Home Fires (23 page)

There’s more. The police will suspect certain persons of belonging to suicide rings. With luck, Zygmunt may be able to learn their names, or some of them. Mick said he could give me the service numbers of his men as well as their names. That suggests that none used aliases, though it doesn’t prove it. Have the numbers checked; the Public Service Administration will provide names.

When I shut my eyes I see the ruin blocking the corridor. I smell the smoke. There were no screams save Vanessa’s. She was on her way to her office, she said, when she stopped at the infirmary to talk to Chelle.

I see the dead hand, the nail polish and the ring with the big watery stone. Did the young woman I spoke to there have a ring like that?

I wish I could remember.

How pretty she was!

12

JANE SIMS

“Sit down, Don.” Skip indicated a chair. “Would you like something to eat? Or a drink? The first-class kitchen’s supposed to be a bit better than second class. It may not be true, but that’s what they say. I’d think the bars are probably about the same.”

“Dos Equis, sir, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“Of course not. I’ll have one, too.” Skip picked up the telephone and ordered.

Miles waited expectantly.

“You’re wondering why I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I need your help, or think I do. You’ve probably guessed that already.”

“I’ll be happy to help you any way I can, sir.”

“I know. I feel sure of that, but I’m going to have to ask you some personal questions. It wouldn’t be fair for me to do that without briefing you, without giving you some idea of why I’m prying into your private life. You went down into the hold with Sergeant Kent-Jermyn to fight the hijackers.”

“Yes, sir. It was a damned fool thing to do. I know that now.”

“It was a very brave thing to do. I admire you for it. Everybody admires you.” Skip paused, collecting his thoughts. “Some of you were killed. Others were captured. When you were, Mastergunner Chelle Blue led a party down there to rescue you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mastergunner Blue and I are contracted. Did you know that?”

“Yes, sir. Lieutenant Brice told me. He’s one of the ship’s officers, sir.”

“He is, Captain Kain has mentioned him. There’s a Captain Johnson on board, too. A captain in the Army, I mean. Do you know him?”

“No, sir.”

“He was in that meeting room when you came in. I should have introduced you to everyone, but I was so anxious to talk to you that it was all I could think of. Do you know Virginia Healy?”

“No, sir. Wait a minute—wasn’t that the woman who volunteered to go down as a prisoner? The first woman who raised her hand?”

“Correct. She’s Mastergunner Blue’s mother.” Skip sighed. “She’s Chelle’s mother, and someone’s trying to kill her. That’s one reason I’m poking and prying—a peripheral reason, or I think it is. Sometime peripheral reasons turn out to be not so peripheral later.”

Miles nodded. “Yes, sir.”

There was a diffident knock.

Skip opened the door, and signed the bill when the waiter had deposited his tray on a small table. “Did you fight?” Skip asked the waiter.

“No, sir. Not really. They put the older people in the second-class dining room, sir, and assigned four of us to guard them. I was one of those.”

“Did you have a gun?”

“Not at first, sir. A kitchen knife. We got guns after, sir.”

“Can you shoot?”

“No, sir.”

“Neither can I.” Skip added a tip to the check, and the waiter went out.

As the door closed, Miles said, “I heard you killed quite a few of them, sir.” He had not opened his beer.

“Yes, but I burned a lot of ammunition, and they were so tightly packed that when I missed one I hit another. I’ll try to do better next time, if there’s a next time.”

Skip sat, and twisted the top from his bottle. “You know Chelle, I know. Do you like her?”

“I’m not trying to move in on you, sir.”

“I didn’t think you were. I just wondered what you thought of her.”

“Everybody likes her, sir.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, sir.” Miles paused. “She’s good-looking, and sharp as hell. She’s got that air of command, too. You know what I mean? She’s a leader. She knows it, and you know it as soon as she shows up. I don’t know how many decorations she’s got, but Private Bonham called around, he said, and he says the eagle and maple leaf, silver. If she stays in, they’ll pin bars on her. You bet your ass, sir.”

“She’s not staying in,” Skip said. “Or I don’t think she is.”

“I don’t blame her, sir.”

“I ought to add that I don’t want her to. She has a problem, a serious one, and I’m trying to help her with it. I’m a great deal older than she is, as I feel certain you realize.”

“A little older, sir. Just a little bit. I guess you two contracted before she went up.”

“Correct. I can’t be a young man for her again. I can help her, though, and that’s what I’m trying to do. Are you contracted?”

“No, sir.” Miles’s face went blank.

“Have you ever been?”

“No, sir. We— Can I explain, sir? You won’t believe me, but it’s the truth.”

“If it’s true, I’ll believe you.”

“There was this girl in high school. We … You know.”

“You fell in love.”

“Yes, sir. That’s it exactly. We said we were going to contract. I believed it, and I think she did, too.”

“Continue, please, Corporal. Let’s have the whole story.” Skip sounded as sympathetic as he ever had to a defense witness during a murder trial, and that was very sympathetic indeed.

“Only she went off to college, sir. We said we’d call and e-mail and all that. You know?”

Skip nodded. “I certainly do.”

“Only I didn’t have the money to call very often, and I’m not very good about writing anything. After a while, well, I enlisted and she stopped calling. It—it didn’t bother me back then. It wasn’t a big thing. This next is the part you won’t believe, sir.”

“Try me,” Skip said.

“She was on the planet, on the world they sent me to. She was an officer, sir.”

“Really?”

“Yes, sir. She’d studied physics in college, and gotten really high up. There was a weapon we had there. She couldn’t say what it was, but it was something one of her teachers had come up with. He was old and hadn’t wanted to go, but he told the Army they ought to take Jane. He said they ought to make her an officer and all that so she could take care of his weapon, and they did it. After I’d been at that base about a week, we—well, we saw each other. I can’t tell you how that was, sir. I haven’t got the words.”

“I think I understand.”

“We said we wanted to get together to talk about old times, and that was all it was. Only we knew better, both of us. We’d go to the officers’ club. I was an enlisted man, but nobody said anything. They could see how it was, and they just smiled and went back to their card game or whatever. We said we were going to contract, and we meant it. We were going to do everything right. You could get model contracts on one of the computers she worked on. Then…”

“Something happened,” Skip said.

“She got killed.” Miles cleared his throat. “I was out on the periphery then, sir. There were outposts, and that was where I was when the missile hit. It was just a little one, not one of the big ones like you fire into space, but it … It killed Janie—killed her, and a hell of a lot of other people.”

“One question, please.” Skip paused. “I know this must be painful.”

“Go ahead, sir. It’s not going to get any worse.”

“Was Janie’s last name Sims?”

“Yes, sir. It was. How’d you know, sir?”

“Chelle told me. You were on Johanna.”

“Yes, sir. I’m not supposed to tell anybody that, but you know already.”

“So was Chelle. She was hurt pretty badly there, perhaps by the same missile, although I don’t know that.” Skip returned his glass to the tray and rose to pace the floor. “Before we knew about Sergeant Kent-Jermyn’s group, Chelle gave Captain Kain her word that she wouldn’t go down into the hold. Her word’s usually good. Better than mine, I think. Achille—do you know Achille?”

Miles nodded. “The little guy with no hands? Yes, sir.”

“He’ll have hands again when we get back home. I’m going to get him replacements. I owe him, and I like to pay my debts.”

For a few moments Skip paced, swinging along with the pronounced roll of the ship and collecting his thoughts. “You know that Chelle assembled a force of her own and went down to rescue you. They were defeated, just as the group you were in were. A good many of them were killed and the rest were captured, including Chelle.”

Miles nodded again. “It’s called defeat in detail, sir. It’s what happens when you break up and let the enemy fight you piece by piece.”

“Thank you. I didn’t know that. You did, but you went down with Kent-Jermyn anyway.”

“Yes, sir. A raiding party of a few men can get a lot done sometimes. You and the skipper didn’t know the setup down there, for one thing. We found out.”

“I think I understand.” Skip sipped his beer and set it back down. “What I started out to say was that Achille came with a list of the captives. The hijackers had gotten all of you to write down your names.”

“Yes, sir, except for the ones who were hurt too bad to write. We wrote theirs for them.”

“I see. I believe that was before Angel Mendoza escaped?”

“Yes, sir. We wouldn’t have put down his name if he hadn’t been there.”

“I see.” For a few seconds, Skip paced in silence. “I’ve been assuming that he had a similar list. And of course he may have—he could have written such a list himself.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think he did. When we found Chelle, she told me she needed a psychiatrist. She was joking, I’m sure; but many a truth is told in jest. As we took her up to J Deck, I asked what she’d meant by it; and she told me that when she’d read your names she felt compelled to get you men back, and that her compulsion to do it overrode every other consideration.”

“I don’t think I’ve got this yet, sir.”

“I think I do,” Skip said, “and right now that’s what matters. It involves Jane Sims and a note Chelle wrote once. It may also involve my secretary in some way, and I admit I don’t understand that yet. Perhaps I never will, but…” He smiled. “But we may get to the bottom of it today, Corporal Miles. I dare hope so.”

“Then so do I, sir.”

“Good! I want to take you to the infirmary to talk to Chelle. I want you to tell her about Jane Sims, in much more detail than you told me. And I want you to tell her how Jane Sims died. Did you see her body?”

“Yes, sir. Not for long, because the medics grabbed it and froze it. They use them for organ replacements, sir. Then the parts they can’t use—whatever’s chewed up too bad—get shipped home in a sealed coffin. People here don’t seem to understand that, but that’s how it is.”

“I see. Do you happen to know whether Jane Sims’s family has received such a coffin?”

“No, sir. I don’t, and I’d like to.”

Skip nodded, mostly to himself. “I have a man in Boswash, which is where I live, who’ll look into things like that for me. I’ll have him find out, and I’ll tell you what he learns.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“In return, I’d like you to talk to Chelle. Tell her what you’ve told me about Jane Sims, and about seeing her body. Describe it. Give her as much detail as you can remember.”

“I will, sir.”

Skip took a deep breath. “It may work, and it’s certainly worth trying; I’ll be indebted to you whether it works or not. A moment ago I said I liked to pay my debts. Are you going to stay in the Army?”

Miles nodded. “I’ll have to, sir. It’s damned hard to get a civilian job, sir. That’s what everybody says. I qualify for a pension—they say I’ve got twenty years’ service—but for a corporal that’s not much.”

“Suppose you could get a civilian job, a good one?”

“Then I’d put in for a discharge, sir. I’d have the salary, whatever it was, and my pension, too. I’d be set.”

“Do this for me, and I’ll get you one.”

Miles swallowed the last drop of his beer, and paused as though afraid to speak. At last he said, “Really, sir?”

“Yes. I’ve got connections. Let’s go see Chelle.”

*   *   *

Someone was shouting in the infirmary, his hoarse voice audible far down the corridor:
“Hey! Hey! Anybody! Come here!”

The middle-aged woman who had sat at the desk when Skip and Susan had come to see Chelle was dead, her body slumped across the desk, her white cotton blouse bullet-torn and scarlet with her blood. Chelle’s bed was empty, her pillow on the floor, her sheets tangled.

The man in the big room next to hers stopped shouting as they came through its door. “Don! What the hell’s going on?”

“That’s what we want to know, sir,” Don said; Skip felt that he spoke for both of them.