The tree hit with the ragged popping of wood fibers stressed beyond their breaking point. The ground gave a hollow boom. The tractor backed slightly to clear the pit the roots had pulled open, then started forward again.
“I don’t see how you can live that way,” Schwartzchild said. “We could be going into anything and you don’t know.”
“Ma’am,” Abbado said. “Nobody ever tells strikers anything. If they do it’s mostly a lie. I’m sorry it’s happening to you guys, you don’t deserve it. But we’re used to it. Go talk to the major, why don’t you?”
He noticed a swelling like a giant beehive stuck on the side of a tree ahead. Caldwell was already extending the blast tube of a rocket to deal with it.
“Ma’am,” he added to the woman still walking beside him. “You got to keep your mind on your job and hope the people in charge are doing the same.”
The bank of clouds to the east was bright with sunlight streaming through a pair of holes in the similar array on the western horizon. The sky above the freshly-cut campsite was as clear as tap water, but it wouldn’t be long before the evening rains hit.
Meyer sat leaning back on her hands. Sighing, she reached for the clamps locking her thigh guards onto the torso apron of her hard suit.
“Sit,” Lock repeated sharply. “I’ll get to them in good time. Just sit.”
He lifted away the breastplate. As usual the clearing’s humid air felt cool and fresh.
“God damn,” Meyer said, closing her eyes. “I think I sweated out ten pounds today. One of these days you’re going to open the suit and all that’s left of me’s going to dribble out onto the ground.”
Matt handed her a drinking bottle and started on the leg pieces. “You shouldn’t have to wear the suit all day,” he said without looking at her. “Another striker could spell you.”
“I’m used to the suits,” she said. She took a careful swig. She’d drunk some from the condenser in the hard suit, but it was hard to get enough fluid—and food—down while you were on. “We’re short. It’s better not to have people screwing around with their armor if the shit hits the fan.”
A tractor was pulling one trailer slowly across the cleared area. Steve Nessman and a pair of girls who’d lost their puppy fat on the march were manhandling rolls of sheeting off the trailer to the teams of civilians waiting to place them on the bulldozed ground.
The whole group sang the “Prisoners’ Chorus” from Verdi’s Nabucco. They were surprisingly good. One of the civilians had been a voice coach.
“I’m learning to drive the bulldozers,” Lock said. “Using the blade correctly is surprisingly complex. I hadn’t realized that it tilts, it doesn’t just push straight ahead.”
“What is this?” Meyer asked, lowering the bottle. “Is this converter-run water?”
“There’s the usual electrolyte fortification from the converter, yes,” Lock said. He began to put the pieces of the hard suit away in the carrying bag. “There’s a few drops of lemon syrup also. Mrs. Regley provided it. She had a tree of her own on the roof garden of Horizon Towers. Do you like it?”
“It’s good,” Meyer said. Really, it was odd; she’d thought somebody’d screwed up the converter setting. She took another swig. The slight tartness did have a cleansing feel if you knew it didn’t mean something had gone wrong. “I’ll have to thank her.”
“You saved her life, you know,” Matt said. “The first day. When you saved mine.”
“We’re all saving each others lives in this ratfuck,” Meyer said. She leaned forward and kissed him hungrily. “All of us.”
Doctors Parelli and Ciler talked briefly as the latter arrived to take his midnight shift with the wounded. Parelli walked off to join her husband; Ciler sat down beside the monitor.
“Hey, Doc,” Caius Blohm said. He smoothed Mirica’s hair back from her forehead, then gently placed the child on the nest of bedding where she lay while Blohm was on patrol. “Got time to talk?”
“Yes, ah . . .” Ciler said.
Blohm gestured toward the berm. Ciler thought about his duties and decided that for a few minutes the wounded would be all right by themselves. He followed the striker to the darkness and relative privacy.