Нэнси Кресс - If Tomorrow Comes

Owen entered the wardroom just as he stuffed the towels into the recycle chute. “Brodie—aren’t you on exercise rotation?”

“Yes, sir. Bathroom break.”

Leo started doing pull-ups.

In his off-duty time, he knocked on the door of sick bay. The passageway lights had been dimmed to simulate night. The briefing in the common room, which even the Rangers had attended, had yielded a lot of math and astronomy that Leo didn’t follow and two useful pieces of information: still no response from Kindred to the Friendship ’s radio messages, and the spore cloud would hit the planet ten weeks from now. Why an hour-and-a-half meeting to tell everybody that? And why did the hour-and-a-half briefing have to fall in Leo’s off-duty? But it was what it was.

“Come in.”

Dr. Bourgiba switched off the wall screen, which showed the common room; he must have been watching the briefing. In the low light, Zoe lay asleep or knocked out on the bunk. Leo smelled disinfectant, a smell he’d never liked.

“I came to see how Berman is, sir.”

“She’ll be fine. Sit down, son.”

Leo disliked being called “son,” but he sat. The doctor said, “Did you know about Ranger Berman?”

“Know what?”

Bourgiba met his gaze squarely. The doctor’s eyes were very dark, almost black. He looked in pretty good shape for a civilian in his forties, but he was no Colonel Matthews. Bourgiba said, “Ranger Berman was pregnant. Were you the father?”

“No!” Despite himself, Leo was shocked, which was ridiculous. “How could she be pregnant? They had physicals just two weeks ago! Anyway, she’s a Ranger—too smart for that.”

“Nonetheless, she was. An ectopic pregnancy—do you know what that is?”

Leo shook his head.

“The fetus implanted in a fallopian tube, not in the uterus. Tubes don’t stretch. So when the pregnancy grows too big, the tube bursts and the patient bleeds internally. When Dr. Patel and I opened Berman, she had a liter of blood in her belly. But she’ll recover fine.”

Leo leaned forward in his chair. “Does anybody else have to know about this? I don’t know how Berman got pregnant”—stupid statement, there was only one way—“but it would get her tossed out of the Rangers. Especially since she’s the only female Ranger with combat experience and that’s why she’s on this mission. It’d be a huge stink and the Army would discharge her.”

“Leo—discharge her to where ? We’re in an alien star system and in temporal dislocation.”

Well, shit. All true. Still… “But they might discharge her when we go home. In twenty-eight years, I mean. And even now, aboard ship… she’ll want to resume her duties, it’s why she came. Why we all came. Can’t you just say her appendix burst or something?”

Bourgiba didn’t smile. Leo gave him credit for that. He said, “Any physician could tell the difference instantly. But I see what you mean—her unit and commanding officer might view her differently, as a female liability, and you don’t think she deserves that, right?”

“Right.”

“I won’t falsify her records, but I will tell Colonel Matthews that her surgery was to address an abdominal problem that has been fully repaired. If he doesn’t actually read her chart, that may be enough, and he probably won’t read her chart because everyone has so much else to deal with. Ranger Berman should be able to return to duty in a few weeks. Will that do?”

“Yes. Thank you, sir.” Leo stood. No way a Ranger was going to stay in bed for two weeks; by that time they’d have made planetfall. Zoe would be on her feet by the day after tomorrow.

Bourgiba said, “And you were not the father.”

“No. I never met her till I came aboard.”

“Are you two friends?”

“Not really. She keeps pretty much to herself.”

Bourgiba looked at him more closely. “Then your concern for her is admirable.”

“She’s in my unit.” Didn’t civilians understand anything?

“I see,” Bourgiba said, although Leo doubted that he did. “Get some sleep, Ranger Brodie.”

“I’m not a Ranger. I’m just on temporary duty with—”

“Get some sleep anyway. You can visit Ranger Berman tomorrow.”

When Leo returned to sick bay the next afternoon, Dr. Patel was there. She nodded at Leo and said in her pretty accent, “Ah, Ranger Brodie. Perhaps you would like to visit with Ranger Berman alone. If you need assistance, just activate the comm and call for me.”

She smiled at him. Dr. Patel, who only came to Leo’s shoulder, was as old as Dr. Bourgiba, but her smooth brown skin and dark curls looked good to Leo. All women were looking good to him lately—it had been too long—except for, now, Zoe Berman, which was weird because she was the most beautiful woman aboard. Something to do with her leaking blood all over him yesterday. Or maybe with her hard scowl.

The first thing she said was, “I suppose you ratted me out to Matthews.”

“No. I didn’t tell anybody.”

Surprise, followed by suspicion. “Yeah? Why not? Against regs.”

“Didn’t think you’d want me to.”

She looked at him a long time, until the expression in her cat-green eyes changed and she turned her head on the pillow so that her gaze rested on the ceiling. “I didn’t know I was pregnant.”

“Pretty stupid.”

“Yeah.” She wasn’t offended, and Leo saw all at once that she wanted to talk. He pulled up a chair.

Zoe said, “It was a sort of farewell fuck. I got so little body fat that I was supposed to be immune. I always was before.”

Leo nodded. His foster family, the one he’d stayed in longest, had had four older girls. Nasty, manipulative bitches that had bullied and hurt him, but Leo had learned to listen.

Zoe said, “I didn’t even like him that much. But we were drinking and he was cute and he was there and… you know.”

Leo knew. He’d had a lot of sex just because the girl was there . He could tell, too, from the way Zoe turned her head to look at him that she was done talking and that now he was supposed to say something personal. Girls did that. It was how they made friends. Figuring out this weird bit of girl-lore had helped Leo get a lot of them into bed, although that wasn’t what was going on here. This might be better; he could use a friend aboard the Friendship . He was mulling over which piece of his personal life to offer when Zoe took that decision out of his hands.

“Why’d you wash out of Ranger School?”

“How do you know that?”

She rolled her eyes. “You think there wasn’t a lot of talk about bringing you into the unit? A lot of poking around online?”

“Didn’t think about it. But your poking didn’t turn up the story?”

“It wasn’t my poking. And Lieutenant Lamont didn’t say anything, neither. Flores is pretty good on the computer.”

Flores, scowling at his tablet, leaving the wardroom when Leo came in to exercise. “He didn’t want me here.”

“Nope. But he’ll do what Lamont wants. Worships the guy. You still didn’t say why you washed out.”

“I didn’t, exactly.” Leo took a deep breath. Did he want to tell her this? Well, why the hell not. It was what it was. “I was there with Owen. Lieutenant Lamont, but he wasn’t a looie then. We went together through RASP and then Fort Bening, then we were in mountain phase and I got into some poison ivy.”

“So? I did, too. Common.”

“Yeah, but I’m allergic and didn’t know it. I got blisters all over my body. That wouldn’t have been too bad except that the blisters got infected. Sepsis, with a fever so high I hallucinated. Owen carried me back down the mountain. Saved my life.”