"Corporal DeSoto misinformed you," he said. "He told you one thing and did something else. Your husband has been assigned to Company B, 587th Infantry Training Regiment. You have been assigned to Company G, 249th Fighting Vehicle Training Regiment."
Her breath stopped, trapped in her lungs.
"For whatever satisfaction it may provide you, Corporal DeSoto will be reprimanded before the recruiting staff, assigned punishment, and perhaps demoted.
"After you have completed your basic and specialist training, which will require several months, both you and your husband will be assigned to a corps consisting of your own people. Meanwhile you will train in different camps. On the same planet, but he in an infantry center, you in a fighting vehicle center."
Her guts shriveled.
"Or," the sergeant major went on, "you can choose to transfer to the infantry. In that case, considering how you were misled, you and your husband can be in the same platoon and squad. But there are serious disadvantages in that."
Again he paused, observing her relief. "You can also have your enlistments cancelled, on the grounds of Corporal DeSoto's deliberate misrepresentation. In that case you will find yourselves in a civilian labor battalion." He paused. "Perhaps on a colony world, building fortifications. If the invaders arrive there, and the fighting goes badly, an effort will be made to evacuate our fighting units, but it is difficult to imagine a situation in which labor battalions can be salvaged."
He leaned forward, forearms on the table, his tone detached but not unfriendly. "The army is no bed of roses," he went on. "The Commonwealth is in serious danger of being overrun, and the human species eradicated. That includes you and me, small children, old people-everyone. So in the army-or in the labor battalions-the purpose of existence is not pleasure, comfort, or convenience. It is to stop the invader. Defeat him and drive him out. Bloody him so badly he will never return."
She stared round-eyed, understanding enough to get his meaning.
"That is what your training will be about, whether you are an armor jockey, or in your husband's infantry squad. One is about as dangerous as the other. In the infantry, however, the purely muscular exhaustion is much greater. The need for muscular strength results in female recruits being routinely assigned to fighting vehicles, but exceptions can be made." He eyed the wide-bodied, broad-handed young woman before him, clearly from a heavyworld, and wondered how many Terran men were as strong. "You will almost certainly be the only woman in your company," he went on, "and probably in your regiment. And ancient experience has shown that few young women can long stand such isolation from female companionship.
"Meanwhile you would not be sharing your husband's bed. Private moments of any sort would be few.
"As an armor jockey, on the other hand, the exhaustion is more of the nerves, and fighting vehicle regiments have many women."
He leaned back slightly in his chair. "You must decide now: armored vehicle training, your husband's infantry platoon, or a labor battalion."
Her eyes met his, and her voice, though quiet, was firm. "I want to be with my husband."
Sergeant Major Nguva smiled. "Good," he said, getting to his feet, and held out a large black hand with a pink palm. Hesitantly she shook it. "Congratulate your husband for me," he said, "on his good fortune in having so steadfast a wife."
Chapter 16
Puzzles
The two Wyzhnyny sat in the grand admiral's office, talking. "Our progress?" the chief scholar said. "It is accelerating. We exchange limited sentences now, on a growing number of subjects."
Grand Admiral Quanshuk shu-Gorlak nodded without enthusiasm. "And what of the questions and topics I have listed?"
"I have not broached them yet. They… "
"None of them?!"
The interruption was discourteous and its tone accusatory, but Chief Scholar Qonits zu-Kitku did not lower his eyes. He was the leading scholar in their mutual and extensive tribe, and in this galaxy without a gender peer. But given certain enigmas in the operating situation, he understood the grand admiral's concern. "Your Excellency," he answered, "the subjects I am able to discuss with the aliens deal with everyday experiences, largely physical. I must have a much broader vocabulary, and refine what I already have, before I can even present the questions you ask. Let alone understand any answers.
"But each day we learn more. As you know, I now spend most of my waking time at the task." He might have added, but didn't, that he'd warned it would take time. Instead he gestured now, palms out and open. "And as I said, progress is accelerating."
Quanshuk nodded. The chief scholar's reply had been as much lecture as answer, but his own impatience had brought it on. Qonits was exalted in more than gender, and due both courtesy and high respect. Pique, impatience, and gender prejudice were inappropriate between them.
"Meanwhile," Qonits was saying, "the ship runs semantic correlations, and presents me with strategical areas to explore." He changed the subject. "It seems that among the aliens there are two parent genders, not one, each gender with fixed sexuality. You can imagine how such personal-incompleteness-might affect the individual, and that a mated pair might therefore bond very strongly.
"The two larger aliens are a mated pair. The smaller one, who does not speak, seems to be a member of their kin group, and is mentally and physically defective. It was being cared for by a servant-apparently of the nanny gender-when the marines captured it. The bond between servant and child had become profound, and killing the servant traumatized the child severely."
"Ah." This was something Admiral Quanshuk could understand. It was easy to overlook that aliens had lives and feelings of their own. It would be wise, he told himself drily, not to dwell on that.
Prior to the invasion, Prime Minister Foster Peixoto and President Chang Lung-Chi had routinely met late in the morning, in the president's office. But seldom at lunch, which they'd agreed was a time for relaxation. Government had not been as crisis-laden and stressful, nor politics as consuming and ruthless, as they'd been a millennium earlier. Society was less overwrought. Socially and psychologically, the human species had truly evolved and advanced. Stagnated, their remote ancestors would have said. Lost their fire.
But since the invasion, crisis and stress were endemic in government. The prime minister and president had met routinely for lunch and often for supper, specifically to talk business. Time was too precious for relaxed eating. Usually they met in Peixoto's office, and ate at an AG table guided in by an orderly.
Chang Lung-Chi would not have changed jobs with his prime minister for anything. The demands on Peixoto's time and energy were more stringent than Chang liked to think about.
Meanwhile, it was Chang who'd come down with the latest new viral pneumonia, quite dangerous, and been confined to the palace infirmary for twelve days. Now Peixoto was updating him on some of the less worrisome matters of interest.
"You may recall my giving Bekr the task of learning where the `messages' are coming from," the prime minister was saying. "He has it sorted out now. The Julie mentioned in their conversations can only be a sensitive named Ju-Li Hamilton-Gavle, the wife of a Dennis Bertrand. She is, or was, the attendant of her half sister, a preadolescent female savant named Annika Pedersen." He paused meaningfully, then finished: "Assigned on Maritimus. The people now looking after her-the Yukiko and David on the cube-are a marine biologist and an oceanographer, Yukiko Gavaldon and David MacDonald respectively. MacDonald was also chief of station on Maritimus. Apparently Hamilton-Gavle and Bertrand were killed by the aliens, and Gavaldon and MacDonald, not being trained sensitives, don't know how to control the savant. Bekr is convinced they don't know she's channeling. They think she's simply comatose."