Earth Afire

by Orson Scott Card

  Fatani whistled. "For free? Considering the price tag of a HERC is more than the GDP of most third-world countries, I'd say we got a good deal. Not bad for an hour's worth of work."

  Napatu leaned forward and frowned. "Well, that's the sour part of this conversation. The Chinese didn't ask for just a single hour of work."

  "That look on your face makes me think I'm not going to like the next thing out of your mouth," said Reinhardt.

  Mazer thought the same, but he kept quiet.

  "The primary reason why we gave a show to the Chinese," said Napatu, "was because they were testing you as much as the HERC."

  "Told you," said Fatani.

  "Testing us for what?" said Patu.

  Mazer answered. "The Chinese not only want to purchase a fleet of HERCs, they also want an experienced HERC team to train their pilots how to fly it."

  "Say it ain't so," said Reinhardt. "We have to babysit a bunch of Chinese pilots?"

  "How many pilots are they sending us?" asked Fatani.

  "None," said Colonel Napatu. "The Chinese aren't coming here. You're going to them. Guangdong province. Southeast China. It'll be a six-month op."

  Nobody spoke. It wasn't uncommon for an SAS team to be given orders to conduct a joint cooperative engagement training--or JCET--but that didn't mean everyone was thrilled by the idea.

  Sensing disappointment in the others, Mazer said, "It's China, Reinhardt. They have hair dryers and silk sheets. I think you'll survive."

  Napatu took a data cube from his desk and offered it to Mazer. "Captain Rackham, you'll continue as team leader. Your mission objectives are there on the cube. You'll brief the others on the plane. You fly out at 0900."

  Mazer took the cube, surprised. "Captain, sir?"

  "You've just been promoted. I'm not having some Chinese officer thinking he outranks everyone on your team."

  *

  It was six o'clock in the morning when Mazer left Colonel Napatu's office and made his way across base toward the motor pool. Three hours. Napatu had given them three hours to arrange their affairs before getting on a plane for an overseas six-month assignment.

  This is why it would never work with Kim, he told himself. This is why it was ridiculous to even consider marriage. No relationship can operate this way.

  They had never discussed marriage, but Mazer knew Kim was thinking about it as much as he was. It was evident in the little things she did: the way she smiled at any baby they passed in the market, or how she casually mentioned her goals for the future, like how she wanted a bay window in her home when she settled down, or how she would grow her own vegetables when she settled down. That was her phrase: "When I settle down." It was never "When we settle down," but the subtext was there nonetheless. The implication was obvious. She was putting her toe in the marriage waters and seeing what ripples it produced.

  Mazer always responded as if he sensed no subtext at all. They were making conversation, nothing more. Why yes, a bay window would be lovely. But no, gardens were a pain; there were weeds to be pulled and bugs to be sprayed and dirt to be tilled. That was time, and time was money. I'll buy my vegetables, thank you very much.

  It was a game they played, a game of compatibility. And the more they played it, the more convinced Mazer became that he would never find a better match.

  He woke the officer on duty at the motor pool and checked out a vehicle. The drive from Papakura to East Tamaki was quick, and he parked across the street of Medicus Industries at ten minutes to seven. She would already be up in her office, he knew; she always came in early to get a jump on the day.

  He didn't call her. Instead, he tapped his wrist pad three times to ping her, then he watched her office window on the fifth floor. She appeared a moment later, smiled, and waved him to come up. He walked to the front door, waited for the holo to appear in the box, and typed in the sequence she had taught him. The door opened, and he crossed through the empty lobby to the lifts.

  She met him on the fifth floor and gave him a light kiss on the cheek. She looked as beautiful as ever, her hair pulled back in a ponytail to keep it out of her face while she worked over her holos all day. "This is a pleasant surprise, Lieutenant," she said. Her American accent always made him smile.

  "I'm a captain now actually," he said.

  "As of when?"

  "This morning."

  She raised an eyebrow. "Really? With a captain's pay?"

  "I assume so. There wasn't much time to discuss it. Why, you need a loan?"

  She smiled, though he could see that the promotion made her uneasy. An unexpected early-morning promotion was a bad sign. It might mean they were shipping him out.

  He waited for her to ask, but instead she cocked her head to the side and said, "You look tired."

  "I haven't slept in thirty-something hours," he said.

  "And yet you came to tell me about your promotion before getting some sleep. I feel special."

  "I didn't come to tell you about my promotion," he said.

  She sensed bad news coming and held up a hand. "Before I get the whole story, let's eat first. There are pastries in the conference room."

  She hooked her arm in his and led him down a corridor. All the offices they passed were dark and empty of people. They reached a glass-paneled room with a long table and a wide marble counter at the far end loaded with fresh fruit, pastries, and self-cooling containers of juice and milk. Kim handed him a plate, grabbed one for herself, and started loading up.

  "Are these yesterday's pastries?" Mazer asked, picking up an apple turnover and giving it a sniff.

  "A caterer brings them in early. They're fresh. And why should you care? You're supposed to be able to survive off the land, eating worms and roasted field mice. Day-old pastries are luxury food."

  He didn't feel like eating, but he put the turnover on his plate anyway and followed her back to her office.

  A holo of an adult-sized human skeleton was floating on its back in the air above Kim's holodesk. Windows of data surrounded it, along with handwritten notes in Kim's squiggly shorthand.

  "Looks like we're a party of three for breakfast," said Mazer.

  Kim waved her hand through the holofield, and the skeleton disappeared. "Sorry. Not exactly what you want to see before eating."

  There was always something floating above Kim's desk. If not bones, then muscles or the circulatory system or some cross section of damaged tissue. She had studied medicine at Johns Hopkins in the U.S. and done her residency at one of the most notoriously brutal trauma centers in Baltimore. Despite being one of the youngest doctors on staff, she quickly built a reputation for being coolheaded and smart in the most gruesome situations. Several medical associations honored her, and it was those citations that had brought her to the attention of Medicus, which had offered her a position at their corporate offices in New Zealand with the promise that she would be helping far more people by working as a medical consultant.

  The company made the Med-Assist device, a holopad designed to help soldiers treat battle wounds. It could do anything: bone scans, blood work, give surgery tutorials, even administer drugs. It was like having a medic in your pocket, only you had to do all the work. The U.S. military had funded the initial development and now used the device extensively throughout all branches of their service. Other countries had since jumped on board. A device for the New Zealand Army was near completion.

  "Is that the new Kiwi version you've been working on?" Mazer asked, gesturing to a Med-Assist on the corner of her desk.

  "Latest prototype," she said, handing it to him. "Tell me what do you think of the voice."

  He turned on the device, clicked through the first few layers of commands, and placed it over his leg. A scan of his femur appeared on screen, the image tinged in green. A woman's voice with a New Zealand accent said, "Femur. No trauma detected."

  "Why isn't it your voice?" he asked.

  Kim's voice had been used in the American version. The U.S. Defense Department h
ad asked that the voice be that of a real doctor, and Medicus thought Kim the perfect fit. She was already on staff, she was American, she had great bedside manner, and she was brilliant. Kim had agreed to do it only on the condition that Medicus test several voices along with hers before making the final decision. Medicus complied, recording samples from Kim and other doctors and then bringing in several soldiers from the NZSAS for a focus group. Mazer had been among them, and he was the most outspoken in the group for why the voice should be Kim's: She sounds like a doctor; she sounds like she knows what she's talking about; soldiers will be anxious and afraid and at the height of emotional distress; a voice like hers will calm them; I believe every word she says.

  The executives had been delighted, and afterward they had made a point of introducing Mazer to Kim, citing him as proof that she had a lot of recording to do. She had scowled at Mazer playfully and blamed him for giving her more work than she had time for. He had apologized, and in a moment of uncharacteristic spontaneity that surprised himself more than anyone, he asked her to dinner to make it up to her.

  It seemed like such a long time ago now.

  Mazer sat on the sofa opposite her desk. Kim removed her shoes, sat beside him, and draped her legs across his lap.

  "The Kiwi version can't be my voice," she said. "New Zealand soldiers want to hear a New Zealander."

  "I don't," said Mazer. "I'd much rather hear yours."

  She smiled. "It's a matter of clarity. Americans pronounce words differently. You don't want a soldier administering the wrong drug or performing an incorrect action because he or she misunderstood the directions."

  "True," said Mazer. "But the real reason why it can't be you is because your voice is so intoxicating. You're like the sea sirens in The Odyssey. Soldiers become so enchanted by the music of your voice that they get all dreamy and starry-eyed and completely forget about their fellow soldier bleeding out in front of them."

  She smiled again. "Yes. Tragic when that happens."

  Why was he being playful? It would only make this more difficult.

  "I'm leaving for China," he said. "For six months."

  It was like a slap. She stared at him. "Why so long?"

  "Exercises with the Chinese. We're training them on some new equipment." He couldn't speak of the HERC. It was still classified.

  "Not a hostile op?"

  "No," he said, reassuring her. "Purely training."

  "Those can be dangerous too."

  "This one won't be. It will be boring."

  "How often will you get to come back?"

  "I won't. Six months solid. No leave time."

  She stared at him then looked down at her half-eaten pastry and pushed it around her plate. "I see. When do you leave?"

  He checked the time on his wrist pad. "Less than two hours. I only found out an hour ago."

  She put the plate aside, angry. "That's how much time they gave you? That's ridiculous. Not to mention insensitive. It shows a complete disregard for people. Doesn't it make you angry?"

  "I'm a soldier, Kim. This is what I do. I go places."

  "Why does it have to be you? I thought you were in the middle of some important training here."

  "I am. It's the training here that's now taking me there."

  She pulled her legs off his lap. "Can you request that someone else go in your place? I know that's unorthodox, but surely they make exceptions."

  "I don't have extenuating circumstances."

  "Tell them I need you here to help with the development of the Med-Assist."

  "You've never needed my help before, and the military doesn't make exceptions, especially with private contractors. If you needed a soldier, they would argue that it doesn't have to be me."

  She got up, crossed to the window, and looked out over the city. "Don't you want to fight this?"

  "You know I can't, Kim."

  "That's not what I asked."

  "Do I want to go to China? Of course not. But I don't get a say in these matters. That's the problem. It's always going to be like this. They're always going to send me away."

  She turned and faced him. "What are you saying?"

  "I'm saying this is a moment of decision. I know we've never discussed marriage, but you and I both know that's where this relationship is headed. We dance around the word, but we're both thinking about it."

  "Of course I think about it," she said. "That's what people our age do, Mazer. They look for someone with whom to spend the rest of their life."

  "And is this the kind of marriage you want?" Mazer asked. "Do you want a husband who goes off for six months or years at a time? Is that the kind of father you want for your children? One who's absent most of the time? People don't get married to live apart, Kim."

  "No, people get married because they love each other and want to make babies together, Mazer. People get married because they see happiness ahead of them with someone."

  "Yes, but you don't see that with me," said Mazer. "You see a world of lonely, sleepless nights, worrying about whether or not I'm bleeding to death in a ditch somewhere."

  "Don't say that."

  "You're proving my point, Kim. Whenever I leave on assignment, you're near crazy with worry. At first I thought it was endearing because it meant you deeply cared for me. Now it makes me sick to think about it. I can't stand that I make you feel that way."

  She turned away, back to the window.

  "I've always been afraid to start a family for this reason, Kim. When I joined up I resigned myself to being single. I wasn't going to be an absent father and husband. Then I met you, and I convinced myself that I could make it work. I told myself that our commitment to each other and to our children would be strong enough to endure any separation. But now I see that I was only being selfish. I was thinking about my happiness, not yours. You deserve someone who can be with you and share the load every day of your life."

  She didn't turn around.

  "I can't leave the military," he said. "I'm in for at least five more years. I don't have a choice on that. Asking you to wait until I get back from China is the same as asking you to wait five years, which I won't do. That's not fair to you."

  He waited for her to move, to look at him, to say something. She didn't.

  "Marriage to me wouldn't be marriage, Kim. You'd be committed to someone who wasn't there. You'd be raising children by yourself. I saw my father do that when my mother died and he moved us to London. He was not a happy man, Kim. Without my mother, he was a shell of who he was. He tried to stamp out all the Maori culture my mother had ingrained into me as a kid because it reminded him of her and it pained him too much to see it. The songs, the stories, the dances, he outlawed them all. I was to be a proper Englishman like him. An Anglo. As if Mother had never existed. Only, he couldn't change the color of my skin. That stayed dark no matter how many boarding schools he put me in."

  He crossed the room and stood behind her.

  "You don't want your children to have only one parent, Kim. I know that life. I don't want it for my kids, either."

  She turned to him. She was crying but her voice was steady. "I'd like to believe that you're being noble and self-sacrificing, Mazer, but all I'm hearing is that you don't want a life with me."

  He didn't know how to respond. Of course he wanted a life with her. Didn't she see that? The issue was it wasn't a life they could have. It would be a life without each other.

  But before he could form a response, she went to her shelf, pulled down a Med-Assist device, and handed it to him. "One of the American versions," she said. "With my voice. You said you wanted one, so there you are. Something to remember me by."

  It was a dismissal. Everything they had built between them was brushed aside in that one gesture.

  It was what he had come to do, what he knew he needed to do for her sake, but now that it was done, now that the business was over, a sick empty feeling sank in his gut like a dead weight. He had to explain himself better.

  He di
dn't get a chance.

  She walked out and left him there. He waited twenty minutes but she never returned. When employees started showing up and turning on the lights to the offices all around him, he tucked the Med-Assist under his arm and made his way to the lifts.

  It was the right thing to do, he kept telling himself. For her happiness, long-term, it was the right thing to do.

  CHAPTER 6

  China

  Mazer boarded the C-200 moments before takeoff and found five new HERCs strapped down in the cargo bay, each of them adorned with Chinese characters and the red-and-gold starred emblem of the People's Liberation Army. Apparently he and his team were not only tasked with training the Chinese, but they were also to hand deliver the HERCs as well. It annoyed Mazer. It meant the deal with Juke and the Chinese had been in the works for some time and that the SAS could have told him sooner that he was likely shipping out.

  Not that it would have made much difference, he admitted. He still would have felt the need to cut ties with Kim, and having more time to do so would have only prolonged the inevitable. Either that or his courage would have failed him, and he would have convinced himself yet again that they could make it work. This way was best for her. Harsh and fast and then he was gone and she could get on with her life.

  He moved through the cargo bay and saw that the rest of his team was already aboard, each of them asleep in one of the bunks recessed into the walls. Mazer stowed his bags in one of the lockers and climbed into an empty bunk. His whole body felt heavy and fatigued and ready for sleep, but thoughts of Kim kept him awake long after takeoff. He kept replaying the scene with her in his mind, thinking of all the things he should have said differently. He took out the Med-Assist she had given him and clicked through it randomly until he came upon a tutorial on how to give rescue breaths. He hit play, laid the Med-Assist on his chest, and listened to the sound of her voice.

  He woke six hours later. His team was still asleep. He took the data cube Colonel Napatu had given him and attached it to his wrist pad. The computer read him the entire mission file as he prepared a large pot of chicken pasta in the aircraft's kitchen area, using ingredients he found in the supply closet.