The sentence ended with the closest approach to an exclamation point that Farrell had yet heard in the aide’s voice.
“Tamara, I believe you’re reacting to toxins from your injury,” al-Ibrahimi said. “I’ll monitor the sensors for you. Go to one of the doctors and direct him or her to sedate you for a three-hour period. After that we’ll examine your condition.”
“I can’t,” Lundie said. She gripped the bandaged wrist with her good hand and squeezed until tears sprang from her eyes. “Sir, you need your sleep. I’ll carry out my duties.”
Farrell stood with a poker face to conceal his aches and the patches of skin rubbed raw by his equipment. “Sir,” he said to the project manager, “I need to make the rounds of my duty section. I know where Doc Ciler is. I’ll take her by. Miss?”
“I’d appreciate that, Major,” al-Ibrahimi said. “Tamara, analyze the probable result of having a psychotic overseeing our sensor data.”
“I’m not . . .” Lundie said, but she rose to her feet at Farrell’s gentle pressure.
“You’re perilously close or you wouldn’t suggest that you’ll carry out your duties when you’re obviously incapable of doing so,” her superior said. He spoke with the emotionless impact of so many hammer blows.
“Yes sir,” Lundie said. “Major Farrell, I believe I’m able to walk unaided. I’d appreciate being able to hold your arm.”
“Sure,” Farrell said. “We’ll find the doc and he’ll fix you up fine.”
He remembered the time he’d screamed that he was still in command, that he was still capable of leading C41, as Leinsdorf held him down for a medic to sedate. He’d been seeing double images from the knock on the head and giving orders to dead people, some of them dead for years.
Farrell led Lundie through groups of colonists sleeping or trying to ready themselves for tomorrow’s march. She closed her eyes. Children were crying; children, and a few adults.
“The biota of this crater bear only a family resemblance to what the survey ship reported for the planet as a whole,” Lundie said in tones of flat despair. “And that was bad enough. Without data, Major, what chance do we have?”
“You’ve got us,” Farrell said. “For what it’s worth, ma’am, you’ve got us.”
Guilio Abbado walked among the sleeping colonists, not in a hurry and taking no particular course. The roof sheets unrolled to eight by twenty feet each. They were laid with a slight overlap. People were supposed to stay a foot back from the seams. Mostly they did, but folks moved in their sleep.
And some of them were sloppy, strikers as well as cits. Abbado hadn’t found any rootlets quivering murderously around the edges, but his boot had prodded a few legs and butts until they moved someplace safer.
Caius Blohm sat beside his unrolled null sack, closer to the berm than most folks wanted to sleep. The scout had finished his guard shift twenty minutes before, when 3-3 came on duty. It wasn’t always easy to sleep, even after a day of exhausting strain.
“Hey, Blohm,” Abbado whispered in greeting. “Looks like the brain trust was right about things settling down after dark.”
“Hey, Sarge,” the scout said. “So far, so good.”
The null sack murmured. Abbado looked at it, the visual equivalent of trying to grab a handful of jelly.
“It’s one of the orphans,” Blohm muttered. “She was having trouble sleeping. Ms. Suares and me thought . . .”
“Caius?” a little voice said. The child stuck her head out of the sack’s mouth. Christ, she was little.
“I’m here, Mirica,” Blohm said. A small hand reached out of the sack. He took it in his. “You’re all right, honey.”
“Hold me, Caius?” the child said.
“Guess I’ll get back to work,” Abbado said, attempting to keep his tone completely neutral.
“Just a second, honey,” Blohm said in a voice gentler than anything Abbado’d ever expected to hear from him. “I gotta talk to the sarge for a minute, that’s all.”
The scout rose in a motion that would have made a cat look awkward and motioned Abbado with him to touching distance of the berm. “Listen, Abbado,” Blohm said. “There’s nothing going on. She’s scared because her folks got greased and I’m taking care of her. You see?”