Third World (6 page)

“
Pardon?”

“
You heard me.”

“
Oh, ah…”

“
Never mind.” Finally Faber
met his eyes, shame-faced. “I’m sorry, sir.”

Newton was tempted to tell him that he
was a liar, but that was no way to go about it.

“
Report to me in ten
minutes, Mister Faber.” Newton should have been angrier, as it was,
he just felt disappointment and a little sick to his
stomach.

He made one more
announcement.

“
I suppose I should have
made my wishes more clear. However, no harm done. Ladies and
gentlemen, you are here, on duty, and this is not a vacation. You
will behave in a manner calculated to reflect well on your uniform
and our Service.”

You could have heard a pin
drop.

“
That will be all, ladies
and gentlemen.”

He turned and stalked out of the room.
He had the presence of mind not to slam the door or anything as the
hotel had other guests and it would have been superfluous as well
as rude.

What the hell did he expect from them?
He wondered if he was taking it too seriously.

Self-control was paramount in command
functions. There was still the trooper in the hall.

She stood there at attention in her
pajamas. Without speaking, he pointed down the hall to her
quarters. She saluted and departed with one quick backward
look.

He couldn’t even remember her first
name.

For the moment, he couldn’t quite
recall where he had been going when all of this started.

A stiff drink preyed on his mind.
Should he or shouldn’t he?

The memory of blonde Jillian Marlowe,
one of the prettiest girls on the ship, and Wilfred Hatcher,
engaged in heavy petting on the biggest chair in the room lingered.
Deep inside he had to acknowledge some masculine jealousy.
Objectivity was the best trait of a commander and he took a deep
breath. It was none of his business, and yet something screamed
inside of him.

He definitely needed that
drink.

Technically, they were all off-duty for
the sleep-cycle, yet standards must be kept. He’d never really
understood what that meant before.

Newton went looking for the Ensign with
some trepidation, praying like hell she had more sense. When he
knocked on her door, it was with some gratitude that he heard her
voice, muffled by the thick wooden door. When the door opened, she
stood there in a long flannel nightgown, not that it did much to
hide her good looks. Her disheveled hair detracted nothing from her
feminine attraction, another thing which sort of ate at his guts
from time to time.

The Service was hell, and everybody
said that.

“
I’m so sorry to disturb
you, but would you throw something on and report to my room
please?”

The look of confusion on her face, and
the straightening up, and her sketchy salute did nothing to relieve
his feelings at all, although the sight of her bedside light and a
reader laying there on the night table was somewhat reassuring. As
to whether anyone was standing just around the corner of the room
and out of his sight, he perhaps preferred not to know.

“
Yes, sir.”

“
You’re not in trouble.”
This seemed to shock her into wakefulness. “I would like you to
witness a little conversation I am about to have with one of our
people.”

“
I’ll be right there,
sir.”

Without a word, he turned and stalked
off down the hallway. He had been going down to the hotel bar,
which was his prerogative, but it did make him wonder about
himself. Was he in that much of a hurry to return to civilian life,
where you could just do what you wanted when you wanted
it?

That was a hard thing to
determine.

***

Faber’s face was carefully composed in
a mask of indifference. He stood, ram-rod straight, in front of
Newton and the Ensign, both seated in plush chairs by the window at
the end of his room.

“
I want a list of everyone
in that room.” Newton, as tired as anyone after the day’s patrols,
tried to keep a note of dejection out of his voice.

And this was only day one.

The Ensign remained silent.

“
Yes, sir.”

“
There will be no
disciplinary action. It will remain suspended, it might be more
accurate to say.”

“
Yes, sir. Thank you,
sir.”

Newton waved him off.

“
What’s that red-haired
girl’s name? The one with the big…the one with the big
chest.”

Faber blushed.

“
Grimaldi, sir.”

“
I like you, Faber.” This
was the sort of thing that was often left unsaid, but in these
circumstances…

Faber said nothing. What did Newton
expect? He didn’t give a damn what Faber thought, when you got
right down to it.

“
How old is she?” The Ensign
spoke up now, although Newton hadn’t had much time to brief
her.

Faber reddened, swallowed.

He was unable to look at the
Ensign.

“
Twenty, sir.”

“
I see.” She jotted
something on a pad. “Thank God she’s over eighteen, eh, Faber?
You’d be up shit creek without a paddle, wouldn’t you?”

“
Er…yes, Ma’am.”

“
Mister Faber.”

“
Yes, Ma’am?”

“
How old are you?” The
Ensign was quietly relentless.

Faber was a good soldier and probably
capable of breaking either one of them in half in the physical
sense. He flushed even redder.

“
Thirty-eight,
Ma’am.”

Newton made no further comment on that
score. He spoke up again after admittedly enjoying the
performance.

“
Faber, I need these people
clean and sober, first thing tomorrow. How many drinks did you
have?” Newton wasn’t looking for trouble, but when it came to him,
he had a few skills.

Faber thought about lying, Newton could
see it go through his mind.

“
Four or five,
sir.”

“
Yes.” Newton waited a long
moment.

The air got very still and the room
must have seemed very warm to Faber, as beads of sweat glittered on
his forehead.

“
All right, Mister Faber.
That will be all.”

“
Yes, sir.” Faber turned to
go.

He paused at the door and turned back.
His mouth opened, perhaps to offer some word of explanation or
apology.

The look on Newton’s face stopped him
cold.

“
I don’t want to hear it,
Mister Faber.”

“
May I say something?” The
Ensign looked over inquiringly.

“
By all means.”

“
Mister Faber, there is a
great gulf between officers and the enlisted personnel. There are
gaps, social gaps if you will, between officers and
non-commissioned officers. But your job is to bridge that gap
between officer and enlisted ranks.”

“
Yes, Ma’am.”

“
You have a tough job. No
one is questioning that. As long as you do it well, very few
questions will be asked.”

Newton put in an oar.

“
Just take care not to get
caught in the middle, which might be very uncomfortable for
you.”

“
Yes, sir.”

The Ensign had more to say.

“
You have to be their
friend, their buddy, sometimes like a father or mother to some of
them. We understand all of that. They are very young. But if you
lose their respect, then we will have no further use for you. At
least at your current rank, and in your present
position.”

“
I understand,
Ma’am.”

“
You are
dismissed.”

Quietly, the door closed behind
him.

Their eyes met. She grinned hugely, and
he couldn’t help but to respond as it was genuinely contagious. She
was enjoying this.

“
I’m sorry to have had to
bother you, Ensign.”

“
That’s all right,
Lieutenant.” She grinned happily.

Neither said anything more for a
moment, and then he nodded, indicating the door with a wave of his
forearm, and finding himself unable to stifle a yawn. What he
wouldn’t give for a friend right now.

He said as much.

“
That’s all right, sir.” A
quirky grin crossed her features. “I wouldn’t have missed that for
the world.”

She got up to go, and Newton considered
offering her a drink but the hour was late enough as it
was.

Then it was her turn to pause at the
door.

She turned.

“
Onboard the ship things are
a lot easier. At least there, they know their duties and understand
the routine. I hope I was of some assistance.” She waited for this
to sink in and went on. “They’re not bad people, as I see
it.”

No, and that was just the
trouble.

“
You were great. I couldn’t
have put it better myself.” He yawned, and then shook his head as
if to clear it of cobwebs.

Everyone knew what cobwebs were. Funny
thing about space-ships, they still had cobwebs. For all of their
material and technological progress, some things remained the same
and likely would until the end of time. Deep-space missions were a
curious mix of the mundane and the sublime.

Even doing laundry for a thousand
people had its challenges, yet it was also crucial to morale to be
clean yourself, and to look after your people.

“
Thank you, Ensign. And I’m
sorry to keep you up so late. Goodnight.”

“
Goodnight, sir.”

There was one more thing to do, and
then he could go to bed.

But if the events of the last half-hour
were any indication, and of course they were, he had better make a
quick check around and see if anyone else was missing or
unaccounted for. He was doing bed-checks, for Christ’s sake. He
shook his head at the thought.

For someone in command of even the
smallest group of human beings, the work was never done and the
responsibility was acute.

He was beginning to see why these
particular troopers were considered dispensable. Maybe they were
just young. The ship really was a whole different environment. But
they might very well have bivouacked right at the landing field,
and subsisted on field rations. They just didn’t see
that.

For one thing, it would be a hell of a
lot cheaper.

Perhaps he should have spelled it out a
little more clearly for them. This was his failure, and his alone,
the way he saw it. Surely it was how the Commander would see
it.

This was just the tip of the iceberg.
And it could have been so much worse.

Chapter Six

Hank Felt Like a
Fool

Feeling a bit of a fool, Hank was back
at worship the next Sunday.

For some reason Leviticus
always left a bad taste in his mouth and it was a sore trial just
to sit through it. The fervent
Amens
of the congregation may have
had something to do with it, or perhaps it was the fact that ten
percent of them must be hypocrites.

Perhaps they didn’t have the slightest
idea of what they were saying or what Marty was talking
about.

Polly was there, but her mother was
absent. He should have been pleased, and yet he had been prepared
for the two of them. It was all rehearsed.

He wasn’t prepared for this.

As the congregation straggled out into
the morning mist, with patches of alternating sun and cloud on the
distant hilltops, he stood there blinking for a moment, off to one
side so as not to be in the way.

Surely there must be at least one man
on the planet who was lonelier than Hank, but if so he’d never
heard of the fellow.

It didn’t look good. Perhaps some other
time. She hadn’t even looked at him. Polly had gotten there and
took her customary pew long ahead of Hank, whose mount was
cantankerous, unusually so for the critter was usually gentle as
pie when ridden.

Admittedly, the critter hadn’t been
ridden in some time and that may have accounted for its
skittishness and reluctance to go where pointed. It was the best
looking one of the bunch and he rode them all in a kind of
rotation, otherwise they got spoiled for lack of work.

Critters was a lot different from
horses, that was for sure.

He was just turning to go around and
find the animal, most likely it would be scrounging in the field
out back, when Polly cleared her throat and diffidently addressed
him.

“
Hello, Mister
Beveridge.”

“
Oh. Hello, Polly.” Swiftly
taking off his hat, he bowed to her, a little stiffly to be sure.
“And how is your mother. I hope she isn’t ailing?”