Emile and the Dutchman (4 page)

VII

"Lesson time, Emmy." Norfeldt's hands were again folded over his ample belly, as he sat—well, floated, really—in his couch, puffing clouds of smoke toward the ashtray.

I'm not criticizing. There wasn't a damn thing to do until we reached the Gate.

But it still didn't seem right. "None of that crap, Major. We blew it. It's going to be a Drop."

The Dutchman shrugged and blew a cloud of smoke at the exhaust over his head. "You're right—but why?"

"Because they
kill
people—espers in particular. I mean, they had to claw Buchholtz to death, but they didn't even have to touch McCaw to kill him. Both of them were psi-positive. Both died. We didn't."

"Don't be stupid. Think about it. Second Team didn't die, and all of them except the Team leader were highly positive—more than Kurt. Well," he said, waving his chins at the screen, "at least they didn't die here—they died back on our side. How much do you want to bet that the only First Team member who didn't change his psych profile was the TL?"

"I don't understand."

"Figures. Try thinking about it."

"Wait! They . . . didn't think of you and me as people."

"You're beginning to get it, Emmy." The Dutchman chuckled. "We learned enough down there, just enough to work it out. Remember the greeting that the leader of the aliens gave McCaw?"

"Something like 'We'll give you what you want,' no?"

"Close enough. Hey, Emmy," he said, like an idea had just struck him, "you want a beer?"

It's strictly against regs to drink on duty. And since there were two of us in the scout, one of us had to be on duty.

"Sure." But a spaceside watch isn't something that you really need to be completely sober for, and a beer was going to do me good. Besides, the Dutchman had told me not to quote regs at him.

He leaned over toward the server and punched up a couple of frosty bulbs, tossing the yellowy one to me, saving the purplish one for himself.

I opened mine and took a deep drink, careful of the way it tended to bubble out of my mouth. Usually, I don't like drinking anything bubbly in low-gee, not even out of a bulb—it feels as if I get more in my nose than in my mouth.

"Tell me, Emmy—what do you think Buchholtz wanted, more than anything else in the world?"

I sat back and thought on it for a while. No rush, no rush at all, dammit. Nothing I could say or could think of would bring either of them back. "Maybe . . . maybe he really wanted to die in combat."

"Bingo. That was Kurt. I knew that from the moment I met him, way back when. He was more of a kraut than you are, kid; wanted to die gloriously, in battle final. Kurt Buchholtz was always a
Götterdämmerung
, looking for a place to happen. The natives gave him that place—just like he wanted."

"And McCaw?"

"C'mon, kid, it's even more obvious about Ari McCaw. He was always bored with the real world. They gave him that way out." Norfeldt rubbed a hand across his face. "Somehow or other, they've developed an esper society based on giving everyone what he wants. And if you've got a strong enough stomach, you'd have to admit that they gave Kurt and Ari what they wanted. A kind of justice, really." He shrugged. "That's the way it goes."

"But that means we don't have to Drop! We don't have to blow up the Gate."

The Dutchman didn't like wireguns; he usually carried an old-fashioned Colt & Wesson point-forty-four Magnum. The "forty-four" comes from the old-fashioned measurements of the diameter of the cartridge; it comes to just a bit more than a centimeter across.

It looks larger when a fat man is holding it in his hand, not—quite—pointed in my direction.

It looked like a cannon, is what it looked like.

"Yes, Emmy, we do have to Drop it. And we will, understood? Any further discussion on the matter is going to get you gigged for insubordination,
if
I
don't shoot you down where you stand. You got me, shithead?"

"Yes, sir."

"Granted, it's not the way I'd like to do it—if I had my way, we'd bring
Magellan
back through the Gate, unleash a worldwrecker, and blow that dirtball to bits. But there's no way I can count on that, so we're going to take the sure way."

"I . . . don't understand."

"That's because you're still green, Emmy. If you started giving everybody what they want, too damn many millions of them would end up like Kurt and Ari—or worse.
Justice
." He snorted as he shook his head sadly. "Ever ask anyone, back at the Academy, why all Contact Service people are officers? No enlisted. Why?"

I quoted from memory. "'The responsibilities of each and every member of the Contact Service are—'"

"No. It's because we're not really military, Emmy. We're cops.

"Go ask a cop sometime, kid. Ask him whether he thinks people need justice. Or mercy."

I

Puffing on another of his cigars, the Dutchman waddled into
Magellan's
Rec Room, a compboard under one arm, a bottle of some possibly nontoxic Chianti under another. He was clean, for once—directly out of the shower, wrapped in four of the seemingly endless supply of huge, fluffy Navy-issue towels that came with
Magellan
's Rec level.

"How they hangin', Emmy?" he said, as he seated himself across from me at the table and popped the cork. He took a quick swig and smacked his lips, then flicked cigar ash on the floor and stuck the moist end back in his mouth.

I was tempted to ask if he'd ever made a mistake and stuck the lit end between his lips, but he might have figured that for a wish—which it was—and gigged me for insubordination.

"I'm fine, sir," I said. I shut down my compboard and rubbed at my tired eyes. I had been busy working on a Qualification Course—Logistics; if there's anything duller, I don't want to have to study it—and any excuse to take a break was welcome.

Well, almost welcome; the Dutchman was barely an exception.

"Entirely a matter of opinion." He puffed another cloud of foul smoke in my direction. "That all depends on this—I've been working on your Quarterly, and amusing myself with your Pers file."

That last is nonreg: accessing a Personnel file without proper need is, technically, a court-martial offense. On the other hand, a commanding officer presumably has the need to know anything and everything on record about his subordinates. On another hand, the purpose is supposed to be to help him do his job better; strolling through Personnel records isn't supposed to be a hobby.

I've run out of hands, but I wasn't about to try and do anything about it: tattling on senior officers about trivial offenses isn't known to do a lot of good for junior officers' careers.

Besides, everybody I know in the Service seems to spend inordinate amounts of time cracking, or trying to crack, computer security systems. I'm not sure where it comes from, but it is traditional.

He furrowed his brow for a moment. "Trouble is, I can't seem to find any paper on you before you showed up at Alton—either the data ain't onboard or I can't access it. You were a transfer from New Haven?"

"That's right." In a manner of speaking. . . .

"Asshole." Norfeldt smiled. "I thought you were a dumbass kraut, but now I know it."

"Sir, I am
not
German. My family has been Austrian for more than two hundred years, sir."

"And the transfer? To the CS? If that doesn't make you a dumb shit, what does?"

I snorted. "I had a hell of a choice, Major. Either transfer or sit down at a Naval court-martial. I didn't think I'd like ten years at hard labor on Thellonee . . . so I picked the CS transfer."

One moment of letting my anger loose . . .

"Oh? Tell me about it."

"I'd rather not."

The Dutchman raised an eyebrow. "I'm sorry, Emmy. I guess I must be hearing things—
you disobeying a direct order, shithead?
" He jerked his head at my coffee cup. "Take a swig and start spewing it out. From the beginning, Mister."

An order is an order.

Of course, there are usually more ways than one to obey an order, unless the giver is very careful. "Yes, sir. To begin: my Grosspapa was born in Vienna—"

"Shut up, Mister. A touch of white mutiny, eh?" He downed some more Chianti. "I wouldn't, Emmy, I really wouldn't. Start again, and take it from where you arrived at the Naval Academy."

I thought it over for a moment. I could go into such detail that I'd never get past the first day, or . . .

Oh, to hell with it. Why not? "Sure, Major. I arrived by copter . . ."