immediately. Their efficiency levels were dropping below permissible levels for surgical procedures. It had taken four intensive hours of flat-out surgical skill and decisions to effect the resurrection, and O'Hara had not been the first patient of the shift for Bardie and Nellie.

 

 

An orderly came forward to move O'Hara's gurney from the theater. Bardie and Jessup followed it, one on either side, through the sanitizing green-light bath and out into the broad corridor.

 

 

"Officer?" asked the orderly.

 

 

"Yup!" Bardie said, the adrenaline leaving her slightly lightheaded. She had to cling to the side of the cart.

 

 

"I can do it. Don't you goils trust me?"

 

 

Bardie grinned. "No, Naffie, I don't. Not with this one."

 

 

Naffie looked peevish because he had taken a very long look at the unconscious O'Hara.

 

 

"Oh, have it your own way. You always do. Not that he's any use to anyone for a while! Bay twenty-two, bed four." The two weary women turned to starboard. "Monitor says he's unattached. How can you be sure it's you who can attach him?"

 

 

"Naffie, you've had more than your share lately," Bardie said firmly, and she and Nellie turned into ICU bay 22. Naffie was deft with the antigrav unit, slipping the unconscious patient onto the bed, which folded its sensitive wings around its new occupant with tender intensive care.

 

 

When Bardie reached her own cubicle, the first thing she did was program her screen for a ten-minute printout on O'Hara, Lt. R. E. C. She took a fan-bath; even a cup of water could make you feel cleaner. She dialed for a hot high-protein meal, inserted herself into her bednet, and ate. The buzzer woke her and she had to blink hard to clear her eyes enough to see the screen. O'Hara was holding his own. She stayed awake until the next report but with great difficulty. She reprogrammed the screen to rouse her only if there was a significant relapse and was asleep almost before she lay back in the net.

 

 

To her surprise, she got a whole ten hours of sleep, waking up to feel guilty at the elapsed time. The screen was flashing a no-change and she had to think hard to remember why she would be monitoring a patient in her cabin. Then Humpty O'Hara's case came to mind and she tapped for a review.

 

 

He, too, had slept ten hours. His vital signs were strong, all along the line, with no hint of rejection from any of the new organs. But no signs of awareness, no return to consciousness. Which, Bardie thought, was kind. No one had discovered the universal pain suppressant. She didn't like to think of the pain, inevitable as it was in her profession.

 

 

She dressed, drinking the high-protein glop that was supposed to be all she'd need for the day's efforts, and left her cubicle. The corridors were amazingly vacant, and the sounds of personalized snores furthered the thought that there had been no new assaults. A lull in a massacre was definitely welcome. She had only thirteen more days of this to endure before she was out of it. She alternated between wanting to be so occupied that the interminable thirteen days would be over and done with and wanting to have time to adjust her thinking to a civilian standard.

 

 

She stopped in the duty room and discovered that she and Nellie were in the next shift - if there was one. She had an hour's leeway. The information screen was scrolling through data on the last assault, but she had long since ceased trying to assimilate either victory or defeat - it all meant bodies to mend. She chided herself for letting that thought intrude. 'S'truth, but whatever victories were won against whatever enemy, she found no glory in it, no matter how necessary the action, how urgent the winning, or what odds and against what, whom, or why. She couldn't remember now what had prompted her to opt for a MASH assignment, apart from a momentary mental aberration. She had learned a great deal - maybe that's why she had come - but there was a large pit of nothingness that one day she would be required to look into, process, and put aside.

 

 

Bardie was somewhat surprised to find herself entering bay 22 of the ICU and stopping by bed 4. The vital signs were as strong as could be expected, the new organs still functioning normally. There was even a healthy tinge to O'Hara's skin.

 

 

"Can't raise so much as a groan from him," Naffie said, slipping in to stand beside her, his bright eyes flicking from the screen to her face.

 

 

"Have you tried, Naffie?" Somehow Bardie Makem resented that.

 

 

"In the line of duty, of course." Naffie grimaced. "He really ought to come to long enough to know he's still alive. In gratitude, if nothing else."

 

 

Bardie grinned at Naffie's disapproval. "So you could hold his hand and reassure him?"

 

 

"I don't really think he's my type." Naffie flounced off.

 

 

Bardie pulled back the thermal cover for a visual check. All the incisions and repairs looked good under their skinplas dressings. Of course, he hadn't been thrashing around with either delirium or pain. She laid her hand on his chest: the skin was warm under hers. She felt his forehead, smoothing back the crisp hair; it was unusually soft to the touch, not wiry as the curling suggested. He really had the most handsome face. Idly, she brought one finger lightly down his cheek, to the thin pink scar, and was surprised to see a faint smile appear on the sleeping face.

 

 

"O'Hara? O'Hara?" She spoke softly. "Roger?" She spoke a little louder, for the smile was still there. "Roger!" He took a deeper breath and then seemed to settle further into sleep, his head turning ever so slightly to the left on the pillow, toward her, the smile in place. "Roger, lad. Wakey-wakey." His brows pulled fractionally together in annoyance. "Roger, I know you're in there. Open up!"

 

 

"You're having more success than anyone else," said the ICU duty nurse at her elbow, startling her. "And we've tried."

 

 

"Since when is a grimace an indication of alertness?"

 

 

"Since it's the only reaction anyone's got out of Sleeping Beauty."

 

 

"It's not a coma," Bardie said, reviewing the signs.

 

 

"No, it's not. Normal sleep pattern. Doesn't even vary when the medication begins to wear off."

 

 

"More should have that facility," Bardie remarked as the patient in the next bed began to moan piteously. She walked as quickly as she could out of the ward.

 

 

Both she and Nellie stopped by bed 4 at the end of their shift, which had been relatively quiet. Mopping-up operations were rarely as hazardous to life and limb, though they'd had some minor repair work from the pong-stick land mines and some of the nasty heat-seeking darts the Khalians deployed at such times.

 

 

At the top of the next shift, Bardie paused for another visit to bay 22, bed 4, where several colleagues had gathered, including the head psych.

 

 

"Ah, Surgeon Makem," Brandeis said, his wide smile resembling nothing more than a trap for the unwary. "I understand you did miracle surgery on this patient. Can you enlighten us in any way as to his current somnolent state?"

 

 

"He hasn't regained consciousness yet?" Bardie was surprised and saw concern and disbelief in the other medics at the bedside. "Well, he did experience major bodily insults. Sufficient trauma there to keep from wanting to know."

 

 

"Ah, then," Brandeis said, leaping upon her suggestion, "this could be psychosomatically induced?"

 

 

Bardie shrugged: she patched bodies, not minds. "His pressure suit kept him alive, maybe even conscious, but he had to have known that he was badly injured. The suit doesn't record how long its inmate is conscious, merely his vital signs."

 

 

"Good point!" Brandeis and the others turned back to regard the calm sleeping countenance. "Could be! And his records do indicate 'mercy' in preference to disembodiment."

 

 

From his tone, Bardie thought Brandeis was annoyed that another "subject" had slipped away from him. Brandeis did a lot of counseling to "brains."

 

 

"Dr. Makem did get a response from Lieutenant O'Hara," the duty nurse said. She'd been standing to one side and Bardie hadn't seen her. She could cheerfully have beheaded her.

 

 

"Ah, when? And what?" Brandeis wanted to know, his expression almost avid.

 

 

"Oh, I just felt his forehead." Bardie felt silly: the hands-on was such an anachronism with so many sophisticated sensors to take accurate readings.

 

 

"And?" Brandeis encouraged her.

 

 

"Faint smile. Might have been reflex." She could feel herself blushing.

 

 

"No doubt," someone murmured in a droll voice. "One would have thought that such a handsome man wouldn't have objected to brain duty."

 

 

"Who'd see him?" The words were out of Bardie's mouth before she could think and she blushed even more furiously.

 

 

"A perfectly natural vanity," Brandeis remarked with an equanimity not echoed in his hard eyes. Brandeis was a tolerably attractive fellow, in excellent trim, and according to wardroom gossip, had plenty of activity in the hetero relationships that were not all professional, so Bardie wondered at the subtle envy.

 

 

"Well, Dr. Makem, if you would be so good as to repeat your gesture..." He stepped aside and indicated that Bardie should move to the patient. Bardie did not like his expression, his manner, or the suggestion.

 

 

Reluctantly she stepped forward, and feeling more ridiculous than she had since a lowly intern, she put her hand on O'Hara's broad forehead.

 

 

"Is that all you did?" Brandeis asked superciliously, with a tolerant smile to the others when there was no patient reaction.

 

 

Bardie fought a desire to turn and run. Grimly she replaced her hand and honestly duplicated the incident. "Roger O'Hara! Roger!" She let her fingers drift backward from his forehead to his crisp, curly hair, then down the side of his face. When the faint smile again touched his lips, she didn't know if she was pleased or if she'd prefer the deck to open up and swallow her. But an experiment was an experiment. "Roger, wakey-wakey, lad." And once again the brows moved into the most imperceptible of frowns as his head inched away from her. "I know you're in there. Open up!" Bardie paused, cleared her throat. "At least, that's about what I said."

 

 

There was a long and embarrassing pause as her colleagues absorbed action and reaction.

 

 

"And that's all you did?" Brandeis asked, frowning.

 

 

Bardie contented herself with a noncommittal nod, recovering her professional poise.

 

 

"That's more response than any one else has had," the duty nurse said approvingly. Bardie's collar alarm burred quietly. "My shift. Doctors. Excuse me." She was out of the bay as fast as was dignified.

 

 

Most of the casualties she and Jessup attended that shift were fairly routine: amputations, the savage lacerations of the latest Khalian mankind-mangler. There was satisfaction in saving all the lives, but Bardie suffered from a most insistent hallucination: O'Hara's smile on nearly every patient.

 

 

At the end of her shift, she went back to bay 22, bed 4 and read the latest chart entries. Technically Roger O'Hara had not regained consciousness. There was no one else in the bay. Feeling decidedly self-conscious, Bardie stroked his forehead, entangling his curls in her fingers, then let her fingers ride down the side of his face. The faint smile appeared,

 

 

"Roger," she said softly, caressingly, "you're in there. Please don't keep hiding. It's all right to wake up. You're in your own body. We're not allowed to disembody you, you know. That's why you have the option. But you're all right. Really, you are! You're still in one piece and recovering far better than could be expected."

 

 

She repeated the caress and he stirred, a deep "mmmm" starting in his throat, as he licked his lips.

 

 

"Thataboy, Roger." She dipped her fingers in the water glass and passed it across his lips, which surprisingly were not as dry as they ought to be. "C'mon, Roger. Wake up." Again the frown. "Don't want to wake up, do you? Well, it's okay to. You'll be just fine. Only wake up. I think Brandeis has some ideas about you, flyboy, that you wouldn't like at all. So I really do advise you to wake up." The frown was deeper, Roger's head turned as if resisting the request. "Do it for me, will you, Roger? Wake up for Bardie, will you?" She smoothed his hair back, fondling it, testing its softness and the way it curled tightly about her finger. "You're some mother's son, Roger. C'mon, sweetheart, open your eyes!" She made her tone wheedlingly loving. The eyelids trembled and the muscles in his cheeks and temples moved. "It's really okay to wake up, Roger."

 

 

She chuckled. "You sure don't like that word, do you?" The frown obediently appeared but it was deeper now. "I wonder why. The call to duty, or merely back to life again. A guy who looks like you wouldn't have much trouble with life. And you'll be out of this war - that is, if you decide to... rouse!" She grinned as she substituted a synonym. Then, out of pure mischief, remembering what Jessup had originally called him, she bent forward, "Roger, Sleeping Beauty," and kissed him on the lips.

 

 

Simultaneously she heard movement just beyond her and saw his eyelids flutter open, blinking wildly to focus. She slipped from the bed and out of the bay before she could be hailed. Safely back in her cubicle, she dialed up bay 22, bed 4 and saw the alert readings of the alpha waves. Sleeping Beauty had awakened.

 

 

She got her wish to be so busy in the final days of her contract that she had no time to think beyond the moment's work. She woke that last morning on the Elizabeth Blackwell with a feeling of such intense relief that she had survived her two years that she was almost in tears. To restore her composure, she used her entire day's water ration in the shower and shampooed her hair, blowing it dry and attempting to style it as a going-home preparation. She dressed in the smart unitunic, tight-fitting pants, and boots, clothes she hadn't worn during her entire tour of duty. She even put on a touch of the scent that had lain unused on the shelf of her locker. Then she stuffed a clean shipsuit and briefs into her bag and the few personal things she'd been allowed to bring, and that was that.

 

 

"Hey, dress blues match your eyes. Nice!" Nellie said, widening her eyes appreciatively when she walked into the wardroom. Two of the other off-duty surgeons accorded her a long whistle before they served her the traditional farewell jigger of fleetjuice.

 

 

There were some letters consigned to her to bring home. Then Bardie left a good-bye message on the wardroom screen for the rest of her MASH friends before it was time to take the shuttle that would bring her on the first leg of her homeward journey. Nellie insisted on going with her to the air lock.

 

 

"Oh, Stitches, I'll never have another as good as you, I'm sure I won't," Nellie said, unexpectedly sobbing in their farewell embrace.

 

 

Bardie held her off, rather chuffed that the case-hardened nurse had such a sentimental streak. "How many surgeons have you survived so far, Nellie?"

 

 

"It doesn't matter," Nellie said, gulping. "It's you I'll miss."

 

 

"Not if the next one is handsome!"

 

 

"Speaking of," Nellie said, her sobs miraculously staunched as she looked down the ramp, "here's Sleeping Beauty himself!"

 

 

Bardie cast a glance over her shoulder and saw, in the stream of wounded being evacuated on this shuttle, Lt. Roger Elliott Christopher O'Hara on an antigrav seat being guided by Naffie, who was chatting affably to his charge. The pilot wore a pleasant enough expression but the slight furrow to his brows indicated more tolerance than interest. So he hadn't been one for Naffie after all. Awake, though still semirecumbent, and responding, Roger O'Hara was really too good-looking for anyone's peace of mind. And his hair curled outrageously over a still-pale face.

 

 

"Amazing recovery," Nellie went on. "Brandeis had hoped to make him a special study case. I heard he woke up the moment he found out."

 

 

Bardie hurried the good-byes as much as she could, wanting somehow to get aboard the shuttle before Roger arrived at the air lock. She succeeded, wondering during the takeoff procedures why she had run like a startled virgin at the sight of him.

 

 

Her reaction puzzled her all through the long, boring run to the relief vessel. Then, just as the shuttle locked on to the mother hospital ship, she realized what had startled her: of all the men and women she had operated on, Lt. Roger O'Hara was the only one whose face she recognized. And it hadn't that much to do with the Sleeping Beauty aspect of their patient-doctor relationship. She did ward rounds frequently enough, but the patients were bay and bed numbers, wound descriptions, severity categories that she forgot as soon as she moved on to the next wounded body. And it couldn't have anything to do with kissing the man, or his startling return to consciousness as a result of that method of resuscitation. It certainly couldn't have anything to do with him being a sleeping beauty, a frog prince, or a humpty-dumpty.

 

 

Fortunately the usual well-organized confusion as the wounded were the first to be disembarked broke into that remarkable revelation. Bardie caught a brief glimpse of O'Hara being air-cushioned out, his eyes closed. She wondered briefly if he'd made the trip all right: two weeks was not long enough to mend his desperate wounds.

 

 

She had received her cabin assignment and was settling into quarters considerably larger than those she had enjoyed in the Elizabeth Blackwell: she had space to stand in and a pull-down desk surface and stool as well as her own sanitary cabinet. She had just turned on the screen to familiarize herself with the ship's facilities when the buzzer went off and the screen cleared to a duty station.

 

 

"Major Surgeon Makem, please report to deck C, ward station G."

 

 

"What's the problem?" The corpsman glanced down to his right. "You're surgeon of record to a Lt. R. E. C. O'Hara?"

 

 

"That's right. What's wrong?" Maybe he'd been evacuated too soon.

 

 

"He won't wake up."

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"If you'd please come. Major?" Long-service corpsmen could develop a tone that was tantamount to an order.

 

 

Besides being worried about O'Hara, Bardie was curious. She had seen O'Hara leave the shuttle with his eyes closed, but for him to have slept? With the normal bucketing, creaking, and groaning on even the newest shuttle, much less the noise of its occupants, that was unlikely.

 

 

She keyed in the ship's deck plan and first located that antigrav shaft nearest her quarters on H deck, then ward G on C deck. When she got there, the officious corpsman was waiting for her with ill-concealed impatience. His expression said "you took your time," but he merely gave her a curt nod of his head and gestured for her to follow him.

 

 

"If you'll check him over, Major, since you're familiar with his case..." the corpsman said, stepping aside for her to enter the cabin. He shut the door immediately behind her and Bardie wondered if she should report his most unusual behavior to the deck physician.

 

 

But there was Roger Elliott Christopher O'Hara, neatly cocooned in his sensor sheet, and the printout over his bunk gave her no cause for immediate alarm. Except that he looked rather more pale than he ought. She approached the berth, noting the light sheen of sweat on his brow. The sensor did not indicate any unusual amount of pain reaction, and according to his chart, he'd been given medication two hours before.

 

 

Without realizing her intention, she laid her hand against his forehead, moist and cool. Her fingers, of their own accord, strayed to the crisp, but soft, curls. "Okay, mate, what's this all about? You were in good shape when Naffie wheeled you in." Did she detect the faintest wrinkle of a frown? She stroked his forehead again. "If you're not careful, you'll still end up in Brandeis's files, pulling this Sleeping Beauty act."

 

 

"There's only one way to wake a sleeping beauty, you know," he said, his eyes still closed. "I liked it the first time. But I wasn't sure if you were real or not until I saw you ahead of me on the gangplank. Brandeis had me believing you didn't exist at all except as a wish-fulfillment dream." Suddenly he opened his eyes, and they were a startling shade of clear green. He turned his head slowly to look at her. "But you did kiss me then,, didn't you? And I had to wake up because that's how the charm works, isn't it?"

 

 

She couldn't believe his ingenuousness: he couldn't have lived through three years' service and still believe in fairy tales, could he?

 

 

"You're no Sleeping Beauty, O'Hara. More Humpty Dumpty."

 

 

"That's why I had to see you, Bardie Makem," he said so earnestly that his rather rich baritone struck answering chords all down her spine. "I knew how bad I was hurt before I finally passed out and I was terrified that..." His voice broke and he swallowed convulsively. No, Roger O'Hara hadn't believed in any fairy tales, but he had feared to end up in a personal horror story. "I needed to know that you were real, Bardie Makem. And not a fairy tale."

 

 

"Alice in Wonderland..."

 

 

His smile had an almost breathtaking charisma to it. "Naffie told me it was wonders you did for me all right enough and no mistaking it, and not a king's horse in sight."

 

 

"So, you played Sleeping Beauty again to entice me into your clutches?"

 

 

"I sure as hell can't come to you for a while yet." He twisted his shoulders restlessly; then his smile became mischievous. "Would you take as a given that I'm sweeping you off your feet, to plonk you on my white charger and carry you off into the sunset to live happily ever after together..." His face was merry with his smile but the intense look in his vivid green eyes affected Bardie far more than she had the right to anticipate. "At least for the duration of this voyage... that'd give me a good reason to wake up again." He closed his eyes, schooled his handsome face into repose, but a hopeful smile pulled at the comers of his mouth.

 

 

Laughing at his whimsy and more than willing to enjoy some happily-ever-after as an anodyne to the past two years, Bardie bent to bestow on O'Hara the favor he had requested.

 

 

The kiss became considerably more magical than Bardie Makem could ever have expected!

 

 

The Mandalay Cure

 

 

Her intercom screen blinked and Amalfi Trotter looked up from the frustration of her life-support-system reports, grateful for an interruption.

 

 

"Captain requests a meeting of all officers in the ward-room at sixteen-thirty."

 

 

"Fardles, that's barely time enough to get there!" As a Life Support Systems officer, she was quartered on 9 deck, in the bowels of the troop carrier Mandalay.

 

 

With one hand, she toggled the acknowledgment switch as she began to strip off her coverall, stinking dirty from her latest wriggling tour of the air-conditioning systems. She'd been positive that she would find dead vermin to account for some of the pong that soured the Mandalay's air. She was a conscientious officer and had done her best with filters, purifiers, and deodorizers to neutralize the pervasive reek.

 

 

She lay awake in her bunk night after night, trying to figure out what could be generating or perpetuating the odors, which, she was certain, were one of the chief reasons why she - and most of the complement of the Mandalay - didn't sleep well. It was that kind of a nightmare combination of stenches. Perversely enough, the heads on all decks were reasonably free of unpleasant odors.

 

 

In fact, Cookie had told her that it was getting to be a joke: go to the head for a cleaner breath of air. Cramming her fouled coverall into the reconditioner, she stepped into the jetter, turning swiftly in the thin mist allowed her for such ablutions. Thirty seconds for soaping and then the mist returned to rinse her body. It did her morale no good to realize that she had just added her sweat and ventilator dust to the pervading odor but one didn't appear before the captain in visible dirt.

 

 

Could he have called an emergency meeting about the air quality? She had done her utmost to improve it. She knew how depressing it was to breathe bad air, and morale on the Mandalay was low enough. But she had tried.

 

 

After the Khalian surrender (the official one, although many enemy units refused to accept their defeat and the ignominy of yielding), while the Mandalay was on the surface, undergoing minor repairs, Amalfi Trotter had scrupulously replanted the entire 'ponics garden, coaxing broad shiny oxygen-supportive leaves from her vines with careful dollops of fas-gro. She had crawled through all the major ventilating shafts on an inspection tour and used remotes to sweep those which were too narrow for even her slight frame - was that why a pint-sized person was invariably made life-support officer? - and replaced every one of 743 vent filters.

 

 

Despite her best efforts, once they lifted from the planet even the "new" air had quickly taken on the taint of hot metals, acrid plastics, body odors too intense to neutralize, and the faint but throat-souring smell of Khalian weasel fur. Even after she had located and destroyed five badly preserved souvenir Khalian hides, she hadn't quite eradicated that taint. The residue was probably due to having to flush out the systems while they were still on a Khalian-occupied world, which had given the air its final touch of pollution.

 

 

Her only success was in eradicating the sickly sweet smell of blood and singed flesh. Perhaps, she thought grimly, there was simply no way to eradicate the rank odor of fear on a troop vessel. And why now? The Khalian War was over. They'd all be heading back to the Alliance ports and demob. Surely the fear contaminant should be fading.

 

 

The fighting men and women of the 202nd Regiment, the Montana Irregulars, on board the Mandalay had survived nineteen major engagements. The MI's were crack troops, a great point of pride to the naval crew that transported them to the various battle theaters. With the war over, why were these veterans still churning out the sour pheromones of fear? She could understand it if they were moving on to yet another battle area. But they weren't. They were in a holding orbit, and as soon as essential repairs were finished, the entire squadron would very shortly be leaving it on a course for an Alliance world.

 

 

She fastened the closings of her clean shipsuit, and grabbed up her clipboard of printouts on the air system. Complaints about the air, while justified right now, were analogous to complaints about weather on primitive planets. It was at least an impersonal, unemotive issue to bitch about. But she couldn't help feeling guilty when someone did. Clean air was her responsibility.

 

 

Maybe the captain had got the orders that would release them from orbit. Maybe that would reduce the stink. They'd been hanging about for a long time now, going nowhere in never-decreasing circles. Hope of that reprieve made her hurry down the narrow companionway to the G grav well.

 

 

Once the troops knew they were going home, the air would clear up from the barracks decks, where it hung, an almost visible miasma of accumulated fear, stress, and pain. And when the old Mandy was back in a decent human port, she would scour the air system of this old bucket with good clean civilized air on a properly photosynthesizing planet.

 

 

Everything will improve, she assured herself, when we're on the way home. She scrambled off the null-grav lift onto the wardroom level. Her palms were sweating again. They always did when she anticipated criticism.

 

 

Her keen nostrils caught a new odor, a pleasant one, refreshing. She sniffed about her and realized that the smell was seeping from the wardroom. She identified the aroma with some astonishment. Lavender? In the wardroom? They were desperate.

 

 

She rapped the panel courteously and then entered, closing the door quickly behind her because she didn't want the outside air to dilute the fragrance inside. The odor came from a lighted candle on the wardroom table, around which ranged both naval and marine officers. She slipped into the only remaining seat, between the marine colonel, Jay Gruen, and Major Damia Pharr, head of the medical team. They gave her a nod, but something about their tenseness communicated itself to her. The clipboard slipped out of her sweaty hands and clattered to the tabletop.

 

 

She muttered apologies, which no one noticed. Then she, too, found herself trying not to stare at Captain August. His face was so expressionless that the flimsy that drooped from his fingers must contain bad news. The lavender was to soothe them all?

 

 

A sudden premonition shook Amalfi. They were not going home. She clutched the edge of the clipboard now as if she were squeezing the breath out of whoever issued such orders. Where in the Nine Pits of Hell could they be sent now? Not another pocket of Khalian resistance? Was that why there was such a stench of fear? Only how could the soldiers know the content of a message the captain could only have received within the past half hour? Scuttlebutt was quick but not that quick, and any important stuff came in code, which took longer to seep into general knowledge.

 

 

Captain August stood. He had been a lean man when she first joined the Mandalay seven long years ago. He was gaunt now, the flesh stretched across the bone of his skull, the skin under his eyes dark with sleeplessness and stress. He'd been in command of the Mandalay since the outbreak of hostilities with the Khalians. He spread the flimsy, its message bleeding black ink tracks across the dirty cream of the recycled paper.

 

 

"In code, we have been given orders to proceed to a rendezvous in two weeks, GGMT, with the supply ship Grampian, which will have replacement personnel for you, Colonel Gruen, to bring the regiment up to full strength."

 

 

"Replacement personnel?" Gruen demanded, his light, oddly flecked eyes bulging slightly as he challenged the captain. "Full strength?"

 

 

"Yes, Colonel," August said. He scowled as he glanced around the table, at the stunned expressions that ranged from horror through disbelief to despair. "We are to reprovision to battle-readiness."

 

 

"Battle-ready?" The words exploded from Hamish Argyll, the gunnery officer.

 

 

On both sides of Amalfi came the mutter of mutinous curses.

 

 

"But, Captain, who's left to battle with?" No sooner were the words out of young Ensign Badeley's mouth than he tried to melt under the table from embarrassment.

 

 

"That information is omitted from this communique!" Captain August let the flimsy fall from his fingers. He scrubbed his fingertips on his thumb as if he'd touched something unclean. The sheet drifted slowly to the tabletop, all eyes following it.

 

 

"Then the scuttlebutt is true?" Colonel Gruen asked in a hoarse voice.

 

 

Captain August turned his head slowly toward him. "And you believe the scuttlebutt you hear. Colonel?"

 

 

"When it's affecting the morale of my soldiers, you bet your last tank of oxy I do." Waggling a finger at the captain, Gruen went on. "I got to tell you. Captain, the morale of my troops is so low, I shall withhold this information from them as long as it is humanly possible."

 

 

"How can you keep it from 'em. Jay?" Major Pete Loftus, the adjutant, demanded, raising his hands in resignation. "They know most things before I do. The air's full of fear stench." He darted a quick glance at Amalfi, who tried to scrunch even smaller between the two larger bodies.

 

 

"How could they possibly know orders which were only issued thirty-five minutes ago?"

 

 

"They don't," the colonel replied bluntly. "They won't. They're sunk so low in battle fatigue right now, such orders would result in a rash of suicide attempts, brawls, and possibly even a mutiny attempt...."

 

 

"Not on my ship..." August began.

 

 

"You're exaggerating..." Brace, the naval science officer, protested.

 

 

"We can't cope with that," added Major Pharr.

 

 

Colonel Gruen eyed everyone dispassionately. "I've been the regimental commander now since we were mobilized to fight the Khalians and there's no fight left in my soldiers. I'll tell you this, I stay awake nights trying - " His fist came down on the table. " - trying to figure out some way to revive their morale. Right now, I doubt they'd even suit up. There've been wars before where there weren't no soldiers to fight."

 

 

"How can you have a war if there're no fighters?" Ensign Badeley piped up.

 

 

"You have been apprised of my orders." Captain August rose to his feet. "We break orbit at twelve hundred hours tomorrow. If it's any consolation, the entire squadron is headed in the same direction, not just the Mandalay"

 

 

"It is no end of consolation, Captain," Gruen replied with bitter sarcasm, "to know that High Command isn't picking on us alone. I'd like permission to make a private call on the secure band, sir."

 

 

Captain August gave a curt nod and strode quickly out of the wardroom.

 

 

"Wait here for me," Gruen said, pointing a commanding finger at the others as he rose to follow.

 

 

"You bet!" Loftus replied, glancing about the table to see if anyone would be fool enough to leave.

 

 

Gruen's wife served on the flagship, and had often been able to discreetly reassure those aboard the Mandalay to their advantage.

 

 

"There is no way that I, as chief medic," Damia Pharr began in her gravelly voice, "would certify these troops as battle-ready. They can dress 'em up and kit 'em out and load 'em up but they won't fight!"

 

 

"Surely they'll follow orders?" Badeley asked, his round, youthful face screwed up in droll surprise.

 

 

He was alternately a headache, a laugh, and a raving bore. It was the universal opinion that he was likely to remain an ensign. Two years on a troop ship that had made four landings on hostile planets - and in which he had had to defend the Mandalay from vicious attacks by would-be boarders - had not shaken the down from his cheeks or given him any significant insights into Life and the Real World. He could be counted on to ask just such a stupid question as he had.

 

 

"No, laddie" - Hamish's accent became thickly ethnic when emotional - "they wouldn't. And I, for one, would not lay a feather of blame on them."

 

 

"But... that would be tantamount to mutiny!" His eyes bulged. "Wouldn't it!" Argyll agreed too amiably.

 

 

"It's inhuman to ask any soldier in their current depressed states to trundle off and fight another war." Loftus brought both fists down on the table, his expression deeply troubled. "They've got to have some R and R on a decent planet, not one with the stench of weasel and blood and death. They need sleep and unprocessed food and rest.... Plague take it, Trotter, can't you do something about the air?"

 

 

Amalfi tried to hide behind Damia Pharr, who was looking down at her with a slightly quizzical expression on her face.

 

 

"Yeah, Malf, isn't there something you can do? Who can sleep easy with tainted air in their lungs all night long?"

 

 

"I've done everything I can," Amalfi said, her voice just one note away from a whinge. She brandished her clipboard. "I changed every plant in 'ponics when we were grounded. I've cleaned every duct, refitted every filter..."

 

 

"Had my gun crew jumping out of their skins when they heard her sweeping out the shafts above us," Hamish said, grinning encouragingly at her. "They thought the captain had found the still."

 

 

"Which reminds me," Damia said, "I'll need four liters tonight if I'm to get my patients to sleep."

 

 

"Has Farmeris come out of his coma yet?" Loftus asked.

 

 

"No, and I've done nothing to wake him up. He's better off asleep in that babbling bedlam I used to call my infirmary," Pharr replied, her wistful tone intimating envy of the man's condition. "He's okay apart from staying asleep. He's got the right idea. Sleeping it out till better days."

 

 

A tinny voice filtered through from Major Loftus's corn unit. "Major, fight broke out in D barracks: tranked nine combatants, but infirmary says they've no room for 'em."

 

 

"That's right," Damia replied cheerfully. "Any injuries?" she added as an afterthought. "No, sir. We had warning of the mood and arrived in time to restore order."

 

 

"List their IDs for report, Sergeant Norly, then dump 'em in their bunks with wrist and ankle restraints. There's no more room in the brig anyhow." Loftus swore as the crack- ling of the intercom ceased.

 

 

"Do you think they feel safer fighting among themselves?" Pharr asked rhetorically, glancing about the room.

 

 

Amalfi saw Badeley open his mouth, and she glared so fiercely at him that he subsided. A depressed silence fell on those waiting at the table. Two of the marine captains who had listened intently to their commanders' remarks were now obviously trying to get a few winks of sleep in the lavender-scented air. Amalfi was only too relieved that no one started in on her again. The sound of boots clomping on the metal decking alerted them all. As one, they looked toward the door, anticipating Gruen's return and whatever hope he might have gleaned from his wife.

 

 

The blank expression on Jay Gruen's face as he entered was sufficient to depress all hope. He closed the door behind him with meticulous care and then leaned against it with the weariness of total dejection.

 

 

"The truth is so bad," and he paused, "that not even High Command has the balls to put it in the orders."

 

 

"Well?" demanded Damia Pharr when Gruen let an atrocious span of time go by without enlightenment.

 

 

"I agree." He pushed himself off the door and toward the table. Loftus and Argyll made room for him as he folded, like a decrepit aged man, into the chair. "It would appear that the Khalians are not the primary enemies of the Alliance."

 

 

"Say what?" demanded Loftus.

 

 

Gruen clasped his hands before him, one thumb massaging the other. He didn't lift his eyes once as he continued to speak. "The Khalians appear to have been the first line of defense of an oligarchy of merchant families - of human or humanoid stock - known as the Syndicate. The Khalians questioned named them the Givers."

 

 

"They give war?" asked Damia softly.

 

 

"There are a lot of gaps about the Syndicate but one thing is sure: they subjugate any useful entities and massacre any that defy them." Gruen's voice mirrored the defeat in his expression. "The Khalian War, the one we just finished, is apparently only the prelude to the Big One. And the Alliance has got to win it or expect that every single planet and star system in the Alliance could, and would be, destroyed by the Syndicate."

 

 

"But surely in a large group, a Syndicate, there would be an outcry against wholesale destruction?" Brace asked, "It's just not economical to obliterate whole planets and star systems...."

 

 

"The Syndicate doesn't think the way we do. They may be technologically superior, but not sociologically," Gruen said, massaging his thumbs with such force the blood suffused the tips. "They're prime bigots - hate any alien race and enslave or exploit them. And we thought the Khalians were bad...."

 

 

"They were," Loftus muttered respectfully. "But surely if the Alliance sticks to our sphere of influence..."

 

 

"That would work with anyone but the Syndicate. And the Syndicate doesn't tolerate powerful neighbors...."

 

 

"The Alliance isn't hostile," Badeley began. "We live in peace with lots of other species and civilizations."

 

 

"We blew the peaceful image by fighting the Khalians...."

 

 

"But, Colonel, they began the hostilities," Badeley replied belligerently; "we were only defending ourselves."

 

 

"Oh, plug it up, Badeley," Argyll said. "Jay, what about other regiments? Can they take another all-out offensive?"

 

 

"I don't have to worry about other regiments," Jay Gruen said, slapping both hands palm down on the table, his eyes averted. "I have to worry about mine. And mine is not ready to hear the score."

 

 

"We can't keep them in the dark for long," Loftus protested. "And if we don't level with them, whatever faith they have in us as commanders flushes right down the tubes!"

 

 

"You're right there. So," and Jay Gruen glanced around at the others, "we've got approximately twenty hours to come up with a way to restore morale - which news of fighting a brand-new war is not going to do - before leaving orbit."

 

 

"But we won't be making the rendezvous for two weeks..." Badeley began.

 

 

"If someone," Loftus said, pinning Badeley with a hard glare, "isn't smart enough to figure out that we're not heading back to Alliance territory, there's nothing we could do to resurrect our once-proud regiment. And I'll just bite the bad tooth and get my discharge."

 

 

Badeley looked even more shocked but he shut his mouth.

 

 

"I'd sleep on that notion, were I you. Lofty," Damia Pharr said kindly. "Oh, Great Gods and Other Lesser Deities!" She slapped her forehead and expressions of amazement, anxiety, incredulity, and dawning hope flitted across her broad homely face. "Why didn't I think of that before!"

 

 

"Think of what?" Gruen asked with acid impatience.

 

 

"Sleep therapy! We could all use a really good sleep. I read about the therapy in the Space Medicine Journal. The Surgeon General... someone named Haldeman... recommended dream sleep therapy for troops being transported from one theater of war to another. I don't see that much difference in this application. It could work. It should work. It sure won't hurt and it'll cut out all the brawling, that is... Arvid." She spoke sharply because the supply officer was quietly napping in his comer. "You still have all those barrels of hibernation gas, don't you?"

 

 

Startled, the j.g. had to have the query repeated. "Sure, yeah, hey, that stuff's probably the only thing we haven't used in this campaign."

 

 

"Deep sleep will not solve a morale problem," Gruen said. "It'll only defer it."

 

 

"Used as a hibernant, yes, but used to induce a deep and restful slumber, now, that's another thing. We can't give the men an R and R but we can give 'em S and D. Sleep and dreams." Damia was so positive that some of her enthusiasm began to infect the others with hope. "What your troops need is restful, REM sleep, to help relieve the backup of willie-horrors...."

 

 

"And how in hell are you going to tend close to four thousand sleeping troopers? They've got to be fed, evacuated, and..." Gruen stopped and Damia, grinning broadly now, waved her hands, encouraging him to talk himself into the next step. He stared at her with dawning comprehension.

 

 

"Yup, that's right. Battle dress drill. I know you made 'em all service their suits on the surface. There's enough nutrient fluid to keep every single one of them going for ten days. And the suits do bodily functions as well as monitoring. Why must such expensive equipment be used only in war?"

 

 

The others around the table, even those who had remained silent, began to talk.

 

 

"Malf" - Damia turned to the life-support officer - "can you block off the barracks decks from Operations? You guys still have to run the ship even if your passengers are all asleep."

 

 

"Ah, yes, I think so, except I thought sleep gas is skin-permeable. Wouldn't the suits..."

 

 

"Seal all the air locks from the troop decks, and penetrating as that hibernation gas is, it won't affect the ship's crew," Damia went on, sort of running roughshod over objections. "Now, just a minute, Dame," Gruen began.

 

 

"Shit, Jay, you need the rest more than your men. I promise you, at the concentration we'll pour into the troop quarters, everyone will go beddie-byes and dream sweet. Dream themselves right back into rested, resilient minds quite willing to take on this new challenge. Hell, if they're deeply asleep, we can even do some sleep training, and they'll be fit as fiddles when we rendezvous with Grampian"

 

 

"You're sure it'll work?"

 

 

Amalfi had to look away from Colonel Gruen's face: the beseeching look of hope revived was almost more than she could bear seeing.

 

 

Damia put her hand on Gruen's shoulder. "I don't know anything else to try. And sleep's not going to hurt anyone aboard this ol' tub...." She shot an apologetic grin at Brace and Argyll. "If the entire regiment is suited save the medical staff, and with a little help from the Mandalay personnel, we can check you all out."

 

 

"Is there enough protective garb, Arvid?" Loftus asked. "You gotta have the right gear or you'll end up asleep at the switch."

 

 

"Yeah, yeah, sure. Plenty," Arvid replied. Amalfi thought he hadn't taken in exactly what was being planned.

 

 

"Malf, can you handle your end of it? Blocking the vents?"

 

 

"I'd only need to block off at three deck. But I'll have to bunk in with someone else," Amalfi said. "I wouldn't mind sleeping through it all but I haven't got a battle suit," she added, responding to the lightening of mood.

 

 

"Good girl, Trotter," Gruen said, his eyes alive again in his face. "Now Brace, how d'you think the captain will take this?"

 

 

The science officer and nominally the second-in-command to the captain gave the colonel a slow smile. "I don't think he'll quibble. Jay, it's not exactly a naval decision. Mandalay's proud to ferry the Montana Irregulars. We want to help. After all, if this Syndicate is half as bloodthirsty as rumor makes 'em, we've got to have at least one regiment fighting-fit."

 

 

"Good. I'll just stop up to his quarters and give him the word. Let's get cracking. The faster we can suit 'em all up, the quicker we avoid problems." The colonel nearly bounced out of the wardroom, followed by a cheerful Loftus and their captains, looking remarkably bright-eyed.

 

 

"Arvid," Damia Pharr said, "I'll just get the specs on that sleepy-time gas so I get the dose calibrated correctly. Can't have our beauties oblivious to wake-up time..." She had the supply officer by the arm and was hauling him away.

 

 

"How many hands will you need, Ms. Trotter, to effect the seal-off?" Brace asked her. Amalfi was running the figures in her head, but Brace waved her to the wardroom con- sole. "If this works, I might try a little compulsory shut-eye myself on the next leg of this voyage."

 

 

At 2302, following Captain August's devious advice, every alarm system on the Mandalay howled, hooted, and shrieked. Troopers on every deck, even those in the brig and infirmary, were ordered into their battle suits until the "break in the skin of the Mandalay" could be mended.

 

 

As the seasoned troops, cursing vehemently, struggled into their protective battle armor, complaints were rife but not a breath of suspicion. If some thought it very odd that they hadn't been ordered to close and seal their helmets against loss of oxygen, battle-weary troops don't do more than they're told to. The first insidious flow of the diluted hibernation gas spread across every deck simultaneously. Not one trooper noticed - and every one of them fell asleep, held upright in parade readiness by his stout battle suit.

 

 

The crew in their protective gear muttered about it being bloody unnatural to move through the rank and file, lowering each to the horizontal mode. To relieve the tedium of their caretaking duties, there was a spritely competition about who had the most outrageous snore, the longest, the most involved, the funniest. There was considerable controversy in the Mandalay's wardroom about the competition: they didn't want the results to affect the Navy-Marine relationships when the troops were finally awakened. Captain August had been heard to chuckle as some of the snore tapes were replayed.

 

 

"You'll notice. Captain," Damia Pharr said shortly before they had reached the rendezvous, "that crew morale has also improved."

 

 

"Noted, Major. We can only hope that the improvement also includes our sleeping beauties."

 

 

"It will, sir, it will," Pharr replied so devoutly that the captain entertained no further doubts.

 

 

By the time the Mandalay eased into position in a docking bay at the gigantic supply ship Grampian, even the air aboard had improved from barely breathable to quite pleasant.

 

 

The officers were the first roused, for orders had come for them to attend a briefing on the flagship. If the sparkle in the eyes of Colonel Gruen and Major Loftus was any indication, Pharr's therapy had indeed worked its magic.

 

 

"We'll wait till our return, Pharr, to effect a full-scale revival," Gruen told his medical officer, ignoring her smug grin. "We just might have some good news to relay with the bad by then. Won't hurt. It's been so peaceful I almost hate to wake 'em up"

 

 

Damia Pharr responded with a huge, jaw-popping yawn. "I get a chance for some S and D first, Jay!"

 

 

"S and D?"

 

 

"No R and R? Try S and D. Makes a difference. You will see."

 

 

Formally piped on board the flagship, the colonel found an anxious wife waiting at the air lock for sight of him. Her amazement at his rejuvenation was heartening.

 

 

"I can't believe my eyes, Jay," she said, giving him a quick but ardent kiss under the eyes of the grinning officer and ratings who were in the portal. "Two weeks ago, you looked ghastly...." She broke off without further detail of that clandestine contact and pulled him down the companionway out of sight. "And it's not just you. Hello, Pete, you look rested and raring to go, too. How ever did you do it?"

 

 

"You can't keep a good regiment down, you know," Pete Loftus replied, grinning. Then a yawn escaped him and, chagrined, he belatedly covered his mouth.

 

 

"There was nothing wrong with any man in the Montana Irregulars, Pamela," Jay Gruen told his astonished wife, "that a good long sleep couldn't set right. A little S and D would do you no harm either. I'll tell you about it on our way to beard the general in his lair."

 

 

And he did. Nor was any of the Mandalay's complement surprised to find a reference to S&D, aka "The Mandalay Cure," in the next General Orders. Damia Pharr was given a double jump to bird colonel and celebrated the occasion with M&M as the Mandalay joined the first Syndicate Expeditionary Force. But that's another story.

 

 

A Flock of Geese

 

 

The time storm shifted and that resettlement was enough to rouse Chloe, attuned as she was to the distortion phenomenon. Awareness returned to her. She fumbled for light, uncertain in her sleepiness what she was reaching for until her hand found the slim metal cylinder. She had to focus her thoughts to remember how to flick on this sort of beam. Then she angled it to shine on her left wrist as her fingers sought the digital switch. The display informed her that the relative elapsed time of the latest shift was four days, four- teen hours, thirty-two minutes, and ten seconds. Time in Issaro's society had been exceedingly complex. In her natal eighteenth century, she had been accustomed to judging the relative time of day accurately by the sun's position. But the sun was no longer a reliable timepiece.

 

 

From the stone shelf above her pallet Chloe took the clip-board and the incredible pen that never needed to be dipped in ink. When she had added the elapsed time to the neat columns of figures of time-storm duration and intervals between the phenomena, no sudden insight revealed to her the secret of the records she had assiduously kept for the past three years elapsed time. Chloe sighed. If only she could discern the relationship between time storm and interval, she would be as much in control of her continued existence as she was of the cave and anyone who resided in it.

 

 

"Damnation take thee, Issaro," she said, ironically aware that Issaro probably had met damnation when he had been caught too far from the cave at the onset of that time storm. She hadn't meant to lose him until he had unlocked the rhythm of the shifts. If, indeed, there was one, as he had constantly averred. "Be that as it may," she added on a philosophical note.

 

 

At some future time, future at least in the sense of her own continuous occupation of the cave, she would probably encounter another man from Issaro's computer-oriented society and, with his help, delve the message of the columns.

 

 

Now she prudently turned off the light. It was a useful device, less dangerous than candles or sparks from flint and tinder, and brighter than any lantern. Judicious use would extend the beam's life. One day, when her records had divulged their secret configuration, she might know when she would touch again in or near the time that had produced the compact hand light.

 

 

The cold of the time storm was gone and Chloe was feeling distinctly warm under her layers of quilts, which she preferred to the lighter-weight blankets and thermal covers the others used. In the earliest days in this cave refuge, there had been freezes of such shocking intensity that her people had bundled together under every available covering to generate enough warmth to keep them alive. Determined never to suffer from such temperatures again, Chloe sewed one patchwork after another from whatever scraps came to hand. The cave had escaped such extremes of weather for a long time, and Chloe had a fleeting moment's anxiety that the balance for such clemency would soon fall due. She folded back her quilts carefully, catching a slight odor from the body-warmed fabric. If it was a good day, an airing would freshen them. Should the river be running clear, and the sun shining, she would have Dorcas launder one or two.

 

 

She rose from the thick air mattress. That, like Issaro's digital watch, had been an unexpected treasure, the remnant of camping paraphernalia found discarded by the river. She chided herself for coveting the elegancies when she could not, in all conscience, approve the societies that had produced them. In truth, the fripperies did make life more endurable in the cave. The disadvantage was that luxuries, such as the light beam or the stonecutters, inevitably lost their power. Then one had, perforce, to resume the more primitive ways of accomplishing the same tasks. The tedious if reliable methods caused her people to grumble and be dissatisfied, forcing her to be unnecessarily stern in order to achieve her desired ends.

 

 

Chloe let her eyes become accustomed to the stygian darkness of her little alcove. If the stonecutters had not depleted their power packs, it would have been a proper room, instead of a niche opposite the stores. She listened intently but heard nothing more than the muted breathing of the sleepers in the main room of the cavern. She inhaled deeply. The air was still good, though slightly tainted with the stench of fearful sweat. Chloe thought of those asleep there: Michael, Destry, elderly Edward, the Indian Fensu, moaning Rayda, the timorous Malenda, and stolid Dorcas. Pregnant Dorcas.

 

 

Chloe did not dwell on that problem. She pulled her skirts straight, the fine-textured and durable cloth a product of yet another culture. She had never been able to bring herself to wear the more practical but immodest unmentionables favored by many societies. The sweep of her skirts added a subtle authority to her slender, erect frame. To have pranced about in trousers would have been to demean herself. Chloe moved toward the front of the cave complex, one hand on the wall to steady herself, for the floor of the cavern was uneven. One day she would have paving stones placed in the worst dips. She knew the contours of her refuge well and lowered her head where the ceiling slanted downward. When she acquired more of the stonecutters, she would lop off the bumps. Then she was in the small entrance, an arm's length from the massive door.

 

 

With an involuntary supplication to a God she knew no longer existed, she hesitated before she put her hands flat against the wood. She could feel no vibration, pressure, or extreme of temperature through the wood. She inhaled, smelling neither the acridity of a foul atmosphere nor the dampness of rain or snow, aware only of the preservative in which the wood had been soaked. How well she recalled the jubilation following the discovery of the railroad ties. It had been the work of most of that interval to transport the bulky pieces of wood to the cave.

 

 

"They'll make the best door in the world and we've found bolts and iron enough to make a frame," Douglas had cried triumphantly. "No more cowering in the back of the cave, praying the elements won't devour us. Nothing in the world, any world, will get through that door when I've hung it!"

 

 

Douglas was long gone, but his door remained as a tribute to his ingenuity and workmanship. She had rather regretted his exigent departure, but those in the cave must owe their allegiance only to her, not to a jumped-up ne'er-do-well. She was the only person who could discern the ripples that preceded a time shift.

 

 

She felt for Douglas's bolts and eased them back in their well-oiled slots. She tilted the heavy safety bar and drew the latch. She paused once more, though she knew in her bones that this had been a good shift and terror did not lie on the other side. She braced herself to heave open the heavy door.

 

 

Spring again! Not a false spring with the mutated horrors growing on the strangely altered ground of three shifts ago. Midaftemoon, unless this time shift had changed the sun as well. The fragrances borne on the air were sweetly familiar. Chloe stepped out and turned as she always did, to look up at the mountains, to the everlasting hills. They were all right! The right shape. No help might be forthcoming from their crags and slopes, as the psalmist had once intimated, but their unchanging aspect formed the one constant from which Chloe could take any reassurance. She feasted her eyes now on their blessedly familiar outlines. Through all the foul and fair forms the land outside the cave assumed after time shifts, the outline of the hills endured.

 

 

"You chose well, good citizen," Douglas had told her his first night in the cave so many years ago. "This is basement rock, solid basalt." He had affectionately slapped the stony bulwarks beside him. "Part of the bones of this tormented earth, established millennia ago and not likely to change no matter how these time storms shift. Until old Earth bounces all the way back to the Archeozoic Age, these rocks will endure. Mark my words!"

 

 

She had, until Douglas had tried to turn the then residents against her, and gain dominion over her cave. Ruthlessly she had left him, and them, behind in the next shift. She had missed him sorely for his many skills and his logical solutions to the practical problems of their curious existence. She chose to believe that his theoretical assessments of their condition, such as the durability of the hills, were as accurate as his practical applications.

 

 

Once more the hills gave her comfort and assurance. Serenely now, she could turn to see what had transpired around her and in the valley. The rivers, seen through a thin or young forest, were in residence and their banks unmarred by buildings of any description. Those rivers had watered her father's prosperous holding, obtained from the governor of the colony, rich farmlands, coveted by his neighbors. Well, she was no longer chattel-goods, unable to guide her own destiny and manage her inheritance. She wondered how those gentlemen, her ardent suitors, had fared the night of the first time storm, when they had chased her into these hills. And fortuitously into the cave, which had proved the one sure shelter in this time-heaved world.

 

 

A faint breeze ruffled her hair, a breeze wet and clean of unfamiliar taints. She saw no stunted or exceptional trees. In this young forest, she recognized elm, birch, chestnut, oak, ash, and further down the hills, beeches and willows. A comforting undercurrent of noise drifted to her ears, the conversations of birds, animals, and insects. Into what era Earth had passed, Chloe could not guess, for the mountain forests of the American eastern coast had stood undisturbed for centuries before England had established her colonies there. This particular section had been alternately called Upper New York State, Lesser Metropolis, Eastern Sector, and Red Region and had been relatively unscathed by urban development, Douglas had said, until the late twenty-fifth century.

 

 

Twenty-five centuries seemed incredible to Chloe, a woman of the eighteenth. Yet, in some society future to the twenty-fifth, the fabric of time itself had been ruptured, causing the great distortion shift storms during which the planet was flung from one point to another along the fifth dimension. Or so Issaro had asserted. The storm-bedraggled Chloe of the eighteenth century might not have comprehended such a theory, but the Chloe who assessed this new period of relative stability could accept that interpretation after all the marvels she had seen during her twelve years of time-faring.

 

 

Chloe moved from the cave's overhang. This would be a welcome stop, though autumn would have been more beneficial in terms of replenishing supplies of herbs, grains, fruits, and nuts. Automatically she bunched her skirt in one hand and began to gather dead branches from the clearing. Firing was always in short supply in the cave, and she despised idleness in anyone above any other flaw and would not tolerate it in herself, either. It took her no time to gather the first load, which she took back to the cave, stacking it quietly and quickly in the bins. No one was disturbed by her slight noises. They were all exhausted by the rigors of the last shift, though it hadn't been a bad one, and they would sleep until she woke them. That was all to the good. Chloe valued this time of solitude to collect her thoughts and plan how best to use a new shift.

 

 

She went back to her alcove and gathered up her quilts. As she spread the patchworks on convenient branches, she hoped there would be game abroad this time. Meat was the most urgent requirement. She would have the able men set snares and hunt. The women could fish and look for spring berries. She had the feeling that they might be here for a goodly while. Time enough to explore and see what other benefits might be derived.

 

 

She took a pail from the supply shelves, noting that some of the precious implements had not been stored properly. She'd have a word with Rayda. Born in a high-technology society and loath to dirty her hands or stretch her muscles in honest labor, Rayda had few skills to recommend her to Chloe. She had been in the cave now for five shifts and could be sloughed off as unsuitable. Chloe did not believe in undue benevolence with respect to castaways. She exploited whatever talents they had and generally managed to retain the artifacts with which they came encumbered. Bitter experience had taught her to be ruthless in maintaining her authority and domination. Wisely she had remained silent on the score that she always experienced a warning of the onset of a time storm. With that unique faculty, she had been able to decide which of her companions of the moment passed the storm in the safety of the cave. Fortunately she had never touched in the same time twice, a mercy of which she was entirely sensible.

 

 

So, she would dispense with Rayda at the conclusion of this interval. A simple ruse at the appropriate time would suffice. The woman had no orientation skill at all.

 

 

Would it ever be possible to have a stable complement in the cave, Chloe wondered, each occupant possessing skills useful in their transitions and valuable in various of the civilizations in which the time storms deposited them? Harmonious personalities with no sudden inexplicable ambitions to usurp her prerogatives: a decent assembly of folk all dedicated to surviving decently in this one refuge on a planet utterly abandoned by time's order? The best of all possible worlds?

 

 

As Chloe wound her way through the trees in search of early berries, she smiled at her conceit. Issaro had suggested, on several occasions, that there had to be other refuges on the planet, other stable areas on the Earth's crust or under it. Chloe had scoffed at the notion of trying to contact other survivors, though occasionally the technological equipment to do so had been available to her. Speaking to people she had never met across vast leagues of continent or ocean seemed a futile effort to her. What value would such contact have? How could one possibly pit mere scores of men against this ultimate disaster? She could not envisage that the combined effort of even the most substantial numbers of folk could affect or alter the cataclysm that had over-taken the world. If, as Issaro had maintained, some future scientific experimentation had ruptured time, then all the efforts of the past could not mend that fracture. The wiser course was to endure the phenomenon in reasonable safety and comfort.

 

 

Chloe broke from the thin forest into a clearing. Goose-berries grew in profusion on the bushes. Chloe ate greedily of the yellow-green ovals, letting the juices moisten tissues dried by the uncertainties of the time shift.

 

 

She had nearly filled her pail when a sudden heavy rustling in the undergrowth alerted her to the presence of some animal. She crouched behind the screen of bushes, observing that she was upwind of the creature. For several fearful moments, she wondered what horrible denizen might emerge. Her relief was double as she recognized the distinctive snout and furry bulk of a bear - not a large one and, judging by the way it gobbled berries, recently awakened from its hibernation.

 

 

Any bear could be dangerous, so Chloe eased her way out of the bushes and walked swiftly back to the cave. Would she rouse the men to chase the bear? No, a thin one with winter-mangy fur would be of little value. And a large predator would provide Michael and Destry with an excuse to use firearms. Still, the presence of a bear augured the likelihood of other familiar, and useful, species. Again, she stifled the wish that the season were more advanced and the bear fat enough to be worth hunting. Perhaps they would remain here through the entire summer and be able to gamer the autumn's harvest.

 

 

The sunlight and fresh air streaming in through the open door had not roused the sleepers. She regarded them with a distaste bordering on contempt. The only really useful one was Fensu, and she could not countenance sharing the cave with the Iroquois, for only the presence of the other three men had inhibited his savage appetites,

 

 

Chloe set the pail on the stone floor, the slight grating noise disturbing no one. Michael slept next to Malenda but under separate coverings. Fensu was beyond them, rolled in his lynx furs. Rayda was curled closed to the pregnant Dorcas, while Edward and Destry, with some curious vestige of chivalry, lay across the entrance to the inner chamber.

 

 

Yes, thought Chloe coolly, she would dispense with the pack of them. She had long since gleaned from each what information and skill could be of use to her. She was bored with their tales and their long faces. Wasn't it enough to live through the time storms? With enough to eat and decent water to drink? Clothes to warm their hides? They had no courage, no real fortitude, no furnishings in their minds at all. She had sloughed off far better companions than these. Indeed, she wondered at her charity in sustaining such a collection of lazy louts.

 

 

"Wake up, you vagrants, you idlers," she cried, prodding indiscriminately at the sleeping bodies. "Wake up! Tis well past time to be about the business of the day. Fresh meat must be caught for I wish to eat a warm meal at supper. Michael, thee and Destry will help Fensu set traps and snares...."

 

 

"We can use the rifles?" Michael threw off sleep quickly in his excitement.

 

 

"What? And drive the game away with unnecessary noise? I do not have unlimited supplies of powder and shot...." She paused, seeing the tightening of his face muscles. "Ammo" was what Michael called powder and shot. "Snares and traps will be sufficient for our needs."

 

 

"Then we are lodged here for a time?" asked Edward, and silence fell for her answer.

 

 

"Long enough to profit more by industry and application than needless questions. Edward, the brook is in full spate. Fill the big kettle first, and then replenish the water butts." It amused Chloe to make a water boy out of learned man. "Dorcas, start the fire. A goodly blaze will rid this chamber of the chill of time... and fear." She glanced around to see if her jibe rankled. Edward and Destry looked quickly away and began to fold up their sleeping bags. "Nay, slovens. Take the bedding out to be aired. Faugh! Malenda! Rayda! There are ripe gooseberries a short step from here. Strip the bushes...."

 

 

"Then we may not be here long?" asked Michael, catching an inference she hadn't meant.

 

 

She gave him a long stare for his impertinent query.

 

 

"Why leave ripe berries for birds when they would sweeten our dry mouths?"

 

 

Michael shrugged and moved out of the cave with his sleeping roll.

 

 

"Come! I've given you your orders. Do not dally!"

 

 

Fensu glided past Chloe, brushing so close that she caught the musky smell of him. Yes, despite his woodcrafts, he was expendable. Rutting animals such as he had forced her from her father's fine farm and into this tenuous existence.

 

 

"Days in the dark, and no rest on cold stones..." Rayda's sulky voice rehearsed her litany of grievances. Destry caught her arm and gave her a shake to be silent as he pulled her out of the main cavern. Malenda, blankets bundled in her arms, scurried after them.

 

 

Perhaps, thought Chloe in malicious hope, the bear might still be in the gooseberries and hungry enough to take a few well-placed nibbles out of Rayda.

 

 

She heard the crackling of fire consuming dry wood and looked around approvingly as Dorcas set the kettle tripod in place over the hearth. Too bad the woman had got herself with child and Chloe had not known soon enough to remedy the condition. The docile Dorcas was an excellent, undemanding servant, but not exactly the sort of companion who wore well in the long run, especially if lumbered with an infant.

 

 

"I will fetch meal for johnnycake, Dorcas, and herbs while thee pares vegetables. Carrots and onions will probably suit whatever flesh the men snare."

 

 

Not a woman to waste breath with unnecessary words, Dorcas nodded acknowledgment and went to the sandbox where the root vegetables were stored.

 

 

As Chloe moved down the short corridor to the stores cave, she reached into her copious skirt pocket for the heavy keys.

 

 

"It's ridiculous to have locks and keys in this place," Douglas had protested to Chloe when she requested them of him.

 

 

"Thee has not yet been through sufficient time shifts to know how the privations can affect the weak in character. I deem it wisest to keep our stores close guarded."

 

 

"What would happen if you didn't make it back to the cave..."

 

 

"Ah, but, my dear Douglas, I always shall!"

 

 

Chloe had seen no point in explaining to a man of Douglas's time the true significance of the keys. She had received her first set from her father's hand at the age of fifteen and proved herself a careful chatelaine despite the inefficient, slovenly colonial indentured servants. How well that training had stood her through these parlous times.

 

 

She selected the heavy key that Douglas had scoffingly forged and slipped it into the heavy lock, hearing the tumblers snick. She supposed that Douglas was much in her thoughts because she was, as ever, grateful for his doors, bolts, locks, and keys. If only the man has been as honest in his dealings as he had been as an artisan.

 

 

Chloe turned on the diffuse-lamp, noting that its illumination was as bright as ever, and measured meal into the pannikin. She selected herbs from their bags, her fingers pausing over the satisfactory plumpness. Sufficient unto the day! Especially when the demands on her supplies would soon be reduced.

 

 

She turned off the lamp, closing and locking the grille behind her. Edward had returned from his first trip to the brook with the big kettle. One glance at Chloe and he made haste to get on with his chore. Dorcas had already set the sheet on the fire for the johnnycake, so Chloe handed her the supplies silently.

 

 

Dorcas was carefully mixing water into the meal under Chloe's watchful eye when they both heard the bubble-bubble of excited voices. Michael burst into view, Destry running close behind him.

 

 

"The rifle, Chloe! The rifle, quickly! A bear has treed Rayda!"

 

 

"A bear?"

 

 

"I'd've thought you'd've heard her yelling all the way up here," Michael gasped out. "The rifle!"

 

 

Chloe hesitated. The winter-thin bear and his mangy coat were really not worth the powder and shot.

 

 

"Or did you know there was a bear when you sent Rayda for berries?"

 

 

"I picked there myself a scant hour ago!" Chloe pointed contemptuously at the full pail.

 

 

"That tree ain't very big nor strong," Destry added, having caught enough breath to add his argument to Michael's.

 

 

Chloe saw Dorcas watching her, hands suspended over the meal bowl. She recognized the anger in Michael's eyes and the anxiety in Destry's. She mustn't seem as if she was eager to be rid of Rayda or she would experience difficulty in discarding any of them at the appropriate moment.

 

 

Chloe moved swiftly then, selecting the proper key as she made her way to the gun case. She handed Michael the heaviest of the rifles and two rounds of shot. He gestured impatiently for her to give him more.

 

 

"Let thy vaunted skill make the first shot count. The noise will likely frighten the creature away."

 

 

Michael gave her a searing look before he turned and pelted out of the cave, Destry behind him. Chloe followed more slowly to the entrance and saw the underbrush flipping back into place after their passage. She sighed with exasperation. That wretched bear! There'd be far too little work got out of any of them today. Perdition take Rayda! Chloe saw that she'd have to contrive cunningly to get the woman out of the cave at all after this "unnerving" experience. All the more reason to see the last of the overtimid Rayda.

 

 

Chloe retraced her steps, pausing to be sure Dorcas was busy, the only honest worker of the lot. Both women heard the resounding echo of a shot. Dorcas's hand quickened in the meal, anticipating meat for her stewpot.

 

 

"I shouldn't count too heavily on Michael's ability, Dorcas." And her skepticism was punctuated by the second shot.

 

 

As she waited to learn the outcome, Chloe turned all the sleeping bags, furs, and blankets on their branches. Malenda led the way, holding back branches as Michael staggered under the burden of a limp Rayda.

 

 

"She fainted," Michael said as he laid the unconscious woman down by the fire. "She managed to stay conscious and hang on to the branches until I shot the bear." His eyes met Chloe's in mutually felt contempt.

 

 

"Two shots?"

 

 

"It did take two. Tough old bugger," said Michael. "Fensu and Destry are dressing the carcass." He unslung the rifle and extended it to Chloe.

 

 

"The rifle must now be cleaned," Chloe said, gesturing Michael to that task as she bent to examine Rayda.

 

 

Dorcas was already beside the woman, sponging away blood. "Nothing deep. Nothing to swoon over," said Dorcas.

 

 

"She's had a terrible shock," murmured Malenda.

 

 

Dorcas made one of her noncommittal sounds.

 

 

"Thee surely sustained the same shock, I think," Chloe remarked dryly as she began to smooth comfrey paste into the scratches. Blood drops formed on the deeper punctures but most of the gore was due to shallow scratches where Rayda had scrambled through briars and up the tree.

 

 

"The bear didn't come straight at me," Malenda said in Rayda's defense.

 

 

"Did thee manage to pick any berries before this tragic occurrence?"

 

 

"Yes, we did," and then Malenda faltered, looking warily at Chloe.

 

 

"Then thee may return to that labor and be sure to return also with Rayda's pail as well. Full, if at all possible. There are several more hours of daylight."

 

 

"Oh, you're impossible, Chloe!"

 

 

"If I truly were, then all this," and Chloe's sweeping gesture included the cave, its shelter and supplies, "would have been unavailable in Rayda's hour of crisis." Rayda groaned. "It will take Fensu and Destry time to dress the bear carcass. You will have their company in the berry patch. Gooseberries will go well with bear stew. Away with thee now!"

 

 

In fact, the gooseberries and johnnycake were the better parts of the evening meal. The bear had broken its winter's fast on a diet of fish, and its stringy meat was so tainted by that flavor that even Dorcas's fine hand with seasoning could not disguise the taste. Rayda, her hands bandaged and her legs smeared with comfrey paste, moaned from her sleeping bag that she couldn't possibly eat the flesh of the beast that had nearly killed her. A solicitous Malenda fed her pieces of the johnnycake and ripe berries. Fensu was the only one who had eaten heartily of the stew, smacking his lips with a courtesy that Chloe would have preferred he did not practice. When the men set to scraping the bear hide, Chloe settled herself on her stool outside the cave with the latest patch-work. Sewing did much to tranquilize her after the day's frustrations. Nor did she relish sitting inside on such a bright evening, particularly if she had to listen to Rayda's moans and Malenda's compassionate chirpings.

 

 

The current quilt Chloe was working in the Flock of Geese pattern, its patches cut from garments of former occupants of the cave. She had noticed over the years that blues, grays, and browns were the predominant shades of the rural past, while the vivid lighter primaries and curious virulent pastels seemed rampant in most city-futures. Chloe began a new square; the last of Issaro's red tunic triangles and Douglas's plaid patterned shirt were offset by Fanel's gray shirt. The gray was the finer material, to be sure, but of a similar weight to Douglas's and Issaro's. She did have to take care to match textures. She would have preferred good stout linsey-woolsey or calicoes, for the artificial fabrics of the futures puckered and stretched, thus ruining the look of the finished quilt. Still, one had to make do with whatever was to hand. No one complained about the look of the patchworks when they warmed a body during the intense and bitter cold of time storms.

 

 

They had been so lucky these past five shifts, like the goose triangles, all headed in the same direction - spring. The gray intervals had alternated between intense heat and dreadful cold.

 

 

Chloe set the final stitch into the square, but now she stopped, looking intently at the pattern, remembering with a sudden clarity the people whose discarded garments had been set to this new purpose. And she discerned an astonishing order in that purpose. There was, in truth, a pattern to the time shifts that had nothing to do with the varying intervals of storm and lull: it had to do with having been at each point, of remembering when it had been in past or future. She didn't need Issaro's calculations: all she had ever needed was her own recollections, placed in an orderly fashion, like the patchwork pieces, to see the pattern of shifts.

 

 

Suppressing her internal excitement, Chloe began to sort through the completed squares, identifying the fabrics, the people who had worn them, the cultures that had produced them. Time was like an enormous circular well. The planet Earth was a plumb weight suspended from a long cord, jerked up and down the well, hitting first one side of the well and then another, jounced up and down by the irresponsible hand that had initiated the time fracture. She was mixing her similes and metaphors but she knew what she meant. And she knew where she was.

 

 

First light tomorrow, she could in all conscience send Michael, Destry, and Fensu on a trip down the south river. They would find, she was now certain, a small but not primitive settlement where the south river joined the mightier torrent that flowed southeast to the sea. She would give Michael sufficient ammunition to reassure him. He'd never know. In this time there were few animals left: that poor specimen of a bear proved that to her. There would, however, be those skilled in medical treatments and she could, in conscience, dispatch Rayda to them, once Michael and Destry had returned. She rather thought that Fensu would find this time to his liking and disappear. Savage the man was, but not without cunning and perception. Malenda would go with Rayda. That would seem eminently logical and not the least bit unnatural in Chloe. Michael and Destry could stay on if they behaved but she could forgo their company. Edward might stay on another shift or two. Physically he had limited usefulness but his mind was sharp and she had not yet learned all the wisdom he had spent so much time storing in his head. Dorcas could abide. The babe would not be born for another four months. Chloe smoothed the next patch with careful fingers. The next time shift would bring them closer to Dorcas's original time. The woman would be more content there and undoubtedly find another husband.

 

 

Well pleased with those dispositions, Chloe sorted through the patches in her basket, for colors that would combine well in the next Flock of Geese square!

 

 

The Greatest Love

 

 

written in 1956

 

 

"You certainly don't live up to your name, Dr. Craft," Louise Baxter said, acidly emphasizing my name. "I trust your degree is from a legitimate medical college. Or was it the mail-order variety?"

 

 

I didn't dignify the taunt with a reply. Being a young woman, I held my Cornell Medical School diploma too valuable to debase it in argument with a psychotic.

 

 

She continued in the sweetly acerbic voice that must have made her subordinates cringe. "In the fashion industry, you quickly learn how to tell the 'looker' from the 'putter.' It's very easy to classify your sort." I refrained from saying that her sort - Cold Calculating Female posing as Concerned Mother - was just as easy for me to classify. Her motive for this interview with her daughter's obstetrician was not only specious but despicable. Her opening remark of surprise that I was a woman had set the tone of insults for the past fifteen minutes. "I have told you the exact truth, Mrs. Baxter. The pregnancy is proceeding normally and satisfactorily. You may interpret the facts any way you see fit." I was hoping to wind up this distasteful interview quickly. "In another five months, the truth will out."

 

 

Her exclamation of disgust at my pun was no more than I'd expected. "And you have the gall to set yourself up against the best gynecologists of Harkness Pavilion?"

 

 

"It's not difficult to keep abreast of improved techniques in uterine surgery," I said calmly.

 

 

"Ha! Quack!"

 

 

I suppressed my own anger at her insult by observing that her anger brought out all the age-lines in her face despite her artful makeup.

 

 

"I checked with Harkness before I came here," she said, trying to overwhelm me with her research. "There are no new techniques which could correct a bicornuate womb!"

 

 

"So?"

 

 

"So, don't try to con me, you charlatan," and the elegant accent faltered into a flat midwestem twang. "My daughter can't carry to term. And you know it!"

 

 

"I'll remind you of that in another five months, Mrs. Baxter." I rose to indicate that the interview was at an end.

 

 

"Ach! You women's libbers are all alike! Setting yourselves up above the best men in the country on every count!"

 

 

Although I'm not an ardent feminist, such egregious remarks are likely to change my mind, particularly when thrown in without relevance and more for spite than for sense.

 

 

"I fail to see what Women's Liberation has to do with your daughter, who is so obviously anxious to fulfill woman's basic role."

 

 

The angry color now suffused Louise Baxter's well-preserved face down to the collar of her ultrasmart man-tailored suit. She rose majestically to her feet.

 

 

"I'll have you indicted for malpractice, you quack!" She had control of her voice again and deliberately packed all the psychotic venom she could into her threats. "I'll sue you within an inch of your life if Cecily's sanity is threatened by your callous stupidity."

 

 

At that point the door opened to admit Esther, my office nurse, in her most aggressive attitude.

 

 

"If Mrs. Baxter is quite finished. Doctor," she said, stressing the title just enough to irritate the woman further, "your next patient is waiting."

 

 

"Of all the-"

 

 

"This way, Mrs. Baxter," Esther said firmly as she shepherded the angry woman toward the door.

 

 

Mrs. Baxter stalked out, slamming the street door so hard I winced, waiting for the glass to come shattering down.

 

 

"How did that virago ever produce a sweet girl like Cecily?" I mused.

 

 

"I assume that Cecily was conceived in the normal manner," said Esther.

 

 

I sat down wearily. I'd been going since four-thirty A.M. and I didn't need a distasteful interview with Baxter's sort at five P.M. "And I assume that you heard everything on the intercom?"

 

 

"For some parts, I didn't need amplification," said my faithful office nurse at her drollest. "Since this affair started, I don't dare leave the intercom hook up. Someone's got to keep your best interests at heart."

 

 

I smiled at her ruefully. "It'll be worth it -"

 

 

"You keep telling yourself -"

 

 

"- to see that girl get a baby."

 

 

"Not to mention the kudos accruing to one Dr. Allison S. Craft, OB-GYN?"

 

 

I gave her a quelling look, which she blithely ignored. "Well," I said, somewhat deflated, "there must be something more to life than babies who insist on predawn entrances."

 

 

"Have a few yourself, then," Esther suggested with a snort, then flipped my coat off the hook and gestured for me to take off the office whites. "I'm closing up and I'm turning you out, Doctor."

 

 

I went.

 

 

I had a lonely restaurant supper, though Elsie, who ran the place, tried to cheer me up. Once I got home, I couldn't settle down. I wanted someone to talk to. All right, someone to gripe to. Sometimes, like now, I regretted my bachelor-girl status. Even if I had had a man in mind, I really couldn't see much family life, the kind I wanted to enjoy, until I had a large enough practice to bring in an associate. On a twenty-four-hour off-and-on schedule that such an arrangement provided, I could hardly see marriage. Not now. Especially not now.

 

 

I poured myself a drink for its medicinal value and sat on my back porch in the late spring twilight.

 

 

So - Louise Baxter would sue me if her daughter miscarried. I wondered if she'd sue me if her daughter didn't. I'd bet a thousand bucks, and my already jeopardized professional standing, that the impeccable, youthful-looking Louise Baxter was shriveling from the mere thought of being made a "grandmother." Maybe it would affect her business reputation - or crack the secret of her actual age. Could she be fighting retirement? I laughed to myself at the whimsy. Cecily Baxter Kellogg was twenty-seven, and no way was Louise Baxter in her sixties.

 

 

However, I had told Mrs. Baxter the truth, the exact truth: the pregnancy was well started, and the condition of the mother was excellent, and everything pointed to a full-term, living child.

 

 

But I hadn't told the whole truth, for Cecily Baxter Kellogg was not carrying her own child. Another medical "impossibility" trembled on the brink of the possible. A man may have no greater love than to lay down his life for a friend, but it's a far, far greater love that causes one woman to carry another's baby: a baby with whom she has nothing, absolutely nothing, in common, except nine months of intimacy. I amended that: this baby would have a relationship, for its proxy mother was its paternal aunt.

 

 

The memory of the extraordinary beginning of this great experiment was as vivid to me as the afternoon's interview with Mrs. Baxter. And far more heartwarming.

 

 

It was almost a year ago to this day that my appointment schedule had indicated a 2:30 patient named Miss Patricia Kellogg. Esther had underscored the "Miss" with red and also the abbreviation "p.n." for prenatal. I was known to be sympathetic to unwed mothers and had performed a great many abortions - legally, too.

 

 

There was nothing abashed about Patricia Kellogg as she walked confidently into my office, carrying a briefcase.

 

 

"I'd better explain. Dr. Craft, that I am not yet pregnant. I want to be."

 

 

"Then you need a premarital examination for conception?"

 

 

"I'm not contemplating marriage."

 

 

"That... ah... used to be the usual prelude to pregnancy."

 

 

She smiled and then casually said, "Actually, I wish to have my brother's child."

 

 

"That sort of thing is frowned on by the Bible, you know." I replied with, I thought, great equanimity. "Besides presenting rather drastic genetic risks. I'd suggest you consult a psychologist, not an obstetrician."

 

 

Again that smile, tinged with mischief now. "I wish to have the child of my brother and his wife!"

 

 

"Ah, that hasn't been done." She patted the briefcase. "On a human,"

 

 

"Oh, I assume you've read up on those experiments with sheep and cows. They're all very well, Miss Kellogg, but obstetrically it's not the same thing. The difficulties involved..."

 

 

"As nearly as I can ascertain, the real difficulty involved is doing it."

 

 

I rose to sit on the edge of the desk. Miss Kellogg was exactly my height seated, and I needed the difference in levels. Scarcely an unattractive woman, Patricia Kellogg would be classified by men as "wholesome," "girl-next-door," rather than the sexy bird their dreams featured. She was also not at all the type to make the preposterous statements and request she had. Recently, however, I had come to appreciate that the most unlikely women would stand up and vigorously demand their civil and human rights.

 

 

Miss Kellogg was one to keep you off balance, for as she began doling out the contents of her briefcase, she explained that her sister-in-law had a bicornuate uterus. During my internship in Cornell Medical, I had encountered such a condition. The uterus develops imperfectly, with fertile ovaries but double Fallopian tubes. The victim conceives easily enough but usually aborts within six weeks. A full-term pregnancy would be a miracle. I glanced through the clinical reports from prominent New York and Michigan hospitals, bearing out Miss Kellogg's statements and detailing five separate spontaneous abortions.

 

 

"The last time, Cecily carried to three months before aborting," Pat Kellogg said. "She nearly lost her mind with grief.

 

 

"You see, she was an only child. All her girlhood she'd dreamed of having a large family. Her mother is a very successful businesswoman, and I'd say that Cecily was a mistake as far as Louise Baxter is concerned. I remember how radiantly happy Cecily and Peter, my brother, were when she started her first pregnancy six years ago. And how undaunted she was after the first miss. You've no idea how she's suffered since. I'm sorry; maybe you do, being a woman."

 

 

I nodded, but it was obvious to me, from the intensity of her expression, that she had empathized deeply with the sister-in-law's disappointments.

 

 

"To have a child has become an obsession with her."

 

 

"Why not adoption?"

 

 

"My brother was blinded in the Vietnam War."

 

 

"Yes, I see." Now that abortions were legal, there were fewer babies to be adopted, and consequently the handicapped parent was a very poor second choice.

 

 

"Children mean a lot to Peter, too. There were just two of us: our mother died at our births. Peter and I are twins, you see. But Cecily has magnified her inability all out of proportion, especially because of Peter's blindness. She feels that..."

 

 

"I do understand the situation," I said sympathetically as she faltered for adequate words.

 

 

"Since I got this idea," she went on more briskly, "I've been keeping very careful charts on my temperature and menstrual cycle," and she thrust sheets at me. "I've got Cecily's for the past six years. I stole them. She's always kept them up to date." She gave me an unrepentant grin. "We're just two days apart."

 

 

I smiled at that. "If matching estrous cycles were the only problem involved..."

 

 

"I know there're many, many problems, but there is so much at stake. Really, Dr. Craft, I fear for Cecily's sanity. Oh, no, I haven't breathed a word of this to Peter or Cece..."

 

 

"I should hope not. I'm even wondering why you're mentioning it to me."

 

 

"Chuck Henderson said you'd be interested." No name was less expected.

 

 

"Where did you meet Dr. Henderson?" I asked, with far more calm than I felt.

 

 

"I've been following the medical journals, and I read an article he wrote on research to correct immature uteruses... uteri?... and new methods to correct certain tendencies to abort."

 

 

I'd read the same article, written with Chuck's usual meticulous care, complete with diagrams and graphic photos of uterine operations. Not the usual reading matter for a young woman.

 

 

"Well, then, why come to me?"

 

 

"Dr. Henderson said that he hadn't done any research on implantation, but he knew someone who was interested in exogenesis and who lived right in my own town. He said there was no reason for me to traipse all the way to New York to find the brave soul I needed, and he told me to ask you how the cats were doing." She looked inquiringly at me.

 

 

The name, the question, brought back memories I had been blocking for nine years: memories (I tried to convince myself again) which were the usual sophomoric enthusiasms and dreams of changing mediocre worlds into better ones with the expert flip of a miracle scalpel.

 

 

Chuck Henderson had helped me catch the cats I had used for my early attempts at exogenesis. Cats were easy to acquire in Ithaca and a lot easier to explain to an apartment superintendent than cows or sheep. I had had, I thought, good success in my early experiments, but the outcome was thwarted by some antivivisectionists who were convinced that I was using the cats for cruel, devious pranks, and the two females that I thought I had impregnated disappeared forever beyond my control. Chuck had been a real pal throughout the stages of my doomed research, all the while caustically reminding me that good old-fashioned methods of impregnation did not arouse vivisectionists. "He said some pretty glowing things about you. Dr. Craft, and by the time he finished talking, I knew you were the one person who would help me."

 

 

"I'm obliged to him."

 

 

"You should be," she replied with equal dryness. "He has the highest opinion of you as a physician and as... as a person."

 

 

"Flattery will get you nowhere," I said evasively and turned toward the window, aware of a variety of conflicting emotions.

 

 

"Will you at least examine our medical records?" she asked softly after respecting my silence for a long moment. "I beg you to believe my sincerity when I say that I will do anything... painful, tedious, disagreeable... anything to provide my brother and sister-in-law with a child of their own flesh and blood."

 

 

She might be right, I was thinking, when she said the real difficulty was in doing it. Here was the magnificent opportunity I'd once yearned for, thrust at me on an afternoon as dull as my predictable future. The adventurousness, the enthusiasm of that sophomore could now be combined with the maturity and experience of the practicing physician. I'd be a fool not to try: to be content with the unwonderful.

 

 

"From the moment you stepped into this room," I said slowly to the waiting girl, "I've had no thought of questioning either your sincerity or your perseverance, Miss Kellogg."

 

 

"You'll do it?" And she began to blush suddenly and irrelevantly.

 

 

"Would you mind not boxing me into a corner quite that quickly?"

 

 

She laughed by way of apology.

 

 

"Let's say, Miss Kellogg, that I will examine the problem in the light of present-day techniques. Which have only been partially successful, mind, on animals." She rose and stretched our her hand to me. I took it and held it briefly, hoping only to express sympathy and respect, not a binding agreement.

 

 

"I haven't said yes," I reminded her, alarmed by the look of triumph in her eyes.

 

 

"No, but I'm damned sure you will, once you've read all this." And she transferred half a dozen Department of Agriculture pamphlets and other miscellaneous printed documents from her briefcase to my desk. At the door, she turned back, looking contrite.

 

 

"I'm sorry about the shocking phraseology I used to attract your attention. I mean, about wanting my brother's child."

 

 

I had to laugh. "There's a bit of the showman in the most sedate of us. I'll call you in a few days."

 

 

"Grand! I won't call you," and with a warm smile she left.

 

 

I heard the street door close, and then Esther had whisked in, staring at me as if I'd changed sex or something. It was obvious that she'd had the intercom key up again.

 

 

"You're crazy if you do it, Allison," she said, her large brown eyes very wide.

 

 

"I quite agree with you, Esther."

 

 

"Of course, you're crazy if you don't at least try," she said, less vehemently, and with a breathiness of enthusiasm that surprised me in my levelheaded nurse.

 

 

"I quite agree with you."

 

 

"Oh, be quiet, Allison Craft. Have you the least idea of the problems you're going to encounter, or are that Nobel Prize and the AMA citation already blinding you to reality? Women aren't cats... at least not gynecologically."

 

 

"Well, in a brief spontaneous thesis or two, I'd say the main problem would be..."

 

 

"Be practical, not medical," she snapped.

 

 

Esther was herself again. She keeps me out of debt, weasels the income tax down to the last fraction permissible, gets my bills paid on time, copes with hysterical primiparas, new fathers, and doting grandparents, and she's a damned good R.N., too.

 

 

"And what are your visible monkey wrenches?" I asked her.

 

 

She held up her left hand and counted by the fingers. "Have you considered the moral issue if someone finds out she's giving birth to her brother's child?"

 

 

"A different hospital, in another town or state."

 

 

"Great time traveling was had by all. Or had you planned to transfer the fertilized egg right here in the cottage hospital before God and his little brother?"

 

 

"That's easy to wangle. At night. On an emergency basis. Everyone knows Cecily Kellogg keeps aborting, and keeps trying."

 

 

I couldn't let Esther see that she was making me find answers to contingencies I hadn't got around to considering yet. I was still trying to figure out how to flush the fertilized ovum from the womb. Fortunately, Esther doesn't second-guess me as much as she believes she does.

 

 

"You have flipped your ever-loving wig," she said, exhibiting an appreciation for current slang that I hadn't known she possessed, "but I'm awfully glad it's the Kelloggs."

 

 

"You know them?" I asked, mildly surprised.

 

 

"And so you do," she replied, exasperated. "I thought that's why you even considered such a sugar-mad scheme. Peter Kellogg? Professor Peter Kellogg?"

 

 

Recognition came: I certainly did know Peter Kellogg. The shock technique Patricia had employed had succeeded in keeping me from associating the name with a face or character. I had heard the campus chatter about Peter Kellogg's brilliant dissertations on English poets of the eighteenth century, and I'd enjoyed his own exquisite verse. As with another notable poet, blindness was only a physical condition, not necessarily a limitation, because Peter Kellogg refused to consider sightlessness a handicap. Although I had never met the man, he and his German shepherd. Wizard, were campus familiars. I had often seen the tall dogged figure as he strode the town streets or college paths. It now occurred to me that I had also seen his wife, Cecily, walking beside him. The picture of the tall couple I had all but decided to help, heaven helping me, was a very pleasurable one in my mind's eye, and I felt a surge of altruistic euphoria. Yes, I could appreciate why the sister was so determined that they should have a child. Surely here was a man who deserved progeny, if only a minor part of his brilliance could be passed along. A thought flitted through my head, causing me a spasm of mirth.

 

 

"Well?" demanded Esther, who hates missing a joke.

 

 

"The Catholic Church won't like it at all, at all."

 

 

"Like what?"

 

 

"Usurping the prerogatives of one of the Trinity."

 

 

"Okay, Doctor, what's the first step?"

 

 

In the following weeks, I should have seen the psychologist, not Patricia Kellogg. But, as Esther became too fond of remarking, I was so happy butting my stone wall. Except I was certain I'd found the keystone. I augmented the pamphlets and treatises left me by Pat Kellogg with as much material as I could find on all the allied fields - endocrinology, hormones, uterine surgical techniques - and a very interesting study about successful exogenesis in rabbits.

 

 

I also went kitty-catching again, having exhumed the notes I'd made on my ill-fated college experiment. Coincident with the shadows of that disappointment was the mocking face of Chuck Henderson. I exorcised that ghost when I successfully transplanted the fertilized ova from a white pedigreed Angora to as nondescript a tabby as I could find. The other three attempts didn't fertilize properly, so I'll pass them without mention. As soon as I was assured the tabby's pregnancy was well advanced, I did a Caesarian and checked the fetuses. They were unarguably those of the Angora, and all five were perfectly formed.

 

 

There are, however, more than minor differences between the procreative apparatus of the feline and that of the human female, so that my experiments were merely reruns that proved exogenesis was possible in cats. The successful exogenetic births of sheep and cows in Texas were encouraging, but in the final analysis only added two more species in which this delicate interference with normal conception and pregnancy was possible. One minor physiological variation between humans and cows or sheep was very significant for my purposes: In human females the length of the oviducts before they unite to form the corpus uteri is short, leaving less time and space to catch the fertilized egg before it reaches the endometrium and undergoes impregnation there: at which point there can be no hope of transplantation.

 

 

This lack of time and space would prove one of the real barriers to success. It takes approximately twenty-four hours for the fertilized ova to drop from the ovaries through the Fallopian tubes into the suitably stimulated endometrium of the uterus. The sticky bit would be to catch one of Cecily's fertilized ova before it could reach her uterus and put the captured ovum into the equally stimulated uterus of her sister-in-law.

 

 

The fertile ova of cows, sheep, and cats had been relatively easy to flush out. To overcome the disadvantage in the human, I planned to use one of the new gossamer-fine plastic films, in the form of a fish-trap-like contrivance (which nearly drove me crazy to fashion). This would fit at the end of the Fallopian tubes and, I hoped, would catch the fertilized ovum. By surgically removing the bag, I could empty its contents into the other womb, unscientifically cross my fingers, and hope! With the use of a new estrogen compound, it would be relatively simple to synchronize the estrous cycles of the two women. Standard dilation and curettage on both uteri would prepare the areas for the best possible results and allow me to place the plastic film at the end of Cecily's tubes. The first D&Cs could be legitimately performed without questions asked. The second and subsequent dilations would, as Esther had remarked, require a little more doing, since both girls would have to be in the same room, under anesthesia, at the same time. This meant the connivance of an amenable anesthesiologist as well as Esther and myself.

 

 

That's how Chuck Henderson got to sneak into the act. He was Pat's suggestion, not mine. He already knew of the Plan, she argued. He would be acceptable as an emergency anesthetist at those times when I had to dispense with the regular man. (That also took finagling, but Esther managed it: she never would tell me how.) The moment we contacted Chuck, he was delighted: too delighted, it seemed to me; as if he'd been waiting - breathlessly - to be asked. I was of several minds about including him again, mostly for my own peace of mind, but all reasonable arguments led to his active participation.

 

 

The day that Pat and I were able to approach the Kelloggs with a plan of action will remain one of the most stirring memories of my life. I had called Pat, some two and a half weeks after her first visit to me, to say that I had researched sufficiently to approach the principals. I had already confirmed to her my willingness to try. I stressed the "try."

 

 

Pat arranged an evening meeting, and we arrived together at the Kelloggs' apartment, myself laden with a heavy briefcase containing twice as much material as Pat had given me. Pat was so nervous that I wondered if she feared that she might be unable to persuade the other two members of the cast to go through with the attempt.

 

 

I had to pass an entrance exam myself, executed by Wizard, Peter Kellogg's guide dog, an exceedingly beautiful tan and black specimen with beauty marks at the corners of his intelligent eyes. He stood at the door, sniffed the hand I judiciously extended, gave a sneeze as Pat told him I was a friend, and then retired to lie under the dining room table. I was awed by the inherent power in the apparently docile beast. I was glad I was considered a friend by that 125-pound fellow.

 

 

Peter Kellogg had risen as Pat drew me into the room, and Peter introduced me to his tall, too slender brunette wife.

 

 

We put off the important announcement with some chit-chat, my appreciative congratulations on his latest verses in The New Yorker, our attempts to find mutual acquaintances. Finally, unable to endure farther inanities, Pat blurted out:

 

 

"How would you like to be parents?"

 

 

Even the dog came alert in the sudden pulsing silence.

 

 

"Pat..." began Peter in gentle admonishment, but Cecily overrode him with a sharp, nearly hysterical "How?"

 

 

"Exogenesis," Pat said, expelling the word on a breath.

 

 

Peter and Cecily looked at me. I include Peter, because he never did fail to turn his lifeless eyes in the direction of the speaker, a habit most blind people never acquire but one that is very reassuring to the sighted. Peter always tried to avoid embarrassing people.

 

 

"I take it that you have arrived at some method of accomplishing exogenesis. Doctor?" Peter asked.

 

 

"Dr. Craft believes it can be done." Pat was careful, as I'd insisted she should be, not to present the plan as an established procedure. "There are problems," she said, in a masterpiece of understatement; "much to be discussed..."

 

 

"Who's the other mother?" asked Cecily, jumping a giant step ahead.

 

 

Peter turned unerringly toward his sister. At Cecily's gasping sob, Wizard gave a low whine. Peter quietly reassured him.

 

 

"I had a suspicion you'd been up to something. Pat," he said dryly. "I hardly anticipated something as momentous as this. Smacks of the incestuous, I'd say, doesn't it. Doctor?"

 

 

"Peter! How can you even mention such a thing in connection with your sister after she's suggested this... incredible sacrifice?" Cecily's voice quavered, partly from outrage, partly from tears.

 

 

"What else can it be called when your own sister proposes to have your child..." he said, smiling slightly as he patted his wife's hand.

 

 

My respect for Peter Kellogg's perception rose several notches. He had unerringly touched one of the difficulties, taken it out, laughed at it and let it be put in its place.

 

 

"It'll be my child," Cecily said fervently. The terrible child-hunger in her face vividly confirmed all that Pat had told me about Cecily's obsession for a child of her own conception. I had seen that look before, in other eyes, and had been unable to bring hope. What if I could bring hope now? And what would happen to Cecily if we failed?

 

 

"It won't, of course, draw anything but prenatal nourishment from its host-mother," I said, resorting to the clinical to hide my emotions. "That is - and I cannot stress this strongly enough, Mrs. Kellogg - if transplantation is possible. You do realize that's a very big if."

 

 

Cecily gave a sigh and then smiled impishly at me. "I know, Dr. Craft. I must not permit myself to hope. But don't you see, hope is so vital an ingredient."

 

 

I saw Peter's fingers tighten around her hand, and then he turned to me. "What are the chances?"

 

 

"Would you believe one out of four cats?" I couldn't bear the tautness of Cecily's face. "Actually, it works out four to one in rabbits, and with livestock experiments in Texas, a ninety-five percent success with cows and sheep."

 

 

"Baaaaa," said Cecily, and again she grinned impishly to show that she was in complete control of herself.

 

 

"I've prepared some diagrams, and I've a plan of action to propose," I said, and dug into the bulging briefcase.

 

 

Several hours later, we had discussed procedure, probabilities, problems from as many angles as four minds could find. I had explained all the relevant medical procedures, some of which seemed brutal, in the apartment of the prospective parents. My eyes were drawn again and again, unwillingly, to Cecily's oval, delicately flushed face. Despite her continued lightness of word and expression, the hope rekindled was heartbreakingly apparent.

 

 

Pat moved to sit beside her brother on the couch. As Peter relied on the verbal descriptions, he leaned back so that the two women could crowd over the diagrams and charts spread over the coffee table. Occasionally he seized his wife's hand to calm her; once, as I explained Pat's role, his other hand gripped his sister's shoulder so tightly that she winced a little. His immense patience and incredible perception made him a good focal point for me, and it was easier to speak to his calm, attentive face than to Cecily's.

 

 

He and his wife must have already examined the possibility of exogenesis, or had a superior knowledge of biology, for they showed their familiarity with the principles involved.

 

 

"Yes, I can see why cats - maybe; sheep and cows, yes. Let's hope there's more of the bovine in you, darling, than the feline," Peter said, summing up.

 

 

"Ha! We'll just blanket the target areas until we succeed. And try and try and try," said Cecily staunchly. "I'm more than willing."

 

 

"And that, my darling, is exactly what we have to guard against in you."

 

 

"Can you endure the disappointments we're likely to encounter, Cecily?" I asked her bluntly. "In view of your previous medical history," and they all knew I meant psychological, "you will have the hardest task."

 

 

"Trust the men to have the easy one," said Cecily, lightly giving a mock angry buffet to Peter's arm.

 

 

"That's why we're the superior sex," he said, laughing and pretending to duck from expected blows.

 

 

"Even if transplantation is successful," I went on, "you must restrain yourself until such time as you actually hold the child..."

 

 

"My child..."

 

 

"In your arms."

 

 

"Hey, don't hold your breath," Pat piped up, for that was what Cecily was doing. She laughed sheepishly with the rest of us.

 

 

I left Pat with them after making arrangements with Cecily to come to my office for a preliminary pelvic. Then I'd schedule the initial D&Cs for both women.

 

 

The warmth of the relationship among the three people, along with Pat's extraordinary willingness to attempt this improbability, warmed me all my cold way home in the frigid car. I still didn't quite fathom myself caught up in an event as momentous as this, my abandoned sophomoric dream, might be. No matter: my routine existence took on a hidden relish as I became drawn closer and closer to the three amazing people. Cecily's fervent, oft-repeated "We will! We must!" became my credo, too.

 

 

Those memories were as strong and vivid as the acid interview with Cecily's fashion-plate mother. Night had fallen now, and my drink was stale. I had another one, stiffer, for courage.