The culinary dream fading, Jodi came fully awake, her stomach grumbling even louder. The bedroll next to hers, where she had finally convinced Reza to lay down and sleep, was empty. “Where’s–”
As she turned toward the fire and where Braddock and Father Hernandez had made their beds, her breath caught in her throat. Not five feet away, suspended on a spit over red-hot coals, was a forest gazelle. The aroma of cooking meat was nearly overwhelming, and she realized that this is what had prompted the dream about the steak. Her mouth suddenly was awash in saliva in anticipation of biting into the golden brown meat.
“Maybe there is a God,” she murmured.
“To hear such words from your lips,” came Father Hernandez’s cheery voice from somewhere on the other side of the roasting animal, “makes me think that you are not quite as stubborn as me after all.” His head popped up, his cherubic smile clearly visible through the smoke of the mystery barbecue. “Would you care to be baptized in the river this morning, good daughter?”
“Very funny, pious priest,” she said. She was not sure which was worse, being baptized into something she had never understood, or having someone dunk her in the freezing glacier water of the nearby river. She had always thought that was a truly moronic idea. “Where’s Reza? And where did this come from, besides heaven?”
“Reza and your gunny,” he said, as always emphasizing the term as if he had never heard it before, “headed off toward the river a short while ago, presumably to take a refreshing dip while leaving me temporarily in charge of this most awful effort.” He made a show of rotating the carcass a quarter turn on the spit, his face a tight grimace of disgust. “I awoke to this horrid vision when dawn broke. Reza must have killed the poor thing some time during the night and prepared it for your culinary pleasure.”
“You just don’t know what’s good for you, Father,” she said, taking one last look at the savory meat and wondering how Reza could have done all that without any of them waking up. Then again, they were all exhausted, and Jodi knew she probably could have slept through a hailstorm. “Since you’re doing such a good job, I’ll let you be and check out what the boys are doing down at the river.”
“Wait! Don’t leave me with this… this thing,” Hernandez called, but Jodi paid him no attention as she trotted toward the sound of the rushing water. “Lord, forgive me for saying this,” he muttered, glaring at the roasting beast, “but great should be my reward in Heaven for enduring such trials.”
Jodi found Braddock sitting on the bank, a slender blade of grass protruding from his lips. Beside him Reza’s armor and clothing lay in a meticulously ordered stack, but its owner was nowhere to be found. “Where is he?” she asked.
Braddock pointed to a group of rocks in the middle of a swirling mass of white water a few meters from shore. “In there somewhere.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, panicked. “Can he even swim?”
Braddock chuckled. “He’s already been to the far side and back. Underwater the whole way on a single breath. I don’t think we have to worry about him drowning any time soon.”
Jodi eyed the river, gauging its width. She figured she might make it a quarter of the way to the far side in one breath on a good day with a tailwind, but certainly not in the current that flowed here. “Shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” Braddock agreed.
Sitting down beside him, she asked, “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Officers get cranky when they don’t get enough sleep,” he said lightly. “And you haven’t had much sleep since you bailed out over this rock.”
“So, are you saying that I’m cranky?”
Braddock laughed. The atmosphere around them had changed; the battle was over, the pressure was off. Reza’s appearance was an enigma, but no immediate threat had materialized from him. Braddock felt like a human being again, instead of a cornered animal fighting for its existence. “No comment.”
“Braddock,” she said, serious now.
“Yeah.”
“For whatever it’s worth, thanks for keeping me in one piece.”
He nodded, then gave her a mischievous smile. “It’s only because I kept hoping you’d go straight and surrender to my masculine charms.”
Jodi laughed so hard that her stomach began to hurt. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, trying to control the spasms when she saw his face redden slightly. He had said it as a joke, but she could tell that there had been more than a grain of truth to his words. “Tony, really, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… well, you know. Make you feel bad. I mean, off-duty, I’d like to be friends,” she shrugged, “as much as officers and NCOs are supposed to be, anyway. But that’s all I can ever be with you.”
“Oh, hell, Mackenzie,” he sighed wistfully, “I know that. It’s just wishful thinking, is all. I won’t hold it against you. Too much.”
“Thanks,” she said, patting his arm. He was a good man, a rare commodity on any world, and a good friend, which sometimes was even more difficult to find.
He suddenly nodded toward the water. “There’s our boy.”
Jodi looked up to find Reza standing chest-deep in the water, his gaze fixed on her.
“Hey, I think he’s got the hots for you, too.”
“Oh, stop it,” Jodi chastened him, but she wondered if what Braddock said wasn’t at least partially true. While Reza seemed to have bonded to Braddock and at least tolerated Father Hernandez, he related to her almost like a newborn chick that had imprinted itself on a surrogate mother. The bond did not seem to be sexually motivated; then again, there was no way for Jodi to really know, either way. Until Reza could be taught Standard – or he could teach someone Kreelan – only the most rudimentary communications could be exchanged. “He’s only interested in me for my mind.”
“Oh, Christ,” Braddock moaned, “he can’t be that desperate.”
Reza watched them curiously, then energetically gestured at them with an outstretched hand, beckoning them to join him.
“Looks like he wants some company,” Braddock said, shaking his head and holding up his hands in deferment. “He tried to get me in there earlier, but this is one I’ll pass on.”
“What’s the matter? Is tough old gunny afraid to show off his wares?”
Braddock snorted. “Come on. You know how cold that water is. One step in there and I’d be groping around for a week trying to get a grip on myself again. If Reza can swim around like a beluga whale, power to him. I’ll just sit nice and dry and stinky for right now, thanks very much.”
“You better turn around, then,” she told him as she began to undo the catches on her combat smock. “No free peeks unless you do the same.”
“Jodi,” he cried, “are you crazy? You’ll freeze in there!”
“I know,” she sighed as she made him turn around to face the sloping wall of the river bank, “but they don’t heat the water in the village, either, and I’d rather not be the star of another peepshow for Hernandez’s monks. I found the little hole they drilled in the wall of the bath.” After this little discovery, the priest had been livid with his charges, and a severe tongue-lashing left them suitably terror- and guilt-stricken. But that was all ancient history now, having taken place soon after Jodi had bailed out, when such luxuries as personal hygiene had still been possible for the human combatants. “I figure I can jump in, scream, rub off some of the scum and get some of the shit out of my hair, and then jump back out and dry off with my smock and get dressed again before I turn into a popsicle.”