“But you know, thinking back . . . Hey,” he said. “Mirica? Do you like tapioca pudding? That was the only thing they could get me to eat.”
Blohm carried the converter over to the berm and dumped its contents onto the wrack from which it had come. Kneeling in the lanternlight, he reset the output and fed an additional length of root into the system. “I never thought of doing this myself, you know? Shit, it must be fifteen years since I had tapioca pudding.”
The converter’s holding tank had a non-stick surface that wouldn’t even raise a meniscus if filled with water. The kid’s mug would have to be washed to get the “chicken and rice” out of it, so Blohm ran the new batch into his own can.
They all watched him as he put his finger into the can and tasted it. Even Mirica turned her head, though she didn’t lift it from her arms. “Goddam,” Blohm said in surprise. “It tastes like tapioca pudding.”
He looked at Mrs. Suares. “Ma’am,” he said, “this is the first fucking thing I’ve had through this bitch that tastes like it ought to. It’s good. Here kid, you try it.”
Mirica stuck her finger out. Mrs. Suares started to say something but caught herself.
Staring solemnly at Blohm, the child licked the goo off her finger, then straightened into a sitting position. He and she each took another fingerful of the sticky mass.
Blohm shook his head. “Fuck if I know why I never thought of doing this before, ma’am,” he said. He suddenly realized he wasn’t speaking to another striker. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “Ma’am, I’m sorry about my language. With the kids and all.”
“You have nothing at all to be sorry for, Caius,” Mrs. Suares said with a smile warmer than the still night air. “And it’s Seraphina, please.”
Esther Meyer heard somebody talking in a low voice to the doctor who’d just checked her over, but she didn’t open her eyes. Kristal had told her she was off the guard rotation tonight. Meyer didn’t think she was hurt that bad, but she wasn’t going to argue with the decision.
She was okay. She just felt like she’d been dragged all day behind the tractor instead of riding on it. She was face down, her cheek against the cool plastic. Her back hurt like hell whichever way she lay, though the doc said nothing was broken. He’d injected an enzyme to reabsorb the swelling by morning.
The plastic sheeting was fairly stiff, but it creaked and rippled when someone walked on it. Meyer felt somebody stop and kneel on the other side of her. “Yeah?” she muttered. Best guess was she was about to learn she was on guard after all.
“Striker Meyer?” said an unfamiliar voice. “I’m Councillor Matthew Lock. I came to apologize.”
Meyer tried to turn over. She gasped and swore with pain. Relaxing, she took a deep breath.
“Striker Meyer?” the voice repeated in concern. “Please don’t—”
“Can it!” Meyer wheezed. “Just give me a sec—”
She lurched into a sitting position. Her muscles relaxed into patterns that didn’t stress bruised and knotted tissue. The relative lack of pain was sudden pleasure.
Meyer smiled into the citizen’s worried face. “It’s just getting from one posture to the other that’s a problem,” she said, wiping her brow absently. “They couldn’t give me the stuff they would’ve done in a base hospital because then somebody’d have to carry me, right?”
Lock swallowed and nodded. He looked like he’d lost ten pounds since she’d seen him in the ship. After that—all Meyer remembered was a flash of Lock’s face as the native convulsed away. It’d been as much luck as Meyer’s skill that she hadn’t blown the cit’s head off with the same burst, but there hadn’t been a lot of time.
“Striker Meyer,” Lock said formally. Fire lit half his face; the other side was sketched by the fainter, even glow of an electric lamp. “I’ve already withdrawn my complaint to the project manager about your conduct. I want to apologize to you personally as well.”
He cleared his throat. “I told Manager al-Ibrahimi that I’d first acted like a fool in the ship, then compounded my error by complaining like a fool to him. He assures me that no disciplinary action had been contemplated in any case.”