Scardown-Jenny Casey-2 by Elizabeth Bear Page A

Richard?
    “If you were leaving presents like this for the backward natives of a backward world—wouldn't you want something from them when they finally came to say thank you?”
    “Troy,” I say automatically. I'm still thinking about my answer when a knock startles me. I grab yesterday's shirt and drag it on over my underwear, buttoning it more or less straight. “Coming.” A pair of warm-ups follows before I undog the hatch and jerk it open. “Valens. You're up early.”
    “May I come in?” And scrubbed and shining, too—full uniform, insignia gleaming almost as brightly as his silver hair despite the peeling redness of his nose and the blurriness of eyes that are usually bright and sharp. I wipe sleep out of the corner of my prosthetic eye and remind myself of ship discipline. Much as I'd like to keep him standing in the hallway, I step back and let him into my cabin. He takes up most of the available floor space, all cleft chin and precision. “I thought you deserved a personal wake-up call. It's your big day.”
    He glances around the room, eye lighting momentarily on the eagle feather in its cubby. I wonder if he was trying to catch Gabe and me together. I grin. Gabe's a civilian now. No rules against it. Besides, I know damn well they've got every room on this ship wired for sound. “First of many, sir. I was just doing my PT before heading down to the scrubbers.”
    “I'll expect you in uniform today,” he says. I scratch the back of my neck, funny sensation where the skin ends and the edge of the socket sits. It itches a little. Not like the phantom pain I used to get on my left side. Which is when I realize I haven't had that in a day or two either. And that the morning stiffness is lessening, and the aches at bedtime.
    “Or what, Fred? You'll court-martial me? You need me a hell of a lot more than I need you.”
    He tilts his head to one side, studying me like a judge eyeing a show dog. The effect is ruined when he sneezes. “If the petty rebellion makes you feel better, Casey, by all means, indulge yourself. As long as I can count on you when it matters, I don't care if you mouth off. We're beyond those kind of games now, aren't we?”
    Damn him.
“Yes.” I get a towel from my locker. “I guess we are. Bigger problems and all that.” Sure. A girl can walk away from her dreams of vengeance. I still want to see Valens court-martialed for what he did to me almost thirty years back. On the other hand, he's saved my life twice now. Sometimes things get a little hard to reconcile.
    “I guess you could call China a bigger problem.” His nod is slow, considering. He stares at the view out the porthole between his boots, but I don't think he's seeing it. “Earth is an egg, Casey. Eventually, the hatchling either puts its beak through the shell, or it suffocates in its own waste.”
    “And what about everybody who gets left behind? What about the damage we do on the way out?” I can all but hear my Haudenosaunee grandfather's wry comments as he stopped to pick up litter on the roadside.
    Valens scratches his earlobe. “We try to solve that problem when we're a little closer to realization.”
    I bite my lip on my answer. Use it up, throw it away, you can always get more. I guess it applies to planets, too.
    He continues. “In the meantime, you're scheduled for twelve hundred. Two Hyperex ninety minutes before, and one when you report. Do you have enough pills?”
    Damn
. The bottle he handed me when I started the VR program had twenty Hyperex tablets in it. Yellow poison dots no bigger than the plastic head of a sewing pin. A drug used in combat missions, colloquially known as the Hammer. He should know exactly how many I have left, as he's supervised my trials.
    And Valens knows what I went through with the Hammers and the pain meds, years ago. The first time I left the army. Before it took me back, over my very vocal protests.
    He's setting you up, Jenny.
Damn.
Has set you up
. “Plenty,” I