I stepped off the courier ship, dropped my gear, looked around.
“This is a world at war?”
The courier had dropped us in the middle of a grassy plain that
stretched unbroken to every horizon. That vista would have scared
the shit out of someone less accustomed to open spaces. I confess
to mild wobblies of my own. Service people don’t spend much
time out of doors.
In the near distance, a vast herd of beef cattle decided we
were harmless and resumed grazing. Shadowing them were a few
outriders. Kick out cattle and horsemen and there’d have been
no evidence that this was an inhabited world.
“Cowboys? For Christ’s sake.” They
weren’t Wild West cowboys, but not that different, either.
The nature of a profession often defines its garb and gear.
The courier joined me. “Picturesque, isn’t
it?”
“After that ride coming in . . . What
the hell was all the jumping about?” A courier boat has no
room for observers on its bridge. I’d gone through the
approach blind.
“Destroyer. Old scow.” He snapped his fingers and
grinned. “Shook her like that.”
“How come you’re such a pale shade, then?” My
shipmate of the past few weeks was a black subLieutenant whose main
pleasure was the witty ethnic insult. He didn’t argue that
one. It’d been a tight squeeze.
“They’ll be along any minute. Said they were sending
somebody.”
“Why out here? Why not straight into Turbeyville?”
He hadn’t revealed his landing plan beforehand.
“We’d have got smoked. Planetary Defense
doesn’t waste time shitting around with Fleet couriers.
They’re busy covering the lifter pipe from the Pits. They
don’t want to hear from home anyhow.” He patted the
case chained to his wrist. Odd, I thought, that it should be so
huge. Suitcase size. Big suitcase. “They’ll cuss me for
two weeks.”
I studied the chain. “Damn. I’ll have to cut your
hand off now.”
“That isn’t funny.” The poor bastards. They
get so paranoid they won’t turn their backs on their own
mothers.
The chain was long. He put the case down and sat on it. He said,
“Just open them baby blues and turn yourself a slow circle,
Lieutenant.”
I did. The plains. The grass. The cowboys, who showed no
interest in the boat.
“What do you see?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“You’ve seen it all. Change your plans. Come on home
with me.”
“There’s more to it than this.”
“Well, sure. Trees, mountains, some busted-up cities. Big
deal. Look at those bastards. Hunking around on horses.
And they’re the lucky ones. They don’t live in caves.
No boomer drops on cows.”
“I fought too hard to get here. I’ll see it
through.”
“Fool.” He grinned. “Climbers, yet. Here it
comes.” He pointed. A skimmer wove a sinuous path across the
green, a small, dark boat chopping through a breezy sea.
It rumbled up to us, down wash whipping torn grass against our
legs. “Still not too late, Lieutenant. Go hide in the
boat.”
I smiled my holo-hero smile. “Let’s go.”
It’s easy to grin when the fiercest monster in sight is a
cow. I’d ridden the killer bulls of Tregorgarth. I was ready
for anything.
The skimmer driver waved impatiently. “Not the
wide-open-spaces type,” the courier guessed.
We boarded. Our steed surged forward, arcing past the herd,
leaving a long, dull snail track of smashed grass. Cows and cowboys
watched with equally indifferent eyes. Our driver had little to
say. She was the surly type. You know, “My feelings are hurt
just by being here with you.”
The subLieutenant stage-whispered, “You’re an
offworlder, they figure you’re a High Command spy. They hate
High Command.”
“Can’t blame them.” Canaan had been under soft
blockade for years. It made life difficult.
Back when, the other side hadn’t thought Canaan worth
occupation. Big mistake. It was a tough nut now. The senior officer
in the region, Admiral Tannian, had assembled scattered, defeated,
ragtag units for a dramatic last stand. The Ulantonids disappointed
him. So he dug in and began gnawing on their supply lines. Now they
are too heavily committed elsewhere to give him the squashing he
wanted.
Great stuff, Fortress Canaan, High Command decided. They sent
Tannian the first Climber squadron into service. He saw their
potential instantly. He created his own industrial base.
You couldn’t question the Admiral’s energy,
dedication, or tenacity. Canaan, an agricultural world sparsely
settled, overnight became a feisty fortress and shipbuilding
center. A loose frontier society became a tight warfare state with
a solitary purpose: the construction and manning of Climbers. All
Tannian demanded of the Inner Worlds was a trickle of trained
personnel to cadre his locally raised legions. A bargain. High
Command gladly obliged. To the sorrow of many ranking officers with
ambitions or personal axes to grind.
Admiral Frederick Minh-Tannian became proconsul of
Canaan’s system and absolute master of humanity’s last
bastion in this end of space. Down the line, on the Inner Worlds,
he was considered one of the great heroes of the war.
It was an hour’s run to the nearest Guards’ outpost.
The place fit the Wild West image. Adobe walls surrounded scores of
hump-backed bunkers. Most of those boasted obsolete but effective
detection antennae. There were barracks for several hundred
soldiers, and a dozen armed floaters.
My companion said, “I usually put down here. One company.
It patrols more area than France on Old Earth. Six regular
soldiers. The Captain, a Lieutenant, and four sergeants. The rest
are locals. Serve three months a year and chase cows the rest. Or
dig turnips. They bring their families if they have
them.”
“I was wondering about the kids.” It was the most
unmilitary installation I’d ever seen. Looked like a way
station three years into a Volkerwanderung. It
would’ve given Marine sergeants apoplexy.
The Captain wasted little time on us. He spoke with the courier
briefly. The courier opened that huge case and passed over a kilo
canister. The Captain handed him some greasy Conmarks. They were
old bills, pre-war pink instead of today’s lilac gray. The
courier shoved them inside his tunic, grinned at me, and went
outside.
“Coffee,” he explained. And, “A man has to
make hay while the sun shines. A local proverb.”
My glimpse inside the case had shown me maybe forty more
canisters.
It was an old, old game with Fleet couriers. The brass knew
about it. Only their pets received courier assignment. Sometimes
there were kickbacks. My companion didn’t look like a man
whose business was that big.
“I see.”
“Sometimes tobacco, too. They don’t raise it here.
And chocolate, when I can make the contacts back home.”
“You should’ve loaded the boat.” I
didn’t resent his running luxuries. Guess I’m a
laissez-faire capitalist at heart.
He grinned. “I did. Can’t deal with the Captain,
though. After a while one of the sergeants will notice that nobody
has patrolled that part of the plain lately. He’ll make the
sweep himself, just to keep his hand in. And I’ll find a bale
of Conmarks when I get back.” He hoisted his case.
“This’s for special people. I sell it practically at
cost.”
“Conmarks ought to be drying up out here.”
“They’re getting harder to come by. I’m not
the only courier on the Canaan run.” He brightened.
“But, shit. There had to be billions floating around before
the war. It’ll come out. Just got to keep refusing military
scrip.”
“I wish you luck, my friend.” I was thinking of a
few items in my own luggage, meant to sweeten the contacts I hoped
to make.
The subLieutenant kicked a floater. “Looks as good as any
of them. Throw your stuff in and let’s go.”
We had to cross two-thirds of a continent. A quarter of the way
round Canaan’s southern hemisphere. I slept twice. We stopped
for fuel several times. The subLieutenant kept the floater
screaming all the time he was at the controls. My turns, I kept it
down to a sedate 250 kph.
He wakened me once to show me a city. “They called it
Mecklenburg. After some city on Old Earth. Population a hundred
thousand. Biggest town for a thousand klicks.”
Mecklenburg lay in ruins. Threads of campfire smoke drifted up.
“Old folks with deep roots, I guess. They wouldn’t pull
out. They’re safe now. Nothing left to blast.” He
kicked the floater into motion.
Later, he asked, “What’s the name of that town where
you want off?”
“Kent.”
He punched up something on the floater’s little info
screen. “It’s still there. Must not be much.”
“I don’t know. Never been there.”
“Well, it can’t be shit, that close to T-ville and
still standing. Hell, you’d think they’d take it out
just for spite.”
“The way our boys do?”
“I guess.” He sounded sour. “This war is a big
pain in the ass.”
That was the one time I didn’t like my companion. He
didn’t say that the way the grunts and spikes do. He was
pissed because the war had disturbed his social life.
I said nothing. The attitude is common among those who see
little or no combat. He viewed the brush coming in as part of a
gentleman’s game, a passage of arms in a knight’s
spring jousts.
We roared into Kent in midaftemoon. Kent was a sleepy village
that might have been teleported whole from Old Earth’s past.
A few scruffy Guards represented the present. They looked like
locals combining military responsibilities with their normal
routine.
“You know the address, I could drop you off,
Lieutenant.”
“That’s all right. They said ask the Guards.
Somebody will pick me up. Right here is fine. Thanks for the
lift.”
“Suit yourself.” He gave me a long look after I
dropped into the anpaved street.
“Lieutenant . . . You’ve got balls.
Climbers. Good luck.” He slammed the hatch and
lurched away. The last I saw, he was a streak heading toward
Turbeyville like a moth to flame.
Good luck, he said. Like I’d damned well need it. Well,
good luck to you too, courier. May you become wealthy on the Canaan
run.
That was when I started wondering if maybe I hadn’t
wangled my way into a hexenkessel.
I spoke with a Guards woman. She made a call. Ten minutes later
a woman eased a strange, rattling contraption up to me. It was a
locally produced vehicle of venerable years, propelled by internal
combustion. My nose couldn’t decide if the fuel was alcohol
or of petroleum derivation. We’d used both in the
floater.
“Jump in, Lieutenant. I’m Marie. He was taking a
shower, so I came. Be a nice surprise.”
“Didn’t they tell him I was coming?”
“He wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”
It took ten minutes to reach the house among the trees. Pines, I
think they were. Imported and gene-spliced with something local so
they could slide into the ecology. Marie never shut up, and never
said a word that interested me. She must have decided I was a
sullen, sour old fart.
My friend wasn’t surprised. He ambushed me at the door,
enveloped me in a huge bear hug. “Back in harness, eh? And
looking good, too. See they bumped you to Lieutenant.” He
didn’t mention my leg. He sensed that that was
verboten.
I’m touchy about the injury. It destroyed my career.
“Boat get in early?”
“I don’t know. The courier always went full out.
Maybe so.”
“Little private business on the side?” He grinned.
He was older than I remembered him, and older than I expected. The
grin took off ten years. “So let’s have a drink and
confound Marie with lies about Academy.”
He meant what he said, and yet . . . There
was a hollowness to his words, as though he had to strain to put
them together in the acceptable forms. He acted like a man
who’d been out of circulation so long he’d forgotten
his social devices. I found that intriguing.
I grew more intrigued during the following few days. I was soon
aware that an old friend had become a stranger, that this man only
wore the weathered husk of the friend I’d known in Academy.
And he realized that he had few points of congruency left with me.
Those were a sad few days. We tried hard, and the harder we tried
the more obvious it became. Canaan was his homeworld. He’d requested
duty there. His request had been granted, with an assignment to
Climbers. He’d been home for slightly under two years, done
seven Climber missions, and now had his own ship. He’d been
executive officer aboard an attack destroyer before his transfer.
He’d worked his way back up.
He wouldn’t talk about that side of his life, and that
disturbed me. He was never a talker but had always been willing to
share his experiences if you asked the right questions. Now there
were no right questions. He wanted to pretend that his military
life didn’t exist.
Just a few short years since we’d last met. And in the
interim they’d peeled his skin and stuffed somebody else
inside.
He and Marie fought like animals. I could detect no positive
feelings between them. She’d screech and yell and throw
things almost every time the both of them were out of sight. As if
I had no ears. As if my not seeing kept it from being real.
Sometimes the screeching lasted half the night. He didn’t
fight back, insofar as I could tell. I never heard his voice
raised. Once, in my presence, while we walked through the pines, he
muttered, “She doesn’t know any better. She’s
just an Old Earth whore.”
I asked no questions and he didn’t explain. I supposed she
was one of the sluts they’d grabbed early and had scattered
around for the morale of the men, and had found unnecessary in a
mixed-sex service. All heart, our do-good leaders. They’d
dropped the women where they were.
Maybe Marie had a right to be hostile.
Three days of unpleasantness. Then, well ahead of schedule, my
friend told me, “Time to go. Pick the things you want to
take. We’ll leave after dark. West of here it’s better
to travel at night.” The quarreling had become too much for
him. He wanted out.
He didn’t admit that. He simply made his announcement.
When Marie got the word, the gloves came off. She no longer kept
the vitriol private.
I didn’t blame him for running.
A young Guardswoman brought us a Navy floater after sundown. We
boarded under Marie’s fiercest barrage yet. My friend never
looked back.
After we dropped the Guardswoman at her headquarters, I asked,
“Why don’t you throw her out? You don’t owe her
anything.”
He didn’t respond for a long time. Instead, he lit his
pipe and puffed his way through. Midway, he said,
“We’ll pick up our First Watch Officer and a new kid.
Going to start him off in Ship’s Services. Academy boy.
Don’t get many of those anymore.”
Later still, in snatches, he told me what he thought of our
ship’s officers. He didn’t say a lot. Thumbnail
sketches. He didn’t want to talk about his command. He
responded to my earlier question just before we collected his First
Watch Officer.
“Somebody owes her. They put the hose to her. She’ll
never get off this rock. Might as well use my place.”
What can you say to that? Call him a sucker for strays? I
don’t think so. I’d call it a case of one man’s
using otherwise unimportant resources to rectify one of this
universe’s countless injustices. I think that’s the way
he pictured it. I don’t think thumbscrews would have forced
him to admit it.
The First Watch Officer was Stefan Yanevich. Lieutenant. Another
Canaan native. A long, lanky man with ginger hair and eyes that
sometimes looked gray, sometimes pale blue. Thin, sharp features
and sleepy eyes. A soft drawl when he spoke, which was seldom. He
was as reticent as my friend the Commander.
He was waiting outside his quarters, alone, and looked eager to
go. But there was no eagerness in the way he slung his duffel
aboard.
He had long, slim fingers that moved while he gave me his
biography. Twenty-five. His Academy class had been two behind ours.
He’d volunteered for Canaan because it was his homeworld.
This would be his sixth mission.
The Commander thought well of him. He would have his own ship
next mission.
He accepted me without question. I supposed the Commander had
vouched for me. He didn’t seem interested in why I was here,
or who I used to be. Again, I assumed the Commander had filled him
in.
The Old Man said, “Next stop, the kid.”
Yanevich became interested. “Met him yet? What’s he
like?”
“Came up last week. Squared away. Shows promise.
We’ll like him.” There was an edge to his voice . It
said it didn’t matter if anyone liked the new man, but it
would be a nice bonus if he turned out okay.
Ensign Bradley was as quiet as the others, but more naturally
so. He wasn’t hiding from anything. When he did speak, he
successfully downplayed his own lack of experience. He drew both
the Commander and First Watch Officer out more skillfully than I
had. I pegged him as a very bright and personable young
man—when he turned himself on. He wasn’t a Canaanite.
In an aside to me, he said, “I flipped a coin when I got my
bars. Heads or tails, Fleet or Climbers. Came up heads. The
Fleet.” He smiled a broad, boyish smile, the kind to win a
mother’s love. “So I went best two out of three and
three out of five. Voila! Here I am.”
“Going to make Admiral in a year,” the Old Man
said.
“Might take longer than that.” Bradley’s grin
weakened.
“What I don’t understand is why they sent me out
here instead of to Fleet Two. Admiral Tannian is
self-sufficient.”
“Maybe too self-sufficient,” I suggested.
“Some people in Luna Command think he’s too
independent. He’s got his own little empire out
here.”
The Commander glanced back. “That something you know, or
just speculation?”
“Half and half.”
Yanevich grunted. My friend lapsed into indifference. Later, he
said, “T-ville coming up. First Watch Officer, I’ll
drop you and Bradley at the north gate. I’ll take my friend
sight-seeing.”
Earlier, there had been a big raid. The sky over Turbeyville had
been filled with ships and missiles. I’d expressed an
interest in seeing the aftermath. Once I did, I wished I’d
kept my mouth shut.
Navy has two headquarters in-system. One is beneath Turbeyville.
The other is buried deep inside Canaan’s major moon. Canaan
has two satellites, tiny TerVeen and the big moon, which has no
other name. Just the moon. I was glad of a chance to poke around
one headquarters before the mission.
I roamed alone. The Commander, First Watch Officer, and
Ship’s Services Officer were busy with what looked like
make-work, preparing for the mission. I found myself more welcome
among the PR-sensitive staff at Climber Command. They arranged
interviews with people whose names were household words on the
Inner Worlds. Real heroes of the Fleet. Men and women who’d
survived their ten missions. They were a depressing bunch. I began
to develop a sour outlook myself, and to wonder just how bright
I’d been, asking to join a Climber patrol.
Then the Commander turned up at my room in Transient
Officers’ Quarters. “Our last night here. Heading for
the Pits tomorrow. The rest of us are going slumming. Want to come
along?”
“I don’t know.” I’d tried the O clubs.
They were filled with dreary staff types. Their atmosphere was both
boring and stultifying. There’s nothing deadlier than a
congregation of conscientious bureaucrats.
“We’re going a different place. Private club.
Climber people and guests only. The real front-line
warriors.” His smile was sarcastic. “Give you a chance
to meet our astrogator, Westhause. Just turned up. Good man, but
he talks too much.”
“Why not?” I had yet to meet any Climber people but
those with whom I was traveling. The others might be less
taciturn.
“Called the Pregnant Dragon, for reasons lost in the
trackless deserts of time.” He grinned at my raised eyebrow.
“Don’t wear your best. Sometimes it gets
rowdy.”
Something came up which demanded the Commander’s
attention, so we arrived late. But not late enough. I
should’ve stayed behind.
That night witnessed the destruction of a hundred cherished
cities in my land of illusions.
The Dragon was up near the surface, in an old subbasement. I
heard it long before I saw it, and when I saw it, I asked,
“This’s an Officers’ Club?”
“Climber people only,” Westhause said, grinning.
“Down people couldn’t handle it.”
Four hundred people had packed themselves into a space that had
served two hundred before the war. Odors hit me like a surprise
fist in the face. Alcohol. Vomit. Tobacco. Urine. Drugs. All backed
by mind-shattering noise. The customers had to shout to make
themselves heard over the efforts of an abominable local band.
Civilian waiters and waitresses cursed their ways through the
press, getting groped by both sexes. I guess the tips made up for
the indignities. Climber people had nothing else to do with their
pay.
Athwart the doorway, lying like some fallen angel seduced by the
sins of Gomorrah, was a full Commander wearing Muslim
Chaplain’s insignia. Smiling, he snored in a pool of vomit.
Nobody seemed inclined to move or clean him. Conforming to custom,
we stepped over his inert form. Not a meter beyond, two male
officers were playing kissy-face huggy-bear. I’m afraid I
gasped.
I mean, it does go on, but right inside the front door of the O
club?
The Commander grunted, “Hang on to your nuts.
There’s more fun to come.” He halted two steps inside,
ignoring the lovers. Fists on hips, he stared about as though
springing a surprise inspection. Having glimpsed what was going on,
I expected an explosion.
He threw back his head and cut loose with a great jackass bray
of laughter.
And Yanevich bellowed, “Make a hole for the best goddamned
Climber in the Fleet, you yellow-assed scum.”
The cacophony declined maybe one decibel. People looked us over.
Some waved. Some shouted. Some moved toward us. Friends, I
supposed.
A tiny china doll, ethereally beautiful in makeup which
exaggerated her aristocratic Manchu features, slid beneath our
elbows as lithely as a weasel. A meter away she paused and, eyes
sparkling, mimicked the Commander’s stance.
“You’re fucking full of shit, Steve,” she
shouted at Yanevich. “Ninety-two A’s the best, and you
fucking well know it.”
Yanevich lunged like a bear in rut. “Shit. I didn’t
know you guys were in.”
“Come down off your goddamned mountain once in a while,
graverobber.” She laughed and wriggled as he mauled her.
“Can you still get it up, Donkey Dick? Or did it fall off out
there in the ruins? We just got in. I could use an all-night
hosing.”
“We’re headed out, Little Bits. Tell you what. You
have any doubts, I’ll stick a wad of gum on the end. You let
me know when you’re chewing.”
I was too startled to be disgusted. A mouth like that on an
Academy man?
For no sane reason whatsoever, it being none of my concern, the
woman told me, “This crud has got the longest hanger I ever
saw.” She licked her lips. “Nice. But maybe I’ll
want a little variety tonight.”
“Sorry.” I thought she was propositioning me. I
didn’t want to trample Yanevich’s territory.
“Variety? Mao, I’d end up chasing crabs through my
beard the whole patrol.” He winked at me, oblivious to my
pallor and rictus of a smile. I found the girl more baffling than
he. She couldn’t be more than twenty. He asked, “You
learn to move your ass yet?”
“No thanks to you.” She told me, “This crud
got my cherry.
Caught me in a weak moment, way back my first night in after my
first patrol. Pounded away all night, and never did tell me I was
supposed to do anything besides lie there.”
Surely I turned from pale ivory to infrared. Bradley was equally
appalled. “Maybe they’re putting us on, sir.”
This assault on the sensibilities had forced him to retreat into
the ancient and trusted fastnesses of military ritual.
“I don’t think so.”
“I guess not.” I thought he would lose his
supper.
“I think we’re seeing Climber people in their feral
state, Mr. Bradley. I suspect the news people have misinformed
us.” I grinned at my own sarcasm.
“Yes sir.” He was developing an advanced case of
culture shock.
The Commander seized my elbow. “Over here. I see some
seats.” We marched through a fusillade of derisive remarks
about our ship and squadron. Other officers, apparently from our
squadron, made room for us at their table. I gutted out a barrage
of introductions, doubting I’d remember anyone in the
morning. Bradley suffered it with glazed eyes and limp hand.
Reality had come stampeding through the mists of myth and
propaganda and had trampled us both with all the delicacy of a
mastodon treading on a gnat’s toe. We couldn’t
acknowledge it. Not till something more personal drove the lesson
home.
Yanevich disappeared with his friend. I didn’t understand.
He didn’t seem the type. He had changed at the door.
Eat, drink, and be merry?
Westhause vanished, too, before I got to learn much more than
his name. Then Bradley, eyes still glazed, was spirited away by a
matronly Staff Captain. “What the fuck is she doing
here?” someone muttered, then plopped her face into the
spilled beer on the table before her, muttering that the Dragon was
a private preserve.
“Ah, let it go,” someone replied. “He
wasn’t going to do us any good.”
I withdrew into myself, drank some, and rolled the camera behind
my eyes. When in shock, record. I remained only vaguely aware that
the Commander was sitting out the squadron’s diminution. Like
me, he was a seated statue with folded arms. I tried to remember
“Ozymandias.” I came up with some lines about rose red
cities and then couldn’t decide if I had the right piece. Why
“Ozymandias,” anyway? I couldn’t remember that,
either. Must have been a reason, though. I ordered another
drink.
He was observing, too, our silent, gallant Ship’s
Commander. Back when, that had always been his excuse for not
partaking of our clique’s conversational buffet.
It grew late. The mob thinned considerably. I shipped a bigger
cargo than I thought. The room began to rock a little, and I to
wonder if our friends upstairs had a drop on tonight. The Commander
touched my elbow gently. “Eh?” At the moment that was
the most intelligent thing I could say.
“Somebody you might remember.” He nodded toward a
tall, lean blonde doing a slow strip atop a nearby table.
I stared through misty eyes. At first I only wondered about her
age. She looked older than most of the women.
“Got her own ship,” the Commander said.
Fascination and horror, lust and loathing, gusted through my
sodden soul. I recognized her.
She looked so old!
Sharon Parker. The Virgin Goddess. The Bitch Queen of Academy
Battalion Tango Romeo. How I’d loved and lusted after her at
a tender seventeen. How many nights had I lain with my good right
hand and imagined those creamy thighs clamping me?
The memories were embarrassing. I’d been so much a fool
that I’d declared my undying
passion . . .
She’d been as cold and remote as the dark side of Old
Earth’s moon. She’d teased, taunted, promised forever
afterward, and never had delivered. For me or anyone else, as far
as I knew.
Torturing me became her pet project. I was more obvious and
vulnerable than my classmates.
“No. Let it be.”
Too late. The Commander waved. She recognized him. She left her
little stage and came over. The Old Man kicked out an empty chair.
She seemed slightly embarrassed as she settled into it. The
Commander can have that effect. He seems so competent and solid,
sometimes, that everyone around will feel second-rate and clumsy. I
always do.
She gave me one indifferent glance while crossing the room. Just
another Lieutenant. Navy is infested with Lieutenants.
“Good patrol?” the Commander asked.
“Shit. Two old tubs that belonged in a transport museum.
One escort destroyer. Only one tub confirmed. One lousy baby
convoy. Twelve ships. We got off our missile flight, then the
hunter-killers hit us. Thought it was the Executioner for a while.
Took us nine days to shake them.”
“Rough?” I asked.
She shrugged, gave me another of those indifferent glances.
I watched the light dawn. She turned bright red, shed the
drunken table-dancer avatar like a snake sloughs skin. For one long
moment she looked like she had a hot steel splinter under her
fingernail.
“You.” Another moment of silence.
“You’ve changed.”
“Haven’t we all?”
She wanted to run so bad I could smell it. But it was too late.
She’d been seen. She’d been caught. She had to face the
consequences.
I was both pleased and a little frightened. Could she value my
good opinion that much?
“Civilian influence,” I said. “I was out for a
while. You’ve changed too.” I wanted to bite my tongue
immediately. Not only was that the wrong thing to say, it slipped
out sounding bitter. My brain was on vacation. My hands had made
too many connections with my mouth, carrying too many drinks.
“I heard about the accident.” Bravely bearing up,
that was her attitude. “You making it okay now?”
“Good enough,” I lied. Twelve years of Academy had
done nothing to ready me for a sudden shift to civilian life. I
could have gone on, I suppose, in a desk job, buried in Luna
Command, but my pride hadn’t permitted it. I was Line, and by
damn that was what I’d stay, or nothing. “I like the
freedom. To bed when I want, up when I want. Go where I want. You
know. Like that.”
“Yeah. I know.” She didn’t believe a word.
“So. What’ve you been doing?”
“Climbing the ladder. Got my own ship now. Forty-seven
Cee. Bravo Flight, Five Squadron. Seven patrols.” I
couldn’t think of anything to say. After an embarrassed
silence, she added, “And finding out what it’s like to
be on the dirty end.”
The conversation lay there awhile, like a beached whale too
exhausted to struggle.
“I’m sorry. For everything I did. I didn’t
know what I was doing. I didn’t know what you could do to
somebody.”
“Long ago and far away. Like it happened to somebody else.
All forgotten now. We were just kids.”
“No.”
I’d lied again. And again she’d read me. It
didn’t hurt as much now, but the pain was still there.
There’re those small places where you never grow up.
“Can we go someplace?”
The thrill again. My libido recalled antediluvian fantasies.
“I don’t think . . . ”
“Just to talk. You were always the best listener in the
battalion.”
Yes. I’d listened a lot. To problems. Everybody had come
to me. Especially Sharon.
It had been a way to be near her. Always, back then,
there’d been the Plan. Move after carefully calculated move,
to seduction. I hadn’t found the nerve to make the most
critical, daring end-game maneuvers.
There’d been nobody for me to cry on. Who confesses the
confessor?
“I’ll only be gone a minute.” She scrambled
after discarded clothing. I watched and was more baffled by her
behavior than by anything else I’d seen.
“She’s aged.”
The Commander nodded. “It’s an eight year millennium
since we graduated. Nothing left of those wide-eyed kids now.
Except for you, most of them died the first year of the
war.”
I needed a moment to realize he meant figurative death. The lift
of the alcohol had peaked long since. I was headed down the rough
side.
Sharon returned trailing a belligerent Lieutenant. He was sober
enough to remain civil during the introductions, drunk enough to
contemplate violence when he learned she was leaving with me.
The Commander rose, scowled. The younger man backed down. The
Old Man can intimidate anybody when he puts his mind to it.
The Lieutenant faded away. The Commander resumed his seat. He
filled the pipe that, in deference to the rest of us, he’d
ignored all evening. He was alone now.
I glanced back once. He sat there with his legs sprawled beneath
the table, observing, and for an instant I sensed his
loneliness.
Ours is a lonely profession. The pressures of war only
exaggerate the alienation.
Sharon and I did more than talk. Of course. There was never any
doubt of it. She tried to expiate the cruelties of the past. I
stumbled, but managed my part.
There was really little point to it.
The dream had died. There was no magic left. Just a man and a
woman, both frightened, sharing a brief communion, a feeble escape
from thought.
Only I didn’t escape. Not entirely. Not for one second did
I forget the mission.
The incident taught me why there were places like the
Pregnant Dragon. In liquor, drugs, sex, or self-loathing, it
provided surcease from the endless fear. Fear those people knew far
better than I, who knew Climbers only by what I’d read,
heard, and seen on holovision.
I have this reflection on the incident. One of life’s
crudest pranks is to yield heart’s desire only when the
desire has been replaced by another. Rare is the man who recognizes
and seizes the precise instant, like a perfectly ripened fruit, and
enjoys it at its moment of ultimate fulfillment.
At least we parted friends.
The dawn came, and with it a message from the Commander saying
it was time we moved on to the Pits. We were to lift for TerVeen in
eighteen hours.
I looked at her one last time, as she slept, and I wondered,
What drew me to this world where they execute dreams?
I stepped off the courier ship, dropped my gear, looked around.
“This is a world at war?”
The courier had dropped us in the middle of a grassy plain that
stretched unbroken to every horizon. That vista would have scared
the shit out of someone less accustomed to open spaces. I confess
to mild wobblies of my own. Service people don’t spend much
time out of doors.
In the near distance, a vast herd of beef cattle decided we
were harmless and resumed grazing. Shadowing them were a few
outriders. Kick out cattle and horsemen and there’d have been
no evidence that this was an inhabited world.
“Cowboys? For Christ’s sake.” They
weren’t Wild West cowboys, but not that different, either.
The nature of a profession often defines its garb and gear.
The courier joined me. “Picturesque, isn’t
it?”
“After that ride coming in . . . What
the hell was all the jumping about?” A courier boat has no
room for observers on its bridge. I’d gone through the
approach blind.
“Destroyer. Old scow.” He snapped his fingers and
grinned. “Shook her like that.”
“How come you’re such a pale shade, then?” My
shipmate of the past few weeks was a black subLieutenant whose main
pleasure was the witty ethnic insult. He didn’t argue that
one. It’d been a tight squeeze.
“They’ll be along any minute. Said they were sending
somebody.”
“Why out here? Why not straight into Turbeyville?”
He hadn’t revealed his landing plan beforehand.
“We’d have got smoked. Planetary Defense
doesn’t waste time shitting around with Fleet couriers.
They’re busy covering the lifter pipe from the Pits. They
don’t want to hear from home anyhow.” He patted the
case chained to his wrist. Odd, I thought, that it should be so
huge. Suitcase size. Big suitcase. “They’ll cuss me for
two weeks.”
I studied the chain. “Damn. I’ll have to cut your
hand off now.”
“That isn’t funny.” The poor bastards. They
get so paranoid they won’t turn their backs on their own
mothers.
The chain was long. He put the case down and sat on it. He said,
“Just open them baby blues and turn yourself a slow circle,
Lieutenant.”
I did. The plains. The grass. The cowboys, who showed no
interest in the boat.
“What do you see?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“You’ve seen it all. Change your plans. Come on home
with me.”
“There’s more to it than this.”
“Well, sure. Trees, mountains, some busted-up cities. Big
deal. Look at those bastards. Hunking around on horses.
And they’re the lucky ones. They don’t live in caves.
No boomer drops on cows.”
“I fought too hard to get here. I’ll see it
through.”
“Fool.” He grinned. “Climbers, yet. Here it
comes.” He pointed. A skimmer wove a sinuous path across the
green, a small, dark boat chopping through a breezy sea.
It rumbled up to us, down wash whipping torn grass against our
legs. “Still not too late, Lieutenant. Go hide in the
boat.”
I smiled my holo-hero smile. “Let’s go.”
It’s easy to grin when the fiercest monster in sight is a
cow. I’d ridden the killer bulls of Tregorgarth. I was ready
for anything.
The skimmer driver waved impatiently. “Not the
wide-open-spaces type,” the courier guessed.
We boarded. Our steed surged forward, arcing past the herd,
leaving a long, dull snail track of smashed grass. Cows and cowboys
watched with equally indifferent eyes. Our driver had little to
say. She was the surly type. You know, “My feelings are hurt
just by being here with you.”
The subLieutenant stage-whispered, “You’re an
offworlder, they figure you’re a High Command spy. They hate
High Command.”
“Can’t blame them.” Canaan had been under soft
blockade for years. It made life difficult.
Back when, the other side hadn’t thought Canaan worth
occupation. Big mistake. It was a tough nut now. The senior officer
in the region, Admiral Tannian, had assembled scattered, defeated,
ragtag units for a dramatic last stand. The Ulantonids disappointed
him. So he dug in and began gnawing on their supply lines. Now they
are too heavily committed elsewhere to give him the squashing he
wanted.
Great stuff, Fortress Canaan, High Command decided. They sent
Tannian the first Climber squadron into service. He saw their
potential instantly. He created his own industrial base.
You couldn’t question the Admiral’s energy,
dedication, or tenacity. Canaan, an agricultural world sparsely
settled, overnight became a feisty fortress and shipbuilding
center. A loose frontier society became a tight warfare state with
a solitary purpose: the construction and manning of Climbers. All
Tannian demanded of the Inner Worlds was a trickle of trained
personnel to cadre his locally raised legions. A bargain. High
Command gladly obliged. To the sorrow of many ranking officers with
ambitions or personal axes to grind.
Admiral Frederick Minh-Tannian became proconsul of
Canaan’s system and absolute master of humanity’s last
bastion in this end of space. Down the line, on the Inner Worlds,
he was considered one of the great heroes of the war.
It was an hour’s run to the nearest Guards’ outpost.
The place fit the Wild West image. Adobe walls surrounded scores of
hump-backed bunkers. Most of those boasted obsolete but effective
detection antennae. There were barracks for several hundred
soldiers, and a dozen armed floaters.
My companion said, “I usually put down here. One company.
It patrols more area than France on Old Earth. Six regular
soldiers. The Captain, a Lieutenant, and four sergeants. The rest
are locals. Serve three months a year and chase cows the rest. Or
dig turnips. They bring their families if they have
them.”
“I was wondering about the kids.” It was the most
unmilitary installation I’d ever seen. Looked like a way
station three years into a Volkerwanderung. It
would’ve given Marine sergeants apoplexy.
The Captain wasted little time on us. He spoke with the courier
briefly. The courier opened that huge case and passed over a kilo
canister. The Captain handed him some greasy Conmarks. They were
old bills, pre-war pink instead of today’s lilac gray. The
courier shoved them inside his tunic, grinned at me, and went
outside.
“Coffee,” he explained. And, “A man has to
make hay while the sun shines. A local proverb.”
My glimpse inside the case had shown me maybe forty more
canisters.
It was an old, old game with Fleet couriers. The brass knew
about it. Only their pets received courier assignment. Sometimes
there were kickbacks. My companion didn’t look like a man
whose business was that big.
“I see.”
“Sometimes tobacco, too. They don’t raise it here.
And chocolate, when I can make the contacts back home.”
“You should’ve loaded the boat.” I
didn’t resent his running luxuries. Guess I’m a
laissez-faire capitalist at heart.
He grinned. “I did. Can’t deal with the Captain,
though. After a while one of the sergeants will notice that nobody
has patrolled that part of the plain lately. He’ll make the
sweep himself, just to keep his hand in. And I’ll find a bale
of Conmarks when I get back.” He hoisted his case.
“This’s for special people. I sell it practically at
cost.”
“Conmarks ought to be drying up out here.”
“They’re getting harder to come by. I’m not
the only courier on the Canaan run.” He brightened.
“But, shit. There had to be billions floating around before
the war. It’ll come out. Just got to keep refusing military
scrip.”
“I wish you luck, my friend.” I was thinking of a
few items in my own luggage, meant to sweeten the contacts I hoped
to make.
The subLieutenant kicked a floater. “Looks as good as any
of them. Throw your stuff in and let’s go.”
We had to cross two-thirds of a continent. A quarter of the way
round Canaan’s southern hemisphere. I slept twice. We stopped
for fuel several times. The subLieutenant kept the floater
screaming all the time he was at the controls. My turns, I kept it
down to a sedate 250 kph.
He wakened me once to show me a city. “They called it
Mecklenburg. After some city on Old Earth. Population a hundred
thousand. Biggest town for a thousand klicks.”
Mecklenburg lay in ruins. Threads of campfire smoke drifted up.
“Old folks with deep roots, I guess. They wouldn’t pull
out. They’re safe now. Nothing left to blast.” He
kicked the floater into motion.
Later, he asked, “What’s the name of that town where
you want off?”
“Kent.”
He punched up something on the floater’s little info
screen. “It’s still there. Must not be much.”
“I don’t know. Never been there.”
“Well, it can’t be shit, that close to T-ville and
still standing. Hell, you’d think they’d take it out
just for spite.”
“The way our boys do?”
“I guess.” He sounded sour. “This war is a big
pain in the ass.”
That was the one time I didn’t like my companion. He
didn’t say that the way the grunts and spikes do. He was
pissed because the war had disturbed his social life.
I said nothing. The attitude is common among those who see
little or no combat. He viewed the brush coming in as part of a
gentleman’s game, a passage of arms in a knight’s
spring jousts.
We roared into Kent in midaftemoon. Kent was a sleepy village
that might have been teleported whole from Old Earth’s past.
A few scruffy Guards represented the present. They looked like
locals combining military responsibilities with their normal
routine.
“You know the address, I could drop you off,
Lieutenant.”
“That’s all right. They said ask the Guards.
Somebody will pick me up. Right here is fine. Thanks for the
lift.”
“Suit yourself.” He gave me a long look after I
dropped into the anpaved street.
“Lieutenant . . . You’ve got balls.
Climbers. Good luck.” He slammed the hatch and
lurched away. The last I saw, he was a streak heading toward
Turbeyville like a moth to flame.
Good luck, he said. Like I’d damned well need it. Well,
good luck to you too, courier. May you become wealthy on the Canaan
run.
That was when I started wondering if maybe I hadn’t
wangled my way into a hexenkessel.
I spoke with a Guards woman. She made a call. Ten minutes later
a woman eased a strange, rattling contraption up to me. It was a
locally produced vehicle of venerable years, propelled by internal
combustion. My nose couldn’t decide if the fuel was alcohol
or of petroleum derivation. We’d used both in the
floater.
“Jump in, Lieutenant. I’m Marie. He was taking a
shower, so I came. Be a nice surprise.”
“Didn’t they tell him I was coming?”
“He wasn’t expecting you till tomorrow.”
It took ten minutes to reach the house among the trees. Pines, I
think they were. Imported and gene-spliced with something local so
they could slide into the ecology. Marie never shut up, and never
said a word that interested me. She must have decided I was a
sullen, sour old fart.
My friend wasn’t surprised. He ambushed me at the door,
enveloped me in a huge bear hug. “Back in harness, eh? And
looking good, too. See they bumped you to Lieutenant.” He
didn’t mention my leg. He sensed that that was
verboten.
I’m touchy about the injury. It destroyed my career.
“Boat get in early?”
“I don’t know. The courier always went full out.
Maybe so.”
“Little private business on the side?” He grinned.
He was older than I remembered him, and older than I expected. The
grin took off ten years. “So let’s have a drink and
confound Marie with lies about Academy.”
He meant what he said, and yet . . . There
was a hollowness to his words, as though he had to strain to put
them together in the acceptable forms. He acted like a man
who’d been out of circulation so long he’d forgotten
his social devices. I found that intriguing.
I grew more intrigued during the following few days. I was soon
aware that an old friend had become a stranger, that this man only
wore the weathered husk of the friend I’d known in Academy.
And he realized that he had few points of congruency left with me.
Those were a sad few days. We tried hard, and the harder we tried
the more obvious it became. Canaan was his homeworld. He’d requested
duty there. His request had been granted, with an assignment to
Climbers. He’d been home for slightly under two years, done
seven Climber missions, and now had his own ship. He’d been
executive officer aboard an attack destroyer before his transfer.
He’d worked his way back up.
He wouldn’t talk about that side of his life, and that
disturbed me. He was never a talker but had always been willing to
share his experiences if you asked the right questions. Now there
were no right questions. He wanted to pretend that his military
life didn’t exist.
Just a few short years since we’d last met. And in the
interim they’d peeled his skin and stuffed somebody else
inside.
He and Marie fought like animals. I could detect no positive
feelings between them. She’d screech and yell and throw
things almost every time the both of them were out of sight. As if
I had no ears. As if my not seeing kept it from being real.
Sometimes the screeching lasted half the night. He didn’t
fight back, insofar as I could tell. I never heard his voice
raised. Once, in my presence, while we walked through the pines, he
muttered, “She doesn’t know any better. She’s
just an Old Earth whore.”
I asked no questions and he didn’t explain. I supposed she
was one of the sluts they’d grabbed early and had scattered
around for the morale of the men, and had found unnecessary in a
mixed-sex service. All heart, our do-good leaders. They’d
dropped the women where they were.
Maybe Marie had a right to be hostile.
Three days of unpleasantness. Then, well ahead of schedule, my
friend told me, “Time to go. Pick the things you want to
take. We’ll leave after dark. West of here it’s better
to travel at night.” The quarreling had become too much for
him. He wanted out.
He didn’t admit that. He simply made his announcement.
When Marie got the word, the gloves came off. She no longer kept
the vitriol private.
I didn’t blame him for running.
A young Guardswoman brought us a Navy floater after sundown. We
boarded under Marie’s fiercest barrage yet. My friend never
looked back.
After we dropped the Guardswoman at her headquarters, I asked,
“Why don’t you throw her out? You don’t owe her
anything.”
He didn’t respond for a long time. Instead, he lit his
pipe and puffed his way through. Midway, he said,
“We’ll pick up our First Watch Officer and a new kid.
Going to start him off in Ship’s Services. Academy boy.
Don’t get many of those anymore.”
Later still, in snatches, he told me what he thought of our
ship’s officers. He didn’t say a lot. Thumbnail
sketches. He didn’t want to talk about his command. He
responded to my earlier question just before we collected his First
Watch Officer.
“Somebody owes her. They put the hose to her. She’ll
never get off this rock. Might as well use my place.”
What can you say to that? Call him a sucker for strays? I
don’t think so. I’d call it a case of one man’s
using otherwise unimportant resources to rectify one of this
universe’s countless injustices. I think that’s the way
he pictured it. I don’t think thumbscrews would have forced
him to admit it.
The First Watch Officer was Stefan Yanevich. Lieutenant. Another
Canaan native. A long, lanky man with ginger hair and eyes that
sometimes looked gray, sometimes pale blue. Thin, sharp features
and sleepy eyes. A soft drawl when he spoke, which was seldom. He
was as reticent as my friend the Commander.
He was waiting outside his quarters, alone, and looked eager to
go. But there was no eagerness in the way he slung his duffel
aboard.
He had long, slim fingers that moved while he gave me his
biography. Twenty-five. His Academy class had been two behind ours.
He’d volunteered for Canaan because it was his homeworld.
This would be his sixth mission.
The Commander thought well of him. He would have his own ship
next mission.
He accepted me without question. I supposed the Commander had
vouched for me. He didn’t seem interested in why I was here,
or who I used to be. Again, I assumed the Commander had filled him
in.
The Old Man said, “Next stop, the kid.”
Yanevich became interested. “Met him yet? What’s he
like?”
“Came up last week. Squared away. Shows promise.
We’ll like him.” There was an edge to his voice . It
said it didn’t matter if anyone liked the new man, but it
would be a nice bonus if he turned out okay.
Ensign Bradley was as quiet as the others, but more naturally
so. He wasn’t hiding from anything. When he did speak, he
successfully downplayed his own lack of experience. He drew both
the Commander and First Watch Officer out more skillfully than I
had. I pegged him as a very bright and personable young
man—when he turned himself on. He wasn’t a Canaanite.
In an aside to me, he said, “I flipped a coin when I got my
bars. Heads or tails, Fleet or Climbers. Came up heads. The
Fleet.” He smiled a broad, boyish smile, the kind to win a
mother’s love. “So I went best two out of three and
three out of five. Voila! Here I am.”
“Going to make Admiral in a year,” the Old Man
said.
“Might take longer than that.” Bradley’s grin
weakened.
“What I don’t understand is why they sent me out
here instead of to Fleet Two. Admiral Tannian is
self-sufficient.”
“Maybe too self-sufficient,” I suggested.
“Some people in Luna Command think he’s too
independent. He’s got his own little empire out
here.”
The Commander glanced back. “That something you know, or
just speculation?”
“Half and half.”
Yanevich grunted. My friend lapsed into indifference. Later, he
said, “T-ville coming up. First Watch Officer, I’ll
drop you and Bradley at the north gate. I’ll take my friend
sight-seeing.”
Earlier, there had been a big raid. The sky over Turbeyville had
been filled with ships and missiles. I’d expressed an
interest in seeing the aftermath. Once I did, I wished I’d
kept my mouth shut.
Navy has two headquarters in-system. One is beneath Turbeyville.
The other is buried deep inside Canaan’s major moon. Canaan
has two satellites, tiny TerVeen and the big moon, which has no
other name. Just the moon. I was glad of a chance to poke around
one headquarters before the mission.
I roamed alone. The Commander, First Watch Officer, and
Ship’s Services Officer were busy with what looked like
make-work, preparing for the mission. I found myself more welcome
among the PR-sensitive staff at Climber Command. They arranged
interviews with people whose names were household words on the
Inner Worlds. Real heroes of the Fleet. Men and women who’d
survived their ten missions. They were a depressing bunch. I began
to develop a sour outlook myself, and to wonder just how bright
I’d been, asking to join a Climber patrol.
Then the Commander turned up at my room in Transient
Officers’ Quarters. “Our last night here. Heading for
the Pits tomorrow. The rest of us are going slumming. Want to come
along?”
“I don’t know.” I’d tried the O clubs.
They were filled with dreary staff types. Their atmosphere was both
boring and stultifying. There’s nothing deadlier than a
congregation of conscientious bureaucrats.
“We’re going a different place. Private club.
Climber people and guests only. The real front-line
warriors.” His smile was sarcastic. “Give you a chance
to meet our astrogator, Westhause. Just turned up. Good man, but
he talks too much.”
“Why not?” I had yet to meet any Climber people but
those with whom I was traveling. The others might be less
taciturn.
“Called the Pregnant Dragon, for reasons lost in the
trackless deserts of time.” He grinned at my raised eyebrow.
“Don’t wear your best. Sometimes it gets
rowdy.”
Something came up which demanded the Commander’s
attention, so we arrived late. But not late enough. I
should’ve stayed behind.
That night witnessed the destruction of a hundred cherished
cities in my land of illusions.
The Dragon was up near the surface, in an old subbasement. I
heard it long before I saw it, and when I saw it, I asked,
“This’s an Officers’ Club?”
“Climber people only,” Westhause said, grinning.
“Down people couldn’t handle it.”
Four hundred people had packed themselves into a space that had
served two hundred before the war. Odors hit me like a surprise
fist in the face. Alcohol. Vomit. Tobacco. Urine. Drugs. All backed
by mind-shattering noise. The customers had to shout to make
themselves heard over the efforts of an abominable local band.
Civilian waiters and waitresses cursed their ways through the
press, getting groped by both sexes. I guess the tips made up for
the indignities. Climber people had nothing else to do with their
pay.
Athwart the doorway, lying like some fallen angel seduced by the
sins of Gomorrah, was a full Commander wearing Muslim
Chaplain’s insignia. Smiling, he snored in a pool of vomit.
Nobody seemed inclined to move or clean him. Conforming to custom,
we stepped over his inert form. Not a meter beyond, two male
officers were playing kissy-face huggy-bear. I’m afraid I
gasped.
I mean, it does go on, but right inside the front door of the O
club?
The Commander grunted, “Hang on to your nuts.
There’s more fun to come.” He halted two steps inside,
ignoring the lovers. Fists on hips, he stared about as though
springing a surprise inspection. Having glimpsed what was going on,
I expected an explosion.
He threw back his head and cut loose with a great jackass bray
of laughter.
And Yanevich bellowed, “Make a hole for the best goddamned
Climber in the Fleet, you yellow-assed scum.”
The cacophony declined maybe one decibel. People looked us over.
Some waved. Some shouted. Some moved toward us. Friends, I
supposed.
A tiny china doll, ethereally beautiful in makeup which
exaggerated her aristocratic Manchu features, slid beneath our
elbows as lithely as a weasel. A meter away she paused and, eyes
sparkling, mimicked the Commander’s stance.
“You’re fucking full of shit, Steve,” she
shouted at Yanevich. “Ninety-two A’s the best, and you
fucking well know it.”
Yanevich lunged like a bear in rut. “Shit. I didn’t
know you guys were in.”
“Come down off your goddamned mountain once in a while,
graverobber.” She laughed and wriggled as he mauled her.
“Can you still get it up, Donkey Dick? Or did it fall off out
there in the ruins? We just got in. I could use an all-night
hosing.”
“We’re headed out, Little Bits. Tell you what. You
have any doubts, I’ll stick a wad of gum on the end. You let
me know when you’re chewing.”
I was too startled to be disgusted. A mouth like that on an
Academy man?
For no sane reason whatsoever, it being none of my concern, the
woman told me, “This crud has got the longest hanger I ever
saw.” She licked her lips. “Nice. But maybe I’ll
want a little variety tonight.”
“Sorry.” I thought she was propositioning me. I
didn’t want to trample Yanevich’s territory.
“Variety? Mao, I’d end up chasing crabs through my
beard the whole patrol.” He winked at me, oblivious to my
pallor and rictus of a smile. I found the girl more baffling than
he. She couldn’t be more than twenty. He asked, “You
learn to move your ass yet?”
“No thanks to you.” She told me, “This crud
got my cherry.
Caught me in a weak moment, way back my first night in after my
first patrol. Pounded away all night, and never did tell me I was
supposed to do anything besides lie there.”
Surely I turned from pale ivory to infrared. Bradley was equally
appalled. “Maybe they’re putting us on, sir.”
This assault on the sensibilities had forced him to retreat into
the ancient and trusted fastnesses of military ritual.
“I don’t think so.”
“I guess not.” I thought he would lose his
supper.
“I think we’re seeing Climber people in their feral
state, Mr. Bradley. I suspect the news people have misinformed
us.” I grinned at my own sarcasm.
“Yes sir.” He was developing an advanced case of
culture shock.
The Commander seized my elbow. “Over here. I see some
seats.” We marched through a fusillade of derisive remarks
about our ship and squadron. Other officers, apparently from our
squadron, made room for us at their table. I gutted out a barrage
of introductions, doubting I’d remember anyone in the
morning. Bradley suffered it with glazed eyes and limp hand.
Reality had come stampeding through the mists of myth and
propaganda and had trampled us both with all the delicacy of a
mastodon treading on a gnat’s toe. We couldn’t
acknowledge it. Not till something more personal drove the lesson
home.
Yanevich disappeared with his friend. I didn’t understand.
He didn’t seem the type. He had changed at the door.
Eat, drink, and be merry?
Westhause vanished, too, before I got to learn much more than
his name. Then Bradley, eyes still glazed, was spirited away by a
matronly Staff Captain. “What the fuck is she doing
here?” someone muttered, then plopped her face into the
spilled beer on the table before her, muttering that the Dragon was
a private preserve.
“Ah, let it go,” someone replied. “He
wasn’t going to do us any good.”
I withdrew into myself, drank some, and rolled the camera behind
my eyes. When in shock, record. I remained only vaguely aware that
the Commander was sitting out the squadron’s diminution. Like
me, he was a seated statue with folded arms. I tried to remember
“Ozymandias.” I came up with some lines about rose red
cities and then couldn’t decide if I had the right piece. Why
“Ozymandias,” anyway? I couldn’t remember that,
either. Must have been a reason, though. I ordered another
drink.
He was observing, too, our silent, gallant Ship’s
Commander. Back when, that had always been his excuse for not
partaking of our clique’s conversational buffet.
It grew late. The mob thinned considerably. I shipped a bigger
cargo than I thought. The room began to rock a little, and I to
wonder if our friends upstairs had a drop on tonight. The Commander
touched my elbow gently. “Eh?” At the moment that was
the most intelligent thing I could say.
“Somebody you might remember.” He nodded toward a
tall, lean blonde doing a slow strip atop a nearby table.
I stared through misty eyes. At first I only wondered about her
age. She looked older than most of the women.
“Got her own ship,” the Commander said.
Fascination and horror, lust and loathing, gusted through my
sodden soul. I recognized her.
She looked so old!
Sharon Parker. The Virgin Goddess. The Bitch Queen of Academy
Battalion Tango Romeo. How I’d loved and lusted after her at
a tender seventeen. How many nights had I lain with my good right
hand and imagined those creamy thighs clamping me?
The memories were embarrassing. I’d been so much a fool
that I’d declared my undying
passion . . .
She’d been as cold and remote as the dark side of Old
Earth’s moon. She’d teased, taunted, promised forever
afterward, and never had delivered. For me or anyone else, as far
as I knew.
Torturing me became her pet project. I was more obvious and
vulnerable than my classmates.
“No. Let it be.”
Too late. The Commander waved. She recognized him. She left her
little stage and came over. The Old Man kicked out an empty chair.
She seemed slightly embarrassed as she settled into it. The
Commander can have that effect. He seems so competent and solid,
sometimes, that everyone around will feel second-rate and clumsy. I
always do.
She gave me one indifferent glance while crossing the room. Just
another Lieutenant. Navy is infested with Lieutenants.
“Good patrol?” the Commander asked.
“Shit. Two old tubs that belonged in a transport museum.
One escort destroyer. Only one tub confirmed. One lousy baby
convoy. Twelve ships. We got off our missile flight, then the
hunter-killers hit us. Thought it was the Executioner for a while.
Took us nine days to shake them.”
“Rough?” I asked.
She shrugged, gave me another of those indifferent glances.
I watched the light dawn. She turned bright red, shed the
drunken table-dancer avatar like a snake sloughs skin. For one long
moment she looked like she had a hot steel splinter under her
fingernail.
“You.” Another moment of silence.
“You’ve changed.”
“Haven’t we all?”
She wanted to run so bad I could smell it. But it was too late.
She’d been seen. She’d been caught. She had to face the
consequences.
I was both pleased and a little frightened. Could she value my
good opinion that much?
“Civilian influence,” I said. “I was out for a
while. You’ve changed too.” I wanted to bite my tongue
immediately. Not only was that the wrong thing to say, it slipped
out sounding bitter. My brain was on vacation. My hands had made
too many connections with my mouth, carrying too many drinks.
“I heard about the accident.” Bravely bearing up,
that was her attitude. “You making it okay now?”
“Good enough,” I lied. Twelve years of Academy had
done nothing to ready me for a sudden shift to civilian life. I
could have gone on, I suppose, in a desk job, buried in Luna
Command, but my pride hadn’t permitted it. I was Line, and by
damn that was what I’d stay, or nothing. “I like the
freedom. To bed when I want, up when I want. Go where I want. You
know. Like that.”
“Yeah. I know.” She didn’t believe a word.
“So. What’ve you been doing?”
“Climbing the ladder. Got my own ship now. Forty-seven
Cee. Bravo Flight, Five Squadron. Seven patrols.” I
couldn’t think of anything to say. After an embarrassed
silence, she added, “And finding out what it’s like to
be on the dirty end.”
The conversation lay there awhile, like a beached whale too
exhausted to struggle.
“I’m sorry. For everything I did. I didn’t
know what I was doing. I didn’t know what you could do to
somebody.”
“Long ago and far away. Like it happened to somebody else.
All forgotten now. We were just kids.”
“No.”
I’d lied again. And again she’d read me. It
didn’t hurt as much now, but the pain was still there.
There’re those small places where you never grow up.
“Can we go someplace?”
The thrill again. My libido recalled antediluvian fantasies.
“I don’t think . . . ”
“Just to talk. You were always the best listener in the
battalion.”
Yes. I’d listened a lot. To problems. Everybody had come
to me. Especially Sharon.
It had been a way to be near her. Always, back then,
there’d been the Plan. Move after carefully calculated move,
to seduction. I hadn’t found the nerve to make the most
critical, daring end-game maneuvers.
There’d been nobody for me to cry on. Who confesses the
confessor?
“I’ll only be gone a minute.” She scrambled
after discarded clothing. I watched and was more baffled by her
behavior than by anything else I’d seen.
“She’s aged.”
The Commander nodded. “It’s an eight year millennium
since we graduated. Nothing left of those wide-eyed kids now.
Except for you, most of them died the first year of the
war.”
I needed a moment to realize he meant figurative death. The lift
of the alcohol had peaked long since. I was headed down the rough
side.
Sharon returned trailing a belligerent Lieutenant. He was sober
enough to remain civil during the introductions, drunk enough to
contemplate violence when he learned she was leaving with me.
The Commander rose, scowled. The younger man backed down. The
Old Man can intimidate anybody when he puts his mind to it.
The Lieutenant faded away. The Commander resumed his seat. He
filled the pipe that, in deference to the rest of us, he’d
ignored all evening. He was alone now.
I glanced back once. He sat there with his legs sprawled beneath
the table, observing, and for an instant I sensed his
loneliness.
Ours is a lonely profession. The pressures of war only
exaggerate the alienation.
Sharon and I did more than talk. Of course. There was never any
doubt of it. She tried to expiate the cruelties of the past. I
stumbled, but managed my part.
There was really little point to it.
The dream had died. There was no magic left. Just a man and a
woman, both frightened, sharing a brief communion, a feeble escape
from thought.
Only I didn’t escape. Not entirely. Not for one second did
I forget the mission.
The incident taught me why there were places like the
Pregnant Dragon. In liquor, drugs, sex, or self-loathing, it
provided surcease from the endless fear. Fear those people knew far
better than I, who knew Climbers only by what I’d read,
heard, and seen on holovision.
I have this reflection on the incident. One of life’s
crudest pranks is to yield heart’s desire only when the
desire has been replaced by another. Rare is the man who recognizes
and seizes the precise instant, like a perfectly ripened fruit, and
enjoys it at its moment of ultimate fulfillment.
At least we parted friends.
The dawn came, and with it a message from the Commander saying
it was time we moved on to the Pits. We were to lift for TerVeen in
eighteen hours.
I looked at her one last time, as she slept, and I wondered,
What drew me to this world where they execute dreams?