Unknown - The_Growing_589064

“Fuck me,” Koda gasps. “Now. Now!”

“Oh, yes,” Kirsten answers, and slips her fingers inside, holding still.

Past words now, Koda thrusts her hips against Kirsten’s hand, and Kirsten at last begins to move in long, slow strokes, her thumb finding the clitoris again, pressing and releasing, then swirling over the distended head until Koda’s spine arches and her body goes rigid. Looking up, Kirsten can see the pulse where it hammers against her lover’s neck, point counterpoint to the frantic beating of blood under her hand. Koda cries out wordlessly, and her climax takes her, rippling through the taut belly under Kirsten’s hand.

“Mitawa,” Koda murmurs again after a time that seems to stretch into infinity. “Winyan mitawa. Cante mitawa.”

“Mitawa,” Kirsten agrees, drained now. She rocks back on her heels, then shifts to lie beside Koda, who slips an arm under her head. Dakota’s eyes slide closed, and darkness takes them both.

*

For the second time this day, Koda emerges shivering from the shower. She wraps one of Maggie’s luxurious towels around her—another amenity that is among the last of its kind; there will be no more Egyptian cotton anytime soon—snatches her clean clothes from the hooks on the door and runs the half-dozen steps to the kitchen.

Kirsten already has soup on the stove, with the oven lit and its door open.

Within the compass of its heat, Koda pauses in the doorway, struck once again by the compact grace of Kirsten’s body as she goes about the mundane tasks of preparing a belated lunch. Her shorts and tank top leave her arms and legs bare, browned skin smooth over muscle attesting to unexpected toughness. Her hair, drying rapidly in the warm air, curls around her ears and over the back of her neck. The late afternoon light streaming through the window as she sets out bowls and spoons touches it to gold.

The sight brings a flush of warmth to Koda’s own skin, mingling with the heat from the stove as she steps over Asi’s snoring bulk, unfurls the towel and begins to rub herself dry. But she says only, “Grandma Lula used to talk about how she and her brothers bathed in a big aluminum washtub in front of the stove back on the rez. Maybe we should start doing that, too.”

“Grandma Lula?” Kirsten flashes her a smile and an inquiring glance. “Reservation?”

“My mom’s mother. Pine Ridge. She believed that suffering is good for you. Builds character.”

“Catholic school?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s why Ina’s such a radical. Equal and opposite reaction.”

Kirsten sets the last of the silverware on the table, then turns to face her. “Your mother’s going to object, isn’t she?”

There is no need to ask what Themunga will object to, no need to skirt the answer. Koda lays the towel over the back of a chair and begins to pull on her clothes. “She’s going to have a conniption, if she hasn’t already. But Ate will win her over.” She pauses for a moment, head buried in a long-sleeved shirt in Black Watch tartan. “He already counts you as a daughter, you know. So will she, given a little time to get used to the idea. It doesn’t hurt that you’re already picking up some Lakota ways.”

“Like talking to raccoons?” Kirsten’s mouth twitches in a quizzical smile.

“Among other things.” Koda grins in return. “Not even Themunga would argue with one of the Four-foot spirits.”

“Mm,” Kirsten observes noncommittally. “How’s your arm?”

“Just a scratch.” Koda rolls up her right sleeve, peels the backing off a clear Coloplast bandage and slaps it over the cut. “Next week you won’t even know it was there.”

“Sure I won’t. Let’s eat?”

The meal is simple, lentils and vegetables stewed together; they are rationing the meat brought by Wanblee Wapka because there is no time to hunt, and no rancher thins his herd in the spring. It occurs to Koda that there is a certain optimism in the assumption that they will last as long as their supply of protein; unless they win the upcoming confrontation, it will hardly matter whether there is meat for the next month or not. “So,” she says, sopping a piece of frybread in the savory broth, “what did you find out about that bomber droid while I was gone?”

Kirsten drops her eyes, giving her entire attention to the soup plate in front of her. “Pass the bread?” As Dakota hands her the basket, she says, “I found the control code. So I made a few more of them.”

The tone is so casual that it almost gets by, but the sheer improbability of it snags on Koda’s brain and hangs there, flapping in the breeze. She sets her spoon down carefully. “Say again, please.”

Suddenly losing interest in her own food, Kirsten pushes her bowl away with a short, sharp gesture. “I said, I found the code and made some more bomber droids.”

It makes no more sense than it did the first time. Granted that Kirsten is brilliant in her field and could probably rig a working computer out of string and paperclips and a few printed circuits. But the Base does not have the materials to make a convincing android, much less “a few more” of a very specialized model. Not in the space of three days. “What,” she says, “did you make them from?”

“The droids already assembled. At the plant down at Butte.”

Butte is just over the state line in eastern Nebraska, perilously close to Offut and the massing enemy. Dakota leans her forehead on her clasped hands. “You want to tell me about it? Or do I have to keep playing twenty questions?”

Kirsten reaches across the table to touch her arm briefly. “It was no big deal. I put together a patch that will target other droids instead of humans. Then I went down to Butte, did my biodroid act, and installed it in their inventory. I tested it. It worked. End of story.”

“Tested it on what?”

“A squad of military units.”

Koda lifts her head from her hands, her eyes on Kirsten’s face. “When did you decide to go?”

There is no sign of a struggle there; the clear green gaze meets her own. “When Jimenez brought me the part of the bomber droid that gave me the idea. Before you left for Minot.”

At least there will be no lie between them. It is cold comfort. “You might have mentioned it.” Koda speaks very clearly, biting off the words. “Say, just in passing. Something like, ‘Koda, I’m going to risk my life and everybody else’s chance of survival on a solo, possibly suicide, mission to a droid plant.’ Would that have been so hard?”

“Yes,” Kirsten snaps. “It would have.”

“You had no right!” Koda’s fist comes down on the table, rattling the soup bowls. “You’re the President! You’re the fucking Commander-in-Chief! Get used to it!”

“I had the obligation! The goddamned fucking obligation!” Kirsten rises and flings away from the table, facing for a moment out the window. Koda cannot see her face, only the rise and fall of her back with her rapid breathing. When she turns, the color has risen in her face, flushing her skin from the base of her throat to her forehead, turning her tan almost to copper. “I can’t ask anyone else to take risks I won’t take myself, Dakota. That includes the lowest private on the Base. That includes Maggie.” She pauses a moment. “And that includes you.”

“Goddam it, Kirsten. No President since Washington has led his own troops, much less—”

“Much less fought Cornwallis for his!” Kirsten’s chin comes up, eyes blazing. “Don’t talk to me about not having the right. The world has changed, Koda. You know that.”

A silence stretches out between them, spun fine along the currents of anger. Koda’s eyes linger along the red line of her wound, visible under the cloudy plastic of its dressing. Finally she says, “Fair enough. But why didn’t you tell me?”