The Lotus Eaters (14 page)

As the second hand on Siegel's watch swung round, he hunched himself lower into the bunker, Tranh following suit. The sapper reached out one hand to push Han's head lower.

It's hardly the first time a man ever pushed my head down
, the girl thought.
This one, at least, means
me
well by it.

Then a half-pound of RDX based linear shaped charge and twenty-eight pounds of ammonium nitrate-based explosive rocked the earth. A pattering of silver painted gravel flew up and then fell on and around Siegel's bunker.

A silver-draped Christmas tree from uplands in the eastern part of the country could be seen from the street. James Soult glanced at it only briefly before he parked the staff car at the curb to let Carrera disembark. That human fireplug, Mitchell, bearing a submachine gun, was already on the sidewalk with his eyes searching for trouble before Carrera's feet touched the pavement.

A sentry called the building to attention as Carrera walked through the main doors. Carrera wished the man a merry Christmas and continued on to Jimenez' office. He found Jimenez hunched over his desk, a sheaf of paper spread out before him.

Jimenez stood to attention when he realized Carrera was present. "How can I help you, sir?"

That, in itself, was odd. Normally Carrera and Jimenez were on a first name basis on any occasion that didn't absolutely require formality.

"Nothing, Xavier," Carrera shook his head. "I just had nothing better to do for the morning and thought I'd stop by and see how your troops are doing."

"The corps grows, Patricio," the lean black answered. "I, on the other hand, am not doing so well."

Carrera had started to ask the problem when he glanced down at the papers scattered across Jimenez' desk. He picked one up, scanned it, glanced at the return address "The Estado Major's Ib wants to know how many of your machine guns are functional? Why? It's too trivial a concern for national level staff."

"I don't know," Jimenez answered, shrugging. "I just answer the mail. And, frankly, I and my staff have fallen behind. We've been in the field training. Sorry."

Carrera fingers continued sorting through the mess on Jimenez's desk, looking over the paperwork. "What? The II shop wants to know what percentage of potential recruits pass their physical. The Provost wants a list of crime statistics from the 4th Corps?" He read another: "They want to know how many people attend Sunday services in the regimental chapels?! That's absurd!"

Carrera replaced the papers on Jimenez' desk and thought,
And I've a sneaking hunch it's
my
fault for not being there to prevent this sort of nonsense. It wasn't enough, apparently, just to keep staffs small so that people couldn't create the demand for this kind of crap. It has to be killed at the source.

Jimenez shrugged once more. "It's been getting worse lately, too. Ah, Patricio; it's not like it was when we were getting ready for the war. Those were good days, damned good. Just train, train, train and to hell with paperwork."

Carrera nodded, then asked, "Got anything to drink, Xavier?"

"Rum and coke? Wouldn't mind one myself."

"It'll do." Carrera took a seat as Jimenez rang for an orderly. A couple of flies buzzed above the top of Jimenez' desk. Carrera glanced at the flies with a certain interest.

As he waited for the drinks to arrive, a muttering Carrera looked over each demand for information littering Jimenez's desk. He looked back at the flies, now buzzing near a window. Finally he spoke. "Xavier, don't answer any of this shit. Still, I want you to do one more report. Nobody's asked for it, and I really don't want the information. But make up a flypaper report."

"A flypaper report?" Jimenez looked incredulous.

"Oh, yes," Carrera grinned. "A flypaper report. Direct it to the attention of the acting chief of the
Estado Major
. Put down the number of rolls of flypaper used, where they were placed, how high, how many flies were caught by placement. Throw in anything you can think of that might conceivably have a bearing on that critically important question: the efficacy of flypaper. Then send it up with an letter of apology for being late."

"Apology? Late? But no one's asked for a 'flypaper report' until now."

"I know." Carrera smiled knowingly. "Now let's have those drinks. And Merry Christmas."

Besides failing to account for the cost of a given good, it is a great moral and logical fallacy of the universe, or at least upon the two planets of it which know Man, to measure good and evil only by their intensity and scope and never by their duration. War is the greatest of evils, so might Man (or at least Cosmopolitan Progressive, or Kosmo, Man) say, and so might he say, too, that we must never wage war even against the greatest oppression. And yet wars inevitably end while oppression goes on and on (and typically ends, if it ends, in war anyway).
War, however, is only the obvious extreme case. Consider reproductive rights. Surely a woman has a right to her own body to do with as she pleases. This is a certain, plain, obvious, and irrefutable good. But just as surely, the children of the women who do not feel that way will soon outnumber the children of the women who do. Those children will learn and carry the values of their parents, as will their children. Also, they will vote. And then expansive, liberal reproductive rights will democratically disappear to join with the children never born to the women most dedicated to those rights. Thus will a generation or two of free reproductive rights for women be followed by one hundred or one thousand generations that scorn them. Thus, the plain, certain, irrefutable and obvious good is
meaningless
, because it cannot last, because it destroys itself as it destroys the conditions which permitted it.
So, too, unlimited democracy . . .

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral
,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

The tree was decorated, the stockings hung, and the Hamilcar's Pashtun guards had even managed to figure out where the exterior lights went. (Also, since the lights would have tended to silhouette them, they'd figured out that they'd better double the number of guards and push them out, away from the house. As Lourdes said, "Paranoia, thou art a Pashtun. Thank goodness.") Now, as the clock neared midnight, Carrera and Lourdes had the Casa Linda mostly to themselves but for the guards outside and the ones keeping watch over Hamilcar, upstairs.

As midnight struck, Carrera walked to a console and removed a small box, the kind that would contain a necklace. He handed the box to Lourdes. She opened it to find a string of pearls, large and perfect, shining pink and iridescent in the subdued light. Lourdes made a happy sound, reached up to kiss Carrera heavily, and ran to where she had hidden her gift to Carrera.

Lourdes' gift was in a box, about three feet long—or a bit more, and four inches on a side. When Carrera had removed the paper he found that the box was wooden. He removed the lid to discover a sword, old and, from the inscription, Spanish.

Lourdes said "I had to send all the way to Taurus to find it for you. It is from the 16th century on Old Earth. The dealer told me it wasn't the sword of anyone famous. But he believed and showed me why he believed that it once belonged to a Conquistador. I thought it would go well with your collection. I hope you like it."

Carrera took the sword from its box. He drew the blade from the scabbard. It was very well preserved, he saw, for something nearly a millennium old and made of steel. The lights from the tree gleamed along the shimmering metal of the blade. Carrera made an appreciative sound. "It's wonderful, Lourdes. You understand, though, it's too rare for me to carry around."

Holding the sword to catch the light better, Carrera saw small flakes of rust and that the blade was, in a few places, pitted. This was no surprise. He said softly, to no one in particular:

"How dull it is, to pause, to make and end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use,
As though to breathe were life."

By his tone, and his eye, Lourdes knew he was pleased. She paused, took a deep breath. "I have another present for you, Patricio. I hope you like it as well. But you can't have it for a while."

Carrera raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"I'm going to have another baby . . . in about seven months."

"Really?" he asked, then, smiling broadly, said, "Coool."

"Well," she said, eyes sparkling and lips turning wicked, "it's not like you've left me with my legs together too often lately.

"Just making up for lost time."

The university was rapidly becoming as split an entity as the country which supported it. True enough, most of the facilities were here on the main campus, in what many were beginning to call "Free Balboa," as opposed to "occupied Balboa." Even so, that portion which was in the Transitway Area, plus the few buildings in the small portion of the city owned by the rump government of Rocaberti and his cronies, had pretty much ceased responding to anything emanating from the University Rectory.

Professor Ruiz, de facto propaganda minister for the Legion and the rest of the country, at the moment not only did not but
could
not care a bit about the split in the country or the split in the university.
He
was nursing a splitting headache, courtesy of the New Years' party held by his department the night before.

Still, work had to go on, even on Terra Novan New Years' Day. Work, in this case, consisted of reviewing a series of two minute long commercials the Legion's junior military academies.

This was a tough one,
Ruiz thought, through the pounding in his head.
We couldn't show the military side of the cadet program . . . too likely to frighten away parents. Besides, Carrera was explicit that that was to be downplayed. So all we have is some martial music, staged pictures of fourteen and fifteen year olds dressed up in gray fatigues while attending class, and a few shots of kids marching in parade. Still, though, the Legion is so tightly woven into the fabric of the country by now that all they need is a reminder, I think. And for that, these commercials will do well enough.

* * *

Not many miles from where Professor Ruiz underwent his ordeal by hangover, a poor boy from a poor family sat through an interview. The boy's parents and his own teacher conversed while trying to find a way to pay for the boy's continued education. The family was named Porras; the boy went by Julio. He was a handsome kid, if a bit on the skinny side. Porras' family had not always been so poor.

Although education was free in the Republic of Balboa, the uniforms and books required were not. The Porras family had been able, by scrimping and saving, to send Julio's three older siblings to school properly attired. But Julio's younger brothers and sister also needed school clothing, and the father was without a steady source of income. There just wasn't enough money.

The teacher said, "
Señor
and
Señora
Porras, I wish I could help. But I have only a teacher's salary. It isn't too generous. Julio is my best student, my best by far. And a good boy, too."

Not a tremendous fan of the military, less still of military education, the teacher was reluctant to suggest to the boy's parents that he try to go to one of the new schools the Legion had started.

Still
, the teacher thought,
for a bright boy like this even a military school would be better than nothing.

"There is a possibility. I don't know how you would feel about it. Maybe you should ask Julio. There are schools run by the Legion del Cid that provide everything . . . books, uniforms, room and board. I understand there's even a small stipend for the boys, though I'm sure it's nothing lavish. But you must understand, this will be a military school. It is intended to educate young men so that they can volunteer for and serve in the Legion upon graduation."

Julio's father asked "Will the boys be soldiers as soon as they enroll?"

"No, I understand they will receive some military training, mostly as an exercise in character building. But they are not supposed to be a part of the Legion until after they graduate. Even then, I've heard, it will be up to them whether they actually join or not."

The teacher turned to Julio. "Would you like to go to that school, son? It will be difficult."

Julio, who knew better than anyone the struggle his parents faced every day just to feed him, assented without a second thought. "
Madre, Padre,
I would like to go to one of these school. Very much."

The mother asked "Do you think Julio can get into this school, Señor? Will he be far from home?"

The teacher reached into his desk and pulled out a piece of paper. "It lists here the desirable qualities the school is looking for. Grades? No problem there. Extracurricular activities and leadership? Julio has captained our soccer team, and won the school prize for a writing competition. Teachers recommendation? If you are truly willing to let him go, I will give him as good a recommendation as anyone will receive. I think he should be able to get in. As for being far from home, I understand that the Legion assigns boys where it has an opening, without much regard for where they may live."

The father asked the last question. "How soon must Julio leave for the school?"

"This paper says initial cadet training begins on the 31st of this month. We have until the 14th to have Julio's application in."

Drivers honked with gleeful abandon. Honking right back, Mitchell used the greater mass and intimidation power of his rather beat up vehicle to force his way through traffic to a spot not far from an office building's door. Wordlessly, Carrera got out. Equally wordlessly, Mitch drove off and turned the corner.