The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection

Mines ^{ELEANOR ARNASON}

We ruined Earth. Not completely. Some places are still okay: archologies in the far north and south and the off-planet colonies: a handful in space and one on the Moon. They’re for the very rich, the very well educated; and the lucky few who maintained the machinery. The rest of us lived with rising oceans, spreading deserts, and societies that are breaking down or already broken.

I was born in a refugee camp in Ohio. It still rained there, though most of the rest of the Midwest was dry. We lived in a tent and got one meal a day. There was some health care, thanks to Doctors and Dentists Without Boundaries. I didn’t die of appendicitis, because of the Doctors. The Dentists pulled some teeth and taught me to brush and floss.

When I was ten the recruiters came around, and I joined the EurUsa space force. That got me to another camp, where I lived in a barracks and ate three meals a day, meat and dairy as well as grain. There was regular medical and dental care. I thought I had died and gone to heaven, though I wasn’t allowed to go home.

“You’re soldiers now,” our house parent—a grim retired sergeant—told us. “Nothing matters except the army and your unit.”

There was one other thing that happened. The girls got hormone implants, so they would never have menstrual cycles. Periods are not easy in a war zone. Pregnancy is worse. The boys got vasectomies, no reason given. I figured there were plenty of people on Earth already, though a lot less than there had been at the start of the 21st century; and people who’ve been in combat can make bad parents.

The camp had a school. I learned all the education basics, plus military discipline and how to operate war machinery, starting with the AK-47. “The best low-tech field rifle ever built,” our house parent said. “They’re still in use in Africa. You know the old saying: you can’t have a revolution without an AK-47.”

When I was fifteen I had the second operation, which implanted a comm unit in my brain. Now I could speak to robots and my unit members directly. At twenty I was shipped out to the war.

A funny thing. Just as everything was going to hell at home, scientists at MIT—at the new campus in western Mass, since the old campus is underwater—discovered that FTL was possible. Expensive, but it could be done. The two large governments that remained—EurUsa and RuChin—built a couple of ships each, and sent them out to visit planets that looked habitable at a distance. You can see a lot with space telescopes. The ships found a couple of planets that were borderline habitable—microbial life, but nothing more, and air that had oxygen, but not enough. They could be settled maybe, but the settlements would always be on the edge of failing. Not what anyone wanted.

Then they found a beauty. There was vegetation and animal life and air we could breathe. Nothing was intelligent, so we didn’t have to worry about the Prime Directive or trouble from the natives. Taken all in all, it was an almost perfect planet.

The trouble was the ships from the European-American Alliance and the Asian Co-operative Union arrived at the same time, and both put down settlements on the planet. For a while everything was quiet, while lawyers argued over who owned what at the World Court. The settlements grew into colonies. The World Court could not come to a decision. And then the war began.

This was a Fifth Generation war. For the most part it consisted of hacking and drone attacks. A full-bore hot war would endanger the huge, fragile FTL ships when they were in-system, not to mention the huge, fragile home planet back in the Solar System, and the space colonies, which were even more fragile than Earth. Both sides held back. But there were soldiers on the ground, though their actions were limited.

(Remember warfare in the early 21st century: the huge, vulnerable aircraft carriers that were mostly not attacked, the atomic weapons that were mostly not used. Fifth generation warfare grew out of those contests. The theory was to wear the enemy—especially the enemy’s civilian population—down, without triggering a world war.)

That brings the story to me, arriving on a planet with purple-green vegetation and slightly heavy G. The home star was dimmer than ours, and the planet was closer in. There were flares, but they were predictable. Most of the time we could get to shelter. We were getting a little more radiation than on Earth, but not enough to worry about.

I don’t like war stories, so I won’t tell you mine. In the end, I was invalided out. I could have gone home, but why bother? I’d lost touch with my family, and I had no desire to live in a refugee camp, even if it was top of the line. It was easier and more comfortable to stay in Leesville, named after General Izak Lee (ret): a town of pre-fab buildings next to a purple-green forest. The trees in the forest had trunks that went straight up. Leaves grew directly from the trunks, big and frilly. Some trees had leaves going all the way up, and others had bare trunks and a big cluster of leaves on top like a palm tree, except they looked nothing like palm trees. (I know. We had palms in Ohio.) The leaves were iridescent, so they changed color when the wind moved them: purple to green, green to purple. No branches. None at all. It was something the life here had never tried, the way it never tried backbones.

The ground was covered with bright yellow, moss-like plants. These were parasites, like fungus. Filaments ran down to the tree roots and fed off them. More filaments ran to other trees. The forest used these to communicate with itself. Don’t think it was saying anything interesting. The xenobotanists said the filaments were mostly reporting moisture or lack of moisture, sudden attacks by bugs and slower attacks by vegetable parasites. It was nothing to write home about. The vegetation wasn’t intelligent, any more than the bugs were.

I got interested in the local life after I was invalided out and had time to read something besides military manuals.

Why? Why not? It was there, and it was the only complex ecological system we had found besides Earth. So, I talked to the scientists in Leesville and read their reports. In another life, I might have become a xenobiologist. In the meantime—here and now—I defended maize.

There were fields around the town, planted with Earth crops. The hope was we’d finally be able to live on what we grew, instead of rations shipped from Earth. The local plant and animal life was inedible and not easy to convert to something we could eat.

The enemy sent in drones that dropped to the ground in the forest, crawled into the fields and dug down, becoming land mines. When people stepped on the mines or machines rolled over them, they blew. This made farming difficult, and we really wanted to be able to farm.

It turned out the best way to find land mines was using African Giant Pouched Rats. They are rodents, but not rats and only giant compared to rats. They have an amazing sense of smell. Do a search on them, if you don’t believe me. They can find mines faster than robots can; and they’re so light, they don’t set mines off. Taken all in all, they’re cheaper than robots. They don’t cost any more to ship than a robot does. Once we had them here, they reproduced themselves, provided you had two of them and some rat chow. Though at the time I’m talking about they were new and not yet common. One of the army’s interesting innovations.

They’re cuter than robots and more affectionate, though the last doesn’t matter to the army.

Were we worried about them going feral? No. They couldn’t eat the local vegetation, and thanks to their caps, we could always find them. We hadn’t lost one yet.

I ended up with Whiskers. She had been modified to be smarter and live longer than natural African Giant Pouched Rats; and she had a metal cap on her head and wires in her brain, that allowed her to talk with me.

My mind comm had been turned off when I left the army. Can you imagine the silence? My buddies were gone. The robots we had worked with had vanished. It was like being alone in a huge, pitch-black cave—except for Whiskers, who was a flashlight in the darkness. Her warm body lay next to me at night. Her friendship kept me sane.

This day we were checking fields west of the town. Whiskers ran between the rows of maize, their bright green leaves startling against the purple and dark-green forest. I watched from the field’s edge. Overhead the planet’s primary shone, always dimmer than Sol. High, thin clouds moved across the sky. A mild wind moved the forest’s frilly leaves.

No. No, Whiskers said. No. Then, Yes. I checked her position and marked it. Whiskers moved on. No. No.

I called her in finally. She ran back, up my arm and onto my shoulder, nibbling my ear gently. I could feel her happiness.

Why do you love me, Kid? I asked.

Genetically modified, she replied. Designed to be smart and love you.

Only that? I asked.

Enough.

Her warm body huddled against my head. I walked home through the town’s muddy streets, between the prefab buildings. It was sunset now, the streetlights coming on, the air smelling of the alien forest. Like Whiskers, I was happy.

My apartment was a one-storey walkup: a living room, a kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom, all small. Okay by me. I’d never owned much, and I wasn’t about to start. Whiskers jumped off and ran to her food bowl, full of rat chow. I heated rations and ate them, while Whiskers finished her chow.

I forgot to say that this was the day I met Marin.

After the dishes were washed, I called a cab and went out to the porch to wait, Whiskers on my shoulder. It was raining now, not the downpours we’d had in Ohio, but a gentle and steady rain, the kind of precipitation that could last all day, soak deep into the dry soil, and wash nothing away.

The cab had a driver, which meant the auto wasn’t working. I climbed in back.

“The usual?” the driver asked. Even the human subs knew my pattern.

I said, “Yes,” and settled back.

The cab bumped over ruts and potholes. “You’d think the army would fix these,” the driver said.

“Not a priority.”

“Find any mines?”

“One.”

“Those bastards keep sneaking in. My partner lost a leg to one.”

“Lucky to be alive.”

“Tell her that. She’s not a soldier, so they didn’t replace it.”

“Was it one I missed?”

“Nah. Before you came. They were using robots. Effing incompetent. The mine was right in the middle of the forest road, and my partner drove over it. You’d think they could find that.”

The cab stopped. I held my wrist to the chip reader, heard it ping, and then climbed out. The driver looked through her open window, obviously hoping. I gave her a handful of change.

“Thanks, buddy. Have a good drunk.”

Yeah.

I went into the bar, Whiskers riding on my shoulder. The minute the bartender saw me they pulled a stalk of celery out of a jar. Don’t think that was shipped from Earth. It had grown in the town’s greenhouses. Maybe we’d be stuck with greenhouses, but we keep hoping for open fields. The local soil provided most of the nutrients our crops needed, and the local pests did not bother anything from Earth.

(There was a story about a field of zucchini that got out of control and spread. The local town ended up with more zucchini than they could eat, and the fruits left in the field grew more and more enormous, untouched by anything native. Finally, they grew dry and board-like. The local people made canoes out of them. This is a tall tale.)

Whiskers hopped onto the bar and took the stalk. I ordered a beer. Goddess, it felt good going down.

“Les,” the barkeep said to me, then nodded toward the end of the bar. A woman sat there in badly fitting civvies. There was something wrong about her posture. An injury maybe. Or she could be more augmented than I was, with body mods as well as a mind comm. Plenty of soldiers were.

“New?” I asked quietly.

“On leave. Drinking a lot.”

I had two jobs. One was finding bombs in the fields. The other was finding human bombs, people likely to go off. That may sound like a strange combination. But remember that the colony was small. A lot of people did two jobs. And remember I had Whiskers. She could smell a lot more than just mines. Her species had been used in Africa to find TB and HIV. If you don’t believe me, do a search.

I moved down the bar, Whiskers following, pitty-pat, the celery in her mouth.

“What the hell is that?” the woman asked.

“Whiskers, “I said. “My companion animal. She an African Giant Pouched Rat.”

The woman was okay looking: a dark, warm skin and crisp, short hair. That mouth might have been kissable a few years ago. Now it was compressed. Her eyes, almond-shaped and slanted, were heavy lidded. She looked tired and maybe a little drunk. I couldn’t tell what kind of body was under the civvies.

Whiskers was up on her haunches, nibbling the celery.

“New here?” I asked.

“What the eff do you care?”

“This is a small town. We pay attention to newcomers.”

“Your rat has a metal cap. What does that mean?”

“We can communicate. I need that. I miss communicating with my unit.”

“Yeah,” the woman said bitterly. “They use you up and throw you out, and you have nothing except silence.”

“There are other jobs,” I said. “I have one.” I told her about the mines, but not about the crazy soldiers.

Whiskers finished the celery and helped herself to a Goldfish cracker out of a jar on the bar. I wasn’t sure they were good for her, but she loved them. They came from Earth. You want to talk about crazy? Shipping crackers from Earth. But people liked them, and we couldn’t make them here. The economics of war are strange.

I took a handful and consumed them, along with my beer. “R and R?” I asked.

“Medical leave.” After a moment or two she said she was staying at the medical hostel in town, having work done by the hospital.

We sat in silence for a while.

One way to get people talking is to talk about yourself.

“I got invalided out.” I took another handful of Goldfish. “PTSD. I didn’t want to go home.” Whiskers’ nose was twitching, a sign that the woman smelled sick. What kind of sick I couldn’t tell. “Home was a refugee camp in Ohio.”

“Home was the Dust Belt,” the woman replied. “Moline, by the Mississippi. There was enough water to survive.”

“I’m Les,” I added.

“Marin.”

We shook. Her hand was enclosed in wire mesh, making her grip cold and very firm. Some kind of exoskeleton, which hadn’t been removed. Most likely that meant she was expected back in the war.

We sat together and talked about being kids in the old USA. Her parents had been members of a farming co-op, using water piped out of the Mississippi. Her older brother bought a share in the co-op, but there wasn’t enough money for her, so she joined the army. She’d been older than me when she joined, which made it rougher. But she’d tested better than I had on robot interface.

“Is that what the mesh is?”

Yes and no. She had operated one of the huge robots, the ones that seemed out of mech-kaiju plays. I’d seen them in the distance, stomping on enemy installations and kicking enemy units out of the way. Some were operated from inside and others at a distance. She had worked inside, striding ahead of our forces. When she moved a foot, the robot took a step. When she moved a hand, one of its huge hands and arms moved. Scary as all hell, though I wasn’t sure how effective. Military R&D is a mystery. I mentioned this.

“A lot of war is psychological,” she replied.

I asked why she was still wearing the exoskeleton.

“This isn’t to run a robot. It’s to run me, though the connections I already had helped when it was installed.”

Whiskers pattered down the bar, got another stick of celery and brought it back. She could follow some of the conversation via me. But a lot of human interactions are a mystery to a rat, even a smart rat.

“Why?” I asked. It was always possible she would go tell me to go away and stop bothering her. But you would be surprised how many people want to talk.

A drone had crashed into her bot, she said. Friendly fire. Not the drone’s fault. It had been hit by the enemy and flying out of control. The bot was destroyed, and she had multiple injuries, including a severed spine.

“They can fix that,” I said, which was true.

She’d had stem cells injected. The cells were supposed to connect across the gap her injury had made. It usually worked, but it took time. Meanwhile the mesh enabled her to move almost like an ordinary person.

We talked some more about Earth and this planet. I could tell Whiskers was uncomfortable, and I knew this was the woman. Finally I said, “I need to go. Nice to meet you.”

We shook again, her hand hard and cold. Whiskers collected more Goldfish and pushed them into her check pouches, making them bulge way out. Marin laughed. It did look silly.

“That’s dessert,” I said.

The rat hopped onto my shoulder. Sick,” she told me mind-to-mind.

Yeah.

I called another cab, this one automatic, and rode home over the rutted streets. The rain had picked up. The rain bugs were out, forced from their burrows by the water and climbing the building walls. Their shells were iridescent in the streetlights. Funny how much of this planet seemed to shine and gleam.

Once we were home I pulled a beer out of the fridge and asked, What kind of sick?

Whiskers pulled the Goldfish out of her cheek pouches and put them in her food bowl. A snack for later. Not an infection, she said. I can smell those. Something wrong in her body or mind.

Out-of-whack neurotransmitters and hormones. Those would give off a smell.

I finished the beer, then went to bed.

A lot of the war was feints and skirmishes, as I said before. The plan for both sides was the same: wear the enemy down slowly, risking as little as possible: a typical Fifth Generation War, carefully limited and held at a distance. No one wanted it to spread back to the Solar System. No one wanted to blow up the handful of FTL ships that came into the system, bringing new supplies and soldiers and scientists.

Now and then, the war on New Earth got hot. I dreamed I was in one of the hot spots, wading through a marsh. No moon, of course. The planet had nothing except a few captured asteroids, visible as moving points of light. Low clouds hid these and the stars. No problem for me. I had my night vision on. I could see the robots ahead of me, tall and spidery, picking their way through the reeds. Drones flew overhead, tilting back and forth to avoid branches. My unit was on either side. I noticed that Singh was alive, which he hadn’t been the last time I’d seen him. Lopez, too. I’d seen her sprayed across the landscape. A nice guy, not looking good at the end.

Something was pulling my rifle barrel down. I looked and saw Whiskers clinging to the barrel with all four feet. A voice said, Dream. Not good. Wake.

I was going to argue, but one of the robots stepped on a land mine, and everything blew up.

That woke me. Whiskers was on my chest, her nose poking at my face. Bad dream.

Yeah. I was covered with sweat. I got up and took a shower. It was close enough to morning so I made coffee, another import from Earth. Funny the things the army thought were worth shipping. Of course, we might not fight without coffee. But why the damn Goldfish?

Good, Whiskers said.

Well, yes.

The day went as usual. Whiskers found four mines in a harmless-looking bean field. In the evening I went back to the bar, Whiskers on my shoulder. Marin was there. I got a beer and sat down next to her. Whiskers sat on the bar top and chewed on a stalk of celery.

I can’t repeat what we said. Mostly I’ve forgotten the conversation, except for a feeling of discomfort from Whiskers. I was going to have to file a report on the woman. She needed more help than she was getting, and her modifications meant she was valuable to the army.

I do remember one bit of conversation. She’d been somewhere in the robot, wading across a wide, brown river. Deep in places, but not too deep for her robot. In the middle, where the main current ran, disks floated on the surface, going downstream with the current. They were a meter or more across with raised edges, bronze brown with streaks and spots of green. I knew these plants, though I had never seen them. The green was chlorophyll, and the disks photosynthesized. But tendrils hung down below them. These captured aquatic bugs and ate them. So the disks were carnivorous plants or photosynthetic animals. Take your pick.

The river reminded Marin of the Mississippi. I didn’t remember any carnivorous floating disks in Huck Finn.

I liked the woman. She was young and good-looking and less crazy than a lot of people I had met. She had a sense of humor, though I don’t remember any of her jokes. While she drank, she wasn’t getting seriously drunk. The only problem was the sense of unease coming from Whiskers.

I was lonely. Most of the people in the town were civilians: scientists and farmers, the people who ran the 3-D printing plant, the people who did maintenance and repair. They were good folk who had gotten good educations back home on Earth. They had a good abstract understanding of war. They knew about PTSD. They sympathized. But I was still an outsider, though they were grateful for my work and for Whiskers.

I liked talking to Marin, so I stalled on sending a report. Maybe I should trust the docs treating her. They would intervene if her condition looked serious. Was it my business that war made people strange?

I was in the habit of going to that particular bar. For one thing, they let Whiskers in. And Marin kept coming. I learned more about her family and the farming co-op. Turned out she could not stand her brother, the one who bought into the co-op, and she was angry that her parents had favored him. Why should he get the safe life on Earth? Why did she have to come here?

What bothered me about her was her anger. What I liked was her youth, her warm skin, almond eyes and lips that would have been lovely if they hadn’t been so often pressed together.

Of course, we ended at my apartment in my narrow, one-person bed, though it took a number of weeks, during which the barkeep kept looking at me funny. I ignored them.

I had never made love to someone covered with mesh before. Weird. The area between her legs was open and available, which made sense. She needed to pee and defecate. The rest was covered with mesh, except her head. The mesh kept changing when I touched it, sometimes soft like silk, then suddenly rigid. Imagine sex with a person whose surface is never the same. Though it stayed rigid along her back, support for her damaged spine. Even her breasts were mesh-covered, the nipples often squashed. I made do with what I could reach.

She came. I came. We lay together, her mesh—soft and cool, at the moment—against my bare skin. I could sense Whiskers, huddled in a corner and deeply upset.

Bad. Bad. Crazy.

Shut up, I told the rat.

Bad, Whiskers repeated.

It became regular: meeting at the bar, coming back to my place and making love while Whiskers sulked. Marin never stayed the night. Instead she went home to her apartment by the hospital. She didn’t like the rat, she told me.

The war must have heated up, because I was finding more mines. Correction, Whiskers was finding them, light footing over the soil between the rows of human plants in the fields outside Leestown, stopping and sniffing and saying. Yes.

Marin began coming out to the fields with me, standing with me at a field’s edge or walking along the edge. She recognized the maize, a plant that needed a lot of water, but was—she said—in many ways the best of all the grains. Native Americans in Mexico had made it a god, way back when. A young god, she told me. A beautiful young man. Of course, they sacrificed people to their gods. We only a sacrificed to our god of war.

I made a polite sound, since I had no opinion about the gods of ancient Mexico. Though I did check online and found images of the Mexican maize god. Lovely, and the ancient Mexicans did sacrifice to him.

It takes some sort of jerk to make love with someone who should be reported to armed forces medical. I was pretty sure Marin’s problem was mental. Anger and depression would be my diagnosis. Whiskers agreed. She knew the smell.

What was I going to do? Turn her in to armed forces mental health, who probably already knew we had a relationship? The barkeep’s sweetie worked in the hospital. Once anything gets in a hospital it spreads. I wasn’t a medical worker formally, but I ought to hold to their code of ethics. No sex with clients. If I turned Marin in, I would be having a conversation with my supervisor.

I could hope that Marin was called back to active duty. Or keep having sex with her, and pretend I didn’t know she was sick. Or cut her off, though that might cause its own problems.

One day she told me the stem cells weren’t working. Her spine wasn’t healing.

“Is that a deal?” I asked. “You have the mesh.”

“That will go if I leave the armed forces. “Do you want to?”

“Yeah.”

“Can they fix the problem?”

“Maybe. The stem cells have formed a tumor. That has to go. Then they might try again.”

I had nothing to say.

A few days later I was at a field. Whiskers was there, of course. So was Marin. We stood at the field’s edge, a short distance between us, watching Whiskers run.

All at once Marin was in the field, walking toward the center. I was slow off the mark and couldn’t reach her before she was too far in. No way I was going to risk the mines. I called Whiskers and she turned, running through the maize toward Marin. God knows what she—or I—thought she could do, being a fraction of Marin’s weight.

Marin stepped on a mine, and it blew. The rat had almost reached her. The explosion put Whiskers into the air, tumbling over the maize. I couldn’t see where she landed, but I could see Marin, down on the alien soil. I walked into the field, following Marin footsteps, knowing the path made me safe.

She was lying on her back. Most of her clothing was gone, blown away. The mesh was still there, netting her dark body with silver. I figured it had protected her, but I didn’t know how much. Not entirely. One foot was gone, most likely the one she’d used to step on the mine. Blood poured from the stump. I took off my belt, knelt and used the belt to make a tourniquet, then wrapped my jacket around the stump. Then I called emergency service and gave my location. “I need search and rescue right now.”

Blood came out of Marin’s mouth. I tried to find a pulse, but couldn’t through the mesh. There might be internal injuries. She didn’t look alive. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and I was worried about Whiskers. I hesitated, then stood and moved through the maize toward the place the rat must have landed, hoping I didn’t step on a mine.

Whiskers was there, lying on the dark soil—uninjured as far as I could tell, but unconscious. Maybe it was a mistake to pick her up, but I did and retraced my path, her small body hugged against me. I stopped at the field’s edge, one finger pressed into Whiskers’ throat. I thought I could feel a pulse, faint and uneven.

Jesus God, I didn’t want to lose her. I was shaking so badly that I couldn’t stand any longer. I folded down onto my knees. Be okay, I told Whiskers. Be okay.

S&R arrived.

I climbed onto shaky legs, still holding Whiskers in my arms. “There’s a human in the field. If you follow the footsteps you can get to her safely. But right now I want you to take me to the hospital.”

“Are you injured?”

I thought of saying no, then decided it would be smarter to say yes. The S&R van took me and Whiskers. A second van raced past us toward the field, as we turned onto the main street. That would take care of Marin.

I climbed out at Receiving and said, “I’m okay. But the rat needs attention.”

“For God’s sake,” Receiving (who was human) said, “This is a hospital. We don’t treat animals.”

I forgot to mention I usually carried a handgun, a comforting weight against my thigh. I thought of pulling it, then decided no.

“There is no vet in town,” I said. “You need to treat this rat. She’s genetically modified. The armed forces will want to keep her alive.”

Receiving frowned and hesitated, then found a doc. I stayed with him, while he examined Whiskers. “You understand I am not an expert on animals.”

“This is a mammal from Earth, a close relative, part of our evolutionary line. Do what you can.”

He ran Whiskers through a scan. “No broken bones. The organs look okay. I’m not seeing any internal bleeding.”

Around that time I heard Whiskers in my mind. A thread of a voice. What?

You took a hit from a mine, Buddy. This is the hospital.

Whiskers sniffed, taking in the hospital smell, the doctor, my fear, then asked, How is Marin?

I looked at the doc. “How is my human companion?”

He paused, listening to his comm. “I’m sorry. The trauma was too severe. She died.”

“I figured as much,” I said.

The doc looked at me funny. Was I supposed to show more grief? Marin hadn’t been a friend, only a lover. I touched Whiskers’ side gently. You did the best you could, Buddy. You couldn’t have saved her.

Didn’t like her.

I know, Bud.

That was that.

There was a vet two towns over. I took Whiskers, hitching a ride, and she was checked a second time. The vet said there might be some problems due to concussion. That caused most of the trouble with human soldiers. Time would tell.

I thank him, paid and got a receipt. The armed forces ought to pay.

Then I went home, had a few beers, went to bed and had nightmares. I was with my unit, and Marin was there as well, walking beside me, then stepping on her mine. This time she wasn’t wearing the silver mesh, and she blew apart, making as big a mess as Lopez had. Jesus, I was covered with blood.

I woke, shaking and sweaty. Whiskers said, Bad dream.

Yeah. After that I couldn’t sleep.

I touched base with my supervisor the next day. Marin had seemed fine to me, I told him. Whiskers hadn’t reported any problems. Maybe I made a mistake in getting involved with her, but she really did seem okay. My supervisor told me to be more careful in the future. I said I would.

Should I have felt more for Marin? Maybe. But I didn’t. I could say that the war effed me up, and I no longer had normal reactions. But I knew what was right. I shouldn’t have gotten in bed with someone who was obviously vulnerable, especially since Whiskers had disapproved.

I didn’t say any of this to my supervisor. Instead Whiskers and I went back to finding mines.

The war heated up. I found more mines. Robot tanks lumbered through Leesville. Once I saw a kaiju-mech robot pushing its way through the forest, knocking down trees. A heck of a sight, even at a distance. Marin had been right. War involved psychology, and the kaiju-mech bots were scary, even when they were ours.

After it was gone, I went out into the forest, following the forest road—it was safe—and found the robot’s footprints, deep depressions in the yellow moss, already full of water. The moss must be bleeding into the depressions. I could look into the nearest pond, which was full of swimming bugs. How had they gotten there so quickly? Life went on, and I really wished I could be a xenobiologist.

Hacking became more frequent. Our local systems went down, then back up, then down again. The FTL ships came less often, though none of us knew exactly what that meant. According to the ship’s crews, everything was fine back home, even though the ships no longer brought new people, only supplies. Why? Because people could tell us what was happening on Earth? Rumors said the war had spread back home, or else the governments had decided FTL was too expensive and the planet not worth fighting over.

Finally the FTL ships stopped coming. No explanation. They simply weren’t appearing in orbit. This was true for both sides. No Goldfish. No coffee. No tea. No chocolate. Nothing except what we could grow or print on this planet. The local printing plant made crackers, but they weren’t as good as Goldfish.

Whiskers complained.

Can’t help you, Bud.

Of course we sent messages back to Earth, asking what the hell was going on. If all went well, we’d get an answer in 80 years. Or the ships would come back. Who could say?

The war slowed after that. The hacking mostly stopped, but the drones kept coming in. Once they were activated, they would keep doing their job, with no way of calling them back. I guess you could say they—and we—were like the local organisms. Most were segmented, and a lot were a meter long. A little creepy, like huge centipedes. They could give you a nasty bite.

If you found one and chopped off the head, it would keep moving. Its sensory organs were all the in head, so it could no longer see, hear, taste. It blundered around on its many legs, until another bug found it and ate it. Nothing ate us here. We and the drones kept blundering, going through the motions.

Whiskers said I smelled funny.

Anxiety? Depression? I asked. These were the usual problem.

Not sick. Funny.

One morning I woke up with cramps. I got and discovered my sleeping shorts were drenched with blood. So were the bed sheets. Of course I called the clinic. I don’t like blood. It reminds me of my dreams: Marin lying in the maize field, Lopez and Singh. The clinic sent a van, with a tech who wouldn’t let me take Whiskers. I left her crouched in a corner of the living room, looking terrified.

It’s okay, Buddy.

Afraid. So are you.

Which was true.

A nurse at the clinic examined me. A big guy with a skin as black as midnight. He must have rotated in from another town. I didn’t recognize him or his accent. Caribbean maybe. There were islands in the Caribbean that were still above water.

After he was done with the examination, he said, “What we have here is menstrual discharge.”

“What?” I said. My voice sounded loud.

“Your hormone implant has failed. You are having a period.”

“I am thirty-effing-two.”

“Late for a first period, but that’s what you are having.”

“Then put in another implant. I really don’t like this.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t. The hormone implants come—or came—from Earth. We can’t make them here. We have a limited number left, but they are restricted for soldiers on active duty. You are not.”

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“What women have always done,” he said. “Insert a tampon—I can print some out for you—and take ibuprofen.”

My crotch felt as if something bigger than Whiskers was trying to chew its way out. There was blood caked on my legs. I wanted to shout at the nurse, but I didn’t. What could he do? If he didn’t have the implants, then he didn’t. I was not going to demand something that was needed by soldiers on active duty.

He printed out the tampons with instructions and gave me a bottle of ibuprofen. I went to a bathroom, read the instructions an inserted a tampon—God this was a crude way to solve a common problem—then took two ibuprofen and went home in a cab.

Whiskers was still crouched in her corner. I picked her up and cuddled her. Nothing serious, Bud. I’m okay.

Pain.

It will go away.

Wrong, Whiskers said.

Not a sickness, I replied. A hormone change. I think that’s what you smelled. I’m going o have to do a wash.

Yes, said Whiskers.

I stripped the bed and put the sheets in a bag, ready for a trip to the community laundry, then took a shower and changed into new clothes. The chewing in my crotch had moderated some.

Sometime in all this I realized that we were really on our own. The FTL ships might never come.

The community radio was on, playing Wagner, “The Flying Dutchman” overture. I lay down, feeling miserable. Whiskers climbed onto the bed and huddled at my side.

Of course the cramps ended, and I went back to checking fields for mines.

We can’t ruin this planet. There are too few of us, even with our technology. If the ships don’t come back, our technology will begin to break down, and our war will wind down to nothing. The question is, will it happen while we still have a chance of survival here? It would be easier to stay alive if we joined forces. People are beginning to talk about peace.

I’m still having periods. The clinic says it ought to be possible to make the hormone implants here, but the project is on a back burner. Other things are more important in an economy of scarcity and war.

I have not gotten used to having cramps. I want this war to end.

Do I still dream of Marin? Yes.