Outland Exile: Book One of Old Men and Infidels
Page 28
“Very well, Lieutenant. Done with grace and dispatch.”
In the same voice of quiet concern he said, “You are going to become a hero of the Unity shortly. Your fortitude in the face of adversity is an inspiration to us all.
“Your first implant”—he touched her scar—“is no longer functioning. That gives you certain capabilities that are … awkward. I want you to be confident that I’ll look out for your best interests, but for now you need to avoid … pleasure-sex. Understood?” Jourdaine gave her the first warm smile she had seen from him.
She nodded.
“You may dress, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
She stooped to retrieve her hospital gown, relieved and disappointed. By the time she stood again, Jourdaine was already leaving the room.
Before she could finish dressing, an aide entered the room with a new DUFS uniform. “Lieutenant Chiu, Malila E.” was stitched over a breast pocket, and each shoulder bore the raised bar that shimmered silver as she moved it in the light. It was the insignia of a first lieutenant.
Major Khama exited the belt near his home in Pertamboy. The commute was getting worse every day. Or maybe he was just getting old. He was never going to be thirty again.
At least things were peaceful. The Blues had been out of the faction fight since 70 when he—that is, the Reds—had won big. Emanuel and Suarez had come to power and had had a field day, Sapping every commander and IT guy down to the S10 level.
Better to give than receive, he thought.
He did not have the enthusiasm for that horror now, again. It must be his age. It looked as if he could get to retirement unmolested. He had hoped for more.
Suarez had promised him a full colonelcy at one time … if she made chief of staff. It no longer looked as if that was going to happen. So close … Even so, if things started to go bad, he had been furbishing that little nook in Lynneboro Station, on the hill with the old stone farmhouse. A two-day notice to his “friends,” and he would be feet up and brain in neutral, contemplating the cows, or whatever one did in rural NuAmpshur. He would be lighter by a few years’ income, and they might still track his O-A. Nevertheless, he would keep it.
He trudged to his building and absentmindedly announced his floor. It took him a second to realize something was very wrong.
Rough hands snatched him out of the darkened elevator, and a hood was jammed over his head. The skimmer trip was long and anxious. Officially, Khama belonged to no faction and was under the command of a laughable incompetent, Magness. No one should think him important enough to abduct. That was how he had been so successful. No one expected anything from him, so they stood in line to use him. And he collected a toll of information with each encounter. Most did not even know they were being used.
He was escorted from the skimmer. He hoped he would not embarrass himself; he had not visited the toilet since leaving work.
The hood jerked off. Khama squinted into the blinding light.
“This the guy?”
A familiar voice said, “Yes. That’s him. Leave us.”
The light was moderated, and a chair was pushed into the back of his legs. He sat.
“We meet again, Major.”
“General, I …”
“… can explain? Actually, I am pretty sure you can’t. So spare me the performance. There are a number of unexplained things happening. The faction needs your help.”
Her subsequent words filled in a couple of uncomfortable holes in his memory and one very odd dream.
“So my setting up the auto ping was an implanted command?”
“We believe so. We just don’t know who did it.”
“So what can I do for the faction?”
“For now, just keep us aware. Keep a diary about every dream you have, every odd thing you do … on paper, ink and paper. Usual precautions.”
“Will you look out for me if this hits the fan?”
“Yes, and we already know about your little hideaway. If things get bad … you commit suicide, on us. Then we forget your address. Lynneboro Station, wasn’t it?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
Suarez motioned to the shadows, and the hood was again jammed onto his head.
CHAPTER 51
REPATRIATION
The attendants gave her a dossier containing her new orders and an entrance code. She had a week’s furlough before she had to report. The guards were gone.
They escorted her to the underground foyer of the building in her new, well-fitting uniform. A private skimmer waited for her, the windows darkened. The trip lasted too long. The driver never spoke.
The entrance code belonged to an apartment across the East River from her last one, far above the distant commotion of the belts and skimmer traffic.
Malila’s O-A came alive for the first time in six months as she entered.
Welcome home, Malila!
Edie, it has been so long! When I got back and you weren’t here, I thought they’d taken you away from me.
That’s not possible, Lieutenant Chiu. You merely needed the CORE to hear me and see me.
Where have you been for the last six months?
I’ve no sensation of time except in relation to you, Malila.
But Edie, there were times when I heard you, just moments.
I have no recollection of such events.
Nothing? Was I hallucinating? You told me to stop when I was trying to kill Jesse; you reminded me of the knife with Bear. At the devil’s bridge … Wasn’t that you?
I remember dreams … dreams after you were gone.
Do you remember Sally, the baby? Sally, she’s the best person. I’m sure you would like her. She and Moses are so lucky to have found each other, and there was this old man, Jesse. He was the one who captured me. He ….
In my dreams, I saw. He smells like home, doesn’t he? That’s why he can disappoint you.
I think it was me who disappointed him. He made such a big thing out of all the little things of life, but I think he built up all the little things. He made them important.
I am sure now. I saw him … in the dreams, I mean.
It is enough, Edie. Sometimes the dreams are the important parts.
In the long spring evening, Malila sat on a sparsely elegant sofa and watched the shadows slip across the wall until they congealed into the garish twilight of the city. Edie had grown quiet. Somehow, in her absence, Edie had grown up.
Malila felt no need to sleep … or move. It was after midnight before she stirred.
Out of curiosity, she activated the various news feeds and stopped on ESPN 54-N. She watched herself give interviews to talking heads she had never met. No one, apparently, was interested in the colony.
She remembered the gritty sizzling sound of the pulse bolt hitting Delarosa, the smell of ozone and burned meat, feeling her heart sink even before she’d turned around to watch him slump to the ground. She’d watched his face pale and … his eyes.
She remembered Sally disappearing into the forest with Ethan as Moses had turned to start an unequal battle for his homeland … for her.
Why had she fought?
She had no answer if they asked. Why had she fought? Malila remembered no red-hued rage as Xavier Delarosa fell … hollowness for his death, yes, but no incandescent need for revenge. She saw again the faceless trooper raising his rifle to club her. She had reacted instinctively—no, not instinct … She had reacted as she had been trained. She’d set her weight, crouched slightly, feeling the center of her explosive force aim itself. The crunch of her hobnailed boot against the trooper’s knee had been satisfying in the way a well-done exercise was satisfying. The second trooper, the one aiming over her left shoulder to kill Moses, she had folded him up like a paper doll almost with no thought at all.
A part of her had remained anal
ytical, detached, scrutinizing. She’d known the signature lock would prevent the captured rifle from working for her and had not even bothered to see if she could activate it, valuing speed over firepower. She’d seen the next trooper. He had been five, maybe six, strides away … too far even for speed. She had known that, even as she’d started for him. She had seen him raise the barrel. The rifle had come up slowly, in the odd detached way it did in battle, to center its dimensionless black eye on her. On her third stride, she would have been hit by the searing heat of the bolt as it exploded her flesh along its trajectory, killing her. She had been surprised when the trooper had fallen before she’d reached him, the rifle report informing her that Moses had saved her life. She had been surprised again when the Taze-Net had engulfed her from the side. She’d started to convulse, her uncontrolled limbs jerking painfully … her mind flickering out.
She undressed for bed.
Why had she fought?
The whole attack had been to liberate her. People she had come to admire and to … love … were dead because of her. Delarosa was dead. Moses was dead too, she feared. She had heard his rifle and had seen the trooper drop as he’d been about to kill her. She had heard the return fire and turned to see Moses’s body crumple to the ground. There had just been too many for him. Jesse would have escaped. The old man had probably bet money on his own immortality.
Malila looked back at the comm’net. The unfamiliar talking heads were calling the Return at Stamping Ground an “outlander sun ritual,” provoking images of naked savages and twitching sacrificial animals.
The songs came back to her. “The Lord is risen today, alleluia.”
She felt soiled.
CHAPTER 52
LUNCH WITH THE GIRLS
A preemptive call from her O-A, the first in six months, jangled Malila awake. Luscena Kristòf’s pale face with her vivid red lips swam before her. Luscena was assuming her tragic-loss face, Malila thought. Lucy was so good at her craft.
“Malila, my love? Can it really be true? You’ve come back to us!”
“G’mornin’, Lucy. Nice to see you too.”
“We have all been so terribly worried about you. Heccy, Alex, Tiff … all of us. You were gone so long—without a word.”
It sounded briefly like an accusation. Luscena’s face morphed to even a more dramatic appearance of wounded dignity, which she’d used to such great effect and critical acclaim in Diary of a Protégé.
“But then to find that you were a prisoner of the savages. It is just too horrible to conceive!”
Malila smiled.
“I am fine, Lucy. I only got out of debriefing last night …”
Luscena sighed, and her face went back to normal. Malila was not, apparently, playing the game correctly. Lucy got down to business.
“But you must tell us all. We are getting together for lunch.”
After accepting the invitation, Malila broke the connection, stopping to marvel at and enjoy the simple act. She had been unable to quest for months.
A folder with six months of communiqués bulged in her near vision.
Of course, Lieutenant. I presume I dispense with the messages of a commercial nature? Then we have a folder containing messages from your patrons.
Yes, let me see that one.
The messages were numerous. Malila concentrated on just the most recent. Within the last few days, each patron had sent a note expressing sadness at her long absence, delight on her return to civilization, best wishes for her continued success, and regrets that the patron would no longer be sponsoring her as a protégé. The wordings were nearly identical. Malila flipped through them without surprise, like looking at holos of another person. From what Jourdaine had said, it was probably inevitable. She would not have to worry about her awkward fertility. Now and for the foreseeable future, her fate was tied to the gray man and his agenda. Malila deleted the whole folder abruptly.
Coffee?
Oh, yes, of course.
Yes, Lieutenant!
The rest of the morning Malila spent in a bathroom exploring the spiritually nourishing aspects of hot water. As she rose from her bath, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. It took her a moment to decide it was her own image in the mirror. Her longer hair had developed an unexpected wave, framing her now vaguely foreign face. Her body was pink from the heat, but the blue filigree of the woman’s mark still writhed along the edge of her areola, ending in Sally’s delicate daisy pattern.
You look lovely, Malila. The wilderness seems to have agreed with you.
Sarcasm? While I was gone, you studied up on sarcasm?
I didn’t study at all, as I’ve already said. But I am sincere. You have gained a little weight, all in the right places.
So you thought my boobs were too small too? Malila laughed. No one was a hero to her own frak.
Glad you like them, Edie.
Dressed in her new uniform, Malila arrived at the museum even as Tiffany was hurrying up, her white coat ballooning out behind her in the spring winds.
They hustled in arm in arm through the museum atrium under the gaze of the blue whale. It was much the same: the waiters swooped around with heavy trays, fresh daffodils graced the table, and the fragrant vines in the latticework were as profligate as ever. The string quartet and the Dutilleux were gone in favor of two additional tables. Newly added comm’net screens dominated the walls, displaying a selection of sweaty athletes for lunch.
Malila was the center of attention. Luscena, in a shimmering black pantsuit, assumed the role as her media secretary and answered most questions before Malila could herself. New loops of video spun overhead, repeatedly showing three-dimensional diagrams of Malila’s platoon being overwhelmed by “wave upon wave of heedless barbarians.” The ’nets had improved the number of her attackers from two to “a hundred or more barbarians armed with antiquated pulse rifles.” Her platoon had fought to the death in her defense; at least that was accurate. The savages “had constructed a funeral pyre in grudging admiration for the noble enemy.”
She tried to ignore them, until Jourdaine’s now-familiar voice came on. It took a while before she could quiet her friends in order to hear him.
“Complete surprise was achieved in this rescue mission, allowing us, with minimal casualties, to retrieve Lieutenant Chiu, this audacious example of the best the Unity produces.”
He looked confident, calm, yet determined.
A pleasant contralto from off camera asked, “Colonel, she’s been gone for six months. Where was she held? What happened to her during her captivity?”
“You can imagine that information is classified, Shirley. It goes without saying a captive among the savages is enslaved, starved, beaten, and degraded beyond anything we, in a civilized country, can imagine. Nevertheless, throughout her six months of brutal interrogation, the barbarians were unable to break her spirit. It is nothing less than a heroic moral triumph!”
Instantaneously, sidebars erupted around the image, showing ’net commentators who weighed in with their own observations and opinions. The panels waxed and waned as the local viewers’ interest changed.
“Now, this little girl … Chiu? Grew up in Kweens. You gotta appreciate that! The district has been supplying more than its share of DUFS for generations now. Must be something in the water,” offered a meaty man in an expensive suit with obvious pride.
“Indeed, Supervisor? I thought your water problem had been rectified,” said
the commentator in the next panel, a near-cachectic woman in a rust-colored suit that sported lighted lapels.
The woman continued, “However, the level of fortitude this woman has displayed … thrust … thrust onto her own resources by savage masculine violence. Who knows what horrors have been visited upon her?”
She lost her train of thought momentarily before refocusing on the audience. “It shows the confidence only a woman with a strong sense of her own style can achieve. Obviously.”
Another commentator, a thin bearded man who was listed as a professor of political science, poked the wall of the woman’s panel. His panel expanded noticeably as he talked.
“Don’t any of these people get it? I don’t think so,” he lilted. “Doesn’t it seem odd that exactly fifteen weeks after General Emmanuel is denounced for incompetence, we have another DUFS crawling back into the headlines? I mean, it may be coincidence, sure, but they both went through the same training. They both served in the same units. It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going, does it?”
The screen dissolved into dueling panels for several minutes until the screen cycled back to sports news about the CORE death of some football player.
After lunch, her friends demanded more of the “real” story from her.
Malila started with her waking up in the dark with a knife at her throat and hearing the remorseless gunshots killing her platoon, one at a time. She told them about the excitement of the bison hunt but also about her daily bondage, the Death Walker, and Bear’s death. She concealed devil’s bridge and her bleeding cycles.
Mostly, Malila talked about Sally and Ethan: her bravery at birthing him, his brilliant smile punctuated by new sharp teeth, and his gluttony at Sally’s breast.
“No! You means it actually uses these?” said Luscena, looking down.
“You should have seen how fast he grew. Ethan was hardly three kilos at first, and by the time I … left, at four months, he was double that. Imagine! He had three chins,” Malila said, laughing.
“They make something, and it licks it up, like a discharge of sorts? That can’t be good … for either of them, can it?” replied Luscena. She looked down at herself again.