In Russian.

And she can’t read Russian.

She doesn’t hear the clatter of her glasses hitting the far wall and coming to rest in a forlorn twist of glass and metal atop the threadbare carpet. With her implants switched off, her world is blessedly silent. Not that there would be anything to disturb the silence if her implants were on, of course. Maggie and Dakota had left the house early this morning; the Colonel undoubtedly off making the world—or what remains of it—safe for Democracy, and Koda tending to the animals thrust suddenly into her more-than-capable hands.

Or maybe not, she thinks as she lifts her head and takes a deep breath through her nose. The scent that lingers there takes her back to a time of cold winters and warm blankets, the love of her family, and the adventures of Katrina Callahan—Intergalactic Cop. A smile steals unnoticed over her face. Mmm. Chicken soup. My favorite.

Casually flipping her implants back on, she listens expectantly for the sounds of life within the house, then frowns, disappointed. Beyond her half-closed door, it’s as silent as a tomb. With a soft sigh, she pushes back from the desk and rises somewhat stiffly to her feet, shaking her legs to restore some feeling into the seemingly deadened nerves.

Padding softly across the small room, she peeks through the opening, smiling in surprised delight at the sight of Dakota propped on the couch, face mostly hidden behind the cover of a thick book. Asi lays sprawled half-across her lap, blissfully asleep. The scent of simmering soup is much stronger here, and she takes it in on a satisfied breath, squinting slightly to catch the title stamped into the thick leather hide of the book Koda holds.

Der Untergang des Abendlandes by Otto Spengler.

“Wow,” Kirsten remarks softly, “and they call me an egghead.”

So confident that her remark was unheard, she almost misses the brief flash of pain that crosses Dakota’s striking features as she looks up from her book. She masks the expression quickly, but Kirsten feels her heart plummet somewhere in the region of her stomach and she takes an involuntary step forward, arms at her sides, palms outspread. “I’m….”

“It’s okay,” Koda intones, pulling up a genuine smile. “Taking a break?”

“Kinda,” Kirsten replies, relieved. “That soup smells delicious.”

“Unfortunately, it’s got several hours to go yet. I just put it on.”

“Ah well. There’s always the mess.”

The women exchange quiet laughs.

Approaching the couch, Kirsten looks down at her dog, who looks up at her without a care in the world. His tail beats a lazy tattoo against the arm of the sofa as his head continues to rest across the top of Koda’s thighs. “You’re a slut, you know that?”

Dakota laughs as Asi gives Kirsten a rather affronted look but deigns not to move from his appointed spot. Rolling her eyes—and secretly envying Asi his prime location—Kirsten perches on the couch’s other arm, peering again at the thick tome in Koda’s hands. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone read an actual book for pleasure.”

Looking down at the book in question, Koda lifts one broad shoulder in a shrug. “Disktexts never were my thing. I like the feel of a book in my hands.”

Kirsten nods, though she really can’t relate. She can, and has, read books when she must, but to her nothing compares with a minidisk filled to the byte with her favorite literature. She smiles. “In German, too. I’m impressed.” She touches the book’s binding. “How many languages do you know?”

“Twelve,” Koda replies, “though I can’t really take credit for most of them. Tali had a Master’s in Linguistics and Foreign Languages.” She smiles slightly, sweet memories surrounding her. “It got to be that if I wanted to talk to her at all, I’d have to learn the language she was currently studying.”

“Tali?”

The look of pain flashes briefly again, then is gone. “My wife.”

“Wife?” Kirsten echoes, stunned. A barrage of emotions run through her, none staying long enough for her to identify, though she knows that a bit of anger, shock, and disbelief are somewhere in the mix.

“She died seven years ago. SARS IV.”

“Oh, Dakota. I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” Koda replies, noting the obvious sincerity in the smaller woman’s tone. She hesitates a moment, then deliberately lowers another internal wall, needing to share some part of herself with this woman she is quickly coming to cherish. “We married when we were sixteen.”

“Sixteen?” Kirsten asks, though her voice is hesitant. She is fully aware of the precious gift she is about to receive, and is loath to have that gift taken back due to an inauspicious interruption on her part. To her vast relief, however, Koda doesn’t seem to mind.

“A little young, I know, but it was pretty much expected.” At Kirsten’s questioning look, she continues. “We grew up together. Her family owned the ranch next to ours, and we were born only three weeks apart. We were best friends from the cradle on, and when I got old enough to know what love was, I knew that I loved her.” Her sudden smile is lopsided and fond. “When I asked for her hand, let’s just say that no one was surprised.”

“It sounds like something out of a Fairy Tale,” Kirsten remarks quietly.

Koda laughs softly. “Maybe a little, yeah.” Her voice becomes serious. “We went off to school the week after we got married. We were both accepted at UPenn, on scholarship. I went to the Vet school, she studied linguists and foreign languages. When we graduated, we moved back here and refurbished our home. I had my clinic and rehab center, she had her students, and we had each other.” She pauses for a moment, her thumb rubbing on the book’s worn spine. “We were happy.”

Kirsten lays one hand almost reverently on Koda’s bowed head, brushing her palm against the silken strands of her thick, jet hair. “How…how did she get sick?”

“As near as anyone could tell,” Koda begins, comforted by the stroking hand, “it was a student who’d just come back from Asia. The epidemic was just starting up at that time, and quarantines weren’t in force. She went to school hale and healthy one morning, and was hooked up to a ventilator that same night.”

“But the treatment…!”

Koda shakes her head. “She wouldn’t take it.”

“Wouldn’t--? But why?”

As Koda looks up, Kirsten reads the answer within the fathomless grief in those too-blue eyes before Dakota even speaks a word.

“She was pregnant.”

* * *

Ellsworth is a large installation, and as Maggie makes her way from the brig back toward the base housing and home, the pain in her leg returns full force. Official rationing of gasoline has not begun, but unless they can find fresh supplies to exploit in Rapid City and the surrounding area, the time will come when all petroleum products will grow not just scarce but extinct.

Dionsaur thou art; to dinosaur thou shalt return. Amen.

She makes a mental note to have someone check on foot-driven transportation already available on base and to send a couple squads to raid the remaining inventories of bicycle shops in town. She will need to speak to Koda and the Mss. Tilbury-Laduque about the possibility of acquiring horses. She will also have to think about how—no, goddammit, somebody else can think about something. Let Boudreaux and the other goddam surviving CPA’s earn their keep.

She shifts that problem firmly off her desk. The bean counters will have to figure out how to pay for such things.

Then the rest of us can fill out the forms in triplicate. Requisition: individual personnel transportation and supply hauling unit, quadruped. Translation: horse.

The feeling that time is slipping out from under her returns: years, decades, centuries tilting drunkenly away as they did the morning of the battle of the Cheyenne. The armature of a whole civilization has collapsed, sending them back to . . . where? When? Maggie shivers a little under her uniform jacket, hunching her shoulders both to hoard the warmth and to ease the weight of her brief case. The most taken-for-granted, everyday facts of life have all suddenly acquired question marks, and she’s not sure there are good answers to all of them.

Maybe not to any of them.