by John Barnes
“Then let ’em. Our first Thanksgiving here should be a good one.”
When they were happy and satisfied and just cuddling on the bed, she asked, “So is this Thanksgiving being good so far?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m about as thankful as I can get.”
“Let me get dressed and see about the soup, and maybe I can get you thankfuller.”
Beth’s fringe benefit for helping with the mass dressing-out of mule deer and pronghorns at the community kitchen had been a generous pail of trimmings. For their Thanksgiving soup, she had boiled that with some potatoes, a share of leftover cooked rice from the community kitchen, a can of tomatoes, a handful of thawed-but-probably-not-yet-spoiled frozen brussels sprouts, and a couple of old, stringy carrots. They promised themselves that by next Thanksgiving they’d have turkey, or at least chicken.
For now, compared to Thanksgiving with his family or at the commune, this was, hands down, the best he’d had: no football, no tofu, no sermons about making something of himself, no dark little hints about Beth having grown up in a doublewide, no sermons about not oppressing people.
“For two refugees, this place is a palace,” Jason said. “You’re right, I really am even more thankful.”
“Yeah, baby, we’re so lucky. And I listen to that wind and I just think, the place is warm and toasty and all ours.” She pulled out a potato on a long-handled fork, cut it in half, and tried a bite. “That’s about as done as it’s getting.”
Later on, when the warmth, safety, privacy, and full bellies pulled them toward bed, they banked the fire, put the soup-pot into the cold corner of the room to keep it fresh longer, and washed with warm water from the iron bucket that Beth kept by the stove. Holding Beth, on a box spring and mattress with real sheets, up on a platform Jason had made from some old crates and boards, he thought, This is living.
ONE DAY LATER . FORT BENNING. GEORGIA. (DRE T COMPOUND. NEAR THE COLUMBUS SIDE OF THE BASE.) A LITTLE AFTER 1:00 P.M. EST. FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 29.
Heather had made the appointment with Cameron specifically, rather than Graham, because stupid me, I thought if Cam just understood the other side, that would solve the problem. Now I see that’s what was causing it.
He was giving her his usual small, polite, meaningless smile, and he’d been nodding more and more as he listened to her. Finally, he said, “Heather, that’s just politics. The real world is complicated and contradictory, but policies have to be clear and monovalent to be carried out. If Graham wins the argument—and he might, he and Norcross talk a lot and get along well—then I will shrug, carry out the policy, and pray that Graham is right. You know it’s not personal with me and Graham. I like the man. I know he’s sincere, and respect his judgment. And Arnie is the cleverest guy in the world and absolutely indispensable, but every so often, his extreme cleverness overpowers his common sense, he starts sniffing up his own butt, he falls in, and he disappears up his own ass like a star falling into a black hole. And when that happens, I have to not follow Arnie up his own ass. So I say—”
There was a knock at the door, and before Cameron could say, “Come in,” Sherry stuck her head in. “Heather, note from Lenny—he said it was urgent—meet him over at the infirmary.”
“Go,” Cam said.
Heather hurried through the gray fall mist, her heart sinking.
It wasn’t fair.
They’d made the dangerous trip down here, lived through the constant danger of exposure in Washington, she’d carried him in her bare hands down through corridors and stairwells that must have been crawling with biotes, and she’d been so careful to scrub and clean him everywhere, brushing every bit of exposed plastic with alcohol and . . .
She knew it couldn’t make any difference, but she ran, anyway. Maybe he has something else, maybe it’s serious but it’s not that, maybe—
At the door to the infirmary, she made herself slow to a walk. If this is it, I’m going to do it right. Inside, they’d been watching for her, and she was guided down the corridor to the room where Lenny waited.
Give Army doctors credit, they don’t run off and let people face their troubles alone, Heather thought. The lady who stood there waiting for her was tall and dark, with close-cropped hair; she was as dignified, and implacable, as a mountain. “Ms. O’Grainne. I’m Dr. Lee. Dr. Plekhanov wanted you to be present while we discuss something very serious.”
“I came as quick as I could.” She was crouched beside Lenny; he hates to look up, don’t make him do that, she wanted to say to Dr. Lee, but then she saw that the doctor had squatted down on Lenny’s other side.
Lenny said, “Heather, babe. This is it. Dr. Lee just scraped four millimeters of decayed plastic goo off my kidney drain—”
“But—Lenny, there was nothing this morning—”
“Of course there wasn’t,” Lenny said.
Dr. Lee added, “We’ll never know how it got to him, and it wouldn’t help us if we did. It could have been floating on the air this morning while he was getting dressed. The stuff grows so fast, faster than yeast in bread dough or a virus in your sinuses, Ms. O’Grainne.”
“I just . . . he was safe when I left this morning.”
Lenny’s strong good hand reached out and took her by the back of the neck, turning her face to him, catching her eyes. “I was safe. Time enough to talk about me like I’m not here when I’m not.”
She let him hold her while she cried, not for long, but enough to find her heart again. Wiping her eyes, she said, “Dr. Lee. You said there was a difficult decision to make.”
“Well, I’ve drilled out as much plastic as I dare, and refilled with surgical cement from a clean tube. Maybe I got it all. Maybe nothing will happen. The next few hours, a day at most, and we’ll know.
“In a way, the sensible, conservative thing to do would be to replace his kidney drain with one of the clean spare drains we sealed into glass jars right after Daybreak. None of those has any visible signs of decay. The problem with surgery is that we have nothing we can use inside the human body that reliably kills nanoswarm, and we might let that in, where it would destroy Dr. Plekhanov’s pacemaker, or his artificial kidney or spleen, or attack his aortal booster pumps. Between all of those he has six running electric motors, four microcomputers, and eight motion-driven generators in his body. Losing any of those could be fatal, and internal nanoswarm excreting strong acid would be a painful way to go.
“But I can tell you still think surgery and a replacement drain would be better. ”
“Even if I got the whole infection today, I’m not sure that my surgical cement plug will hold together. Dr. Plekhanov has to remove the accumulated fluid about every ten days, and I’m afraid my fix on that plug will break when he does; there were no specs to tell me if that surgical cement would work in that application, but it was all I had.”
“So that’s the choice,” Heather said numbly. “Replace the drain now, while the biotes are in check, and hope the nanoswarm don’t kill him; or wait and see if the drain starts to spoil again, and run the risk of an emergency surgery with even more danger.”
“That’s it,” Lenny agreed.
“Not much of a choice.”
“Oh, it’s a big choice. There’s just not much selection.” Lenny put his hand on her cheek; she pressed against it. His fingers are so strong, right now he’s still so healthy— “Dr. Lee says we can figure that surgical cement plug won’t last either; something will contaminate it even if it went in clean, and sooner or later it will start to decay. The new drain, if they put that in, will come down with decay sooner or later too; maybe in a week, maybe in ten years, but eventually. The longest they could keep me alive would probably be in an almost-sterile environment, where you could visit me and we could touch if every time you go through the kind of scrub that they gave us coming into Benning.
“And yet I’d still be doomed, Heather, we both know that. I’m a little chunk of the Big System, and Daybreak is going to kill the Big System. But here’s the t
hing. We don’t know if my drain getting infected was a once-in-ten-years fluke, or if it’s something that is bound to happen every three months. But we do know that drain has already been infected once, and despite Dr. Lee’s best efforts, it might not be clean now. And we do know that surgical cement isn’t going to be as durable as the original plastic. So I figure, if everything is perfect with the repair job she just did on me—I’ve got less than a year. Just too many things that are too close to certain to go wrong.
“But if I go in right away for the surgery . . . well, there are three possibilities. Opening me up is always dangerous; too many parts are broken already. Or I might get nanoswarm. Or—and I think it’s the most likely—they’ll get me back to where I was a day or so ago. And at that point . . . maybe getting a plastic infection is something that will happen every few weeks, and that’s all the life extension I’ll get. But maybe this really was a freak case, maybe it won’t happen again for ten or fifteen years. I might even live long enough for them to redevelop all the stuff that’s needed to keep me alive.
“So, basically, if I don’t go in for the surgery, it’s a near certainty I’ll die this year. If I do go in for surgery, odds are I’ll just die this year anyway, and there’s maybe an increased chance of dying tomorrow, but there’s a tiny little chance of living with you for years and years. So . . . hey.” He brushed her tears away with his hand again. “Do you need some time to get it back together?”
“Yeah, but I can spend the rest of my life doing that.” She sighed. “I see the point. I really do.” She wiped her eyes. “Lenny. You’re not doing anything to me that I’m not also doing to you. You know I’m not going to sit this whole thing out behind a desk; any time, Cam or the president might send me where I could come down with a bad case of shot or stabbed. Even if you’re here for ten more years, there’s no guarantee I will be. So I think you better take your chance to really live.”
Lenny nodded. “I told Dr. Lee you’d say that. There’s one thing you can do that would be great.”
“Name it.”
“They can’t open me up and get to work till midday tomorrow. I can’t safely go back to our place, so I’m in the hospital for tonight, but if you’re willing to let them do a full scrub on you, we could be in the same bed.”
“A full scrub is like the one we had on arrival, where they shave my head and exfoliate me?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’m glad you like your girls bald and bright pink.”
“I like my girls you. Bald and bright pink is just a side benefit.”
SIX HOURS LATER. FORT BENNING. GEORGIA. 7:30 P.M. EST. FRIDAY. NOVEMBER 29.
Her skin was rubbed raw, and Lenny suggested that next time she ask them to use finer-grain sandpaper, but they forgot it all in the pleasures of one more night with each other. “I’m glad you’re good at in-the-moment and for-right-now,” Lenny said, “because I sure needed you to be tonight.” His powerful hands were gently pulling and tugging at her scalp muscles, enough to force them to relax, and the release of tension was wonderful. “Does this feel good?”
“Mmm. The best.”
“I’m kind of liking it myself.” He rubbed and tugged firmly, and she let herself get lost in the sensations, being just here, just now. “Got the energy for another round, or is it time to sleep?”
“I’m not sure I want to sleep at all, tonight.” She moved him gently into a better position and kissed him.
Coming up briefly for air, he said, “Well, they’re going to knock me out for a lot of hours tomorrow; why sleep now?”
THE NEXT MORNING. FORT BENNING. GEORGIA. 6:48 A.M. EST. SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 30.
The next morning, they were turning toward each other, cuddling and touching, not sure whether to be awake yet, when Heather smelled a combination of rotten cheese and flyblown meat.
Lenny saw her expression and sniffed. “Fuck. Oh, shit. Where do I have it?”
The new piece in his plastic kidney drain, which Dr. Lee had sculpted so carefully from surgical cement, had brownish ooze around its edges. Heather kissed him once more, and said, “They’ll be rushing you through everything from here on. You make it through and come back, ’kay?”
“I will if any of it is up to me. Whether I do or not, I love you.”
“And I love you.” She pushed the call button that would start the chaos, and dressed all but instantly in the scrubs they’d given her; Lenny asked her to help him into the awkward hospital wheelchair, and she was just making sure he was comfortable, even if it was only for the short trip down the hall, when the nursing team arrived.
ABOUT FOUR HOURS LATER . FORT BENNING. GEORGIA. 11:15 A.M. EST. SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 30.
They had put her at some distance from the operating room; Dr. Lee had said, “I don’t want your instincts kicking in if there’s some running and yelling.”
Heather admitted it made sense, but still, she wished she were close enough to be sure of knowing whatever was going on. She knew they’d be taking a lot of extra time, working with extra-sterilized instruments and giving everything much more than the usual scrubbing, doublechecklisting everything to make sure that nothing was contaminated inside; caution would take time, and so would working as systematically as they would have to.
She was bored after a while, sitting in the waiting area, so when she saw Sherry passing by, she flagged her down and had the dullest and most tedious paperwork files brought over and sterilized; she sat with her legs up on the bench, scribbling out each new document, accumulating a tidy heap.
They offered her lunch just before the hospital kitchen closed to start fixing dinner; she couldn’t have told anyone, afterward, what it was. Pretty typical hospital experience, that’s what I’ll tell Lenny, because he’ll scold me for hanging around here and fretting. She kept working because it was easy to put a few words down on a form, stare off into space for a few minutes, then put a few more words down on the form.
Late that afternoon, Dr. Lee came in, sat beside her, and put an arm around her; she was already weeping when the doctor finally said, “His heart just stopped—even with the pacemaker going—and nothing would restart it. We don’t know if it was a toxin from the infection, or something wrong in his artificial systems, or it was just time; but he just stopped, and we couldn’t start him again.”
They sat together for a long time, but neither of them seemed to have anything to say.
That night, back in their quarters, she packed Lenny’s things, because she didn’t expect to sleep, and if she didn’t do it then, she might not for a year. His clothes went into a box for decontamination and distribution; his books and papers would go to his colleagues to look through, to try to pick up the threads of his work; the few mementos he had carried in his pack from his apartment to across DC, when he’d made the trek with Heather and Sherry, went into her own keepsake box. Maybe someday I’ll meet his family, and they can explain the ones that I don’t know about. I wish I’ d thought to ask. I guess people always think there will be time.
TWO DAYS LATER . FORT BENNING. GEORGIA. 11:00 A.M. EST. MONDAY. DECEMBER 2.
Heather remembered every detail of Lenny’s funeral; for safety’s sake, he was cremated. She remembered blubbering something briefly about how much he’d meant to her; it hadn’t been exactly what was on the little typed sheet she’d written, because she couldn’t read through the tears. She remembered more about the other speakers—Arnie, warm and fond, helping everyone smile with gratitude that Lenny had been in their lives; Graham, brief, stiff, too dignified; Cam, reading a short message from President Norcross, and then adding his own few sentences.
“Taps” had always torn her heart out even before now; there were no firearm salutes because guns that definitely fired were still too scarce. Norcross had requested that Lenny’s ashes be stored on the base until it was practical to inter them at Arlington.
Afterward, Allie walked Heather back to her now-too-lonely quarters “just to make sure you get to bed o
kay tonight.” She hung around, giving Heather orders—“Now into your pj’s, now turn the covers back—”
“Are you going to read me a story?”
“If I have to. What I’m not going to do is leave you here sitting up for days, or wandering around, till you’re sick and exhausted.”
“You’re a good friend.”
“I’m a good staffer. Strict orders from Graham and Cam both: Make sure she’s okay.”
“You’re also a good friend.”
“Yeah. Get into the bed; I’ll turn the light off on my way out.”
Heather stretched out and shut her eyes. Not sure about sleeping, but I’m certainly tired. “Thank Arnie for me. His eulogy was . . . well, it was Arnie that made me remember Lenny.”
“Sometimes he has a pretty human touch,” Allie said.
That seemed odd but Heather was sleepy. “Okay, you can go. Really. Turn out the light. I’ll try to sleep.”
“ ’Night, Heather. I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”
She didn’t even hear the door close.
THE NEXT DAY. NEWBERRY. SOUTH CAROLINA. 7:30 A.M. EST. TUESDAY. DECEMBER 3.
Manckiewicz had originally thought he would follow the interstates and skirt Atlanta as he had done Richmond, on his way down to Fort Benning. But he’d found that away from the big concrete ribbons, people were friendlier and barriers easier to pass, so he’d gone higher than and west of his original plan. Whenever he met a traveler headed back to Washington, he gave the traveler a hand copy of his writing so far on the trip, and told them to present it to George Parwin for a bath, bed, and meals. The endless hand-copying seemed to improve his style. I sure skip the clichés when I know I’ll be hand-copying them four or five times.
In Spartanburg, he’d heard that the refugee pulse from Atlanta had been far larger and more violent than anything he’d encountered before, probably because it was the biggest city he’d passed so far and its position next to the mountains narrowed the way out. He heard the fires to his west had been worse as well, so he had decided to go south through the space between Columbia and Augusta; both towns were apparently keeping it together, so there shouldn’t be more than occasional bandits—or the petty fortified houses that their right-wing-nut owners called Castles, which could make you just as dead if you walked into their territory before you knew where you were. Once he was well south of Atlanta, he’d cut west toward Fort Benning again.
