The Lotus Eaters (17 page)

A Balboan may or may not have a deep emotional attachment to his district or province. If he is an immigrant, as many are, of late, he probably has
no
attachment to his district or province. His devotion to his regiment, however, if he belongs to one, is profound. His regiment has recruited and trained him, given him the most exciting years of his life, and paid for his education after service. It may well have fronted the loan for his house, his farm or his business. It may have
built
his house.

If he is married, the odds are good that the reception was held in the regimental hall, of which there are about one hundred and fifty scattered about the country, and the ceremony itself presided over by the regimental chaplain. His young children may be educated at a regimental school or attend a regimental summer camp. He and his family likely receive primary medical care, at low cost, at a regimental clinic. He drinks with his regiment. He goes fishing with his regimental comrades, at the regimental fishing hole. He shops for food and clothing at the tax-free regimental exchange or commissary or at the larger exchanges at legion or corps level. When he takes his wife or girlfriend to dinner, it is probably at that same, low cost but not inelegant, regimental hall, he was or will be married in, surrounding by the tokens of glory he helped earn, and of which he is a part. Moreover, his regiment is his primary political representation, via the Senate, elected by the regimental centuriate assemblies.

There have been few revolutions in human history that have worked out generally for the benefit of those on whose behalf the revolutions were ostensibly launched. The first Red Tsar of Volga, for example, launched his revolution with the stated aim of uplifting the workers and peasants. (Though, in fact, his greater aim was rationalizing war production and asserting a more general societal control to serve the needs of the Great Global War.) The effect, in any case, of the Red Tsar's revolution was, at the lowest socio-economic levels, to return those same workers and peasants to the state of serfdom from which they had previously escaped. At higher levels, on the other hand, the Red Tsar merely substituted or supplemented his then existing nobility with a new nobility uplifted from Volga's previous middle and professional classes, the very same people who had, for their own interests, fallen in behind him in his revolutionary bid.
Observation of this phenomenon is not restricted to our planet and goes back not merely to Old Earth, but to
ancient
Old Earth. For his play,
The Assemblywomen
, for example, Athenian playwright Aristophanes has his proletarian heroine, Praxagora, respond to the question, "But who will till the soil?" with the simple answer, "The slaves."
Indeed, what we can tell from the scattered stories that have come down to us, from those who came to our planet at the very end of the wave of immigration, is that on Old Earth the largely peaceful revolution that gave that planet a world government also had the effect of reducing more than ninety percent of humanity there to a state of servitude.

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

Despite her new and exalted caste and rank, Class One and Marchioness, vice Lucretia Arbeit, of Amnesty, Wallenstein wore no fashionable diadem. And when she saw her senior staff and shuttle deck crew in full proskynesis on the deck—

She didn't have to feign fury. Marguerite
was
furious. "Get up! Get up, dammit! I'm no stinking, head in the clouds idiot. I don't need to be fooled into an unreal sense of my own importance. I'm not so deep down convinced that I'm a walking turd that I
need
this kind of reassurance that I'm not. On your feet!"

Sheepishly, hesitatingly, the staff and deck crew stood. First to stand was Khan, the male, Chief of Intelligence. At Wallenstein's command he first raised his face from the cold metal deck and stole a glance to see if she seemed serious. It seemed she did. Khan pushed his upper torso off the deck and rocked back. After tapping his wife, Khan from Sociology, he grasped her arm in one hand and pulled her up along with himself.

Around them, others likewise arose from their postures of submission and humiliation. There was a clear correlation between caste and speed with which the crew obeyed the new High Admiral's command. Indeed, it wasn't until Wallenstein walked down the shuttle's ramp and stormed across the deck to where the mostly Class Three, Four and Five deck crew lay, and said, "Yes, that means
everybody
," that those lessers began to get to their feet.

"Staff meeting in half an hour," Wallenstein announced, turning and walking off toward the hatch that led from the shuttle deck.

* * *

There have always been classes and castes
, thought Marguerite, alone in the Admiral's quarters.
There will always be classes and castes. And those who cry out against the injustice of it all only want to displace those at the top and put themselves there. At least, that's the way to read it from the results they get. And can't people be presumed to really desire what they actually achieve? At least when they do so well by it?

She quickly skinned out of the dress uniform, all black and silver, she'd worn for the trip up from Earth, replacing it with a more comfortable shipboard undress uniform. This was still the black of space, but of a softer material and a more yielding cut. And, best of all, it lacked the stiff high collar that some fashion maven had inflicted on the Peace Fleet centuries before. She didn't bother to hang the dress uniform up, tossing it instead over the desk across which the former High Admiral had so often used her body. Housekeeping wasn't her job.

All right then,
she thought, running a finger up a seam to seal the garment to her hips,
so it's unavoidable. Is this such a bad thing? Isn't it most important that the Earth be well governed? Isn't displacing a class gone rotten and replacing it with a better one the only way to achieve that?

She stopped dressing for a moment to apply her new rank insignia, silver crossed batons surrounded by a wreath, to her old uniform. Eventually, so she supposed, she'd pick an aide de camp or two to handle things like that for her.

"Odd, really," she said aloud, as she finished affixing the rank to her collar herself. "I thought it would feel better to do this. Somehow, it doesn't feel like anything. Then, too, I didn't feel as much as I expected to when the Secretary General publically elevated me to Class One and enfeoffed me with Amnesty."

Wallenstein laughed at herself and her circumstance, then said, "
Sic transit gloria mundi
." Thus flees the glory of the world.

On the other hand
, she thought, tugging on her tunic,
the tithes that go with Amnesty will also help with the fleet. I do so hope Mr. Brown can get a good price on Cygnus House, too. I couldn't continue to own it anyway, not after I saw and smelled that sick, twisted bitch's dungeon.

Boots went on last, calf length and supple black leather to match the undress uniform. With those, Wallenstein stood and walked to the mirror on one wall of the Admiral's quarters.

"Best I can do," she sighed, though she was, in fact, still the attractive woman she'd been since
becoming
a woman. "And now, to meet my
public
."

* * *

"Gentlebeings, the High Admiral," the Adjutant announced as the oval hatchway to the ship's conference room sphinctered open and Wallenstein walked in. The hatch closed behind her as soon as it sensed she was past. Each officer present pushed their chairs back from the massive Terra Novan silverwood conference table and stood immediately to attention. With a nod, Wallenstein walked between the staff's chairs and the room's iridescent ironwood-paneled walls.

Even before taking her own seat, she ordered, "Seats."

Just as they had when ordered out from proskynesis, the crew hesitated.

Wallenstein glared. "I said, 'seats,' dammit. I don't have time . . .
we
don't have time, for meaningless formalities. Sit!"

Marguerite didn't wait to see if the staff obeyed. Rather, she swung her chair almost one hundred and eighty degrees to face the large Kurosawa viewscreen on one wall of the conference room. Not far from that was the hatch leading to the Admiral's Bridge, a feature so far little used.

"Computer," she said. "View of the boneyard." Instantly the screen went from blank to filled with rank upon rank of ghost ships, their lightsails furled, the dark side of the moon visible on one corner of the screen.

"We're going there," Wallenstein announced. "We're going to get several of those running. Six, I think, right now, enough for a resupply every four to six months, indefinitely. They are going to become our lifeline to Earth. Don't bother asking where the credit is coming from; suffice to say that His Excellency, the SecGen, has approved a considerable increase to the fleet's budget and a major reallocation of industrial and personnel resources to our support."

"This ship," she continued, before anyone could even register surprise, "is going to be skimmed for cadre to command those transports. The rest of the crews will be coming from the academy and from weeding out some likely prospects from Fleet Base, both on Earth and on Luna. Those, and eventually the crews that were beached on Atlantis Base because we cannibalized their ships. The new commanders will have to train their crews themselves and with a minimum cadre.

"Job One, however, will be restoring the ships we need to full functionality. That should help with the training. Hopefully, we'll be able to restore one or two, then head back to Terra Nova, ourselves, leaving stay-behinds to finish the restoration on the rest.

"Our first target for restoration will be the
Jean Monnet
. It's almost the newest ship out there. It was the last mothballed. And its maintenance records indicate that it is likely in the best shape of the lot.

"Oh, one more thing. I have no intention of burning up in a defective shuttle. We're going to be taking every shuttle we can cram aboard the
Peace
, plus every shuttle we can cram aboard the first few of our restored ships, plus all the parts we can loot."

A large cargo shuttle, recovered from one of the abandoned transports, was having obvious difficulty maneuvering to dock at that transport. The shuttle, Marguerite saw from the manifest, was carrying one hundred and twelve early-graduated midshipmen and cadets from the Fleet Academy, along with about ninety tons of Class Fours and Fives for scut work.

The problem
, Marguerite thought, watching from the observation deck of
Peace
as the shuttle applied reversed thrust and backed off for a second attempt,
is half that none of my people are used to dealing with the unusual or the unexpected. There's no surprise there and maybe not any blame either. After all, the Fleet spent
centuries
in orbit about Terra Nova and in all that time there were precisely
two
unusual events. At least only two that made it into the records. The other half is that I just don't have enough qualified people, for all my brave talk to the SecGen.

She watched further as the shuttle missed its second attempt, pulling up this time and barely missing a collision with the edge of the open bay.

Marguerite shook her head with disgust. Reaching over to a small box mounted next to the large, clear viewing port, she pressed a button and said, "Operations. Here's a general rule for you. Write it into the SOP, as a matter of fact. WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO TRAIN PEOPLE RIGHT NOW ON THE FINER POINTS OF—ELDER GODS PRESERVE ME!—DOCKING WITH A STATIONARY, NON-ROTATING, SHIP. Have the comp take over docking on shuttle flight"—she glanced down at the manifest—"number one seven two.

"Training we'll have time for when we've got a full recovery crew aboard the
Jean Monnet
. Until then, priority is personnel and materials. Got it?"

"Aye, Aye, High Admiral," answered the voice from the box. Before the box went silent again, Wallenstein heard a different voice commanding, "Shuttle One Seven Two, Shuttle One Seven Two. Halt in place and get your butterfingered hands
off
the controls. We are taking over your docking from here."

* * *

One problem I didn't anticipate
, thought Marguerite, alone in the High Admiral's quarters,
was that I can't get
laid!
For all my planning, I just completely missed
that
little inconvenience.

It was never a problem before, not since I took command of the flagship. Here, there was always a High Admiral to fuck . . . or whatever. Now, I'm in charge and the only way to have sex is to use a subordinate. Even if I were willing to do to someone aboard what's been done to me for so long—and I'm not—how the hell does someone take me seriously after they've seen me panting like a dog in heat or moaning all the idiocies people do in the throes of passion? How do they even look at my face without remembering the last time they saw a dick growing out of it?

Might not be such an issue with a woman, I suppose, but that is
not
my actual preference. Besides, the only one I find really attractive is Khan and she's a submissive. And, in bed,
I
prefer to be the submissive, as a relief from having to be in charge all the rest of the time. Fuck.

I foresee a
miserable
decade or two ahead.

Hmmm . . . bring a boy toy up? It's permitted but . . . no . . . that's contemptible. Then
everyone
would imagine seeing a dick growing out of my mouth but would not associate the dick with a real man.

Misery, misery.

* * *

"High Admiral on the bridge," the junior watch officer announced as Wallenstein stepped out of the elevator and through the oval hatchway.

She looked grumpy. No one knew why and few thought they could make even an educated guess. After all, hadn't the strange woman dispensed with the hallowed tradition of proskynesis? Who knew what other bizarrenesses lurked in her feverish brain. She'd never been so hard to figure out when she'd been a mere, non-ennobled captain.