Finally the FTL ships stopped coming. No explanation. They simply weren’t appearing in orbit. This was true for both sides. No Goldfish. No coffee. No tea. No chocolate. Nothing except what we could grow or print on this planet. The local printing plant made crackers, but they weren’t as good as Goldfish.
Whiskers complained.
Can’t help you, Bud.
Of course we sent messages back to Earth, asking what the hell was going on. If all went well, we’d get an answer in 80 years. Or the ships would come back. Who could say?
The war slowed after that. The hacking mostly stopped, but the drones kept coming in. Once they were activated, they would keep doing their job, with no way of calling them back. I guess you could say they—and we—were like the local organisms. Most were segmented, and a lot were a meter long. A little creepy, like huge centipedes. They could give you a nasty bite.
If you found one and chopped off the head, it would keep moving. Its sensory organs were all the in head, so it could no longer see, hear, taste. It blundered around on its many legs, until another bug found it and ate it. Nothing ate us here. We and the drones kept blundering, going through the motions.
Whiskers said I smelled funny.
Anxiety? Depression? I asked. These were the usual problem.
Not sick. Funny.
One morning I woke up with cramps. I got and discovered my sleeping shorts were drenched with blood. So were the bed sheets. Of course I called the clinic. I don’t like blood. It reminds me of my dreams: Marin lying in the maize field, Lopez and Singh. The clinic sent a van, with a tech who wouldn’t let me take Whiskers. I left her crouched in a corner of the living room, looking terrified.
It’s okay, Buddy.
Afraid. So are you.
Which was true.
A nurse at the clinic examined me. A big guy with a skin as black as midnight. He must have rotated in from another town. I didn’t recognize him or his accent. Caribbean maybe. There were islands in the Caribbean that were still above water.
After he was done with the examination, he said, “What we have here is menstrual discharge.”
“What?” I said. My voice sounded loud.
“Your hormone implant has failed. You are having a period.”
“I am thirty-effing-two.”
“Late for a first period, but that’s what you are having.”
“Then put in another implant. I really don’t like this.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t. The hormone implants come—or came—from Earth. We can’t make them here. We have a limited number left, but they are restricted for soldiers on active duty. You are not.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“What women have always done,” he said. “Insert a tampon—I can print some out for you—and take ibuprofen.”
My crotch felt as if something bigger than Whiskers was trying to chew its way out. There was blood caked on my legs. I wanted to shout at the nurse, but I didn’t. What could he do? If he didn’t have the implants, then he didn’t. I was not going to demand something that was needed by soldiers on active duty.
He printed out the tampons with instructions and gave me a bottle of ibuprofen. I went to a bathroom, read the instructions an inserted a tampon—God this was a crude way to solve a common problem—then took two ibuprofen and went home in a cab.
Whiskers was still crouched in her corner. I picked her up and cuddled her. Nothing serious, Bud. I’m okay.
Pain.
It will go away.
Wrong, Whiskers said.
Not a sickness, I replied. A hormone change. I think that’s what you smelled. I’m going o have to do a wash.
Yes, said Whiskers.
I stripped the bed and put the sheets in a bag, ready for a trip to the community laundry, then took a shower and changed into new clothes. The chewing in my crotch had moderated some.
Sometime in all this I realized that we were really on our own. The FTL ships might never come.
The community radio was on, playing Wagner, “The Flying Dutchman” overture. I lay down, feeling miserable. Whiskers climbed onto the bed and huddled at my side.
Of course the cramps ended, and I went back to checking fields for mines.
We can’t ruin this planet. There are too few of us, even with our technology. If the ships don’t come back, our technology will begin to break down, and our war will wind down to nothing. The question is, will it happen while we still have a chance of survival here? It would be easier to stay alive if we joined forces. People are beginning to talk about peace.
I’m still having periods. The clinic says it ought to be possible to make the hormone implants here, but the project is on a back burner. Other things are more important in an economy of scarcity and war.
I have not gotten used to having cramps. I want this war to end.
Do I still dream of Marin? Yes.
There Used to Be Olive Trees
RICH LARSON
Here’s another story by Rich Larson, whose “An Evening with Severyn Grimes” appears elsewhere in this anthology. This one takes place in a desolate far future where dwindling enclaves of humanity struggle to survive in a world dominated by “gods” who mostly sail by overhead, ignoring the problems of those below, although occasionally they will grant a “miracle” of one sort or another if petitioned in the proper manner—something that it’s supposed to be the protagonist’s job to do, but which he realizes, to his dismay, that he can’t handle at all.
Valentin crept through the darkness toward the high stone wall of the Town, heart thumping hard against his ribs. His nanoshadow, wrapped around his chest under his shirt, sensed his anxiety and gave a comforting pulse, gritty and warm against his skin. It helped a little. Valentin had never gone over the wall before. He had never left the Town before.
But anything was better than what awaited him in the morning: the prueba. His fourth prueba, to be precise. Valentin ran a finger over caked scar tissue until it contacted the gleaming black implant poking from the crest of his shaved head. It was the implant that let him control his nanoshadow—for anyone else, it would have been an inert black puddle. It was the implant that let him communicate with some of the simpler machines inside the Town.
The implant didn’t make him a true prophet, though. Not until he passed the prueba, until the Town’s machine god spoke to him. No prophet had ever failed the test more than twice. Valentin was on three and counting.
So he was leaving. Valentin breathed deep, staring up the weathered stone face of the wall that had kept him safe for all his sixteen years. He knew the world outside was a dangerous one. There were wilders and mudslides and scuttling scorpions. Valentin hated scorpions and he had a healthy fear of wilders from growing up with scarestories.
But so long as he had his nanoshadow, he could do things no barbarian could even dream of. He reached out with his implant and summoned the gleaming black motes, coaxing the shadow down his arms, gloving his hands. He steadied his nerves, looked around once more for anyone who might stop him, then took a flying leap at the wall.
Valentin was normally clumsy, but with the nanoshadow strengthening his arms like corded black muscle and coating his hands with clinging tendrils, he went up the sheer wall easily as a gecko. He felt a grin splitting his face as he topped it. Poised there on the edge with his nanoshadow balancing him, Valentin could see the empty campo stretching far and away. Rolling hills of dead gray soil, dotted ruins, crumbling road. It looked like freedom.