“Me all of us,” Cortez said. “Who hasn’t dreamed about going to space? Maybe touring some of the colonies? None of us could have hoped to afford it on our own, and most of the colonial missions were either closed-shop operations, or had application criteria so severe, you had to be a super-genius or a genetically healthy freak to get onboard. Now look at us. Future spacers, all! In one form or another.”
“You’re mighty right,” I said.
Five fists went into the center of the table and touched, followed by five hands that opened—palms wide, fingers splayed—before withdrawing: blow it up!
On our way back to Charlie Company, the base shuttle stopped at a little concrete building with a tall spire at one end. A meager handful of recruits slowly stepped aboard. Each of them clutching a small book in his or her hand. They stared at the rest of us as we made jokes and laughed loudly, then they decided to stay up front—apart from us.
“What’s their problem?” I asked quietly.
“Church boys,” Cortez said, snickering loudly.
“It is Sunday,” Handley said. “Didn’t you ever go to service when you were a kid?”
“No,” I said. “My parents aren’t religious.”
“And yours were?” Sembeke asked Handley.
“My mom kinda was,” he said. “Lutheran. I think? Though I only went for a little while when I was very young. I remember the meeting house being a very empty place.”
“Looks like that post chapel back there was mostly empty too,” I said as the base shuttle pulled away and resumed its route.
“Why do you say that?” Sembeke asked.
“Look how few there were,” I said, pointing to the five boys and two girls who’d boarded. Their backs were turned and they faced straight ahead, not saying anything as the shuttle rumbled along the road.
“Service runs all day,” Handley said. “Maybe people attend piecemeal? Or didn’t you look at the chapel hours in the IST manual on your e-pad?”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said. “Why would anyone go waste their time sitting in an empty building on a day when they could be out having fun?”
Cortez loudly voiced her agreement.
One of the recruits up front turned, looking hard at us, and then got up and walked back to where we were sitting. We shut up and stared at him as he came up to us, his hands resting on the backs of the bench seats in front of our group.
“It might seem like a waste to you,” he said, “but there are still a few of us who like to go to chapel on the Lord’s Day. Please, we’re only going to get a few more minutes of peace and quiet before the shuttle drops us off at Delta Company. Do you mind not making fun of us?”
“Sorry,” I said, feeling somewhat sheepish.
He went back and sat down.
I was quiet all the way back to the company area. As we climbed off the shuttle Cortez poked me in the ribs.
“Church boy put you in your place,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said, not smiling.
“Did that bother you as much as it seems like it did?” she asked.
“I guess so,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to hurt his feelings. I just don’t get why anyone goes to church in the first place. My family never did. My mom and dad never expected me to. I mean, people can believe whatever they want, but this is the twenty-second century. Church . . . that’s in the past. Haven’t we kinda left that behind us? We’re traveling the stars now!”
Sembeke put a hand on my shoulder.
“You Americans enjoy a lot of material luxuries. You have your nice safe houses with your modern machinery and your VR and you don’t think much about what some of the rest of us out in the other parts of the world think about. I am not religious either, but I grew up around religious people. This thing you say you do not understand . . . it matters to them. I feel that perhaps we were disrespectful in our boisterousness.”
Cortez snorted.
“We have to be quiet on the shuttle just because they went to service?”
“No,” Sembeke said, “we don’t have to. But we probably ought to. In the future, at least.”
I looked at Sembeke, and slowly nodded my head. He’d definitely given me something to ponder, as we moved into our second half of training.
CHAPTER 31
I WOKE EARLY.
The Captain was still snoring softly, so I slid out of the bag as slowly and as stealthily as I could, letting my superior curl the fabric around herself and bury her face deeper into my jumper. The sun wasn’t yet up, but I could see well enough. Being both naked and cold, now seemed as good a time as any to go see if my uniform had dried. But first, business. I spied a low mound of split rock not too far off, and headed directly for it.
The Professor caught me halfway back.
I felt a bit awkward over my nudity, then decided it was silly to be modest in front of the alien. Though I also thought this is how the Queen Mother must have felt when she was forced to disengage from her disc.
“Good morning,” the Professor said.
“Hello,” I replied.
“The female still sleeps?”
“For the moment.”
“Did you mate with her?”
I sputtered a quietly exclamatory denial. Then asked, “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“On Purgatory you once told me that when male and female humans wish to copulate, they will share the same bed.”
“On Purgatory, sure, and then only if the male and the female know each other well enough and have agreed to have that kind of relationship.”
“It is not an automatic biological function?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Is it for you mantes?”
The Professor considered, a forelimb gently running along the edge of his disc.
“In some ways, yes. The egg-laying females—like the Queen Mother—when they enter what you would call estrus, they exude a pheromone that is both sexually rapturous and psychologically debilitating for males. Any male within reach of the pheromone becomes somewhat mindless in his pursuit of intercourse. The only way to avoid it is to avoid being where the pheromone can get to you.”
“But once you get a whiff—”
“Then the male is in for a delightfully stupid time of physical pleasure, followed by a lengthy period of slumber.”
“Well,” I said, smiling, “at least one thing is shared between human males and mantis males.”
“Still,” said the Professor, “with Adanaho, if she is available to you and there is the possibility of sex, are you not . . . desiring?”
“Of course I’m desiring,” I snapped. Then apologized for being harsh. “It’s been at least a dozen or more years since I had a woman in my arms like that. But when a human male gets excited, he’s still in full command of his faculties. He can still choose. Or at least he’s expected to behave as if he has a choice. Personally, I think it’s one of the few things that actually makes us different from mere animals. We can deny our lusts, even during moments of opportunity.”
“So you chose to abstain.”
“Yes.”
“Is she not attractive?”
“Yes, she’s attractive.”
“Forgive me, Harry, I am still struggling to understand.”
“Look,” I said, my hands on my hips as I walked slowly over to the rocks where my uniform and boots were spread out, “attraction is only part of it. There’s other factors too. Like, she’s too young. Much younger than I am. I’d feel like I was taking advantage of her. Plus, she’s my superior officer in the Fleet. It’s against the rules for a superior and a subordinate to engage in sexual congress.”
“Why?”
“Bad for discipline in the chain-of-command, among other things.”
“And that’s all?”
“No,” I said, testing the fabric between my fingers. It felt dry enough. I started to put my undergarments on. “The male and the female should really love each other first, before they have sex. When sex happens before lov
e, or without love, it gets . . . complicated.”
“Also immoral,” said the Professor.
“If the man and the woman subscribe to certain ‘flavors’ of religious or moral tradition, yes. That too. Though most religious proscriptions surrounding intercourse simply involve matrimony, not love. A few centuries ago, before humanity went into space, it was quite common for young men and women to be married off by their families. For political and social reasons, among other things. Love didn’t really enter into it.”
“Fascinating,” said the Professor. “Among my people we mate for genetic enhancement and advantage. Many, many males. A few females. In the far distant past males engaged in mortal combat to determine which ones would mate during a given cycle of estrus. Now we select for genetic traits we consider positive and bar those who don’t meet the standards. Those of us who meet the standards are then chosen via lottery to attend to the females when they are ready. I have copulated six times in my life. I am considered somewhat fortunate in this regard.”
“Because you’re smart?” I said, sliding on pants, then socks, then boots.
“Intelligence is key,” he said. “But chance rules the final selection process, yes.”
“Assuming you win the lottery,” I asked while buttoning up my topcoat, “do you choose the females or do the females choose you?”
“The females choose us,” he said. “In descending order of matriarchal seniority.”
“Did you ever mate with the Queen Mother?”
The Professor paused. A small flush of color along the semi-soft portions of his chitin told me I had embarrassed him.
“No.”
“I’m sorry if I intruded into a private area where I should not have,” I said honestly.
“No, Harry, it is I who began this conversation. The discomfort comes from knowing that no female of the Queen Mother’s stature has ever selected a scholar for mating. They prefer warriors to thinkers.”
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
“What does that mean?”
“Never mind,” I said.
The sun’s first rays peaked over the horizon.
I observed the Queen Mother’s silhouette in the distance. Just like the day before. She was immobile, faced directly into the growing light as it slowly bathed the landscape. The Professor and I watched her for a time, then I asked, “Penny for her thoughts.”
“If by that you mean to say you wonder what’s in her mind at this time, I wish I knew. I have inquired, and she will not tell me. I sense in conversation with her that the Queen Mother is both fascinated and troubled by her experience living without the disc.”
A rustling to our left told me the captain was arising.
“Clothes are dry,” I called, deliberately loud.
“Roger that,” she said, her nose sounding stuffed up.
I walked away from the rocks where her uniform still lay, and kept my back turned while she shuffled up and slowly put on her uniform in silence.
“Okay,” she said.
I turned around.
“You look like shit, ma’am,” I said.
“I feel sick,” she admitted. Wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“We should have checked your bag sooner. We’ll have to let it dry out before nightfall if we don’t want a repeat of last night. Meanwhile, perhaps the Professor can spare room on the back of his disc for you while we travel today.”
“I’d be grateful for that,” she said, eyes drawn and puffy-looking.
“It could be managed,” the Professor said, after looking down at the captain—his antennae moving thoughtfully.
The captain and I did what we could with the ration bars still in our packs, chewing because we needed the fuel, not because it tasted good. I’d never been a heavy chap. I realized that too much time on this nameless world would thin me down even more.
When we’d collected our gear and secured our packs, I helped Adanaho climb onto the back of the Professor’s disc—following his having helped the Queen Mother climb onto the front. The Queen Mother and Adanaho both seemed unusually quiet this morning, and I shouldered my burden wondering what the day would bring. The captain had taken some pills from her pack’s emergency medical kit, and wrapped her sleeping bag around herself inside-out so as to let the liner properly dry. Her belt had been looped into a small cleat on the back of the disc so that she wouldn’t slide off.
A cool breeze started up.
We moved out, due southwest in the direction of the hinted-at mantis signals the Professor had previously detected.
Plodding through the gravel and sand I thought about the one time I’d been to the Mojave, back on Earth. At least there, I’d had some mountains to look at in the distance, along with a few Joshua trees, and the occasional rattlesnake. On this world, everything had been worn flat and made unremarkable. Without the Professor’s telemetry to guide us, I suspected it would have been supremely easy to wind up meandering in circles. One dune or low bluff looked like the next.
After a while I noticed that the captain’s eyes had closed. She was slumped against the Professor’s back. If either she or he were bothered by such close contact, neither of them showed it.
“Military is as military does,” I said under my breath. Sleep anywhere you can, when you can.
Good for her.
I kept walking.
CHAPTER 32
Earth, 2153 A.D.
MICROGRAVITY TRAINING WAS A COMPLETE HORROR SHOW.
No baby steps in jets performing parabolas, like in the old astronaut times. We took a straight shot to orbit, all of us in Charlie Company packed into a single company-sized assault carrier. If at first it had seemed like a whale of an amusement ride, the fun stopped for me once the falling sensation became ever-present.
“You’re going pale on me,” Cortez said. Like me, she was in her training-issue combat vacuum armor suit. We were strapped into opposing benches that ran up and down the length of the carrier’s main troop deck. Our helmets were strapped down in our laps, and for good reason too. Next to each helmet was a plastic bag into which we could hurl the contents of our stomachs, if the need so arose.
And it arose.
Again, and again, and again.
After several minutes of anguished upchucking, I pulled the opening of my bag away from my face and chanced a look around the immediate area. To my relief, I wasn’t the only one who’d tossed his cookies. Though I could see from the evil smirks on the faces of our DSs that certain people were enjoying the show just a little too much.
“You gonna feel a lot worse if even one piece o’ bahf touch the inside o’ my carrier,” the first sergeant said. “Some of you act like you never been to space before. You mean nobody take a transcontinental flight? Not even once? My drill sah-jeens gonna enjoy watching you all get sick over the next two weeks. We have four more flights coming and those of you who can’t adapt, you’re out. Grounded. You’ll be stuck scrubbing gah-bage cans at a Fleet mess facility.”
Right about then I think I’d have been perfectly happy to see the business end of a mess hall trash barrel. It certainly couldn’t get any greener nor smell any worse than I did.
A few seats away, a male recruit who’d been playing tough guy let loose. No bag on his mouth. The female recruit across from him shrieked as she took the blast full force.
A collective cry of, “Eeewwww,” went up from Charlie Company.
Second platoon’s trio of DSs were all doing their best to suppress laughter, and failing. Then they put on their helmets—something we recruits had been strictly forbidden to do during this first flight. With faces and noses safely behind transparent faceplates, Senior Drill Sergeant Malvino, Drill Sergeant Davis, and Drill Sergeant Schmetkin all began to shake with mirth. I guessed that they’d seen and experienced this many times. I guessed also that once a man got used to microgravity, such scenes could become funny. In a gallows humor sort of way.
More stomachs were empt
ied around the deck. Some people were smart enough to employ bags. Some were not. Fluid and bits of half-digested food began to float freely.
After we landed—just one orbit on the initial run—it took all six platoons working in shifts two whole days to get all of the gack off our suits, out of the cracks and crevices of the equipment, and out of the carrier’s ventilation system; to say nothing of cleaning and disinfecting the troop deck proper.
Ample incentive to develop an iron digestive system—for those who’d not had the sense to use their bags as intended.
The next orbital sortie was longer in duration, resulting in fewer sick cases, and had absolutely zero projectile events.
After the second orbit—when the DSs were convinced that all of us who could get sick, had sufficiently emptied ourselves—we were ordered to go vacuum tight. Which meant helmets on, and sealed. Having spent many days on the ground going through the complexities of our armored space suits, their computer systems and oxygen generators, CO2an> filters, hoses, emergency patches, etc., now was our chance to put that knowledge to the test.
The first sergeant’s voice was patched into our helmet speakers via the Charlie Company wireless, and we listened as she instructed one of the fifth platoon DSs to activate the lock cycle that would evacuate the entire troop deck’s atmosphere, and clamshell-open the massive troop deck bay doors at the tail end of the carrier.
There was an extremely loud hiss—which died quickly.
In my helmet’s virtual display I saw the atmosphere bar rapidly drop from green, to yellow, to orange, to red, and then blink an angry crimson at me.
Still strapped to our benches, we all craned our necks as best we could to get a glimpse out the back of the carrier as the doors gradually opened, and revealed a rather spectacular view of the Earth.
At several hundred kilometers altitude, all of humanity’s worldly achievements were dissolved into the swirling natural blues, browns, greens, and whites of land, air, and sea.
A collective exclamation went up from the lot of us, even the ones like me who were still wrestling with the silent physical terror of weightlessness.
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