Warriors [Anthology] by George R. R. & Dozois Martin Page A

for thirty minutes, so after we made love in the low morning sun, we swam in the warm water for a few minutes, and then sat and held each other while the gentle surf rolled over us. It was jarring when the time ran out suddenly and we were in that hard plain bed, hardly even touching.
     
    No money for a hotel room. We had hot dogs for dinner and a couple of beers, and then walked back to the base and our separate beds.
     
    * * * *
     
    Blaze was amused but shook her head. “You’re in for four years, ten days at a time?”
     
    “Yeah. I see what you mean.” We were alone at the coffee place, mid-morning.
     
    “By the time you get out, you’ll owe the army a million dollars. At ten percent interest.”
     
    I could just shrug, and I guess smile sheepishly.
     
    “You know it’s like addictive behavior. If the army had gotten you hooked on DDs, we’d be down there with a brace of lawyers, getting you pulled from service and into detox. But they’ve got you hooked on love!”
     
    “Come on . . .”
     
    “Try to be objective about it. I know Carolyn’s a nice girl and so forth—”
     
    “Watch out, Blaze.”
     
    “Listen to me for just one minute, okay?” She took out her notebook and clicked a couple of times. “Do you know what your brain chemistry looks like when you go down to that Motel de Dream?”
     
    “Hotel. Pretty strange, I suppose.”
     
    “Not strange at all. It’s a seething stew of oxytocin, serotonin, and endogenous opioids. Your vasopressin receptors are wide open. You would be totally juiced even if Carolyn was a gerbil!”
     
    I could feel myself almost grinning. “Nice job of objectifying it. But if you haven’t been there, you just don’t know. It really is love.”
     
    “Okay. So do me a favor. Do it with one of the other women. Watch yourself fall in love with her.”
     
    “No.” just the thought was disgusting. “Blaze, that’s awful. It’s like I was a lovesick teenager, and Dad gives me a wad of money to go to a whorehouse and get it out of my system.”
     
    “Nothing like that. I just want you to engage your critical side, your objectivity.”
     
    “Yeah. That always works with love.”
     
    * * * *
     
    We didn’t talk about that any more that month—or much else. I went to the airport alone.
     
    Carolyn and I had one embrace, and then off to the cages.
     
    It was a routine show of force. The governor-general of Panama, our well-loved puppet, was giving a speech in Panama City, and we were there to stand at attention and look ominous. Which we did, I had to admit, nine of the soldierboys set to “camouflage” in the bright sun. That didn’t hide them; it made them glittering, shifting statues you couldn’t quite focus on. Scary. My own soldierboy, platoon leader, was shiny black.
     
    Our presence wasn’t really needed, except for the press. The crowd was hand-selected, and applauded and cheered on cue, no doubt eager to have it over with and get back into the air-conditioning. It was in the high nineties and steamy still.
     
    Do you feel warm? Carolyn asked without words. I thought back that it was psychosomatic, sympathy for those poor proles outside, and she agreed.
     
    Then the speech was over, and we got together in a line for our dramatic exit. It was a routine extraction, but it was a good demonstration of our inhuman strength: we stood shoulder to shoulder with our left hands raised, and a cargo helicopter with a retrieval bar came swooping in, churning along below treetop-level at more than a hundred miles per hour, and snatched us away. It would have torn off a human’s arm, but we hardly felt it.
     
    Carolyn’s output suddenly went black, apparently unplugged by the mechanical shock. “Carolyn?” I said over the emergency vocal circuit.
     
    When she didn’t respond, I asked permission to disengage. There was no reason for us to stay in the soldierboys, other than the convenience of walking them to storage after we landed. My