They Also Serve: A Jump Universe Novel Part 7

"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 s.p.a.ce, 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 d.a.m.n 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 s.h.i.+psuit 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 pa.s.s 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? h.e.l.l, 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. .h.i.t 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 gra.s.s," Jeff answered, fis.h.i.+ng 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 amba.s.sador," Jeff corrected.

"And the two of them never apart," the mother a.s.sured 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 gla.s.s," 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 there for 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.

And something came along, cut him off at the roots, and swallowed him down. As Ray took a ride through an alimentary system with three stomachs, he found that he wasn't bothered by the outcome, but rather enjoying the experience: digestion, respiration, and a wild trip around the circulatory system before he settled down to a single viewpoint. He was the cow, or sheep, or whatever this critter was; it had six legs and clumped together in a herd, side by side, cheek to rear. Ray got busy nipping at flowers before his herdmates gobbled the best.

I'm experiencing life as a flower, a sheep. Why?

Ray was not surprised when the carnivores showed up.

Given a choice between being eaten as a flower and eaten as a sheep, Ray would take the flower any day. The sheep spotted the wrong smell on the wind. Its little brain wasn't geared for friend-foe identification; it settled for WRONG. Adrenaline started pumping, panic took over, and Ray took off along with every other six-legged woolly in the herd.

He didn't know where he was going; he didn't care. He just knew that he had to get as far from that wrong smell as possible. He didn't have to be faster than it, just faster than his neighbor. The military officer in Ray evaluated the data and concluded raising an army of sheep was a lost cause.

Whoever the smelly, hungry things were, they weren't dumb. Running upwind, the sheep stampeded right into the ambush before they even knew it was there. Ray took a mercifully quick blow to the head, found himself in darkness again, and got ready for another lesson in alimentary ca.n.a.ls.

Instead he was in his freshman biology cla.s.sroom back at the Academy. The gardener stood at the front of an otherwise empty cla.s.s. "What have you learned?"

"To stay at the top of the food chain." Ray shot back the freshman quip just as he would have years ago.

The gardener shook his head sadly. "You are older and wiser than that. Have you learned the lesson, or must you repeat it?"

Ray felt the darkness coming for him. He had a distinct feeling this school only got harder the second time around. "No matter what color the uniform, we all bleed red," he said.

His father had told Ray that once. It had taken him years to understand the full impact that his enemy was human, too.

Ray came awake, grimaced at his bladder's demand, and reached for his canes. Done and back to his bed, he wondered what his next dream would be about. He placed little weight on dreams, just the subconscious mind's way of discharging electricity. He rolled over and went back to sleep.

SIX.

RAY WAS IN a very good mood when he got his first staff meeting under way at 0800 next morning. He'd breakfasted with the kids, Mary, and Kat. How anyone could stay glum around kids was a puzzle Ray didn't want to solve. They attacked breakfast with an innocent abandon that left the table a wreck, the adults exhausted, and Ray swearing he wanted only one kid so he and Rita would never be outnumbered worse than one to two.

"Think those odds are good enough?" Kat asked, trying to persuade David he didn't need five spoonsful of sugar on his cereal.

"Grandparents, I hear grandparents make great auxiliaries," Mary put in. "Never had any myself, but it's in all the books."

"How about a squad of marines?" Ray suggested.

Mary shook her head, "Not fair to the troops, sir. A good officer never sets her troops up for defeat."

Somehow the kids learned about the day's mining project and wanted to go. Ray promised they could "if there's transport for all of you," which gave Mary an out. His security chief looked torn between "No way, Jose," and "Whoopee." The meal had been so absorbing that Ray was back to the HQ before he recalled the game the kids had been playing as they trooped in.

Mary had asked what kind of animal they'd like to be. Rose piped up she'd want to be a flower. Jon wanted to be a warm, woolly sheep. David had growled and made a leaping grab for Jon that left him shrieking, "I want to be a wolf."

Ray had commended the lad for staying at the top of the food chain. Now the words and the memory of a dream came back to haunt him.

In the staff meeting, Barber was already seated to Ray's right. Mary brought Ca.s.sie. "If I'm promoted to minister of mining or something, she'll take security." Doc Jerry sat next to Kat, no longer with murderous intentions toward the middie.

"Anything new concerning last night's talk, Doc?" Ray asked.

Jerry rubbed grainy, sleepless eyes. "Nothing, nada, and zip. I'll keep hammering on it today. Don't know when I'll make a breakthrough. Don't know if I'd recognize one if it bit me."

"You want the middies out of your hospital?"

"I don't really need all that s.p.a.ce. Besides, who knows when what they know will be something I need to know? I'll work up local patients a bit more thoroughly today, see if I can get a local baseline. See how close the kids fit or scatter from it."

"Will you need the kids?" Mary asked.

"Probably not. You got something special for them?"

"Take them for a walk in the country."

"Just make sure they don't leave breadcrumbs. Lets them find their way home every time. Or so I'm told."

"Glad you're not speaking from experience, doctor," Ray quipped. "Looks like everyone has their day planned. Chief, I a.s.sume you have plenty to do." Barber nodded. "Then let's get busy doing it," Ray said, starting to stand.

"How are you planning on spending your day?" Barber asked.

"Taking a nap. Relaxing in a nice, warm bath. Sitting at your elbow every minute of it figuring out what needs to be done." The chief laughed at Ray's opening wish, then nodded agreement as reality thrust up its ugly head.

There was a knock at the door. "Enter," Barber said.

A yeoman did. "Sir, we've got some locals here to see you."

Jeff poked his head in. "Annie's with me. Her folks sent her out with lunch for all and a couple of kegs of beer," then added quickly, "and as a kind of observer for the green side of things." He paused, glanced over his shoulder. "Oh, and we picked up the padre. He'd just finished Ma.s.s as we went by the church. Wanted to see his grandson."

Ray drummed his fingers on the table. "So the success or failure of our mining effort will have a planetwide audience."

"Naw," Jeff said, "just pretty much this continent."

Was Mary up to a PR blitz while juggling a mine? Hardly seemed fair. "Looks like I amba.s.sador today."

Outside, Ray found two mules and loaded trailers. Annie was in a blue plaid dress, maybe a tad more revealing than the usual local, and perched on the seat of a large, one-horse cart. From its bed came wondrously good smells. There were also two kegs of her pop's beer. Ray made a mental note to see that Mary had most of the work done before the kegs were tapped. The padre's rig was a smaller version of Annie's drawn by a s.h.a.ggy pony. Rose took one look and begged to ride with the priest. David and Jon demanded rides in a mule. Mary loaded them both in the lead one, then climbed in herself. With the kids chattering nonstop, Ray seated himself in the second mule beside Ca.s.sie. He wanted a few words with the woman who might soon be his chief of security. Twenty marines, half drawn from the old miners, the other from Dumont's squad of ex-street toughs, were the work team.

Unity intelligence had a.s.sured Ray that Earth's Society for Humanity was press-ganging the dregs into their desperate defense. That was half true; Mary's ex-miners got their draft notice with their downsizing pink slips. The street kids like Dumont woke up stoned and hung over to discover they'd signed themselves in-even those who couldn't sign their own name. Ray's mistake had been a.s.suming that they were easy sweepings.

Mary and her miner friends had been madder than h.e.l.l...and done something about it. Their last s.h.i.+ft at the mines, they walked off with anything that wasn't welded down. Ray found out too late that his proud 2nd Guard Brigade was facing a lot of stuff that wasn't in the latest Jane's All the Worlds' Weapons Systems or in their database of hostile system signatures-and which they really should have avoided.

The rest was history, a history that he and Mary and Matt wrote in blood. They'd ended that war, to the shock of some and the relief of most. Now, Ray chuckled to himself, they were working for him and he'd get a chance to see what they could do for him. "I thought Mary'd bring more miners," Ray said to Ca.s.sie. "What's she doing with Dumont's kids?"

"They're in makee-learnee status. Mary promised Dumont she'd teach his kids the trade. What Mary promises, she does. This drill, each miner has a shadow. Dumont's kids learned fast in the war. Expect they'll learn even better today."

On horseback, Jeff led them west. Mary followed, Ca.s.sie right behind. Annie and the padre's carts fell in line. Miners and trainees hopped aboard mules and trailers. The padre offered Dumont a ride. The young tough looked like he'd rather be anywhere but beside the old man of the cloth. Apparently Ray had taken the seat the kid had selected for himself. With a nasty glance Ca.s.sie's way, he took the priest's offer.

"See how the kid gets along with the priest," Ca.s.sie muttered, one eye on the rearview, the other keeping Mary's trailer a proper distance ahead.

Ray leaned back, relaxing into the mule's jerky motion, his back already starting to ache. The morning was pretty enough, high clouds marking off an otherwise pa.s.sionately blue sky. A gentle breeze dried the sweat as fast as the sun drew it out of Ray, cooling him nicely. The hills were dotted with trees, Earth green as well as red, blue, and gray. They added a pleasant pattern for the eye and an intriguing scent to the air. Familiar and strange merging into a palette that excited and called forth hope in Ray. On a day like today, it was easy to forget someone had tried to knife him. And someone else may have tried to burn Refuge's central archives. Back to business. "Ca.s.sie, you got any problem taking over security if I put Mary in charge of running the base and feeding the manufacturing?"

"You do what the good Lord calls you to," the woman said.