The man looked down at the line.
“That’s all?”
“For now.”
He began walking. The first three steps were too deliberate. The fourth brought his heel down beside the toe rather than directly before it.
“Again.”
The man turned.
“I only missed once.”
“You’ve only done it once.”
The second attempt was better. Mehrab watched the ankles, knees, shoulders, and the slight compensating movement of the hands. A body revealed its arguments in motion. It could lie while seated. Walking required it to negotiate openly with gravity.
The recruit returned to the examination table.
“Arms out.”
The man raised them. Mehrab placed both hands against his forearms.
“You’re heavier and bigger than me,” he said. “Try to push my arms away.”
The human hesitated.
“Go on.”
He pushed.
Mehrab’s elbows bent almost immediately, but he felt the force arrive equally through both arms. No weakness on one side. No tremor beyond that produced by effort. He shifted his grip and tested again, then had the man turn his palms upward and close his eyes.
“Hold.”
The arms remained level. Mehrab watched for drift.
Nothing. He passed the strength test.
“Good.”
“Am I fit?”
“You're standing.”
“I mean for duty.”
“I haven’t finished.”
Mehrab pulled the stool nearer and motioned for him to sit. He crouched at the man’s feet and pressed two padded fingers into the flesh above one boot, then the other, feeling for swelling and watching whether the skin retained the shape of pressure.
The recruit looked down.
“What’s that for?”
“To see if your body is already failing.”
The man gave a small laugh. Mehrab did not.
“Does that happen?”
“Yes.”
The laughter stopped.
There was no edema. The ankles were lean and firm. Mehrab asked about alcohol consumption, old fevers, yellowing of the eyes, dark urine, loss of appetite. The man answered with increasing caution, as though each question might reveal something uncomfortable.
Mehrab listened to his chest and back with a stethoscope. The breath sounds were clear. Heart regular. Skin intact apart from two insect bites acquired before the recruit had even learned the name of the insect responsible.
He returned to the desk and wrote on the clipboard.
The paper had a column for every part of the body the VSEA believed might betray a soldier in Tilmuhl. Vision. Balance. Coordination. Cardiovascular condition. Respiratory condition. Liver signs. Previous tropical exposure. Species-specific sensitivities. Immunization status.
The final column was headed SUITABILITY FOR PROLONGED FIELD DUTY.
Mehrab wrote: 'FIT, PENDING ACCLIMATION'
The distinction mattered to him more than it would matter to anyone reading the form. He placed the clipboard aside.
“Roll up your sleeve.”
The recruit looked toward the tray.
Several glass syringes rested there beside small labeled vials, rubbing alcohol, and a jar of cotton balls. Some of the labels were in trade speech. Others used medical abbreviations inherited from older institutions whose names no one remembered. A metal vaccination gun lay at the far end beneath a folded cloth.
“How many?”
“Enough.”
The man rolled up his sleeve.
Mehrab cleaned the skin with rubbing alcohol on a cotton ball and administered the first injection. The recruit flinched.
“Zhat one was easy,” Mehrab said.
The second went into the opposite arm. The third beneath the skin. The fourth was given from the vaccination gun in a quick pressure-driven strike that left a pale circular mark.
The recruit stared at it.
“What was that?”
“Somezhing you would razher have in here zhan out zhere.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It answers the useful part.”
Mehrab recorded each dose as he gave it. Jungle ague. Gray bowel. Two varieties of marsh fever. A fungal infection that entered through damaged feet. One inoculation intended primarily to prepare the immune system for organisms common in Olissingen but absent in the Heart. Another was not strictly a vaccine at all, but a prophylactic culture administered in carefully measured quantity so that the body would recognize a family of pathogens before encountering them in their less cooperative forms.