The Lotus Eaters (2 page)

Still, I
must
think. What the fuck do they want of me, back on Earth
? wondered Wallenstein.
What could the Consensus ask of me there that they could not just as well ask me via courier? I don't like this. Does the Consensus suspect I had a hand in the disappearance of my predecessor? Do they
know
I did? Do they know I helped one of the barbarians below to capture him and the Marchioness of Amnesty? Do they know about the nukes? If they do, if they know any of that, I'll be going home to a quick court-martial, a quicker trip back to space, and an even quicker trip out an air lock sans suit.

But it's not like I have a choice. They've already designated my stand in. If I don't go, the Duke of Pksoi, Battaglia, will certainly have me arrested and that trip out the airlock will come even sooner.

Elder gods, if we knew of even one more world, I'd just take my ship there, colonize it, and set up in business for myself.

Sadly, we don't. It's Old Earth and New, and the rift that joins them, and that's it.

I can't even mutiny here. Senior in the Fleet I may be, but unlike most of the ships' captains I'm not in the peerage. A mutiny would have me and
Peace
and maybe a couple of others against the rest. That's a losing proposition, too. My own crew would space me if I tried it.

Her eyes continued their quest, searching now for the
Pentagram
, yet another of the constellations familiar here and unknown back home. Even while she searched though, her mind decided.
Nothing for it but to go back home. There, maybe, I have a chance to survive. Maybe even I'll have a chance to prosper.

Wallenstein turned her vision from space to the planet below. Her eyes focused on the area where the continents of Southern Columbia and
Colombia del Norte
joined. The narrow isthmus there was cloud covered now, as was much of the sea to its north.

If I thought it would work
, she mused
, I'd consider asking Carrera for asylum. But since he hasn't answered my calls since that one day . . . no, home it is.

Wallenstein sighed, thinking,
But who can I trust to keep an eye on things here for me?
Mentally, she ticked off the names of the fleet's captains, before finally settling on,
The Count of Wuxi, Bruce Shi. Not only are we friends, but he's one of the few Class Ones who hasn't let that status go completely to his head. More importantly, he absolutely
loathes
Battaglia. Yes, Bruce can at least give me good intelligence when I return. If I return.

The sick feeling in Wallenstein's stomach grew more acute with that thought. She turned her view back to that narrow isthmus.
And, speaking of Balboa and Carrera, I think maybe I need to have a meeting with General Janier before I leave, to advise him to cool it until I come back. If I do.

Lightning flashed over the wide
Mar Furioso
to the north, briefly illuminating the crested waves. Sometimes it struck down to the sea below. At others it seemed to dance from cloud to cloud, never touching down. Still other flashes were diffused behind heavy blankets of storm clouds, causing large portions of the angry sky briefly to glow.

Underneath the fiery display, surface vessels struggled through the waves, some on their way to the Transitway to the west, others having just left it, and still others merely paralleling the coast on their trek between Southern Columbia and Colombia del Norte, the twin continents joined at the narrow Isthmus of Balboa.

A couple of miles from the frothy surf, on the marble-railed back balcony of a grand old stone-built house, situated on a steep hill overlooking the sea, the lightning likewise lit two eyes. They were strange eyes and, to some, frightening. They watched the lightning, as they watched the struggles of the ships at sea. They watched as if curious but not involved.

A primitive bird, extinct on its homeworld, landed on the balcony's railing in an effort to get under cover from the lashing rain. Half a moment later another bolt lit sky and eyes. Its light reflected from the eyes, making them seem as if they lit up of their own accord. The bird may have been primitive; it was not stupid. One look at the glowing eyes convinced it,
Better to brave the storm than to sit here with
those.

* * *

Patricio Carrera blinked two or three times against the bright blinding flash.
Funny
, he thought,
for a half second there I thought I saw a trixie. Maybe I'm sicker in the head than I'd realized. Maybe . . .

Ah, never mind. Not important.

Little seemed very important to Carrera, of late. Little had, since he'd collapsed the year prior, a result of a combination of overwork and overwhelming guilt at having become at least a candidate for the title of "Greatest Single One Day Mass Murderer in Human History." This wasn't a title he wanted, though he thought it was one he might well deserve.

Carrera looked down at his hands, thinking, first,
Miserable dainty things
, and then,
How can I defile my wife with the touch of hands so stained with blood?

Besides that questionable title, Carrera had many others: The Blue Jinn . . .
Carnifex
—the Butcher. Most still referred to him by his military title:
Dux Bellorum
, in Latin, or
Duque
, for short, in Latin's daughter, Spanish. And no one had ever so much as suggested that he resign his title and position as commander of the Legion del Cid.

Though I should
, he thought.
That, or find a way to force myself to take up once more the duties that are plainly mine.

Lightning flashed again, in the distance. It was another shot of ribbon lightning, which again lit from behind the clouds across the sky.

That's what Hajar looked like . . . almost . . . in the last second before the fireball destroyed the camera I watched by. What did the people see—ninety-nine percent of whom, or
more,
were utterly innocent, I am sure—in that last second before the fire engulfed them? Poor sorry bastards.

But did I have a choice, really? A valid one, I mean? The
Salafi Ikhwan
intended to nuke not one but a dozen cities. Yes, I captured their nukes before they could. But they could have gotten more . . . probably . . . eventually. And they'd have used them if they had them, of that there is no doubt at all.

Now? Now they've no support. I nuked Hajar but they took the blame. And virtually everyone in the Moslem quarter of this world counts that as Allah's doing, his ultimate statement and command that terrorism is wrong. More practically, not one country in the world is loony enough, now, to give them shelter, on the chance they might bring in a nuke and allow it to detonate. A reputation for incompetence has hurt them more than any reputation for frightfulness.

I saved tens of millions of people
maybe.
I killed a million, though, maybe more, for a certainty. And my hands still drip with blood. And I can't bring myself to touch my wife.

* * *

She was fairly tall for a woman of any race, but remarkably so for a woman of Balboa. In her stocking feet, Lourdes Nuñez Cordoba de Carrera, wife of Patricio Carrera, stood five feet, nine inches. In heels, which she usually avoided, she towered over her man.

Like her husband's, Lourdes' eyes, too, were rare. In his case it was the color, and the dark blue circles about the irises that gave them a frighteningly penetrating quality . . . that, and their odd habit of seeming to glow under certain lights at certain angles. In hers, a gentle and beautiful golden-brown, it was the sheer size and shape that excited men and made women cringe with envy.

Those huge and lovely golden-brown orbs remained open, though the woman lay abed. Hand tucked between pillow and cheek, Lourdes stared at the strobe-lit French doors which led to the covered balcony connecting her husband's office and library with their bedroom.

I'd wish he'd come to bed
, the woman thought, feeling frustration well mixed with anger and despair,
but, then, what would be the point? All he'd do is lie as far to his side of the bed as possible, and then turn away. And if he actually
did
sleep? Then the screaming would begin.

He thinks I can't guess at Hajar. Why do men think—how
can
they think—that there are any secrets from wives? I hear the name of the city; I hear him mutter his plea for forgiveness. I see the tears on his cheeks.

But he never talks about it, when he talks at all. Does he think I wouldn't understand? It was
war
. My people were in danger.
All
people were endangered. Worst of all, my children were targets. Does he think I would prefer any number of strangers over my own son, Hamilcar?

Silly man. Come to me and, for a while, at least, I will make you forget. Come to me and give me another son.

* * *

In his own room, on the same floor, Hamilcar Carrera, eight years of age, stirred. His eyes opened and focused on the ceiling, onto which a home planetarium, the best model made on Terra Nova, painted stars. The planetarium was a gift of the boy's father. Instantly, sensing that their charge was stirring, the turbaned Pashtun who slept on the floor to either side of the boy, guarding him as if he were a god, were on their feet. They had weapons in hand as their eyes searched for the threat.

"It's nothing, Karim, nothing, Mardanzai," the boy assured his followers, as he sat up. The Pashtun did not relax for an instant. "The thunder awakened me," Hamilcar explained further. Not that the guards needed explanations, oh, no. If it was their lord's will to awaken and walk, then it was their merest duty to follow and protect.

"Where is my father?" Hamilcar asked.

"I saw him on the balcony, Lord," Karim answered.

"I will go to him, then," the boy said, sitting up and placing his feet to the throw run beside his bed. "He shouldn't be left alone too long."

"I sent two men to watch over him after I saw he was awake," Karim said. "Alena, the witch, insists we watch over those you love, Lord, as we watch over you." The boy nodded his thanks. He'd long since given up trying to break the guards of their form of address.

He was about to leave when a series of cautionary coughs from the Pashtun reminded him. Nodding again, the boy turned and walked to a corner of his room, taking in hand his rifle, a hand-made gift of the Balboa Arms Corporation, over in Arraijan, in honor of the boy's eighth birthday. The rifle was a full caliber F-26, but specially lightened and shortened and with a muzzle brake to reduce recoil. Likewise were the pistol grip and foregrip carved to fit an eight year old's hand. Under the black paint the Pashtun had laid on to reduce shine, the thing was ornately inscribed.

Hamilcar checked the rifle to ensure it was loaded, then padded out the door and down the corridor to his father's office from which a glass-paned doorway led to the balcony. The two guards, joined immediately by two others who had stood alert at the boy's door, followed.

Caridad Cruz followed her own husband from the bedroom to the living room. She found him there, seated in his chair, admiring his sole badge of rank, his centurion's baton.

"And they say we women are vain," Cara said to Ricardo, smiling and shaking her head.

Cruz looked up, his heart suddenly warming at the sight of his short, brown and still very pretty wife. "Men are just as vain, no doubt about it,
queridisima esposa
," he admitted, lowering his baton to his lap and smiling at her. "We're just as vain, only in different ways."

The centurion was as brown as his wife, and, at about five-seven not all that much taller. She found him handsome and assumed everyone else did, too.

Cara glanced about the walls of the living room. On two wooden pegs driven into one wall rested Ricardo's rifle, an F-26. Below it, on similar pegs, was his very first rifle, a simpler and cruder Samsonov, purchased for a very nominal price from the Legion in which her husband served, as a memento of that service and of his first campaign. On the opposite wall hung his battle scarred and stained lorica, the silk and liquid metal body armor he worn for years. Cara tried to keep the thing clean.
But not
too
clean. I love the smell of my man.

On a third wall hung Ricardo's decorations. She heard the citations read off for some of them, those awarded formally when he was home from the wars. The knowledge of the things her husband had done both filled her with pride and chilled her to the marrow. She never read the citations themselves, lest that refreshed knowledge drive her to try, once again, to talk Ricardo out of the Legion. She'd done that before. He'd acquiesced, too. The loss of purpose had nearly killed him.

He must be free to do the work he loves
, she reminded herself, glancing over the wall holding the awards.
He must be free if, for no other reason, because when he's miserable,
I'm
miserable.

And, too, it's not like I'm ashamed when other women come over, and have to pass under his
corona civilis
to come into the house. I like their envy of the courage of my man. Is that so wrong?

"What's wrong, Ricardo?" she asked. "Did the thunder awaken you?"

Cruz shook his head. "No . . . I never really got to sleep." Seeing that that wasn't really an answer to her question, he added, "Things are not right with the Legion since the
duque
had to . . . take a sabbatical. It worries me. We are not the kind of force that deals well with inaction."

"But the war is over," she said. "We won."

"One war is over," Ricardo corrected, picking up the baton again to admire it. "There will be others." He seemed very certain of that.

Please let it not be so, God
, the wife silently prayed, even as she knew the prayer was futile. For there
would
be other wars, and her man
would
fight in them. It was the way of the world just as it was the way of Ricardo Cruz. Between the Santandern guerillas infesting Balboa's province of La Palma, the Tauran Union troops occupying the Transitway, the old government cowering in the old section of
Ciudad
Balboa under Tauran Union protection, or the drugs passing daily through the country, there
would
be war.