Chapter 37

Good news, it's said, travels fast, and this was no exception. Soon the shipboard romance, and its culmination in the forthcoming ceremony on Eden, was the talk of the Gardener. Even Hill's erstwhile lovers rejoiced for her, so open and giving was her nature, and all of the others on board, even those who knew the two only slightly—as well as the several women who had previously been at pains to show their disapproval of Hill's undisguised sexuality—seemed pleased for the happy couple.

All except one.

Siegfried Miller, one-time respected Army major, now dishonored retiree, had had ample time to fully comprehend his altered status. Physically he was as recovered as he was going to be pending their return to Earth and its advanced reconstructive medicine. The one leg, merely broken, had healed, and he wore a carefully designed knee brace on the other that allowed him reasonable, though still significantly restricted, movement. Hours of intensive rehabilitation had brought him as close to recuperation as he could reasonably hope to achieve on the Gardener.

But all that rehab had been done strictly solo save for the help of a few med techs early on. Most of the scientists and working crew were unaware of the full extent of his disgrace, but all could see how his former troops now shunned him, and the isolation in which he'd held himself previously also was being repaid in kind. He exercised alone, he ate alone, he spent his days alone and his nights alone. For all intents and purposes he was a pariah aboard ship.

He knew, though, that he would never be allowed to leave the ship, not for as long as their stay lasted. And there were many months still to go.

So he brooded. His first command, and he had lost it in ignominy. Not even to another officer, his successor was a despised civilian! His career was ended before it had fairly begun. Even the honors Meiersdottir had promised him would await at the end of their journey would be hollow shams, he would still know the truth and others would, he was sure, suspect; what transpired had the hallmarks of pusillanimous civilian thinking, not the true valor of the fighting man. And the bitch still held the confession he'd been forced to sign. No, it would be Igwanda, not he, who would reap the glory.

He was a bitter man. And news of the coming wedding, which he gleaned from bits and snatches of conversations overheard, only intensified his bitterness. By rights Zo should have had to apply to him for permission to marry—permission that would never have been granted; Miller knew, far better than other more liberal officers who might accede to such a presumptuous request, the proper limits for soldiers in his command. Yet as matters stood it was to Igwanda that the sergeant had made his application, and to rub salt in the wound the usurper would even stand beside him as his best man while Miller could only watch impotently from his spaceship prison.

Perhaps he was no longer quite sane. Certainly there were elements of madness in the thoughts that cascaded through his mind as he contemplated this new turn of events. They were dark, dark thoughts, and they grew darker yet as the appointed date neared and all around him busied themselves in happy preparations.

Many of those preparations took the unusual form of negotiation. Most of the Gardener's contingent would be in attendance, but there was a problem with the "most" because all of them wanted to be there. The mothership could not be left unattended even briefly, and whoever stayed behind had to be capable of piloting it back to Earth in the very unlikely, but still conceivable, event that something went tragically wrong below and the ship had to return home without those on the planet—either to seek rescue help or simply to report a mass demise.

At Igwanda's and Meiersdottir's wedding that lot had fallen to Shaw, as first mate. His then-captain, Margaret Ziang, had gone to Eden to perform the ceremony, and he'd had to content himself with a holographic representation. Because multiple broadcast units had been set up he had a better view of the proceedings than most who were on hand, but he had always regretted not having been actually, physically present.

This time he would of course be there to preside, and by rights the shipboard duty would have ordinarily have devolved on Cherney. But on this voyage, unlike the other, the Gardener had been allocated a second mate, a very junior SES officer—scarcely beyond a cadet—named Herbert Garreaux. Garreaux had been assigned to the ship to gain experience but, youthful though he was, had already shown remarkable competence; Shaw had actually allowed the young man to program the wormhole jump to Eden and bring the ship into orbit around the plan­et, both of course supervised closely but without need for correction.

Cherney spent several days pleading her case with her captain, and finally, to her great delight, won out. It would be Garreaux, not she, who'd remain on board. The technicians wound up drawing lots for who would stay with him—Shaw decreed that at least five must remain—but everyone else would go planetward in a sequence of lander shuttles piloted by Cherney. Except, of course, for Miller; but no-one gave him more than passing thought.

Zo had decided to personally create wedding rings for both himself and Hill, much as Igwanda had done for Meiersdottir—but with two differences. The first was that he was appreciably more skilled at metal-working than was his colonel, meaning he could execute far more intricate designs. The second was in his choice of material; whereas Igwanda had used iron, the only metal then being worked by the Edenites, the sergeant chose copper for both its color and its superior molding capability. By now the refined metal was moving in regular convoys from the outpost to the main village, and he spent more than a few hours at the natives' forge to make the rings.

Hill herself eschewed the forge—"Me, get all sweaty down there where nice girls don't go?" she'd asked. "I don't think so. It's not bride-like." But she'd insisted that he bring the products to her for inspection, and had twice sent him back for minor emendations. The night after she finally gave her approval had been a memorable one for all on the planet, and several opined that her shrieks of pleasure had probably reached as high as the Gardener itself.

Some of them told her so the next morning. She simply smiled serenely and asked men and women alike, "Envious?"

Roarin' Rory might have become Aurora, but it was clear that some things wouldn't change.

At last the day arrived. As before, the natives too would be in attendance, with their customary numerical parity to the humans. The final contingent of them emerged from the overgrowth surrounding the pavilion meadow, where the ceremony was to take place, as Cherney brought in the final load from the mothership.

But as the last human stepped down the lander's ramp—Cherney herself—one of them quietly retreated back whence he'd come. At about the same moment Edmundson, to whom had fallen the task of mustering the troops with both his colonel and his sergeant occupied by their roles in the proceedings at hand, abruptly asked, "Where the hell is Simone?"

He would naturally have been the one to have noticed her absence first; over the months he and Accorda had fallen into the habit of spending more and more time together. Nothing had been overt, and they still spent nights (most of them, the ones that were observed, at least) apart, but their fellow troopers had noticed they were often together. The troopers had also noticed a gradual moderation of his once-pronounced anti-feminist views.