Battle of Long Island Nancy Kress

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.Three more soldiers are on him.I've seen more direct combat nursing than any other nurse I've met personally, but in OR I can't look at Strickland's eyes.If he had reached the Hole, he could have gone through, and I'm the only person in the room who knows this.Not even Strickland knows it.He only acted as if he did.Dr.Bechtel sends for me the next morning.He's the chief of medical staff.I go."Susan, I think.""|Major,' sir.I would prefer to be called |Major.' Sir." He doesn't change expression."Major, I think it would be a good idea if you requested a transfer to another unit."I draw a deep breath."Are you rotating me out, sir?""No!" For a second some emotion breaks through - anger? fear? guilt? - and then is gone."I'm suggesting you voluntarily apply for a transfer.You're not doing your career any good here, with Strickland, not the way things have turned out.There are too many anomalies.The Army doesn't like anomalies, Major.""The entire Hole is an anomaly.Sir."He permits himself a thin smile."True enough.And the Army doesn't like it.""I don't want to transfer,"He looks at me directly."Why not?""I prefer not to, sir," I say.Is a nonanswer answer an anomaly? I can feel every tendon in my body straining toward the door.And yet there is a horrible fascination, too, in staring at him like this.Somewhere in my mind a four-year-old girl touches a one-eyed doll in a raveled red dress.Here.He touched me here.And here.But did he?The four-year-old doesn't answer."Strickland is asking to see you," he says wearily."No - demanding to see you.Somewhere he saw Healy's uniform.Being carried across the parade ground from the cleaning machine, maybe - I don't know.He won't say."I picture Healy's heavy watch coat, his red uniform with the regimental epaulets on both shoulders, his crimson sash."Strickland's smart," I say slowly, and immediately regret it.I'm participating in the conversation as if it were normal.I don't want to give him that."Yes," my father says, a shade too eagerly."He's figured out that there are multiple realities beyond the Hole.Multiple Battles of Long Island.Maybe even entirely different American Revolutions.I don't know." He passes a hand through his hair and I'm jolted by an unexpected memory, shimmery and dim: my Daddy at the dinner table, talking and passing a hand through his hair, myself in a highchair with round beads on the tray, beads that spin and slide."The Pentagon moves him out tomorrow.""Strickland?""Yes, of course, that's who we've been talking about." He peers at me.I give him nothing, wooden-faced.Abruptly he says, "Susan - ask for a transfer.""No, sir," I say."Not unless that's an order." We stand at opposite ends of the bunker, and the air shimmers between us."Dismissed," he says quietly.I salute and leave, but as I reach the door, he tries once more."I recommend that you don't see Strickland again.No matter what he demands.For the sake of your own career.""Recommendation noted, sir," I say, without inflection.Outside, the night is hot and still.I have trouble breathing the stifling air.I try to think what could have prompted my father's sudden concern with my career, but no matter how I look at it, I can't see any advantage to him in keeping me away from Strickland.Only to myself.The air trembles with heat lightning.Beyond the compound, at the Brooklyn Zoo, an elephant bellows, as if in pain.The next day the Hole closes.I'm not there at the time-0715 hours EDT - but one of the guards retells the story in the mess tent."There was this faint pop, like a kid's toy gun.Yoder hit the dirt and pissed his pants -""I did not! Fuck you!" Yoder yells, and there are some good-natured insults and pointless shoving before anybody can overhear what actually did happen."This little pop, and the shimmer kinda disappeared, and that was it.Special Forces showed up and they couldn't get in -""When could they ever?" someone says slyly, a female voice, and there are laughter and nudges."And that was it.The Hole went bye-bye," the guard says, reclaiming group attention."So when do we go home?""When the Army fucking says you do."They move Strickland out the next day.I don't see him.No one reports if he asks for me.Probably not.At some point Strickland decided that his trust in me was misplaced, born of one of those chance moments of emotion that turn out to be less durable than expected.I wasn't able to help him toward the Hole.All I was able to do was tell him military information that may or may not be true for a place and time that he can't ever reach again.Curiously enough, it is the Brit, Major John Healy, to whom we make a difference.He is with us a week before they move him, recovering from his injuries.The broken leg sets clean.Military Intelligence, in the form of Colonel Orr, goes in and out of his heavily guarded bunker several times a day.Orr is never there while I'm changing Healy's dressings or monitoring his vitals, but Healy is especially thoughtful after Orr has left.He watches me with a bemused expression, as if he wonders what I'm thinking.He's nothing like Strickland.Slight, fair, not tall, with regular features and fresh-colored skin.Healy's speech is precise and formal, courteous, yet with a mocking gaiety in it.Even here, which seems to me a kind of miracle.He's fastidious about his dress, and a military orderly actually learns to black boots.Between debriefings, Healy reads.He requested the books himself, all published before 1776; but maybe that's all he's permitted.Gulliver's Travels.Robinson Crusoe.Poems by somebody called Alexander Pope.I've never been much of a reader, but I saw the MGM movie about Crusoe, and I look up the others.They're all books about men severely displaced.Once Healy, trying to make conversation, tells me that he comes from London, where his family has a house in Tavistock Place, also a "seat" in Somerset.I refuse to be drawn into conversation with him.On the day they're going to move him, Bechtel does a complete medical.I assist.Naked, with electrodes attached to his head and vials of blood drawn from his arm, Healy suddenly becomes unstoppably talkative."In London, the physicians make use of leeches to accomplish your identical aims." Bechtel smiles briefly."In my London, that is.Not in yours, There is a London here, I presume, Doctor?""Yes," Bechtel says."There is.""Then there exist two.But there's rather more, isn't there? One for the Hessian.One for that Colonial who attempted escape back through the.the time corridor.Probably others, is that not so?""Probably," Bechtel says.He studies the EKG printout."And in some of these Londons, we put down the Rebellion, and in others, you Colonials succeed in declaring yourself a sovereign nation, and perhaps in still others, the savages destroy you all and the Rebellion never even occurs.Have I understood the situation correctly?""Yes," Bechtel says.He looks at the Brit now, and I am caught by the look as well - by its unexpected compassion.The vial of blood in my hand seems to pound against my temples.My mother told me, when I was eight, that my father had caused the war then raging in Vietnam.I say nothing."Then," Healy continues in his beautiful, precise, foreign voice, "there must exist several versions of this present as well.Some of them must, by simple deduction, be more appealing than this one." He glances around the drab bunker.Beyond the barred window, an American flag flies over the parade ground.Couldn't we have spared him the constant sight of his enemy's flag?Then I remember that he probably doesn't even recognize it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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