The Hospital

Casualties from the Fire Base Raid were only a small part of those received by the hospital over a forty-eight-hour span. The less seriously wounded were sedated, put in hastily set-up squad tents without floors, then largely ignored.

It was morning when Esau awoke, with a bad headache, and found himself on a folding cot with mattress. A mosquito bar was draped over it. Getting up he went outside, barefoot and in a hospital nightshirt, to find and use the latrine. He'd just settled down when another B Company trooper sat down next to him, a sergeant named Ferris, from 3rd Platoon. He had an arm in a sling.

"Morning, Esau," Ferris said. "What happened to your head? Jael hit you with a skillet?"

Esau might have scowled, but didn't. "Jael's in the bot shop," he said. "From the Pecan Orchard Raid. The Wyzhnyny killed her body; she took a blaster pulse in the guts."

"Oh… Gentle Jesus, Esau, I'm surely sorry. I shouldn't have said that. War's no good place for jokes I guess. I was just wondering about your head being all bandaged up."

Esau nodded. Carefully. "The doctor says I took a fragment through my helmet, and it cut a groove across my skull. And scalps bleed pretty good; it looked worse than it was. I'll be back with the platoon in a day or two, if there's any of it left. We jumped the Wyzhnyny fire base that was shelling headquarters base. I don't know how it finally worked out."

Before they left the latrine, Ferris told Esau there wasn't a whole lot left of the rest of B Company. They'd been in the breastworks, fighting all of yesterday and the night before, and even before that. The good part was, most of the casualties were wounded or bot cases. A lot of the fighting had been with grenades and mortars. People got hit with fragments, or lost arms or legs or hands. Or got burned; the Wyzhnyny'd used flamethrowers.

Then in early evening, the Wyz had pulled back. Division figured that meant a heavy Wyzhnyny barrage, so Colonel Leclerc pulled 2nd Regiment back, too. Then, with dusk thickening, the shells started roaring in. Sounded terrible, even from a ways off, and chewed up the forest pretty badly, but didn't really harm the abatises that much. Even most of the breastworks more or less survived.

The shelling stopped just when it had started creeping westward. The rumor was a bunch of Indi tanks had hit the artillery base and shot it up pretty bad. Leclerc had sent 2nd Regiment back in, but the Wyz didn't come back. "What happened to me is," Ferris added wryly, "a broken limb fell out of a shot-up tree. Broke my collarbone. Heh heh heh. A tree taking revenge! I guess trees don't distinguish people from Wyzhnyny."

Esau nodded without smiling. It seemed like in war, there were all sorts of ways to get hurt or killed.

He wiped his butt and left. He felt hungry, a sign, he guessed, that he was getting back toward normal. When he got back to the tent, a clean uniform lay folded on the cot. He put it on; it didn't fit too badly.

At noon, the mess line buzzed with stories and rumors. A guy from Dreiser's Platoon, Mellon, was there with a bandaged face. He'd lost an ear to a grenade fragment, and another had gashed his cheek and jaw to the bone. Best he could do was mumble; Esau had to concentrate to understand him. Mellon had gotten out later than he had, when two more medivacs arrived at the fire base. One left loaded. The other left only partly loaded; it had gotten too dangerous to stay. A lot of Wyzhnyny reds had arrived in APCs-a battalion, he'd heard-and attacked what was left of Airborne A and the demolitions company. Then a dozen Indi tanks had arrived and pounded the Wyzhnyny. Right after that, an Indi air squadron had swooped in and shot them up some more, but by then, Airborne A and Demolitions were pretty much used up. When the medivacs went back again for casualties, about all they found were dead.

But the Artillery Base Raid wasn't the major topic. Mostly Esau heard about the fighting in the forest. That's where most of the casualties came from. It sounded pretty bad.

After lunch, Esau went back to his tent and lay down, but before he could get to sleep, a doctor came in, looking worn out. He told Esau he'd have to stay a few more days. Esau was glad to hear it. He felt used up.

Esau told him about Jael. The doctor gave him a note, saying he could go to the "Cyborg Processing Center" to see his wife, if she was allowed to have visitors. So after the doctor left, Esau did too.

He had no idea what to expect. The bot shop turned out to be somewhat like the hospital but smaller-a long low prefab building with several similar buildings attached along the sides like hover-fly wings. It was as clean as you could hope for; smelled like turpentine. Terrans in white coats moved through the halls, and went in and out of rooms.

He was directed to a desk, where he showed his note to a woman and said he'd like to visit his wife, Jael Wesley. Another woman, taller than he was, took him down a hall to one of the wings, to a room, and went inside with him.

On a cart was a sort of cylinder, maybe two and a half feet long, and eight inches across except at one end where it was bigger. There were wires and tubes and dials, with a couple of boxes attached. His heart sank.

"Jael," the woman said, "Esau is here to see you."

"Hello, Esau. I knew you'd come see me if you could. What happened to your head?"

The words came from one of the boxes. Esau's eyes welled up and ran over till they dripped on his clean shirt. It was almost like that night in the woods-the night he'd come back from the Pecan Orchard Raid-except this time he didn't sob, just moaned. Because the voice wasn't Jael's. The plastic cylinder wasn't Jael. Jael was dead, and he hadn't let her finish dying. "I'm sorry," he choked out. "I'm sorry. I just didn't want you to be dead."

"Oh, Esau, don't be sorry. I'm not." If the voice wasn't hers, the tone was. It reminded him of when she felt fond and loving. "And I'll have my new body pretty soon. Sergeant Boucher took me to see it. You'll be impressed."

He pulled himself together. "I… will." It began as a question and ended as affirmation. "Yes, I surely will… That is you in there, isn't it. The voice isn't yours, but it's you. I recognize… I recognize the soul."

Jael laughed quietly. It didn't exactly sound like a laugh, but he knew that's what it was. "That's right," she said, "when they take out the CNS, the soul comes with it. And the voice will come along. It takes practice, and I only just started day before yesterday. I didn't realize how poorly I'd laugh though. I hadn't tried it till just now."

It was only then he realized: she'd asked about his bandages. She could see as well as hear. The nurse said they had ten minutes, then left them alone. It turned out to be more like fifteen, and they got quite a bit of talking done. The best was Jael told him she'd rather be a bot than an invalid. "As for a bot agreement bringing bad luck," she finished, "I didn't sign one, and look what happened anyway."

Then the nurse returned and shooed Esau out. He found a place in the woods where he could sit alone and think, and weep some more, and talk to himself. Till after a while he felt pretty good. He even laughed at his own joke: grubbing stumps would be a lot easier, with a wife that was a warbot.

Not that he expected to farm after all this. Not really. He could, but he didn't expect to, even if they lived through this war. But there'd be something to do.

That wasn't the end of Esau's day. He'd gone to the hospital to check on Ensign Hawkins, who turned out to be asleep, sedated, with his broken leg hoisted up. The nurse said he'd been in pretty bad shape from prolonged, untreated shock. But he'd heal all right. It would just take a while.