School of Fire

by David Sherman

  Schultz and Hing stared at each other for a moment. Hing's chest heaved. His bent arm held the unconscious Pincote upright.

  "Truce," the guerrilla leader finally said, while looking at a face that hovered before him.

  Schultz nodded, then said, "Truce."

  The two turned and went back about collecting their wounded—a much easier task for the Marines, as they had only one casualty.

  Doyle's wound was fairly minor, first- and second-degree burns on his left arm and side where the uniform had burned away. Chan quickly applied a dressing to numb the pain and protect the burned flesh.

  "We'll get you to the battalion surgeon," Chan said as he finished the job, "he'll fix you up. In another week you won't even have any scars. All you'll have to show for this is a wound stripe on your dress reds."

  "I'm really going to get a wound stripe?" Doyle asked eagerly.

  "Injured as a direct result of enemy action? You better believe it."

  "Wow," Doyle whispered, awed. "A wound stripe to go along with my Bronze Star." He didn't know any clerk who had a medal for bravery and a wound stripe. Maybe he'd get a promotion to sergeant and a transfer to battalion headquarters, where he'd never again have to risk being in battle.

  Schultz hawked off to the side. What was his Marine Corps coming to when a clerk could see so much action?

  "Lance Corporal Chan," Hing called a few minutes later when he'd retrieved all of his wounded. He was out of sight in the tunnel. "We have an impasse here that requires a resolution. Do you agree?"

  "If you really don't have communications, I guess that's true," Chan called back. "Unless I can convince you there's really a cease-fire on."

  Hing laughed softly. "I don't know how you can." After a pause he asked, "Why is there a cease-fire? Why is today different from yesterday?"

  "This morning Confederation authorities arrested Ruling Council Chairman Arschmann and Oligarch Keutgens. The remaining oligarchs and your high command agreed to talk. That's what's different."

  Hing barked out a laugh. "The tyrant and the bitch-queen arrested? Now I understand why Lieutenant Pincote called you a liar."

  "It's true."

  "Let me think on this."

  The Marines waited with nervous patience while Hing thought.

  "All right. Marine," the guerrilla commander finally said. "I don't know how many of you there are. I think you are few enough that if I send my fighters in they could kill all of you quickly. But they can't see you, so you might kill too many of them even though they kill all of you. I don't want to lose many of my fighters—especially if the fighting is truly over."

  Pincote screamed her disagreement. The Marines heard the sharp report of a slap on human flesh.

  "Lieutenant, I am the commander!" Hing shouted. "I make the decisions, not you. Everyone will do as I say. Is that understood?" There was a pause during which soft whimpering was audible, then Hing resumed talking to them again.

  "On the other hand. Lance Corporal, that's an outrageous story you tell about the arrests. But it doesn't sound like something a lance corporal would make up, which means there is a chance you are telling the truth. So. I will tell you of another way out of here. It leads to the top of the ridge. You won't have to worry about the wolves up there, they never go to the ridge top because they can't climb well." He laughed softly. "You might have to worry about them when you descend the ridge, though."

  "If we can get to someplace where there aren't any wolves, we can deal with them if we run into them again."

  Hing chuckled. "Such confidence. You Confederation Marines must be very fierce fighters."

  "We think so. And so does everybody we've ever fought."

  Hing laughed again. "Here's where you go..."

  Chan and his men didn't encounter the wolves again when they climbed down the ridge side. Before they descended Chan managed to make contact with the 257th's headquarters unit via line-of-sight communications. Bass told them their shifts had been located and withdrawn and where they should go to rejoin the battalion. It was midafternoon by the time they reported in and gave a more detailed account of the action in the caves.

  When the debriefing was over, vanden Hoyt said, "Well done. Marines. Now rejoin your shifts, we're going back to GSB headquarters."

  Bass gave them a grin and a thumbs-up.

  It was several more days before the solar flare ended its storm in the ionosphere and the guerrillas were able to confirm the cease-fire. But by then Hing had a different problem that was occupying entirely too much of his attention.

  Lieutenant Pincote was looking at him with altogether new eyes. At last, she had found a man who didn't grovel when she bared her pointed teeth at him, a man willing to stand up to her. She wondered what his blood would taste like after she punctured his shoulder with the sharp points of her teeth.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "I'll be back in a while," Dean told Claypoole some days after the oligarchs' arrest. They were scheduled to return to the company the following morning, and so were at police headquarters to clean up their workstations. Commissioner Landser had scheduled a formal going-away party for later that afternoon, and both were looking forward to that almost as much as they were to their return to the Corps. But Dean had private business to attend to first.

  After Dean departed, Claypoole asked Lieutenant Constantine for the loan of his landcar. The lieutenant gave him permission without question. That's one thing Claypoole had come to like about the police: once they trusted you, nobody ever asked you any questions when you went somewhere. If it'd been the FIST sergeant major, he'd be on foot—with full field gear—for asking for the loan of a vehicle without full justification, and especially for personal business.

  With Claypoole's contacts in the police department, he had no trouble learning where Maggie had been buried. He stopped at a florist's on the way to the cemetery and bought a beautiful bouquet of pinekiss flowers. Hoffnungsberg Cemetery lay on a high bluff just across the river. It was the oldest burial site in Brosigville, with graves going back more than three hundred years. Since most Wanderjahrians were Christians, the graves had stone monuments, each of which bore at least the name and dates of the deceased. Many had Bible verses and something about the lives of the individuals that lay beneath them.

  The original cemetery had been carefully laid out by the first settlers, but over the centuries it had expanded as Brosigville grew from a village of huts and mud streets to a modern city. Long ago the caretakers had given up assigning graves and let the families of the deceased pick burial spots wherever they wanted. The bluffs held thousands of graves, most arranged with little thought for the original grid, but each burial was accurately recorded in the chief caretaker's office.

  The boards in the floor squeaked under his feet as Claypoole walked up to the caretaker's desk. A shriveled old man with wild wisps of gray hair floating about his head like an overgrown halo looked up and smiled as Claypoole approached.

  "You are a Confederation Marine!" he exclaimed, and stood to extend his hand. "Thank you for what you have done for us, young man." He bowed slightly.

  Somewhat embarrassed, Claypoole stood awkwardly, the flowers grasped tightly in one hand. "Sir, I would like to visit someone," he said at last.

  "And who might that be, young man? Oh, yes, I think I know! A young woman. A recent burial. Most unfortunate case. You knew her." It was a statement, not a question. Claypoole nodded. Maggie's full name had just slipped completely out of his mind. The caretaker took down a huge folio volume from a shelf. They had always recorded the graves at Hoffnungsberg by hand, painstakingly making each entry in huge leather-bound ledgers using only black ink in a big, old-fashioned hand.

  "Here," the old man said at last, and turned the ledger so Claypoole could see. "That's Section Six, Line Thirty-nine, Grave number 193906." He jotted the figures down on a slip of paper. "It is very nice back there. Quiet. I'll give you directions."

  Claypoole drove slowly through
the vast cemetery. Hundreds of hectares in extent, it was crisscrossed by roads and pathways interspersed with parks and ponds and flower beds, altogether a very pleasant and restful place. Hochbaums everywhere provided deep shade from the bright sunlight. He marveled at the variety of monuments. A big metal marker with an Arabic numeral 6 on it soon appeared.

  He parked and got out of the landcar. He realized that, judging from the simple stone markers, the people buried here were not very well-to-do. He found Line 39 with no trouble, then walked down it, searching for Maggie's grave. Most of the stones carried only the briefest entries, just the name of the deceased and their dates of birth and death. Here and there, however, more elaborate monuments poked up from the closely cut grass. One bore the carving of a child embracing some kind of small animal. The child, buried fifty years before, had been only eight years old when he died. As he walked farther down Line 39 he passed into the shade of a beautiful hochbaum. The dates of death were closer to the present. Maggie was at the far end of the line, clearly one of the most recent interments in that section.

  Claypoole stared down at the simple stone. He was surprised to discover that she had been several years older than he. The grave was still fresh, the earth still slightly mounded. He closed his eyes. In his mind he heard her singing that exciting, lascivious song. He knelt down and put the pinekiss flowers into a metal vase fitted into the front of her stone. The bouquet was so big that when he stood up he couldn't see the stone behind it. Then he removed all but one flower, a gorgeous thing of deep red on a long green stem, and stuck them onto the grave next to Maggie's. "Here you go," he said, carefully placing the single remaining beautiful red flower into her cup. It looked nice. He stood a while longer and then walked to the car and drove back to the caretaker's office.

  "How much would it cost to have a new stone made for Miss... Miss, uh, excuse me, sir, for Miss, er..." Again his memory had failed him. "For Maggie's grave?"

  Dean knocked lightly on the door. A servant girl opened it. "I'm here to see Miss Hway Keutgens."

  "Who is it?" Hway's granduncle asked from inside the house. The servant girl opened the door wider and the old man came to stand in the doorway. "Lance Corporal Dean, you are no longer welcome in this house."

  "I-I've come to see Hway," Dean replied.

  "After what you have done to my sister, young man, you are not wanted here." He began to close the door in Dean's face.

  Dean grabbed the door and held it. "I did nothing to your sister, sir! You go ask Gretel Siebensberg's family about what she did to them. Hway is here, sir, and I want to see her. Please?"

  "No!" the old man shouted, and leaned harder against the door.

  "Goddamn you!" Dean swore. "Get out of my way or I swear, I'll blow this fucking door all to hell on you!" The old man was strong, but Dean was angrier than he'd ever been in his life, and he began to win the shoving contest.

  "Uncle! Let him in," Hway shouted from behind the slowly opening door. "No!" her uncle shouted back.

  "Uncle, I am the oligarch of Morgenluft now, and as such I am also the head of this family. Let Joe in."

  The door swung open. Dean and Hway's granduncle glared at one another as they panted.

  "Come, Joe, let's walk in the field again." She took Dean by the hand and led him outside and around the house. The door slammed behind them.

  "I know you had nothing to do with grandmother's arrest," Hway said as they walked hand in hand. "But I just can't believe she did those things, Joe! Gram is not the murderer they are saying!" She began to cry.

  "Aw," Joe said, "I don't know, Hway." He held her in his arms. "There'll be a trial and all that. Maybe all this will work out." Of course, he knew it wouldn't.

  They walked along the rows of tomato plants. "They will begin the harvest tomorrow or the next day," Hway said.

  "Yeah. Hway, I'm going back to the company tomorrow, and the day after we'll go back to Thorsfinni's World. I-I—goddamn, I'll start crying next! I came to say good-bye—" His voice broke on the last syllable. He took her and held her close. She put her arms around him and hugged him tightly. "Honey, can we stay in touch? Can we write? Let's not lose contact." Joe was finding it difficult to get his breath.

  Gently, she pushed him away. "Joe, no; it's over between us. If I were an ordinary citizen, I'd take the next ship for Thorsfinni's World and live there outside your camp and wait for you to come to me. But I am not an ordinary citizen. I am no longer a free agent. I'm going to succeed Grandmother. My responsibility now is to the people of Morgenluft. You're going back to your Marines, Joe. That's where you belong." She was crying again. He reached out to touch her, but she shook her head. "Joe, my life is here. Yours is—out there." She gestured toward the sky. She leaned forward slightly and kissed him gently on the lips. "My brave Marine," she whispered, and stroked his hair lightly. "I am going back to the house now, Joe. We shall never see each other again."

  Dean stood helplessly watching the only woman he'd ever loved walk away from him. He remained between the plants for a long time after Hway had disappeared into the house. Then he began to pick some tomatoes to take to the guys in the barracks.

  Hway Keutgens, soon to be oligarch of Morgenluft and ruler of millions of people, watched stoically as Joe Dean drove away from her granduncle's home. She ran her hand thoughtfully over her still-flat, hard belly. No, she would never forget Lance Corporal Joseph Finucane Dean. She had just missed her period.