A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (17 page)

“Who is it, please?” inquired the familiar sweet voice.

“It’s me, Judikha.”

“Judikha?
Judikha!
Oh, my goodness!”

The door immediately swung open to reveal Judikha’s old friend, beaming with recognition and welcome. She’s scarcely changed at all, Judikha observed, other than having gained fifteen or twenty pounds.

“Oh, my goodness! Come in! Come in! Poopsie! Look who’s here!”

A tall, elegant-looking young man rose from the overstuffed couch on which he had evidently been enjoying, until Judikha’s untimely interruption, a pleasant evening with Bettina. What caused Judikha to gape, however, was not his glossy handsomeness but the uniform he was wearing. It was the greys of the Space Patrol.

“Poopsie, I’d like you to meet an old, dear friend of mine, Judikha. Judikha, this is Lieutenant Birdwhistle.”

Birdwhistle regarded her with cold, distant, unfriendly eyes and Judikha was all too aware of the disheveled and probably bloody condition of her own uniform. She unconsciously stood a little straighter and raised her hand to move a misplace strand of hair.

“Judikha?” he said, in an aloof, disapproving voice. “Judikha? I see by your comet you’re a recent Academy graduate, but I don’t seem to recall ever seeing you around here before.”

“No, sir. I’m—ah—that is, I didn’t graduate from the Blavek Academy, sir. I attended the Academy in Toth.”

“Toth, eh? Really? I had higher expectations of their standards. What in the world have you been doing? Your uniform’s a disgrace.”

“I—I—had an accident, sir.”

“Indeed. I would think that a woman—Patrolman or not—would know better than to wander around the Transmoltus alone.”

“I was, ah, looking for an old friend, sir.”

“Miss Henlopen, I presume?”

“No, sir, not exactly.”

Bettina, who had left the room immediately after performing the introductions, returned carrying a tray of snacks and drinks. “Would you care for something to eat, Judikha? I’m sure you must be hungry. You look terribly tired.”

“Thanks very much, Bettina, that’s very kind.” Judikha welcomed the interruption in her interrogation and all three took seats around the little table upon which Bettina had placed her tray. Lieutenant Birdwhistle regained his place on the couch, his slim body bent in two perfect right angles, still glaring at Judikha, who sat in a chair opposite, with his cold, grey, suspicious eyes.

“Whatever happened to you, Judikha?” Bettina burbled gaily. “Everyone wondered where you went. All those awful things everyone said you’d done...I never believed them for a moment.”

Judikha noticed that Birdwhistle was taking far too much interest in these hints about her history and fervently wished Bettina would shut up. She thought it best to steer the conversation toward more fruitful lines, but Bettina, in her delightful inability to stick to a single subject, solved that problem for her.

“Oh, Judikha! Look at you and Poopsie! You’re both in the Patrol! Isn’t that just
too
wonderful? And you look just splendid in your uniform, so tall and slender. Oh, Poopsie, don’t you think the uniforms are just too, too flattering to the figure? Don’t you think Judikha looks just
splendid?
Whatever do they make them of? I wish I had the figure to wear something like that. I remember Judikha always talked about getting into the Patrol and now look at her! Isn’t it just
wonderful
, Poopsie? Judikha always wanted to be in the Patrol and now here she is, in the Patrol just like you!”

“Yes, it does seem rather remarkable.”

“It’s
so
nice to see her again—we were the best of friends once, weren’t we, Judikha?”

“Yes, I really was very fond of you, Bettina.”

“I hardly
ever
see any of my old classmates any more. Goodness knows what’s happened to them all. It wasn’t a very nice school, I’m afraid.”

“Speaking of old classmates, have you seen much of Rhys or his brother?”

“That
awful
little Pomfret creature? I should say not! Rhys left years ago and took Pomfret with him. Their father had come into just
piles
of money from some invention or another and then dropped dead, poor man, and left it all to them.”

“Do you have any idea where they may have gone?”

“Nary a clue, I’m afraid. Just no idea at all. I was terribly, terribly hurt you know, the way he just up and left me, Rhys did, without hardly a word...” here she gave a little sniffle of exquisitely perfect timing and dramatic technique. Birdwhistle, Judikha was pleased to notice, endured this maudlin speech with visible discomfort.

“I’m very anxious to find Pomfret—if you have any suggestions at all?”

“Oh, it’s really such a terribly, terribly painful memory...I was just absolutely
devoted
to Rhys, you know...I can’t imagine why you would want to see his dreadful brother again. He was such a sneaky,
awful
little thing, always poking around in other people’s business...I don’t think he liked you very much at all, you know...Oh! My goodness, Judikha—he didn’t have anything to do with your
troubles
did he?”

“Troubles?” asked Birdwhistle.

“I—ah—had some, um, difficulties in my last year...”

“Yes, now I know. I thought there was something familiar about your name,” said Birdwhistle, “I remember now.”

“You’re thinking, sir, of that affair in Spolkeen-on-the-Sea?”

“No. No, I recognized you immediately from that, of course. No—I mean something earlier, something I read about you in the newspapers, years ago. When you were a thief and a murderer.”

“Oh,
Judikha!”

“Those were dirty lies, sir!”

“Oh, were they? It seems to me that you ran like someone who thought they were guilty. If there were no truth to the accusations, why didn’t you stay and prove it?”

“It doesn’t matter now, sir. I’ve been exonerated. The Patrol has wiped my record clean.”

“They have, have they? Maybe so, maybe not. Perhaps they know nothing of your, um, background. The Patrol deals very harshly, I can assure you, with people who presume upon them.”

“I resent that, sir. You have no call to say such things.”

“We’ll see about that. It seems to me, however, that the state of your uniform belies your protestations of reform. You’ve been brawling, haven’t you? There’s no point in denying it: I can see from here that’s blood on your uniform and your hands.”

“I was—I was attacked, sir. A gang of toughs tried to rob me.”

“Nonsense! No hooligan would dare attack a member of the Space Patrol. Its uniform commands respect, nay, awe, among the criminal classes. No—if there has been any violence I am certain you started it—as flagrant a disregard for the Code as can be imagined. The authority trusted to even the lowliest Patrolman cannot be exercised on personal vendettas.”

Lieutenant Birdwhistle rose from the couch, as mechanically as a carpenter’s rule unfolding. He spoke to Bettina while never taking his eyes, glaring with the light of righteousness, from Judikha. “Bettina, my dear, I’m afraid I’m going to have to interrupt our evening. I think it’s going to be necessary to escort Ensign Judikha to the nearest Patrol barracks.

Whether there is any truth in what she says I have no idea, though I certainly have my private doubts. But there is absolutely no question that she has violated the sacred Code of the Patrol. It is my bounden duty to place her under arrest.”

Judikha leaped to her feet, but immediately realized how that flash of temper looked to the lieutenant.

“All right, sir, I’ll go with you. You’ll find out soon enough how wrong you are about me.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Expressing formal apologies to the tearful Bettina, with promises of an early return, Birdwhistle led the fuming Judikha from the apartment. As they descended the stairs, Bettina called after them: “Oh, Judikha, dear! Please! Call on me again, any time! I
so
much enjoyed seeing you!”

The street was dark. Although Bettina’s apartment was close enough to the Palace Bridge to be in as protected a neighborhood as the Transmoltus offered, the Patrol barracks lay on the other side of a mass of ancient and decaying tenements. Only a matter of a mile, but through perhaps the most harrowing and lawless of the Transmoltus’ districts, an area police were reluctant to enter even in broad daylight. Judikha knew this full well, of course, but Birdwhistle, in his smugly blind confidence in the symbolic power of his uniform, was entirely oblivious to the danger...an ignorance that lasted scarcely five minutes.

Judikha, being much more alert to where she was, and expecting the worst to happen at any moment, heard the soft pad of approaching footsteps long before the lieutenant, if he heard anything at all. She started to withdraw into the shadow of a nearby doorway but Birdwhistle, entirely misunderstanding this action, interpreted it as an attempt on her part to escape. Instead of joining her, he shouted, “Ensign Judikha! You are under arrest! Return to my side immediately! That’s an order!”, and lunged for her arm. He was pulling her back into the moonlit street when the press gang, all dressed in black, attacked. The lieutenant went down like a poleaxed ox, but Judikha fought until she was finally overwhelmed, which, as you will imagine, took some considerable time and not a little toll among the gang. The last thing she remembered was the heavy, wet canvas being dropped over her head. There was something that seemed to jar her head painlessly at the same time producing a brilliant flash of light—then everything went black.

She had been shanghaied again.

-IV-

By the time that a rasping “Turn to, there! Oilers and greasers! Break out them grease-gogglers forward there!” came from outside the door, Judikha began to feel a lively interest in the speaker—the man who had dragged her from her sleep and struck her. She watched the giant figure lumbering forward. The vague familiarity became discomforting. Disbelieving her eyes, she stepped into his path for a better view of the face. She had seen it before. It belonged to Monkfish Glom.

Monkfish Glom, five years older, big as an ox, sagging, misshapen, arms like piston-rods, the old sour visage, chicken-skin face and beer-colored hair all developed into as unpleasant a combination as may go toward the makeup of the human countenance. It was a brutal, sensual, stupid face—a face bearing a standing invitation to an honest fist, an invitation most men would feel pleasure in accepting, even if the results, however satisfying, would scarcely have been improving. His officer’s whites were soiled, and he within them, as sour as his face, and his curses were as rotten and filthy as the lips over which they poured. And as Judikha backed toward the shadows of the valve-array, the face followed her with a leering expression strongly disfigured with embryonic curiosity, wonder and doubt.

“Hey, you!” he cried in his old, high-pitched, honking voice. “You th’ one I pulled out at eight hundred, ain’t ya? What’s yer name?”

“Ju-ah-Veronica, sir,” answered Judikha, remembering the lieutenant’s injunction to keep her real name to herself.

“Veronica, hey? You look bloody hell too much like a bitch I went to school with. Look out ye don’t look more like her or I’ll take it out o’ you!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” returned Judikha, submissively, as she turned to take down a brace of grease guns. The officer stepped toward her, searching her inscrutable face for any hint of sarcasm behind the answer, and finding none, thundered forceful objurgations to the others to “get that turbine-wrapper aft.” Judikha was thankful for the changes in face and body granted her by just a few years of the Patrol’s clean life—she was taller, stronger and sleeker than the scrawny, unprepossessing child Monkfish had known. She had certainly developed much more successfully in the past five years than he had.

As the watch labored that morning, the second mate scrutinized Judikha continuously, no matter how surreptitiously she tried to avoid his direct gaze. It was obvious her disclaimer had not entirely impressed him, and that he still harbored a suspicion concerning her identity. She was certain that catastrophic recognition was not far in the future. At the first opportunity she begged Wopple to tell no one that she was a Patrolman. Wopple, who had no particular love for the officers, and Glom in particular, readily agreed. And when the watch turned out at 0700 she also apprized the lieutenant of her pseudonym and her reason for adopting it.

“One of the old gang, eh, Judikha? See: you can never escape your sins, can you? Well, with a little luck you’ll have a chance at him before long. And perhaps not with your fists,” he added, his face twisting, reddening, like a put-upon baby working up to a fit of tantrum. Judikha feared, with no little distress, that he was about to cry. Was the man ill? “I’ll do murder before I submit to any more of this, this indignity!” he hissed. “Now get to work. Here comes our
superior
officer.”

It was Mr. Glom approaching. The lieutenant went to the second watch’s quarters for his breakfast, leaving Judikha to resume her greasing. She knew there was strong cause for the lieutenant’s bitter tone and murderous mind. You cannot drug, rob and strip a Patrol officer, dress him in greasy rags, swear at him and kick him until he is willing to wrench fifty-pound valves open and closed through the rigors of a high-gravity launch, and then expect him to be in a gentlemanly mood, temperate of mind and refined of speech. The normally hot-blooded Judikha was now the milder and more subdued of the two—an irony she absolutely failed to recognize.

At 0800 her watch was relieved and she went to breakfast—manufactured coffee and cracker hash, the latter an unsavory mess of hard biscuits and gristly meat, soaked overnight and baked only long enough to separate the grease. Confiscating a plastic pot and spoon, she helped herself, wondering, as she forced the stuff down, how the well-fed Birdwhistle was managing; and there came to her with a momentary feeling of ungenerous and anarchistic pleasure the knowledge that this well-groomed pet of society and the Patrol now knew what the common spaceman must bear. The mood was but transient however and left her with nothing to occupy her thoughts but the mechanical filling of her stomach. There was a loud summons calling all hands to muster in the common-room and she obeyed, along with a crowd of males and females, fully prepared to join in any defensive and offensive alliance which Lieutenant Birdwhistle might propose.