Bertol Bakkis's body would never again pickle in ethanol; Graves Registration personnel had treated it with something more permanent. At least, though, it had been spared the indignity of being torn up by blast slugs; a fragment of lobber rocket had ripped through his sternum and right ventricle, killing him instantly.
Not that Bertol and Konni had tried anything as strenuous as accompanying a platoon into action; they'd stayed near the carrier, shooting what cubeage they could from there. Several lobber rockets had hit nearby, and he'd been one of the casualties.
It took Varlik and Konni most of the day to edit their cubes and narrative reports. After they'd delivered them to the communications center for the next day's pod, they'd gotten maudlin drunk together in honor of Bertol. Then Varlik had jogged, sweating, through the prairie night to the T'swa camp.
He could have stayed in the air-conditioned media quarters at base camp. But if he had, he'd have ended up in the sack with Konni—she'd seemed to be inviting it—and he wouldn't allow himself that. Mauen, he felt, deserved better than an adulterous husband.
The first mile of jogging had taken him in uncertain wavers along the travelway, but by the time he arrived, he was pretty much sober from the exertion and sweating. And had begun to wonder and worry. Had the T'swa held a memorial of some sort for their killed and he missed it? At the tent of the First Squad, all of whom had returned unscathed, Sergeant Kusu raised his head for a moment as Varlik entered.
"Can I talk with you?" Varlik whispered.
In answer, the T'swi had swung his legs out of bed, and together the two of them went outside.
"I had to work all day, on my reports," Varlik said. "And one of the video team was killed at Kelikut, so the other one and I—got drunk this evening, in his memory. I hope I didn't miss anything you guys did, any memorial you held, for your dead."
"You didn't," Kusu said. "We make our farewells privately, personally."
Varlik nodded and turned on his belt recorder. "At the communications center they told me the regiment had lost twenty-nine killed and sixty-one wounded, but they said there weren't any missing. How could anyone tell the killed from the missing in the dark like that, pulling out the way we did?"
In the moonlight, the black face seemed to smile very slightly. "We have our method."
"Is it—all right to tell me about it?"
"Certainly. But you might prefer not to know."
The answer froze Varlik's mind for a moment. Then, "I see," he said, not seeing at all. "I would like to know."
"The dead come to us as spirits, thus we know who they are. All the rest returned physically. Thus no prisoners, no missing."
The dead tell them. Varlik had nothing to reply and nothing more to ask; he simply nodded. Kusu stood for a moment as if waiting for possible further questions. When none were forthcoming, he said good night and went back to the tent.
Mind spinning in slow motion, Varlik got his towel and walked to the showers where, beneath the stars, he washed away the sweat of his run. Somewhere in the process his mind relaxed, and when he went to bed, he lay awake only briefly. The dead came to them, and the farewells were personal and private. The sort of things—superstitions—that you could expect from gooks. But these "gooks" weren't gooks. And if they said it, he would not gainsay them, even inwardly to himself. Even if he couldn't accept it as truth.
Then he slept, and dreamed, and when the whistles wakened him near dawn, he felt rested and revived, and surprised by it, ready for the day despite all he'd had to drink and his shortness of sleep.
That day he trained with the T'swa. The day after that he went to the base. There wasn't much to report, although he sent off a letter cube to Mauen, but he wanted to update himself on the Beregesh invasion. He ended up flying south again, in an armored staff floater with Information Office personnel, to see and record the battle site. He hadn't thought to get a cool-suit, and had had the choice of either going later or going without one. He was the only one on the plane who didn't have one bundled beside him.
At Beregesh, he found the battle over, with two full divisions, one Iryalan and one Romblit, securing the surrounding area. Cargo carriers were landing equipment and supplies in quantity, the area resembling some mad and disorderly quartermaster depot. Casualties had been moderate, and yes, a major told him, the T'swa had done a thorough job of neutralizing Bird fortifications.
Occasionally he heard distant firing; some of it couldn't have been much farther than a mile away.
He ran into Konni at the field HQ. She'd arrived the afternoon before, when there'd still been sporadic hard fighting close by. She'd spent one night sleeping in a cool-suit, and was going back to Aromanis later; she'd share her cube with him if he'd like.
Next he caught a ride on a hover truck hauling digging equipment to the perimeter, where fortifications were being built. The driver was a Romblit reservist, a tall ex-farmhand corporal who looked rawboned even in his cool-suit.
"Mate," the Romblit said, "I don't see how you can live without a cool-suit. It's bad enough here with one. I tried to sleep without mine for a while last night and liked to have died. How d'you do it?"
"Not very comfortably. But I thought I'd better give it a try."
The driver steered around a caved-in bunker, then nursed the rig through a shortcut, angling down into a shallow rocky draw and up the other side, to hurry jouncing along a rough track bulldozed through open scrub growth. Mostly the way was slightly downhill. Varlik kept his camera busy.
"You're that news guy that lives with the T'swa, ain't you?" the man asked.
"Right."
"I figured, what with no cool-suit and that funny-lookin' spotty uniform. How come they make 'em like that?"
"They're harder to see in the woods. They call them camouflage suits."
"Huh! I've heard you train with the gooks—run all day through the hot sun like a herd of buck." The man's tone was not disparaging; he sounded impressed.
Varlik understood how things could get exaggerated. What puzzled him was how this man, and presumably therefore many others, had even heard of him. He decided it wasn't worth puzzling over; he'd relax and enjoy his new reputation.
"Yes," he answered, "I train with them."
"How come would anyone do that 'less they had to? I'm glad I'm in the Engineers, so's I don't have to even drill."
Varlik recorded a file of troops trudging along in cool-suits, rifles slung, headed the same direction as the truck.
"I thought I'd like to get an idea of what it's like to be a T'swi," Varlik answered. "Besides, if I'm to go with them in combat, I'd better be able to keep up or the Birds could get me."
The construction site was just ahead along the upper edge of a long declivity. Men with beam saws were felling the larger scrub trees and cutting them into short timbers. Reaction dozers pushed dirt and rock, gouging a broad trench, pushing the spoil into piles. Soldiers manhandled timbers into place, shoveled and tamped dirt, all in cool-suits. It occurred to Varlik that someone had manufactured a lot of cool-suits in the last year or so.
The driver spat brown fluid out the door. "I wish we had time," he said. "I'd like to hear more about them T'swa. They're supposed to be some tough gooks. You with them here night before last?"
"Right."
"Without no cool-suit."
"Right again."
The Romblit shook his head as he stopped the rig by a group of soldiers. "Maybe I'll see you again sometime," he called as they dismounted out opposite sides. "Maybe when we get this place civilized. I'll buy the beer and you can tell me about it."
Varlik poked around the area, keeping out of the way of equipment, visiting fortifications in different stages of construction. Half an hour was enough. Beregesh would take some getting used to; despite taking mineral tablets and drinking heavily at one of the huge water bags slung from tripods, he felt ready to head back to field HQ, and caught a ride on another truck. Its driver was taciturn, repeatedly eyeing his lack of a cool-suit, or perhaps his T'swa uniform, but saying nothing. The officer in charge at the landing site chatted briefly, commenting on his lack of a cool-suit, then pointed out a staff floater he could board that would be northbound in minutes.
The floater soon was full, and when the last seat had been taken, took off. Excepting Varlik, all the passengers were officers. Most looked tired, and there wasn't much talk. He got some looks at first, or his sweat-soaked T'swa camouflage suit did, but he ignored them and napped much of the way back.