They Also Serve (9 page)

"Cancer!" Kat breathed. "But that's easily cured," she said, to take the ancient death curse from the word.

"In any decent medical facility, a minor problem."

Ray saw where this was leading. "Do we have access to a decent medical facility?"

The doc took in a long breath. "No. Any ship personnel with a problem like that are dropped off at the nearest base and we pick them up two months later, cured."

"Another reason to wish we were home," Ray breathed.

"Except." The doc tapped the board, bringing up four skull scans. "Rose, David, and Jon all have tumors in the exact same place as you."

As Ray bent over the board, Kat quickly joined them at the display. Mary was beside him, a gentle hand resting on his elbow. Ready to catch him if his knees caved on him? Ray tried to process what had been thrown at him. Doc had given him a potential death sentence, then changed it... to what? Ray studied the four skull scans as if one of them weren't his, as if they were just terrain his troops had to maneuver over.
Detach, Colonel, detach. You can feel later. There's something important here. Find it.

"The tumor mass is here," Doc was saying, "between the right and left lobes of the brain. There shouldn't be anything there." Ray focused on the four skulls, checking each. To his eye, they all looked the same.

"No way to tell from this if it's benign or malignant?"

"I ran the blood tests on all four of you. Didn't find anything malignant, but.. ."

"Keep talking, Doc," Ray ordered.

"There're fragments of virus in your blood. Kids', too. Again, we all have them, but this stuff isn't in our database. I'm still trying to put them together, do an ID."

Ray could think of nothing more to say. It was moments like these, at funerals and
bedsides, that left him at a loss for words. "Let me know what you find" was so empty.

Doc headed for the door. "Mary, it's time to put the kids to bed. I'm keeping them in the clinic tonight."

"Excuse me, Colonel, I promised Rose I'd bunk with her tonight, just in case she needed to call her mom."

Ray ushered them out the door. Somewhere in the past hour or so, the HQ staff had left. Even the chiefs light was off. The office with Ray's name on it had a door leading into a spartan bedroom with its own facilities and shower.

Someone had unpacked his kit; he couldn't even lose himself in the mindless duty of assigning underwear to drawers. He settled in his bed and opened the shades. Thirty or forty yards away was the hospital. He found himself looking into windows, watching Mary and Kat wrestle three youngsters into an unfamiliar bedtime routine. He smiled, thinking of what it would be like to do that with Rita and their own little ones.

He'd had plenty of experience with young men and women, rifle-high and in hormone hell. What would it be like to tackle one that was tiny and innocent and full of energy and didn't want to go to bed, thank you very much?
Don't worry, Rita, I'll make it home soon. Real soon.

With Mary busy taking care of someone else, Ray found his pills and set them beside his bed with a glass of water. He doused the lights and settled into bed. With the blinds still open, he had a front-row seat to the bedtime production across the way. It was gentle distraction from a day full of things he could do nothing about.

He fell asleep with a smile on his face.

Mary had never put in time at a crèche. As a qualified miner, she wasn't required. She was catching up fast on all that she'd missed. "Can I have a drink of water?" came from the darkened room for the umpteenth time. Kat had younger brothers and sisters; she'd warned Mary this could take a while.

"I'll handle this one," the young middie said. Mary was glad to let her.

"I've got your blood results" came from behind Mary. She turned. Doc Jerry, holding three pages of test results, absently scratched his bandaged elbow, showed where the third batch of blood had been drawn. Inspired by example, Mary rubbed her own bandage. Medical tests these days required little more than a pinprick. Doc had found an ancient blood kit with a huge needle and gigantic blood holder and gone hunting for both Mary and Kat. He'd drawn enough blood to fuel a small starship.

"Anything interesting?" Mary asked.

"Both you and Kat have virus fragments in your blood. Not much, but you and the colonel are in the same general range."

"And you?"

"Some. Maybe a few. I don't know." Doc shrugged.

"When'd you come down?"

"Day before yesterday."

"Retest when you're down a week?"

"Yeah. Mind if I run a quick brain scan on you?"

Mary tried to control rising panic. "Are my levels up?"

"A bit elevated. Not outside the norm."

"Close to the Colonel's?"

"No."

Mary tried to get the old terror out with a deep breath. Cancer was easily cured, but she'd seen old miners with too many hours in the radiation of space, faces and bodies disfigured from long-ago cures. Yeah, cancer didn't kill you, but it could sure mess with your smile. "When do you want to do the scan?"

"Now, if possible."

Glancing in the room, where Kat was providing another round of drinks for all and refusing to read a third bedtime story, Mary figured she had time. The doc had the scanner prepared for her and did it quickly. "Nothing, no tumor, not a damn thing," he muttered as he put her through a second scan. Mary was glad for the immediate feedback.

Back outside the kids' door, Kat was keeping watch. "They've been quiet for ten minutes. They may be down for the night. Rose wondered when you'd come in."

Mary yawned and stretched, the bandage pulling on her arm. "I'm about ready now."

Kat nodded toward the still-lit lab. "Doc done yet?"

"Yeah, our blood's got virus, just like the Colonel's. He ran my head through a scanner and didn't find anything."

"I knew marines had empty skulls," Kat grinned.

Mary gave her a sarcastic bow, having intentionally left the opening. "Why don't you wander down and let the doc sort through the cobwebs in your head."

Kat gave the doc's direction a worried glance. "Think he's still mad at us over his lab?"

"Doesn't strike me as the kind to hold a grudge," Mary said, "for more than five or six years."

"Gee, thanks," Kat said, but headed down the hall.

Mary edged the door to the kids' room open and slipped in. From the outside lights, Mary could easily see the little ones. All three had kicked off their blankets. Since it wasn't that warm, Mary made her way from one to the other, slipping a single blanket back over each sleeping form. She'd heard that kids had such angelic visages when they slept. Rose, Jon, and David's faces were scrunched up, intent on something in their sleep. Their breath came short, jerky, in near-gasps.

Done with blanket duty, Mary slipped out of her shipsuit and slid under her own
covers. Lying on her side, she rested her eyes on Rose, wondering what it would be like to have such a child, to be responsible for another small person's life and welfare. Strange thoughts for someone who'd never even tried to pass the requirements to have a kid.

Rose stiffened in her sleep. A small fist jerked out; a leg twitched. The blanket was half off again. With a sigh, Mary got out of bed and rearranged Rose's covers. Then she made another round of the other kids; their blankets were half off already. What made these kids so restless?

Back in bed, Mary remembered she hadn't laid Ray's pills out; he probably took care of them himself. He was a big boy, didn't need her. So why was she always looking out for him? Hell, six months ago she'd wanted him dead. Well, he's my boss, she thought, knowing that wasn't the answer. Now that she knew him, she'd found the kind of man she might have cared enough about to have a kid with. But that door was closed; he had Rita and their own child on the way and deserved better than to be chained to canes and hobbling through the world. With luck, he wouldn't always be like that. If she could do something to make this period better for him, she would.

What did she want?

She'd fought like a demon to stay alive as a marine, and she'd do it again if she had to. She'd done her job at the mine, keeping her nose clean and her head down, but none of that was her. She was happiest with her friends, part of their lives and they part of hers. Right now, the job let her be just that. Tomorrow they'd put their own twist to running a mining operation. For now, that was enough.

Two blankets hit the floor within seconds of each other. Yawning, Mary made the rounds again, wondering how long this could last. Tomorrow she'd find a complete set of pajamas for each of the kids. PJs with padlocks. As she tucked the kids in, she watched as their breath slowed, became steady, almost in cadence with each other. Good; maybe now Mary could get some sleep herself. She slid back into her own bed, pulled the covers up, took one last look at each of her kids, and went to sleep.

Jeff tossed his bag on the table nearest the public room's door and shouted, "I'm home! Don't all cheer at once!"

Annie might have, but her da and ma were in the kitchen getting tomorrow's bread started, and her kid sister was helping sweep the floor. "Nikki," Jeff asked, "could you carry a message to old Ned? I'll be going out mining tomorrow with the starfolk and I'll need a horse."

"And what do the starfolks think they'll be doing?" Mrs. Mulroney asked, coming from the kitchen with a dishrag to wipe the flour from her hands.

"Taking all the metal a man could ask from a hill without disturbing a blade of grass," Jeff answered, fishing a coin from his pocket. The one he pulled out was mainly ceramic, with a thin wire of brother Mark's aluminum wound through it. Out here, the aluminum standard had caught on quickly. In the cities, they still wanted copper in most coins. Sooner or later that would cause trouble, but it made it easier for Jeff to catch a little sister's eye. He tossed it to Nikki, who made for the door.

"Straight to Old Ned's door and back, Miss Nikki, and no dawdling," her mother warned as the girl raced out

"Humph," Mr. Mulroney said as he came from the kitchen, two mugs of beer in his hands. "That will be the day a hill gives up good metal without the likes of you tearing it apart, shovel by shovel. I've heard the tales of what your brother's doing up among the Bible-lovers. Whole hillsides gone, rivers flowing full of mud. What you're doing ain't natural."

"Well, Mary says it doesn't have to be that way."

"You've spent a lot of time with her," Annie said.

"I've spent a lot of time with their ambassador," Jeff corrected.

"And the two of them never apart," the mother assured her elder daughter.

"Anyway, I'd like a lunch for me and twenty or so more," Jeff cut in. "The starfolk will probably have their own food, but wouldn't it be nice to show them how good they can eat from your larder?" he pointed out to Annie's dad.

"I could take along an extra keg or two and sell it by the glass," Annie offered.

Jeff started to say he'd pay for the kegs, then thought better. Much better chance of getting Annie up in the hills with them if her dad thought she was doing business. Jeff would pay for the beer, whether it was drunk or not.

"I could see what they do to the mountain, Ma, and tell you and your friends exactly what happens."

"As if they'd trust your word where young Jeff is concerned," her mom muttered, but did not second-guess her man when he said Annie should take two kegs. Jeff went up the stairs two at a time, light of heart. He was staying close to Mary. That would keep Vicky happy. And close to Annie, which made him happy. What more could a man ask for?

Ray was in darkness. It wasn't the pitch dark of a moonless night but total darkness, the complete absence of light. Sound as well. Feeling also. He moved. Which left the rational part of his brain wondering how he could be so sure he was moving when he had no reference point. Then he spotted a distant speck of light. No question he was moving toward it, and rapidly. In no time . . . which, considering this situation, might not be a bad image. . . he shot into the light, transitioning from the total absence of the stuff to the total presence of it in hardly a blink. As he floated in the brilliance, he could feel the ping of every photon as it struck him.

Ray had never been tickled by light waves; he found the sensation rather pleasant. He reached out, spreading himself to take in as much of the stuff as he could. . . and discovered his body. He had beautiful yellow petals and a long, reddish-brown stem. Around him were a million flowers like him.

Ray remembered when he was a kid, a spiritual guru or fakir or something had chained himself to the base fence and started a hunger strike. On his way to school, Ray remembered the guy yelling at one and all that they had to become one with the animals and the flowers. The base commandant left him therefor several weeks, until he started to stink up the place and looked really wiped out by his hunger strike. One morning he was gone and his area hosed down and restored to proper military spic-and-span status. To Ray it had seemed about time.

Still, he often wondered, usually late at night after several beers, what it was like to feel one with everything. Now Ray felt it. The sun fed him, the air flowed over him, his roots reached down, soaking up water and minerals, photosynthesis pulsed through him, filling him, enlarging him. A bee came along. The experience wasn't quite as enjoyable as a night with Rita, but, for a flower, it was fulfilling. He pushed out seeds.