“I shot the bear,” Landry said. Pause. “Sir.”
Hillson said, in the tone that had wrangled out-of-line soldiers into line for thirty years, “Report, Private.”
“I seen the bear charge and a second later I seen her cubs. She barreled on over to them two aliens and laid into ’em. But they didn’t fight or nothing. In fact, they didn’t even react. I couldn’t see real clear, but it looked like they was both asleep. Maybe they was.
“But the funny thing was, I don’t think they woke up when the bear started clawing away. Neither of ’em woke up. They just lied there. I fired, but the bear’d already slashed open the woman’s throat. Bear turned to me and I fired again, and still the alien didn’t move. That bear was hit, all right, but she was tough and mad. She bellowed and made one last slash at the Reddie before she come for me and I dropped her with a hit to the head.”
Reddie. The same word Perry had used. What other slurs did his men call Worlders? Jason said, “So the victims didn’t react to the bear because they were already dead?”
“Didn’t look dead to me. Corpses got a whole different look to ’em.”
“Perhaps they were freshly dead?”
“From what?” Landry said contemptuously. Hillson said sharply, “Private,” and Landry added, “Sir.”
“Dismissed,” Jason said, and Landry sauntered out. But his question had been a good one. Jason said to Hillson, “Drugs?”
“Could be. Or could be Landry’s lying. Although I don’t see any reason why he would.”
“Nobody else saw the bear mauling?”
“No, sir. Landry was point. Also, sir, outside patrol received a message from the signal station, a general bulletin to all bases. Colonel Hahn has died and General Strople is now commander in chief.”
“Okay.” Jason paused a moment. He hadn’t known Colleen Hahn well, but he’d respected her. An able soldier and fair officer. Jason still wondered how she could have contracted RSA, but it was not his place to question that. He said, “Tell Dr. Holbrook I want an autopsy on the two bear victims.”
“I think that one is already in progress, sir.”
“Oh?” Holbrook had the authority to make that decision. Although… did World culture permit autopsies? The Return was a Worlder ship and, technically, Ka^graa led a diplomatic mission, even though there had been very little diplomacy going on so far.
“Hillson, have Jane sent to me.”
“Yes, sir. Is she in Lab Dome?”
“Probably. Send her here.”
Despite everything, his heart lifted at the thought of seeing Jane again.
Jane had spent another hour with Colin in the infirmary. She wanted to know about life in the Settlement, but he was curious about World. Jane insisted, and he had become both enthusiastic and theoretical, while she concentrated to keep up with his English.
He said, “Before the Collapse, in developed countries the total energy to produce food was more than the caloric value of the food produced, if you count in all the energy used in everything from tractors to fertilizer to plants. Agriculture was the most energy-intensive segment of the economy. But in preindustrial societies, energy produced as food was typically ten times larger than the input in terms of the labor of people and animals. It was a much better relationship with nature.”
This wasn’t what Jane wanted to know. “But how did you live, each day, to produce the food?”
He told her. As he spoke, she could feel the air between them shifting, tightening, becoming something more than air. When he said, “Now you tell me about World,” she struggled to explain her former life to him; so much that seemed obvious to her, beyond needing explanation, was strange to a Terran. Finally, she said, “I don’t know how to say… what simply… simply is…”
“Like a fish not noticing water,” Colin said, and grinned, and just like that she tumbled all the way into love with him. And even that—“falling in love”—was a Terran expression that had taken her a while to fit to feelings and actions that certainly existed on both planets, but not in exactly the same way. At home, mating choice was a complex alloy of individual preference, the needs of the lahk, and bu^ka^tel. But simple desire, and the copulation it often led to, was a personal and unquestioned right.
Jane desired Colin Jenner.
She blurted out, “Who is Mary?”
“Mary who?”
“When you became injured, you asked if Mary was all right.”
He smiled. “Did you think it was a woman?”
“Is it not a female name?”
“Yes. Mary is a beautiful and very bright child I have been teaching to raise kelp.”
“Okay.” She felt herself blush, and blushed more when he laughed at her, his eyes warm.
When Colin tired, she left his room and went to La^vor’s. Had Jane been neglecting her friend? Yes, she had, but her translation duties kept her so occupied. And Glamet^vor¡’s tiny cubicle was jammed next to La^vor’s. Since his tirade against Terrans, Jane had felt even more uncomfortable around him. How strange it was that two people should have such different reactions to Earth!
“I greet you, La^vor. I greet you, Belok^.”
La^vor broke into a huge smile. “I greet you, Jeng…. Jane! Belok^?”
“I… greet you,” Belok^ said.
He squatted beside his sister, twelve small circles of karthwood stained in various colors on the floor in front of him. Standard toys on World and nearly indestructible, they served babies to chew, toddlers to pile and knock down, older children to be taught their first math. Every small Worlder had a set. Virtually indestructible, kiki were often passed down through generations of a lahk. Belok^ looked huge beside the blocks intended for little children.
La^vor said, “We work on totals and reductions. See, Belok^, here are two kiki and there is one kiki. How many kiki have we here?”
“I tired,” Belok^ said.
“You just woke!”
“I tired.” He stretched out on the floor, jostling La^vor, and closed his eyes.
“Wake up, Belok^!”
He started to snore.
“I do not know what to do with him. He sleeps too much. But Claire-mak says he is not ill.”
“Let him sleep,” Jane said. “I want to talk to you.”
La^vor smiled. “You glow, Jane. Has something good happened?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Tell me! Come, sit on the bed!”
The two women stepped carefully over Belok^ and climbed onto La^vor’s narrow bed, each sitting cross-legged with her back against the wall. The Army blanket, an unattractive bilious color, scratched rough against Jane’s legs, bare in her brief wrap. La^vor wriggled to get comfortable. She was unusually short for a Worlder, her body stocky, her skin too pale and eyes too small to be pretty. She was the kindest person Jane knew, with the gift of being happy whatever her circumstances.
Too bad her older brother was not more like her.
“I think,” Jane said, turning to look at her friend and choosing her words carefully, “that I would like to copulate with someone, and maybe even sign a mating contract, if he is willing.”
La^vor smiled. “With Glamet^vor¡?”
“No. I told you that is finished.”
“With who?”
“With Colin Jenner.”
La^vor’s lips parted in surprise—and then the top lip lifted more. “With a Terran?”
A small shock ran through Jane. So it was not only Terrans who could be disgusted with humans who were different. Her face must have shown… something, because La^vor said, “I regret that unkindness. Please forgive me.”
Formal words. La^vor meant them… and yet she was being formal, and her gaze didn’t meet Jane’s. Jane took her hand. “Please, La^vor… this is my choice. You are my friend.”