Day 298 or so, check

I had been doing most of my days doing my ‘doctoring’ but I still spent some with Andrew, so I wasn’t too surprised when we showed up together. But what I was surprised by was… June! I said, and ran over and hugged her.

She reached out, with an amused look on her face, “Thank you for the thought, dear, but I’m not really here so I can’t feel you hug. It is nice to see you again, though.

I looked around and saw more and more of my old shift… and my new shift… appearing. Andrew came over next to me and, together, we watched until basically everyone was there. One of the ship crew appeared almost last and we gathered around him. We knew he was the instructor because he was the only one in a uniform.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “You all will be doing a long range sim over the next few days, leaving it only for sleep time. It is a combat sim, against the enemy; but one that is a much more strategic sim than most of you have done before.”

“The ladies,” he said, his gaze still fixed on the boys, “Will be preparing meals and things over there, in those huts. They can get going now.”

We were used to being addressed in the third person like that, and all trooped off. As we went I heard him say, “Now, as for the men, here is what you will be doing…”

“Hey love,” Andrew said, some minutes later. “I have the first hour or so off, so I thought I would come cuddle.”

“Can we?” I asked, “I mean I have work…”

“Go with your partner!” June commanded. “That is the way we work it. When he has time off, you have time off. Take advantage, there won’t be much of it.”

I didn’t exactly want to spend time with Andrew, but, then, I didn’t exactly want to spend time cooking, either, so I let him take my hand (it was important everyone see we were dong our ‘together’ thing). “Where can we go?” I asked.

“Well, not that way,” he said, pointing. “There is a river that way, and that is where the Enemy are. We need to be careful here, too, but just juvies and packs. The others who are off should be coming this way too.”

I looked and, sure enough, there were others coming our way. Or close to our way. It was a nice enough walk, even if I did have to share it with Andrew. “So, what are we doing here?” I asked him.

“We are fighting The Enemy, or practicing anyway. It is a real cool plan. And good for me, too. It uses archers and that is my best skill, you know that. I’ll be up in one of the towers, getting to shoot at The Enemy. Real Enemy!”

“Adults?” I asked.

“Yes! We have this whole big plan. We’re building these towers…”

“Here?” I asked, “I thought you said there were no adult Enemy here?”

“Not quite here,” he said. “We are making the bricks here… you want to see?”

I could see that it was what he wanted, so I agreed, and, pulling my by the hand, he took me back to the work area. “Look at this,” he said.

There were a bunch of boys, stripped to their shorts, all digging up dirt and putting it in these skid barrows. Other boys were dragging these barrows over to this great big machine, which was where Andrew had taken me. There other boys were shoveling the dirt in.

“What does it do?” I asked.

“It is really cool. It is high tech way of doing low tech. It takes the dirt in, mixes it really well with water, and the squishes them really good.”

“Them?”

“The bricks. Look.”

We went to the far end of the machine where other boys, including Martin, were taking a bunch of bricks, big bricks, about as big as my head, out of the end of the machine and taking them over to a field they had cleared. “You see, the machine squishes almost all of the water out, so they dry pretty quickly. In a couple of days we should have enough to make the first tower.”

“We’ll take them over to near where the adults actually live, and build these towers, where the archers, like me, will start killing adults.”

“Ok, but why? Just to kill them?”

“No, no. We are going to build a whole bunch of towers and then we will build this big wall to block off The Enemy here from The Enemy downstream.”

“OK, but why?”

“Well, we’re going to kill all the Enemy upstream, and then we are going to put something in the water that will keep The Enemy from using the water to breed.”

“What?” I asked, blushing but interested in the same time. How could you prevent…?

“It is some chemical, and if we put it in the water so the boy enemy can’t tell boy enemy from girl enemy, so they won’t be able to breed.

I stared at him in amazement. “Really?”

“Yes, apparently they only tell by smell, or something. So, anyway, the boys will all get frustrated and go further downstream, since they will think there are no girls here, and then we can go downstream and do the whole thing over again. Except we won’t, this is just a sim. But they are thinking this is something that will work on an enemy planet, so we are kind of testing it, the combat part.”

“So… not much fighting, then? Just archery?”

“Oh, no,” he said, looking at me with a very concerned look. “The archery is just the beginning. Once we start building the wall I’m sure that there will be plenty of hand to hand combat; and plenty for you to do with your surgery. You should get plenty of practice.”

“I don’t want that kind of practice!” I said, thinking of all of the poor boys. He turned and looked at me, very seriously,

“You need all of the practice you can get,” he said. “Just think, one day it might be me, one of our offspring, or any of our team that you might be saving.”

I walked alongside him in stunned silence. This was hardly the Andrew I knew. I wondered if this was part of his depression about his lack of skills; and he was trying to make it up by pushing me forward. I hugged him, which he returned… and I think I was successful at getting his mind off his depression, as he turned us back into the woods and we cuddled for the rest of his hour off.

—

“Food, anyone?” I asked, coming up into Andrew’s tower a few days later.

“Thanks, Aliya,” Greg said, keeping his eye on the window. “Just put it down there. Andrew, you can take a few minutes off to cuddle with your wife. Seth, you can eat. Then Aliya will have to go back and we can rotate around.

“How’s it going?” I asked Andrew, a few minutes later, as we sat in a corner of the stairs, as far away from the others as we could get. I didn’t feel at all bad having this time with Andrew, as all of the other partners had already visited and, from what I heard, had their time to cuddle as well.

“Good,” Andrew said, his mind not really on my question. “I killed one today. It was kind of gross.”

“Gross?” I asked.

“Yeh, we have packs and Juvy’s coming around and waiting and every time we kill an adult, they move in and eat the body. How are you doing?” He asked.

“Oh, fine,” I said. “Mostly boring. But I’ve got my surgery pretty well set up, and I have been allowed some sub-sim time to work on my techniques.”

“Great, he said. “We start the wall tomorrow.”

“I know,” I said, and subsided into silence and some serious cuddling. I knew. Tomorrow would be my first day as a ‘real’ surgeon, in charge of other people and people’s lives, at least in simulation. Tomorrow I would move from short simulations to long, and ugly, surgery… blood, guts, screaming, nakedness… tomorrow it would all start.

—

Greg, as leader, needed to talk to us: me as surgeon, and the other girls, who would be acting as medics, nurses, that kind of thing, but, of course, since we were girls, he had all of our partners present so he could honor, at least in image, the rule that he wasn’t supposed to be talking to other boy’s partners. “We are almost ready to begin our attack. Aliya has set up the surgery here, under the shadow of this tower. And no,” he said, to the laughs of several of the girls, “Not just so she can cuddle with her partner. We figure this is the safest location for the surgery.”

“I will be assigning two groups of boys to the surgery. The first, commanded by Adam, here, will be foot soldiers, dedicated to protecting the surgery tents. The second, commanded by Allen, will be runners and stretcher bearers, taking injured boys back here from the front line.”

“I will be in charge of the overall operation here, and I will be up in the tower for the most part, where I can see everything going on. One warning that I have is, if I order an evacuation, everyone will have to leave right away, and not try to evacuate all of the wounded, the ones that can’t walk. Remember if we get the girls away, we can bring them back to do more surgery. But if you all get killed, then we will have no one to bring the boys to.”

I quailed at that thought. “Are there any questions?”

I could have spoken at that point, since Andrew was right there, but I didn’t have any questions. I looked at my team, but none of them seemed to have questions either. So I just shook my head and he dismissed us.

The boys, except for a couple of runners, left. Some of the girls had partners among the runners or guards and so I dismissed them to cuddle. I would find Andrew myself in a moment. I looked at the girls I had left. They were all trained largely in first aid, except for a couple with more advanced skills. “I know you know this,” I said, “so this is as much for my benefit as for yours, but a reminder. I only get the red cases, or yellow cases if I have time. Green and black have to wait until after the battle, or get dealt with by a first aider or advanced aider.”

They nodded, they all knew that.

“OK,” I said, “If you can’t cuddle, nap or whatever. The runners,” I said, not speaking to them directly, “will give us a warning if there are wounded coming in, and the fort will warn us if there are Enemy anywhere near.

Andrew appreciated my coming, and we got in a good half an hour of cuddling before I heard a cry, from the tower actually (we were cuddling next to three other couples on the stairs), “Wounded coming in,” the boy said, and with a sigh and a last, long, kiss, Andrew left me.

“What is it?” I asked, as I came into the tent.

“Oh, oh, it’s horrible!” Jane said. “It’s Julie’s husband and it is just horrible.”

I sighed, and, using my best voice, tried again. “Report!” I snapped out.

She straightened up a bit, slowed her breathing, and tried again. “We have a patient ma`am who is badly injured.”

I sighed. I loved Jane, and she did wonderful with Grant, but this was not her strong suit. “What type of injury?” I asked. “What class?”

She screwed up her eyes. We had gone over and over our surgery classifications, but they were still tricky at times. I knew that Beth, my advanced aid, was already stabilizing the patient, so I wasn’t in a rush. Finally Jane, with a horrified look on her face, said, “Black class, ma`am.”

“Very well, then,” I said, turning to go back to Andrew.

“But Aliya,” she said, grabbing me by the arm, “It’s Julie’s husband. You have to do something for him.”

I sighed, and went to look. It was, indeed, horrible. An Enemy had obviously gotten close enough to bite him and his entire right shoulder was gone. “Can you help him?” Jane asked, clinging to my arm.

“Not now,” I said. “That is hours of surgery. Beth and the others will stabilize him and, if he lives, I will work on him after the battle.”

I turned to go again but she caught my arm again, “But that will be hours!” she said.

“Yes, probably,” I said. I sighed and went back to the stretcher. Julie, her face all over tears, looked up…

“Oh, Aliya, can you do something?”

“Not now, Julie, you know that.”

“Ooooh, oooh,” she said, and turned back to her partner and gave him another drink from our ‘strong liquor’ bag. He gagged it down and looked at me.

“Good thing this isn’t real, eh?” he asked. “Or my cuddling would be definitely handicapped.”

He laughed, but I could hear the pain in his voice. “Keep drinking,” I said. “If you live you will need it for all of my sewing, later.”

I turned away to go, and Jane wasn’t the only one who looked at me with a hurt look. Embarrassed I fled off to my ‘office’ and spent a few useless minutes re-arranging my supplies. Finally I could waste no more time and went back to Andrew.

“Easy case?” he asked me, as we settled back down into the stairway.

“It wasn’t a case for me,” I said, avoiding the subject. He wasn’t really interested anyway and returned to his cuddling.

As time went on, and on, however, I felt worse and worse. No other injuries came in. I could have been… no, I couldn’t, I told myself. You wouldn’t have been near done by now, and then, when the real work came in, you wouldn’t have been ready. Beth will do all that needs done. She probably isn’t even working on him anymore. Finally Andrew noticed my nervousness. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing,” I said. I actually probably wouldn’t have minded telling him, but not with the others around. He squeezed me and looked into my face. “Nothing,” I repeated, looking around at the others.

“Later?” he whispered into my ear.

“Yeah, later,” I whispered back.

“Everybody up!” Greg said, suddenly. “Looks like we have a bit of an attack coming in.”

I hurried downstairs, arriving with a dozen other girls, some of them out of breath and disheveled. Since no patients seemed to be arriving just at that second I went off to see how Julies husband was doing. Beth met me at the door, “He died a few minutes ago,” she said. “He’s already resurrected and on his way back to the front lines. I let he and Julie spend a couple of minutes together, but he left when the alert was called.”

“Was it bad?” I asked.

“Pretty bad. Pretty painful, and we just couldn’t stop the blood loss.”

“I should’ve…”

“You should’ve done exactly what you did, and you know it,” Beth said. “Now pull yourself together, we should be getting casualties soon.”

“I…”

“You’re the doctor. Cool, calm, collected, impersonal… that’s your job. Don’t worry, you get bloody enough.”

“I…”

“Doctor,” a girl said, hurrying up. I knew her name, too, if only I could think of it. “We have our first case, and he has a slashed artery.”

I hurried off and, The Creator be blessed, it was a ‘red’ case. Indeed it was a simple one. The enemy had gotten a good bit on his left arm, up above the elbow and, in spite of my nurses best efforts, the blood was still spurting out. “Clamp,” I yelled, and some girl handed me one. Seconds later I had had the artery clamped. “Scalpel,” I said, and soon was busy getting the flesh cut back enough to allow me to work at the artery…

“There,” I said, ten minutes later, “I think that will hold. Keep an eye on it though.”

“Can someone else close,” Jane asked, from my elbow. “Beth is calling for you in the next room.”

This was a good job for Jane, I thought. Right up her alley… running messages. Jane wasn’t really here, of course, not in full sim. She was just doing glasses and gloves. But it worked well enough. “What do you have, Beth?”

“Bowel,” she said to me, and I cursed. Not out loud, of course. We were trying hard to attempt to keep someone alive with a bowel wound, given the very basic equipment we would have to work with in the field. But it needed to be tried, and we had some nice new techniques… new primitive techniques. “I have it resected,” she said, holding it out to me. The wound itself, in the flesh, wasn’t that bad. And it wasn’t that bad a bowel nick.

I took the bowel, after washing my hands in our feverwash, and Beth, beside me, started barking orders for the abdominal wash. As I cleaned and closed the bowel I washed them. This was the technique… basically filling and emptying the abdomen with feverwash over and over again, hoping to both rinse out all of the bowel contents lost inside there and to prevent bugs from growing from what was left.

It was powerful stuff, the feverwash and, as we all knew, not exactly pleasant stuff. The boy, at his other end, was moaning and vomiting powerfully. Vomiting was good, actually, as it meant he would have less stomach contents to move down into the bowel. Who knows, we might save him. Although he himself would probably rather die quickly than live through this.

The bowel finished I put it back in, rearranging the contents a bit to fit in in, and checking to see that nothing was kinked or anything. The other girls finished their washing, and I began cleaning and sewing the outside wound. I had just gotten started when Jane, clearing her throat, said, “When you’re done Julie really needs you…”

I looked at Beth, sighed, and she took over…

—

“Ooooh,” I said, letting the hot water play over me that night. “I don’t think I have ever been so tired.”

“And yet all you did was stand there,” Andrew said, watching me. It was one of ‘those nights’. I still can’t tell you how he knew, but it was ‘OK’ for him to watch me tonight. He wasn’t even all that ‘interested’ either. I think he was exhausted as well.

“Stand there working frantically, and then move to the next room and do it all over again. I don’t think I finished a single patient all day!”

He came in the shower and started rubbing my shoulders and then my back, while I moaned in pain and pleasure… my shoulders hurt abominably. “Tension, my love, tension,” he said. “This was good practice for you, but you need to remember it is all simulation.”

“All too real simulations. And the emotions of the other girls aren’t simulated. Higher, please,” I said. His hands had been straying lower and, while I knew we were going to go there, I really wanted his hands back on my shoulders. He really was strong, this my partner. “Oh, yes!” I said, almost screamed, when he got back to my shoulder. My right shoulder was almost on fire.

“Well, that’s true,” he said. One thing I really liked about him is he could keep working even while talking. I tended to forget what I was doing with my hands (annoying him mightily) whenever I got interested in what I was saying. “we boys don’t tend to do the whole ‘relationship’ thing much.”

“Higher, please,” I said again…

—

Day 300, morning

I had been expecting it since forever, but the beep and the red light still took me by surprise. So much by surprise that I just stood there, staring in shock as the door opened. “Oh, Aliya!!” June said, coming over to me and pulling me out of the booth by main force. “Oh, Aliya, I am so glad for you!”

I cried. It was too much. It was just way too much. Yesterday, last night, I had almost been able to forget who I was partnered with, but now… now I was carrying his baby! Someone who had signed up just to force me to partner with him and now… oh, I cried. How could I…?

“Come here, dear,” June said, pulling at me. I thought she was taking me to the separate room where all of the pregnant women simmed, but instead she pulled me over to a corner, forcing me to sit and then sitting right next to me. The girl in charge of the booth, a bit bemused, sent a girl over with my robe and, when I was decently attired, June started in.

“You really need to talk to me, dear,” she said, in a voice that brooked no opposition. “What has happened between Andrew and you? It has been horrible to watch. The two of you were doing so well, and then that one morning…”

“He isn’t who you think he is,” I said, trying, and failing, to keep my voice down. “He… he…” I shut up, appalled. He was my partner, how could I betray his confidence like this. He was the father of my…. I broke down crying again.

“I know exactly who he is,” June said, her voice harsh. “But all I would need to know is that he is the partner The Creator assigned you.”

“The Creator?” I said, “The Creator didn’t assign us. Some computer back on New Texas…”

“Don’t blaspheme, dear, no matter how upset you are. Of course The Creator picked him. The Creator is in charge of everything, and He certainly took care to give Andrew exactly the helpmeet he needed. So you can be sure that’s who you are.”

“But what about me?” I wailed, getting glances from other girls…but I was beyond caring.

“What do you mean?”

“What about me? Does The Creator care who I get for my partner?”

“Of course He cares, didn’t I just say that?”

“No, you said that I was the right help-meet for him. But is he right for me?”

June looked at me as if I had suddenly started speaking Greek. “But dear, The Creator… He… He made you to be Andrew’s help-meet. How can there be anything more right for you than that?”

“I…. it isn’t fair, I said, petulantly.

“Fair? Who said anything about fair? The Creator isn’t ‘fair’. If He was, we would all be dead. But He is just, and merciful. And you need to pull yourself together and start being obedient, or you are going to have a horrible pregnancy. Pregnancy is hard enough without fighting against The Creator the entire time.”

“I….” I hiccuped several times, “but how can I?! You don’t know who he is!”

“Yes, yes I do, dear,” she said, very quietly. “He told Martin the whole story right after his letter. And Martin yelled at him, I can assure you. Not telling you all that time! But he is your partner, and your lord. And you need to act like it.”

I stared at her, my eyes wide. “You knew?!”

“Yes, dear, Martin told me, of course. We have been hoping that you two would reconcile. Is that really all you are upset about?”

“Well, yes,” I said. How could she accept this so casually?

“Well, that was silly of you,” she said. “Here you are with a group where half the men have committed quite deliberate crimes, a couple of them even rape, and you are worried about a partner who, stupidly and foolishly, perhaps, joined the Colonization Force just to avoid the humiliation of final choice… and then lied about it? You work with Jane and… well, I know you know some of what she goes through. Now, tell me honestly, does Andrew ever do things like that?”

“No!” I said, appalled, thinking of how patiently he had rubbed my back last night. Well, sort of patiently. But he rubbed it for an hour or so before we had moved on to bed play, and he had even started that by rubbing my legs!

“Well, then, stop complaining and stop whining and start being a good partner. If nothing else, for your child. It will soak up all of the emotions between you like a sponge.”

“I… I never thought….”

“No, you didn’t,” she said. “So start now. And stop using your old name, it is just an insult to him. Haven’t you noticed how everyone else has changed?”

I stared at her. This wasn’t what partnering was all about! Sure my parents had loved each other, but they had always kept to the rules. My dad had never insisted that my mom…

But this wasn’t Andrew insisting. He had insisted on some things, some spiritual things. Praying together, headcoverings… but he had never insisted I take his name. He had always turned his back when I wanted him to. He had never… but this wasn’t Andrew. This was June, and she was just talking to me. This was my spiritual ‘mother’ and she was telling me that I was sinning, big time. But how could I…?

“I need to get you in sim,” she said, probably taking my silence for rejection. “You are late already. A good reason, but you’re late.”

Finally she took me into the room, the room where the pregnant women were. They looked odd, with their gloves and goggles, all moving around oddly. Of course, the girls in sim suits always looked odd as well, but this was, well, different… since they were mostly wearing their robes or uniforms. “Ok, get up here,” June said, taking me over to one spot on the floor. I didn’t really have to get ‘up’, it was just a circle on the floor… kind of a dull grey. I stood on it gingerly, but it didn’t move… despite the fact I saw it rolling freely under the feet of the other girls as they ‘moved’ about. Once I was there she handed me the gloves dangling from the ceiling, and helped me put on the left hand one… once my right hand was already encased. “This will be very odd for you,” she said. “You’ve probably gotten very used to regular simming. You won’t be able to feel anything except with your hands, and you will be able to see this room as well as the sim. We do that because the moving circles aren’t omniscient… every once in a while someone steps off one. Ready?” she asked, and handed me the goggles.

“Aliya!” Andrew said, spotting me where I stood, blinking in confusion. This was odd! And I felt unsteady on my feet, although that was probably an illusion. “What took you so long?” he asked, hugging me… which I did my best to return. I could at least feel him with my hands… it was bizarre not to feel him against my chest. “Are you OK?”

“Yes,” I said, “very, very OK,” I said… and he looked confused but Beth, who had been standing nearby listening and, truth be told had probably seen me come in the sim room ‘through a glass darkly’ came up and hugged me,

“Oh, Aliya!” she screamed and, my poor partner still looking confused, a dozen other girls came over and hugged me. “She’s pregnant, you silly,” Beth said, and, finally, his face lit up.

“Really?” he asked and then a shadow of fear crossed his face.

“Yes, really!” I said. “Isn’t it wonderful?” I asked, hugging him again.

“Yes… yes,” he said, fear still evident in his face. I changed my hug into a kiss, doing my best to make it a very, very intimate kiss (which was very hard without any feedback) and I moved my hands into a ‘cuddle’… yes, right in front of everyone. I certainly wouldn’t be the first person to do it, although he and I never did. I did my best to watch his face (not easy with that kind of kiss) and I saw him relax. I assumed he moved his hands, too, but I couldn’t really tell. This new sim was annoying!

Once everyone one left us (which our cuddle definitely helped with, it was kind of a standing rule that you ignored people who were cuddling or ‘otherwise engaged’) he whispered in my ear, “Are you OK with it?”

“Of course,” I said, “haven’t we been trying?”

“Yes, but…”

“That’s over,” I said, decisively. “Forget about that.”

“But…”

“I said forget about it. I think I have the right to make that request. If you don’t think so we could ask Martin.”

“Ask Martin?” he said, his face paling, “but…”

“He already knows,” I said. “June gave me a big lecture about it, and how I was behaving. So, I’m sorry already and if you could, please, stop talking about it and kiss me again.”

He did, and he did, but of course I couldn’t feel any of it. “How’s the battle going?” I asked, as he walked me over to my surgeons tent after our kiss and cuddle (none of which I felt! This new sim was annoying!!)

“Well, it’s a lot harder than we thought it would be,” he said. “They, the enemy, seem to have some kind of territorial instinct thing, so whenever we kill some of them, more move into that territory to take their place. So we’re basically having to just build the wall through constant battle.”

And we didn’t know about this territorial thing? How did the computer know?”

“We don’t quite know. It could be it is just a testing thing, or it could be that the computer knows how to model the enemy behavior but not how to tell us about it. Anyway, it is what we have to deal with.”

This was a sim, of course, so time could have basically stood still during our absence. But we were working with three separate shifts so the battle was always raging. “Aliya,” Jane said, from where she stood by the door of my tent, “congratulations and we need you…”

Andrew laughed, then turned and whispered in my ear, “I need you too, never forget that. And I love you.”

“I love you too,” I said, willing my heart to mean what I said, and to act on my will. With one last kiss (and, I think, he did something intimate with his hands, but I couldn’t feel it, he left for his tower, and I left for my tent.

—

I felt really guilty when I saw him next. I had missed two whole break sessions, due to an absolute overload of patients. Cuddling was sure not to be fun for me, even if I did manage to scrape together the desire for it, but I knew Andrew would miss it. And, coming right after the announcement, I was sure he would worry that I was doing it on purpose.

“Andrew?” Greg said, “I finally gave him a break, since you didn’t come. But it’s OK, you two can still have time.”

I looked around, “But where is he?” I asked. Greg laughed,

“He’s over the edge,” he said, and pointed. I looked and, sure enough, there was a rope dangling over the edge. “What on earth is he doing there?” I asked, going and looking down. “Andrew?!” I called.

He looked up from where he dangled, several feet below me. “Oh, hello love, coming,” he said, and putting something in his pocket, he climbed up the rope.

“Whatever were you doing?” I asked, helping him over the edge.

“Come, and I’ll show you he said, taking me by the hand (which I could feel) and running me down the stairs. “Come, come look…” he said, dragging me outside.

“What, what am I looking at?” I asked.

“Look!” he said, sounding triumphant and turning me around. I stared. At the tower. At… “The New Texas Flag?” I said.

“I couldn’t think of what else to draw, but I plan on doing more. Do you like it?”

I could hear the excitement in his voice, so I would have said I liked it anyway, but I did like it, actually. The tower, before, had been all boring stone, and now it was… I dunno how to say it. It was more alive, more personal, more like something in the middle of a war should be.

It’s great,” I said. He admired it for another few seconds, and then began admiring me. I still couldn’t feel any of it!! After a few minutes he stopped, “Are you OK?” he asked.

“Yeah, fine,” I said.

“You don’t seem to be, ummm…”

“I can’t feel any of it, with this new sim,” I said.

“What?!” he said, stopping and sitting up. “Why?” he asked.

“I am only wearing goggles and gloves,” I said. “I can feel you with my hands, though,” I said, grinning at him.

“But, then…?”

“Look, almost all the other girls are in the same situation,” I said. “They manage, we’ll manage.”

“But…” he said, and I kissed him to get him to shut up.

—

Day 344

The next two weeks were such chaos that I didn’t have a scrap of energy for anything except duty. Andrew stopped, without my even saying anything about it, turning around for showers, and I enjoyed his frank admiration even while I struggled with keeping my emotions under control. It made our evening routine quicker though (I’ll let you figure out how and why on your own) which I was glad for as I needed all my energy for my work. I learned tons more about surgery than during all my classes, and we even had an outbreak of some horrible rash (which I never got, and wouldn’t have felt anyway) that we, after a long struggle, figured out was being caused by some plants that the boys were always having to go through. Andrew caught it really bad, and the computer even had one boy die when the leader (without asking me, I can assure you) had them burn the plants. He inhaled the vapor and was dead, from the reaction, within minutes. I’m afraid I got a little disrespectful toward the leader just then, but Andrew later asked forgiveness for me.

The battle went fine. We won, anyway, and got our wall extended all the way to the river, put the chemicals in, and all that. Andrew could tell you more, I was mostly busy with surgery and all.

So, anyway, it was two weeks more of sim and two weeks before I had energy for anything. So it was two weeks before, after actually delivering one girl of her baby, before (after showering and taking a short break) I got a look at the statistics board. “June?” I said, “What’s up with the board?”

June never did pay much attention to the board, but came over when I called and looked at it with me. “What’s different?” she asked.

“There’s a bunch of people missing!” I said. I had actually been looking at Andrew’s ranking, which showed him rising steadily over the last two weeks. I guess he was doing really good in this sim. But what I had noticed after that was, “There are a whole bunch of people that have dropped out of the rankings. Julie’s partner, for example.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard? They’ve been assigned. They’re ship crew now. They moved, what was it, two days ago?”

“Ship crew? Really?” I wondered how I felt about that. I didn’t really think I wanted to be ship crew. I didn’t know what I did want. I always assumed we would be colonists. Most people were. I had been afraid that we were to be soldiers. Most of the infertile couples were assigned that duty, for the disgusting if understandable reason that if they got killed no breeding power would be lost. “Are they assigning anyone else yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard of. Ship crew is probably the first since, you know, we are already on board ship. They can get to work right away.”

That made sense, I supposed. I looked again at the standings. Poor Andrew. He was moving up but, like he said, he really wasn’t ‘good’ at anything. His overall ranking was OK, but none of the individual ones.

Ironically it was later than, when Andrew and I were on our way home, that I ran into Julie herself. “Wow, Julie,” I said, “look at you!”

She did look good in her grey’s. Good, but harassed. “Oh, hi, Aliya. Nice seeing you.”

But I was having none of that, and grabbed her by the arm. “How is it going? What’s it like being ship crew?”

She stopped. “Oh, it’s great! My partner especially he likes it. It’s how we got in, you know, he’s really good at ship handling. We’ll be getting to go back to New Texas to shuttle people up and down, and I’ll like that, you know, getting to see my folks more often.”

That did sound good. I hadn’t thought of that. I had another question, though, “But… how is the life? I mean, the dorm and all.”

She flushed. “Ah, well, yes, that is hard. Really, really hard. My partner he does OK but… my folks were pretty private and all and, well, living all together like that.” She looked at me. “Well, you can understand that. That was always a very hard thing for you, too.”

I nodded my head and, just then, her wristband beeped. She looked at it, paled, and ran off with, “I’ve got to go…”

I looked at Andrew, who grinned. “I guess it’s good we haven’t been assigned yet,” he said. And then, more seriously, “You would have a problem with their kind of living, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh,” I said, breezily, and not at all accurately, “I’m sure I’ll do OK. The sims were really helpful, you know, getting me used to that kind of thing.”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and I flushed. I’m sure he knew I was lying, but what could I do about it? I knew it was necessary, common logic told me that once I thought about it. So, being necessary, I would have to adapt. And it wouldn’t help me to worry about it now, would it?

“Ah, well, sufficient unto the day,” he said, echoing my thoughts in a rather spiritualized manner. “I’m sure you’ll adapt. You’ve adapted to worse things.”

I looked at him. That was the closest he had come to mentioning… my little problem… since I had told him not to. But I guess it was an OK way to mention it. “How did your day go?” I asked him, taking him by the arm.

“Oh, really well,” he said. “I have some art to show you.”

“You do?” I asked, pleased. “How did you get the time?”

“The computer has been giving me more time to do art,” he said, as he reached out and opened the door. “I guess… oh, hi guys,” he said to XXX and YYY, who were busy getting dressed, “How are you guys doing?”

“Just great,” YYY said, tightening his belt over his shirt, “we got word that we are going to be assigned today.”

“Really?” Andrew said, pulling his shirt off. “What to?”

“We don’t know,” YYY said, “We’re hoping soldiers, of course.”

I looked at XXX, as I pulled my own shirt off. I knew that she was terribly disappointed that she wasn’t pregnant, but we both knew that YYY had joined up in order to be a soldier, so she had been as encouraging as she could be. Her face was a study but, overall, she did seem pleased. Of course, it wasn’t like soldiers couldn’t have kids.

“Well, leave us a note or something so we’ll know, eh?” Andrew said, fiddling with his comp pad. “We’ll miss running into you each of your mornings.”

YYY laughed, grabbing XXX by the hand and pulling her toward the door. “OK, ok, so we’re not so fast in the mornings. You don’t have to rub it in!”

They left and, as I finished undressing (I never could bring myself to finish while they were still there, although it was perfectly legal and the computer was probably docking me for it. Julie had been right, I was going to find group living hard. ) Andrew pulled up some new pictures. “Oh, Andrew!” I said, getting into the shower. “Those are marvelous.”

They were, too, I wasn’t just saying that. He had done a series of animal studies, including that wolf with scales thing that we had fought on that one sim. And he had done a koala bear, too, which was one of my absolute favorites.

“So, soldiers eh?” Andrew said, joining me. “Is that what you want?” he looked down at my stomach, as if he could see the baby growing… which of course he couldn’t, even with me naked, I was nowhere near far enough along for that. “Or do you want to do ship, like Julie?”

“I want to go home…” I said, and then, realizing what that must have sounded like, added “with you, of course.”

“Of course,” he said, kissing me. “But seriously, what job do you want?”

“What does it matter?” I asked. “They’re not going to give me a job because I ask for it. And it’s not like…” I stopped, panicked.

“It’s not like I’m good at anything, in particular,” he said, bitterly.

“I didn’t mean…” I started, but that was a useless lie. “I love you,” I said, “and you don’t need to be good at anything in particular. You are good at lot’s of things in general, and that is what colonists need.”

“So you want to be a colonist?” he asked.

“I guess so,” I said, doing my best to distract him from my foolish comment. I didn’t really care, but if I could convince him that he was good at what I wanted to be. “I mean, the colony’s need doctors and midwives, and you are great at colony skills.”

“Well, not great,” he said, but I got busier with my distracting and he shut up.

—

Day 345 evening I think

“Well, they did get to be soldiers,” Andrew said to me when he met me in the hallway. “I got a message from YYY today. Apparently he and about five hundred other guys were working with the ship types to make them a dorm. We’ll be getting new roommates.”

We did, too, and I was incredibly excited. It was AAA and BBB and little Lydia and the baby. Lydia was excited too, running around her mother’s skirts and hugging my knees. “Aliya,” AAA said, kissing me, “Andrew. We had no idea, we didn’t even bother to look it up. They kicked us out of our room and just told us to come here. It is so nice it is you.”

It may have been nice, indeed I’m sure it was, but that didn’t mean they stayed long to greet us. They were always rather duty bound, AAA and her husband.

“So,” I said, as we lay together later, “one thousand people picked to be soldiers?”

“Yes. That will be all for them, though. We should be meeting their ship in a couple of weeks, and they will be taken off to their advanced training. And then off to the front. But the others, the ship people and all, they should be getting more and more over the next few days, or so I’ve heard.”

It became a habit, over the next few days, for us to gather, each morning, at the board, and see who had gotten chosen for each job. We all knew that, if it was us, we would get told off individually, but there was still that thrill of suspicion that our name would not be on the list. And then, finally, one day…

Day 350 morning

“It seems to have slowed down,” Jane said.

“It seems to have stopped!” I said. “Two couples yesterday, and none today. Five thousand chosen in total. The rest of us must be colonists.”

One thousand in total had been chosen for ship crew, and four thousand for soldiers. How did I feel about that? Not being chosen. Did I want to be a colonist? It was the safest path except for serving on a ship. And, my heart suddenly leapt, I would only have to share a house with my family. Sure, we would be in tight quarters, if the video’s were anything to go by. But it would just be Andrew, I, and our children. I patted my stomach. I could live with that. I would have to but, still, I could live with that. And maybe we would get put somewhere, some forest or something, where it was easy to build.

“I have to get to work,” I said to June and went and got on my glasses and goggles. Appropriately enough, the lady teaching us announced that we would be learning how to make bread with grains other than wheat today. As I kneaded my first batch I sighed, contentedly, to myself. If this was to be my life, I could live with it.

Are we there yet?

Day 360, evening

The soldier ship, when it came, brought us no news, no letters, as it had come from the front. But the crew told us that, when we got to the enormous station that served this entire area of the front, and where we would all be disembarking, we would get letters from home; brought by courier ships that constantly flew back and forth. And were all dismissed from training to get our letters. It was awkward because, of course, there were several people in each room, but the computer speakers could focus very tightly, as could the picture on the screen, so it was only the partners talking together that we would have to be careful about.

But nothing on earth could have stopped me from crying out when the screen lit up and I saw my mother sitting, along with my father and Andrew’s parents. The look on her face was such that I knew some catastrophe had happened. “Dear,” Mother said, and broke down. “I…” she tried again, and broke down, looking helplessly at my father, who stepped forward.

“I suppose you have already heard of the attack on New Texas… the invasion.” I was crying freely now, and missed the next few words… “I suppose Andrew is with you, and we have very bad news. We were together, the two families, during the attack. We have been doing more and more together, and we were at this resteraunt. We were sitting at a table near the window. You understand, there was no warning at all. Anyway, one of the meteors took out a building a block or so away and…” he stopped as Mother’s crying got louder. Andrew’s parents were sitting stone faced behind her. “…and Susan was killed, along with two of Andrew’s brothers, James and Jon.”

Andrew let out a cry himself. I would have worried about the other two couples, but they were just as obviously grief stricken and taken up with their own letters. He reached forward and paused the letter, and we hugged for a while. Then he turned it back on…

There were actually three separate attacks. It was totally unlike anything the aliens had ever done before. The first attack was the one that killed your siblings. They vectored in several small meteoroids toward a dozen or so cities on the coast. Our population is rather dispersed, so the actual damage from these was light, but the casualties were, for us, horrendous.

The second attack was on the space fleet. This was much less successful, as the fleet was, of course, always looking out for such a thing and able to defend itself, unlike the cities. The two sides gave as good as they got, if I understand, with one ship killed on each side.

That second attack was just a cover for the third one, however. Several large colony ships ‘snuck’ down to the surface and dumped their loads into the oceans; with dozens of shuttles from each one landing in the ocean and, basically, sinking with their load. From the couple of the shuttles we managed to destroy before they landed we estimate several thousand Juvies or packs were landed, along with whatever adults were piloting the shuttles.

The end result is that we are now an occupied planet. Your group will be one of the last we will send to the war. Indeed their was a group just about to leave, which thankfully was spared in the attack, which turned around and re-landed their inductees.

We are all praying for you, of course…”

“Kill them!” Mother broke in, in a harsh voice. “Kill them all!”

Father broke off at her interruption, not seeming to know how to go on and, after a few seconds, he just reached forward and ended the letter.

Andrew and I looked at each other, hugged, and then watched the rest of our letters. Some of them had been sent before the attack and were oddly incongruous. I kept thinking back to what Mother had said and, after we watched the last letter from his brother (not the one that was killed, luckily, I don’t think I could have handled that even though I didn’t know him) I turned to him. “Do you think we could become soldiers?” I asked.

He looked at me for a minute and then said, “I don’t think we need to. Our job as colonists is equally important. It isn’t like we won’t get to kill the enemy. Mostly Juvies and packs of course, but still. And every planet we colonize is another way for us to attack them.”

I knew all that, of course, but it was nice hearing it. It was actually our sleep shift so the other two families left right after they watched their letters, and Andrew and I fell asleep in each other’s arms (I mean, even more than usual) after I had cried for quite a while. It wasn’t too long before we had to get up and begin our morning routine. But then,

Day 361 morning

“What?” Andrew said, looking at our schedule. Every once in a while we had a slightly different assignement so we did make it a habit of looking each day. But today… “Shuttle bay Alpha? I thought we weren’t going over to the station till tomorrow.”

I joined him looking and, just then, JJJ and KKK walked in with a wailing LLL so, after Andrew gave one last look, we went off to the shuttle bay. “I guess they changed the schedule,” Andrew said, “But that is really weird. I saw the overall schedule yesterday and all of the colony ships will be picking people up tomorrow… soldiers, colonists, and even new ship handlers. Why on Earth do they want us here today?”

“I don’t know love, but I’m sure they’ll tell us.”

“But it will be a madhouse over there! Five thousand people all milling around on the space station. There isn’t room to house us overnight. I know, I’ve seen the specs.”

“Well, maybe it isn’t five thousand people,” I said. I don’t think I’d ever seen him this worked up. He hated things to be out of order… not that that was much of a problem for us, of course. With our little room there was hardly a way to get things out of order, and we each were careful to leave it nice for the others.

“But why do they need…” he stopped in mid-sentence as we came into the room. It was full of people, of course, but that wouldn’t have stopped him. They were all quiet themselves, which, of course made him shush instinctively. But what really shushed him was the site of three men, standing on top of a shuttle. Three men in green and black uniforms. Not the gray of the ship handlers, not the dull tan of colonists, not the very-colored green of soldiers… but the green and black of… “Pathfinders?!” Andrew whispered, shocked. “But I thought they recruited pathfinders from the soldiers!”

We walked, not that we had far to walk, to the edge of the group and stood still, waiting. I looked around. Almost all of our group was here… all three shifts! I saw Grant standing with Jane a little way off, a huge smile on his face and standing tall. Could it really be…?

“Greetings,” the head pathfinder, a colonel by his stripes, said, a couple of minutes later when the trickle of recruits came to a halt. “and welcome to the pathfinders!”

<change so they can write home, family can join pathfinder support group, etc.>

There was a burst of noise from the crowd at this, which quickly subsided. “No insult to the other branches, but the pathfinders are, of course, the best branch of the forces.”

“Huuurah!” the two men standing next to him said, echoed, awkwardly, by a couple of the boys. Not Andrew, I don’t think he could have opened his mouth to save his life.

“I know there are rumors about how pathfinders are chosen… and we encourage them. I personally like the rumor that you get to be a pathfinder when you have killed one hundred adult enemy in hand to hand combat.”

“Huuurah!” shouted the men next to him, and the audience laughed.

“However, that is not, exactly, true. In point of fact pathfinders are chosen because we aren’t good at anything.”

The men didn’t hurrah at this, but they did grin, and I felt Andrew’s hand tighten convulsively in mine. “You see,” the colonel continued, “Pathfinders have to be able to do it all. We have to fly our own ships, fight our own battles, and find the best place to plant colonies… clearing the land and living on it until colonists come live on it. Then we move on and do it again!”

“Huuurah!” the men said and, this time, many of the boys joined in.

“So we don’t need the best ship handlers, but we need good ones. We don’t need the best fighters, but we need good ones. We don’t need fantastic colonists, but we need people who can find, and plant, good land; build good houses, clear good roads.” <insert hurrahs, or state afterwards>

“Over the last year you have been tested, rigourously, and your group sorted down until you, the people in this room, were fixed on as the people we want as pathfinders. You have formed this group, and worked together in dozens of different sims. I will be one of your leaders, my brothers here two others, but, other than that, you are the 501st pathfinder group!”

“Huuurah!” all the boys said together. The cry was familiar, it was on all the movies. Movies had all of the forces, of course, and honored them all. But the most exciting movies, the one’s that showed us taking the battle to the enemy’s heartland, always starred the pathfinders.

“OK, no more time to waste. Board shuttles by your shifts. ‘A shift with me, ‘B’ shift with Andrew here,” he said, pointing at the man to his left, “And ‘C’ shift with Jesse.”

<fix shifts>

We followed Jesse into the far shuttle. “Take your seats,” he said then, when we were seated, he, standing at the front, said, “My name is Jesse, obviously. We are the 501st C group. We will be splitting into three shifts within the group.”

He looked around, “We will do a bunch of training on our way to the front, it is another three months to our first assignment. I will need to learn about each of you. I know your names, and some things, but you all know each other better than anything. So, we’re going to play a little game. I want you to look at the person on your right, and tell me one thing about them, not work related, that the person next to you can do better than you can. Not work related. We will be spending lot of time together, living right on top of each other, and we will need to get along. So, let’s see, let’s start with you…” he said, pointing right at me.

“I…” I said, panicked. “I’m Aliya, Aliya…” I panicked again. I had never said this but I knew I needed to, “Aliya Tome’, and this is my partner Andrew and he… he draws just wonderfully.”

“An artist, eh?” said Jesse. “That’s great. I’m sure that we will all look forward to seeing what he can do. We have a painter… or, in my last group we had a painter, and he was always making us paintings. It was fascinating some of the materials he used on some primitive planets. I’m sure you’ll find drawing easier. My oldest son, Adam, would like to take lessons from you, I’m sure. Next?”

Grant was sitting next to Andrew, and Andrew sat silently for a few seconds. Then he grinned, “This is probably cheating, but he is really great at wrestling. I doubt it will go over too well on ship, but on planet I think he will go unbeaten.”

“You’ll be surprised what we can do on ship; they say necessity is the mother of invention and living on top of each other on ship is necessity squared. That should be great. Next?”

Grant stared at him, a confused look on his face. “Well, this is my wife Jane and she is the best wife in all the world, but that probably doesn’t count.” He thought for a minute. “I think I have something, something she is really good at. She’s a great story teller. She doesn’t do it often, she’s kind of shy, but she can tell a great story.”

I stared at Jane, and I wasn’t alone, and she blushed furiously. I had no idea she could tell a story, and I thought she was a good friend of mine. She stammered for a couple of minutes and then came out with what the rest of us knew, that June was a motherly type who always made you feel good.

“Well, that is certainly useful…” Jesse was saying, when we heard a clang and I realized, we all realized, that we had landed. And I realized that I had no idea where we had landed. “Welcome home,” Jesse said, walking to the front of the shuttle and working the latch. “Come on down,” he added, bowing and waving us out.

If you could call it ‘out’. We left the shuttle all right, but it was parked mere inches from the wall, and we walked, single file, through a door just outside of the shuttle door and into the ship proper… and into Bedlam. Men, women, children, babies crying… even a couple of women in crew uniform. “Fresh meat!” one of the soldiers yelled, and, grinning, everyone gathered round with a bedlam of greetings. I clutched Andrew’s arm, and we were kind of toward the back so it was a couple of minutes before a woman made her way through the others to us.

She looked to be a very nice woman, wearing soldier red and nursing a child, which she held confidently as she shook Andrew’s hand and hugged me. The child seemed used to the confusion and kept nursing busily even when it was squished between us. “Andrew and Aliya, no?” she asked. “My name is Beth-any. I studied the portfolios. We are bunkmates,” she said and, at my confused look, said, “We have the bunk, floor space really, next to you two. You will find that a very important relationship on board ship.”

She took me by the arm and led me, Andrew following, over to a spot on the floor. “This will be your bunk,” she said, indicating an area about one meter by two, if that,” and my partner and I sleep here with our little ones.”

Little one*s*?! I thought to myself. She sat down so I sat next to her, Andrew busy being greeted by some man. “I don’t understand,” I said, “You are soldiers?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Silly videos, they really don’t tell you much about pathfinders do they? Each pathfinder team consists of pathfinders proper, like you’ll be; a team of soldiers; and crew for the ship.”

“I thought they said we would need to be crewing our own ships and fighting our own battles.”

“Oh, you will dear, you will. We have dozens of ships of all sizes on this ship. We are really very well equipped. The crew run the main ship, not the shuttles. Well, except for the shuttle that brought you in, that kind of thing. And everybody does fighting, of course, but we soldiers, our men mostly, do their fighting pretty continuously at the front lines, keeping the enemy back from you all, hunting and all that. Your men, and you yourself when needed, will do most of your fighting near your colonies and roads and all that.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. Just then she popped the baby off her breast,

“Would you like to burp it?” she asked. “I can see you like children.”

Well I did, although I had never thought myself good with them. The child came to me willingly enough, however, and gave a simply enourmous burp which sent breast milk simply cascading down my back. Beth-any laughed, and handed me a rag. Then, seeing I couldn’t reach she turned me around and plyed the rag all up and down my back. “Well, you’ve been baptized,” she said. “He does that, my Caleb.”

It seems odd but somehow I liked Caleb from then on. I was just picking him up again when Jesse called out, “Ok, that was fun, but some of us need to sleep. Time to call off for shifts. Andrew and Aliya Tome’, this will be your sleep shift. Grant and Jane Seymor, Day shift, downstairs please…”

He read everyone off and I watched as most everyone went downstairs. Beth-any still sat next to me and, seconds later, her husband, John came over with Andrew and, after quickly introducing himself to me turned back to Beth-any.

Day 361 evening

The next hour was the hardest hour of my entire life. The lights were dimmed, very dimmed, and that helped. And Andrew was everything I could have asked. But being bedded in a room full of people, even ones that were strenuously ignoreing us as much as we were trying to ignore them. Although Beth-any and John were fairly blasé, no doubt having lived through this for the last who knows how long.

Andrew held me, afterwards, while I cried, and then he dropped off to sleep. I couldn’t, not yet, and sat up after he was off. As I did so I noticed two eyes peering at me. I hadn’t noticed them putting her to bed, but right next to us, at our feet, was evidently their little girl. And she, evidently, wasn’t sleepy… no doubt because of all of the newness. We stared at each other for a minute or so and then, slowly, carefully, I reversed my position in bed and put my head down by hers. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Gillian,” she answered. “What’s yours?”

“Miss Aliya,” I said… forgetting that I wasn’t ‘miss’ anymore. She looked confused, looking at me, and then at Andrew. “Aren’t you sleeping here?” she asked. “Aren’t you an Aunt?”

“A what?” I asked.

“Mommy says that anyone that sleeps with us is ‘Aunt’ Something.”

“Oh,” I said, “Well, then, call me ‘Aunt Aliya’.”

“OK,” she said. Then, “Don’t you have any kids?”

“Just the one inside,” I said, patting my tummy. She reached out her hand.

“I can’t feel it,” she complained.

“Not yet,” I said. “Not for a few more months.”

She seemed assuaged by this and looked at where Andrew lay, snoring quietly. “Is that your partner?” she asked, sounding as if Andrew was a poor substitute for children.

“Yes,” I said, “his name is Uncle Andrew.”

She nodded her head. I had obviously gotten it right this time. “I have a brother,” she said, “His name is Caleb.”

That I knew, but I asked her all sorts of questions about Caleb, and Gillian, and her mommy and daddy. She had scooshed over next to me and I was in the middle of telling her a story about one of my brothers when I suddenly realized she was asleep. It was kind of awkward, without a pillow and all, but I didn’t want to wake her, so I lay back and closed my own eyes.

Day 362 morning

And woke to nausea. I sat up, bolt upright, looking frantically around for the bathroom. It wasn’t hard, one end of the room had two doors on it, and the proverbial picture of a girl in skirts on one wall. I hurried off, almost running over a small child coming out. I went to the first hole I came to and lost… lost whatever meal it was I had eaten last. The child, a girl, had come in after me and was watching me, wide eyed. “Aunt Aliya?” she said, and I finally recognized her as the child I had fallen asleep with last night. She had probably had to get up to go, and that had woken me up, and… I threw up again.

“Are you OK, Aunt Aliya?” the child insisted, coming over and pulling my hair back from my face.

“Yes, yes dear,” I said, trying to play the part of an ‘Aunt’ when what I wanted was to be a little girl and have my mommy come and hold me. “Yes, it is just being pregnant.”

At least, that is what I figured. I got up, showered and, leading Gillian by the hand, went back to bed. My arrival woke Andrew, with predictable results. I struggled to be cheerful, and not to bother him with my condition but, when he was finished, he seemed to notice that something was wrong. As we got up to shower he said, “Are you OK?”

“My morning sickness has finally started,” I said, holding my stomach… which was still threatening revolt and slaughter.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Hopefully it will be over quickly.”

I hope so too, I thought, as I got back in the shower for a quick rinse. Certainly several other girls had only had short and easy sickness. Jane, for example, had only been mildly sick for a week or two.

I went back to bed, but couldn’t sleep. Every time I tried to lay down my stomach threatened to rise up. So I grabbed a comp from the cabinet beside the bed and tried to read. Then I decided I might as well dress, and rummaged through the cabinet for clothes. My new ‘pathfinder’ uniform looked like just so much grey in the dim light, and I went back to my book. It wasn’t like it had been my sleep cycle anyway. But I was going to be tired by tonight!

It turned out I had only gotten up about an hour early. Soon people began stirring all over the room. Most of them were our people, the ones that had come with us, the ones I knew. Young couples, the occasional baby, the less occasional pregnant partner. Besides us there was Beth-any and her husband and, down the line, an entire family. I watched them out of the corner of my eye as they got up and there were three older boys and three younger girls. And the mother was grossly pregnant. I wondered if that would be a girl or a boy.

“You’d better get up,” I said, poking Andrew, after most of the others had come back from their showers.

“Huh,” he said, waking and stretching. He really had changed from the boy I had partnered with. The training had been good for him, and he had muscles popping out all over. He stretched, again, and got up, rummaging through the cabinet for clothes and pulling them on. Suddenly I thought of my own duties and got up and started folding up the blankets and putting them away, along with the pillows and all.

“Work time Aunt Aliya!” a small voice piped up from my waist and I looked down to see Gillian. With her mother and Andrew both staring at us in surprise I bent down to her.

“Where do we go for work time?” I asked her.

“Down the ladder!” she squealed, sounding excited to tell me… or perhaps excited to go down the ladder, I couldn’t tell. She grabbed my hand, “Come on Uncle Andrew!” she said, imperiously and Andrew, grinning, came over and took her other hand.

“Have we met?” he asked Gillian, as she led us across the room, followed by most of the eyes in the room.

“You were asleep!” Gillian said, accusingly.

“I suppose I was,” Andrew said, as we came to the ladder. I thought, for a second, about helping Gillian down, but before I could even decide how she let go of our hands, leapt forward and, with a squeal, slid all the way down the ladder to the floor below. Andrew, grinning, followed more sedately, and I followed him.

Into bedlam, again. If anything this was worse. There was only one ladder and about fifty people, including about twenty kids, were standing around the ladder waiting for us to get down.

“Wow,” I whispered, yelled practically, into Andrew’s ear.

“Yeh,” he said, pulling me through the crowd. It took fifteen minutes for all of the upstairs crowd to come down, and all of the downstairs crowd to go up the ladder. Then, finally, there were a few minutes of almost silence as we all turned to look at Jesse. There were about sixty of us in the room right now, and Jesse stood in front with the another man, a crew.

“Good morning,” Jesse said. “I hope those of you that were off shift were able to sleep, and I’m sure you are all hungry. Eddon, here, had his crew prepare a breakfast for us. That’s not usual, I want you to understand, usually each shift’s women make their own meals for their families, but given the circumstances he thought it would be a fine welcoming present. And, he tells me, that we had some frozen Juvie left so you freshies will get to taste real Juvie for the first time. I guarantee you it tastes even better than in sim. So, let’s get out the tables.”

Which I had no idea how to do but the other crew obviously did, even those that had come over with us. Seconds later several of the walls were folded down to make tables, seats were pulled up out of the floor, and the women were bringing bowls to the tables. I felt something on my arm and turned. It was Beth-any. “Would you like to eat with us?” she said. “We really didn’t get to know each other last night.”

“Sure,” I said, knowing Andrew would approve. He liked me to take charge for ‘social stuff’. We followed her over to a table and I was soon seated between Gillian and Beth-any, and Andrew sat down between Caleb and John. <check for ‘of course’>

“You will like this Juvie,” Beth-any said. “Pretty much everyone does. This is our favorite way to cook it for breakfast.”

I looked into the food she was busy spooning onto her plate, before passing it to me with instructions as to how much Gillian should start with. It smelled great, although it was nothing like any kind of breakfast food we would have on New Texas. It was all sliced vegetables and meat… “Steamed?” I asked.

“On ship,” Beth-any said. “On planet we usually have to boil or fry it. But steamed is really best.

I took some. I truly was hungry. And it turned out to be excellent, too. “What are these vegetables?” I asked.

“I don’t remember their name. We grew them, what, three planets ago? No, two planets ago. They are delicious, aren’t they?”

“Yes. Kind of crunchy sweet.”

“There is another one, in the same family, that is hot and spicy. But we usually don’t eat it for breakfast.”

No one was eating quickly, so I took my time as well. The room was filled with babble but, about a half an hour into the meal, my ears caught a question Andrew was asking John, “So, you are her second husband? And Gillian isn’t yours?”

“Yes. Beth-any’s first husband died on their first assignment, and I was brought out as a bachelor soldier. There are always some in the pipeline.” Beth-any, sitting beside me, paled, and I put my arm on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“He was very nice,” she said. “John is nice, too, of course, and he has been just wonderful with Gillian, raising her absolutely as his own. Of course, her first father never even got to see her, the poor boy.”

“Ok, folks, time for us to get started working. We’re all going to be busy over the next three months. Partners, while your women clear the tables and all, I’ll get you started simming.”

The men and boys all trooped off downstairs, and I got up with Beth-any (and Gillian) to help clear the tables. “what do the boys do?” I asked. “What kind of sims?”

“The same as the men,” Beth-any said. “Boys, unless their gifts are very different, tend to follow in their father’s force. They are partnered right at what we called eligibility, and they start work right away. Actually, most of them start even before then.”

“They partner right at eligibility? How do they manage that?”

“They are assigned,” Beth-any said.

“Really? All of them? Kind of like a final choice?”

“Oh, no. They are assigned well before then. The doctor and the parents assign them. Genetically, you know. You’re a doctor, you understand these things. Oh, speaking of which. I completely forgot.” She looked out at the room, and spotted a boy standing in the corner who, when he saw her looking at him, blushed. “That’s Carl, he needs you to certify him as in puberty and take the standard tests and things.”

Poor boy. Back home you went to the doctors very privately. I had only told my girlfriends a couple of weeks later. “You’re Carl?” I said to him, as he came up to me in response to my wave.

“Yes, yes ma`am.”

“So, Carl, you’ve started puberty?”

“Yes ma`am, that is, my mom says I have.”

“Well, we’ll just check you real quick and then get your blood test and all. Let me figure out where we can do that.”

“Oh, I know that, ma`am.”

“Yes?”

“Right in here,” he said, pointing to the boy’s room. “I’ll make sure there’s nobody in there.”

He went in and, a few seconds later, a boy came out, then Carl came to the door. “The kit for the blood test is right here, ma`am,” he said. “There is one in the girl’s room as well. Would you rather go there?” he asked, sounding concerned.

“No, this is fine,” I said. Let me find the tests I’ll need.

The kits were standard and I had the blood test and the physical exam done a few minutes later. One boy came in while I was doing the blood test and backed hurriedly out. “Well?” he asked me, when I had finished and was running his genetic test.

“Well, what, Carl?”

“Am I, ma`am? Am I in puberty now?”

“Yes, yes of course, Carl, your mother was quite right.” His face lit up, and I suddenly realized that he hadn’t been worried about the exam so much as whether this strange new doctor would agree with his mother and pass him into his next phase of life. He thanked me and then ran off, “Mom, mom, the doctor says I am!”

I emerged from the boy’s room to the grins of the other women, and the relief of that one boy, who hurried in behind me. “Thank you,” Beth-any said. “You have made his day. He was actually changing?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “He was just at the very beginning, but enough along I could certify him.” I tried to sound confident, as if this wasn’t the first puberty I had certified outside of a sim. “I take it that the boys here are proud to pass that step in life?”

“Oh, extremely proud, but they are especially eager because it means that they will get to fight soon. Carl is a soldiers son and, except for some turret work, has never been in ‘real’ combat; you know, against adults. Now that you have certified him he can take his final few sims and be cleared for ground work.”

I blanched, appalled at what I had done. “But he’s so young!”

“We start out young out here,” she said. “We have no choice. But, don’t worry, it won’t be front line stuff. He’ll fight in towers and all. And we pathfinders, that is pathfinder units, have some excellent body armor. I’m sure you’re training will include that. And with his genetic information we can regrow practically anything that doesn’t kill him, even germ tissue, so unless the battle really goes south he should be OK.”

“But I don’t envy you your next task, however.”

“Oh?”

“Once his father is back from simming you will have to sit down with his parents and go over who Carl can partner with. Hopefully his code will leave him rather open, but we have such a small group that we often have to send our eligibles back to the station for partnering, and parents hate that.”

“What’s the genetic variability required?” I asked. Usually partnering wasn’t that hard!

“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that,” she said, “you’ll have to look it up. But it worse for pathfinders than for anyone else, because we are such a small group.”

“Oh, oh, that makes sense,” I said, thinking myself pretty stupid for not thinking of that myself.

“Well, time to sim,” Beth-any said, and I looked around, confused. “Where are the circles?” I asked, watching people, women and children, settling themselves in front of various walls, and donning gloves and goggles. I wasn’t surprised to see them sitting down but…

“Oh, we can’t do those, unfortunately. There simply isn’t space to install them in the floors. You have no idea how tight these quarters are. But you will, that is the first sim.”

Indeed, the second I put on the goggles my world vanished completely into a starfield and a spaceship. Startled I reached up and removed them, rejoicing to see the world return to our day cabin. I put them back on, and the starfield came back.

This is the pathfinder ship Terrier, the new home of Pathfinder force 501st C. Except for certain command and control functions she is identical to the wolfhound and the Beagle, the home of the 501st B and A. These ships use the latest in our stealth technology, the picture you are seeing is not something the human eyes could actually perceive. Observe.

At that the ship all but disappeared, replaced by a black patch that still radiated the view of the various stars ‘behind’ it. Ironically only where the stars weren’t could I notice a slight change in the background ‘color’.

This stealth is reflected in all wavelengths and it is estimate that the enemies technology will not be able to perceive this ship at a distance of more than 100 km, and even then only with difficulty.

One hundred kilometers? That was practically spit—in-your-face distance. No space warfare ever occurred that close.

She is lightly armed, with only a few hundred long range missiles and a few thousand air to ground missiles on board. The Grendor, the 501st supply ship, has a reasonable re-supply capacity. However the force will need to meet up with supply colliers from time to time to resupply for most circumstances.

The interior of the Terrier consists of three living compartments, one piloting compartment, several storage facilities, and bays for the shuttles, ground ships, and assault ships. The most interesting of the ground ships is a new ship appropriately called ‘the spider’.

The screen had been zooming in and showing me the various compartments and things as the voice spoke. I recognized the sleeping compartment where I had spent the night, and the ‘day cabin’ where I was now. The third compartment, below us, was a sim compartment and had suits dangling from the ceiling everywhere. But now I was suddenly inside of one of the bays, staring at a bizarre apparition.

The spider is best shown in use, the voice said, and I was suddenly faced with a jungle scene. The ‘spider’ was literally dangling between several trees, with long metallic tentacles reaching out to grab them. As I watched it moved a tentacle over its ‘head’ and grabbed a new tree, moving itself forward, slowly, between the trees. As I watched it came to a space that was too small the two tentacles reached forward and removed the tree. As you can see it is designed for an environment rich in plant growth where standard ground transportation would be difficult. It can also… The view shifted to a swam… walk on water, in the sense that the tentacles have the capacity for buoyancy and, along with the main compartment are, in the aggregate, lighter than water.

This was totally awesome, with the spider literally skating across the water.

The inside of the spider normally carries up to eight personnel. Four can be housed in the piloting compartments…

There were four of these around the circumference of the spider. Kind of like for flitters, except the ‘windows’ were black one way vision durasteel.

Four more can be housed in the interior compartement, with two more in the turrets. Given normal staffing, some of these positions are usually unoccupied.

Well, of course. One had to sleep sometimes. But the way it was built it looked like there was little room to do anything more than sleep. You would have to eat sitting on the floor or laying down, there couldn’t be room for a table in that ‘interior compartement’. The computer droned on about armaments and storage and the like and I was almost asleep by the time it said,

The next ship is a standard ground vehicle. Capable of powered flight at heights of over two hundred meters it normally cruises at two meters or less.

This craft looked very normal, almost like a shuttle. One interior compartment, like the one I was sitting in, except a little smaller.

—

Attention: The parents of Carl Jensen would like to set up an interview time for discussing his partnering.

Oh, bother, I had forgotten about that. I clicked, “Message acknowledged” and started digging through the relavent files. Wow, they did have a much tighter genetic allowance than I had read about before. I set the computer up to search… oh, bother, I had pulled up the wrong file… this was every female in our group, not just those not yet partnered. Bother! No one not yet partnered was a good match for him. Poor Carl.

As I thought about how to tell his parents that he was going to have to search for a partner from outside the group, with all of the problems that that must entail, I scrolled idly through the list. He could have partnered with some of the rest of us. Escpecially me. Our patterns were very different.

Suddenly I had an idea and started doing some research. It was a bizarre idea. A truly and fundamentally bizarre idea. My research confirmed it but…

I stared at the screen, and considered… but I was the doctor. I hit the ‘override’ button and Andrew’s face, looking very confused, suddenly appeared before me. “Aliya?” he said.

“I need to talk to Jesse,” I said. “Doctor stuff.”

“Oh,” he said, “Oh, ok. Boy, that surprised me. I was in the middle of slaughtering a group of aliens.”

I played with the controls a little more and gave Jesse a few seconds to respond, but he showed up right away. “Yes?” he said.

“As you may know, I certified Carl this morning,” I said. “Unfortunately I’m having a problem with his genetic pattern.”

“I was worried about that,” Jesse said, supposedly to Andrew. “We have been having that problem recently, although we have always managed. You will have to search farther out, perhaps a nearby soldier unit? Not that any of them are that close.”

“Yes, well, I had another idea,” I said, and proceeded to explain it.

“Are you sure she will be a match?” Jesse asked.

“Yes, actually, the markers are quite clear.”

“Well, I don’t object, then. It seems a nice solution. Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” I said, and closed the connection, and then signaled the parents that I would be ready to meet as soon as they were. Seconds later the ‘connection’ button came up, and I duly pressed it.

“Hello,” I said to the partenaire, whose name, I hastily looked up, was Cynthia. “I have completed your son’s partner assignment. It is a little unusual, but I checked it out with Jesse and he approved it.”

Unusual?” the partner said.

“Yes,” I answered, as if Cynthia had spoken. “You see, there was no one in our group he could partner with. So I had to choose, for his partenaire, someone a little further afield.”

“Oh, we were afraid of that,” she said. “Who did you get?”

“Well, as I said, it was a bit unusual. I have a sister, back on New Texas, that isn’t partnered. And so, again with Jesse’s approval, I sent for her to be his partenaire.”

“Oh!?” Cynthia said. “Oh, well, that is wonderful. We are such a close group, you see, and we hate to partner very far out. That will be…”

“I’m going to go back now,” the Partner said. When he dropped out of the call I looked at Cynthia. “Is he upset?”

“Oh, no. He is just very businesslike and hates to ‘waste time’. They are very busy training all of your new partners, you know. But, really, I’m so excited by your news. We were so worried that we would have to get some total stranger. Tell me about your sister…”

—

“How was your morning?” Andrew asked, coming up to me at ‘lunch time’ and kissing me and cuddling at the same time. “It sure is great to get to see you at noon, or whatever time it is.”

“Well, our shift time we woke up at eight and it’s now four o’clock,” I said. “Hungry?”

“Starving. Training was hard. Unit stuff.”

I looked at him as I served him. Roast meat: these pathfinders ate well. And potatoes. The first meal I actually cooked for him, with real food, and I wanted some New Texas food. The meat was some strange animal, but the potatoes were regular enough. “Unit stuff?”

“You know,” he said, “learning to fight together as a team. I can’t believe this. I can’t believe we are pathfinders. My parents are going to go ballistic.

“You’ve certainly come a long way,” I said and then seeing his look and realizing how he might have taken that I said, “I mean it. I still remember that first day I saw you.” I reached out to grab his arm, squeezing his bicep, which hardly budged. “Look at you.”

He blushed, ate, and then said, “I heard you certified a boy today. You made his day! He worked with me on a combat exercise and he was grinning like the Chesire cat. Puffing out his chest. And when he found out who I was he was all over buzzing about how nice you were.”

“Were you like that, when you changed?”

“Well, I was happy enough. But I was much more embarrassed about it. I changed shirts though.”

“What?”

“It was our tradition, I don’t know if they did it in your town. But in our town, when boys first changed, he would start wearing a different kind of shirt. In our town it was dark blue. No ‘little boy’ was allowed to wear dark blue. You had to wait until you changed. I think I wore the same shirt for three straight weeks, until my mother threatened to throw me in the wash with it. Then I put on another one.” He grinned and piled in again.

“How are you?” he asked, some minutes later, when we had retired to a busy corner to cuddle. “You don’t look great.”

“Oh, it’s just the morning sickness,” I said. “I’m sure it will pass.”

“And then we’ll get a baby!” he said, “Do you want a boy or a girl?”

—

The next three months were incredibly hard. Andrew did well, enjoying his training. And I made friends and all. But I was with people constantly. Constantly. I never was in the shower without at least three other girls, and usually twice that many and several children.

And I was mortally ill. I wasn’t just morning sick I was noon sick and evening sick as well. I drank Nausease, which tasted awful but helped some women, and it did nothing for me. I didn’t throw up often, usually just once a day, but I felt sick all day!

Ironically the first morning I really felt good was the morning that we were due to arrive at our first planet. “Baby!” Gillian said to me in the shower that morning, patting my stomach which was, just a bit, showing. Just the slightest bit but everyone made a big deal about it, especially in the morning showers. Not just for me, either, all the pregnant women came in for the same thing from Gillian.

“Yes, Gillian, Baby,” I said, trying to keep the shampoo out of my eyes. “Are you excited, Beth-any? To be going to a planet?”

She laughed, “It’s not quite the same for me, Aliya. I’ve done this before, and, besides, our job is different from yours. But I guess I’m still excited.”

I stood in the dryer and she grinned at me. “I hope it goes well for you. Your first assignment can be hard, you know.”

“I know,” I said, but I had no idea what she meant. This assignment seemed easy enough

—

The shuttle flared to a stop, literally in the middle of nowhere. An enourmous stretch of sand, stretching for miles in either direction, with nothing breaking it anywhere. “Are you sure this is the right spot?” I asked Andrew, looking over his shoulder at the screen.

“You can see it as well as I do,” he said, pointing. Sure enough the underground water was closest to the surface right here.

“This is so bizarre,” I said, as the shuttle door opened. “All this water, and all of it under the surface.

“Bye Aunt Aliya,” I heard as I got to the door. I looked up to the turret where he sat, poking his head down and grinning at me.

“Bye Carl,” I said, waving back.

“Help them unload, Carl,” the father’s voice came from the front of the shuttle, where he was shutting everything down. Carl raced down the ladder and ran over with Andrew to the cargo bay. I walked out into the desert and stared at the sand. How could there be water here?

“Aliya?” Andrew yelled, “they have to go, could you help?”

I went over and helped pull out the rest of our stuff; pull it far enough so that the shuttle wouldn’t squish it with it’s thrusters when it took off.

“Bye Aunt Aliya,” Carl yelled, at the door of the shuttle. Seconds later I saw him back at his turret, waving again. I waved back at him as the shuttle took off, flaring away from us on it’s way to drop off the next couple… or family rather, I remembered, as they had had their baby a month ago.

“What do we do first?” I asked Andrew, more to hear my self talk than anything.

“Well, if you’re OK with setting up the tent I’ll get started on the well.”

“I still can’t believe we’re having to dig this with shovels!” I said, as I pulled at the cases until I had the tent case out.

He walked over to another case and got a shovel. Then he stripped off his shirt and started off into the desert. “Andrew!” I said, “Put your shirt back on. You’ll get sunburn.”

Andrew sighed and walked back. “You know why we have to do it by hand. We don’t have room: not on the shuttle, not on the ship. Besides, the water is only five feet down through sand. It shouldn’t be that hard to dig out.”

Two hours later I had done everything I could think of with the tent. I even had a dinner cooking. So I went over to Andrew.

“Don’t say anything!” he said, from where he stood in the middle of a very, very small hole in the sand.

“How can I help,” I said, doing my best not to laugh.

“Get me some water,” he said, starting again with his shovel.

I got him water and then, a few hours later, convinced him to stop.

The next morning went better. We got up early in the morning, really early, so it was cool. He had me make sandbags, to hold the edges of the sand back and somehow just filling them and piling them around the edge made the hole look deeper. And then I switched with him for a while. He let me dig for a half an hour or so and then came back. By then I fully appreciated the difference between the muscle mass of a male versus a female. I thought I was going to die.

I went back and took a nap. Hey, I was pregnant, I was allowed! And when I got up…

“You took your shirt off again,” I accused. He had taken off more than that, he was shoveling in his briefs.

“It’s still early morning, and the sun can’t even reach me here,” he said. It was true, too, so I came down off my high horse and said, “So, what can I do?”

“Rig up a pail, will you?” he asked. That way I don’t have to throw it so far.”

That was an idea. I went out to to look. Since we were building a well, they had given us some pails, and I tied a rope to one and went back.

“Great,” Andrew said, as I threw it down to him. A few shovels and it was full. He stood there while I pulled it up and out, and then threw it back. We reapeated this a couple of times and then he started, in between my pails, to continue to throw stuff out over the walls.

“This isn’t helping,” I said, discouraged.

“No, it is,” he said. It’s easier when I throw it in the pail. But we’ll get done faster this way, with me doing both.”

And so I hauled on the pail for the next couple of hours. “How deep are we?” I asked, collapsing exhausted by the side of the well.

I think about three feet,” Andrew said, and then, “What’s that?”

I looked up, hearing the noise myself. There, about three miles away, was the shuttle, obviously coming toward us.

“I wonder what’s up?” Andrew asked, climbing out of our ‘well’ and getting his clothes on.

“they didn’t radio us or anything,”I said, arranging my hair, which had gotten kind of out of order as I pulled on the pail, and when I flopped on the ground.

“Well, let’s go see,” he said, his shirt in place.

We walked over to where the shuttle had landed, and got to the door just before it opened, revealing a grinning Carl. “We brought you some fish!” he said. “For a barbecue!”

I looked behind him at his mother. “We went fishing,” she said, “and thought you would enjoy some.”

Carl and his father went out with Andrew to see our well, and I went with his mother… their little one’s tagging along. “We’ve finished dropping everyone off, and so we decided to go fishing, after strafing the enemy some. We’ve got this cool harpoon and…” She opened the door to the fridge and I gasped. “Yes, it is rather large,” she said, laughing. “Let’s get a fire started and then we’ll cut some off.”

Large? I thought to myself as she closed the fridge, that fish was bigger than me!

We, that is the kids mostly, got a fire started with our fire sticks… Long tubes that gave off gas and imitated a real fire. We supervised them as they did that, set up the grilling rack over the fire, and then we, indeed, cut off a large section of the fish, leaving the children with the grill to ‘watch’ it. It was only then that I noticed that Carl and his father had joined Andrew in our well.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I came to the edge and saw the three of them, stripped to the waist, shoveling sand on some tarp or something that was all tied up with ropes.

“Grant invented this,” Carl’s father said, still shoveling. “We’ll show you how it works in a minute.”

It was only a minute too, as they had it relatively full. Then they came out and Carl’s father took up the ropes, tied them together, and tied a longer rope to them. Then he tied the other end of that to our ‘come along’, a winch thing that operated by hand. He attatched the come along to the shuttle and handed the handle to Carl who, with a grin, started winching. “You can put a stake in here when we leave,” Carl’s father said, as we watched the tarp tighten up. “But I think you’ll find this quicker.”

It wasn’t very quick, with each winch of Carl’s arms moving the tarp only an inch or so, but it was moving a great deal of sand. The tarp sort of crept over the wall, with the ropes only moving the far end and the rest kind of rolling up and over until the sand dumped out. We all went forward and pulled the tarp out from under the sand.

“You can move the stakes around while Andrew shovels,” Carl’s father said, “so the sand doesn’t get too piled up in any one place. I think it’s only faster because it is easier, really. All of that throwing overhead…”

The boys went back to their work, and we went and turned the fish, and prepared some other food. “So, we were your first stop?” I asked Carl’s mother.

“Yes, Carl insisted. I think you made a hit with him, first certifying him and then giving him your sister. That makes him your Brother-in-Law.”

I laughed, “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’s right. We didn’t usually have any time, back on New Texas, where the couple would be planning on coming together but not yet partners in flesh. So, I have another brother. Interesting.”

“You come in for a new name, that way,” she said. “Among us. You are now his ‘Adelphe’, or ‘Sister in Law’. If he had several sisters in law he might not use it so much but, being the only one, the only one here, anyway, he has said he will start calling you that, if it is OK with you. It is our tradition for Sisters-in-law, a special form of respect.”

“Sure,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, and we concentrated on the fish. “I guess that’s what I get for marrying myself into a another culture by proxy.”

“Dinner!” Carl’s mom shouted a few minutes later. The fish looked really good, and smelled great. Carl, his father, and Andrew, came climbing out of their hole a minute or two later, and washed themselves with water from the shuttle before putting their shirts back on.

“Shall we pray?” Carl’s father asked, and we all bowed our heads.

“Well, brother, thank you so much for helping us with our well,” I said, to Carl, coming over and putting my hand on his shoulder. He blushed furiously, and stammered out something about my being welcome. The other children, slightly confused, grinned at him. Andrew looked at me curiously, and then with dawning comprehension. Soon he was joining in with the ‘brother’ comments, causing Carl to look as if he wanted to crawl in the well and pull the sand in after himself. But I crowned the issue as, after we had eaten and we girls had cleaned up (while the boys dug) I stopped him from getting away with a mere handshake for me as he said goodbye.

“As my new brother, you really need to kiss me now,” I said, presenting my cheek. Face aflame he complied, and then almost ran back into the shuttle while everyone laughed.

“Oh,” you are so cruel,” his mother said, while his father grinned and kissed me himself.

“As your brother’s father, you understand,” he said, as I blushed myself.

“Will he survive?” I asked Carl’s mother, when she came up, indicating Carl with a wave of my head.

“Oh, he was thrilled, just embarrassed,” she said, kissing me herself much more naturally, and then repeating the gesture for Andrew. “He’s growing up, and is thrilled by it. We’ll see you two around.”

The new device worked marvelously, as did getting up early, staying up late, and napping in the middle of the day to avoid the sun. It was only two days later when a shout from Andrew sent me running. “Water!” he yelled and I looked down. It was so dark in the hold I could hardly see anything, but I certainly didn’t see any water. “At my feet,” he said. “They are a couple of inches into the sand and I can feel water with my toes. We’re getting there!”

“That’s great!” I said, climbing down beside him and grabbing a shovel.

It only took us a few minutes to get a faint seep of water, but it took us another whole day before Andrew was willing to stop shoveling. He was standing in the middle of the huge hole he had dug, ankle deep in water at the time, and water was still seeping in. “We’ll need to sandbag, now,” he said, and, with a sigh, handed him some sandbags and began filling some myself. It was, finally, two days after that before we stood, at sunset, at the side of the well, looking down at our ‘finished’ product.

“Shall we start the plants tomorrow?” he asked.

“Oh, I’d really like to start now,” I said. “At least with a couple of plants.”

He looked at me and grinned, “Eager for some green?” he asked, and I nodded. These last few days had been very hard. I only had Andrew to talk to, and he had wanted to do very little talking. He had worked, eaten, spent time in bed with me, and slept, and then gone back to working. I had worked with him, done what I could around ‘the house’, taken care of the seedlings… but I was mostly bored. So I was, indeed, eager for a little green. “Well, let’s get started then.”

The system was fairly simply. Each plant was being held in a kind of ‘suspended animation’ chemically. I didn’t remember the chemicals, but I knew I wasn’t allowed to touch the plants until it had been all washed off, being pregnant and all. So I hauled some water over to where we kept the plants, and stood back as he carefully poured out all of the liquid they were in, and poured cup after cup of water into the plant trays, rinsing out everything that had been in there.

We were going to start with the ‘deep root’ bamboo, we had decided. It was a little more straightforward and the end plant would be useful, even if it gave a little less green. The plants rinsed, and Andrew’s hands washed, together we carried the plants over to the edge of the well.

Each individual plant came with a ten foot ‘wick’, which I carefully handed down to Andrew, who being still undressed, was the one to go into the well. He put each wick into the water, and I, at the top, put the plant, in its little plastic pot, into the ground. The plastic was rather fragile, and full of holes, so the bamboo roots, once they started to grow, would rip it to shreds and give the plant room. But, meanwhile, it was filled with little chemical balls which would hold the water, so the plant wouldn’t dry out. (The balls were specially designed not to hold any chemical except water, so the suspension chemical wouldn’t stick to them. Still, I washed my hands well after I was done. )

We planted, in all, fifty plants that evening but, when we got done and stood holding hands looking at them, “It doesn’t look like anything,” I complained.

“It will though,” he said, squeezing my hand. “You know what the books said.”

I did, and I had seen the video too. Content, we walked back to our tent and I was just getting undressed, and Andrew was taking what shower he could (we would hook up the water from the well tomorrow, first thing) when our com rang. It was Carl’s mother. “Aliya,” she said, and the tone in her voice caused me immediate concern, “we’re bringing Jane in. She’s bleeding. I’m afraid it is a miscarriage.”

I hurried out to tell Andrew, who dressed. It was a full ten minutes later when the shuttle landed. Grant was right at the door, practically carrying a white faced Jane. “Lay her down over here,” I said to him and he did… and then abruptly left. I stared at him for a second, and then Jane said,

“He’s scared. He keeps talking about me dying. Somebody tell him I’m not going to die, will you?”

“Well, let me examine you first,” I said, “so I can speak authoritatively.”

I got out my equipment, and it only took me a few seconds to realize… “Jane, I’m sorry…”

“I’ve lost the baby. I know. But please tell my husband I will be all right.”

I looked at Carl’s mother who had sat with me and helped me during the exam. “Do you think you could break the news to him? And reassure him about Jane? And then come right back? I’m going to be rather busy here.”

She nodded and hurried out, and I administered the ‘forget me’ drug to Jane, who lay back, a bemused smile on her face. And then I laid out my other equipment.

“So, she’ll be OK?” Grant said, hurrying up to me. “Carl’s mother she said she would be, but you took so long…”

“It took a long time because she was hemmoraghing from several spots,” I said, not willing to tell him that those spots were where his latest son had died in the womb. “I got her all cleared out, though. She will need to sleep for a day or so, though, after the drugs I gave her.”

“Oh, oh, well could I see her?”

“Yes, just don’t be long, and with the drugs, she won’t really recognize you.”

Grant and them eventually went off to sleep in the shuttle, and Andrew and I finally got to lay down in our tent, in our ‘bed’ on the floor, with Jane a few feet away in her cot. She was still zonked, and so Andrew and I were able to talk, and I was able to cry: both for Jane’s baby, and in fear for mine. Andrew did his best, poor dear, to console me and, eventually, we fell asleep.

“You’re finally up!” I heard as I came out of our tent the next morning. We had slept in a bit, the sun was almost up. The voice was Grant who, along with Carl (who duly came and greeted me) were duly planting along the edge of the well.

“The plants are growing,” Carl said, taking me by the hand and leading me over. “Just since yesterday they’ve grown a little.”

I looked at them. They had been about an inch tall, and several were approaching two inches. I knew that that was slow for this kind of bamboo… they were probably still shaking off the suspension affects.

“How… how’s Jane,” Grant asked.

“She’s doing much better,” I said. “I got her up, helped her use the toilet, and fed her some light soup. It is mostly the medicine that she is shaking off now,” I added, “along with some loss of blood. But she should be ready to go with you later today.”

“Great, great,” he said, and turned back to work. I turned to Carl,

“So, you’ve started installing the creeper vines?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling me closer to look, “Look at their roots! They’re already creeping down the wick!”

I had seen the genetic engineering that they had done on these plants to speed up their growth. The bamboo hadn’t needed that much ‘encouragement’ and it was mostly bamboo genes they had used to help the vine along. You couldn’t quite see the roots growing, but they were a half inch along the wick already, and that was with the suspension chemical still working some. I knew that the rate of growth would increase soon. “Yep, they’ll be down to the water by the next time you’re here.”

Carl looked down into the well. “Do you want to go swimming?” I asked him.

“I can’t swim,” he said, his face falling. “We’ve never visited a planet where I could learn, and you know I just started real sims.”

“Well, do you want to learn? Not that a well is the best place…”

“I’d love to,” he said. I thought quickly. “Grant,” I said, “Would you mind…?”

An hour later I watched the two them, Grant holding up Carl who was splashing away happily. As I watched Grant let him go (again) and Carl, plunging into the water, splashed more frantically and then, triumphantly, lifted his head out of the water and gasped out a breath. Grant let him do this a couple of more times and then lifted him out again, “Good job!” he said, “Now, breathe!”

I laughed, and left them alone.

“How’s Grant?” Jane asked. I had finally allowed her to have her infant back, and he was nursing busily.

“He’s doing great,” I said. “He’s teaching to Carl to swim… in a well!”

Jane laughed, weakly. “Is he OK with my losing the baby?”

“He was upset, but he was mostly worried about you. He was so nervous, you should have seen him.”

“Oh, I’ve seen him nervous before. You should have seen him at my birth. You remember, you were busy with some sim and Angela came over to deliver me. And poor Grant just paced back and forth. I think if my labor hadn’t been as quick as it was he would have had a heart attack.”

“Well, this wasn’t that bad! But he was awfully worried, so he’s been working night and day, practically.”

“Why don’t you have him come in,” she said, “maybe seeing me will calm him down.” She took my hand as I went to turn away, “He’s really a good partner, you know. I know you know we had some problems at first. He had a very hard time growing up, you know. He… he’s not like other boys. He has a temper. He really cares about things. But he’s good at this job,” she said, almost pleading with me to believe her.

“He’s great at this job,” I said to her, patting her on the wrist, “He was born for this job.”

“Do you, do you really think that?”

“Yes, dear,” I said, wondering what it would have been like if Grant had gotten a different partner, one like me. Would he have simply killed me? Or ended up even stronger? I shook my head, it was a foolish question. The Creator had given Grant the partner that The Creator wanted him to have, and had given me to Andrew. “I’ll go and tell him you want to see him.”

—

“Well, it is good to be finally alone!” Andrew said, that evening, after we had watched the shuttle take off and decided to go and have a rather chilly ‘hot tub’ experience in our new well.

“I have to admit, I kind of enjoyed it,” I said.

“Oh, of course, silly me,” Andrew said. “Here you go and get all of that medical training and then hardly ever get to use it.”

I didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t that. How many months ago had it been that I had been culled, and that I had been absolutely appalled at my new quarters, my new partner, the total lack of privacy, the living on top of one another… and now… now I was lonely. I had been devastated for Grant and Jane but I had been thrilled to have company. I lived for the day when Carl and his family would come by again with another fish…

“I have an idea,” Andrew said, interrupting my reverie. “You should do a tour.”

“A what?” I asked.

“A tour, you know, a medical thing. We could visit the families. Come on, there has to be something medical you can do, check on their pregnancies and all.”

“Do you think?”

“Yeh, sure, why not? You’re the doctor person, right? And it’s not like the plants can’t grow by themselves. We’ve got them all well started.”

“Really?!”

“You’re the doctor, surely you can come up with a plan, something to do with everyone.”

I thought. I had to do routine cancer screening, of course. And with living on a new planet there were tox screens to carry out. I think one girl was getting near puberty. And of course all of the pregnant women needed checking… including myself, but Beth could handle that…”

—

“Wow!” Carl said, “The plants have really grown!”

Indeed, the bamboo was now taller than he was, and the vines were a good six feet out from the well already. “Are you ready for your exam?” I asked him, “You’re first on my tour. Then your mom.”

Sure, he said, and I led him off to my tent.

“So, how am I doing?” he asked, a bit nervously, while getting dressed after the exam.

“Good. You’ll definitely be ready by the time your partenaire is here. You need to get more exercise though, and take your vitamins. I’ll talk to your mom, and maybe you can do a stretch with a family that is still digging, and need help with the kids and all.”

His face fell. “Hey, you’re probably going to have your own kids soon, you need to get used to dealing with it.”

His face then lit up a bright red, but it was true. “Send your mom in, will you?” I asked, and he darted out.

“What’s got into him?” his mom asked, coming in and taking her clothes off.

“I told him he needed more exercise, more vitamins, and I suggested that he spend some time with a family digging and taking care of kids. When he quibbled at that… lie back please… I reminded him that he would be having his own kids soon.”

She laughed as I played my wand over her just beginning to bulge belly. “No wonder he looked like a ghost. I’ll talk to my husband, I think I’ve got a good placement for him. What do you think of Jones’s?”

I laughed. Jones’s were older pathfinders, not our induction, and they had four little girls: four hyperactive little girls under four, including two red headed two year old twins who were the dictionary models for the ‘terrible two’s’.

“Well, how am I doing?” she asked, some minutes later, as I packed away my tools.

“You, and your baby, are fine. Or, I should say, babies.”

“What?” she squealed.

“Twins,” I answered. “One boy, one girl, growing well. I’ll need to check you more often, twins are a bit more dangerous.”

“Well, Carl will enjoy that, coming to see his sister. Are you ready to go?”

“Yep, all packed. As soon as I get done the rest of your kids and your partner. Let’s do him next, while you are still here.”

—

Our first ‘stop’, although we had had no idea it was coming, was at the beach. Not like you think, though. “You ready, Aliya?” Carl yelled down at me from his turret. “We’ll be there in a minute, you need to get to a window.”

“A window?”

“On the starboard!” he said, and I heard his hatch slam shut, as regulations demanded before firing, so I sat down and pulled up a ‘window’. Not a real window, of course, no one was dumb enough to put one of those on a shuttle. A screen, that showed the outside. And I had just pulled it up when I heard the turret guns begin to fire. And I saw… enemy. Adult enemy. Farms and things down by the seashore. Farms that were, now, being shot up. Primitive farms. The enemy here were still at their primitive stage, and our troops were dedicated to keeping it that way. The huge desert was bad for them, making it almost impossible for Juvies to survive.

We coasted down the coast for quite a ways, and then headed out to sea. “Did you see, Adelphe?” Carl asked, opening the hatch again and poking his head down.

“Yes, Carl,” I said. It had seemed horrible to me even knowing what I did about the aliens it was awful to see them all running all over the place getting shot and all. I looked at his grinning face, his hands still gripping and relaxing as if he was still firing. I wondered if it was the testosterone that made them so cavalier about all of that killing. Of course, I was medically trained, perhaps that made a difference.

“We’re going to Mr Grant’s place next, you know,” he said. “Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t, but I’m glad,” I said. “She needs checking after losing her baby.”

Carl’s face fell and he climbed back into his turret. Three hours later we had visited Jane and her family, another family with three small children (which was a bit wild doing their exams, let me assure you) and were coming up to Jones’s.

“Carl!” his mother called, and Carl came sliding down his ladder. “Carl, get yourself some stuff together, you will be staying with Jones’ to help them…”

“Mom!” Carl said, looking at me, appalled, as if he knew this was my fault.

“Carl!” his mom said, and he subsided, going to a closet and pulling out some spare uniforms and underclothes, then a package which I assumed contained his toiletries. Then he sat, glumly, in a corner. I let him sit for a minute, and then went up to him.

“Hey, Brother.”

“Hey,” he said.

“I wonder how your partener, my sister is doing right now.”

He looked at me, slightly wide eyed. “Can you imagine? She would have been sitting in her house, my old house, and then there would have been a knock on the door. It’s very rare, pre-cull, you know. There would have been two people, a seargent and an officer, standing there, and they would have read out her cull. It’s not a real cull, in her case, I think they call it ‘required induction’, and she gets a double bonus and exemption and all.”

His eyes got wider.

“She had an exemption, you know. I gave her one. She will get to pass on that exemption, and her two, on to my other sisters. Still, I wonder how she is feeling, having to travel across all that way to come and partner with you. I told her your name and all, and I told her a lot about you.”

“What…?” he asked, “What is she like?” he finally managed, his voice husky.

I spent the next few minutes telling him about Beth-any until, suddenly, “Carl, we’re about there, are you ready?” his mother asked.

Carl looked up, looked at me, grabbed his pack, “I’m ready mom.” He looked back at me, “I get it. If she can come all that way, I can spend a couple of weeks with the Jones’s.”

I winked at him, and he went to the door, just as if he was all eager for the treat.

—

“Well?” asked Andrew, late that night as we lay in bed together. “Did that make you feel better, Dr. Aliya.”

I rolled over and looked at him, his body glistening with sweat in the heat. In a few minutes it would be chilly, but the sand was still losing its days heat and we were both covered with sweat. “My love,” I said, “It wasn’t that I needed to play doctor, I needed to see people. It was good that I got to do my doctoring, given our lifestyle. One set of twins, one early skin cancer. But…”

I flopped back on my sheet. “It is truly bizarre. Just a few months ago I could hardly stand being with all those people. I was mad at you, I hated you; and I was totally freaked out by living with all of those people, being naked in front of people, bed play in the same room as other people.”

I rolled over again and looked at him. “But now I can hardly imagine living without you, and I feel isolated and alone living without all those other people.”

“You… you like me now?” he asked, quavering.

“I love you, silly,” I said, writing my name on his belly in his sweat.

“I was so scared of you,” he said.

“What?” I said, moving myself over till I was looking into his eyes directly in the dim light that the moons provided through our tent wall.

“I was terribly scared of you. I knew that our coming together was totally my fault; and… and I felt like I had to lie to you about it. I couldn’t even decently apologize, like most of our friends were doing. I mean, Grant was horrible, but he knew it, and he told Jane. He would get mad, and beat her, and get whipped, and apologize, and try again.”

“But I couldn’t do that. I had to try to pretend I was this noble recruit. And then you found out, and I felt just awful. You punished me, and that was good…. But then you stopped, and I didn’t know how to feel. I mean, I loved it, but I felt… and you’re so smart! I mean, a doctor and all!”

“Oh, my love,” I said. “I may be doctor smart, but I’m not very partenaire smart. Jane’s better at me at that, even if she isn’t ‘doctor smart’.”

He started to say something, but I kissed him, and then showed him how much I loved him in a way that, I had been told, was very meaningful for boys. He was very surprised, and almost resisted, but then (he was a boy) we came joyfully together. When we were done, I said to him, “I love you! Remember that. And you are smarter than I am in lots of ways. Your art is great!”

“But I…” he started, and I kissed him again, and he didn’t say anything else for the rest of the night.

—

“Carl?!” I said, to the glowing and grinning boy standing in front of me. The shuttle had landed when I was at the far side of our enormous oasis and by the time I had gotten back to our tent (which we had had to move several times already) he was in our tent and stripped down for his exam. He was a rather different boy after his six weeks with the Joneses. Except for a small strip of white at his waist he was a solid mass of tan. And where he had been reasonably muscled before, his muscles were practically bulging, for his age. And his age was increasing, as was evident by his naked status.

He seemed to almost glow during his exam, being sure, very sure, that I was going to congratulate him on his increased maturity; which I did. As he put his shorts back on he stammered a bit and asked, “Do you know when Beth-any is coming?”

“No, I don’t know any more than you do. I guess we’ll find out when the ship comes back for us in a few days.”

“You’ve done incredible here!” he said. “We measured more than nine square miles of greenery, just at your station.”

“The plants have done really well tapping the underground water,” I said. “We have measured plants a mile away from the hole that have gotten their roots down into the underground water. But you have to remember, these are our super-plants. They grow super-fast, but they wouldn’t do at all well in a real situation. There are no bugs here that attack these plants. Once there are, they will die off like crazy.”

“So why do we plant them?”

“Because they will cover the ground, and the animals will eat them, and then we’ll have something resembling real soil for the other plants to grown on. And they won’t all die off.”

“Did you want to go swimming?” I asked him. “Andrew or your dad could take you. I have to examine your mother.”

“Yeh, sure,” he said, darting off in his shorts and yelling for ‘Uncle Andrew’, which had replaced the awkward ‘brother’ which he had tried for a while.

“Wow, you’re looking pregnant,” I said to his mother as she came in and undressed. “Of course, twins make you grow quicker. Your uterine wall seems to be holding up well, you are using the muscle stimulator?”

“Just like you prescribed. It is very annoying.”

“Well, I’m sure it is, but it will really help when it comes time for birth, and for holding those twins the last few weeks.”

“I know. How are the twins doing?”

“Oh, they are doing great!” I said, looking at the readouts, and then looking at the twins themselves, who were wrapped in each other’s arms. “Heart rates are find, growth pattern is good. They are a trifle undernourished, but that is kind of natural with twins, and they’re handling it fine. I expect them to be born a bit early, but well developed.”

“Oh, good. My husband, I know he seems very distant to you, but he is very excited. I think somehow he thinks it affirms his masculinity to have seeded twins.”

I laughed, “Well, perhaps it does. But they’re fraternal twins, so if you want to get back at him you can remind him that that is because you threw two eggs.”

“No,” she said, getting up and getting dressed. “I’ll let him have his little joy. I wouldn’t trade his grin for anything. Besides, he is oh so solicitous now that I am carrying twins.”

I laughed again, and called her oldest daughter in. She watched as I examined her. “How long, do you think?” she asked me after I finished and she went out to find her brother, or some other child for me to examine.

“A year or so yet, I think,” I said, answering her half asked question. “She’s developing a bit slowly, but I think that is probably good. By the way, I check already, and she should have no problems partnering. I count at least four boys who are getting close to changing who she would be able to partner with.”

“Oh, good. She is going a little slow, but she isn’t worried about it. I guess I’m just being a bit of a mother hen. Besides which, I keep wondering when your sister will arrive.”

 

Despite my words, coming back together in the ship was a bit of a shock. For one thing, I was now much more pregnant, which made me feel like I was standing out, and awkward. And my natural modesty had had a small chance to come back on the planet, where I spent most of my time with just Andrew, and some time with Carl’s family… but now I was back 24/7 surrounded by people. Even sleeping, which had become harder being pregnant, got harder with the noise, the movement, the babies crying and nursing… all of it.

But I loved it, everyone loved it, except poor Carl. I saw his eyes when they came in the shuttle for us, he looked at me and looked disappointed, almost angry. “She’s not there?” I asked him, guessing from his look.

“No. they say it will be another three months, at least. There was some kind of battle or something, and her flight was diverted to take new colonists to a new planet.” He brightened up, “She is coming, though, I mean, I got that. And it’s not like she was killed in the battle or anything, they weren’t anywhere near the battle. They just got diverted. I think there’s a message for you on the ship.”

There was, too. I made sure that I was private when I watched it. “Hey, Aliya,” Bethany said. I could tell that she was sitting in a room in a transport. “It seems you can’t make up your mind. First you give me an exemption and then you call me out on a special induction.” She sighed, “You made a boy back home very unhappy, I think. You remember Drenden? I think he was working up his courage to ask me to partner with him, which I’m sure I would have accepted after what happened to you in finishing school. That is, if you hadn’t given me an exception, which he didn’t know about. I might have accepted him anyway, he was a nice boy, and you know I want to partner early and start having kids; unlike you, my brilliant if anti-social sister.” She grinned.

“I can’t figure out if I am mad at you or thrilled. Obviously this is a nice boy and all, or you wouldn’t have done it. And we were all exstatic when the news reached us that you had been assigned a pathfinder unit. No one, quite frankly, could believe it. We were forbidden from telling anyone, too, which made it freaky. Can you imagine, all my girl friends asking me, “how’s your sister” and my having to say, “oh, she’s fine, colonizing some boring planet somewhere. That’s what they told us we had to say, you know. In a couple years we will be able to tell them that you are then a pathfinder but.”

“But I had just gotten up my hopes for a sort of normal life when the military arrived. You should have seen it. The kids and all the neighbors were absolutely freaked, and mother was sure that it meant you were dead, even tho it was totally the wrong kind of military. I was actually at Jenny’s house, you remember Jenny, and the kids came belting over for me. Jenny offered to hide me and smuggle me over to Jenners, but I just couldn’t. I mean, a special induction… not a prisoner, not a regular recruit… someone important, or so I thought.”

There was a long pause, “Which he is, I suppose. Being part of your unit and all, even if I will be his first partnére. Well, I’ll see you soon, I doubt this message will get to you much before I will myself, you might even get it after we have partnered. Wouldn’t that be a joke!”

—

The joke was on her, I thought, thinking of how frustrated she must be going off to that colony instead of coming straight here. She would get a lot of training in, anyway.

Our next stop was only a month away, so I only barely got partially used to living together again when it was time to land on our next planet. We were all awake together, and standing watching a screen. If there was anything that could be more different from our last planet, this was it.

“It’s a jungle, ladies and gentlemen, YYY said, “from coast to coast on this mainland it is one solid jungle. Similar to large parts of South America, back on Earth, this entire mainland only rises, at its highest point, three hundred feet above sea level. The rain here is almost constant, so basically everything is wet, all the time.”

“I don’t  understand the reasoning,” Grant said. “How can we possibly settle here? It seems to me that the aliens can settle that entire jungle.”

“they can, and they can’t,” YYY said. “There is almost no metal on this planet, and there is almost no real areable land. Everywhere on the plant floods. So while they can live everywhere, their actual adult settlements are few and far between and not very successful. We are going to land and see if we can be more successful with our ability to work together as a group.”

The boys all discussed this for a good amount of time, but I, and I think most of the women and children, all just stared at the screen, at the jungle rolling out underneath the screen. It was a fascinating jungle, with enormous trees, and in incredible amount of vines. The livestock was incredible as well. Just in our little fly over I saw about a dozen different types of lizard like squirrel things. And in the water below there were hundreds of crocodiles, or the local equivelant.

“So we’ll be settling where, exactly?” Grant asked, and YYY turned the film off, put the map back on, and showed areas in red.

“These areas are reasonably far from any of the adult settlements we have been able to find. As you see the settlements will be in a circle, so that, when the colonists come, they will be able to enclose the circle against the Enemy, assuming we can figure out how to do that.”

“But how will we live?” someone else asked.

“Well, in a word, treehouses,” YYY said, and everyone laughed. “No, seriously. We have plans from several primitive groups back on earth for houses in trees, and we are going to be giving those to you, and each partnership can choose which type of house they would like to build.”

“What will the colonists eat?” I asked. We had our own food, of course, but we needed to set things up for the colonists that would come after us.

YYY looked almost embarrassed. “Well, there are a large number of fruits that are edible, and some vines that can be used as we would use vegetables. But mostly, well, meat: bugs and lizards.”

I flushed, and I was sure I wasn’t the only one. I had eaten lots of strange things, but most of them I hadn’t really know what it was. And I had eaten reptiles, of course. But these poor people would have to live on nothing but reptiles, lizards, for meat. And, of course, for the next few months, so would we!

“Come  love,” Andrew said, breaking into my reverie. “We need to choose our plan for our house.”

We looked them over and it didn’t take me long to decide on my favorite: a nice, light, airy house, all one room. Deciding how to cook was very awkward, but there was a kind of large bamboo that we could actually make a fire in, assuming we were careful. So we decided to put one of these in, literally, a hole in the very center of the room, in such a way that, if the bottom burnt through, the fire would just drop to the jungle floor… the soaking wet jungle floor.

“It’s going to be smoky!” I said. Always before, or almost always, even in the sims, I had managed to get at least a chimney. But that wouldn’t work here. I would have to keep the fire down or the house would be filled with smoke all day. Andrew probably wouldn’t care so much, but I would be stuck in the house pretty much all day.

“So, we’re ready to go?” Andrew asked, when I got done sketching a couple of cabinets and things. Very primitive cabinets.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

“Great, I’ll tell the shuttle pilot.”

“See if we can go with Carl’s family, will you?”

“Sure.”

—

<emphasize dense jungle, rain, etc.>

It took us another twenty four hours before it came our turn to go down. And we did get to go with Carl and his family. And Carl was very excited. “It is cool, Adlephe,” he said. “We build the house from the slings! You’ll be the third I’ve gotten to help with!”

He wasn’t the only person to get to help, either. A half an hour after we got in the shuttle we were hovering over what seemed to be a spot of the jungle that looked like everywhere else. We had a dozen soldiers with  us, and they, along with Carl and his father, got out their sling  lines and began rappelling down.

Most of the soldiers went off into the nearby jungle to start cutting off various branches. Carl, his father, and Andrew, on the other hand, had long ropes on their shoulders and, going off to various nearby trees, began making a kind of web. Carl was actually best at it, scurrying along the ropes and branches, swinging wildly along with his sling propellant.

Soon they had a part of the web woven and I rappelled down. Andrew wouldn’t let me come down before. I stood, hesitantly, on the web and watched them work and then, as the soldiers started to bring up branches, I started to weave them into place, according to the plan. It was actually kind of fun.

—

“Wow,” I said, several hours later, looking at our house from where I stood, on what remained of the web, a few feet in front of our new house. It was tiny, of course, only about ten feet across. And rough, of course, as befitted a house put together with branches and vines in a day. But it was done, and it was ours, and I, quite frankly, was ready to get into it and lay down and go to sleep.

“Totally cool!” Carl said.

“Hopefully it will be dry inside,” Andrew said. True to form, it had been raining all day, although, luckily, just a light drizzle, almost light enough to ignore when you were working, but now that we were just standing here.

“Do you want to spend the night?” I asked Carl.

“Nah, I can’t,” he said. We have deliveries to make, tomorrow. We’ll deliver to you, what, third I think.

His father nodded, and then waved his hand, and the rappelling ropes pulled him and the others back up to the shuttle where, one by one, they grabbed handholds and pulled themselves inside. Carl was last and waved at us after he had climbed in.

“Come,” my love, Andrew said, as he took me by the waist as the shuttle roared off into the sky, “Let us enter our abode.”

I had started a fire earlier, and we both gratefully stripped off and towled ourselves dry in front of it. I laid down some blankets on the floor, more for protection against the roughness of the sticks than any need for warmth. In spite of the rain the temperature was much warmer than we kept the inside of the ship, and we hardly used covers there.

“Happy?” Andrew asked me, as we lay together, a half an hour or so later.

“Well, I can’t say I’m happy with the diet,” I said. “And I don’t know how I’m going to handle the  humidity. But the rain on the roof is kind of nice.”

“Those leaves do make a wonderful sound, don’t they?” He asked me.

I took his hand, and laid  it on my stomach. “Really?” he asked.

“I think so, but I’m not sure,” I said. We had been waiting for movement and, so far, the couple times I had thought I had felt something, I hadn’t been able to get Andrew there in time to…

“I felt it!” he exclaimed and I lay back, content, his hand on my stomach, listened to the rain, and fell asleep.

—

“Wake up, love, the shuttle is coming,” Andrew said. I woke with a start, how long had I slept? I threw on my dress and ran outside. Sure enough, the shuttle was here and Andrew was there, dangling outside the shuttle.

“They must have started early,” Andrew said. Like me he was dressed in about the minimum  he could be, just a loose pair of shorts. I looked and the sun was hardly up. “Carl looks happy, getting to bring down the guide line.”

He did. He was grinning and, with his free hand, waving. We watched him as he got lower and lower, till he was about twenty feet above us.

Suddenly there was a bright flash from off to my right. I had no time to turn, however, because it moved from the right to directly above me… a bright streak that went directly into the shuttle, and was followed by a tremendous explosion from the inside of the shuttle.

I screamed but, before I could even really register what had happened, two things happened. The first was that the shuttle began to move, off to my right, erratically. The second, seconds later, was that Carl began to fall, his rapelling rope shooting out of the shuttle.

“Aaah,” Carl screamed, adding his voice to my voice and the high pitched roar of the shuttle. The motion of the shuttle was horribly worrying, but Carl, almost directly above us, took up all of my attention. The movement of the shuttle meant that he wasn’t falling directly downward but to my right, toward the house.

“Andrew!” I shouted, having no idea whatsoever what he could do. He moved, however, and my heart stood still. Down and down Carl plunged, seeming to take forever. And then, to my mixed horror and relief, he hit… hitting the house almost at its very top. I watched, trying to decide which way to move, as the house bent, and bent… and then snapped back into place, shooting Carl off the house and… directly into Andrews arms who, catching him, fell to the ground with him.

I had a few seconds release to watch the shuttle which, to my horror, continued to fly erratically off to my right, and downwards, until it hit a tree, spun wildly, and plunged to the jungle floor.

“Here!” Andrew said, shoving Carl into my arms and yelling into my face, “Take him and hit the panic button!”

I looked, dazedly, into my arms and saw that Carl was truly in a bad way. He was unconscious and his right arm hung at a horrible angle. His clothes were ripped in several places, and he was all over blood. My medical training kicked in and I raced into the house with him, putting him on the blankets that I had so recently, and so happily, quitted. Then I raced to the locker and pulled out the emergency communicator, pushing the emergency button, designed for just this sort of situation.

Then I got out my medical kit and went over to Carl. In seconds I had his clothes off and was examining him. He had three deep puncture wounds and had  lost a lot of blood. Two them needed only a quick application of anti-bleed, but the third needed a quick surgical intervention to pull out a three inch long splinter, about an inch wide, from out of his thigh.

The sky overhead filled with noise, first the roaring of a combat shuttle, and then some deep crumping sounds. All around me I heard the snapping and crash of trees and parts of trees crashing down. I put all of that out of my mind, and went back to my surgery.

It took me a half an hour to stop all of the bleeding, and I had to give him three separate boluses of fluids to keep his blood pressure up.

“Come on, Carl, come back to me,” I kept mumbling. His pulse eventually came down, and his blood pressure stayed up. His face was strained so I gave him a dose of pain-down, and forget-me… two pain drugs that worked very well together, the one slowing the transmission of pain, and the other basically making the brain not care.

I had some time so I got out a rag, and water, and began washing him off, looking for other punctures and contusions and the like. The wand had showed me considerable brusing along the lungs, but nothing that looked like it would cause bleeding there, but I kept looking back every few minutes.

Finally I had him completely evaluated and began a replacement bolus. I hoped I had enough for any other patients they brought me. I hoped, desperately that there would be other patients.

After an hour or so I couldn’t stand the suspense and went outside. The shuttle noise had calmed down, at least as far as the weapons. The roar of the engines were still there and, the second I came out, a combat repel hole opened and a soldier came down a fast-rappel line. “Are you OK, ma’am?” he asked me, hitting the ground and bouncing slightly.

“I’m fine,” I said. “The shuttle crashed over there, and my partner went down to find out if they are all right. What happened?”

“We’re still working on that, ma’am. He glanced at my hands, “Are you sure your OK?”

I looked down at the blood and said, “I’m fine. Their son, Carl, he was injured in the accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident, ma’am,” he contradicted. “Do we need to evac the boy?”

“No, the young man will be fine here, I think, at least until we get his parents up.”

“We have sent several soldiers down to the crash site, ma’am, we should have news soon.”

“Thank you,” I said, and went back in the house, while he stood, scanning the jungle warily, his rifle in hand.

—

“They’re coming up, ma’am,” he said, “and they have a patient.”

A patient? I prayed that there would be more than that and rushed outside, peering over the balcony.

“It’s Julina!” Andrew yelled at me, from forty feet or so below me. He was coming up the line rapidly, obviously with a line shuttle, and he had a pack on his back.

“How is she?” I asked, as he made it the last few feet and I helped him over the edge.

“We gave her a shot of calm,” he said. “I think she’s just badly bruised, but there might be a break somewhere, especially in the ribs.”

I took her into the hut and, opening the pack slowly, I laid her besides Carl. They had field stripped her, of course, and cleaned her. I ran my wand over her. Sure enough she had a broken rib, not a bad one though. And she was badly bruised.

I examined her head carefully. My little wand was not the best for finding head bleeds, but I didn’t see any, and she didn’t have any symptoms of a head injury. I moved down the kidneys, and the suddenly became aware of my partner, watching me with worried eyes.

“Where are the rest of them?” I asked, scanning the kidneys. I heard nothing, looked up, and saw the answer in his eyes. “All of them?” I screamed, “They’re all dead?”

He came and hugged me, holding me until, guilty, I went back to my scanning. The left kidney showed a small amount of damage. “How?!” I asked, pleaded, “What happened?”

“We have no idea how they did it, but somehow the enemy managed to get an eplosive device into the shuttle. It killed everyone instantly,” he said. To this day I think he lied to me, but, if so, it was a lie out of kindness. “Everyone except Carl, who was outside, and Julina, who was in the bathroom. As she ship went down she must have been banged about rather badly.”

I spent the next hour watching over them, adding medication lightly to their dose to keep them under while they healed, and crying. Andrew stayed with me off and on, and went outside the rest of the time. They were all dead?

The noise of the shuttle, which had been fairly dull, now opened up so I could hardly hear myself think. “What are they doing?!” I asked Andrew, when he came in a few minutes into the noise.

“Pulling the other shuttle out of there,” he said. “It was so wedged in that they couldn’t run it.”

“It would run?” I asked, incredulously.

“Oh, yes, they’re incredibly tough. If they hadn’t had the door open to let the explosive in, it wouldn’t have done anything at all. But the explosive killed the people, so the shuttle, which was on manual, crashed into the trees, and then the autopilot tried to move it, and couldn’t, so it shut down and locked down, as they are supposed to do.

The noise changed just after he said, that, and we heard one shuttle leave and the other come hovering over. I didn’t want to be bothered with the shuttle, and stayed with my patients. A few seconds later the colonel, himself, came into our hut with Andrew. “How are they?” he asked, coming right to the issue.

“Not great,” I said.

“Will they be OK staying with you?” he asked.

“Yes, they should be fine, but I will need a restock of my medical supplies.

“That’s no problem, the boys are bringing down a full restock of everything, the stuff that was on Carl’s shuttle, your regular supply. So you’ll be OK with them?” he asked, looking at Andrew as well.

“Yes, Sir,” Andrew said.

“Well, good. You two are their closest family. Let us know if you need any special help. We are going to make some changes to our shuttle procedures, I can tell you that!” he finished, and stomped out.

I looked at Andrew, only now realizing what we had agreed to. “That’s OK, isn’t it?” I asked him.

“Of course,” he said. “They’re family, after all.”

 

Chapter 13: Interlude

I stood staring at the screen, waiting for my roommate to come in. With these tiny cubicles, which opened onto the hallway, I hated to get undressed for my shower before there was no chance of the door openening. I wondered how Aliyah was doing. And my new partner, ‘Carl’. What were they doing, for that matter. Carl was a soldier, they’d made that clear. Or, at least, a son of a soldier. I don’t know if we could be assigned before we were successful partners. What if I was incompetent.

I didn’t know whether to be glad or sad for our diversion. Our little courier ship had been very busy, passing back and forth between the various ships, ferrying down supplies and all. They kept promising me, and the others like me, that ‘soon’ we would go back to where we were supposed to be, and deliver the letters, supplies, and new partners and partnéres.

My roommate was a partnére as well, assigned to a pathfinder! I couldn’t imagine being assigned to a pathfinder, but I supposed their partnéres must die, too, occasionally. We had gotten assigned this room together but spent most of our time training or working. I had even gotten to help fly shuttle missions… not the dangerous ones near the coast, but some boring resupply missions in the mountains. Not that I had been bored, of course, even as co-pilot.

How was Aliyah doing with her partner? I pitied the poor boy, at least at first. Aliyah had never really wanted to partner, turning down boys right and left, or so it had seemed. She had never come out and said anthing, but we shared a room, back home, and I had learned to read her. The first time she had come home glowing but determined, and I had almost expected her to announce that she had partnered. But when day after day went by without it, well, I had understood. She had been proud to be asked, and even prouder to have turned him down.

She and I weren’t at all alike in that. I wouldn’t have turned any boy down, I don’t think, unless he was truly horrible. True, I had kept YYY a bit hanging, but he had never actually asked.

The door opened and I saw Guestina come in, hurrying. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, as the door opened and she turned around so I could change and shower. “My sim ran long.”

“Oh, that’s OK,” I said, stepping gratefully into the hot water. “I had a kind of boring day anyway, so I won’t be able to get to sleep for a while. What did you sim about today…?”

Chapter 14: Waking up to pain

My world was pain, nothing but pain. Pain and a sense of dread, of something missing, of something go wrong. “Go back to sleep, Carl, Sister said, and I felt her cool hand on my forehead and then she did something at my wrist and…

My world was pain, nothing but pain. Pain and a sense of dread, grief, loss, fear. I heard Justina playing, talking with her doll. I heard Uncle Andrew talking in the background. A soft beep went off and Sister started talking to me again, and…

I had to pee! I hurt all over and I had to pee! Sister came over, which was embarrassing, but she put some bottle or something there when I told her, and then I could go back to sleep…

“Carl, Carl, it’s time to get up!” Sisters voice pounded incessantly, if gently, at my brain. I knew I didn’t want to get up. The pain was better, but the dread, the grief, stood at the door of my brain like a lion waiting to tear me apart.

“Is he still sick?” Justina asked, at my elbow.

“Yes, Justina, but he’s getting better now and he needs to move about, to eat and drink, or he’ll start to get sicker. “Carl!” Sister said, as if she knew I was awake, “Open your eyes now.”

I did, slowly. I was hoping that I would see, somewhere in the background, Mom and Dad… but I knew I wouldn’t. If I was this sick Mom would have been there with me, and if she couldn’t, Dad would have. He would have found it hard, but he would have been there. And when I opned my eyes I saw… Sister, and Uncle Andrew, and Justina. I looked around, still hoping, hoping for some of them! Even little Dustin!

But, when I looked back at Sister’s eyes I knew the truth. “Their all gone, aren’t they?” I asked. “When the shuttle…” I looked at Justina, wonderingly.

“Yes, Carl dear,” Sister said, pushing my  hair back from my face. “Justina was in the bathroom, and you were out on the rappelling line.”

I nodded, and Justina said, “Can you make them come back, Carl?”

I looked at sister, who looked pained. No doubt she had told Justina dozens of times but, I was her big brother, the one who always did things for her. “No, sorry ‘stina, Carl can’t do that.”

Justina’s face fell, and then brightened, “Uncle Andrew made me a ‘ammock,” she said. “And you can sleep in it two when you can get off the floor and climb in it. I can climb in it!”

“Cool, ‘stina,” I said. I reached out my hand to sister, and she helped me sit up.

“Here are some shorts,” Sister said, and together we struggled me into them. When we got done I lay back on my bed, as exhausted as if I had run a four mile race in the deep sand. “You need to eat,” she said. “I’v made some nice lizard soup.”

I had to chuckle, remembering how much sister had complaind about having to eat lizards. I liked them, myself. Mom always said they tasted like ‘lobster’. Not that I would know. I’ve eaten a bunch of stuff, but never lobster. I struggled to sit up again, with Justina helping me, while sister ladled me some soup… a thing broth with small pieces of lizard floating around in it.

“Oh, wow, this is great,” I said and then, remembering again, my eyes started to flood with tears, which I hurriedly blinked back.

“You can cry, Carl,” Sister said, but I shook my head, angry at her.

“I’m a soldiers son!” I said “Soldiers don’t cry.”

“I cried,” Justina said.

‘You’re a girl,” I said. “Girls can cry.”

Uncle Andrew looked at me, and he looked proud, so I went back to my soup knowing I had done the right thing. I was getting big enough I wasn’t going to get to see my family much anyway, I thought to myself. Why, Sister’s sister, my partner, would be showing up any day now. I hoped I would be better by then; it would be humiliating not to be able to perform our first time!

“Drink slowly,” Sister said to me, “I don’t want you to get sick.”

I was just about to tell her that that was silly, when I felt my stomach complaining, and slowed down my eating. I got the entire bowl down, though, before Sister said to me, “Sleep now. The drugs will take a while go get out of your system. You’ll feel a lot better when you wake up.”

I didn’t though. I woke, next, in the middle of the night. I had to pee, bad, again, but Sister had left me a bottle, which I used. And then I cried. I cried really quietly, I couldn’t let Uncle  Andrew see me! What would he think of me? What kind of soldier was I, crying my Mommy and my Daddy and all my brothers and sisters.

“Carl?” Sisters voice came, out of the darkness, “Are you up?”

“Yes,” I said, hurriedly wiping a hand across my eyes, “I had to go.”

“Did you find the bottle?”

“Yes,  and I used it,”

“OK. Do you need anything? Are you hurting?” I was, even if not in the way she meant,

“No, Sister,” I said.

“Night then,” she said, and I heard her roll over.

I chocked back my tears, then, and thought… if you could call it thinking… and decided. How should a soldier react to this? What could I do?

 

Chapter 15: At Ease

The next morning the colonel came to visit me, no doubt because Sister had told him I was finally awake. “Sir!” I said, struggling to get to my feet.

“At ease,” he said to me and I sank back, reluctantly. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” I said, my voice giving me the lie.

“I see. Well, we hope to have you up and going in no time. Your new family and your sister will need you.”

My new family? Who…? But he went on, “It will be a bit of a change for you, of course,  living with Pathfinders, but don’t worry, we’ll hold your spot open for after you partner, if you want still want it. As a Pathfinder’s son  you will have that open to you too.”

A Pathfinder’s son? Suddenly I realized who they were talking about and looked at Uncle Andrew, who was standing behind him, looking at me. I handn’t even dreamed of this, but it made sense. Since my partnership, even is she wasn’t here, Uncle Andrew was my closest relative. But that meant, that meant I would have to leave my dorm! All of my friends and all my other Uncles and Aunt.

I noticed the Colonel looking at me. What must he be thinking! How could I be a soldier if a little thing like a new assignement got me all upset?

“Thank you, sir,” I said, which seemed to be the best thing I could say. “Sir,” I managed, after a few seconds, “Sir, do you know what happened?”

He looked at Uncle Andrew, who said, “We told him everyone died, but not how. Indeed, I’d like to know myself.”

The colonel sat down next to me on the floor of the hut. “Well, it was incredible. We will have to change all of our procedures. You know that this planet has almost no metals. Well, in general that means that high technology is very difficult. So we thought our shuttles were safe.”

“But this genious class, and we killed him, by the way, this genius class invented himself this tube, made entirely out of plant material, and shot a high explosive charge out of it. He had to have been standing in just the right place, and had incredible aim, because it went in the door of the shuttle, killing everyone except you and Justina.”

I lay back, and the others started talking about other things, plans and things, but I decided what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I was going to kill these genius class aliens. Whenever I could find the time I would go out in the jungle…

—

“What are you looking up, Carl?” Sister said to me that evening, after the colonel  had eaten with us (I stayed on my mat) and left. I had gotten out my computer tablet.

“Weapons,” I said. “Primitive weapons that we can make here.”

“Carl,” Sister said, but Uncle Andrew interrupted her,

“That’s an excellent idea,” he said, and I flushed. “The son of a soldier, stuck with some Pathfinders, helping design appropriate technology weapons. A great idea. Do you have anything?”

“Well, I have one,  that was used in just this kind of environment, but it needs something I don’t have.”

“Oh, what’s that?” Uncle Andrew asked me. “Maybe I can help.”

“I need a drug that affects The Enemy,” I said.

“A what?” he asked, coming over and taking the pad from me.

“It’s called a blowgun,” I said, feeling foolish now. “It’s a long pipe and you blow a sharp stick out of it. I thought it might work, but I need some kind of poison to put on the end of the stick. I’ll keep looking.”

“Why?” Uncle Andrew said, “This looks good. Your Sister can help you with a poison for aliens, can’t you Aliyah?”

“I… I suppose so. We have a lot of information on their biochemistry., But you don’t just want a poison, do you? You want something we can make here.”

I nodded. “Well then,” she said, “you will have to help me with my work. You will need to go out and get me samples form all of the plants in the area: their leaves, stems, flowers, and fruit. I will test them for what I need to make you your poison.”

I looked back and forth between them, but they didn’t seem to be making fun of me. “OK,” I said. “Can I do that, then?”

Uncle Andrew sat down next to me. “You’re a partnered man. You need to decide what you should be doing. I outrank you, but there is no reason for me to boss you around. If you are out gathering plants, for your Sister’s work, which is vitally important, and finding out more about our environment in other ways, and you write that up properly in your reports, then you will be doing a vitally important work.”

I stared at him. Dad had never said anything like that before! But maybe pathfinding was a different kind of job from soldiering, more independent like. “OK, I’ll get started,” I said, staring to get up.

“Hold on, soldier,” Sister said. “First of all I’m not letting you out just yet. And secondly, you need to study my files so you will know what I already have.”

I was too tired, really, to go out anyway, so this sounded good, and I booted up her files and spent the rest of the afternoon studying them. We had roast Juvie for dinner, which was great, and I fell asleep, almost happy.

“Where are you going?” Sister asked me, the next morning, when I got up early and, pulling on my shorts, started for the door.

“To look for plants,” I said to her,  pulling a knife and a pistol from the rack by the door. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but Uncle Andrew pulled her back down into bed and I walked out of the door.

It was nice to be outside, after so long being  inside. And it wasn’t bright yet, either, not that it ever got that bright this deep in the jungle. I walked along the web to the nearest tree, where I clung to a branch and walked along another one. This wasn’t as  hard as it seems, because they were big fat branches for the most part, and their were vines everywhere.

I knew Sister would have collected from around here, so I went off toward the main trunk, worked myself around the trunk, and continued away. I went two whole trees away before I stopped and started looking around. At first I cursed myself, because I had forgotten to bring a collection bag. Then I rememberd my survival classes and, pulling off some thin vine, wove myself one. When I got done I looked at it. It wasn’t the best, but I would do better tonight, at home, while I was resting.

I looked at the plants around me and, seeing a dozen types that hadn’t been in the catalog… including, ironically, the small vine I had made by bag out of, I started collecting.

“Carl!” Sister said to me, three hours later, when I came in. “Where have you been?”

“Collecting,” I said, putting my bag down.

“Well,” she said, partially mollified, “that is a nice collection. But did you bring anything to eat with you?”

“I… no, I forgot, I said, embarrassed. “But there was plenty to eat. There was some of those red berries that you have checked out, and that round smooth nut thing.”

“If you go out again without food,” she said, “I won’t say anything about water, here, because it rains all the time; but if you go without food, I’ll use you to test out the bugs that I have determined are edible.”

She said this while holding out a jar that had a variety of bugs crawling around in it, and I blanched. I mean, we knew we had to eat those, at least in sim; and sister had actually told me that the colonists would need to make some of them part of their diet, but…

I saw her grinning at me, and decided to pay her back. “You’re right, Sister,” I said, “I should have known better.” I reached out to the jar and, before I could change my mind, pulled out an enormous beetle and popped it in my mouth, chewing loudly.

“Oh!” Sister said, as bits of leg and shell sprayed out, “Oh, Carl, how could you! Oh, that is so gross!”

I swallowed, and laughed. It felt terrible, chewing, but it tasted kind of like chicken. I did take a drink right after that, though, and was glad to eat the Pack stew that she had saved for me from breakfast.

‘Bye,” I said, an hour later, but she was having none of that.

“Nap!” she said. “You may be some big grown up soldier, but I’m still your doctor. Nap!”

So she made me lie down, and took Justina out to do some collecting with her. I lay down, vowed I wouldn’t sleep, and woke up three hours later. “I’m going out again,” I said to Sister, who was working at her lab stuff. She turned around,

“Ok. Go a different direction this time, and get samples from the trees too. You got lot’s of vines and all, which is great, but I need to examine the trees, too.”

“Yes… yes, ma’am,” I said, reverting to military speech, since this sounded like a military order insead of Sister (or doctor) stuff. “I’ll be back later.”

“I’ll save dinner for you,” she said.

These shorts were horrible in the rain, I thought to myself as I walked along. They got wet, and stayed wet, rubbing up against my skin in a very irritating way. And besides, they aren’t natural. I’ll have to look up some natural materials to make clothes from, or ask Sister if she knows if anyone is working on that.

This time I took samples all along the way. There were so many plants  here that even with Sisters big collection I still found new ones, ones she didn’t have, every few feet. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was really helpful. If I got the plants, then Sister could spend all of her time analyzing them.

These shorts were sooo irritating. I looked around. No one could see me from the house, and there was just my Sisters and Uncle there anyway, who didn’t care, so I took of the shorts and hung them up on a broken branch, leaving my belt, with the pistol, knife and collecting bag in place. This was better, and, taking care to remember where exactly I’d left them, I continued along.

After another couple of hours I came to a really cool spot. Two separate branchs, big branches, had grown together, with two more right above them, a rare combination. The vines, taking advantage, were growing all around the branches. I came up to them and pushed aside the vines, crawling into the space between the branches.

It was awesome. It was kind of dark, but some light still came through the curtain of branches all around. And the branches above blocked off almost all of the rain. I lay back for a minute, reveling in the dryness. Not that I was dry, exactly, but it was nice not to be in the pouring rain or drizel that was constant here.

I got quickly bored, though, and lay down on my stomach to look out. Looking down I could see the jungle floor in a couple of spots, which was rare. I squished around, this was amazing. I could see the jungle floor in a dozen areas! I was so impressed that I kept moving around and looking and then, to my glee, I saw an adult alien.

It was just sitting still. I think I had missed it the first time I had looked here. They weren’t all that easy to spot in the jungle, being of a kind of dull green, which fit in with all of the other greens. It must not have heard me, and I eased my  pistol out of it’s holster.

Now, if you’re used to projectile pistols, this next will sound silly. But this was a sonic-focused pistol, which was very accurate even at long distances if you knew how to use them… which I did, of course. I eased it forward, snapped open the laser targeter, and fired.

“Yes!” I muttered to myself as the adult dropped like a stone, it’s stupid alien brain fried into alien mush. I watched, and soon a Juvie came snuffling up, nervously. When the adult didn’t move it got closer and, finally deciding it was dead, began to feast. It was kind of gross, and I won’t describe it, in case any girls ever read this book. It had hardly gotten three good bites in, when another Juvie came by. Five minutes later, fairly well in, they were driven off by a pack.

And, no, I didn’t fire at them. You don’t. You never waste ammunition, not that the sonic pistol uses ammunition but the principle is the same, on Juvies or Pack unless you are going to eat them. The world was filled solid with Juvies and Pack. It was adults we hunted. And I was going to become a genius hunter. Well satisfied with my day, I put my pistol back, grabbed my sack, and went back to my shorts (which I did remember where they were, in case you were thinking of laughing at me for having to go back the Sister all naked).

“Sister,” I said, while scarfing my Pack stew an hour or so later while we watched Uncle Andrew draw us a picture of Justina. “Who is in charge of developning native clothing?”

“Ruth. Why?”

“These shorts are horrible to wear in this weather,” I said, “I was wondering if we have developed anything else.”

“There is a bark that she is recoomending,” Sister said. “It takes a bit of work.”

“Well, I have time, evenings,” I said, and, as soon as the stew was done I got out my computer pad and looked it up. The next morning I got up early and went looking for the tree it had mentioned. I found one and cut myself a strip of about four feet long and one foot wide. I put this, along with my shorts, into my new blind area and, naked except for my belt, went out to get some more plants. And insects, Sister had told me she needed more insects too.

This was glorious, really. It was pouring down rain today, but since my shorts were off there was nothing to bother me there. I think all of the adults were finding the rain annoying, but I loved it. And there seemed no end of plants, or insects.

I was just thinking about going back and getting dressed when I saw it. There were very few straight plants on this planet, and fewer hollow ones. I was down near the floor, however, when I saw a whole clump of plants that were both: about an inch wide, and hollow, and perfectly straight. I looked around. Juvies woudlnt’ bother a human, but a pack would, and an adult certainly would. Besides, there were local animals that wouldn’t mind a nice raw leg of human for a snack.

But there didn’t seem to be anything around, so I snuck lower. I grabbed one, from a nearby branch, but it wouldn’t come out of the ground, so I had to go lower, almost into the muck itself.

Now, I haven’t ever told this story to Sister, so you have to keep it to yourself. The clump was just a little to far away so I had to really reach out to get it. Which to do that I had to put my foot on this rock or log or whatever it was. I’m sure you know what happened. It wasn’t a rock, or a log, it was a crocodile type creature. And I scared it. So it moved, which scared me and dropped me right in the water.

The next few seconds were the longest of my entire life up to that point. Which is to say I moved faster than I ever had before, and it seemed I was moving through molasses. I fell in the water, as I said, but I managed to keep one hand on the tall hollow reeds and so my head didn’t actually go in the water and I swung myself up the reeds, kind of with both hands until I could shove my feet in, jamming them between the various reeds and pulling myself into the clump.

Which seemed like it took forever, like I said. But it must have been just a few second because, when I got up and got turned around and drew my pistol I saw the crocodile thing, which was still thrashing around and turning itself toward me. When it got around it stared at me with an expression on its face that was truly funny to behold. I was a lot bigger than it was, or heavier anyway as it was so long, and it probably thought it was being attacked.

I looked around, but I still saw nothing, so I carefully cut off (and they were hard to cut!) several of the reeds and, using a vine that was growing among them, lashed them to my back. Then I very carefully climbed up a clump of reeds until they kind of bent over toward the tree and I could grab a branch and haul myself up.

“What on Earth do you have there?” Sister asked me, a couple of hours later, when I trooped back into our hut.

“Stuff,” I said, which annoyed her. But really, she was always asking me things, and I wanted to get to work not to talk. I laid down my carry bag on her table and took my stuff over into a corner.

I looked at the reed first. It had these dividers every few inches down the tube which I would have to get rid of. I could just use the laser cutter, of course, but that would be cheating. I needed to figure out how to do it with local materials. “Sister,” I asked, “do you have some kind of strong acid I could use to clean out these partitions?”

She waved me over and I showed her the reed. She looked at it, looked at me, cocked her  head to one side the way she does when she is thinking, and said, “Well, I might, but I don’t think that is what you want to do. What if you took a long stick and poked a hole through them, then took a really tough vine, maybe with some, well, we don’t have pebbles…”

“Bones!” I said. “We have some hard bones. And pull it back and forth, you mean, and wear it smooth. Thanks sister.”

I set the reeds aside. I would find a good stick for the poking tomorrow. I picked up the bark I had cut off and looked around. The girl had said that I needed to rub it against something, both directions, to make it really flexible. Suddenly I grinned and took up my reed.

“What are you doing, Carl?” Justina said, some minutes later. I had the reed propped up against my feet and had my bark, which I had put around the reed, and I was pulling it back and forth.

“I’m making myself a new pair of shorts,” I said. “Except it won’t be shorts, it will be what they call a ‘loincloth’.”

“But what are you doing?” she asked again, confused.

“I’m pulling this back and forth over the reed to make it soft. I go this way,” I said, stopping and wrapping the bark the other way round,” and this way, so it gets really soft and flexible.”

“Oh,” she said. “Can I try?”

“I’ll get you some, tomorrow, and you can make a skirt out of it.”

“Oh, ok,” she said, and then asked, “How long do you have to do it?”

“Just a few minutes,” I said. “At least the first day. It says I should do it every day.”

I stood up and took off my shorts, and, with everyone watching me, put the cloth on. “Get me a bit of vine, will you ‘stina?” I asked  her and, when she came, I made myself a quick belt with the vine. “TaaDaa!” I said to the room in general. Uncle Andrew clapped and Sister came over and felt at the fabric.

“Well, you look like a regular native right out of the books,” she said. “I think you should work on that fabric more, though, it seems like its still a bit rough, and will rub a bit. Good job, though. Where did ou find the material?”

I took it off and started on the rubbing thing again, “Oh, East about half a mile. You’ll recognize the tree, its the one,” I laughed and held up the material, “with bark like this!”

“And you’ll make me one?” Justina asked, again.

“Yes, ‘stina,” I said. “Could you get me some more of that stew?”

—

I wanted to scream in frustration. I was a man now! I had a partner, and a job, and was going to be a soldier, and Sister had me over her knee for teasing Justina, her hand wailing on my naked backside. I didn’t scream though, but gritted my teeth and hated her. Hated her for treating me like a little kid that needed a mother. Hated her for trying to be that mother.

Finally she was done and she let me go. I reached down and pulled my cloth back on and walked outside without a word, picking up my belt and my blowpipe without a word.

My blowpipe was finished, after a week of work, and I was working on another one of evenings. I had finished Justina’s skirt, which had thrilled her, although she almost never wore it, preferring au naturel most of the time. She wore it whenever we had company, and when Sister made her put something on, like for meals.

I was now working on the darts for my blowpipe. The computer had had several ideas, things people had used in the past, and I was trying to make one of them work. I had found a really good material for the dart itself, long thorns form one particularly nasty vine. But the dart needed something at the end to help stop up the pipe, to allow my breath to actually push it, and to help guide the dart in the air, so it didn’t just tumble but went straight.

I had found s omething which worked really well. I had killed this lizard, and he had this thing on his throat, this loose light skin which it used for making noise. I had killed one of them and figured out a way to attatch it to my dart. It had flown really well but Uncle Andrew had pointed out that I only was able to make two darts from that one lizard so I would have to kill a whole ton of those exact lizards to make more darts. So I had a few of those darts, but I just used them for practice.

My eyes smarting from tears that kept trying to come out I went to my hideout and sat. But, after I didn’t see anything for a half an hour I decided to try something different, and climbed.

We didn’t have any birds on this planet, which was a shame, as it was a great place for birds, they would have loved it here. I climbed and climbed, higher than I had ever been. This was great, and it almost helped me forget how mad I was at Sister for spanking me.

The flowers here were awesome. There were flowers all in the jungle, of course, but they were incredible here. The air was fresh, clear, and bright… and filled with insects buzzing from flower to flower. It was a rare hour without rain right now, and even most of the clouds were gone so I could see, in one or two spots, the kind of blue sky we had had back on the desert planet.

Not wanting to get in trouble I started to collect plants and things, flowers with vines. Flower after flower with their vines. My bag filled up and I started on another one. Sister would be happy with me after this, certainly, I thought, not even trying to blink back the tears. After all, no one could see me.

I looked up at the blue. The blue which hid my real family, my dorm, with all of my other aunts and uncles, where I had grown up, where I had always lived. Why did I have to live here? Sister was trying to be my mother, and she couldn’t be four years older than me, and hadn’t even brought first her first child.

A lizard poked his head out from behind a nearby clump of flowers, and I had to laugh it looked so funny. I grabbed at it with my hand and it darted away, leaving me with a handful of flowers.

I was about to let go of them when something about them struck me. They were incredibly tough. The petals formed kind of a long, tapered cylinder and they had come off the plant easy enough, but they didn’t come apart from each other and…

I put them carefully into my new bag, and reached for my belt, pulling out a dart, one that didn’t have an end. I took a flower out of the bag and, my hands almost trembling, took a small thread out from my belt pouch and, very carefully, tied the flower onto the end of the dart. I held up the result. It looked like it would work, it really did.

I got out my blowpipe and carefully put the dart in, aimed and… Yes!! I missed what I aimed at, but it had flown straight and true. The flower had stayed on and hadn’t come apart. “Sister!” I yelled, starting down and ignoring the fact that, a good two miles away in the jungle there was no way for her to  hear me, “Sister, Uncle Andrew, I did it!”

—

They watched as I shot dart after dart at the practice log I had set up at the other end of the hut. “Good job!” Uncle Andrew said, and Justina clapped and cried out with each shot.

“Will they last, do you think?” Sister asked.

My heart sunk a little. They were just flowers, after all. Everyone knew that flowers faded. “Does it matter?” Uncle Andrew asked. “He says there are hundreds of them, so he can get them new whenever he needs them. And besides, he picked these hours ago and look a them.”

“That’s true,” Sister said, running a flower through her hand and rubbing at to see if it would come apart. They are remarkably tough for flowers. Good find, Carl.”

“By the way,” she said, “I am coming along on your poison. I have one that I want you to try. It’s a combination, actually, of two different poisons. One of  them is a sleepy drug, that we get from that nut, you know the one.”

I did indeed. It was from a really cool plant that I had found. There was this nut growing in the middle of the plants leaves.  I had been on a gathering expedition when I had seen a lizard crawl up and eat the nut. It had looked kind of startles, and then sleepy. And then, while I watched, fascinated, the plant had slowly closed around the lizard. You can bet I had (carefully!) gathered a nut to give to sister.

“I boiled that down and the result should make Aliens almost as sleepy as the lizard, even with the small dose from your dart.”

I nodded, but what good did that do? I didn’t want sleepy aliens, I wanted dead ones. “The second poison,” she continued, “I’m a little less sure of, which is why I need you to test it, or to capture me a Juvie to try it on. It’s a bleeding drug, or and ‘anti-coagulant’ drug.”

“It will make them bleed?” I asked, picturing this little spurt of blood from my dart. That didn’t seem very effective… just sleepy and bleeding, but maybe it would do.

Sister laughed, “Not the kind of bleeding you are thinking of,” she said, “although it will do that too. It will make them bleed inside, in their brain and lungs. It will kill them. And it doesn’t affect humans, as we have a different coagulation pathway, so it should be safe on the darts. The sleepy drug will make you sleepy, though, so be careful.”

I thought about it for a while and then started looking things up  on my comp. Captureing a Juvie… I’d never done that before. How could I do that?

—

“Sister! Uncle!” I yelled, startling a dozen lizards into scurrying away from me. The Juvie struggled in my arms, trying to bite and scratch me. I had it by its legs, but it was threatening to curl around and get at me. My trap had finally worked, but I hadn’t thought  about how hard it would be to get the silly thing back to our hut!

“What on Earth!?” Uncle Andrew said, a few minutes later from above me. “Why don’t you just kill it?” he asked, dropping down next to me and getting out his knife.

“Sister wants one alive!” I said, mostly evading a nasty scratch.

“Oh, to be partners with a doctor,” Uncle Andrew said, grinning. “Here, let me tie it up.”

We all carried several loops of this tough vine and, after a few struggling minutes he finally got it tied down. “Let me get a stick,” he said. “I’ve seen pictures of animals carried that way. A few minutes later we had my struggling captive tied down to the stick and we started the long climb up to our hut.

“Oh, wonderful!” Sister said when we arrived. Then she saw my scratches and my ‘wonderful’ capture had to wait a while while she doctored me all up with all sorts of new salve made, if I rember correctly, from some berries or something.

“Well, shall we give the poisons a try?” she asked, finally, as my last scrache was washed and salved.

“Shall I shoot it?” I asked, reaching for my blowpipe.

But Sister laughed, “No,” she said. “I need to do it with a needle so I can measure exactly how much I put in. Let’s try the sleepy drug first.”

We all watched, even Justina, as she drew up some drug in a needle and went over to the Juvie, who was still struggling against its bonds. Uncle Andrew and I went over and held it down for the couple of seconds that it took to give the shot, and then the Juvie relaxed, almost instantly.

“Well, that part worked,” Sister said, kind of kicking at the Juvie, with no response. We all stared at it. It was past merely asleep; if it hadn’t been breathing I would have thought it was dead. “I put very little in, too; I think your darts should do as well. Now we just have to see if the next poison will work.”

She got out a bottle, and mixed something up, all the while looking back at the Juvie. “What is with that thing?” she asked. “I didn’t think it would work that well!”

She finished and put some of the mixture in a needle, still shaking her head. “Wow.” She injected it and, seconds later, the breathing stopped, and blood started coming out of the Juvie’s nose. “Wow,” she repeated. She looked at me, “I think we have your weapon.”

 

I had just really started to get good with my blowpipe when we received a visit from the colonel. They had really revamped the shuttles, and no holes showed anywhere when the shuttle hovered over our hut. The colonel, and three of his boys, slid down the ropes. I hurried forward to meet them.

“Carl!” the colonel said, saluting me. I saluted back, and he said, “I would appreciate it if you would give my boys a bit of a tour,” he said. “They can report to you on the latest developments, which I’m sure you’ll be pleased to hear. Have them back here by sunset.”

I saluted again, and turned to his boys, “Come!” I ordered, and led them inside. In a couple of minutes I had them dressed in spare loincloths and we set off toward my shelter. They looked rather miserable in the wet, and I had to work hard not to laugh.

“Wow!” Jonathon said, as I pushed aside a branch, allowing him easier access to the branch we were climbing across. “This is incredible! You remember the desert planet we were  on last?”

I laughed, “This sure is different,” I agreed. “So, what’s the news?”

“The news… oh, yeah! We’re going to get soldiers!”

“Really? When?”

“Soon, in a week or so. Muslims!”

I gave him a dirty look and he had the grace to blush. His family was from Leeman’een and they were often rather prejudiced against other religions. “Rihahlans, then,” he said. “Anyway, they’re coming next week.”

“What are they going to do?” I asked, reaching out my hand to help Benjamin, his smallest brother, who was looking a bit nervous at having to cross a bit of a gulf.

“Fight, obviously,” Jonathon said. “Dad’s going to divide them into units of a hundred each and assign each unit to one of our pathfinder families.”

“So Carl will get to live with a hundred families?” Benjamin asked.

“Rihalans don’t have families!” David, the middle brother, scoffed. “They are all men, at least their soldiers are.”

“No mothers?” Benjamin asked, wide eyed.

“Nope, not while they’re soldiers. They just come out for five years, and they are all soldiers. Every single Rihalan boy, once he changes, has to come for a five year stint as a soldier. Then they go home and get married, and have kids and all.”

Jonathon and I looked at each other, knowing what David wasn’t saying. The Rihalans, when they went back, would go back, usually, to two wives each.

“So, what will they do with us?” I asked, again.

“Fight!” Jonathon said, again. “With stunners and your new blowpipe things. We have them for a whole year, and they are going to slaughter Bnentarri. They will just live, eat, and kill.”

Jonathon sounded excited, and, indeed, there was a hint of something in his voice so, on the off chance, I said, “…and you are going to just sit back and watch?”

He blushed, “Well, no, that is the rest of my news. My dad… he’s asking your folks if we can come live with you for a while.” He seemed embarrassed and rushed on, “It isn’t easy fighting with shuttles, here,” he said, “the fighting needs to be on the ground, so, well, we were wondering if we, my brothers and I, could come live here, with you. Benjamin will go back and forth, more, but David and I, we’re hoping…”

He broke off and glanced at me. Did he think I wouldn’t like it?

“Great,” I said, nervous myself, although I didn’t know why. “Hopefully Uncle Andrew and Adlephe will say it’s OK. Hey, here’s my base. I have several blowpipes, maybe we can kill some Bn’s.”

We tried shooting for a while, but they were too nervous, or active, for anything to come nearby, so I decided to take them on a ‘tour’ of my flower garden. I hadn’t realized how poor they were at climbing, tho! It took us easily an hour to get high enough to even see the flowers.

“Wow!” Jonathon said, again, as he and I held Benjamin between us. Benjamin clung tightly to us and kept looking down, which you seriously didn’t want to do when climbing. I had told him and told him, and Jonathon had even switched him, but he would keep doing it. It was the first thing we would have to do when they came for real.

Suddenly we heard the noise of a shuttle and, looking off to our left, saw the shuttle that had brought the colonel and the boys coming back down. Jonathon looked as if he would start down, but I stopped him. “There’s no way we can get there fast enough.”

“He… he said he would leave  us here if your folks said it was OK,” Jonathon said. “But I thought, I thought we would have a chance to say goodbye.”

“Well, you’re soldiers now,” I said, seeing he was about to cry. “Soldiers don’t worry about saying ‘goodbye’ to their folks. It’s probably getting about time to get home, though, for evening meal and sleep. We’ll be getting up early for hunting, you all need to train.”

It took us fully two hours to get back to the house, and that was with me carrying Benjamin on my back. We made it just before sunset. “Carl! Boys!” Adlephe said, waddling over to greet the boys. “Dinner is just about ready, wash up!”

The boys had eaten with us often enough, so our ‘sink’ wasn’t a great surprise, and they had even slept with us before, so the shower and hammocks and all they were used to. Benjamin slept with Jonathon in the other hammock, and David slept with me. I noticed that he had a hard time getting to sleep. Probably homesick. He would have to get over that.

~~~

“Carl,” Adlephe said to me, the next evening. The boys were over in the showers; I had showered and was over watching Adlephe cook. Beetle stew tonight, although the boys wouldn’t know that as the shells were all strained out. “Don’t you think you’re being hard on them?”

“No.” I said. “They need to learn fast, the Rihalan come in a week, and we will need to show them what to do. You’re going to have a lot to do, cooking for all of them,” I said. “Do you think they will give you a helper?”

“No Rihalan will be allowed in the hut,” she said. “And I will only be able to go outside with you or Andrew.” I looked at her, and she finished explaining. “We don’t allow Rihalans to get around any of our women,” she said. “And I have to be all covered up, head to toe, whenever I am around them.”

“They can’t do that!” I said, disgusted.

“They can. Indeed we did most of it when we signed them up. But that is my problem, not yours. Andrew is going to make me a ‘sun room’ so the baby and I can get sun. Kind of like a porch where I can dress normally, but ‘inside’ so we obey their rules. But there have been problems, in the past, so you and the boys need to be watching out for me.”

My heart kind of jumped when she said that, but it almost seized when she said, “And your wife, of course, when she comes.”

I hadn’t forgotten that my wife was coming, of course, but I sort of almost had. “Did you hear any more?” I asked, nervous and then, at her look, got more nervous still. “You did!” I accused her.

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t want you all nervous. She’s coming in the same fleet as the Rihalans. The Colonel said he will place soldiers with other families first, so poor Jill can have a couple of days, at least, with just you and not a bunch of perverts running all around, and having to stay inside.”

“So…?” I asked.

“About a week from now,” she said, answering the unspoken part of my question. “Go back to your trainees, now,” she commanded. “And get your mind off your wife.”

“Yes, Adlephe,” I said, thinking to myself how impossible that was!

“Dinners not quite ready,” I said. “Let’s work on making darts. Benjamin, get some flowers out. David…”

“Good luck,” Miriam said to me. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stick around?”

“No,” I said. I wanted to face my new future alone. I had gotten the latest letter from Aliya yesterday, as we came into the system, and I was still busy trying to process all that she had said. My partner’s family dead, and he was ‘traumatized’, she had said. She had told me everything, everything, about his new life, my new life, how he was coping, what I would have to do to help him, and just to live.

I had been shocked. My training on board ship, and my exposure to the other cultures on board, had taught me much, given me a good idea of the various differences, and prepared me for shocks but…

There was an enormous clang, and the shuttle rocked a bit then, after some more noises and some work by the men at the doorway, the door slid open, quietly. That was the last quiet thing for quite a while, as the room suddenly filled with me and women coming in, greeting, discussing cargo, and overall acting like people who were getting together with old friends after a long break. I stood, quietly, watching, until, about five minutes later, one of the women noticed me. “Oh! You must be Bethany! My name is Laura,” she said, hurrying up and attracting far more attention than I wanted. “We have waited so long for you to arrive!”

“Carl certainly has waited a long time!” One of the younger women said, and everyone giggled. Then I had to survive an inordinate number of huggings and kissings… luckily only from the women and girls, the men mostly just watching with amused fascination.

“Poor, Carl,” the first woman said when, a few minutes later, she managed to pull me off into a corner by myself. I gathered she must have been some kind of leader, or leader’s partnére, because everyone else left us alone, reluctantly. “You heard what happened to his family?”

I nodded, overwhelmed. My heart was still racing from the ‘introductions’. I loved people but, now, with all that I had before me, I felt incredibly shy.

“It will be so good that you are here,” she continued. “You remember the story of Isaac, well, I hope you will be just as helpful to Carl. He really is a very wonderful boy, you know.”

How would I know? Outside of the letters from Alihay, of course. But I nodded my head.

“Your sister is trying so hard with him, she and her husband. And Justina is doing fine… weepy, from time to time, but she’s doing fine.”

“When… when will I get to see him?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice calm.

“Tomorrow!” Laura said. “You’ll sleep with us tonight, it’s almost the end of our sleep shift, and then my husband, the colonel, will take you down tomorrow. It isn’t going to be a very standard partnering,” she said, grinning, “But I am sure Carl won’t mind.”

I certainly hoped he wouldn’t. The rest of the evening passed in a blur. If I hadn’t been prepared, trained and warned by Aliya, I would have found the dorm life hard but, since I knew what was coming, I just threw away my New Texas modesty and ignored… everything I was supposed to ignore. I was very tired, and nervous, but I could hardly sleep. What would tomorrow be like? What would my husband be like? Would he like me, at all?

I doubt there are many things more nervewracking than standing waiting for a woman to come who is your wife, and who you have never even seen. And I stood not only with my family, Adelphe, Andrew, and Justina; but with Jonathon and his brothers. All of whom kept looking at me, wondering how I felt. As if I knew.

Adelphe had come over to me, early that morning, and whispered in my ear, “You’ll like her!” she had said. I hoped she was right. But, more importantly, I hoped she would like me!

“Look, there they are!” David called out, pointing. They were excited because they were hoping that it was their parents that would be bringing me my wife. It made sense that it would be them, and I sort of hoped they were coming too, so as to take the boys mind of me and my wife.

We all strained to see. Sure enough, it did look like a shuttle. They came from different directions each time; both because the ships themselves were always in motion about the planet and in order to prevent the Bn from planning another attack. The speck rapidly grew bigger and my heart pounded faster and faster.

It was a long time, and way too quickly, before the shuttle hovered over our compound and the ropes came down. The boys and I scrambled to the bottom of each rope, holding them stable. Seconds later the first rope started to shake and the colonel, his assuault rifle over his shoulder, came sliding down. Then the rope I was holding started to shake and, above me, a child came… his drag zipper bringing him safely down the rope. I still caught him… her… when she got to the grown. It was their sister, about half way to puberty. She gave me a quick kiss and ran off to Adelphe.

The next person down my rope was Jonathon’s mother. She always hated sliding, which I thought funny in a soldier-wife. She was a great shot, though, often taking top marks in our competitions. I had to kind of stand out of the way to hold the rope as she controlled her own meeting with the floor and, once she unhitched herself, she turned and hugged and kissed me. Then she stood in front of me and looked meaningfully over my shoulder.

I turned… still holding the rope, and saw her. Why, she was beautiful! She was talking with Adlephe and had an enormous grin on her face. They were hugging and kissing and all and she was crying. I thought, at first, that she hadn’t seen me, but then I noticed that, every few seconds, she was giving me quick sidelong glances.

One more child slid down my rope and then the hugging and kissing became general, and the shuttle flew off. Everyone watched that, of course. No matter how many times you watched a shuttle fly it was still glorious to watch.

“Carl,” Adelphe said, from behind my shoulder, “This is Jill.”

I turned and met her eyes, really met her eyes, for the first time. Adelphe had told me what to do, and I tentatively held out my hand afraid… my fears were foolish. She took my hand back, confidently, even eagerly. “I’m so sorry that my trip took so long!” she said, chattering. “And…”

Just then she kind of squealed. You see, it hadn’t been raining. It almost always rained but, by some miracle, it hadn’t been raining just when they landed. And just now it started again, and pretty heavy. So, when the rain hit her, she kind of squealed.

Everyone one else went racing into the hut but, when she turned to follow, I pulled on her hand. “Could you… I’d like to show you something,” I said.

“I… OK,” she said, glancing back at the hut with its fire and all. I pulled her, then led her, by the hand and we went down the path to my refuge. She was rather nervous at several of the crossings, and clung tightly to my hand, which I really liked. I knew I needed to calm down before tonight, and I hoped a little time alone with her would help. And, besides, I didn’t think I could face that whole crowd, just now.

“Oooh,” she said, when I led her in. “This is nice!”

“I like it,” I said, plopping myself down on the ‘floor’… the part of the branch just next to the trunk. The two huge branches that met here were so wide, and so joined, that I hoped she wouldn’t feel nervous, and we could relax and talk.

She didn’t sit, but walked around, looking at everything, and even looking down at the jungle floor. Then she looked at my collection of blowpipes, flowers, and all.

Then she turned back to me. “Thank you,” she said, and started taking off her ship suit.

At first I thought she was just getting dry. But, as my heart kept beating she didn’t just get down to her shorts but…

“It is so nice of you to give us privacy for the first time,” she said, when she finished undressing. “I know that this isn’t how we will normally be, but it was special of you to arrange this for  our first time.”

I had no idea, at all, what to say, but she made it so I didn’t really need to say anything. The floor must have been uncomfortable for her, and Adlephe told me the first time always was for girls, but she didn’t complain at all.

“Well, so now we’re really partners,” she said, leaning back against me. “Oh, no, I forgot, you’re from Leeman’e, aren’t you, so that makes me your ‘wife’, no?”

She turned toward me, and I nodded. “I’m so glad,” she said. “It was a very hard trip for me. It wasn’t like I was a normal recruit, like Aliya,” she said. “On my ship…”

I listened for at least an hour. She didn’t seem to expect any answers from me, except the occasional nod. Eventually, however, she said, “Do you want to go back now? I’m kind of hungry.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, hopping up.

The rain had died down a bit, so she looked a little less uncomfortable on the way back. I was… I didn’t know what I was. Happy, of course. But shocked. I had never heard of anyone, you know, in the middle of the day like that. I thought it always happened at night, and in the morning. Would she still be willing to… tonight?

“Carl!” the colonel said, when we came into the hut, hand in hand, starting to come over to me. Then he stopped, and blushed. I had no idea why, but I wasn’t really in the mood to talk anyway. Jill kept holding my hand, and I didn’t resist, allowing myself to be led over to Adelphe and Jonathon’s mother.

“Jill,” said Adelphe, hugging and kissing her. I thought they had done that before, but Jill didn’t seem surprised. The colonel’s wife looked at us with a grin on her face. I suppose we did look a little funny. First of all we were all wet, and they had all dried off. Secondly I was just wearing my loin cloth, and my wife was all in her ship suit still. I had made a jungle skirt for her, I would have to show it to her. Later, I thought to myself. She is from NT and will probably not want to change in front of everyone.

“Tell us about your trip,” The colonel’s wife asked Jill, and she started in on that story. It sounded rather different, her telling it to everybody, than it had to me. It started to get a bit boring, her telling a story I had already heard, but, about a minute in, she put her arm around my waist and I reciprocated, getting lost in my thoughts. I had a wife. Not just a bed partner, but a wife; someone to talk to, to share everything with. I could even cry with her, you could with wives, or so my mother always told me. Not that I would.

~~~

The colonel’s shuttle came back for them soon after dinner, but no one else seemed ready for sleep, so we all sat up talking. I kept looking at Jill and wondering if she liked me at all. She sat next me, and all, and kept her hand on my leg, but was she just doing her duty?

Even when we went to bed (she looked funny getting in the hammock), and, well, yes… I still wondered if she was just ‘doing her duty’. She seemed to find being inside, with everyone all there and everything, very annoying. Adelphe had told me enough so I understood that, and tried to be as private as possible.

She was very, very tired when I woke her the next morning, and went right to sleep, afterwards. “Come on, guys,” I said, and the other boys stumbled, sleepily, after me.

“Those Rihalan will be here in a few days,” I said. “One hundred of them. We’ve got to get their blinds ready.”

“I don’t get it,” David said. “how come this works?”

“What?” I said.

“Blinds,” he said. “How come they work? I mean, the aliens. How come that they don’t, like, see us building these things and stay away?”

“That’s a good question,” Jonathon said. “We don’t know. They are genious’s, in some ways, but, in other ways they are really stupid.”

“They don’t cooperate well,” I said. “We do, sometimes.” I wasn’t doing too well at cooperating, myself. These boys were annoying me. The arrival of these Rihalan was annoying me. I’m not going to say that Jill was annoying me, I mean, you know, but what was annoying me was that I had no idea how to deal with her.

“Come on!” I said, as the other struggled along behind me. Frustrated, I picked up Benjamin, and lashed him to my back. We moved along a little faster after that and arrived at the first place I had picked a half an hour later.

“Here,” I said. “You see these limbs? I thought this would make a good place for a blind.”

“They can’t climb either,” David said, a half an hour later, as we arranged vines.”

“What?”

“Not very high, anyway. They can’t climb and they never really look up. This must be a frustrating planet for them, in some ways.”

I looked at him. “True,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that. They like the water, though.”

“Yes,” he said. Then, “Look!” he whispered.

We looked. It was just a normal adult. “Your turn,” Benjamin. I would never have let him try to shoot a genious class, but a normal was fine.”

Phweet. “Did I hit it?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But it didn’t hear your shot, try again.”

Three more shots and, finally, he hit and we watched the Bn collapse. “Back to work,” I said, and David, Jonathon, and I started moving vines around again.

A couple of minutes later Benjamin said, “Oooh, they found him. Their eating him!”

“They do that,” I said.

“Oooh, gross!” he said.

Phweet.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I shot one of them.”

“Don’t waste ammunition,” I said. “It’s hard making those darts!”

“Sorry, Carl,” Benjamin said. “Oooh, gross!”

~~~

“Carl!” Jill said, coming over and kissing me.

“Hi,” I said, hanging my stuff up. “Been busy?”

“Ummm, yeah,” she said. “I guess I was kind of tired. But I got up sometime after you left, and helped Aliyah fix breakfast. Kind of gross. Lizard.”

“Lizard is good,” I said. “Better than bug.”

She turned a little green, and turned back to the stove. The boys busied themselves with some dart making. I looked back at Jill. She had her shipsuit on again. Adelphe must not have told her about her new skirt. Probably thinking that, since I made it, I should give it to her.

I went to the closet, “Jill, come here for a second,” I said. Everyone, the boys and Adlephe, looked up as Jill came over. “Look what I made you,” I said to her holding it up. She grinned at me.

“What is it?” she asked. “You made it?” I guess, since she hadn’t seen anything quite like it before, it was a bit confusing.

“It’s a skirt!” I said. “Adelphe has some like this.”

“Oooh,” she said, sounding kind of confused.

“Well, try in on!” I said. “You’ll find it a lot more comfortable.”

“Ok,” she said. I don’t know if she liked it, really. I mean, she said she did, but I had to convince her that it was much more comfortable without the shorts and all, and she still seemed very uncomfortable with it. But she wore it, and I knew that she would find it more comfortable in time.

“Breakfast ready?” Andrew asked, coming in a few minutes later. Jill must have been embarrassed to be wearing the new skirt I had made her, as she kept her back turned to him for a while. And I guess Lizard wasn’t her favorite, as she didn’t eat much breakfast.

“What are you doing, Uncle Andrew?” Benjamin asked, once he had taken his first few bites of breakfast.

“Shelter, shelters, and more shelters,” he said. You are so lucky that you are getting to hunt with Carl.”

“Shelters?” Jill asked, blushing when everyone looked at her.

“We are having a hundred Rihalan, coming in about a week in a half,” Andrew said. “I’m putting them in four man shelters, so I have to work up twenty five shelters.”

“Rihalans,” Jill said, still blushing but gamely trying to integrate herself into the family. I was proud of how hard she was trying. It must be difficult from someone from a society like New Texas, without all of the formal training, to come into a family like ours. “I’ve never met any Rihalans.”

“What?” I said. “I thought you came with them?”

“They were in the fleet,” she said. “
But it’s not like I met any of them. They were all quarantined in their own quarters. We weren’t allowed anywhere near them.”

“Why?!” David asked.

‘Because I’m a girl,” Jill said. She really must not like being the center of attention, as she blushed, again, when we all looked at her, but she continued gamely, angrily. “Girls, women, none of us were allowed near them.”

“But why?” David asked, again.

“Because they don’t bring women with them,” Adelphe said. “Boys need girls, men need women, but the Muslims are so interested in getting two wives each that they send their boys out to be killed.”

“Oh,” said David. I didn’t quite understand why Adlephe and Jill were so upset. I never did understand girls, really.

We ate the rest of the meal in silence and then, as we all picked up our bowls to take them over to sink, Jill pulled me aside. “I talked to Aliyah and she said it was OK for us to, you know, spend some time together. Can we go back to the… to your shelter?”

I was confused but Adelphe, standing behind her, nodded vigorously at me. Ordinarily I would have hated a hint like that but, really, girls… she knew about them and I really didn’t.  I knew the girls in my dorm but they… they weren’t really girls, if you see what I mean. They were more like sisters. “OK,” I said.

She grabbed my arm, like partners did sometime. It was kind of awkward, holding my arm against my body but I did like it. It connected us. I didn’t understand what was supposed to happen between us… except in bed. And even there I wasn’t sure I was doing it quite right, she seemed so awkward and tentative.

“Oooh,” she said, when we got to that one section of branch where I had to help her across. “We have nothing at all like this back on New Texas,” she said. “Everything is just totally flat. The tallest thing on the planet… well, not really, but in our area, is new corn, which grows to about ten feet.” We got to the other side and she looked back, and down. “And that is way more than ten feet. Oooh, what’s that?”

I pushed her behind me, and down, dropping down next to her, sort of on top of  her. She squealed a bit as I whipped out my blowpipe.

Pwheet.

“Sorry,” I said, getting up. “It was just an adult, but I don’t like to let any get by.”

And adult what?” she asked, me as I pulled her up and she straightened her skirt and brushed some leaves out of her hair and off her chest.

“Bn!” I said. Didn’t she even know that?

“Enemy? Really?” she asked, falling flat on her face again and peering over the edge. “That’s my first one to really see.”

I stood there, staring at her. At first just because it was so beyond my ken that someone her age had never seen an enemy. And then because, well, she was my wife, and she really looked good, laying there, in nothing but her skirt… which had kind of rumpled up. And, now, I was really allowed to look.

Girls must have some kind of sixth sense because I hadn’t been staring at her for more than a few seconds before she rolled over and grinned at me. “Want to get to the shelter?” she asked.

“I, umm, yes,” I said, embarrassed and excited.

She must really like the shelter, I thought to myself an hour later, as we lay together on the floor of the shelter. She really seemed to like being here, so much better than back at home. She even seems to like me better here!

“How’s it going with the boys?” she asked me, suddenly.

“The boys? Jonathon and them? Ok, why?”

“Oh, you just seem a bit angry at them.”

“Angry? No, just frustrated. They’re supposed to be helping me, and learning, and instead I seem like I’m babysitting them.”

“Well, they are younger than you,” she said, rubbing her hand across my chest. “It’s not like they’re ready to be married yet.”

“I guess,” I said, glowing at the compliment. “I guess we need to get back. I need to set up a lot more blinds. All of those Rihalans are going to hunt, too.”

“OK,” she said, sounding sad.

“You, you don’t have to wear that skirt, you know, if you don’t like it. You can wear your ship suit, or I can make you something else.”

“I love it,” she said, kissing me. “It’s just a little different from what I am used to wearing back on New Texas.”

“On New Texas?” I asked, confused. “I have seen files from their and that is more than just a little different… oh!” I said. “I’m so sorry!”

“Sorry, my love?” she said.

“For making you wear that! Oh, I’m so sorry. I grew up in the dorm, but I should have remembered from my studies!”

“It’s OK!” she said, kissing me again. “I knew things would be different here. It will just take me a little while to get used to.” She took my hand and led me outside.

“This rain, on the other hand, I don’t think I will ever get used to.”

I didn’t say anything. No one else seemed to like the rain. I liked it.

“What are you looking for?” she asked me, halfway back to the house.

“Bn,” I said, and she gripped my hand tighter, looking down at the jungle floor herself.

“Come on, boys,” I said, when we got back. The boys looked up from the table, which was covered in plants. They must have been helping Adelphe sort. That was good, that they were working.

We got five more blinds done before dinner time. Seriously, it took me most of my time getting them there. They were fine once we got to a site. We got back and showered… which I always thought funny, as we spent pretty much all day pretty much naked in the rain. The boys, unlike my wife, liked the clothes I had made the. Especially Benjamin.

“Carl,” Uncle Andrew said, “Are you going to want to do worship time with just your wife? Or join  us?”

I looked up, startled. And  upset at myself. Of course I would need to do worship time with myself, and I had totally forgotten. But… “I think it would be good to do it together, in the evenings,” I said. “Then perhaps we can find some time, during the day, to do our own worship time?”

Andrew looked pleased at this answer, Adlephe grinned at me, but Jill looked very confused. She didn’t say anything, though, so I let it ride. “OK, well, if you change your mind, let me know,” he said, and we finished the meal while he, basically, moaned about having to build all of these shelters for the Rihalan. Once we were done, and had done the dishes, we gathered, as we always did, in a corner of the hut… if a round hut could be said to have corners. Jill, without my even asking, sat down in my lap, sort of.

“Since we are going to have Rihalans coming to live with us, or near us anyway,” Andrew said. “I thought it would be good for me to teach, some, on what the differences are between us… between the religions of New Texas, New Geneva, and Rihala. Jill squirmed in my lap, I guess she was having difficulty finding a comfortable way to sit. I was comfortable just having her there, I can assure you.

“Are you cold?” I asked her, suddenly thinking of it. After the day it got a bit cold, here. Not like it had in the desert, but still. She nodded, and I reached out for a blanket, and covered her… us really, with it. She relaxed a bit then, leaning back more against me. She probably was tired, as well, poor girl, having to change shifts.

“New Texans and New Genevans share most of our religion,” Andrew said. “New Genevans are much more serious about it, of course. New Genevans explain much more in relationship to their religion, as well. When we execute someone on New Texas, for example, we are likely to say ‘they had it coming’ or ‘good for them’ or some such. New Genevans are much more likely to specifically state the religious conviction behind the execution.”

“Another issue would be that the Genevans tend to emphasize the role of God in salvation, and we from New Texas talk about man. So we might say, “I found God,” while the Genevans will say “God found me.” Both have their roots in Scripture, and were not here, tonight, to argue the point, I am just pointing out the differences.”

“But, mostly, we agree. We believe in God, as a trinity: the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. We believe that Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins…”

He went on for a few minutes on that subject, and then, finally, got to the part that interested me. It had been a long time since I had studied what the Muslims actually believed.

“Muslims believe in one God, as well, but believe that we believe in three. Like most non-Christian religions they insist in misunderstanding Christianity.”

“Rihalans are different from other Muslims. They have taken several aspects of Muslim culture and religion to rather an extreme. The  one that will affect us the most is their view of women. We believe in a strong difference between the sexes,” he said. “We believe in early marriage, and in women being very ‘fruitful’ and having lots of children.”

“But we believe, and believe strongly, in being ‘one flesh’ with our wives. In doing lots of things together, and really getting to know each other. We believe that the love between a man and his partnére… or wife… is the strongest and most important love after the love that God has for us, and we are supposed to have for him.”

“For  Rihalans, on the other hand, women are almost a separate speices. Except for their sisters, mothers, and ‘aunts’, Rihalans almost never see women. Women are kept very closely guarded in their compounds or houses.”

“Rihalans, like some religions, even, I’m sorry to say, some Christians, see women as basically evil.” He paused, “Well, maybe that’s not quite fair. Basically they, many religions, see the body, and its desires, as evil. A necessary evil, a ‘fun’ evil even, but evil. And for Muslims and others, including many early Christian writers, women represent that evil.”

“No one, not here on the colonies anyway, reacts like some of our anscestors did. It used to be common for people to delay partnership, thinking they were somehow more Godly if they were able to wait; or scared of getting into a ‘bad’ partnership with a woman who wasn’t Godly enough. Fathers of daughters had the same idea. It was truly an insane time.”

“Anyway, no one today acts like that. Even before the war made it even more vital pretty much all the colonies were in favor of very young partnership. But what they do do, and the Rihalans really do, is hide the flesh away, and try to pretend that those relationships don’t exist.”

“The Rihalans, in particular. They wear clothes you will find oppressive… and our women will have to wear something like it. They don’t care so much about boys and men. They might kill us if they found us around their women dressed like this, but there will be none of their women here.”

“As for justice,” he said, “They have a rather different judicial code than we do…”

~~~

The next morning the boys did better. Jonathon and David were getting better at getting around, and Benjamin just climbed on my back first thing. “I’m going to leave you guys for a while,” I said, when we got to the fourth blind are after breakfast. “I need to spend some time with my wife.”

“OK, Carl,” Jonathon said, looking around. “Which way do you want us to go for the next one?”

I explained that and hurried back to the house. “Are you ready?” I asked Jill, when I got there.

“Ready?” she said, looking confused. I guess I should have told her when I was coming, but I hadn’t been sure it would work. “Oh?!” she said brightening up. “Sure.”

“You don’t have to wear that skirt, you know,” I said to her as we went, hand in hand, toward the shelter. “It won’t offend me if you want to wear something else.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “How was your morning?”

“We’re getting more blinds built,” I said. “The boys are getting better. I haven’t seen many Bn, though.”

“Well, with the Rihahalns coming you will have lots of help, soon, no?” she asked.

“I hope they will be help,” I said. “How are you doing with Adelephe?”

“Who?”

“Aliyah, your sister. Sorry, I call her Adelphe. It is a New Genevan name for a sister in law.”

“Oh, fine. She and I get along fine, we always have. Does it always rain, here?” she asked, as we got to the shelter.

“Pretty much,” I said. She started to take off her skirt, but I shook my head. “Not yet. You remember what Uncle said. I need to do our worship time. I noticed, last night, that you didn’t seem to know any of our Psalm tunes, so I thought I would teach you a couple of them.”

Well, she had a fine voice, and learned well. And, well, the rest went well as well. “Can you find your way back?” I asked. “I need to…”

Her panicked face answered my question and I took her hand. “Look, I’ll get you started,” I said, remember that she had problems with that one branch. “But you really will need to learn.”

Then I remembered myself. “Or, maybe not. You won’t be able to get out of the house without me with these Rihalans here. Bother.”

A couple of minutes or so later she said, “I can find my way now, thanks.”

She gave me a quick kiss, and I darted back toward the boys…

~~~

“Carl!” Uncle called, from where he was building a shelter, the next morning. We had just been passing nearby on our way to a new blind.

“Yes?” I yelled back. I didn’t really like to yell, I figured it let the enemy know where we are. I had been having a lucky morning so far: three enemy shot and killed.

“Get the boys working and come up here, will you?” he asked.

“K.”

It was probably fifteen minutes later I made it back. “Sir?” I asked.

“Ah, well, more ‘Uncle’ I think,” he said. “More of a family thing.” He cleared his throat and said, “How is it going with Jill?”

I blushed, I’m sure. What was he asking? “I, umm, fine.”

He frowned. Obviously not what he was looking for. “I am not trying to pry,” he said. “But it is my responsibility, both as your new father and as your superior officer, to make sure that things are really ‘fine’.”

“You have been taking her off to your shelter every day, and I think that is a good thing. She was not raised on shipboard. You’ve been coming together there?”

I nodded, blushing, although I didn’t know why.

“Good,” he said. “And she is talking to you, that is good.”

“Talking? Yes, she is always talking.”

He laughed, “She is kind of talker.” He sobered up, ‘You probably need to do more talking too. Do you do any talking?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Didn’t I do worship time, just like I was supposed to? That was talking, wasn’t it?

“Well, good. Girls seem to need a lot of talking. Glad to hear it is going well, you can go back now.”

As I left I wondered what that had been about. My wife was great, I was enjoying her attention in bed, if not so much her talking, and we could only hope she would be fertile. If she helped Adelphe with the house and all, and freed her up to do more doctoring, the I could do my job of killing enemy, and everything would be fine.

“What did Uncle want?” David asked me, when I showed up at the blind, which they finished and had been sitting watching for Bn.”

“To talk to me about how it was going with Jill,” I said.

“Oh!” he said.

“Come on,” I said. “I have to get you to the next blind area.”

I took them there and then went off to the shelter. Jill had told me she would try to get there herself and, when I got near, I saw that she had done. I was on a level several meters above her, and could see into the shelter from where I was.

She was, surely, the most beautiful creature on Earth… or this planet anyway. I was sitting, just looking at her, as she stared down, probably looking for enemy… although whether she could hit something with her pistol was a doubtful question.

Truly girls must have a sixth sense, for she almost immediately turned around and looked at me, grinning and waving… quietly. I had talked to her about how important that was. I grinned back, and started down toward her.

When I came in she was, again, watching for Bn. Which was good. I hadn’t seen any, myself, on my trip down, and we needed to get everything done, tho, so I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned around, and sat up for worship.

“Umm, before I get started, I have a question for you.”

“Yes?” she asked, her eyes sparkling.

“Are you happy? I mean, is there something different I should be doing as a husband to make you happy?”

Her face totally changed, and I was afraid I wasn’t communicating very well. “Uncle took me aside, today, to ask how everything was going, and I wanted to hear from you, as well, how things are going for you.”

Her face was a study, and she seemed at a loss for words. She opened her mouth several times, and then, finally, with an embarrassed pull at her skirt, said, “Well, I won’t lie to you, it has been hard coming out here. Things are very, very different here. But you have been wonderful, and Aliyah, and Andrew, and I love Justina and the boys and all.”

“Good,” I said, relieved. Uncle’s question had worried me. “Let’s see what the next text is…”

~~~

“What on Earth!?” I said, when I got back to the latest blind. Benjamin was standing in the middle of the blind, looking truly bizarre. I looked at the other boys.

“Camouflage!” David said, excited. “We looked it up, and wanted to surprise you!”

Well, they had done that. Benjamin was all over splotchy: not a trace of his original skin color was left. Greens, browns, even purples covered him from head to toe… at least everywhere not covered by his loincloth… covered him in long, scraggly, streaks. Even his eyes.

“Camouflage?” I said, wonderingly.

“So we can’t be seen,” David said, as if I wasn’t clear on what camouflage was.

“Where did you get the stuff?” I asked them. Jonathon kind of giggled.

“We asked Adelphe,” he said. They had taken to calling Aliya that like I did, I’m not sure why. “We had to do it when you weren’t listening. It was hard. They are all local plants and things. The brown is from the bark of a Yhoran tree,” he said.

“It itches,” Benjamin said, scratching. Scratch how he might, it didn’t come off tho. I rubbed on his skin, and looked at the other two, who grinned.

“Won’t rain off, either,” Jonathon said, confidently. “Adelphe says so.”

“Wow!” I said.

“Shall we all put it on?” David asked and, when I nodded, he squealed, running over into the corner where they had the materials all bound up in leaves.

Minutes later, fun minutes later, we all looked like nothing on Earth. “Wow!” I said, as Benjamin finished putting the last few touches on David’s leg. “This is awesome. Good job, boys!”

The boys grinned, and stayed grinning all the way back. Especially when…

“What on Earth?” Jill said, almost dropping the pot she was carrying to the table.

“Like it?” Benjamin asked her. Aliyah stood in the background, grinning.

“What is it?” Jill asked. Then I came in, “Carl?!”

“It’s camouflage,” I said, enjoying the boys pleasure. It was funny to see Jill’s face.