Alternities (27 page)

“Katie-cat!” and childish giggles reached Ruthann’s ears. Despite wanting to run away, she found herself walking slowly toward them.

“See, Mommy, I was right. It
is
Daddy.”

Rayne offered a sheepish smile. “You can join this hug if you want to.”

Her own smile felt wan and hollow, but she moved into their embrace, Katie’s arms eager and unknowing, Rayne’s familiar yet measured. “You could have called and told me you were coming.”

“You make it sound like I need permission to be here.”

She pulled back. “I didn’t mean it like that. How long are you here for?”

“Twenty-four hours,” he said. “I’m due back at the Tower tomorrow midnight.”

“Will you read me my new book?” Katie interrupted.

“Sure I will,” Rayne said. “What’s the name of it?”

“
Lady and the Tramp
.”

“Oh, boy,” he said. “That’s a good one.”

“I guess we’d better go in, then,” Ruthann said. “You haven’t very much time.”

He looked at her curiously as he shifted Katie to ride on one hip. “Let’s go find that book, Katie-cat. Sure is good to see you.”

Katie meowed her agreement.

It seemed to Ruthann that so long as Katie was up and about, Rayne was civil to her. He smiled—forced smiles, but better than nothing. Talked to her—about inconsequential matters, but better than nothing. Even touched her—though only to rub her shoulders or kiss the crown of her head, poor substitutes for a truly loving embrace.

But the moment Katie went to bed, Rayne’s discomfort at being with her became obvious. She watched him make a beeline for the hi-fi and stack it with records, watched him burrow into week-old papers awaiting disposal, watched him weed his way with painful slowness through the accumulated mail. While so occupied, he barely looked at her. It was as though she had disappeared with Katie.

“Rayne—we have to talk about this,” she said finally.

He looked up from the newspaper on his lap. “Seems like all that ever comes from that is yelling or crying or both,” he said. “I’m not even sure whose turn it is to storm out of the room.”

“I feel like my life is on hold,” she said, turning an ottoman into a chair to settle near him. “But I don’t even know why I have to wait, or what it is I’m waiting for.”

“I don’t understand,” he said in a tone which suggested he also did not care to understand.

“It’s the not knowing that’s hard. If I knew—”

“I can’t tell you what you’re asking.”

“Can’t you tell me enough to show me it’s not always going to be this way? I need a reason to hold on.”

He was silent for a moment before answering. “I’m a soldier, more or less. I go where I’m told. I do a job that needs doing. If I do it right, I get to come back.”

Staring, she said, “That’s all? That’s supposed to give me hope?”

“My Dad was in Europe, with a tank battalion,” Rayne said, shaking his head. “Mom never knew much about where he was or what he was doing. If he tried to tell her, his letters came censored, marked up with big black lines. It wasn’t her place to know. She understood. She just trusted he’d come back. Why can’t you do that?”

“At least she knew who he was fighting. She could read about the war in the papers,” Ruthann snapped.

“I guess not every war makes the papers. You have to figure there’s a reason for the ones that don’t.”

Frustration cascaded into her voice. “Then tell me something about us, can you? When do we get to be a family?”

“I thought we were one,” he said, surprised.

“I mean a real family. Look at the way Katie was tonight. She missed you.”

“Did you?”

The question was hurled as a challenge, and Ruthann took a long time answering. “I missed the Rayne I married. I missed the Rayne who took care of me when I was so sick with Katie. I missed the Rayne who makes me laugh and feel like the luckiest woman anywhere.”

His face was softening, but she was not through. “I didn’t much miss the Rayne who sulks around here and never talks to me, who resents it when I want some attention from him, who leaves me home alone and never shares what he does or thinks or wants. Which Rayne are you? Tell me and I’ll tell you if I missed you.”

His answer was a growl. “You’re trying to make me crazy.”

“How?”

He spread his hands in supplication. “Talking like there’s two of me. I’m the same person now that I was when we were happy.”

And we aren’t happy now. The open acknowledgment of it was a hot needle through the back of her skull, “No, you aren’t. Because that Rayne never would have treated me like this.”

“I am that person,” he insisted. “I have all those memories. Sitting with you on your parents’ couch while they hid out in the kitchen. Biking up to Limberlost. The train trip here.”

“That’s the last good time I can remember. The last time you were really you.”

“Don’t do that,” he said warningly. “Don’t treat me like some sort of… some sort of changeling. This is me. This is what I am, all of it, the good and the bad.”

“Then maybe I just didn’t pick very well, did I,” she said brittlely. “Because you’re perfectly happy with things the way they are, and I’m miserable. You’re living your life and I’m waiting for mine to start.”

“You
wanted
this. You practically dragged me down to take the Federal exam. You were floating on air when the Guard called me back for an interview—”

“I didn’t know it’d end up like this. You don’t want anything from me and I need you so badly—”

“I don’t know what you want,” he said, leaping to his feet and throwing his hands in the air. He retreated a few steps toward the kitchen, muttering as though talking to himself. “I don’t know what all this ‘waiting for my life to start’ is about. We’ve got more money than we ever had, a nicer home. We’ve got friends—”

“I hate this place,” she blurted out. “I hate being stuck here waiting for you to come home.”

He turned and stared.

“It’s like a prison, Rayne, it really is. That’s why I was driving so much. I just want to run away sometimes. I just want to take Katie and go someplace where you can’t hurt me anymore.”

Rayne took a step back toward her. “I don’t want to hurt you, Annie.”

“But you do, every day you’re here. Even when you’re not.” There was nothing to gain from making accusations, but she could not stop herself. “You take me for granted, treat me like all I’m good for is to climb on. You don’t take me seriously. You never ask me about anything, you just tell me what you’ve decided. I’m disappearing, Rayne. I can’t see myself. All I see is what you’ve made me.”

She expected denial, rebuttal, indignation. He surprised her. “What is it you want from me?” he asked quietly.

I’ve been telling you all along, she almost shouted. “Do you really want to know? Do you really care?”

“I care.”

“Well—I’d like a chance to go out without Katie for a change. I’d like not to have to have her be part of every decision I make. I love her dearly, but it feels sometimes like we’re attached with a chain, and she’s the one holding the leash.”

“I guess I never thought about that.”

“And I’d like to have another baby,” she said quietly.

The incredulous stare returned.

“I’d like Katie to have a brother or a sister. I think she’d be good with a little one. The way she worries over Kim’s new baby. But I don’t want to do it if it’s all going to fall on me. I need more from you, Rayne. I need you to be a partner. I need you to be a friend, like you were before.”

But he was shaking his head even before she finished speaking. “No. We can’t manage that,” he said firmly.

“That’s it? Just no? You selfish—”

As though by mutual consent, both were screaming now.

“What do you want to do to us? Every time I find a way to make a few more dollars, are you going to make them disappear? You’ve got the easy half of the job, spending it—”

“I didn’t ask you for more goddamned money—”

“I’ve got my own fucking chains, you know. And you’re the one holding my leash—”

“Well, why don’t you just not come back, then—”

She felt something tug at the back of her slacks and whirled, hand raised. It was Katie, looking up at her with sleep-narrowed eyes. “Was I bad?” she asked in a quavery voice. “Don’t be mad, Mommy. I’m sorry—”

Ruthann closed her eyes for a moment and tried to release the massive knot of tension lodged under her ribs. Then she knelt down and swept the child into her arms. “No, sweetheart, you weren’t bad, and Mommy’s not mad,” she said soothingly. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Can I help?” Rayne asked in a chastened voice.

“No,” she snapped. “I wouldn’t want to get used to you helping, because I know the next time I need you you won’t be here.”

Gathering Katie close, Ruthann carried her back into her bedroom. She did not look back to see if her words had scored on him. It did not matter. She could no longer permit herself the luxury of worrying about Rayne. It was asking enough to keep herself and Katie whole.

The room was called the Hatchery, an appropriate nickname for the plans division’s project operations suite. The map pinned to the wall bore the legend DOD BEM ET 54. The man studying the map called himself Kendrew.

There was much to take in on the six-foot square map. In a generous 1:1000000 scale, it spanned an area from Iceland on the west to Norway on the east, from the southern tip of England to the Arctic Circle. It was covered with multicolored circles centered on places with names like Bergen, Durness, and Toshavn. Queer black symbols found in no cartographic guide dotted the landforms and, more sparsely, the wide expanse of the Norwegian Sea.

DOD BEM ET 54 was a battle environment map, the product of the combined efforts of the agency and military intelligence, mostly Air Force. The circles and symbols demarked the special concerns of its creators. Among them: radar sites, with their ranges marked and frequencies noted; air corridors and shipping lanes; airfields and ports, classed by capacity.

Kendrew stood before the map rubbing his tired eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The logistics of what the director called “the initiative” were proving to be even stickier than he had thought when first brought in.

As far as the initiative was concerned, there were no friendlies on the map. The British, Norwegian, and Danish installations were as much a threat to security as any Soviet asset, which made finding a hole in the web of listening posts large enough for the switch to take place a challenge.

The whole initiative made Kendrew uncomfortable. There were too many variables, too many elements. How to bring the Q-plane and at least one strike fighter into the area unseen. How to jam the target plane’s radio without causing alarm. How to guarantee the kill was swift and sure, and didn’t bring a hail of flaming fragments down on a freighter or fishing boat. How to blind or fool the Danish radar station in the Faeroe Islands and the Soviet pickets in the Barents Sea and the British air traffic system—

It was the timing more than the difficulty of any individual element which seemed impossibly daunting. It was as though they were choreographing a ballet knowing that the dancers were clubfooted and the musicians arhythmic.

But the initiative was neither his creation nor his responsibility. He was just part of the team, brought in to give opinions and guidance on ground operations in support of the initiative, not on the merits of the initiative itself. That decision had been made at higher levels, and Kendrew would not question it.

The door to the room opened, and the plans division chief poked his head in. “There you are,” he said. “Come on down to the shack. There’s some news coming in from Walvis Bay.”

There were a half-dozen staff members gathered in the communications center by the time Kendrew reached it. They were listening to an accented English voice on a static-punctuated radio broadcast:

“… wide divergence on the question of the number of Freedom Now rebels who took part in the raid, as well as the number of casualties…”

“Where’s this coming from?” Kendrew asked.

“BBC shortwave.”

“… Early this morning, security forces displayed for representatives of the international press eleven bodies of alleged FN soldiers, including one purported to be the rebel leader known as Xhumo…”

“Wasn’t that our man?”

Kendrew nodded. “This is the third time they’ve said he was dead.”

“So you think—”

“I don’t know. Have to be right sometime.”

“… The South African administrator for Walvis Bay claimed that thirty-one residents of South-West Africa’s only deep-water port were killed and fifty injured, including eleven children. No evidence was offered for this claim, however, and other sources placed the death toll at less than ten, with most or all of the victims members of the South African police or military…”

“Speaking of other sources—what about our own assets?” asked one of the staffers. “Are we getting any humint from the Pretoria cell?”

The plans chief answered. “Too soon for that.”

“… According to South African National Radio, the targets of the raid included schools, the waterworks, and the pilchard and snook canneries which are the mainstay of the local economy. A government spokesman condemned the rebels for a ‘reckless disregard for the lives and homes of those who have refused to join in their destructive antidemocratic campaign’…”

Do they think we’re idiots?
Kendrew thought. No popular front would cut itself off from its political base by attacking the people it wants to represent—

“… independent reports confirm that a fish meal storage building was destroyed during an unsuccessful rocket attack on the South African patrol boat
Witbank
, Reporters were barred from…”

“Jesus Christ,” Kendrew exclaimed, startled. “He took on a PCE with Buzzsaws? What a goddamned amateur stunt—”

“Hey, the man’s dead,” someone said. “Maybe.”

“He deserves to be. Goddamn amateurs. Tape and twine operations, no discipline, no military sense—”

“… In a broadcast late this afternoon. Prime Minister Benjamin Fourie accused the United States of supplying arms to the FN rebels. Brandishing an American-made rocket launcher he said had been recovered from the raiding party, Fourie threatened to…”