by Tom Kratman
There he was met by a sergeant first class sitting at a desk. The sergeant held out one hand and requested, "Orders, please, sir."
Hamilton reached into a breast pocket then withdrew and passed over an identity card. This the sergeant laid down on a gray-colored panel. Instantly a scaled-down picture of Hamilton appeared above the gray pad, flanked by various copies of orders on one side, and disciplinary and academic records on the other.
"Ohhh," the sergeant said. "You're the Martinez Award winner. We've heard all about you, sir."
Hamilton sighed. Make DHG out of Ranger School and nobody cares. Set a record for walking the Area and nobody forgets.
"Yeah, that was me, Sergeant."
The sergeant—Hamilton saw that his name was Moore—stood and held out his hand. "Sir, if you don't mind, I'd like to shake your hand. I figure nobody who hasn't got what it takes could piss off that many people and still graduate from the IMA."
Flattered, Hamilton shook Moore's hand, but countered, "It isn't like I pissed all those people off deliberately, Sergeant."
"I know, sir. I'm sure you didn't. But when a man has a talent like yours . . . well . . . that talent is just gonna shine through.
"Computer," Moore said.
"Yes, Sergeant Moore?" the machine answered.
"Log this officer in. Do we have his billet?"
"Lieutenant Hamilton is assigned to Room 217, Olson Hall, Sergeant. It is a single with a private bath and maid service. The room has been notified to admit him. His inprocessing schedule has been downloaded to his Mark XVII, along with the academic schedule for the first two weeks."
"Only two weeks?" Hamilton asked.
The sergeant shrugged. "Sir . . . this isn't the IMA or even Ranger School where everything goes right pretty much all the time. This is the Regular Army and if you can follow a plan for ten days you're doing pretty well. Two weeks is actually pretty optimistic."
"But . . . "
"War is chaos, sir, and we practice chaos every day. That's our unique talent."
Back in the car, Hamilton let it drive again. Though he'd been at Benning for two months now, all that time had been in Ranger School. He didn't know his way around.
This was wise, letting the car drive. There's no particular and necessary logic to the way the military designates buildings, fields, ranges and such. Sometimes they have both names and numbers; other times not. Sometimes, they're numbered in accord with when they were built. Sometimes they were so numbered, but the numbers were changed. Sometimes they're numbered by blocks. The names can change to suck up to the latest political figure or general officer.
Most of the time, you're doing well if "Building 398" and "Building 399" are within a mile of each other. Chaos: it's what's for breakfast.
Olson Hall, an old barracks used for the last century and a half as a bachelor officers quarters, or BOQ, had somehow kept its number, Building 399, for well over a century. Where Building 4, the main academic building, had had a facelift that didn't quite take, Olson Hall still reflected the look of solid military efficiency it had been born with. Brick, built in a quadrangle open to the west, the living space was stretched around broad interior-facing, railed walkways. The only elevator was industrial, not passenger; those lazy lieutenants could just walk upstairs.
Which is fine, Hamilton agreed, as he trudged up the broad concrete steps carrying four bags full of uniforms and the minimum necessary other gear, a little exercise never hurt anybody . . . but my fucking knees are killing me.
Arriving at the second floor, Hamilton's nose was assailed by a mix of esoteric foodstuffs in preparation mixed in with the marginally washed bodies of some of the sepoy officers—foreigners selected to lead some of the empire's foreign volunteers—who trained at Benning. These sort were often quite good, Hamilton understood. Some said that their ideas of personal hygiene did not always match those of the American citizen officers among whom they were billeted. More objective sources had told Hamilton that people with different diets will smell different, no matter their personal hygiene habits.
There were enough breakable objects in the bags that just dropping them was a poor idea. Instead, he bent at the waist and the knees to lower the two handheld ones to the concrete. Then, straightening— ouch—he reached up and lifted the third. This one he'd had balanced on the back-borne fourth and held steady with the pressure of his head. After lifting it overhead, he placed it, too, on the deck. The last (and curiously enough the Army was still issuing green duffle bags with shoulder straps) he took off one strap at a time.
His other personal belongings, books, dress uniforms and such, would arrive sometime in the next few days. He'd have to call to arrange a drop off and authorize the room to accept it.
"Welcome, Lieutenant Hamilton, to Olson Hall," said the room. "If you would place your palm on the gray panel to the right of the door and look with both eyes directly into the scanner above and to the left of that . . ."
As the palm and retinal scanner recorded and verified his identity, Hamilton heard a familiar feminine voice say, "About time you showed up."
"Hodge, you look like hell," Hamilton said, as the two sat at a table down in the bar just off the lobby of Olson Hall. "Your skin's a mess. You've lost what? Twenty pounds?"
"Twenty-five. And you think you look any better? They starved you worse than they did me."
"True," he agreed, "but not for as long. And it doesn't matter if my tits disappeared. I didn't have any to begin with."
"Never mind," she said, tilting her glass towards him. "They'll grow back. And drink up. I'll start looking better, I promise." She tilted her head to one side. "Did I ever tell you you're an asshole?" she asked.
"Many times."
"Did I ever tell you that you're a cute asshole?"
Kitznin, Affrankon, 5 Shawwal,
1530 AH (4 October, 2106)
Besma was awakened by crying. Worse than crying, really; what she heard was a brokenhearted sobbing severe enough to shake her little bed. Tossing the covers off, she put her feet on the floor and walked on cat feet to the source, an even smaller bed at the foot of her own.
"Petra, are you all right?" she asked. The sobbing grew, if anything, worse.
"I m-m-miss my mommy. I m-m-miss my daddy. And I w-w-want my brother, Hans. They didn't even let me take m-m-my d-d-dolly!"
Besma wasn't much older than Petra. She hadn't a clue about any clinical theories on what to do with a child who's been dragged from her home and sold as a slave. She did, however, have a good heart, a naturally kind and sympathetic heart. She spent some time stroking the hair of the weeping slave, then laid her own dark head down on Petra's lighter one. Finally, when those things did no good, she just wrapped the little Nazrani in a hug and joined her in her sobs.
The next day Besma cornered the groundskeeper, another slave though he was a Moslem from Mauretania, and asked him, "Ishmael, will you escort me to the town my new friend came from? She left some things behind and I'd like to get them for her."
"Ohhh, Miss Besma," Ishmael shook his brown head, frowning, "I don't know about that. I've still got hedges to trim and the garden plot needs weeding and . . . "
From a fold in her garment Besma drew out five silver dirhem, a gift from her father on the last Ramadan and all the money she had. She knew Ishmael had been working to buy his freedom for years, for as long as she could remember, in fact. She also knew that her father was quite liberal about letting his slaves buy their freedom, subtracting a percentage of the value of the work done from the purchase price and asking only for the difference. Lucky was the slave that found his way to Abdul Mohsem's household.
"I can always ask Rafi to fill in for me," Ishmael announced, his frown changing instantly to a smile. "Tomorrow, though, all right? Rafi's so stupid it will take me half a day to teach him what he has to do over a single day. And then I'll have to work half the night to fix the mistakes the idiot boy will have made before your father sees them."
B
esma nodded quickly. A deal was a deal and she was certain Ishmael would keep his end of the bargain.
In a different part of the city, back at the auction house, Rashid counted out the additions to his wealth.
"It's a dirty business, Rashid," the slave dealer said, "you setting the jizya so high these people can't pay. Aren't you worried about getting caught?"
"Why should the caliph care?" Rashid asked. "It's not like these Nazrani filth have any value."
"But they do," the slave dealer said. "Other than the zakat they're virtually the only ones who pay any tax. It's only their sons who are suitable and legal for the corps of janissaries. If you haven't noticed, they do most of the work."
Rashid shrugged. "If Allah wants them to disappear, they'll disappear. If he wants them to continue to exist and to continue in their heresy, they will. Nothing you or I can do will change that."
"As you say," the slave dealer conceded. "Do you have any special plans for the extra money?"
"No, not really. Why?"
"I've got a line on some truly prime females from Slo but the price tag is a little high for me."
"Halvsies?" Rashid asked.
"That would be acceptable."
Room 217, Olson Hall, Fort Benning,
6 October, 2106
"My, that was nice," whispered Hamilton to the ceiling.
"About time you showed up," had led to a bear hug, Hamilton picking Hodge up and swinging her around in full circle before setting her on her feet again. A bear hug had led to talk. Talk, as it will, led the two lieutenants downstairs to the bar almost directly beneath. That had led to some serious drinking, the more serious after four years of the anally tight control of the Imperial Military Academy and two months, in his case, and three, in hers, of far worse deprivation in Ranger School. Drinks were there. Rooms were there. Bodies were there. Attraction, apparently, was there as well. It had seemed only natural to put two and two, or—more technically speaking—one and one, together. Several times.
"I wonder if we'll be in the shit over this," Hamilton mused further.
He didn't expect an answer but got one anyway. Speech still a little slurred, Laurie Hodge answered, "No, dipshit, we're lieutenants, not cadets. We can fuck if we want to. Be unnatural if we didn't. I mean, Jesus, 'a man who won't fuck won't fight.' Don't you read any history?"
Grolanhei, Affrankon, 7 Shawwal,
1530 AH (6 October, 2106)
"I have read the histories," Ishmael said, "but Il hamdu lilah; the Nazrani actually live like this?"
Ishmael led a cloth-wrapped Besma to the front door of Petra's family's home—hovel would have been more accurate—in the town. The slave had a point. The town, whatever it might once have been, had grown decrepit over the years. The asphalt of that portion of the road they trod was sufficiently broken up that the cobblestones underneath it would have been an improvement. The houses were small, dirty and unpainted. Animals—to include disgusting pigs and dogs—wandered free. Worst of all were the people. They, walking with uncertain, shuffling steps, kept their heads down. Even the grubby-faced children seemed to understand their second-class status.
Or do they look and act like that because we're here, Besma wondered. An unpleasant aroma reached the girl's nose. They might look and act like that because we're here, but that smell is something that was here already. Maybe I shouldn't feel so bad that Petra is with me.
Ishmael stopped a passerby and asked, "Where can we find the house of the little girl who was taken as a slave recently?"
Still keeping eyes carefully focused on the ground—yes, Ishmael was obviously a slave but he was equally obviously a Muslim slave and thus far above any Nazrani—the townsman pointed with one hand, saying, "Down that street. Just before the old train station. On the left."
"Shokran, sayidi," Ishmael answered. From his point of view; well, yes, they were stinking Nazrani but he was a slave. And politeness cost nothing.
"Come, Miss Besma," he directed, leading the way.
"Is this the house . . . the former house . . . of Petra bint Minden?" Ishmael asked.
The door, hung on leather hinges, was only slightly ajar, just enough for one eye to peek through. The door started to open, then stopped.
"Wait," said a woman's voice, closing it again.
When the door opened again, fully this time, the woman had covered her hair and the lower half of her face. "What about my daughter?"
Besma pushed past Ishmael and said, "She's with us now. But she told me she'd left behind her doll and . . . "
"She's with you now?" the Nazrani woman repeated. "Who are 'you'?"
"I'm Besma bint Abdul Mohsem. My father is a merchant . . . not a slave dealer; he doesn't sell people."
Backing away from the door with unsteady steps the woman sat heavily into a roughhewn chair. "You mean my daughter was not sold to . . . to . . . ?"
"She's with us," Besma repeated. She saw that the woman's eyes were red and puffy as if she'd been crying for days. "She's fine but she misses her family and her dolly. So I came to get it for her. I can't be away from home very long," the girl added.
"Her dolly? Yes, her dolly!" the woman said, excitedly. "Please wait . . . just a minute, please."
She immediately raced from the room, disappearing somewhere into the back of the hovel. Besma heard scuffling of feet and the opening and slamming of trunks. When the woman came back she had a doll in her hands, but also a bundle of clothing, ratty clothing, to be honest, in her arms. She was also accompanied by a boy who looked enough like Petra that he just had to be her brother.
As the mother turned the bundle of loosely gathered clothes over to Ishmael, Hans pressed an old leather bound volume into Besma's hands.
"It's our great-grandmother's journal," he explained. "They won't let me take it where I'm going soon. Petra can't read it yet but . . . "
"I can read," Besma said. "My father insisted. I can teach her."
Room 217, Olson Hall, Fort Benning,
6 October, 2106
"Yes, I read history," Hamilton said to the form lying next to him on the narrow, issue bed. "But, no, I never read that."
"Patton . . . in Italy, I think, during the Second World War," Hodge explained.
"Okay, if you say so. But I'd like to see the history book you dug that little tidbit out of."
"It was down in the library back at IMA. Deep down," she amended.
"Yes, but in the sober . . . okay, the seriously hungover, light of day, we're still—"
"—no longer cadets," Hodge interrupted. "Not in either's chain of command. Free and over twenty-one. Adults. Moreover, there'll be no punishment tours for you from getting blown by the first captain."
"Hey, at least the first captain was female. That isn't always the way it works." Hamilton laughed aloud. "You know what, Laurie?"
"No, what?"
"She wasn't worth it. Unlike say, you, she gave lousy head. Mechanical, you know. All technique and no feeling."
"That's what I heard . . . from more people than you would care to imagine."
"Jealous, are we?" Hamilton smirked.
"Not anymore," she answered, turning to face him.
Interlude
Kitzingen, Federal Republic of Germany,
16 April, 2003
Tikrit had fallen the previous day, totally eliminating any chance that Saddam Hussein might defeat, or even slow down, the American-led invasion. Gabrielle was of mixed feelings about that. The fighting was over, she thought, and civilian casualties would stop. These were unquestionably good things. But the Americans had not been humbled; America bestrode the world like a colossus. There was no way that could be good.
She saw the waiter from the previous week, Mahmoud, at this week's protest. He stood out for at least four reasons. One was that there were many fewer people; most of the stalwarts who could be counted on for this sort of thing were disillusioned and heartsick, and saw no reason to contest a fait accompli. Another was that he wasn't ca
rrying a sign; indeed he was sitting down sipping a beer, a Kesselring, on this fine spring morning. The third was that he had a look of wry amusement written across his face. He didn't really seem to be part of the demonstration at all. The fourth was that, as she had thought when she had first seen him, Yum.
Gabrielle walked over and sat down. Well, she was, after all, a very modern girl.
"It's pretty hopeless, isn't it," she said, meaning the protest.