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“Yes. They’re accelerating inward. It’s fairly clear that all which can make planetfall hope to do so; the rest are ru
“Shouldn’t we organize an interception?”
“We can’t spare the strength. Clearing away those forts will empty most of our magazines. Our prime duty is to pull our men out of that mess we… I… sent them into.” Cajal stiffened himself. “If any units can reasonably be spared from the orbital work, yes, let them collect what Avalonians they can, provided they conserve munitions to the utmost and rely mainly on energy weapons. I doubt they’ll get many. The rest we’ll have to let go their ways, perhaps to our sorrow.” His chuckle clanked. As old Professor Wu-Tai was forever saying at the Academy — remember, Jim? — The best foundation that a decision is ever allowed is our fallible assessment of the probabilities.’”
The tropical storms of Avalon were more furious than one who came from a planet of less irradiation and slower spin could well have imagined. For a day and a night, the embarkation of the sickest men was postponed. Besides the chance of losing a carrier, there was a certainty that those flensing rains would kill some of the patients as they were borne from shacks to gangways.
The more or less hale, recently landed, battled to erect levees. Reports, dim and crackling through radio static, were of flash floods leaping down every arroyo.
Neither of these situations concerned Rochefort. He was in an intermediate class, too ill for work, too well for immediate removal. He huddled on a chair among a hundred of his fellows, in a stinking, steaming bunker, tried to control the chills and nausea that went ebb-and-flow through him, and sometimes thought blurrily of Tabitha Falkayn and sometimes of Ahmed Nasution, who had died three days before.
What Avalonian spacecraft ran the gantlet descended to Equatoria, where home-guard officers assigned them their places.
The storm raged to its end. The first Imperial vessels lifted from the wrecked base. They were warships, probing a way for the crammed, improvised hospital hulls which were to follow. Sister fighters moved in from orbit to join them.
Avalon’s ground and air defenses opened crossfire. Her space force entered battle.
Daniel Holm sat before a sca
“—we’re interdicting their escape route. You can’t blast us in time to save what we estimate as a quarter million men. Even if we didn’t resist, maybe half of them would never last till you brought them to adequate care. And I hate to think about the rest — organ, nerve, brain damage beyond the power of regenerative techniques to heal. “We can save them. We of Avalon. We have the facilities prepared, clear around our planet. Beds, nursing staffs, diagnostic equipment, chelating drugs, supportive treatments. We’d welcome your inspection teams and medical perso
XVIII
The ward was clean and well-run, but forty men must be crowded into it and there was no screen — not that local programs would have interested most of them. Hence they had no entertainment except reading and bitching. A majority preferred the latter. Before long, Rochefort asked for earcups in order that he might be able to use the books lent him. He wore them pretty much around the clock.
Thus he did not hear the lickerish chorus. His first knowledge came from a touch on his shoulder. Huh? he thought. Lunch already? He raised his eyes from The Gaiila Folk and saw Tabitha.
The heart sprang in him and raced. His hands shook so he could barely remove the cups.
She stood athwart the noisy, antiseptic-smelling room as if her only frame were a window behind, open to the blue and blossoms of springtime. A plain coverall disguised the curves and straightness of her. He saw in the countenance that she had lost weight. Bones stood forth still more strongly than erstwhile, under a skin more darkened and hair more whitened by a stronger sun than shone over Gray.
“Tabby,” he whispered, and reached.
She took his hands, not pressing them nor smiling much. “Hullo, Phil,” said the remembered throaty voice. “You’re looking better’n I expected, when they told me you’d three tubes in you.”
“You should have seen me at the begi
“I’m all right. Most of those you knew are. Draun and Nyesslan bought it.”
“I’m sorry,” he lied.
Tabitha released him. “I’d have come sooner,” she said, “but had to wait for furlough, and then it took time to get a data scan on those long lists of patients and time to get transportation here. We’ve a lot of shortages and disorganization yet.” Her regard was green and grave. “I did feel sure you’d be on Avalon, dead or alive. Good to learn it was alive.”
“How could I stay away… from you?”
She dropped her lids. “What is your health situation? The staffs too busy to give details.”
“Well, when I’m stronger they want to ship me to a regular Imperial navy hospital, take out my liver and grow me a new one. I may need a year, Terran, to recover completely. They promise me I will.”
“Splendid.” Her tone was dutiful. “You being well treated here?”
“As well as possible, considering. But, uh, my roommates aren’t exactly my type and the medics and helpers, both Imperial and Avalonian, can’t stop their work for conversation. It’s been damned lonesome, Tabby, till you came.”
“Ill try to visit you again. You realize I’m on active duty, and most of what leave I’m granted has to be spent at St. Li, keeping the business in shape.”
Weakness washed through him. He leaned back into the pillows and let his arms fall on the blanket. “Tabby… would you consider waiting… that year?”
She shook her head, slowly, and again met his stare. “Maybe I ought to pretend till you’re more healed, Phil. But I’m no good at pretending, and besides, you rate better.”
“After what I did—”
“And what I did.” She leaned down and felt past the tubes to lay palms on his shoulders. “No, we’ve never hated on that account, have we, either of us?”
“Then can’t we both forgive?”
“I believe we’ve already done it. Don’t you see, though? When the hurting had died down to where I could think, I saw there wasn’t anything left. Oh, friendship, respect, memories to cherish, And that’s all.”
“It isn’t enough… to rebuild on?”
“No, Phil. I understand myself better than I did before. If we tried, I know what sooner or later I’d be doing to you. And I won’t. What we had, I want to keep clean.”
She kissed him gently and raised herself.
They talked awhile longer, embarrassed, until he could dismiss her on the plea, not entirely untruthful, that he needed rest. When she was gone he did close his eyes, after do
She’s right, probably, he thought. And my life isn’t blighted. I’ll get over this one too, I suppose. He recalled a girl in Fleurville and hoped he would be transferred to an Esperancian hospital, when or if the cease-fire became a peace.
Outside, Tabitha stopped to put on the gravbelt she had retrieved from the checkroom. The building had been hastily erected on the outskirts of Gray. (She remembered the protests when Marchwarden Holm diverted industrial capacity from war production to medical facilities, at a time when renewed combat seemed imminent. Commentators pointed out that what he had ordered was too little for the casualties of extensive bombardment, too much for those of any plausible lesser-scale affray. He had growled, “We do what we can” and rammed the project through. It helped that the principal home-guard officers urged obedience to him. They knew what he really had in mind — these men whose pain kept the weapons uneasily silent.) Where she stood, a hillside sloped downward, decked with smaragdine susin, starred with chasuble bush and Buddha’s cup, to the strewn and begardened city, the huge curve of uprising shoreline, the glitter on Falkayn Bay. Small cottony clouds sauntered before the wind, which murmured and smelled of livewell.