“I like Missus Stewert very much, but if it hadn’t been for Jesse, I’d be back home! He made me miserable for weeks. He almost got me raped and sold to a brothel.”
“You do know our two countries are at war, don’t you, Acting Second Lieutenant? He doesn’t owe you anything.”
Before she could answer, Delarosa shrugged and changed the topic to Unity sidearms. Malila was delighted, as she was able to refuse to answer.
It was her anticipation of Delarosa’s visits that surprised her. Unity men were either her superiors, sizing her up as a protégé, or her competitors, watching for some chink in her defenses to exploit. Worst of all were her subordinates. They were ingratiating, saccharine, and looking for eventual patronage from a rising star of the Unity. Malila sighed. The hope of her having any patronage to distribute had vanished months ago.
However, Delarosa amused her. At first, he challenged her to tell stories of her homeland. Malila related the few narratives she knew, the Storming of the Hoover Building and the Battle for Wilmington, confident Delarosa was already familiar with them. Then she went on to tell him of her friends and Maddow Crèche #213, all useless information to him.
Delarosa reciprocated, not by telling stories but by relating wonders. He would set the scene with words and the pitch of his voice. He impersonated each character with distinctive accents and phrases.
“Who goes there afoot on my land, you bold foeman? Approach, if you dare, and be tried by the Strangler,” boomed an alien, brutal voice.
Malila felt her heart race.
“Oedipus of Corinth, out to seek my fortune, to foil a worse fortune at home than abroad. And what of this trial to each stranger you give, O Sphinx?” said another voice, smaller yet manly, forthright, and noble.
“Mere words, fainting man, but the forfeit is death. Take you the wager?”
Dread seized her as the foundling Oedipus endangered himself to save his family. Malila applauded Oedipus’s cleverness, his success, his noble struggle with Apollo’s plague … and wept at his downfall. It left her exhausted.
In turn, Delarosa became a dying emperor, a Saracen maiden, the village drunk, and an oriental sage. Soon Malila gave up all pretensions at exchanging stories and just listened as she was moved to laughter, tears, and longing.
Malila had thought she was sophisticated. With Luscena’s help, she had experienced the best of Unity performing arts: magnificent productions of light and sound. With each elaborate program, a boutique ThiZ, tailored for the performance, was distributed. The shows had been marvelous, but Malila couldn’t remember them now. Her heart pounded as Delarosa painted with mere words.
She was always sorry when Delarosa left for the day, usually with several of Sally’s cookies wrapped in a handkerchief in his jacket.
CHAPTER 40
INTRUDER
After two weeks at the Stewerts’, Malila saw that some special event was approaching. Moses cleared out a barn before throwing sawdust on the floor. More confusing, he cut conifer boughs to decorate the house and the barn. Wagons arrived with townspeople, who assembled long trestle tables. Sally made more succotash than they could consume in a week.
The Coming, as Sally called it, was a great day of celebration, leaving Malila’s ignorance undisturbed. She meant to bring it up with Xavier the following day, but it slipped her mind when Moses insisted on showing off the new milking program to Xavier and her.
On their return, nearing the front of the house, they heard muffled shouts. The front door banged open. A hunched figure of a man in a black-and-red-checkered wool coat hastened out, scolded and savaged by the diminutive Sally wielding a broom. The man halted only when he found himself outflanked by the woodpile.
“… are a vicious, hard-hearted, rough-handed waste of skin. You are a nasty, crooked, old, dried-up, slant-faced, scant-bodied, shameless, arrogant, bloody-minded, evil-scheming abuser of your betters and worse for it!”
At this point, Sally sputtered in her assault, apparently having fired off all her ammunition on the first salvo and awaiting resupply. Moses rushed by Delarosa to intercept and disarm her. A hissed conversation ensued.
Malila was shocked. Gentle, loving Sally had become this angry, red-faced fury. The man must have done something horrible. After Moses wrapped up Sally in his long arms and almost carried her into the house, the miscreant unfolded himself. He was tall and clean shaven, with his long white hair caught up in a ponytail.
Jesse.
Without his beard, he looked even thinner than the last time Malila had seen him. His eyes were brighter, more brittle. He had none of the gray-skinned apathy that had frightened her during the final week of their journey. The old man stared along Sally’s line of retreat as if gauging the possibilities of a renewed attack from cover.
He turned as she approached, and his face blossomed into a smile, the tableau of the preceding few seconds seemingly forgotten.
Sweeping off his hat, he said, “Malila, lass, there you are. I came to see if the Stewerts were doing right by you! I hope I find you well.”
Malila was amazed. The old man, who for weeks had threatened her life, made it miserable, betrayed her by making the ghoulish signature patches under her very nose, and abandoned her in body and spirit, was attempting to act as if he were the wasteland’s concierge. Malila burst into laughter.
Jesse froze and then straightened up, his hat circling in his hands.
“Ah. I see you are in good spirits, Lieutenant. I’ve been told how much help you’ve been around the place, especially with young Ethan. Is there aught you might need?”
Infected with the oddness of his formality, wearing one of Sally’s dresses that she had yet to alter, a pair of cast-off trousers, and an old coat of Moses’s, the sleeves falling over her hands in lieu of mittens, Malila dropped an unsteady curtsy to the old man.
“Captain Johnstone … or is it Doctor again? The Stewerts have been truly marvelous hosts. It seems that Mrs. Stewert has the same high opinion of you that I have.”
The old man looked up at the front door again and scratched his chin.
“She was fair exercised, at that, wasn’t she, lass? Sort o’ glad she didna keek Moses’s 30-30 over th’ door,” he said, giving her a watery smile.
“It’s a marvel that anyone can resist your charms, Doctor, or are Sisis not held in such high esteem in the outlands as you imagined?”
Ignoring Captain Delarosa, Malila moved close to the Jesse and pressed herself to him, letting a hand move to fondle him as the surest way to embarrass. It was amusing to be in the driver’s seat with the horrible old man for once. Anticipating her maneuver, he caught her hand.
“Nay, lass. Don’t do this,” Jesse hissed to her as she tried to press forward.
“Ooooww!” she shrieked. “So strong, you don’t know your own strength, Dr. Johnstone. And after all those weeks together!”
With her free hand Malila stroked the old man’s cheek and marveled that he still blushed.
“Sally is a good judge of character, don’t you think? She isn’t fooled by you,” she whispered into his ear. “You’re not so brave now, are you? Why come back for me now, I wonder?”
Jesse tried to pull away, but Malila was having too much fun at his expense to let him get off the hook. If she humiliated him in front of his amateur army, so much the better.
Delarosa, silent until now, interrupted her by taking her arm.
“Excuse us, Captain Johnstone. Stay here for a few minutes, would you?”
Malila, pleased to be able to leave the field of combat uncontested, allowed herself to be piloted toward the house. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the old man hunker down beside the woodpile and replace his hat.
Malila heard the muffled shouts of Sally and the low and urgent rumblings of Moses erupt as Xavier knocked on the front door and then let them in when there was no respon
se. Ethan, absorbing the hostility in the air, had started a descant shriek of his own.
“I won’t have that vicious old fraud on our property or anywhere near our son!” Sally shouted at Moses, dramatically pointing a finger at Ethan.
“Sally, it’s only because of Jesse that it is our property,” Moses answered.
“I don’t care!” she said before looking up at Delarosa and Malila. Her pale features suffused with the dull red of rage, she turned away, scooped up Ethan, and ducked into the hallway. Malila heard the bedroom door slam.
Moses turned to Delarosa, looking pained. “Captain, I’m sorry you had to be here for this. I don’t know what’s got into Sally; I really don’t. She doesn’t like Jesse, but that just means she ignores him.
“Seems Jesse knocked on the door and let himself in. That’s a bit rude, I know. When I was proving out this section, he got used to coming in, more or less, like he owned the place, which, at the time, he did, but Sally blowing up like that … I just don’ understand.”
Sighing, Moses sat down in his old rocking chair and put his head in his hands.
Delarosa turned to Malila, her arm still in his gentle but unrelenting grip. “What might you know about this, Lieutenant Chiu?”
“Me? I just told Sally how that old Sisi treated me! Sally told me how people think he’s so important, but he’s just a Sisi. He killed all my men, and you told me how he saved the fingerprints for you. That’s just grotesque. He went out of his way to humiliate me.” She felt her outrage build now that it had an audience.
Xavier had no reaction, so she went on. “He had me strip naked every night! He hit me if I didn’t drink this or do that. It was one humiliation after another. Sally can tell you. She’s seen the marks!”
Delarosa interrupted her in a quiet voice, “I read his report on the trip, Malila. Perhaps I can add a little light to this story. Moses, would you get Sally back here? I’d like her to hear what I have to say as well.
“Now.”
It was a command. Both Malila and Moses looked at him in surprise. It was a second or two before Moses stood and disappeared down the corridor.
Delarosa and she had yet to speak a word more by the time, minutes later, when a sniffling Sally returned, her eyes red and swollen. Malila pulled her arm away from Delarosa and went to stand beside Sally, who grabbed her hands with both of her own.
“I’m going to tell you what Jesse’s orders were when he left here last summer. Moses, you may not be aware of this, but I can show you the orders themselves if you want,” said Delarosa.
Moses shook his head at once.
Nodding to Malila, Xavier continued, “We needed to examine your new troop rifles, but we have known for a long time about the inserts … the implants your country uses to track its people. We couldn’t afford to have a raiding party intercepted by taking any implants along with us. I am sure you understand that, Lieutenant.”
Malila, despite herself, understood immediately.
“All your troopers were better armed than Moses or Jesse. You invaded the sovereign territory of America. Killing you and them in combat is the usages of war. Jesse’s specific orders were to allow no one with an implant to survive to compromise the mission.”
Delarosa let the statement float for a moment until its significance set Moses’s head to nodding.
“Jesse wasn’t supposed to take any prisoners,” Sally said seconds later, her voice flat and almost unrecognizable, her words falling into the silence of the room like a pebble into a vast sea.
Malila knew the Unity seldom took prisoners. Those they took, they Sapped.
Sally interjected, “Jesse wouldn’t shoot unarmed prisoners! He is an arrogant old geezer, but he doesn’t kill like that!”
“He didn’t, did he?” said Delarosa. “Lieutenant Chiu, your Unity soldiers were all armed. They outnumbered Jesse and Moses by twenty to one. They should have been more than capable of defending you. You lost, and they won.”
Malila nodded to him, one soldier to another.
“Once you were secured, Jesse sent Moses back to the summer camp with the rifles and the ID chips. That took all the horses. So Jesse followed his orders to the letter, if not the spirit. The rifles we are examining back at Saint Lou. The fingerprints Jesse delivered two weeks ago. He had to start processing them right away, but you might have sabotaged that work, had you known.
“From Captain Johnstone’s report, he seems to have been rather resourceful in saving your life … several times, Lieutenant. Let me ask you … the last three weeks of the trip, after you tried to kill him, how did you think Captain Johnstone was doing physically and mentally?”
Sally interrupted and turned to look at Malila. “You tried to kill …”
Jumping in before Sally could finish the thought, Malila attempted to make her story sound dry and military. Even as she spoke, Moses’s long face hardened, and a pallor invaded Sally’s flushed features. With a pang of remorse, Malila felt Sally release her hands.
“Did you have any problems with bleeding, mental depression, joint pains, or loose teeth by the time you got to Morganfield?” asked Delarosa.
“What? Of course not! But Jesse starved me. Sally can tell you. Do you know what I had to eat? And he made me drink his poison tea every day. I was sick of it,” Malila said, wondering at the direction the discussion had taken.
“Captain Johnstone arrived in town and turned you over to me two weeks ago. He was examined and invalidated to Lexington for treatment of scurvy.”
Malila watched Moses and Sally look down, embarrassed.
“What’s scurvy?” Malila blurted.
“I am sure Sally would be glad to tell you. Jesse needed to take that nasty tea he makes to stay well while traveling. Instead he gave it to you. He could have died. Many have. He nearly did this time. We sent a guard with him to Lexington to make sure he got there alive. He is a durable old coot, and he took well to the treatment. He got out of hospital and back to town just yesterday.”
Moses nodded in agreement, and Sally started to twist the small handkerchief into which she had been weeping.
“I learned last week that one of the Unity’s enforcer bands had disappeared, just east of the Illini-Indi line. They found five bodies, or pieces of them anyway, under a bridge at the Route 41–Interstate-74 junction,” Delarosa said as if to change the subject.
“You have any idea what happened to those five men, Lieutenant Chiu?” Delarosa asked with a smile.
Malila began to recite her story, feeling her outrage avalanche with the memory. “Jesse abandoned me and let those men capture me. He left me to them, like a piece of meat! They were going to …”
Malila looked at Sally, before saying, “… abuse me.”
A hum in her head accelerated, making it hard for her to hear.
“It was all Jesse’s fault. If he had stayed with me, we could have fought them off. We had a pulse rifle! I took a chance and ran away from them. Jesse found me and put me into a cave in the snow. He abandoned me again, and Bear caught me again. Bear cut me; Sally saw the scar. He tried to kill me, but I killed him first.”
“And how is it that you and Jesse connected up again, before or after you tried to kill him?” Delarosa asked.
Malila began to explain. She backtracked, amended, and reworded her story. In the middle of her recitation, she started to hear her own words, to glimpse the trip from an outlanders’ point of view. Moses was watching her, his face set as if he were watching the death agonies of some insect. With a shock, Malila recognized for the first time how dangerous a burden she had been. The old man had brought her out against reason, orders, and his own interests. Her account petered out when she caught herself relating her horror at her first bleeding cycle. She blushed, hesitated, looked at Sally for some moral support, and stopped.
Sally said, “Oh, dear.”
/> Moses stood and confronted Delarosa. “Captain, first let me say that it was me as killed the zombies; Jesse was keeping Malila quiet. That should be in the report. I know Jesse thought we would be passing her over to headquarters once we rendezvoused. It was you, Captain, as asked me to billet her here. I was glad to do it, even if Sally wasn’t.
“Now I’m withdrawing that offer. Lieutenant Chiu has brought discord into my house. She needs to leave,” he finished.
Sally interrupted. “No, Moses! Where will they take her? You don’t have any idea where she’ll go. I need her! … She needs me!”
Malila froze at the last outburst. Sally lapsed into miserable silence, sat, and wept into the hard-used handkerchief.
Malila turned to Delarosa.
“I will be ready to leave in a few minutes, Captain Delarosa.”
Without looking back, she went to the ladder and climbed into the loft. Malila collected the few items the Stewerts had given to her. She wouldn’t take the dress. She was a soldier, a captive soldier. She knew how to take orders, and she would not make it any more difficult for Sally. She took up the baby’s clothes she had taken to mend. Malila pressed the small garments to her face and inhaled the faint scent of the infant before grief overwhelmed her. Malila sank to the pallet in the loft under the eaves in the small house along the frontier of the outlands and wept.
“There is only one way Lieutenant Chiu can stay. She’s no believer. Who would accept her apology anyway?” Moses announced in a low voice to Delarosa.
“The girl’s lies have almost killed Jesse more than once,” Moses finished … an epitaph.
Miserable, Sally stood and faced Delarosa. “But it was me that took out after Jesse, not Malila.
“It’s true I don’t like Jesse, but it was his walking in unannounced that just set me off. He was the cause of all Malila’s pain and humiliation … there, in my front room. The poor girl had suffered so much during her trip. She had so little to begin with.
Outland Exile: Book One of Old Men and Infidels Page 21