The Lotus Eaters (52 page)

In a way it was better to put away the picture and stare at the town, below. For one thing, Chapayev was reasonably sure of the town. Of the woman in the portrait he was much less so.

* * *

The reasons that airships on Old Earth had never, so to speak, taken off was that, despite the advantages in fuel consumption and cargo load, they'd required excessively large and expensive ground crews and been terribly vulnerable to sudden and severe changes in weather, especially when near the ground. On Terra Nova, conversely, which had much less axial tilt to it than had the world of Man's birth, the weather was more predictable and, generally speaking, less severe. The better weather had made airships a better bet, long enough, for systems to be developed to reduce the size of the ground crews. The airships had never quite eliminated the need for fixed wing, heavier than air, craft, but they had proven a more useful supplement to those on New Earth than on Old.

They were still far too vulnerable in war to be used for anything but lifting heavy loads, and then only to and from very safe areas, and along safe routes. In practice, the ACCS was not an exception to these rules.

* * *

Chapayev barely noticed the shudder and the metallic
clangs
as the airship let go half a dozen cables. No more did he notice as the cables were grasped by claws mounted on half a dozen heavy trucks. Even when the trucks carried the cables off to be affixed to the mules—heavy and heavy-duty railway cars—that would take the ship in to the landing pit and hold it steady while the ship winched itself down, the tribune paid no mind.

With the terminal building rising next to his ship, Chapayev laughed at himself.
If I wasn't afraid in Santander,
why
am I so afraid now?

* * *

Until he'd heard Chapayev's local accent, the taxi driver had been inclined to cheat the young officer. Once he'd heard it, and learned a little of the man's background, it had been hard to get the driver to take even an honest fare.

"I served the motherland, too, sir," the driver had insisted.

"Then take the money as a gift for your family," Chapayev had answered.

Once through the stone-framed doors to the old Tsarist building, converted to apartments, Chapayev was surprised to discover that the elevators actually worked.
Hmmm
, he'd thought,
I wonder if the reds are back.

The answer to that question could wait. The doors opened and Chapayev walked as quietly as the bundles in his arms would let him. Reaching the door to his and his wife's apartment, he carefully placed his burden down without making a sound. Then he reached into his pocket for the keys. Everything was more difficult because of his bandaged shoulder.

It wasn't the sore shoulder, though, that caused Chapayev's hand to tremble, the key poised just outside the tumbler. It was—

I am afraid. It's been two
years
. What if . . .

He forced himself to insert the key and slowly to turn it. He tried to keep it quiet. Despite his best efforts the massive but poor quality lock clicked loudly, once, and then again, louder still, as the bolt retracted. Chapayev pushed the door open slightly. It made a creaking sound.

"Darling, is that you?" Veronica's voice made Chapayev's heart leap. He pushed open the door the rest of the way, then turned to drag in the gifts.

As he straightened from moving the bundles into the apartment he looked up and saw his wife standing in a doorway wearing nothing but a shocked expression. "Victor. I didn't know to expect you."

Chapayev looked from Veronica's face down to where a slight bulge told of an early stage of pregnancy. His eyes grew wide with unwelcome understanding. He looked around the cramped apartment for something, anything, to look at other than the bulge in his wife's belly. His eyes stopped on the picture of a man, his own age but somehow soft looking.

Walking over to the picture, Victor picked it up. "Darling?" he asked, holding the picture where Veronica must see it.

Recovering a portion of her composure, she answered, "Well, what did you expect? You left me here alone for months and years on end with nothing to do."

"I sent you every
grivna
I made. I waited for you."

"And so? The more fool you for waiting. The money you sent? A small enough price to pay for the silly, silly love letters I had to write to keep you happy, off with your colonel and your wars." She walked forward, taking the picture away from Chapayev and putting it back in its place of honor. "Leonid here is just the latest. He manages a Columbian ice cream parlor and makes more than you ever did. . . . And spends it on me, too."

" 'Just the latest,' " Chapayev echoed.

"Yes. Just the latest. How do you imagine I kept my job and our apartment here. While you were off playing cowboy with your stupid soldiers, I've had a very fine time, I don't mind telling you. I've screwed half of the city by now. Sometimes, for fun, I even get paid for it. Ask anyone important in Saint Nicholasburg where to go for the very best. He'll say 'Veronica Chapayeva. Her husband's off at the wars and she misses him so badly she'll make do with anyone.' Oh, yes, my very dearest. While you were on hands and knees in the mountains I've been on hands and knees—sometimes just knees—right here."

"Slut!"

"So? And what are you? Just a waste of a soldier nobody has any use for anymore, least of all me." Veronica reached for a robe and pulled it on. "So leave me now. I don't need your money anymore. And I
never
needed you." She went to where the bundles lay, pitiful offerings, and proceeded to throw them back out into the hall. In doing so, she turned her back on Chapayev.

* * *

Victor saw himself reach under his coat for the knife he had been advised to carry while walking through the city's no longer safe streets. More silently even than he had crept to his wife's door, he crept up behind her now. Like an automaton, with no control over his own actions, his left hand reached for her long, midnight hair and grasped it.

"What do you think you are doing, you cretin?".

Chapayev didn't answer. He just lifted Veronica by her hair and moved the knife to the left side of her neck. She froze as she felt the icy touch.

"Victor, don't?" she pleaded softly.

"Bitch!" he whispered into her ear. Then he drew the knife across her white throat in one smooth movement. Blood, bright and red, spurted from Veronica's throat to splash the wooden floor. Chapayev dropped her body as soon as he felt her go limp. He gathered his bundles, closed the door, and left.

* * *

In the real world, Victor found himself still standing in the middle of the living room. Veronica Chapayeva still knelt by his pile of packages, tossing them one by one into the outside hall. He thought about killing her, and decided she wasn't worth dirtying his hands over.
Besides, my shoulder is still such a mess I'd probably make a hash of the job
. He gathered the shreds of his dignity around himself and walked past her and through the door. Before he turned his back on the woman for the last time, Chapayev faced her.

In a voice colder than any Volgan winter, he said, "Veronica, I probably won't be able to stop this month's pay from reaching your account. Consider it a divorce settlement. I also will not go through the trouble of staying here for a divorce. You can do what you like about that. I don't care. Maybe I should hate you. But then, you can't help being what you are . . . and what you are not. I won't wish you well. Good-bye."

Victor turned and left the bundles where they lay, scattered between apartment, threshold, and corridor. He walked down the stairs and out of Veronica Chapayeva's life without a backward glance. He didn't trust himself to look at her again.

It wasn't until he was in the relative solitude and safety of a taxi that the young Volgan pulled his coat over his head and, as quietly as possible, began to weep.

Richard was being very talkative. Seated at her own mess with the ship's captain, Marguerite suppressed a smile. Watching Richard trying—
painfully
trying—to keep his mouth moving and his eyes off of Esmeralda had become more than amusing.

Except that—Dammit!—I've come to care for the both of them. But he's a Class One and she's just a peasant girl I rescued, barely rescued, from slavery. Where do they have a future together in our world? Not even in the computer generated pulp romances they print for the lower classes. Not even on the public television shows.

And anyway, while his face shouts that he's in love, hers is much harder to read. Our class nearly killed the poor thing. I doubt she has much room for love for us. I foresee pain in Richard's future, much pain.

Should I try to help? Hell, no. I'm no kind of matchmaker. I know not the first little thing about romantic love, never had any room for it, what with being at the beck and call of whatever Class One wanted me bent over a desk or down on my knees.

She suppressed a bitter thought.
I wonder what life might have been like if one of them had ever looked at me the way Richard looks at Esmeralda . . .

She couldn't help sighing at dreams she'd never really been allowed to have.

"High Admiral?" Richard enquired at the sigh.

"Nothing, Captain," Marguerite answered.
Well, why not give them the chance, if only for a bit, to have some of what I never did?

Wallenstein pushed the plate away from her and stood. Richard began to follow until she gestured him back to his seat.

"I've got a little work to do," she lied. "You finish your dinner, Captain. Esmeralda, please see to the Captain's needs."

"Yes, High Admiral," the serving girl said, with a curtsey.

* * *

Immediately as the door whooshed shut behind Wallenstein, Richard shut up, turned his reddening face down towards the plate, and commenced eating mechanically.

I can talk with her in public, on the bridge
, he fumed.
Why can't I speak with her in private?

The silence went on for several awkward minutes before Esmeralda asked, "Would you care for some more wine, Captain?"

Richard, in mid chew and not expecting the question, choked . . . literally. He began to choke so badly, in fact, that Esmeralda had to put down the carafe she'd picked up and rush to his side to pound on his back.

His choking ended, but not the sense of embarrasment that made him think,
Why couldn't I have just died?
Muttering something unintelligible, Richard, Earl of Care, stood and left the Admiral's mess for his own quarters.

None of the planet's three moons were up. The land was illuminated only by the streetlights, whatever light escaped through windows, and the occasional passing motor vehicle. Power for the former there was in plenty, from the half dozen solar power stations that now dotted the nation's northern shore, their greenhouse complexes connected to the mountain top chimneys by sturdy, half buried concrete tunnels. Even at night, with the sun down, heat differential let them continue to produce power.

The softly cooing antaniae loved the moonless nights, for those were the vile creatures' best chance to find unguarded prey. Legate Pigna could hear them calling outside,
mnnbt . . . mnnbt . . . mnnbt.
He wasn't worried about them, however, he'd already checked the doors and window screens to ensure that the children were safe inside, and the antaniae out. Now he sat, portable computer on his lap, continuing his planning.

Every now and again the magnitude and the dangers of the project Legate Pigna had undertaken would get to him and he would being to fret, even to choke up. Three things kept him at his task. One was the burning memory of a wad of paper thrown in his face as if he were an unruly school boy. In itself, perhaps this should not have rankled quite so much as it did. After all, the Legion was a rough service, and harsh. He'd chewed out subordinates before, if never quite so viciously as Carrera had inflicted a mass chewing upon his subordinates.

Sitting in his office at his home, sipping a higher end rum, Pigna thought,
But I was one of the bastard's most loyal supporters. I deserved better. I deserved, at a minimum, not to be entrapped with that fucking flypaper report. And he should know better than to wound a man in his pride. If he doesn't, he's not fit to command.

Deep down, the legate knew that was rationalization. Wounds heal, and his had long since, except when he ripped off the scab to open the wound again. He did that because . . .

Even if I wanted to, I couldn't pull out now. They've got me on video and I have no doubt that that video would go to Fernandez the day, the hour, maybe the second I try to back out. Carrera might forgive me. Fernandez would never give him the chance. I, my family, we'd all disappear.

So much for fear, and so much for honor, or at least the avenging of dishonor. But what ultimately kept Pigna at his task was . . .

And, then too, with the corps commanders, Carrera, his personal staff, and Parilla gone, why shouldn't
I
become the new commander? I will
be
first among equals. I'll have the gratitude of the old families. And if I can do that, why not president myself, someday? Why shouldn't I watch out for my own interest?

Responsibility and authority
will
equal out in the long run. The society that robs the future will have no future. The descendents of the man who places family over society will find no society to shelter them.
The trick, then, is to limit power to those who can, in the aggregate, be expected to use it responsibly. As we have seen, kings and tyrants are, at best, fifty-fifty; elites, oligarchs, and aristocrats are not a whit better; and even popular democracies have no great track record of responsible voting and actions, over the long term.
Geniuses may vote irresponsibly while morons vote wisely, wisdom being more a matter of instinct and experience than raw, native intelligence. Education not only doesn't guarantee responsible exercise of political power, if anything it tends toward the opposite, for the educated—who are too often also the arrogant—fool themselves into thinking they are voting the issues, after sober reflection, when in fact they just vote their emotions and gut instincts. Whatever the airs they may put on, they are, like the rest of mankind, not rational so much as rationalizing.
Just as, in the words of Voltaire, "A rational army would run away," so the act of responsible voting requires at some level an irrational mindset—to vote for the good of the whole over the good of the self—or one that, if really rational, thinks in the long term and understands long term costs and benefits.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral
,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468