Fire Time (23 page)

The unit was ordered to the front. Action was rising afresh.

Yet ‘the front’ was nearly a meaningless noise. Tsheyakkans held parts of southern Sigurdssonia. Occasionally they would withdraw before an Eleutherian advance – or vice versa – whether as the consequence of a battle or as a phase in a larger plan. Humans had leapfrogged to a similar spotty occupation of western Hat’hara and islands near that Continent. Besides those lands, the ocean and skies between saw engagements.

Conway’s squadron did on its first patrol. When his headset informed him that detectors registered hostile craft bound this way, he felt crazily that it couldn’t be real, he was trapped in a fever dream, nobody could want to kill him whom so many people loved. Meanwhile his fingers did what was needful with drilled-in skill. And that was strange
too, being a passenger in his body. Then the Tsheyakkans arrived and the dogfight erupted. He forgotto be afraid.

He noticed himself enjoying what he did, as if this were a poker game for stakes higher than he could afford to lose–

–where he suddenly drew a fourth queen. The enemy flyers were mean-looking elongated teardrops, against lead sky and mercury sea; but they were no better than his Shark, and their pilots didn’t have even his hasty operant training. One plunged at him. He slipped aside from the rake of tracers, rolled about and got the bandit in his sights; automatons did the rest, fireworks and a long, long, smoking spiral down into the drink. Accelerations made him giddy, quasi-drunk. He whooped his joy till the next opponent showed, whereupon he became strictly business.

He couldn’t swear that he made a second kill. He did know that his outfit won hands down and went jubilant back to an otherwise dismal base in the jungle. At small cost to themselves, they’d practically wiped out the croaker escadrille.

Small cost. … Trouble was, it included Eino Salminen, who was Conway’s best friend in the service and who’d gotten married very shortly before leaving Earth. Twice Conway tried to write a letter to Finland. He never completed it. Each time, he’d start wondering if that pilot who burned under his guns had been married too.
Not that I feel like a murderer or anything. It was him or me, in a war. I only wonder about him.

Rain roared on the-barrack. Its unconditioned interior was a steam bath full of swamp stenches. Men who huddled near the 3V were stripped to their skivvies. Nobody dared go nude, Conway suspected – at least, he himself would have been afraid the others might think he was projecting a proposition – or was that merely a quirk he’d acquired? An environment both womanless and weird did things to your mind. Ah, well, probably his bare ass wouldn’t like direct contact with a chair anyway.

Barton was ’casting the latest news tape to arrive. Mostly it reported Christmas and Chanukkah festivities on Earth, this year especially elaborate because the Universal Love
movement had grown so popular. But there were stories as well on a complete Neanderthal skeleton discovered in North Africa, and almost the whole of Apollo turning out to rescue a little boy trapped in a broken-down mono shuttle, and Lima’s new fusion-power plant, and an acrimonious election campaign in Russia, and a spectacularly messy divorce in the Philippine royal family, and a riot in New York Welfare, and a Bangkok fashion czar decreeing triangular cloaks. … Toward the end, it was announced that a skirmish had occurred between Terrestrial and Naqsan space forces in the Vega sector. As for Mundomar, nothing special–

Major Samuel McDowell, Eleutherian liaison officer, stirred. ‘Did you notice the date on that tape?’ he asked. ‘Happens to be the day my brother-in-law got killed.’

‘Huh?’ somebody said. ‘Too bad. I’m sorry.’

‘He wasn’t the only one,’ McDowell said. ‘Enemy came out of the jungle and shot up the whole village where his unit was. Lot of civilians bought it too. Filthy terrorists.’

‘You call your men in Hat’hara guerrillas,’ Conway couldn’t help muttering.

McDowell gave him a whetted stare. ‘Where are your sympathies, Ensign?’

Against the inward-crowding heat, Conway felt his cheeks and ears flush. ‘I’m a combat flyer, Major,’ he snapped.
I don’t owe servility to a ranking officer of a foreign country, do I?
He nearly added that they have a proverb on Earth about not looking gift horses in the teeth, but checked himself. If McDowell complained to Captain Jacobowitz, Ensign Conway might go on the carpet. Besides, the poor devil had suffered grief, and did see the war as a matter of survival. ‘No offense intended, sir.’

McDowell
eased
a trifle. ‘Oh, I’m not a fanatic,’ he said. ‘If the croakers would be reasonable– But think. To Earth, what’s going on here is a sideshow! Or less than that. Can’t they see we’re bleeding?’

In a quick and brilliant series of actions, human airmen cleared the skies. Tsheyakkans were no match for them.

After that it should have been easy to interdict supply lines and reduce cut-off invasion forces from above. Don Conway personally sent a surface watership to the bottom and probably a submarine freighter. But the next time around, a missile speared his flyer, as was happening unexpectedly often to his corps. He ejected, and bobbed about in the sea till a rescue bug hooked him out.

This earned him a week’s R&R in Barton. A polite gentleman from Earth phoned him at his hotel room, requested an interview, and treated him to the kind of dinner he had not guessed existed on Mundomar. In time, after numerous cordialities, the gentleman got to the point.

‘I gather you’ve been on the Shka coast. It’s devilish hard to collect any real information about that area. The Eleutherian authorities sit on everything and– Well, see, here, Ensign. You’re not an Eleutherian, you’re a … m-m-m, you’re under the jurisdiction of the World Federation. Think of that as your nationality, where your loyalty belongs. And people, important people in the Federation would definitely like to know if their suspicions are right, about the oil in Shka.’

‘Oil?’ Conway was astounded.

‘Yes. I’m not a scientist, but it works like this. Mundomar had an unusual evolution, starting when the whole system was a condensing dust cloud and going on through a mess of complicated planetology and biochemistry. Its petroleum contains several pretty unique materials. Extremely valuable as starting points for organic syntheses, like medicines, you know? Sure, we can manufacture the stuff from scratch, but pumping it out of the ground here and shipping it home is a hell of a lot cheaper. (Say, do you care for another drink?) The question is, when peace comes and the planet’s parceled out, will the rich sources be in friendly hands, or the hands of ungrateful sons of bitches who’ll screw us on price, or even the hands – flippers – of croakers? If Earth knew for sure, confidentially, what territories have these deposits, well, we could better plan our military campaigns and make our political deals. I don’t imagine you have the
complete information; but every scrap helps. Helps the Federation, that is.’

Conway almost said he had none, and if he did would still have seen no particular reason to contribute to the profits of producers or the kudos of commissioners. He halted his larynx in time, and spoke according to a swiftly devised plan. Item for item, he bought drinks with hints, and finally a night’s worth of delightful girl with an outright work of his imagination.

He didn’t think the Earthling would mind too much, being after all on expense account. Anyway, his furlough was soon over and he returned to combat.

For a while, that consisted of runs over wilderness. He blackened the areas he was told to blacken, and got no more reply than rifle bullets. The trouble was, the job had no end.

‘They don’t quit, the slimy bastards,’ said a captain of armored infantry. Conway had burned out a generator and landed for help at an advanced Eleutherian post. It was a village lately recaptured, ruins in the rain, full of a rotten-sweet odor. Humans rarely bothered to bury Naqsans, whose corpses could infect them. The captain spat on one. ‘They can live off this country better than we can. And their mother world’s getting war supplies through to them–’

His gaze went to a fence which confined a number of prisoners. They weren’t mistreated; but nobody here spoke any language of theirs, and physicians who knew their ailments were in short supply. The big seal-shapes comforted each other as best they might. ‘We’ll collect plenty more like those, though,’ the captain said. ‘A hard push is in the works. You’ll be busy yourself, Ensign.’

Conway flew high above the clouds, far into the stratosphere. Beneath him shone whiteness, around him deep blue and his companion warriors, above him the sun and a few brightest stars. But mostly he saw Ishtar.

And felt it, heard it, smelled it, tasted it. When he was little, how infinitely tall his father was, and how beautiful his mother. And Jill and Alice were pests he couldn’t have done
without. When Larreka came around, he’d smoldered with jealousy at the way the soldier favored Jill; but
he
took overnight boat trips on the Jayin with Dad, just the two of them waking up in an enormous misty morning. … He remembered woods and seas, his early discovery of the arts of Earth, an eo-sweetheart, O God, a triple daybreak seen from climbed heights in the Thunderhead Range. …

His earphones alerted him. What? Were any bandits left?

Their speed into his vision was terrifying. They were not the kind he had encountered before. Gaunt delta wings, these bore a wheel emblem whose recognition struck like a fist. Naqsa’s. The League itself. Yonder pilots weren’t half-trained colonists stuffed into unfamiliar machines. Naqsa had followed Earth’s lead and sent air corps regulars.

‘Hang, onto your scalps, boys,’ said Conway’s commander; and the two squadrons penetrated.

It was raining when he got his consciousness back. Jungle crowded the wreckage of his flyer. He had no memory of being hit or of a crash landing.

Mainly he knew pain. Blood was all over everything. His left leg was crimson pulp from which jutted bone splinters. He thought dimly that he must have broken ribs too, because each shallow breath hurt so. The universe had a scratch across it that he discovered was in his right eye.

He fumbled at his radio. Nothing happened. The canopy was burst open. Rain hammered and stammered over him. Where was his first aid kit? Where the fuck was his God damned first aid kit?

He found it at last and tried to prepare a hypospray, to dull the pain enough that he could think. His shaky hands kept dropping the apparatus. Presently he quit, since it hurt too much to bend over in his harness and grope after the stuff.

Later he began feeling warm and numb. The crack in creation faded, along with the rest of everything.
Go away, death,
he thought somewhere afar.
You’re not welcome here.

Why not? asked the gentle dark.

Because I
…
I’m busy, that’s why.

All right. I’ll wait till you’ve finished.

KILLED IN ACTION: Lt Cmdr Jan H. Barneveldt, Ens. Donald R. Conway, Ens. James L. Kamekona. …

MOURN FOR: Keh’t’hiw-a-Suq of Dzuaq, Whiccor the Bold, Nowa Rachari’s Son. …

Theoretically, Dejerine could have done all his communicating with Primavera at his worksite. In practice, he needed relief from that desert as much as any of his men. Furthermore, an electronic image is no real substitute for a live presence. It is immensely easier to stay cold and impersonal toward the former. Hence he flitted often to the town for consultations as well as avowed recreation. The individuals who most strongly resented his mission had the wit to see, in time, that he had not instigated it, he too meant well by Ishtar and might be persuaded to urge a change of policy upon the government.

After a couple of hours spent on technical problems in Sparling’s office – the location and most efficient utilization of natural resources needed for the project – the engineer abruptly said around his pipe: ‘Tell you what. Anyef, the area’s top dream artist, is giving a performance in Stubbs Park. Why don’t you come to dinner at my house and then we’ll see the show together?’

‘You are very kind,’ Dejerine said, surprised.

‘Aw, you’ve turned out to be not such a bad fellow. Besides, frankly, the more you see of native culture, the harder you may work to help save it.’

‘I have tried to appreciate playoffs from your data banks. It isn’t easy.’

‘Uh-huh. It isn’t simply foreign. Music, dance, and drama are more subtle, more complex than anything I believe our
species has ever done. But while Anyef’s conveying her latest experience, I can give you a running commentary.’

‘Won’t that disturb the audience?’

‘I’ve got a micro transceiver set in a bracelet, and I’ll find you another you can hang on an ear. Whispering won’t bother anybody; the wind’ll be noisier. I think that’s why she’s performing this dream, whatever it is, this evening – she’ll use the wind somehow as part of her language–’ The phone chimed on Sparling’s desk. ‘Excuse me.’ He punched acceptance.

Goddard Hanshaw’s ruddy features appeared in the screen, unwontedly grave. ‘Bad news, Ian,’ he said. ‘I thought you, being a particular friend of hers, ought to know right away.’

The pipestem broke between Sparling’s jaws. He caught the bowl automatically and put it in the ashtray with exaggerated care. The ashtray was an iridescent chelosaur shell– ‘Larreka called from Port Rua. Jill Conway’s been captured by the barbarians’ – which she had given him.

Dejerine sprang out of his seat.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous dites?’
he yelled.

Sparling waved him down. ‘Details, please,’ he said.

‘They borrowed a ship from the Kalain Glorious on the Dalag coast, but the commandant refused to spare more than a handful of soldiers for its protection; claimed he needs every sword he can get to hold North Beronnen safe,’ Hanshaw related. ‘He may be right. However, the upshot was that a couple of Valennener galleys, doubtless out pirating, attacked the ship in the Fiery Sea. Their crews boarded, were either beaten off in short order or deliberately retreated after they’d grabbed Jill. On the basis of prisoner interrogations – Larreka didn’t specify his methods – he thinks probably the kidnapping was the whole objective, when their chief had seen a human was aboard. That does give hope. If they want her for a hostage or a bargaining counter, they shouldn’t hurt her, on purpose anyhow. Their boats being too fast to pursue, Larreka proceeded on his way. The thing happened, uh, three days ago. He’s just arrived, made straight for the big transmitter.’