The Lotus Eaters (5 page)

"Let's go up and chat, then, shall we?"

"I'll grab anot'er bottle and some glasses," Mac replied, still in English. Then, switching to Spanish, he said, "Rico, you can park the car around back. You know your way to the guards' mess, right? Hope you like Pashtian food."

"I got used to it, Sergeant Major," the driver answered.

Old Earth transportation was, for the most part, fairly conventional. The styles might have excited comment on Terra Nova, the mechanics would not have. The big difference was that, at least on the reasonably prosperous parts of the other world, private conveyance was common. On Old Earth, it was the perquisite of the high and mighty.

"The SecGen wanted to chat with you before you made your presentation to the Consensus the day after tomorrow," said Wallenstein's escort, another Class Two named Moore, as their car sped through Rome's uncrowded streets. "He told the Admiralty to stuff it, that they could see you after important matters were taken care of."

In appearance, Moore seemed a near brother to the captain. Albeit a bit taller, he was likewise blonde and blue-eyed, as were most of Old Earth's ruling class.

"Can it wait until tomorrow?" she asked. "Gravity aboard ship is less than here and I find I'm very tired."

"He assumed that," Moore answered. "You're set to meet tomorrow, over lunch."

Lunch with the SecGen?
Wallenstein mused.
Or am I supposed to lunch the SecGen? Well, whatever the market will bear. I'll bring kneepads in a satchel, just in case.

"How did he take the news of the loss of the High Admiral and the Marchioness of Amnesty?" Marguerite asked.
Note: I didn't say "deaths;" I said "loss."

Moore sighed. "Rather hard, actually. He and the Marchioness were very close."

"Did he . . . ?" Wallenstein let the question trail off.

"Yes," Moore answered. "The entire Consensus accepted your version of events." He knew from her tone that Wallenstein had been worried about that.

Now Marguerite sighed, and hers was with relief. If there had been any suspicion that she had turned the High Admiral and Lucretia Arbeit, the Marchioness, over to the Terra Novans, she'd have been for the chop, she was quite sure.

Fortunately, the only people who know that are myself and another Class Two who wants a caste lift. Oh, and Carrera back on Terra Nova . . . but
he's
not likely to tell anyone.

Carrera didn't look up as McNamara and Jimenez took seats to ether side of him around a small wooden table on a largish balcony that overlooked Terra Nova's greatest ocean, the
Mar Furioso
. Indeed, he didn't acknowledge their presence until Mac placed another bottle of whiskey, along with two glasses, next to the nearly drained bottle sitting by the ice bucket in the middle of the table. At that, Carrera only said, "Welcome."

Jimenez thought,
It's funny; despite the gray hair he actually looks younger than he has in years.

Mac filled the silence that followed Carrera's one word by taking the open bottle and pouring what was left, half and half, into the two glasses he'd brought from the bar.

"Lotsa history made right here," Mac commented, as he transferred ice from the bucket to the glasses.

Eyes still affixed on the ocean in the distance, Carrera said, "That's
so
lame, Top. You couldn't come up with a better opening line than that?"

"Man's got to play the hand he was dealt, sir," McNamara said, while plinking ice into his own glass.

"I suppose," Carrera conceded. He turned his eyes from the ocean to McNamara's dark, seamed face. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would you? Lourdes won't buy me any. I haven't felt up to driving in a while. And she's threatened all the help with death if they give me one."

Tobacco on Terra Nova had been infected with a local virus that tended to make it much less carcinogenic than was the case on Earth. Even so, it couldn't precisely be called
good
for anyone.

"Sure, boss," the grizzled older man said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a pack of Carrera's preferred brand, Tecumsehs, imported from First Landing in the Federated States, and a lighter. These he slid across the table.

"You're not drunk," Jimenez said in surprise, gesturing at the now empty bottle.

Carrera shook his head. "I sip. But that bottle's been on that table for over a week, ten days maybe. I find if I get drunk that I feel things I don't want to feel any more, remember things I'd just as soon forget.

"Not that I don't remember them in my dreams, mind you."

For reasons known only to himself, Moore directed the driver of the vehicle to pass by the
Ara Pacis
, Augustus' Altar of Peace and the holiest spot on all of United Earth. Here the last vestiges of open Christianity had died—been
burned
, rather—and one couldn't get more holy than that.

"I don't mind that it's a bit out of the way," he informed the Class Four driver.

"Yes, Lord," the driver answered.

"What's with the ribbons around the heads? They're kind of attractive. Should I wear one to keep in style?" Marguerite asked, once she noticed that about one in twenty of the people they passed on the street wore them.

Moore snickered, "The diadems? No, I don't think so. They've become something of a fashion statement by the children of the Class Ones. From our point of view, it saves trouble by telling us lowly Class Twos exactly whom we must bow and scrape to. There's a color and ornament coding to it I can brief you on later.

"It isn't just the children, actually," Moore amended. "Some fairly older Class Ones have taken to wearing them, too, the last couple of years. The SecGen, however, has not."

Whatever the Class Four driver thought of the subject of diadems or fashion statements, he kept it to himself.

"
Ara Pacis
coming up on the left, Lord," the driver announced, slowing his vehicle to a crawl. The Altar itself had been modified some centuries prior, with a matching white marble roof having been placed over it, and overhanging the sculptures on the sides. Along with the roof two narrow sets of marble steps lead off, at right angles to the steps that led inside. The building that had once housed it and protected it from the air pollution was gone. With so few cars and so little industry operating, it was no longer needed.

Moore didn't bother to look right away. Marguerite, however, did, and was surprised—perhaps better said, shocked—to see rivulets of red running down the Altar's creamy marble sides. She looked up and saw five muscular men in outlandish garments, all gold and feathers, two of them holding a sixth who was naked but for a loin cloth.

"It's an Azteca day," Moore explained, though the bare words explained little. "Those come only a few times a year." He added, "Some objected, of course, to using the Altar of Peace for human sacrifice. On the other hand, the Azteca have or influence a significant block of votes within the Consensus. And the Orthodox Druids were on their side since they wanted to have burnings and hangings here."

Marguerite gulped as she watched the sixth, near naked man forced down to the stone roof and flipped over. A black, jagged obsidian knife, the hilt wrapped in cloth, in the hand of one of the other five flashed down. Out came a dripping heart, probably still beating, which was held aloft. As the heart was squeezed out and then tossed over the side of the altar, she looked away. Even so, however repulsive the scene, it was still fascinating. She turned her eyes back to the Altar.

"Just thought you might find it interesting," Moore said.

"Where do the victims come from?" Wallenstein asked.

Moore shrugged, saying, "Some are political prisoners from Central America. It's been in a state of near rebellion for years. Some, too, supposedly, are genuine volunteers."

The next victim was a beautiful, young, brown-skinned girl. She wept and screamed and struggled pitifully with the larger men dragging her to her death. Even through the sealed windows of the vehicle Wallenstein heard the girl's screams. She heard, too, when they were abruptly cut off.

"The Azteca insist it's a necessary terror against the lowers," Moore said, just as the car left the area and drove off. "And if you think this is a bit much, you ought to go to The Burning Man this year."

"The problem, gentlemen," Carrera said, "is that I am
terrified
of taking command again."

"Terrified?" Jimenez asked. "You?"

"Yes . . . terrified . . . for my soul."

He held up both his hands, thinking, as he always did,
miserable, dainty things.
"See these. These are the hands of the greatest one-day-mass-murderer in the history of our planet and the second greatest in the history of the human race. I'd had
friends
in Hajar . . . children I'd held in my lap. And I murdered them." He shook his head. "Somebody who can do that? He's got no business being in command of anything."

"T'at may be true," McNamara said in English, "t'e first part, anyway. But it ain't t'e whole trut'. You know what, boss? T'em fockin' Yit'rabis ain't had no more truck with t'e Salafi mot'erfockers since Hajar. T'ey ain't had no money to give t'em cause t'ey had to spend it decontaminating and rebuildin' t'eir fockin' capital city. T'ey ain't had no sympat'y for t'e mot'erfockers, neit'er, since t'e Yit'rabis are
sure
it was t'e hand of God t'at set off t'at bomb. So maybe, yes, you killed a million people. But maybe, too, you saved ten or twenty million of 'em."

Carrera nodded slowly before answering, "The one is speculation. We know for sure about the other, though."

Jimenez snorted. "So we have to be sure about things before we can act, do we, Patricio? Fine. Let me tell you about some things we can be sure of. We can be sure of them because
you
set them up, and what you didn't set up you allowed. One of those things is that
my
country—I would have said
our
country but you've abandoned it—is bisected by a foreign occupier. Another is that a chunk of it is ruled by as vile a cabal of self-seeking corruption as ever went unhanged. We've got fifty thousand regulars under arms, and twice that in reservists, willing and eager to fight to free that occupied portion.

Jimenez stood angrily, jabbing his finger in Carrera's direction. "This is no speculation, Patricio. There's a war coming and it's
your
fault. You can't duck it. There are people going to fight that war because
you
formed them and
you
trained them. You can't duck that, either.

"Your soul, friend?" Jimenez sneered. "Screw your soul; you've got
responsibilities.
"

Carrera sighed, then lifted and sipped at his drink. "You're a bastard; you know that, Xavier?"

* * *

"He's just been a bastard lately," Lourdes said to Artemisia,

sitting across the wooden kitchen table from her. "Grouchy . . . inconsiderate. Cold to me and to the kids . . . and being cold to the kids tears my heart out."

Sitting next to the two, the green eyed, light skinned Alena stifled a
harrumph
. Being cold to Hamilcar, Iskandr to her, who was to her mind and by her upbringing an avatar of God, was just beyond the pale. Even so, Alena was one of those odd people whose guesses were so good that she might as well have had second sight, if, indeed, she didn't have it. She had a very good idea of why the
duque
was so distant.

"Sex?" the younger and far more statuesquely built black woman suggested. Artemisia was inarguably the prettier of the two, as well, if not by much. Even so, Lourdes had eyes so large and so beautifully shaped they ought to have been against the law . . . of God if not of man.

"Oh, Arti . . ." Tears sprang to Lourdes' eyes. "He hasn't touched me since he came back from the war."

"Another woman?"

Lourdes dashed away the tears. Sniffling, though trying not to, she answered, "No, no, it's not that. He's barely left the house and never left the grounds since he came back."

"He sure ain't been trying to hammer my old ass," offered the cook, preparing dinner twenty-five feet behind the two.

At that, Lourdes couldn't help but laugh, even as her fingers continued to brush at her eyes. "Thanks, Tina," she said, adding sardonically, "You've no idea how much better that makes me feel."

"Well," Arti boasted, "over sixty or not, Mac's a randy goat. So I doubt Patricio is too old for sex."

"Mac has you for inspiration," Lourdes answered. Lovely eyes downcast, she added, "Patricio only has me."

Artemisia snorted. "Only you, eh? I would
kill
for your eyes, your lips, and your ass. To say nothing of your legs. No, honey, it isn't that any man would find you unattractive, still less Patricio. I think it must be something else."

For the nonce, Alena kept her own counsel.

* * *

"I feel unclean, you know," Carrera said. "Ever since Hajar I've felt dirty and unworthy of my wife or the kids she gave me."

"Did you ever tell her that?" asked McNamara, reverting once again to Spanish.

Carrera shook his head. "She doesn't know about Hajar. Not that I gave the order to destroy it, I mean. And if I told her, I'm afraid she'd feel the same way I do, that she'd feel I was unclean. I don't think I could take that."

* * *

"He thinks I don't know about the destruction of Hajar," Lourdes whispered, low enough that the cook couldn't hear. Alena caught her breath.

Artemisia leaned in and cocked her head to one side, whispering back. "What about Hajar?"

"He did it. He's never said so but . . . as if a man could keep from screaming during nightmares, or a wife not be able to figure what he was screaming about."

"He did," Alena confirmed.

"John never told me," Arti said, slowly. Turning to Alena she asked, "How do you know?"

"I rarely know how I know," the Pashtun woman answered. "Nonetheless, I know."

"I shouldn't have said anything either. Arti, you can't tell anyone. Ever. Not
anyone
. Nor you, Alena."