by Sharon Lee
Things might have been busier had Corporal Bicra also not been in isolation elsewhere, this news brought and left by a smirking Kinto. The corporal had touched the tree, carried her Wingleader's burden—as both proper and prudent!—after all. Bicra being the most organized of the remaining squad, some important details were sure to be missed.
Jela was inclined to consider Kinto a factor in the isolation as well, since he was known to be a friend of the med tech. What use any of the fooraw could be to Kinto was a mystery worth exploring at a later date; for the moment Under Sergeant Vondahl was too busy overseeing the maintenance and repair of the wing's ships to spend time on a vital-records search.
The med tech seemed a busybody of the highest order. Jela's three sensor packs reported ably to the room's central console, but the tech remained in the room nonetheless. More, he constantly checked Jela's rate of water intake and—
"Will you give me ten heartbeats to myself, Tech? You've already got cameras, body sensors, air-intake gauges, and two measurements of my weight. Do you think I'll grow wings and leave you behind if you don't check my color every tenth-shift?"
Most of Jela's attention was on his porta-comp, where he was following with interest the check on Sergeant Risto's ship. Risto was one of the three who'd died when the primary passage had been laid open to space while they were scrambling.
"Not likely," admitted the tech. "I don't think there's anything in the literature about a more or less standard human being able to fly—or even grow wings. The sheriekas are said to . . . "
Jela looked up when the phrase wasn't finished.
"Are said to what?"
The tech looked down, rising blood staining sturdy cheeks a deeper brown. "I can't say. You haven't been confirmed as Wingleader, and the information may be restricted to . . . "
Jela looked on with interest as the tech mumbled words into silence, and turned to busy himself with adjusting various dials that didn't need adjusting.
Understanding blossomed.
"I see," Jela said. "Until I'm scanned, rescanned, sampled and shown to be free of disease and healthy of mind—hah!—I might be an agent of them, magically cloned on the spot and released to destroy the defenders from within." He took a breath, decided he was still irritated, and furthermore that the tech had it coming, and continued.
"Will it ease your mind to know that I was one of the Generalists brought in to study the problem of how to spot sheriekas and sheriekas-made in their human disguises? That would be, before they sprout wings and—"
"Stop, Troop!"
This was a new voice. An entirely new voice, from a woman he'd never seen before.
Her uniform—
Jela slowly moved the keypad back, stood, and saluted.
"Commander, I have stopped."
She snorted delicately.
"I hear, Troop. I hear."
She pointed at the med tech.
"You may leave, Tech. Your monitors will warn you if there's a problem."
A quick salute from the tech, who nearly tripped in his hurry to leave the scene.
As the door sealed the commander sighed, none too gently.
"Wingleader." She said the word as if she tasted it, as if she tested it.
"Wingleader. Indeed, it would look good on your record, were that record reviewed but not much inspected—I may allow it to stay. May."
She moved closer to the wall of his enclosure, studying him with as much interest—and perhaps even concern—as the med-tech had showed disinterest and disdain.
In his turn, Jela studied her: A woman so near his own height he barely needed to look up to meet her eyes; strongly built, and in top shape. Not a Series soldier, but a natural human, her brown hair threaded with grey.
She continued as if there had been no pause for mutual evaluation.
"Wingleader . . . Yet, I'm not sure if that would be best for you, howsoever it might serve the troop."
She peered through the inflatable, studying his reaction.
"No comment, Troop Jela?"
"Wingleader has never been in my thoughts, Commander. It is an unexpectable accident . . . "
She laughed.
"Yes, I suppose it is. I have seen your record. You always seem to rise despite your best efforts!"
Jela stiffened . . .
"Stop, Troop. Relax. Understand that you are monitored here. You are on camera. You are being tested for contagion of many sorts. There's no need to bait the tech. He's too ordinary to be worth your trouble."
Jela stood, uncertain, aware that information was being passed rapidly, aware that levels of command were being bypassed.
"Sit," the commander said finally. "Please, sit and do what you can for the moment. As time permits, we will talk."
Jela watched as her eyes found the cameras, the sensors, the very monitors on his leg. He sat, more slowly than he'd risen.
"We will talk where we might both be more comfortable. In a few days, when you will be quite recovered from your trek, Wingleader."
She saluted as if that last word was both a command and a decision, and then she was gone.
* * *
THE COMMANDER MADE no more appearances in Jela's isolation unit—a unit he'd begun to think of as a cell after the third day schedule commenced in the vessel outside his walls, and by the start of the sixth ship-day knew to be the truth, if not the intent.
He'd been in enough detaining cells in his time to see the similarities: he was on his jailer's schedule, he exercised when they told him to, ate what they brought him, and slept during a portion of the time after they turned the lights out on him.
He did have his porta-comp, which meant some communication, after all, and he had received a few visitors, though he'd had more visitors in some lock-ups than he had here. Then, too, most often his jail cells hadn't had the luxury of his very own green plant.
It turned out that the "alien plant" was under every bit as much scrutiny as he was—in fact it appeared that many of the sensors he wore or was watched by were duplicated for the tree.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing was that though he could see the tree—and was under orders to observe it and report any anomalies—he could not to touch it, or talk to it, or comfort it in what must be new and terrifying circumstances.
Shortly after the commander's visit, he gained an amusing rotation of warders to replace the solitary med-tech and his curious warnings—or, perhaps, threats.
What was amusing about the new set of keepers was that they each seemed guided by a printed sheet. They neither saluted nor acknowledged him other than directing him for exercise or tests. They also wore medical gowns without emblem, name, rank, or number.
What they did not wear were masks—thus baring the all-too-silly tattoos that were becoming the rage—and making each as identifiable in the long run as if they'd shouted out name, rank, birth creche, and gene units . . .
For in fact, every one of the new keepers were of the accelerated, the vat-born, the selected, the so-called "X Strain"—able to work harder and longer on less food than even the efficient Ms. Too, they had for the most part had similar training, similar instructors, similar lives. They spoke amongst themselves a truncated and canted artificial dialect, and appeared to lump any soldier but those of the latest vat runs into a social class of lesser outsiders.
Despite the disdain, and the tendency to seek only the company of their own kind, what had so far eluded the designers of soldiers was the sought-after interchangeability that would have made them—the Y Strains and the X—in the image of some committee-envisioned super-fighter: Physically perfect, identical, and above all amenable to command. It was the downfall of the M Series, so he had heard it said—they were too independent, too individual, much too prone to use their own judgement. And much too often, Jela might have added—right.
So, he found himself in the care of the proud yet still-flawed X Strains, and he'd been annoyed in the night to wake as some one of the guardians attempted to
enter the room without disturbing him: They were all of the blood, dammit! Would he have assumed them so lax . . . well, yes. He might have.
"You of Versten's Flight have no regard for the sleep of your brethren, eh?" He called out in the assumed dark of the infirmary's night. His reward was a not unexpected flash of light as the woman with a red lance crossing a blue blade tattooed on her right cheek reacted, alas, predictably.
"Wingleader," she gasped.
He'd startled her—and if he'd been of a mind he might just as easily have killed her—been though the transparent enclosure and had his hands around her throat before she'd known he was awake.
"Wingleader," she said again, recovering her voice, if not her dignity. "The monitors must be checked manually from time to time, and the calibrations . . . ."
"The calibrations may be made just as conveniently from a remote station," he said, allowing his voice to display an edge. "It would be well if these things were done during ship's day, for who knows what one who has been abandoned on a near lifeless world might do in the midst of being startled awake?"
"Wingleader, I . . . "
"Enough. Calibrate. I will sleep again tonight, and some of tomorrow day as well . . . "
Which was unlikely, so he owned to himself, but minor, as he was no longer entirely on ship schedule.
This was an oddity he considered too minor to concern med techs of any ilk, though interesting to himself. It seemed he was keeping two clocks now. One was the ordinary ship-clock any space traveler became accustomed to. The other . . . the other was the daily cycle of the planet he'd been stranded on, though he'd kept planet-time for so few days he might still be expected to be in transition-timing.
The X Strain tech finished a half-hearted tour of the sensors, used her light to peer inside his cubicle and satisfy herself that he was not green and leafy, and that the tree was. She left then, without a word to him, leaving him wakeful.
And that, too, might have been her purpose.
Jela crossed his arms over his head, his thoughts on the planet of the trees, its sea, and other things he could not possibly remember from the place. No doubt he'd been very close to total exhaustion and on the verge of dementia when he'd been picked up. Perhaps the techs were right to be concerned, after all.
Because he was a pilot, and an M, with all that Series' dislike of being idle, he began to calculate. He checked his new sense of time against the trip back to the mother-ship, knowing that the breeze would about right now have been shifting to come at his face if he stood on the hill over the empty sea.
That established, he calculated the entirety of his journey to his best recall—brief time outbound, to taking on the enemy vessel, to near automatic charting of course to the nearby planet, to the landing . . . likely he spiked this or that spy-sensor as he recalled the grueling and pitiless flight through that eventually life-saving atmosphere—and then the walk. He recalled the walk vividly, recalled the valleys, treasured the long trip the trees had undertaken from the side of a mountain to the ocean so far away . . .
And that thought he put quickly away, tagging it mentally as a mention-to-none, a category that by now seemed to include half of his thoughts in any case.
Jela consulted the other clock in his head, saw that it would soon be time for his breakfast, and rose to do stretching exercises. When the techs entered, en masse as they did at the beginning of each of his days, he'd be good for a full schedule of work, sleepless half-night or not.
The combat warning came before breakfast, and the transition warning overlaid it almost instantly. Neither his bunk nor his chair were attached to the deck within his isolation unit—nor was the tree secured. His orders were clear—he was to observe the tree until released to general duties.
Jela yanked his bunk against the wall of the wider room, ignoring the ripples in the flex-glass, and pushed the tree, still within its own cocoon and attached to its various umbilicals, into the corner thus made. Flinging himself against the bunk he hugged the tree's base through the flexible walls, internal clock counting the beats until—
"Go, dammit! Go!"
His voice rippled the flex-glass walls, and that was all the effect it had. The ship shuddered with the familiar shrug of launching fighters . . . but no stand down from the transition warning followed. He did the calcs out of habit, assuming a nearby threat in the line of travel—why else launch now?
There was another kind of shudder in the ship now —this one less familiar. Perhaps a jettisoning of mines, or an unusual application of control jets?
Maneuvering was starting. The direction of up shifted slightly, and then again, and as if it hadn't already sounded, the transition buzzer went off again.
He ought to be with his wing! His duty—
He took a breath, and another, and did what he could to relax. Around him, the ship went absolutely still as it slipped into transition. He wondered, then, and with an effort, how long breakfast would be delayed, and how many pilots they'd left behind so that breakfast was an issue.
* * *
BREAKFAST FAILED TO arrive, and it was nearing time for lunch. Jela remained close to the tree, concerned that any moment might bring them into normal space with unwanted, deadly, motion. He was still sitting beside the tree when the commander arrived, four hurried helpers in tow.
"Take your samples, quickly," she ordered. She half-bowed, half-saluted Jela, who rose as quickly as he could.
"Wingleader, the medical department has been advised that they are no longer concerned with the possibility that you have become infected by contact with your tree. As they assure me you show no signs of physical abnormalities, other than those any M grade soldier might show at this point in his career, we shall shortly have an opportunity to discuss the matter I spoke of earlier. Please, Wingleader, prepare your computer for removal as well."
Jela went to the desk and snapped the unit together, watching with some relief as the technicians inserted a hosed connection to the outer lock of his chamber. In a few moments the structure sagged around him and the outer flex-glass rippled as the technicians peeled apart the seal. A moment later and the inner seal sighed open and two technicians strode in, heading toward the tree. Only one was face-marked.
"The tree? I may take that with me?" he asked the nearest tech—the unmarked one—but was rewarded only with a half-formed shrug. He risked annoying the officer, whose attention was focused on a medical reader connected to the room's telemetry.
"Commander? The tree—I will take the tree with me as well, I assume?"
She didn't look up from her study of the reader, her answer heavy with irony. "Yes—the tree, the computer, your boots—whatever will make you comfortable, Wingleader!"
He nearly laughed; then wondered if he'd really put up that much of a fuss when they'd told him to leave his boots outside the isolation area. Yet as a soldier and a pilot he deserved certain politeness, and he was as aware as they that his treatment had misused his station.
The commander was quick.
"You, Corporal. You will carry this computer, and walk with us to the Officer's Mess. You, Wingleader, may help the other tech as you will, or carry the tree if you prefer, and we shall together retire to the mess so that you may be fed."
In the end Jela carried the tree, while one of the techs carried his boots and his computer; they made a strange procession through a ship unnaturally quiet, and it had taken a moment or two of confusion to see everything placed when they arrived at the mess. At last, the techs were sent on their way, and the Commander preceded him through the lunch line—open early, apparently for their convenience.
"So, Wingleader Jela, we have arrived at a place I'd hoped not to arrive at."
He looked up from his meal, startled, and she smiled a mirthless smile.
"No, it is not that I dislike the food onboard ship, as rumor might imply! Rather it is that our hand is forced— my hand is forced—and all of this ripples things set in motion long before either of us took
our first breath."
Jela thought for a moment, waited until he was sure an answer was required.
"This is always the case with soldiers," he said carefully. "From the colors of our flags and uniforms to the names of our units to the choice of worlds we must defend, none of it is beyond the influence of what went before us. It is a matter of soldier's lore that we often die for the mistakes made generations before."
She was eating as if she, too, had been denied breakfast, but Jela saw that his remark had sparked something, for she put her fruit down and took a sip of her water, while raising a hand to emphasize . . .
"Which is the problem I deal with," she said, moving her hand almost as if she wanted to break into hand-talk; Jela followed her fingers for a moment, but she resisted or else failed to find the appropriate signs.
"You will not quote me to any on board this ship, Wingleader, but we have only a few days to prepare you. First, I must ask if you have made any plans for your retirement?"
He nearly choked, hastily swallowed bread in mid-chew.
"Commander, no, I have not," he admitted, stealing a hurried sip of juice. "I've always thought I would die on duty, else on penalty of some infraction . . . "
"Indeed? Then you have paid no attention to the information from the bursar's office about time due and funds due, of the rewards of taking up a farm?"
He looked at her straight on, and then allowed his eyes to roll.
"Commander, there's not much retirement allotted for an M. True, true, some of us have retired—I've heard of three, I think, but it's not something I admire. I just spent several days too many watching a star set on a desert world—a sight I'm assured is restful and worth seeking!—and found it far from restful. I fret when I'm not busy. You've seen my record! When I'm idle I am as much an enemy of the corps as any . . . "
"No, Wingleader, I will not permit that statement. The truth is that you are what you say. You know you are an M; you would rather march in circles for days in payment for having had your fun than sit staring at a wall doing absolutely nothing, and often you are better informed than your commanders, for you sleep very little and begrudge it besides."