“I wanted to ask you about Mirica, Doc,” the scout said, facing the forest. “Is she going to get better?”
Ciler considered a number of ways to answer the question. He settled on the truth. “No,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry, Striker Blohm. The injury she received is total and irreversible. If we were back on Earth, my answer would have to be the same.”
“Yeah, pretty much what I figured,” Blohm said. His left hand was gloved. He ran the index finger gently over the surface of a log the dozer blade had wedged into the berm; blue sparks popped nervously from its surface.
“You know,” he said, “I thought about maybe bringing ears back to her when I caught the Spooks who did it. There’s guys who collect Spook ears. I never got into it, but I thought, you know, for Mirica . . .”
Ciler watched him without speaking. Blohm met his gaze, but the scout’s eyes were merely glints reflected from the light beside Major Farrell’s hunched form.
“She wouldn’t have liked that, Doc,” Blohm said earnestly. “She was a great kid, you know? Wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
A hollow clock! clock! clock! rang through the starlit forest, then died away. “I’m glad you came to that decision,” Ciler said quietly.
“Yeah,” said Blohm. He sounded as though he was discussing a problem with a machine that he couldn’t get to run the way it should. “And hell, I couldn’t even get pissed at the Spooks. I mean, they didn’t mean to shoot her. It was a waste shot, right? They wanted to get me and they fucked up. What am I supposed to do? Hunt down the training cadre that didn’t make them better marksmen?”
His gloved hand touched the log three times, each time harder. The last was a full-strength blow with the edge of his fist. Sparks sizzled, outlining his prominent knuckles.
“They just wasted a shot,” he repeated. “Everybody does, you know. One time or another, you shoot something you didn’t mean to because you didn’t have time to think. Everybody does.”
“Mirica knew you loved her,” Ciler said carefully. “I think the part of her that is with God still knows that.”
“She was a good kid,” Blohm said. “Wish I could’ve known her longer. What’s wired up to the machine now, that’s not her, though. I guess you’d like your machine back?”
“There are . . .” Ciler said. “Patients. For whom the use of the life support system would be the difference between life and death, yes.”
“I figured that was it,” Blohm said. He looked at the forest. “Well, shit. Look, Doc. There’s two things. What’s left isn’t Mirica. But I don’t want it to hurt. I don’t want it to, you know, suffocate because it just got unplugged. Even though it’s just a lump of meat. You understand?”
Ciler thought about the oath he swore when he became a doctor; and he thought about Hell. “I understand,” he said softly.
“The other thing is,” Blohm said. “I don’t want to know about it. Not ever, not in any way.”
“I understand,” Ciler said.
Caius Blohm strode away without speaking or looking back.
The bulldozer that would be breaking trail the next morning was parked at what would be the head of the line of march. Blohm walked around it and leaned against the curve of the high steel blade. A veil of phosphorescent moss shimmered on the edge of the forest like a magenta dream.
The blade was cool. Blohm took his helmet off and turned to rest his forehead against the metal.
Seraphina Suares appeared at his side. She put an arm around the striker and began to weep quietly.
Blohm hugged the widow close. “There,” he said, holding her. “There.”
But he didn’t shed a tear of his own.
Once More into the Breach
The lead bulldozer cut into the berm and shoved a section of the dirt and debris slantwise into the jungle. Farrell watched Blohm and four strikers under Verushnie step through the gap. The scout vanished into the jungle while the others waited for the bulldozer to begin its advance.
The column was still forming, though it was later in the morning than Farrell would have liked. Manager al-Ibrahimi and his monitors were redistributing loads and help for the injured among those still capable of marching on their own.