Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Her mouth opens, and she utters, again, the cry of the hawk, which is echoed by Wiyo, and then by human voices.

Many human voices.

A long line of men and women appear behind Dakota. Leading the line is Tacoma, dressed identically to his sister save for the single feather in his hair and the bone whistle cradled securely between his lips.

He looks at her and winks. She can’t help but smile back, filled with a sense of warmth and family far beyond anything she has ever conceived of knowing. She almost laughs aloud as the line dances slowly forward to Koda’s rhythm and she recognizes the men and women following. Andrews, his shockingly red hair free and down past his shoulders, wears a pair of Army camo pants and no shirt, his fair, freckled skin already starting to burn in the blazing light of the sun. Manny is next, looking every bit the full blooded Lakota, his hair finally grown out enough to braid.

Her jaw drops slightly as she recognizes Maggie, breasts proudly bared, her ebony skin shining blue in the sun, her teeth a blinding white as she nods to Kirsten and breaks into a beaming grin.

“My family,” she whispers, her eyes filling with tears once again. “My people.”

The strident scream of an air-raid siren breaks through her vision, jarring her back to full consciousness as her muscles close their steel traps once again.

She feels herself being lifted to her feet and steadied as she sways the tiniest bit, still caught between the present and what can only be her future. Can it? the more cynical part of her mind asks. Can it really? Dreams like that are not for you, Kirsten King. Not for you. Not for you. Not for you….

“We’ll just see about that,” she growls, grabbing Dakota’s hand just as the door bursts inward and Jackson plows through. “The enemy’s been spotted, Ma’ams. They’re coming.”

“In the air?” Dakota asks.

“No, Ma’am. On the ground. It’s….” He shakes himself out of his nervousness. “The Colonel requests your presence in her office. Best possible speed.”

“Let’s go.”

Jackson leads the way back out, but as Kirsten is about to follow, she’s tugged to a gentle stop by Dakota. She looks up into gleaming eyes.

“You were given a vision.”

It’s not a question, and she doesn’t have it within her to demur. Not now. Instead, she nods.

“It will come true.” Again, the tone of complete, unalterable certainty.

Lifting Kirsten’s hand, Koda places a kiss in the palm, then holds it over her own heart. “It will come true,” she states again, her belief bedrock.

“I hope so,” Kirsten whispers. “More than anything in the world.”

*

Hours later, with the last of the plans set into motion, Dakota and Kirsten return to the house for a brief period of privacy, each knowing that such a chance will not come again for a very long, strenuous time.

“I saw Manny earlier,” Kirsten says, looking up from her laptop where binary code continues to march futilely across the screen. “He’s not a happy camper.”

Koda lifts the kettle from the stove with both hands and pauses on her way to the bathroom. “I ran into him, too, when I made a last check on the patients in the clinic. He was walking around in the middle of his own personal cloud, but he didn’t say what was bothering him.”

“I know Maggie isn’t letting him lead the chopper squadron tomorrow. He’s been a glorified baby sitter for the last several weeks; that’s got to smart.” From the bathroom, Kirsten hears the water splash into the tub. They may die tomorrow, maybe tonight. But, by all the gods past and present, they are going to have a hot bath first. “How’s it going?” she asks as Koda returns to fill the pot and set it on the stove where two others are just beginning to steam.

“Almost there. I found a last bit of bath salts in the back of the cabinet. Want to go for it?”

“Oooo, decadence. Need help?”

“Nah, I got it.” Koda lifts another pot from the stove and disappears again.

The figures march across the screen in ranks, and it seems to Kirsten that they possess the same sort of mindless, mechanical determination that has been programmed into the droid soldiers. Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die . . .. The odd bit of poetry, relic of some long-ago literature class, floats up from her memory. And how, she asks herself wryly, is that so different from us? If we fail here, we all die, sooner or later. Some later, but just as surely. And then what?

Her vision, or her imagination, had seemed to promise that she and Koda would survive. So had Tega.

But she knows enough, by now, to know that prophecy is conditional, not what will be but what can be. It is up to her, to Dakota, to Maggie and Tacoma and Andrews and Jackson and Manny and all the rest, to carry that future and ultimately to bring it forth into the world. And there is a battle between that conception and that birth, and in that battle is death.

She lowers the top of her computer, pushing it away from her, and with it the thought. They are as ready as they can be: ditches dug, derelict cars and trucks rammed into barricades, troop placements and strategies mapped out. Even from the distance of the officers’ quarters, Kirsten can hear the steady roar of engines as their transports pull into formation on the flight line, the higher pitched whine of tanks and their two self-propelled howitzers as they take up their positions. Their rumble vibrates through the floorboards under her feet.

We’re going to make it. We have to. Failure is impossible.

In two hours, she and Koda will take their places in that line, move up the road to block the droids’ advance. The enemy has the numbers, but, given the rigidity of their programmed logic, the Ellsworth force has the tactics and the flexibility to exploit even a minuscule advantage to the fullest. And, despite the air raid siren, the droid army is dirt-bound. At need, Maggie will put the Tomcats into the air and bomb them to flinders. Which is, it occurs to Kirsten, probably why Manny is being held back.

The last pot comes on the boil, and Kirsten carries it into the bath. The steaming water smells sharply of lavender and something sweeter and more subtle, running under the astringent scent of the bath salts. Koda kneels by the tub, stirring a thin stream of cooler water from the faucet into the mix. Curling vermilion petals skim the swirls, here and there the bell of an entire flower, its anthers leaving a trail of gold in the water. Koda glances up, one hand still in the water. “Try the temperature. See if it’s right.”

Kirsten’s eyes sting suddenly, a prickling that has nothing to do with the eyestrain of the past hours. “It’s right,” she says around the catch in her throat. “It’s the best bath I’ve ever seen.” Then, more steadily, “Where’d you find the tiger lilies?”

“In the garden of one of the vacant houses. They’re panther lilies, actually, wild flowers. Someone must have brought them here from California.”

Bending to add her own pan of hot water, Kirsten looks more closely. She brushes a silken bloom with one finger as it floats by. “You’re right. They grow all over in the woods; I used to see them when my dad took us camping.”

Koda reaches up to capture her free hand, turns the palm up and kisses it. Her eyes, when she raises her head, are the deep blue of gentians, trouble in their depths. She says softly, “You’re trembling.”

Wrapping her fingers about her lover’s longer ones, Kirsten closes her own eyes. “I’m scared, Koda. I don’t know—” With an effort, she steadies her voice. “It bothers me when I don’t know what outcome to expect. It’s the scientist thing.”

“You have seen beyond tomorrow. Wika Tegalega has given you a prophecy.”