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The psychiatrists had told Laura to record her dreams on paper. She had questioned their use of the word dreams.
Not dreams. it's the dream. It just keeps happening and happening.
She played out variations of i, switching around acts, starting with the climax and working her way back, starting at the middle and spiraling outward so that the start and end ran simultaneously.
But the result was always the same.
While she listened to the hum of the troop carrier's instruments, she felt that the cabin was too small, her bunk too cramped.
The way the crawlspace had been.
Laura knew she was going to dream; it was just a question of how intense the nightmare would be. With Caleb's bunk seemingly pressing down on her, she couldn't help psalming the plastic, wishing she could drive it away.
I hate to sleep. We went from the bar to cargo detail to the MHLV to the station to this ISSCV. My eyes hurt. I feel like I weigh a ton. Come on, Laura. Close your eyes.
She obeyed herself, and as always, the point when she actually fell asleep went unnoticed. Sometime during the night, the flecked darkness was burned away by a wrathful white light.
Laura lifted the door of the crawlspace.
"Tam, Miri. Stay here!"
She dropped into the hole and hit the floor. Looking forward, she saw her dead parents lying on their stomachs, cast in the twin shadows of the Bionic soldiers. The cyborgs' eyes were obscured by infrared visors, and their chins, though pink, looked as hard as the black armor plates grafted to their bodies.
One of them brandished his pistol and....
Laura sprang away, even as the closet exploded behind her. The pretty school clothes Mama had bought her burned furiously, their hangars melting off the wooden rod.
Darting towards one of the soldiers, Laura dropped to pass through the killer's legs; then, from behind, she tore away his pistol. Fumbling with the weapon, she finally wrapped her trembling fingers around it, took aim as the soldier faced her, then, at point-blank range, blew a basketball-sized hole into the cyborg's chest. Fragments of blood, bone, metal, and wire splattered on the wall behind the soldier. He crumpled to the floor and lay there, writhing spasmodically.
Laura turned to the other soldier, who, in one fluid motion, ripped away the pistol. He took a step forward, training two weapons on her, his gaze unreadable: his mouth unflinching.
She backed away from the window, thinking she might be able to crash through it and fall to the bushes below. Pressing her arms against the cold glass, she stiffened and braced herself.
Then the Bionic soldier spoke, his voice oddly familiar. "They had to die, Laura. Even here you can't save them. Even here."
Laura balled her hands into fists, but then relaxed the hand that Miri had bitten. "You are lying!"
"Do you know how many of my people your mama and papa murdered?"
"You're not....human."
"What does that mean, young lady?"
She glanced at her parents. "You killed them! And THAT means YOU deserve to die!"
"Aren't you better off without them?"
"How can you say that?"
"They never loved you. They loved the Israeli Defense Force."
"What do you know?!"
"I know everything about you." He raised his infra-visor.
And Laura saw that she was the soldier, her neo-green bionic eyes rising from the shadowy face of her doppelganger.
"I'm you," the soldier said, now sounding feminine, something like she should, sounding exactly like herself.
"You killed Mama and Papa!"
"Yes, I did, Laura...."
She felt someone shake her. The nightmare rushed out her head, making her feel as if she were sinking through her pillow. She realized she was out of breath and soaked in her own sweat. After gingerly opening her eyes, she saw Jonas Berkson staring at her from his bunk, looking fascinated.
Laura wanted to duck under her blanket, but she felt she had to say something, to kind of cover up what he had seen. She cleared her throat. "Sorry I woke you."
"I wasn't asleep."
They lay there, looking at each other, saying nothing, just there, alive, breathing at a loss.
Finally, a curious thought worked its way into Laura's brain. "Don't take this wrong," she began softly. "I'm just wondering, I've always heard that Ao Primes can't dream."
Berkson, revealing no pity for himself, answered matter-of-factly. "You heard wrong. I dream."
Laura nodded, her curiosity blossoming. What did the tank dream about? She leaned back and gazed at the blank plastic base of Caleb's bunk.
Then, as if reading her mind, Berkson supplied, "I know they never lived, but when I dream I see my parents."
She shivered, then rolled onto her side to face him. "Me too---only I have nightmares about mine. The same one. Since I was five."
"What happens?"
Laura discussed her dream with few people. And she had found that talking about it was nearly as hard as experiencing it. Berkson was moving pretty fast, not that she sensed he had any romantic or sexual intentions, but rather, he was diving headifrst into one of the most painful and private experiences of her life. She could either clear the water for him or drain the pool and let him hit fiberglass.
"My mother and father were IDF officers in the Bionics War," she told him, half-regretting it as she spoke. "One day, a Bionic patrol attacked our house."
They're coming! The lights!
"My mom hid me and my sisters in a tiny crawlspace in the attic. I saw them...."
The shadow of one of the soldiers raised his arm.
"---kill..... my parents."
Berkson appeared sympathetic, but there was something missing in his expression, something she couldn't discern. "Are your sisters still alive?"
She nodded. "That night, during the attack, my sister Miri tried to scream, but I kept my hand over her mouth. She bit me." Laura held up her palm. "I've still got the scars."
Before she realized what was happening, Berkson reached across the aisle to take her hand in his own. She felt a little awkward but still trusted him.
"That must've hurt."
"Yeah," she said softly. "And you know what's weird? My sisters and I aren't close. I guess I'm the parent they need to grow away from. And maybe they've always reminded me of...."
Berkson looked up, puzzled.
"You know, they've always looked to me my whole life. I want to get away from people looking to me. I enlisted for me. My life. I don't want to take care of anybody for a while. Does that sound selfish?"
Berkson shrugged, then ran his thumb across her scars.
"So, what happened with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"With the police...."
He sneered, looking away into some hidden memory. "One of those things."
"Did you kill somebody?"
"Not yet."
"Are you thinking of..."
"I'm mostly pissed off."
"Why?"
"I wake up every day cheated."
"i don't...."
"Cause I'm a tank, all right?"
She hadn't intended to exasperate him. She slid her hand under his, now holding him. "I'm sorry if...."
"You didn't." He sighed. "Some guys I worked with tried to lynch me."
Laura flinched. "Jesus Christ!"
"Yeah, my timing was pretty bad on that one."
"Things are going to change. It's already happening."
"Sometimes I think the only peace for me is six feet under."
"Now that's selfish."
"How?"
"What about the people who care for you?"
His grin was sarcastic.
"No, really. Think about it. Did you ever lose anyone?"
He looked deeply into her eyes, as if probing for something. Leaning over, he gently placed his finger around the back of her neck. He pulled her close. She thought he needed someone more than ever now, someone to hold.
But then his grip tightened on her neck, and he drove her face into his. He kissed her hard and tried to pry open her lips with his tongue.
Laura craned her head, pulled away, then drew back a fist and punched him in the mouth. His head lolled back to collide with the hull. Caging her desire to scream, she gruffly whispered, "What the hell was that?"
Grimacing, Berkson ran an index finger over his teeth, checking to make sure they were all there. Unfortunately, he was in no position to answer.
"How does 'did you ever lose anyone' translate into 'please stick your tongue down my throat?'"
His eyebrows drew together. "I don't know much about stuff like loss and nightmares. So don't get all in an uproar."
"You don't know much about women, either."
he turned on his side, his back to her. "What man does? Oh, I'm sorry. That doesn't work. What man or tank does?"
"Let's get something straight right now, otherwise..."
"Give it a rest. I won't be around much longer anyway."
Laura faced the hull, pulling her blanket over her shoulder. She hadn't thought about it until now, but she wondered if anyone had been listening.240Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZ4zIkSDZdO
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Twice Caleb had held himself back from jumping down and punching the shit out of the tank. He'd known that would embarrass Laura to no end. He'd let her handle the situation herself, and, to his mild surprise, she had been the one to whack Berkson.
When Laura had told him that her parents were dead, he guessed that they had died of illness or natural causes. For some reason, he had not made the connection between their service in the IDF and the Bionics War.
She had seen her parents slain. Her inability to sleep in the cramped bunk and the favoring of her palm all made sense now. Caleb tried to put himself in her place. He imagined himself in the crawlspace with his two brothers. And then he imagined the pleading eyes of his mother and father a second before they got their heads blown off.
No wonder she couldn't rest!
And now he couldn't. He looked across the cabin to the opposite porthole. The sun was two-thirds its normal diameter and half as bright. For a moment, he couldn't find Earth; then he spotted the blue planet with its tiny dot of a moon floating nearby.
It was funny to admit it, and it made him feel childish, but he was homesick. He remembered going away to Kibbutz Bet Jezus, something had come over him, a sense that he might never go home again, never see his brothers or parents again. He had started crying and couldn't stop. One of the counselors had had to take him into her office and assure him that in another week he was definitely going home. At first, he hadn't believed her, but then she had called his parents and they had told him not to worry, that they loved him and would see him soon. It had taken him two more days to finally shed the feeling.
It would take much longer now. Caleb was twenty-one million kilometers away from home, and he felt that the farther away the ISSCV took him, the stronger the longing would become.
He shut his eyes, dug his head into his pillow, and tried to fall asleep.
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