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.”