"What?" he said, groggily. "No. Leave me alone."
"You sure, Leon?" I asked. "You know what they say about breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day, and all that. Come on. You need your energy."
Leon actually growled. "My mother's been dead for thirty years and as far I know, she hasn't been brought back in your body. So get the hell out of here and let me sleep."
It was nice to see Leon hadn't gone soft on me. "Fine," I said. "I'll be back after breakfast."
Leon grunted and rolled back over. I went to breakfast.
Breakfast was amazing, and I say that having been married to a woman who could make a breakfast spread that would have made Gandhi stop a fast. I had two Belgian waffles that were golden, crisp and light, wallowing in powdered sugar and syrup that tasted like real Vermont maple (and if you think you can't tell when you have Vermont maple syrup, you've never had it) and with a scoop of creamery butter that was artfully melting to fill the deep wells of the waffle squares. Add over-easy eggs that were actually over easy, four slices of thick, brown sugar–cured bacon, orange juice from fruit that apparently hadn't realized it had been squeezed, and a mug of coffee that was fresh off the burro.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Since I was now officially legally dead on Earth and flying across the solar system in a spaceship, I guess I wasn't too far off.
"Oh my," the fellow I sat next to at breakfast said, as I put down my fully-loaded tray. "Look at all the fats on that tray. You're asking for a coronary. I'm a doctor, I know."
"Uh-huh," I said, and pointed to his tray. "That looks like a four-egg omelet you're working on there. With about a pound each of ham and cheddar."
"'Do as I say, not as I do.' That was my creed as a practicing physician," he said. "If more patients had listened to me instead of following my sorry example, they'd be alive now. A lesson for us all. Thomas Jane, by the way."
"John Perry," I said, shaking hands.
"Pleased to meet you," he said. "Although I'm sad, too, since if you eat all that you'll be dead of a heart attack within the hour."
"Don't listen to him, John," said the woman across from us, whose own plate was smeared with the remains of pancakes and sausage. "Tom there is just trying to get you to give him some of your food, so he doesn't have to get back in line for more. That's how I lost half of my sausage."
"That accusation is as irrelevant as it is true," Thomas said indignantly. "I admit to coveting his Belgian waffle, yes. I won't deny that. But if sacrificing my own arteries will prolong his life, then it's worth it to me. Consider this the culinary equivalent of falling on a grenade for the sake of my comrade."
"Most grenades aren't soaked in syrup," she said.
"Maybe they should be," Thomas said. "We'd see a lot more selfless acts."
"Here," I said, sawing off half of a waffle. "Throw yourself on this."
"I'll launch myself face first," Thomas promised.
"We're all deeply relieved to hear that," I said.
The woman on the other side of the table introduced herself as Susan Reardon, late of Bellevue, Washington. "What do you think of our little space adventure so far?" she asked me.
"If I had known the cooking was this good, I would have found some way to sign up years ago," I said. "Who knew army food would be like this."
"I don't think we're in the army quite yet," Thomas said, around a mouthful of Belgian waffle. "I think this is sort of the Colony Defense Forces waiting room, if you know what I mean. Real army food is going to be a lot more spare. Not to mention I doubt we'll be prancing around in sneakers like we are right now."
"You think they're easing us into things, then," I said.
"I do," Thomas said. "Look, there are a thousand complete strangers on this ship, all of whom are now without home, family, or profession. That's a hell of a mental shock. The least they can do is give us a fabulous meal to take our minds off it all."
"John!" Harry had spied me from the line. I waved him over. He and another man came, bearing trays.
"This is my roommate, Alan Rosenthal," he said, by way of introduction.
"Formerly known as Sleeping Beauty," I said.
"About half of that description is right," Alan said. "I am in fact devastatingly beautiful." I introduced Harry and Alan to Susan and Thomas.
"Tsk, tsk," Thomas said, examining their trays. "Two more plaque attacks waiting to happen."
"Better throw Tom a couple bacon strips, Harry," I said. "Otherwise we'll never hear the end of this."
"I resent the implication that I can be bought off with food," Thomas said.
"It wasn't implied," Susan said. "It was pretty much boldly stated."
"Well, I know your roommate lottery turned out badly," Harry said to me, handing over two bacon strips to Thomas, who accepted them gravely, "but mine turned out all right. Alan here is a theoretical physicist. Smart as a whip."
"And devastatingly beautiful," Susan piped in.
"Thanks for remembering that detail," Alan said.
"This looks like a table of reasonably intelligent adults," Harry said. "So what do you think we're in for today?"
"I have a physical scheduled for 0800," I said. "I think we all do."
"Right," Harry said. "But I'm asking what you all think that means. Do you think today is the day we start our rejuvenation therapies? Is today the day we begin to stop being old?"
"We don't know that we stop being old," Thomas said. "We've all assumed that, because we think of soldiers as being young. But think about it. None of us has actually seen a Colonial soldier. We've assumed, and our assumptions could be way off."
"What would the value of old soldiers be?" Alan asked. "If they're going to put me in the field as is, I don't know what good I'm going to be to anyone. I have a bad back. Walking from the beanstalk platform to the flight gate yesterday just about killed me. I can't imagine marching twenty miles with a pack and a firearm."
"I think we're due for some repairs, obviously," Thomas said. "But that's not the same as being made 'young' again. I'm a doctor, and I know a little bit about this. You can make the human body work better and achieve high function at any age, but each age has a certain baseline capability. The body at seventy-five is inherently less fast, less flexible and less easily repaired than at younger ages. It can still do some amazing things, of course. I don't want to brag, but I'll have you know that back on Earth I regularly ran ten K races. I ran one less than a month ago. And I made better time than I would have when I was fifty-five."
"What were you like when you were fifty-five?" I asked.
"Well, that's the thing," Thomas said. "I was a fat slob at fifty-five. It took a heart replacement to get me serious about taking care of myself. My point is that a high-functioning seventy-five-year-old can actually do many things without actually being 'young,' but just by being in excellent shape. Maybe that's all that's required for this army. Maybe all the other intelligent species in the universe are pushovers. Presuming that's the case, it makes a weird sort of sense to have old soldiers, because young people are more useful to their community. They have their whole lives ahead of them, while we are eminently expendable."
"So maybe we'll still be old, just really, really healthy," Harry said.
"That's what I'm saying," Thomas said.