Mercenary

by Piers Anthony

  I attended their housewarming, and Commander Phist, a handsome man in his mid-thirties, informed me politely that he would be happy to oblige his wife in any legitimate way within his power.

  I explained about Lieutenant Repro’s model staff, and Phist said he considered himself honored to be included in that roster. That was all; since my command did not warrant any such staff, it remained only theoretical. Spirit had delivered; the most competent logistics officer in the Navy had elected not to resign and was now in our orbit. I pondered the ethics of this, and concluded that since no deception was involved, and Commander Phist understood why Spirit had come to him and was satisfied, that was satisfactory. The truth was, Spirit had an extraordinary amount to offer any man; I was in a position to know.

  Now Lieutenant Repro presented me with the next name on his list: that of the most brilliant unrecognized military strategist to be seen in this century. “The test scores are virtually unbelievable,” he confided. “I thought there was a typo or computer glitch, so I double-checked it and found it was true. This person by rights should be put immediately in charge of the entire Jupiter strategic initiative. But that will never happen.”

  “Why not?” I inquired innocently.

  “Three reasons. First, no connections. You have to come from the right family and the right political spectrum to have any reasonable prospect of achieving anything approaching policy-making status.”

  All too true. I, as a young Hispanic officer, understood that well. “And?”

  “Second, you have to be of the proper race. This one has a visible percentage of black ancestry.”

  That, too, I knew. The Navy was an equal-opportunity employer, but there were few black officers and very few ranking ones. Two strikes.

  “Third, you had better be male.”

  I was startled. “A black woman of the wrong political persuasion?” Three strikes indeed!

  “Lieutenant j.g. Emerald Sheller,” he concluded. “Age twenty two. Go get her, Hubris; your sister has shown how.”

  “But she’s young!” I protested. Young: my exact age now.

  “That, too, is a liability,” he agreed. “But genius knows no age. Be warned, Hubris: She’s brilliant, aggressive, and bitter. It will be a significant exercise of your talent.”

  “I’ve got to have her?” I asked dispiritedly.

  “You’ve got to have her. One day you’ll tackle the pirates on the field of battle, and you will have a reasonable chance of success if Sheller is on your team, and little chance otherwise. She’s a wild one, but believe me, Emerald is a jewel.”

  He was serious, despite the pun, and this was his life’s hobby. The ravages of his addiction were more prominent now, but I trusted his competence in this. I had to have wild Emerald Sheller. I nerved myself to get on it.

  Locating her was no problem. They had her supervising the filing department of the Base Records Division. Their tests showed her to be the most promising strategic genius available, yet this was the use they put it to! She had a right to be bitter.

  I sent her a message: Lt. Hope Hubris Requests Date with Lt. Emerald Sheller. That’s an Approved Navy approach. She responded promptly: 1800, this date. A pun, perhaps, on the social and calendar aspects of the word, but nevertheless an acceptance.

  I presented myself in my dress uniform at her residence at the appointed hour. I had thought she might dress civilian, as was customary for women in this circumstance, but she met me in her own formal uniform. She was a small, angular woman with short jet-black hair and brown skin, no beauty by the standards of her race or mine, but fit and brisk. Every inch the efficient, virtually sexless clerk. I anticipated a dull evening, but a challenging one intellectually. I was half right.

  We shook hands, as it was our first meeting. “I thought we might go to a restaurant and talk,” I said.

  “I have made arrangements,” she announced briskly.

  So she had. She conducted me to one of the licensed private shops on the post where we bought two bean sandwiches in bags. Then we went to the capsule tower, which was a mild form of entertainment. Opaque small bubbles were released to be drawn in by Leda’s trace gravity. The descent was not far, but the bubbles moved slowly and could take an hour to land, or longer if jostled out of the direct line of fall. They were known as love capsules, for they were commonly used for brief dates. I had never used one before, being already familiar with free-fall and preferring more comfortable settings for my romantic engagements, and was surprised Emerald had chosen this. But I said nothing, letting her play it her way. I had, after all, been warned about her aggressive nature, and sought no quarrel.

  Thus we found ourselves floating down, isolated. We ate our sandwiches, catching stray beans out of the air. And the woman tore into me verbally as if I were a pirate.

  “So the lordly Hispanic Lieutenant Senior Grade, hero of Chiron, craves some black nookie. What possessed you to seek out this particular stranger? Surely not my voluptuous ass!” She patted her petite military flank.

  My talent works best when there is interaction. I can gather a sense of a person’s character in minutes that others might not discover in years. But this woman was complex, and as yet I had no grasp of her. “I am informed that I need you with me,” I said.

  “You are informed, Lieutenant?” she demanded, in a parody of the martinet. “Don’t you have a mind of your own?”

  I smiled, refusing to be baited. “Sometimes that is in doubt. You see, I have one ambition, but other people are formulating its realization, and they know more than I do. Thus I am supposed to enlist you in my cause.”

  “Why do I get the feeling this is not a simple sex-liaison?” she inquired, frowning as if in doubt. She was good at her mannerisms, and I found myself liking her.

  “Because it isn’t,” I said. “I have no particular interest in your body, no offense intended. I need your service as a strategist. You may be the best of this century.”

  “Let’s leave it at the sex. You aren’t turned on by my body?”

  She remained hostile and difficult to read. There were so may complex currents in her that I still could get no firm sense of the whole. “I asked you for a date because I wanted to talk with you,” I said. “It is your mind, your ability I am interested in. I prefer not to advertise my real purpose. No one need know what passes between us here.”

  “They’ll figure sex. And that’s what it’s going to be.”

  “I need your strategic genius, not your body,” I insisted doggedly. “This isn’t any ploy for sex! I won’t lay a hand on you. I’m simply asking you to join my mission, because it should represent an excellent challenge for you, and its success may hinge on your ability.”

  “Well, I still figure sex,” she said. “So get your clothes off, spic.”

  I had not heard that term in some time. It was a hostile reference to a person of Latin descent, specifically Hispanic; its precise application and interpretation had changed in the course of centuries, but it was generally considered grounds for combat when addressed to a person of my background by a Saxon. This woman was only half Saxon but was prickly indeed! Combat was what I did not want. “I want only to talk to you,” I insisted. “I have no designs upon your—”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “Get ‘em off, Lieutenant Loco, or I’ll take ‘em off for you.”

  I was irritated by her perversity but was aware that this was her intent and refused to be baited into open anger. So I removed my clothing and folded and bound it carefully in the null-gee, and floated naked before her. I experienced deja vu, the feeling of having been here before; it was my memory of my first encounter in the Tail. I would handle this woman as I had the Tail-girl, June, if I had to.

  She looked me over. “You’re in pretty good health. Well, so am

  I. We’ll wrestle.” “I don’t wish to—” But quickly she divested herself of her own uniform and floated

  nude before me. It is a peculiarity of the English language that a man
unclothed is naked, while a woman unclothed is nude. I have never fully understood the distinction and tend to ignore it, but in this case I appreciated it. Nakedness is embarrassing; nudity is intriguing. Emerald was slender rather than lush, but she was indeed in good health, and her form was well assembled. Sometimes clothing diminishes blemishes or malformity; in this instance it had rendered severe a form that was in fact esthetic. My lost love, Helse, had masqueraded as a boy by strapping down her breasts and wearing boy’s clothing; Emerald had in effect done much the same. I had not seen a brown girl completely exposed before and was interested. Her midsection was very small, and her breasts and buttocks quite well rounded.

  But I had no intention of indulging in sex with her, because that had never been my intent and because I needed to prove to her that it was her strategic ability I valued. I must confess it had become a certain challenge for me to demonstrate my lack of sexual interest in her, though her body was in no way repulsive to me. Quite the opposite; the overly soft, fleshy women of the Tail were not strongly conducive, while the taut, vibrant, artistically molded flesh of this one—

  “Try for a fall,” she said, taking hold of me.

  A fall—in free-fall? It was impossible! I simply fended her off. But she went for a pain hold, and that sort of thing can be effective in free-fall, so I had to counter. I was stronger than she, and I had had excellent training in several species of martial arts, but most importantly I was increasingly able to fathom her physical strategies. Her mind remained largely unfathomable, but not her body. One might argue that bodily action is a product of the mind behind it, but in practice this is severely limited by the physical chemistry of that body, and its signals are much more evident. So I understood her body, using my talent, and she could not make headway against me.

  “One fall for you,” she said when this was apparent. “But I can make you perform sexually.”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you—”

  She grasped my private anatomy and kneaded it. I was surprised, but I remembered the Tail and let her proceed without reacting. This was a considerable challenge, for she had a flair for this sort of stimulation. Then she put her face down and used her tongue in a manner that caught me quite unprepared, and caused me to react despite my intent. In moments I converted, as the saying goes, from rubber to iron. Then she grasped me about the hips and drew me in close to her as we both floated in the sphere, and spread her legs to take me in. She had a kind of internal muscular control that amazed me, and in that manner she had her will of me. I gave up the struggle and clasped her body tightly and thrust urgently within her. “One fall for you!” I gasped as I shuddered to conclusion. She acknowledged by coming further alive against me. Juana, though more luxuriantly endowed, had never reacted like this. Emerald had shown me a new level of sexual experience.

  But she wasn’t through with me. “You figure you’re a leader,” she said as she separated from me. “That business with the Hidden Flower--you were just lucky they blundered worse than you did. If you had planned and executed it properly, you could have saved your sister without risking your Navy ship. And the episode in Chiron—blind luck was sixty percent of that, and again your own life was on the line. Those were Pyrrhic victories; too many of them and you’ll be finished.”

  “That’s why I need you, to plan and execute my strategy,” I said humbly.

  She considered momentarily. “Very well, Hubris. I’ll marry you.”

  I had not, of course, proposed marriage to her. But in the Navy, term marriages were the norm for officers, just as heterosexual rooming was for enlisted folk. Emerald Sheller had concluded that she could achieve her own ambition more readily by being with me than on her own, and marriage was the most expedient way to get her reassigned to my unit.

  We signed the forms that evening, for a one-year term, renewable, and next day she was transferred to my unit. For the second time in the Service, I had a liaison with a woman in which convenience was the motivating force, rather than emotion. But Emerald took her wifely perquisites seriously, and I must confess that I liked it. She was motivated to succeed at anything she tried, and her definition of success was demanding. She saw marriage as a legitimization of both sex and common interest, and she was quite good as both sexual partner and intellectual partner.

  I think I could have loved Emerald, had she wanted to be loved, and had I wanted to love. Certainly I respected her. She was indeed a kind of genius. When our year was up, we renewed without question, and again the following year. Each time I told her: “I married you for your mind, but you conquered me with your body.” And each time she said: “I know it.” But the word love remained forbidden.

  Emerald assumed the management of my career, and as my success as a leader led to promotion, her career profited, too. She was doing what she lived for, strategic planning. In three years I was a lieutenant commander, O4, and she was a lieutenant, O3, and my company was achieving a reputation as a fortunate unit.

  Emerald, however, did not get along perfectly with the others. She had a certain acerbic way of expressing herself that came across more in tone and look than in content, and in this way she distanced herself from male and female alike. That seemed to be the way she wanted it. My sister Spirit, when she returned to the unit, resented this especially, yet she was the first to recognize what Emerald was doing for my career and the reputation of our unit, and she was also aware that Emerald and I were using each other, quite consciously and amicably. Spirit remained my closest friend and associate; she was the one I loved.

  I should clarify an aspect of the military system and how it related to us. Some navies were organized on strictly impersonal lines, with officers rotated every six months and enlisted personnel having absolutely no certainty of assignment. The Jupiter Navy, however, favored the so called Regimental system popularized by the Uranian moon of Titania, in which both officers and enlisted personnel tended to remain for prolonged periods in the same units, changing assignments only if dissatisfied with present ones. Promotions were generally within the unit, so that the commander had years-long association with the unit he took over. This led to much greater esprit de corps and satisfaction. Fewer people retired early, and performance tended to be better. I endorsed this system wholeheartedly, as it enabled me to gather in those people I knew to be good, and to retain them. For example, I got my old roommate Juana to be my secretary. She was now a sergeant, E5, and I promoted her at the earliest opportunity. She was a bright woman, good at her task, but our association was more than that. She knew my ways and would never betray my interests. Emerald was not entirely pleased, knowing our prior connection, but in this case I put my foot down. I wanted a secretary I really understood and trusted. There was, of course, no further sexual contact; Juana was enlisted, and officers did not mix that way with enlisted. But Juana and I remembered our first encounter in the Tail with a certain fondness; we had been good for each other and remained so, and that was what Emerald distrusted. I could talk candidly to Juana; she would understand, and she was never abrasive. I think it is possible for a man to be closer to a woman after the flame of sexual appetite has burned out; at this time true friendship becomes feasible, and that is as rewarding in its fashion as sex.

  I also gathered in a considerable number of the Hispanics I had commanded during the Chiron mission—and some of the Saxons, too. They had never forgotten how we worked together to befriend the Greeks and how many lives had been saved when the violence erupted. They also remembered how I had scrubbed the barracks floor. Some called me, privately, el cepillo, the brush. But only those who had been there at the time; they were a select group. And I also picked up a few Chironiotes, young folk who had emigrated and been inducted as resident aliens. They had petitioned to be assigned to my unit, and I was flattered.

  Of course, I got Sergeant Smith. Mine was not a training battalion, so my company had no recruits, but we did have need of instruction and discipline, and there was a better future for Sergean
t Smith with us. We were an action unit, similar to the one on the Chiron mission; we could be sent out to fight at any time. I wanted my men ready, and Sergeant Smith was the one to get them ready. When he transferred in, there was some muted protest by my regulars because he was a Saxon outsider, but I put out the word: He was also the one who had put me on the track to officer’s training. Without Sergeant Smith, I would not have become an officer, and this unit would not exist. Sergeant Smith was amazed at the welcome he received then, and the cooperation he received from a class of personnel who had always given him trouble before.

  But mainly I was assembling my elite administrative officer corps. As commander of a company I did not warrant a special staff, so this remained largely in the imagination of Lieutenant Repro, but we had designated the positions and placements that would occur at such time as I commanded the battalion. In that fantasy, I was the commander, and Emerald was my executive officer. She was planning my promotion and acquisition strategies, devising ploys to gain key personnel, and doing comprehensive research on battle tactics, anticipating the time when we would put them into practice against the pirates.