In Evil Times

by Melinda Snodgrass

  “The lieutenant asked me to keep her confidence,” Tracy said stiffly.

  “And if I order you?”

  “I gave the lady my word.”

  “You took an oath.”

  “And you took two. Medical privacy versus good order and discipline. Which one are you going to obey?”

  “And an armchair lawyer too. Damn you, boy. You can escort her back to her quarters.” He started to turn away.

  “Sir, she thinks he won’t try again,” Tracy blurted. “I’m not sure that’s true. She won’t transfer, and well, I wondered if you had any advice?”

  “That she shouldn’t be here at all, but that ship has sailed.” Exeteur sighed. “I can make a suggestion to the captain that she not wander out of officers’ territory.”

  “You’re assuming it’s an hombre.” Blood was pounding in Tracy’s temples.

  “That would be easier.”

  “For who?”

  “Good order and discipline,” Exeteur said with a significant look. “But in the highly unlikely and very hypothetical chance it was an officer then a man’s name might help.”

  “Sir?”

  “Husband, Lieutenant. Husband. A man is hesitant to touch another man’s property.”

  “She shouldn’t be forced to marry just to stay safe.”

  “An engagement might do as well,” the doctor mused.

  “I could do that.”

  “You?” Incredulity dripped off the word.

  Given the doctor’s reaction Tracy hastened to add, “Of course I wouldn’t hold her to it.”

  “Good God, boy, no one would believe it. She’s the daughter of the Duque de Nico-Hathaway. The idea she would affiance herself to someone like you…” He must have read something in Tracy’s face for he added, “It was kind of you to offer, but… no.” He shook his head. “Also, think what it would do to your reputation. You’d be viewed as an encroaching intitulado looking to use marriage to better himself.”

  “Yes, God forbid any of us ever try to better ourselves.” Acid laced the words.

  “Don’t fire up, boy. I didn’t mean to insult you.” Which you did, you pompous prick, but Tracy managed not to say it aloud. “You’d best shove off. I’ll discuss options with the young lady. Perhaps I can convince her to go home.”

  Tracy saluted, whirled on his heel and headed for the door of Medical. “Don’t count on it,” he muttered under his breath.

  * * *

  The priest was a shadow behind the wood grating. Tracy rested his head against the wood, cleared his throat and said, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been seven months since my last confession.”

  “I had noticed that I hadn’t seen you beyond dinners at the captain’s table and at mass.” He paused then added gently, “Would I be right in assuming your presence on Sunday is only because the captain insists, Lieutenant Belmanor?”

  “Yes, that would be correct.”

  “Have you lost your faith, my son?”

  “I don’t know, Father. There just doesn’t seem to be any justice anywhere.”

  “If God exists and really loves us why does he permit bad things to happen?”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No. I struggle with doubt every day. You went through the catechism, right?” the priest asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know the answers the church—”

  “Free will, trust, greater good, blah blah blah,” Tracy recited. His bitterness showed.

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened that has you so bleak.”

  “There’s a man aboard, a fellow officer who assaulted a woman, and I can’t do anything to him.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Beat him to a bloody pulp.”

  “Thus compounding the evil.”

  “Not if he got the message and never touched her again.”

  “Ah.” The shadow shifted and Tracy had a brief glimpse of the priest’s profile, the jawline already beset by a dense five o’clock shadow.

  “So you know?”

  “I was called to minister to the young lady. She was quite concerned about you. That you not do anything foolish and endanger your career.”

  “Is a career worth my honor?”

  “But it’s not just your honor. You have to consider her wishes and reputation. Her honor.” Tracy slumped back against the wall of the confessional. “What else is bothering you?”

  “My bunkmates. I hate them. They never let up on me, reminding me that I’m just lowborn scum. Nothing I do, nothing I accomplish is ever going to erase my background. I’m smarter than any of them! I work harder! I’m not asking them to respect me, just leave me the fuck alone! Sorry, Father.”

  “I have heard strong language before.” There was a chuckle in the light tenor voice. “As to your bunkmates, you understand they’re scared of you, right?”

  “Huh?”

  “They’ve been raised to believe their titles and the circumstance of their births prove they’re superior in all respects. Then you come along and threaten that comforting world view.”

  “So you’re an intitulado too.”

  “Oh no, I was the Duke of Bedford; my full name is Kenneth Robin Herbrand Francis Russell. But you can call me Father Ken.” The humor and the warmth in the priest’s voice removed any embarrassment.

  “I don’t know that title and my father made sure I memorized them all.”

  “It’s an old Earth title dating from the seventeenth century, not one of the new League titles. I’m quite the black sheep of my family. Wanting to be a priest, renouncing my title. Fortunately I have a younger brother, and he’s managing perfectly well. Though heating Woburn Abbey is a struggle with the North Atlantic Drift shutdown. Anyway, I do hope you’ll forgive me for being a member of the FFH, and I’m sorry for maundering when I should be listening to you. I do understand your dilemma. You’re between worlds and as a result you can’t feel comfortable anywhere. I can’t promise you that it will get better, but I think you have the strength to endure and come through this difficult period. You won’t always be the junior lieutenant. I want you to reflect on the fact that you are a worthy man, and that people care enough about you to put aside their own pain to protect you. I also want you to say the Rosary and promise not to maim or murder any of your fellow officers. And I want you back here next week to tell me how it’s going.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Please.”

  “All right.”

  I may have just made a friend.

  14

  DECISION POINT

  Cipriana didn’t go home. She also didn’t go to the captain’s table for dinners any longer. Tracy missed seeing her there because he could at least judge how she was doing from her expression. She had been assigned to Medical even though nothing in her training supported that posting. As near as Tracy could determine she had become a glorified secretary to Dr. Exeteur.

  He tried to follow Father Ken’s advice, but it seemed like his entire world was filled with entitled assholes who demanded he kiss those noble asses each and every day. Rage was a foul taste on the back of his tongue and his gut hurt. He wondered if he was developing an ulcer. Mostly he wondered if he could face one more day. He kept his word to the priest and went each Saturday to confession even though there was a monotonous theme to all of them. Most began with “I want to kill—fill in the blank.” Anger and pride, those were his sins. He struggled, tried to find peace because he didn’t want to disappoint the gentle little priest, but neither prayers, confession nor violent exercise seemed to help.

  * * *

  The first year of Tracy’s tour had come and gone, and now the Triunfo was in orbit around the particularly undistinguished colony world of Wasua. Shuttles had been busy delivering a rotating group of crewmen to enjoy some leave, while the fusileros were going to play war games. It was either wisdom or sadism on the part of their commanders that the soldiers were going to be per
mitted to get shit-faced and laid before they had to play pretend war.

  The main city looked like it had been thrown up in a day and would disappear just as quickly. It was a place where colonists stopped to outfit their vehicles, pick up their homesteading permits and headed out to break sod on a new world. It had a lot of cheap wheeled vehicles and trailers for sale, stores selling overpriced portable shelters, tractors, seed, fertilizer, frozen livestock embryos and the livestock to carry them. And bars. It had a lot of bars.

  Tracy had found one well away from the spaceport. In this dank, dark space smelling of cheap beer, rancid grease and lost dreams he was unlikely to run into anyone from the ship. A soccer game played on a screen over the bar with the sound turned down to a low growl. There was no conversation among the surly customers who all seemed to seek the shadows. The only other sounds were the dull clunk of glass on glass as the bartender filled orders and the click of hooves as the Hajin waitress delivered them. She had a long, tangled red mane and her top barely covered her sagging teats.

  He wasn’t sure why he’d picked a place on the edge of the city. Maybe a sense that he could run. It was easy to get a homesteading permit. He could ask Donnel about putting him in touch with a Cara’ot surgeon. Change his face. Take off, start over.

  As a farmer? He didn’t have the first idea about farming. He had been raised in the biggest city on Ouranos. He’d be bankrupt in a season. He gestured to the bartender to fill his glass again. It was cheap whisky and it went down harshly, etching pain down his throat to land like a smoldering coal in his already roiling gut. He thought about finding a brothel— he’d been celibate for over a year—but that would require effort and he was too depressed to muster up the energy— for either the search or the activity. He motioned at his glass.

  The bartender, a big man with tattoos on his arms and a dirty apron that strained across his gut, tipped in another shot. The harsh fumes made Tracy’s eyes water. “You’ve been hammering those down, son.” Tracy looked up to meet his surprisingly kind brown-eyed gaze. “Sure you’re going to be able to find your way back to your ship?”

  “Don’t care.”

  “Yeah you do. They hang deserters in the League.”

  “They wouldn’t even look for me. I’m the embarrassment. The intitulado. They’d be glad I’m gone.”

  “Pretty thin thread to hang your life on. Look, son, I can see you’ve got troubles.”

  “Wow, you always this perceptive?” Tracy snarled.

  “Don’t piss off the bartender. I might cut you off. Look, you want to hear a real tale of woe… go talk to that guy.” The bartender jerked a thumb at a fat, sweating man sprawled in a chair and staring morosely into his empty glass. “It’s a load of bullshit, but it’s entertaining as hell and after you hear it your troubles won’t seem so big.”

  Tracy took another look at the man. Even with his dark skin the broken veins in his nose were visible and the sclera around the dark eyes was bloodshot. The tight curls of his luxuriant hair were streaked with grey. The bartender moved away to place full glasses on the Hajin’s tray. Tracy dithered; finally he grabbed up his glass and walked over to the man. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

  He sat down at an empty chair. “He,” Tracy said with a jerk of his thumb toward the bartender, “says you have a story that will put everything in perspective for me. Amaze me.” A quivering ran along his nerves. He really hoped the man would object. Jump up and take a swing at him. Tracy longed for a fight, a chance to pound on somebody. He’d been stopped from dealing with Wessen by Cipriana and Father Ken and he couldn’t start a fight on the ship. He’d either end up cashiered or in another stupid duel. He absently rubbed the scar at his temple. Unfortunately the man didn’t object. He leaned forward over the bulge of his gut and blinked owlishly at Tracy.

  “Loren doesn’t believe me. But it’s all true.” Even slurred by alcohol Tracy recognized the round vowels and clipped consonants of a member of the FFH. God knew he was familiar with it after three years at the High Ground and now aboard the Triunfo. He was afraid he had begun to acquire the aristocratic accent.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s all true?”

  The tip of the man’s tongue wet his lips. “I could tell the tale better if my throat weren’t so dry.”

  Tracy almost left, but something made him decide to play along. He went to the bar and bought a bottle of bourbon. He slammed it down in the middle of the table. Filled his glass and filled the man’s.

  “Okay. Talk.”

  The man drained his glass in one long swallow. Tracy refilled it. The man tried to straighten, swayed a bit in his chair and gripped the edge of the table with a pudgy hand to brace himself. “I am much, much more than I seem.”

  “Okay.”

  The man looked around nervously, leaned in and whispered, “I have to be very careful. They’re everywhere.” He looked around again, and gulped down his second drink. “If they knew I was talking to an officer…” He made a throat-cutting gesture. He started to reach for the bottle. Tracy pulled it away from him.

  “Uh uh, not until you sing your song.”

  The man laid a finger against his lips and leaned in close to Tracy. His breath was a nauseating mix of booze and halitosis. “What I’m about to tell you could shake the very foundations of the League. It will put you in grave danger. But perhaps you are the man I’ve been waiting for.”

  “If we keep waiting long enough another man might come along.”

  The drunk gave him an aggrieved look. “I hope you intend to take this seriously.” Tracy grabbed the bottle and started to stand, but then words tumbled from the man’s mouth like spilled marbles. “It all began with a bachelor party. Did I mention I was a very prominent individual? I had staff and one of my young aides was getting married.”

  Tracy sank back into the chair. The man continued. “His friends had arranged for a night out at one of Hissilek’s more elegant strip clubs. I shouldn’t have gone. It was beneath my dignity and while one hopes to be on good terms with your assistants one can’t make friends of them.” The man frowned, which gave him the look of a petulant baby. “If only I hadn’t, but the lads pleaded and the atmosphere at home hadn’t been precisely warm.” Another frown. “My wife’s current lover was the age of our nineteen-year-old daughter.” He gave an irritated gesture. “Whatever. Suffice it to say I agreed.”

  Intrigued despite himself Tracy refilled the man’s glass.

  “The club was very exclusive, catering to only the very best of the FFH. All human waitstaff. Oh, I presume that BEMs toiled behind the scene, but in the club proper only our kind. Beautiful naked women posed on rotating platforms suspended from the ceiling. The platforms were shaped like galaxies and made of faux diamonds. You could see the gems dimpling their bare buttocks. On the stage a constant parade of dancers writhed and undulated.” Once again the tongue touched his lips and the man’s hand disappeared beneath the table. Tracy had a feeling it was exploring the man’s crotch.

  “What I didn’t know was that in addition to the normal human dancers they had a few to appeal to those with… exotic tastes.”

  “You mean aliens.”

  “Yes.”

  Tracy sneered. “I can’t imagine being aroused by a Hajin or Isanjo. Much less a Flute or a Sidone—I mean, spiders?”

  “Good God, man, no. I’m not a pervert.”

  Ah, Tracy thought.

  “No, this was a Cara’ot. You know they can change their forms and this one was most alluring. Most alluring indeed.” The puffy lids closed over the bloodshot eyes and the man smiled, clearly viewing a pleasant memory. “She arrived to a drum roll, the clash of cymbals and a single spotlight in the darkness. Leaping to center stage like a gazelle. She wore an elaborate mask and headdress and unlike the others she was cloaked and veiled. She began to dance and she was quicksilver and starlight. None of the harsh gyrations of the other girls. This was a song in motion. There were light-emitting diodes set into
her claws. Streaks of multi-colored light wove about her.” His voice had taken on a singsong quality.

  “Bit by bit the concealing layers fell away until a tail, streaked and ringed with red and white fur, began to undulate with her. Another layer of veiling fell, and the fur that banded her crotch like a bikini and rose to a point between her perfect breasts was revealed. My young aides were disgusted. I was mesmerized. I gripped the table begging her to remove the mask. To show me all that she was.

  “Unlike the other women she wouldn’t allow us to grope and stroke her. If you held a credit spike she would dance close enough for you to insert it into the credit belt she wore, but if you touched her body those claws would rake you.”

  Tracy had a sudden vision of aroused and sweating human males, their credit spikes outstretched like pecuniary stand-ins for dicks. It was a reminder of his own horny state. Tracy gulped down his drink.

  “She gave a final breathtaking leap and she posed center stage and removed the mask and headdress. She had this small upturned nose, tiny fur-covered ears thrust up from the red and cream curls that fell to her shoulders and her eyes… ah those eyes. Deep green and slitted like a cat’s. I was lost.” The man hung his head. “You see, I had a taste for the exotic. I frequented an Isanjo massage parlor in Pony Town. They knew that. That’s how they got me.”

  “The government?” Tracy asked.

  “No, them.”

  “Who—?”

  “I will get to that. Needless to say I made her my lover. And believe me it wasn’t easy. She mocked me, but I persevered and eventually she relented.”

  “And did she fuck as well as she stripped?” Tracy asked.

  “Please. Don’t be crude about Samarith. My beautiful Sammy.” His voice was as mournful as a debt-ridden Flute singing of woe. “I called her Sammy and she called me Han and we pretended the world wasn’t as it was; that our love could be accepted. For you see it wasn’t all sex. She was the companion of my heart, the keeper of my soul. Some nights we would just sit and talk, the tips of her ears tickling my chin as I held her in my arms. I poured out everything to her. My hopes and dreams, regrets and fears. My secret shames and my deepest desires. She was interested in everything about me: my economic theories; my old fencing master when I had been a boy; the furnishing in our house on Grenadine. I showered her with expensive gifts. She was like a drug. I began to shirk my duties so I could spend more hours in her company.”