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We flew back to Threshold, half the world away, and got there just as the administrative offices were opening. William fought and bought his way to the top, trying at the very least to have me reassigned as hisXO. What difference could it make? Most of the people he'd muster with at Stargate hadn't even been born yet.
Of course it was not a matter of logic; it was a matter of protocol. And no army in history had ever been so locked in the ice of protocol. The person who had signedthose orders for the yet unborn was probably dead by now.
The day and night we had left together was not good. Naturally, we thought of ru
Desertion would be punished by death, of course, and we discussed the possibility of dying together that way, in a final gesture of defiance. But that would have been passive, simply giving our lives to the army. Better to offer them one more time to the Taurans.
Finally, exhausted by talk and anger and grief, we just lay in each other's arms for the last night and early morning. I wish I could say we gave each other strength.
When he walked me to the isolation chamber three hours before launch, we were almost deferential with one another, perhaps the way you act in the presence of beloved dead. No poet who ever equated parting with death had ever had a door slam shut like that. Even if we had both been headed for Earth, a few days apart, the time-space geometry of the collapsar jump would guarantee that we arrived decades or even centuries apart from one another.
And this wasn't Earth. There were 150,000 light-years between Sade-138 and Aleph-10. Absolute distance means nothing in collapsar geometry, they say. But if William were to die in a nova bomb attack, the tiny spark of his passing would take fifteen hundred centuries to crawl to Orion, or Earth. Time and distance beyond imagination.
The spaceport was on the equator, of course, on an island they called Paerw'l; Farewell. There was a high cliff, actually a flattened-off pi
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Fortunately, I had six hours' slack time after we docked at the space station Athene, before I had to report for ALSC training. Time to pull myself together, with the help of a couple of slowballs. I went to my small quarters and unpacked and took the pills, and lay on the bunk for a while. Then I found my way to the lounge and watched the planet spin below, green and white and blue. There were eleven ships in orbit a few klicks away, one a large cruiser, presumably the Bolivar,which was going to take us to Aleph-10.
The lounge was huge and almost empty. Two other women in unfamiliar beige uniforms, I supposed Athene staff. They were talking in the strange fast Angel language, and I was listening with a rather slow brain.
While I was getting coffee, a man walked in wearing tan-and-green camouflage fatigues like mine. We weren't actually camouflaged as well as the ones in beige, in this room of comforting wood and earth tones.
He came over and got a cup. "You're Captain Potter, Marygay Potter."
"That's right," I said. "You're in Beta?"
"No, I'm stationed here, but I'm army." He offered his hand. "Michael Dobei, Mike. Colonel. I'm your Temporal Orientation Officer."
We carried our coffee to a table. "You're supposed to catch me up on this future, this present?"
He nodded. "Prepare you for dealing with the men and women under you. And the other officers."
"What I'm trying to deal with is this 'under you' part. I'm no soldier, Colonel."
"Mike. You're actually a better soldier than you know. I've seen your profile. You've been through a lot of combat, and it hasn't broken you. Not even the terrible experience on Earth."
William and I had been staying on my parents' farm when we were attacked by a band of looters; Mother and Dad were killed. "That's in my profile? I wasn't a soldier then. We'd quit."
"There's a lot of stuff in there." He raised his coffee and looked at me over the rim of the cup. "Want to know what your high-school advisor thought of you?"
"You're a shrink."
"That used to be the word. Now we're 'skinks.'"
I laughed. "That used to be a lizard."
"Still is." He pulled a reader out of his pocket. "You were last on Earth in 2007. You liked it so little that you reenlisted."
"Has it gotten better?"
"Better, then worse, then better. As ever. When I left, in 2318, things were at least peaceful."
"Drafted?"
"Not in the sense you were. I knew from age ten what I was going to be. Everybody does."
"What? You knew you were going to be a Temporal Orientation Officer?"
"Uh-huh." He smiled. "I didn't know quite what that meant, but I sure as hell resented it. I had to go to a special school, to learn this language-SoldierSpeak-but I had to take four years of it, instead of the two that most soldiers do.
"I suppose we're more regimented on Earth now; creche to grave control, but also security. The crime and anarchy that characterized your Earth are ancient history. Most people live happy, fulfilling lives."
"Homosexual. No families."
"Oh, we have families, parents, but not random ones. To keep the population stable, one person is quickened whenever one dies. The new one goes to a couple that has grown up together in the knowledge that they have a talent for parenting; they'll be given, at most, four children to raise."
" 'Quickened'-test-tube babies?"
"Incubators. No birth trauma. No real uncertainty about the future. You'll find your troops a pretty sane bunch of people."
"And what will they find me?They won't resent taking orders from a heterosexual throwback? A dinosaur?"
"They know history; they won't blame you for being what you are. If you tried to initiate sex with one of the men, there might be trouble."
I shook my head. "That won't happen. The only man I love is gone, forever."
He looked down at the floor and cleared his throat. Can you embarrass a professional skink? "William Mandella. I wish they hadn't done that. It seems . . . u
"We tried to get me reassigned as his XO."
"That wouldn't have worked. That's the paradox." He moved the cup in circles on the table, watching the reflections dance. "You both have so much time in rank, objective and subjective, that they had to give you commissions. But they couldn't put you under William. The heterosex issue aside, he would be more concerned about your safety than about the mission. The troops would see that and resent it."
"What, it never happens in your brave new world? You never have a commander falling in love with someone in his or her command?"
"Of course it happens; het or home, love happens. But they're separated and sometimes punished, or at least reprimanded." He waved that away. "In theory. If it's not blatant, who cares? But with you and William, it would be a constant irritant to the people underneath you."