All his adult life, Wellem Bosler had made a point of getting enough exercise to keep his body functioning well. Here, for several weeks, he'd let it slip. Now he'd begun jogging and walking about the compound in the dark of pre-dawn morning. Sometimes it was snowing; more often the sky was clear, starlit, and cold.
The detention section—sixteen youths from 3rd Platoon, F Company—had been digging on the intended swimming pool at night, breaking the hard-frozen earth with sledge hammers and long-handled chisels, throwing the larger chunks out by hand, the smaller with shovels. But they'd be sleeping exhausted in their squad tent, their jail—tronk was their slang for it—well before he came out.
Not much, good or bad, surprised him about human beings, but the tenacity and morale of the detention section had. They trained hard all day, then dug till past midnight, yet the few times he'd made a point of strolling out to watch them dig, before he retired in the evening, they seemed to be in good spirits, vying to see what pair could move the most dirt.
Third Platoon, F Company, had been the most aberrated in the regiment, the result of two dominant individuals who were reasoning psychotics. Second and 3rd Squads were the most aberrated in the platoon. Third would be the last platoon to undergo the Ostrak Procedures, and the fourteen men in the detention section, all from 2nd and 3rd Squads, would be the last individuals.
Yet Voker had left Brossling with them—Brossling, their ringleader and chief troublemaker. The wise, tough old ex-soldier and the tough but crazy intentive warrior, had come to an understanding: Brossling would ramrod the amends project and maintain discipline, and Voker would grant them the privilege of not having a pair of T'swa corporals bossing the job, would let them do it on their own.
Usually, when T'swa whistles rousted the trainees out of bed, Bosler jogged back to the Main Building for a hot shower and breakfast. This morning though, he stopped to watch, from a little distance, one of the platoons go through reveille, heard its squad sergeants reporting in their mellow T'swa voices. And recognized one of the trainees, even at forty yards in the predawn: Artus Romlar. Bosler himself had done the last two interviews on Romlar; the procedures needed were beyond Lotta's training and experience.
That had been a week earlier. Romlar needed a few weeks to settle out before they did anything further with him. Then perhaps . . . Bosler turned and jogged toward the Main Building. Romlar had received three times the attention of any other trainee, but he had a potential unique in the regiment. He'd been born to a particular role, one they understood only vaguely. Which didn't necessarily mean he'd get to play it, or that he'd succeed if he did.
The trainees had eaten dinner—the midday meal—and had a half hour to loaf around before forming up for training. Jerym lay on his bunk, booted feet on the floor, looking at his hands. Before signing up, he'd never even seen hands like them, their palms and fingers callused like boot leather, with hard ridges and pads on the pressure points.
"I never thought I'd be doing what I did this morning," he said, to no one in particular.
"You mean giant swings?" Esenrok asked. "I knew you were ready. What impressed me was Romlar doing 'em. Remember when he was 'fat boy'? Less than four deks ago, for Tunis' sake!"
Romlar had entered the barracks just in time to hear Esenrok's comment, and paused to raise the foot of Esenrok's bunk with one big paw, lifting it chest high, Esenrok on it, before setting it gently back down.
Jerym had watched the little interplay. He really didn't feel that much changed himself, but Esenrok and Romlar now . . . Romlar especially; he still didn't say a lot, but somehow or other he was definitely no longer stupid.
He explored his calluses with a finger, remembering the hard T'swa palm that had hauled him onto the straggler truck, that first, late summer night when he'd fallen out on the run. Give him another dek or so and he'd be able to juggle hot coals.
Giant swings for Tunis' sake!
At 2000 hours, Artus Romlar stopped at the Charge of Quarters desk in the Main Building. CQ was an Iryalan soldier on detached service, good at obeying orders and not bad at thinking for himself.
"What's your purpose here?" the man asked. Seated as he was, Romlar loomed above him, not threatening but impressive, almost T'swa-like in his size, his physical hardness, his sense of calm strength.
"I've come to see the civilian interviewer, Lotta Alsnor."
The CQ touched keys at his console, his eyes on the display. "Do you have an appointment?"
"No. She'll see me."
The soldier, a buck sergeant, looked Romlar over. "What's your name?" he asked, and Romlar told him. For brief seconds the sergeant hesitated. He knew how little free time these project people had, and this request was irregular. But then somehow he shrugged, and keyed the console again. The button in his right ear told him her room comm was buzzing. After three or four seconds he spoke to his collar mike. "Lotta Alsnor? This is Charge of Quarters. There's a trainee Romlar here to speak with you. Do you want to see him?"
After a few seconds he touched a couple of keys, looking up at Romlar again. "She'll be down," he said, and gestured with his head. "Have a seat over there."
Romlar did. A few minutes later Lotta came down the stairs, wearing coat, mittens, and fur cap. Romlar got up and met her at the door.
"This is a surprise," she said as they stepped out into the cold.
"I didn't know whether it would be or not. The way you looked into my mind in interviews."
She grinned. "Those were special situations. A special environment, and the stuff I was helping you pull out to look at was pretty powerful, easy to see."
They began to walk, nowhere in particular, beneath bare shade trees, stars glinting through the branches. "What brought you over?" she asked.
"I wanted to say goodbye. Now, when we had an evening without training."
"Goodbye?"
"Yes. You're leaving, you know. Within the next day or two. Maybe three or four."
She didn't ask how he knew. "For where?"
He shrugged big shoulders. "That's not part of it—part of what I know. Where you came here from, I suppose. Lake Loreen, you said at Solstice."
A move was news to her—they were extremely busy here—but she didn't challenge him. If he was wrong, it didn't matter. If he was right . . . He might be; she wouldn't be astonished at it. "It was nice of you to want to tell me goodbye," she said.
He grinned, shrugged. "I'm not sure why I did, really." His tone changed then, became softer. "That's not true. It's because I've got a crush on you. I suppose everyone does that you interview. And I wanted you to know how I feel.
"When you've gone, you're not likely to be coming back, and next fall we're supposed to go to Terfreya for a year, and then to Tyss for another one." He chuckled. "That'll be something, training on Tyss. No frostbite there! Tomorrow we'll be out in twenty inches of snow and probably below zero, with explosives and fire jets, learning how to clear fortifications.
"From Tyss I'll go somewhere to fight, to some trade world or gook world." Again he chuckled. "And never see you again. It's the sort of thing that, on the cube, they'd make out to be sad, and me heartbroken. But somehow or other . . ."
He shrugged, grinned, and with a hand on her arm, turned her, facing him. "Anyway I need to let you go now. I imagine you need rest as much as we do." Her face was clear, her features fine-boned, her eyes shadowed but somehow penetrating in the night, looking into him. "And thank you," he said, "for what you did. I feel as if I'm on the track now. Whatever that is, and wherever I'm going on it."
"It seems that way to me too, Artus. That you're on the track."
He walked her back to the Main Building—they hadn't gone a hundred yards—and said goodbye to her inside the door. From there he walked to the barracks and got ready for bed. It wasn't lights out yet, but near enough, and someone had turned the light intensity way down.
Before he closed his eyes, it occurred to him that he really didn't know why he'd gone to see Lotta. He did have a crush on her, true enough, but that was only part of it.
Then it struck him: I was demonstrating, he thought, showing off my precognition.
He wondered, as he drifted toward sleep, if this precognition would prove an isolated occurrence. It seemed to him that for a warrior to get precognitions useful in battle would take the joy out of combat.
It also seemed to him that the universe wouldn't be wired that way.