The maintenance crew managed to patch up the huge rip in the side of the Anniversary and to repressurize that section. We spent the rest of the day cleaning up the area; without, of course, disturbing any of the precious evidence for which the commodore was wiffing to sacrifice his Career. The hardest part was jettisoning the bodies. It wasn’t so bad except for the ones whose suits had burst.
I went to Estelle’s cabin the next day, as soon as she was off duty. “It wouldn’t serve any good purpose for you to see her now.” Estelle sipped her drink, a mixture of ethyl alcohol, 102 Joe Haldeman citric acid and water, with a drop of some ester that approximated the aroma of orange rind. “Is she out of danger?” “Not for a couple of weeks. Let me explain.” She set down her drink and rested her chin on interlaced fingers. “This sort of injury would be fairly routine under normal circumstances. Having replaced the lost blood, we’d simply sprinkle some magic powder into her abdominal cavity and paste her back up. Have her hobbling around in a couple of days. “But there are complications. Nobody’s ever been injured in a pressure suit before. So far, nothing really unusual has cropped up. But we want to monitor her innards very closely for the next few days. “Also, we were very concerned about peritonitis. You know what peritonitis is?” “Yes.” Well, vaguely. “Because a part of her intestine had ruptured under pressure. We didn’t want to settle for normal prophylaxis be-cause a lot of the, uh, contamination had impacted on the peritoneum under pressure. To play it safe, we completely sterilized the whole shebang, the abdominal cavity and her entire digestive system from the duodenum south. Then, of course, we had to replace all of her normal intestinal flora, now dead, with a commercially prepared culture. Still standard procedure, but not normally called for unless the damage is more severe.” “I see.” And it was making me a little queasy. Doctors don’t seem to realize that most of us are perfectly content not having to visualize ourselves as animated bags of skin filled with obscene glop. “This in itself is enough reason not to see her for a couple of days. The changeover of intestinal flora has a pretty violent effect on the digestive system-not dangerous, since she’s under constant observation. But tiring and, well, embarrassing. “With all of this, she would be completely out of danger if this were a normal clinical situation. But we’re decelerating at a constant l-1/2 gees, and her internal organs have gone through a lot of jumbling around. You might as well THE FOREVER WAR 103 know that if we do any blasting, anything over about two gees, she’s going to die.” “But. . . but we’re bound to go over two on the final approach! What-” “I know, I know. But that won’t be for a couple of weeks. Hopefully, she will have mended by then. “William, face it. It’s a miracle she survived to get into surgery. So there’s a big chance she won’t make it back to Earth. It’s sad; she’s a special person, the special person to you, maybe. But we’ve had so much death.. . you ought to be getting used to it, come to terms with it.” I took a long pull at my drink, identical to hers except for the citric acid. “You’re getting pretty hard-boiled.” “Maybe. . . no. Just realistic. I have a feeling we’re headed for a lot more death and sorrow.” “Not me. As soon as we get to Stargate, I’m a civilian.” “Don’t be so sure.” The old familiar argument. “Those clowns who signed us up for two years can just as easily make it four or-” “Or six or twenty or the duration. But they won’t. It would be mutiny.” “I don’t know. If they could condition us to kill on cue, they can condition us to do almost anything. Re-enlist.” That was a chiller. Later on we tried to make love, but both of us had too much to think about.
I got to see Marygay for the first time about a week later. She was wan, had lost a lot of weight and seemed very confused. Doc Wilson assured me that it was just the medication; they hadn’t seen any evidence of brain damage. She was still in bed, still being fed through a tube. I began to get very nervous about the calendar. Every day there seemed to be some improvement, but if she was still in bed when we hit that collapsar push, she wouldn’t have a chance. I couldn’t get any encouragement from Doc Wilson or Estelle; they said it depended on Marygay’s resilience. The day before the push, they transferred her from bed to Estelle’s acceleration couch in the infirmary. She was 104 Joe Haldeman lucid and was taking food orally, but she still couldn’t move under her own power, not at I-1/2 gees. I went to see her. “Heard about the course change? We have to go through Aleph-9 to get back to Tet-38. Four more months on this damn hulk. But another six years’ combat pay when we get back to Earth.” “That’s good.” “Ah, just think of the great things we’ll-” “William.” I let it trail off. Never could lie. “Don’t try to jolly me. Tell me about vacuum welding, about your childhood, anything. Just don’t bulishit me about getting back to Earth.” She turned her face to the wall. “I heard the doctors talking out in the corridor, one morning when they thought I was asleep. But it just confirmed what I already knew, the way everybody’d been moping around. “So tell me, you were born in New Mexico in 1975. What then? Did you stay in New Mexico? Were you bright in school? Have any friends, or were you too bright like me? How old were you when you first got sacked?” We talked in this vein for a while, uncomfortable. An idea came to me while we were rambling, and when I left Marygay I went straight to Dr. Wilson.