The day after Rachel’s visit first Nergui, then Shilan had started to complain to Jody of diverse and mysterious maladies. They were quickly sent to town and returned later with bundles of cloth and odd cloth straps. Jody, after a visit from first Rachel and then Daneh, who looked drawn and tired, had passed the word to the males not to ask questions. But when Courtney had doubled over in the middle of the afternoon Mike wasn’t willing to take “it’s a girl thing” for an answer and the whole subject was brought out into the open. The reactions among the males ranged from bemusement to anger, especially since they were getting the details secondhand from the women. That night when food was brought out, most of the cooks were men from Raven’s Mill, hastily conscripted from various other jobs. Apparently what was happening in the wood-cutting camp was also happening everywhere and from the muttered comments of the males Raven’s Mill was in an uproar. The men, furthermore, were not well-trained cooks. The mush was half burnt and an attempt to cook cornbread in something called a “Dutch Oven” was a disaster.
Deann and Karlyn were apparently suffering from the same maladies, but they had gone back to work almost immediately on doing whatever the women were doing to manage it. Deann mentioned that she was feeling cramps and a certain amount of weakness, but in Karlyn’s case there seemed to be no effect other than the bleeding and not much of that. Courtney, as soon as her cramps passed, was back at work as if nothing had happened as was Shilan. Nergui continued to complain of intense pain and while Jody tended to be unsympathetic, without any way to judge the amount of pain involved there was no way for him to order her back to work.
At the end of the fourth day at the site Herzer came over with his food and sat down with Courtney and Mike. As he did Cruz and Emory wandered over as well.
Courtney looked at him and gave him a wan smile.
“How you doing?” Herzer asked, spooning up a bite of beans. The mixture this night was really good, some sort of meat had been minced fine and added to the beans along with a slightly hot spice.
“Better,” Courtney answered. “The cramps are gone at least.”
“So… this is going to go on for five days?” Herzer asked. “I’m sorry, we’re all pretty curious. If you really don’t want to talk about it…”
“No, it’s okay. It just came as a shock at first. In a way I’m glad we’re out here; I don’t want to think what it was like down in the camps.”
“Ugh,” Mike said, spooning up another bite of the stew and taking a bite of cornbread.
“Basically we bleed all the time, so we have to keep a pad of rough cosilk on.”
“That was those strap things they brought up?” Cruz asked.
“Yeah. We don’t know exactly when it stops. And they say it might get worse than it is this time. Karlyn is hardly bleeding at all and Nergui is like a fountain.”
“Yuck,” Herzer said, looking at the rather red mixture in his bowl doubtfully.
“I had the cramps for about twelve hours. Shilan and Karlyn didn’t get them at all. Deann was just about put out by them. You couldn’t tell by the way she was working but she was. Mine were… pretty bad. I couldn’t work through them; I just wanted to curl up in a ball and put heat on them so they wouldn’t hurt so much.”
“Sorry,” Herzer said.
“Why? There’s nothing you could do,” she replied with a smile. “I don’t know how long it’s going to last; Dr. Daneh says that five days is just an average.”
Emory didn’t talk very much, but he started chuckling now.
“What?” she asked.
“You won’t want to hear it,” he replied in a gravelly voice. “What I was thinking is ‘never trust something that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.’ ”
“Oh, thank you very much!” Courtney snapped, fire in her eyes.
“Said you wouldn’t like it,” he chuckled.
Herzer and Cruz coughed in their hands while Mike just smiled.
“Thanks so very much,” Courtney said with a frown then shook her head. “Men!”
“What about ’em?” Deann said, sitting down on one of the stumps.
“Can’t live without ’em and there ought to be a bounty,” Courtney replied.
“You’d better think about living without them,” Deann replied. “Unless you want to be carrying around a baby.”
“What’s that mean?” Mike asked, sharply.
“I’m not trying to cut you off from your… friend,” Deann replied just as sharply. “But bleeding means we’re fertile again. Just like the other animals. So if you go making whoopie with Courtney, you’re going to be looking at a baby in nine months.”
“Well…” Mike looked at Courtney who blushed. “We’d… we’ve been thinking that having a child might make sense. But with the replicators gone…”
“That’s the point lover boy,” Deann said. “The replicators ain’t gone. All us women are replicators now. We’re fertile, Mike. We can have babies. That grow in our bodies like some sort of damn parasite!”
“It’s not that bad!” Courtney replied. “I mean… I don’t know. I’m sort of… looking forward to it. I want to see what it’s like.”
“How many times?” Deann asked. “You’re talking about carrying around ten kilos of material in your belly.”
“So? Deann, we’re designed for it! That’s what our bodies are for. Sure, if I had my choice I’d use a replicator. But I don’t have that choice anymore. So…”
“So you’re going to get pregnant?” Deann asked, aghast.
“If it’s a choice of that or giving up guys, yeah,” Courtney said with another blush.
“What a choice,” Herzer said, shaking his head.
“Man, is this stupid war going to screw up everything in our lives?” Cruz snarled.
“Nice pun,” Emory muttered.
“Wha… Oh, shit,” Cruz said and laughed with the others.
Mike reached out with his boot and tapped Herzer on the foot.
“I think you’ve got a visitor,” he said, gesturing over Herzer’s shoulder.
“Hello, Herzer,” Bast said, looking around at the group with a nod. She was carrying her usual panoply of weapons but also had a basket on her back.
“Bast,” Herzer said, reaching towards her.
“Hello, lover boy,” she repeated, swarming up him in a full-body hug. “Let’s take a walk.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” he said to the group.
“I’ll carry your bowl back,” Courtney said with a smile.
“Thanks,” he said as Bast flipped off him and took his hand, leading him into the woods.
“Are you headed somewhere to take a bath?” Herzer asked. He knew full well that the clothes he was wearing reeked of days of sweat.
“Not yet,” she replied as they passed out of the clearing into the woods. “There will be time later. There’s a full moon tonight.”
“And what does that mean?” he asked as she stopped to pull something from the ground.
“That we can see well enough to take a bath, silly,” she smiled at him, stripping the dirt from the root she had dug up.
“What’s that?”
“Armoracia,” she replied. “Horseradish. It’s a hot spice to be added to food. It also can be used for poultices and to help clear the passages in bronchitis.”