The Future War

set up a still somewhere. In the interest of keeping the peace and keeping them from poisoning themselves and others, I'd like you to find it and get rid of it.'

'Yes, sir.' Reese paused. 'They'll only set up another one, sir.'

Yanik was studying another message. 'Think I don't know that, Lieutenant?' He looked up. 'We have to keep the civilians entertained somehow.'

BLACK RIVER RELOCATION CAMP CLINIC

Mary Shea made a notation on a patient's chart and moved to the next bed; they were using a series of double-wides, together with sheds and tents and—she suspected—parts from prefabricated chicken coups, but at least they kept off the rain and had floors. Everything else in camp was gluey mud; the air in the clinic smelled better, of course. They were using bulk bleach salvaged from a cleaners as a make-do disinfectant.

She inserted an old-fashioned mercury thermometer under the patient's tongue and took his pulse; the skin was a little clammy and moistly warm. It was a bit fast. His temperature was a hundred and one, down a bit. Unfortunately she thought it would go up again come sundown.

The sanitation in this hastily flung together camp worried her—a lot. It was grossly inadequate for the number of people here, and for all they were supposed to be a supply center, the clinic was constantly running out of the most basic supplies. She suspected that this patient's illness was a water-related one, possibly cholera; the diarrhea indicated that—strongly—but they wouldn't know for sure until they got the results back from the lab. And the lab was in worse shape than the clinic.

The nutrition wasn't very good either. Beans and rice, mostly.

Sometimes she absolutely craved meat; it was like her teeth were begging her to let them chew animal protein.

When the camp did get meat, the doctors and nurses insisted that a large portion of it be given to the hospital, before the rest was made available to the camp at large. The broths they made were a great help to the patients and they made sure that any pregnant or nursing mothers got a share of the meat.

The smell of cooking soup or roasting meat actually made her drool. And coffee, God, if she could only have a cup of coffee!

The next patient was an elderly woman with a very high fever, nausea, and very bad diarrhea. She complained of pains in her joints and headache as well. Dr. Ramsingh had gone to the HQ to talk to the captain about this. Two patients was hardly an epidemic, but these suggestive symptoms couldn't be ignored.

The old lady looked up at her with fever-bright eyes when Mary put the thermometer under her tongue.

'Don' wann be a burthen,' she said.

'You're not,' Mary assured her. 'You'll be fine soon.'

She certainly hoped so. That there might be cholera in this camp was inexcusable. These people would be better off in their own homes rather than here, risking the spread of a deadly disease.

Many people, she knew, had argued against these—no other word for it—concentration camps. She'd heard the army's argument that it was more efficient, but any place so badly constructed that a cholera epidemic threatened the population in less than a month was hardly a model of organization.

Though to be fair—she patted the old woman's hand and moved on—if the pathetic trickle of supplies coming into the camp represented the best the government could do, then civilians on their own would quickly starve.

The problem was there was no news available to them except what they got from the army. Mary couldn't help but feel uneasy at being reduced to one source of news; there was no way of crosschecking anything. Not that the government was giving them a very sunshiny outlook. To hear the army tell it, the world beyond the borders of the camp was a radioactive cinder. Which we can see with our own eyes isn't true. So why was the army telling them that?

There was a commotion at the head of the ward and Mary looked up.

'This is the hospital ward,' the matron was explaining. 'You have to take them to the clinic.'

'Don't tell us to take them somewhere else,' a man was saying, shouting, actually. 'Can't you see they're sick?'

'Help us!' the woman beside him said desperately.

Mary headed toward them. Oh God, she thought, it's children.

One of them a babe in arms, the other about the size of a four-year-old. Her gut went cold. Cholera was very hard on the very young and the very old. Her eyes met the matron's and they made a mutual executive decision.

'If one of you will stay with Matron and help her fill out a chart, I'll help the other put these children to bed.' Mary put the tray on the desk and held out her arms.

The man and woman glanced at each other, then the man held out the child he was carrying; a boy, Mary saw. She took him and led the woman down the ward toward a pair of cribs that Mary now thought insanely optimistic of whoever had put this place together. Just two, she thought sadly.

'What are their symptoms?' she asked the mother. She didn't need to be told 'fever'; she could feel it burning through the blanket. Ice, she thought, where are we going to get ice?

'Diarrhea,' the mother said, her voice shaking. 'It just won't stop.'

It was the symptom Mary had most dreaded hearing. She efficiently stripped and cleaned the little boy and put a Pampers on him. Those aren't going to last long, she thought bitterly.

She'd have to organize some of the civilians to help out with the laundry. Things were about to get high maintenance around here.

The thing was, where was the fuel to boil all this water going to come from? They'd have to send men out to cut down trees, then chop the wood, then make the fires and tend them. At least it would keep people busy. Those who stayed healthy. The question was how many of them had the disease already working its way into their systems.

She listened to the near-panicked mother as she started listing the symptoms all over again. Mary gave the woman a second look, noted the hectic flush, the too-bright eyes. Help! she thought, as short and desperate a prayer as she'd ever prayed.

Mary brought a chair over and sat the mother down.

'Conserve your strength,' she cautioned. 'You're going to need it.' Then she went to the supply cabinet and came back with some bottles of water boosted with vitamins and electrolytes.

'Get them to drink as much of these as possible,' she instructed.

'I know they're sick to their stomachs and won't want it, but they need it, so get it down them.' She put a couple of facecloths and a bottle of alcohol down on a bedside table. 'When they get too hot, wipe them down with this. I'll be back shortly.'

As she headed down the aisle, the father was coming toward her, all his anxious attention on his wife and children. She and the matron stared at each other for a moment.

'Go tell Doctor,' Matron ordered. 'I'll look after things here.'

ALASKA

Once again Ninel rode her bike up the overgrown driveway to Bale-witch's pleasant cottage. She'd been off- line, except to check her own site, for the last three weeks. There'd been her traps to mend and oil and put away until next winter, skins to see to, and the garden plot to clear of winter debris in preparation for planting. Ninel thought it would be a while before she'd trust the weather enough to put in seeds, though. She had some seedlings started in the cold frame she'd built, but it had been so cold lately that Ninel was sure she'd put them in too soon.

It was surprising that no one had sent her any e-mail in such a long time. But a brief check had shown that there wasn't much activity anywhere. Still, that happened sometimes, the occasional dry spell that occurred for no known reason. What worried her was that she had expected to hear from Balewitch, or someone she had delegated.

This was the second time she'd paid an unscheduled visit; Ninel hoped someone would be home. She turned into the curve of the driveway, and through the trees she could see the older woman standing on her steps, clearly waiting for her.