“Of course right now. I’m assuming you’ve had one or two in your life.”
“Yes, that too. But not at the moment.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t been looking all that hard. Not since the ship landed. Nothing serious. How about you?”
“Oh, I have prospects. Looking for a guy who can keep up with me. Haven’t found him yet, but the list of suitors is long, let me tell you.”
“I bet it is.”
THE DOCTOR FINALLY RETURNED, after another hour of waiting. Annie was pretty annoyed by then, because this was going to end up being the same news as always: nothing appeared to be newly wrong with her mother, they see no reason for her not to be released, call if something changes in the next twenty-four hours, and so on. Keeping her waiting for three plus hours to hear that was just silly.
The doctor was working from a different script, though, which ended up explaining the delay.
“I’d like to admit her overnight,” the doctor said. This was outside the curtained area where Carol was sleeping.
The doctor’s name was Chao, and she had such a pleasant way of saying not-pleasant things that it took Annie a second or two to absorb the information, then another second or two for her to deal with the lump that fell out of the back of her throat and into her stomach.
“I’m… sorry, what?”
“Oh, it’s just a precaution.” She was holding a thin folder that had, at minimum, the outcome of a blood test. “Her white blood cell count is elevated, and I’d like to hold her over until at least tomorrow, and get her going on an antibiotic.”
“So it’s just an infection.”
“It may be, certainly. I’d like oncology to have a look. To rule out some things. Do you have a guardian?”
“A guardian?” She was picturing a guy in armor, following her around. That would be sort of cool.
“Is someone waiting for you? You have a place to go?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I have a friend… my boss is here. He’ll take me home.”
“All right, good. Let’s go have a conversation with your mother.”
10
CHOKING HAZARD
Corporal Sam Corning checked into the barracks at twenty-two-hundred hours, after a briefing on the latest info regarding the ship. Said briefing lasted a solid hour, and at the end of it he felt no more enlightened than he was before it started. He did walk out a little more worried—in a non-specific sort of way—than when he walked in, and that was certainly a change.
Part of the issue was just that he had no classification level to speak of, so any information being delivered to him had all the interesting stuff removed ahead of time. Most briefings it was seamless, but there were days when very specific information suddenly became very general information, and any efforts to get greater detail were met with the classic need-to-know line.
All of which was pretty amazing, since the way Sam saw it, if that thing jumped up and started mowing people down with a ray gun, he would be one of the first to go. That was something he thought he probably needed to know.
There were other times in briefings when it became abundantly clear the real information had been removed and replaced with fake information. Sam and the other men of his squad called these tofu briefings, where the meat was substituted with something that only looked like meat. The briefing in which they were informed of the impending arrival of Edgar Somerville was a tofu briefing, because nobody really believed he was a journalist doing a story. Even Sergeant Phineas rolled his eyes when he read it.
That particular tofu briefing was especially annoying, because inside of a week Annie Collins had more accurate intel than Sam did, which was just insulting.
The briefing that ended at twenty-one-forty-five was not a tofu briefing. It wasn’t really even a briefing, since no new information was imparted. It was a lecture on the importance of drilling, maintaining order, holding position, keeping equipment at the ready, and staying “awake and focused.” It followed a terse reminder that Sorrow Falls was a de facto war zone and they had to remember that, even if the war was not apparent and the enemy unresponsive.
It was a little terrifying.
By twenty-two-fifteen, Sam and the others had talked it over, and after a few valid points on the subject of getting a little lazy about perimeters, focused on two or three details from the meeting that could be made fun of safely. For instance, Phineas was unreasonably fond of the word perambulate and used it—incorrectly, they were sure—so often it became their own little drinking game. (Not that they drank on the base during a briefing in front of a superior. They mimed each drink when the occasion arose.) So they went through every instance of the word, and that seemed to calm everyone down. Then it was time to bed down, as some of them—although not Sam—had sentry duty down the hill at oh-six-hundred.
For a couple of soldiers, that only meant talking in whispers, rather than sleeping.
“What do you think, Sammie?” asked Dill Louboutin in that bayou drawl of his. Dill was two years younger and five inches shorter than Sam, and seemed to think those two years and five inches made Sam someone to look up to, metaphorically. Dill was new to the base and to anywhere this far north. His first three weeks were spent talking almost non-stop about the hilly terrain. Sam didn’t appreciate just how flat Louisiana and Texas were—he was a West Virginia boy, and knew from hills—until Dill came along to explain it to him.
Dill had a lot of theories about the ship. Probably everyone did, but Dill had a mouth that kept going when his brain had long stopped, so he extemporized on the subject at length. And since he was newer to the base than Sam was, every time there was a briefing, Dill wanted to know if it was unusual.
This was the first time the brief actually was unusual.
“What do I think about what?” Sam asked.
Dill was on the top bunk, looking down. He could rain words on Sam for hours, and had.
“You know what.”
“I think we’ve gotten sloppy of late is all. Hard to stay focused when nothing’s happening. Sarge isn’t wrong, there are soldiers on war games more alert than we are.”
“Yeah, but what did it mean.”
“It didn’t mean anything, Dill.”
“I think it means something’s coming.”
“Like what? Aliens? We already have that.”
Dill shook his head, which shook the whole bunk.
“I’m telling you. Something’s in the air. I can smell it, like ozone.”
“Ozone? You don’t even know what that is. Go to sleep, Pickles.”
Dill didn’t like the nickname, which was a little strange because his full first name was Dillard. He could have gone by that instead and skipped the obvious pickle reference.
“Ahhh,” he grumbled, and disappeared over his bunk.
There was quiet for about two minutes, but then he was back again.
“Hey!”
“Dill, I swear to God...”
“No, look! Who is that?”
Sam rolled up onto an elbow and looked along the row of bunks. Someone was walking down the row, which was not in itself unusual. The latrine was at the other end of the tent. He was only in his boxers, and that was a little odd, but just a little. It was a warm night.
“Think that’s Vogel. What of it? Man’s gotta go, man’s gotta go.”
“Don’t think that’s where he’s going. Watch what he’s doing, brother.”
There was something distinctively odd about Vogel’s movements. His gestures were halting. Jerky, almost. Somewhere between Frankenstein’s monster and a marionette.