Emile and the Dutchman (17 page)

"And since I didn't get myself killed—"

"—and since you didn't fuck up badly enough in the line of duty that I had to blow you away, you may as well enjoy, your new railroad tracks." He tossed me a set of captain's bars, stuck into a piece of cardboard. "These . . . mean something, Emmy."

There was a catch in his voice that I'd never heard before. I was touched. "They were yours?"

"No, shithead—I bought them at the PX before we left. They mean you owe me twenty quid."

"I'll pay you later."
Bastard.
"We'd better hurry, Major, or we're gonna be late."

"Right. And try to keep the stuff down until the ceremony's over. If I can do it, you can do it."

"Makes me nauseous, Major. Almost as bad as your cigars," I said, stepping up the pace as I unpinned my lieutenant's bars and pinned on the shiny railroad tracks. I held the two little pieces of silver in the palm of my hand and looked at them for a moment. I'd been wearing them for one hell of a long time.

Captain Emile von du Mark, eh? I liked the sound of that. "And what are you grinning about? Sir?"

"I'm still basking in your reflected cleverness. But you still haven't told me how you blackmailed Ahktah. From the way you've been chortling to yourself, I'm assuming it was something a tad more clever than 'Geek or I'll tell on you.'"

As we approached the palace, a crowd of poncharaire of all ages looked curiously at us, but kept a respectful distance.

"Yes, sir. Just a bit cleverer. I told him we were gods."

I'd timed it just right; Norfeldt's jaw actually dropped. He tilted his head and peered over at me. "He didn't believe that. Did he?"

I shrugged. "Well, yes and no. It's an absurd proposition—but Ahktah
wants
to believe it. It gives him an out. If we are gods, then the reason I gave him for humans landing on Pon begins to make sense."

"And what reason was that?"

"So that we can see to an increase in both our number of worshipers and our take. See, if Ahktah believes that we heard his prayers for forgiveness as he sinned by giving charity, and that's why we came, well, then, he isn't going to give the Trade Team a whole lot of trouble, is he?"

K'chat stood beside Ahktah.

I leaned over and whispered to Norfeldt. "I told him we didn't want it generally known that we're gods, and that his prayers and . . . sinning brought us. Might make it look like we're too easy to trade with. A god has to be a tough trader, no?"

"Cute. And that means that you promised him you wouldn't tell anyone about him sinning. At least, you implied it. Hmm . . ."

"So?"

"So, it means you're becoming quite a hypocrite yourself, Emmy."

"Emile."

<. . . and since our priest has returned,> K'chat said in a half singsong,

I suppressed a chuckle. "Hypocrisy, so I'm told, is a fine social lubricant, useful in many situations."

"Pretty fucking funny. So we're gods, eh?"

"Just to Ahktah. We gods like to keep our secrets."

The Dutchman studied my face for a moment. "But I don't understand why you didn't ruin him. Sounds like you had Ahktah pretty much broken up there. He wouldn't have had to believe anything if you'd done things the simple way—taken a few holos, threatened to show them to the locals. If they thought their priest was stealing from the gods—giving charity, of all things—"

"They would have ripped him to pieces. Literally."

He shrugged. "So? I thought you didn't like the little hypocrite."

Oh, hypocrisy isn't all that bad, Dutchman
,
I thought.
Depends on what you use it for, depends on who benefits. Most people lie to themselves and to others in order to line their own pockets. Ahktah did it to feed the hungry and warm the cold.

I can live with that. How about you?

Ahktah rose.

I turned to the Dutchman. He wouldn't have understood. If I told him the truth, he'd just snicker at me.

"It just seemed more convenient this way," I said.

"Mmm-hmm." The Dutchman shrugged. "I guess it doesn't make any difference, Lieutenant—"

"Captain."

"—as long as it worked."

If I didn't know better, I would have sworn that the Dutchman smiled. Like he meant it, I mean.

I

A flier has to have both caution and confidence. But the shuttle screamed all the way down, in my ears and in my mind.

I still don't know where the fear came from. Maybe it was just that I didn't like being Second Team. Better to be First, where all you have to do is build the Gate, locate any possibly habitable planets, then do the orbital survey. Better to be Third, where at least you know there's something serious out there.

But it's not fun to be Second. When you're Second, it's too easy to be a bit too slow on the uptake, or—more likely—let your adrenal glands keep pumping, pushing you until you don't know when you're firing at shadows, or don't notice when the shadows reach out with their needle-pointed, retractile claws. . . .

For whatever reason, the shuttle screamed.

It isn't supposed to sound different until we hit about Mach 2—from the high side, of course—not as long as it's coming in at the right attitude, through the right land window.

We were at the right attitude. That was easy to check and easier to verify.

To check, I glanced at my attitude display. The screen was solid green, which meant that our actual attitude was what the computer thought it ought to be.

To verify, I noted that I was still breathing. Reenter at the wrong attitude and you're dead once you hit atmosphere.

Land windows are a different matter. If the computer and I were bringing the shuttle in too shallowly, the shrill thrumming of the heat shield wouldn't stabilize; instead, it would begin to ease off, as the shuttle started to gain altitude, bouncing off the atmosphere of the planet like a stone skipping across the water. And if we came in too steeply, the skin temperatures would go above the heat shield's classified but very high tolerance, the shield would ablate, and the shuttle would become a brightly glowing cinder for a few seconds.

Either way, it wasn't supposed to sound different.

Maybe it didn't. Maybe it was just me.

The Dutchman frowned over at me. "Trouble?" he asked around the unlit cigar clamped between his teeth.

"Don't know, but something sounds funny."

"Sounds?"

"Sounds."

"Mmm . . . N'Damo, punch up an audio comparison, and analysis."

"Yes, sir." Donny's fingers beat a rapid tattoo on his keyboard. "Here it comes. . . . Nothing special, Major. External ambient sounds indicate normal atmospheric entry," he said. "As far as the comp can tell, performance of all subsystems is nominal."

That sounded good.

"I don't know, Major," I said. "Maybe it's just me. I've got a funny feeling." I punched the
program button to let the computer fly the shuttle for a few seconds while I tested the stick against the fly-by-wire computer.

Again, nothing. I took control back.

The Dutchman snickered. "Nice try, Captain von du Mark. But this horseshit isn't going to work, Emmy."

"What isn't going to work?"

"You're not going to get even with me for your Quarterly by spooking me." The Dutchman snickered. "I don't spook easy."

Akiva Bar-El gave out a sound halfway between a throat clearing and a growl. "Captain von du Mark does not operate that way, sir."

"You being insubordinate, Lieutenant?"

"No, sir. Accurate, sir."

The Dutchman snickered again.

I don't know. Maybe there was something to the Dutchman's accusation. I'll give him the point: I was hurt by the meat of his last Quarterly Evaluation:
While Captain von du Mark's reflexes and judgment are generally adequate or better, he has on more than one occasion demonstrated an unfortunate sentimentality in his behavior. I cannot at this time recommend him for Team Leader status. . . .

To hell with him. I deserved my own Team; I'd proved it on more than one world. Pon, particularly.

Right on schedule, I thumbed for a bit of wing, and felt them take a tentative bite into the thin but fast-moving air, I pulsed the radar for a quick look downward through the clouds.

The plan called for the final approach and landing to be over the western half of the dirtball's smaller continent, the half now mostly covered by oncoming clouds chasing a slow-moving warm front. As to exactly where to land, we weren't sure; the weather was likely to mess up an approach anyway. It was just as easy to make a decision on the fly.

The screens went gray. I gave the shuttle more wing and locked the radar on as we entered the upper layer of clouds at fifteen klicks. While I don't like radar announcing my presence, I like flying blind less.

About ten klicks south of a nice-sized mountain, there was a decent-looking LZ: an extension of the western plain, bordering on what looked to be swamp. It was well within our unpowered-landing footprint.

I tapped the screen with a fingernail. "That look okay to you. Major?"

"That where you want to put her down?"

"Looks good to—"

"Then do it."

The shuttle screamed all the way down to the ground.

I've had tricky landings; this one wasn't one of them. Energy was just about perfect: the spot we'd picked out fell just halfway between the max-range and min-range lines on the energy display. At fifteen klicks out, I spread the wings fully open, put the shuttle into a nice gentle bank that gave us—and, more important, the belly cameras that we could extrude, now that the speed had dropped and the skin cooled sufficiently—a quick tour over the area around our LZ.

"Looks good, Major."

"Set her down, Captain," the Dutchman said. "Gently."

"Airspeed, please," I said. Shuttles aren't like most fixed-or variable-wing craft: it's a bad habit to take your eyes off the screen during a shuttle landing; whether or not you bump into something is far more critical than what your airspeed is at any given moment. If you drop below stall speed—just about four hundred, by the way—the engines'll light themselves, unless you tell them otherwise.

So, when it's tricky, my preference is to have whoever's in the right-hand seat read off airspeed. I know: I could have had the computer programmed to give me airspeed indications vocally. But I couldn't tell the Dutchman what to do if I did it that way, could I?

"Five hundred five," the Dutchman said.

The heads-up display was a glowing green line across the screen, just above the nose of the shuttle—

"Four eighty."

—so I pulled back on the stick with my right hand while I eased my left hand over to the panel and set the ignite selector to work the belly jets, since I wasn't going to need the main engines to get to the LZ. I thumbed back the cover to arm the button. We were a bit heavy in energy, so I wheezed the nose intakes open early.

"We're coming in on four hundred, Emmy. And that's fucking
stall
speed."

"So I've heard." I punched the ignite button to fire up the belly jets to a nice quiet idle, and dropped the shuttle down toward the plain.

"Give me landing pods, full extension."

"Got 'em," the Dutchman said unnecessarily, as they extended with a loud ka
-chunk.
"Bar-El—stand by with the foam."

"Yes, sir."

You have to pay attention to what airspeed indicators say, but don't believe them. They lie; the approach & closing radars are worse. Both swear you're slowing constantly, but the truth is the last few meters go faster than light speed.

The plain came up like God's Own Flyswatter.

I pulled the nose up more than thirty degrees past horizontal, and then shoved the throttle almost to the wall; at more than three gees, it only took a couple of seconds to kill the shuttle's speed, both forward and downward.

I pushed the nose down, pulled the throttle back, and settled the shuttle down firmly on the tall grasses, the landing pods hissing as the hydraulic system took up the shock.

"Powerdown," I said.

The Dutchman was already flipping his switches. "Bar-El, handle the fire."

Flames licked up in the monitor as the still-hot heat shield ignited the dry grasses around the shuttle.

"Foaming." Bar-El hit the foam switch. A turret in the roof snicked open and some distant piece of machinery began to whirr as the nozzle sprayed fire-killing foam over the shuttle and its environs.

"Negative," Bar-El said, eyeing his screens. "We've got some fire beyond range to port—to the south."

Moving more quickly and gracefully than a man his size had any right to, Akiva Bar-El was already out of his harness, on his feet, and halfway into his silvery environment suit, balancing on the balls of his feet like a dancer.

"Permission to go EVA and kill the fire?" he asked.

"Damn." The Dutchman pursed his lips. "Permission granted. Hop to it. Full decontam protocol, understood?" The fat man turned in his couch to trigger the outside bio-package; a little distant heat and smoke wouldn't do much damage to biogel, and the sooner we knew what biocontaminants we were up against, the better.

"Yessir." Bar-El slipped a membrane helmet over his head, sealed it to his E-suit's collar, and inflated it while he shrugged into a khaki oversuit. He threw a power rifle's sling over one shoulder, tucked an extinguisher under one arm, and slipped into the airlock, slamming it behind him as he cycled the outside door open.

The Dutchman turned to N'Damo. "Keep in touch with the jewboy. Comm or psi—I don't give a rat's ass."

"Yesss. Sirrrrrr." The sound caught in Donny's throat and turned into a high-pitched, liquid burbling.

I turned to look at him.

Pink tongue clenched tightly between his ivory teeth, he scrabbled his fingers slowly, clumsily, randomly across his panel, his eyes vague and watery.

"Sssschtannnnn?" he hissed, in a voice distant and alien, his fingers caressing the air in front of him. "No. N'vakt sssss . . . ssssschtannnnnn. Ssss." His eyes sagged shut as his arms fell limp at his side. Reflexively, I started to unbuckle myself from my couch, but then caught myself, snorted, and punched up the readings from Donny's sensors. He was breathing, his heart was pumping away, but his brain waves looked weird. Some esper thing, undoubtedly.

"
Shit.
Why the fuck do the locals have to always be breathing down our necks? Awright, Emmy, we're going to Condition Yellow," the Dutchman said, punching for the roof radar and weapons turret himself. He raised his hand to his throat. "You hear that, jewboy? We re at Yellow. Acknowledge."

"Condition Yellow, Major," came over the speaker.

The Dutchman shut off his mike. "Keep an eye on Bar-El. He's not particularly expendable at the moment."

"Yes, sir." After landing, the pilot's first priority is powering the ship down; that only takes a few moments, and most of it doesn't require full attention. I'd already hooked my right-hand display into the turret cameras and was watching Akiva carefully spray the last traces of smoking grass. He let the extinguisher drop to the ground.

"No problem. Major. He's already on his way back."

The Dutchman went over to N'Damo. "Out, but he seems okay," the fat man said as his fingers felt gently at Donny's neck and pried back an eyelid to reveal a dilated pupil.

Bar-El entered the lock and shut it behind him. Blue water ran down the window like an old-style washing machine as the lock began to spray biocides all over him and his suit.

The Dutchman sat back in his couch and folded his hands over his belly.

"Only thing to do now is keep watch until the biogel has a chance to spoil, and wait until sleeping darkie there has a chance to wake up." He wriggled himself a bit deeper into his couch and closed his eyes.

I hated it when he pretended to sleep in a situation like this. I
think
he was pretending. . . .