After the name Yancy, the ensign called, "All right, follow me!" and led off toward an exit, another man following to herd stragglers. Jael stepped out of line and ran to catch up with the ensign. "Sir," she said, "my husband isn't here!"

He glowered but did not slow. He was the tallest man she'd seen, even among the Terrans, a lantern-jawed giant. His skin was brown, his arms and hands long, and his eyes were hooded by thick slanting lids. "Soldier," he ordered, "get back in line. If you've got a problem, it can be handled at the waiting shed. We'll be there in a minute."

Not relieved, she fell in immediately behind him. In two minutes they arrived at another large tent, where a lot of people waited. The ensign told his charges to sit down on a block of empty benches he pointed to. They all did except Jael. She stood determinedly.

"All right, soldier, what's your complaint?"

Briefly she explained. Without answering her, he took a phone from his belt. "Provost Station, this is Ensign Adrup Gompo, 3rd Processing Company, at Station E. I have a recruit with a beef. This one needs an arbiter." He put the phone back on his belt and looked at Jael again. "Sit down, soldier. That's an order. Someone will come to take you to an arbiter. He'll fix what needs fixing."

She stood half numb. She'd only half understood what he'd said. A runner arrived, and led her to one end of the tent, to a room walled by plastic curtains hung on wires. Inside sat a burly, middle-aged man. A placard on his desk read SGT. MAJOR NGUVA. His skin was almost black, his short salt-and-pepper hair formed tiny tight curls, and he wore a plug in one ear. There was a chair a few feet from his, but he left her standing.

"Your name, soldier?" He asked it amiably, while aiming a microphone toward her, then watched the monitor on his terminal while she answered. Next he tapped something on his key pad, before looking back at her. "What's your complaint?"

Again she described it. He tapped an instruction, then frowned, listening to something she couldn't hear. Now his fingers tapped a longer instruction. From a box came Esau's voice, then the corporal's who'd sworn them in, and finally her own. The sergeant major cut it off.

"Corporal DeSoto misinformed you," he said. "He told you one thing and did something else. Your husband has been assigned to Company B, 587th Infantry Training Regiment. You have been assigned to Company G, 249th Fighting Vehicle Training Regiment."

Her breath stopped, trapped in her lungs.

"For whatever satisfaction it may provide you, Corporal DeSoto will be reprimanded before the recruiting staff, assigned punishment, and perhaps demoted.

"After you have completed your basic and specialist training, which will require several months, both you and your husband will be assigned to a corps consisting of your own people. Meanwhile you will train in different camps. On the same planet, but he in an infantry center, you in a fighting vehicle center."

Her guts shriveled.

"Or," the sergeant major went on, "you can choose to transfer to the infantry. In that case, considering how you were misled, you and your husband can be in the same platoon and squad. But there are serious disadvantages in that."

Again he paused, observing her relief. "You can also have your enlistments cancelled, on the grounds of Corporal DeSoto's deliberate misrepresentation. In that case you will find yourselves in a civilian labor battalion." He paused. "Perhaps on a colony world, building fortifications. If the invaders arrive there, and the fighting goes badly, an effort will be made to evacuate our fighting units, but it is difficult to imagine a situation in which labor battalions can be salvaged."

He leaned forward, forearms on the table, his tone detached but not unfriendly. "The army is no bed of roses," he went on. "The Commonwealth is in serious danger of being overrun, and the human species eradicated. That includes you and me, small children, old people-everyone. So in the army-or in the labor battalions-the purpose of existence is not pleasure, comfort, or convenience. It is to stop the invader. Defeat him and drive him out. Bloody him so badly he will never return."

She stared round-eyed, understanding enough to get his meaning.

"That is what your training will be about, whether you are an armor jockey, or in your husband's infantry squad. One is about as dangerous as the other. In the infantry, however, the purely muscular exhaustion is much greater. The need for muscular strength results in female recruits being routinely assigned to fighting vehicles, but exceptions can be made." He eyed the wide-bodied, broad-handed young woman before him, clearly from a heavyworld, and wondered how many Terran men were as strong. "You will almost certainly be the only woman in your company," he went on, "and probably in your regiment. And ancient experience has shown that few young women can long stand such isolation from female companionship.

"Meanwhile you would not be sharing your husband's bed. Private moments of any sort would be few.

"As an armor jockey, on the other hand, the exhaustion is more of the nerves, and fighting vehicle regiments have many women."

He leaned back slightly in his chair. "You must decide now: armored vehicle training, your husband's infantry platoon, or a labor battalion."

Her eyes met his, and her voice, though quiet, was firm. "I want to be with my husband."

Sergeant Major Nguva smiled. "Good," he said, getting to his feet, and held out a large black hand with a pink palm. Hesitantly she shook it. "Congratulate your husband for me," he said, "on his good fortune in having so steadfast a wife."

Puzzles

The two Wyzhnyny sat in the grand admiral's office, talking. "Our progress?" the chief scholar said. "It is accelerating. We exchange limited sentences now, on a growing number of subjects."

Grand Admiral Quanshuk shu-Gorlak nodded without enthusiasm. "And what of the questions and topics I have listed?"

"I have not broached them yet. They… "

"None of them?!"

The interruption was discourteous and its tone accusatory, but Chief Scholar Qonits zu-Kitku did not lower his eyes. He was the leading scholar in their mutual and extensive tribe, and in this galaxy without a gender peer. But given certain enigmas in the operating situation, he understood the grand admiral's concern. "Your Excellency," he answered, "the subjects I am able to discuss with the aliens deal with everyday experiences, largely physical. I must have a much broader vocabulary, and refine what I already have, before I can even present the questions you ask. Let alone understand any answers.

"But each day we learn more. As you know, I now spend most of my waking time at the task." He might have added, but didn't, that he'd warned it would take time. Instead he gestured now, palms out and open. "And as I said, progress is accelerating."

Quanshuk nodded. The chief scholar's reply had been as much lecture as answer, but his own impatience had brought it on. Qonits was exalted in more than gender, and due both courtesy and high respect. Pique, impatience, and gender prejudice were inappropriate between them.

"Meanwhile," Qonits was saying, "the ship runs semantic correlations, and presents me with strategical areas to explore." He changed the subject. "It seems that among the aliens there are two parent genders, not one, each gender with fixed sexuality. You can imagine how such personal-incompleteness-might affect the individual, and that a mated pair might therefore bond very strongly.

"The two larger aliens are a mated pair. The smaller one, who does not speak, seems to be a member of their kin group, and is mentally and physically defective. It was being cared for by a servant-apparently of the nanny gender-when the marines captured it. The bond between servant and child had become profound, and killing the servant traumatized the child severely."