Endgame Read Free Page A

Dodd was the first guy to care about me that way; but I didn’t know what love meant until . . . oh Jesus, that sounds really stupid, doesn’t it?”
    I climbed onto the table myself, and we sat back to back. I liked feeling her warmth against me. It was like keeping double-watch, looking both ways at once. “No. It would have sounded dumb, except I know exactly what you mean. I felt that once, too: young girl in high school, before I joined the Corps.”
    â€œYou never told me, Sergeant—Fly.”
    â€œWe got as close as you could in a motor vehicle not built for the purpose. She swore she was being religious about the pill, but she got pregnant anyway. I offered to pay either way, and she chose the abortion. After that, well, it just wasn’t there anymore; I think they sucked more than the fetus out, to be perfectly grotesque about it. . . . We stopped pretending to be boyfriend-girlfriend when it just got too painful; and then she and her parents moved away. She just waved goodbye, and I nodded.”
    Arlene snorted. “That’s the longest rap you’ve ever given me, Fly. Where’d you read it?”
    â€œGod’s own truth, A.S. Really happened just that way.”
    Arlene leaned back against me, while I stared out the aft port at the redshifted starblob; the mess hall was at the south end of a north-going ship, 1.9 kilometers from the bridge, which was located amidships, surrounded by a hundred meters of some weird steel-titanium alloy, and 3.7 kilometers from the engines, all the way for’ard. Sitting in the mess hall, we could look directly backward out a huge, thick, plexiglass window while traveling very near the speed of light relative to the stars behind us.
    It was a fascinating view; according to astronomical theory—which I’d had plenty of time to read about since we’d been burning from star to star—at relativistic speeds, the light actually bends: all the stars forward press together into a blue blob at the front, all the ones aft press into a red lump at the stern. I wasn’t sure how fast we were going, but the formula was easy enough to use if I really got interested.
    â€œI just had a horrible thought,” I said. “We only brought along enough Fredpills to last a few days. We didn’t plan on spending weeks here.” Arlene didn’t say anything, so I continued. “We’ll have to find the Fred recombinant machine and figure out how to use it; maybe Sears and Roebuck know.” Fredpills supplied the amino acids and vitamins essential to humans that Freds lacked in their diet; without them, we would starve to death, no matter how much Fred food we ate.
    â€œFly,” she said, off in another world, “I’m starting not to care about the Freds anymore. I know why they attacked us: they were terrified of what we represented, death and an honest-to-God soul, and maybe the god of the Israelites is right, huh? Maybe we’re the immortal ones . . . not the rest of them, the ones who can’t die.”
    â€œSo are you thinking that Albert still exists somewhere,maybe in heaven?” I was trying to wrap myself around her problem, not having much luck.
    She shrugged; I felt it roughly. “So he himself believed; I would never contradict an article of my honey’s faith, especially when I don’t have any contrary evidence.”
    â€œTranslation into English?”
    â€œI’ve just stopped caring about the Fred aliens, Fly. They’re frightened, desperate, and pretty pathetic. And they’re soulless. I mean, two humans against how many of them? Even when Albert and Jill joined us, we were still four against a planetful! And we kicked ass. Maybe it’s just the Marine in me, but I’m starting to wonder why we’re bothering with these dweebs.”
    â€œWell, we’ve got about forty-five days left to get our heads straight for what’s