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Mandalay howled, hooted, and shrieked. Troopers on every deck, even those in
the brig and infirmary, were ordered into their battle suits until the "break
in the skin of the Mandalay" could be mended.
As the seasoned troops, cursing vehemently, struggled into their protective
battle armor, complaints were rife but not a breath of suspicion. If some
thought it very odd that they hadn't been ordered to close and seal their
helmets against loss of oxygen, battle-weary troops don't do more than they're
told to. The first insidious flow of the diluted hibernation gas spread across
every deck simultaneously. Not one trooper noticed - and every one of them
fell asleep, held upright in parade readiness by his stout battle suit.
The crew in their protective gear muttered about it being bloody unnatural to
move through the rank and file, lowering each to the horizontal mode. To
relieve the tedium of their caretaking duties, there was a spritely
competition about who had the most outrageous snore, the longest, the most
involved, the funniest. There was considerable controversy in the Mandalay's
wardroom about the competition: they didn't want the results to affect the
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Navy-Marine relationships when the troops were finally awakened. Captain
August had been heard to chuckle as some of the snore tapes were replayed.
"You'll notice. Captain," Damia Pharr said shortly before they had reached the
rendezvous, "that crew morale has also improved."
"Noted, Major. We can only hope that the improvement also includes our
sleeping beauties."
"It will, sir, it will," Pharr replied so devoutly that the captain
entertained no further doubts.
By the time the Mandalay eased into position in a docking bay at the gigantic
supply ship Grampian, even the air aboard had improved from barely breathable
to quite pleasant.
The officers were the first roused, for orders had come for them to attend a
briefing on the flagship. If the sparkle in the eyes of Colonel Gruen and
Major Loftus was any indication, Pharr's therapy had indeed worked its magic.
"We'll wait till our return, Pharr, to effect a full-scale revival," Gruen
told his medical officer, ignoring her smug grin. "We just might have some
good news to relay with the bad by then. Won't hurt. It's been so peaceful I
almost hate to wake 'em up"
Damia Pharr responded with a huge, jaw-popping yawn. "I get a chance for some
S and D first, Jay!"
"S and D?"
"No R and R? Try S and D. Makes a difference. You will see."
Formally piped on board the flagship, the colonel found an anxious wife
waiting at the air lock for sight of him. Her amazement at his rejuvenation
was heartening.
"I can't believe my eyes, Jay," she said, giving him a quick but ardent kiss
under the eyes of the grinning officer and ratings who were in the portal.
"Two weeks ago, you looked ghastly...." She broke off without further detail
of that clandestine contact and pulled him down the companionway out of sight.
"And it's not just you. Hello, Pete, you look rested and raring to go, too.
How ever did you do it?"
"You can't keep a good regiment down, you know," Pete Loftus replied,
grinning. Then a yawn escaped him and, chagrined, he belatedly covered his
mouth.
"There was nothing wrong with any man in the Montana Irregulars, Pamela," Jay
Gruen told his astonished wife, "that a good long sleep couldn't set right. A
little S and D would do you no harm either. I'll tell you about it on our way
to beard the general in his lair."
And he did. Nor was any of the Mandalay's complement surprised to find a
reference to S&D, aka "The Mandalay Cure," in the next General Orders. Damia
Pharr was given a double jump to bird colonel and celebrated the occasion with
M&M as the Mandalay joined the first Syndicate Expeditionary Force. But that's
another story.
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A Flock of Geese
The time storm shifted and that resettlement was enough to rouse Chloe,
attuned as she was to the distortion phenomenon. Awareness returned to her.
She fumbled for light, uncertain in her sleepiness what she was reaching for
until her hand found the slim metal cylinder. She had to focus her thoughts to
remember how to flick on this sort of beam. Then she angled it to shine on her
left wrist as her fingers sought the digital switch. The display informed her
that the relative elapsed time of the latest shift was four days, four- teen
hours, thirty-two minutes, and ten seconds. Time in Issaro's society had been
exceedingly complex. In her natal eighteenth century, she had been accustomed
to judging the relative time of day accurately by the sun's position. But the
sun was no longer a reliable timepiece.
From the stone shelf above her pallet Chloe took the clip-board and the
incredible pen that never needed to be dipped in ink. When she had added the
elapsed time to the neat columns of figures of time-storm duration and
intervals between the phenomena, no sudden insight revealed to her the secret
of the records she had assiduously kept for the past three years elapsed time.
Chloe sighed. If only she could discern the relationship between time storm
and interval, she would be as much in control of her continued existence as
she was of the cave and anyone who resided in it.
"Damnation take thee, Issaro," she said, ironically aware that Issaro probably
had met damnation when he had been caught too far from the cave at the onset
of that time storm. She hadn't meant to lose him until he had unlocked the
rhythm of the shifts. If, indeed, there was one, as he had constantly averred.
"Be that as it may," she added on a philosophical note.
At some future time, future at least in the sense of her own continuous
occupation of the cave, she would probably encounter another man from Issaro's
computer-oriented society and, with his help, delve the message of the
columns.
Now she prudently turned off the light. It was a useful device, less dangerous
than candles or sparks from flint and tinder, and brighter than any lantern.
Judicious use would extend the beam's life. One day, when her records had
divulged their secret configuration, she might know when she would touch again
in or near the time that had produced the compact hand light.
The cold of the time storm was gone and Chloe was feeling distinctly warm
under her layers of quilts, which she preferred to the lighter-weight blankets
and thermal covers the others used. In the earliest days in this cave refuge,
there had been freezes of such shocking intensity that her people had bundled
together under every available covering to generate enough warmth to keep them
alive. Determined never to suffer from such temperatures again, Chloe sewed
one patchwork after another from whatever scraps came to hand. The cave had
escaped such extremes of weather for a long time, and Chloe had a fleeting [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]