The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  “That would be cheating,” Kris told her, “but yes, I know what it is.”

  “A hint?”

  “Cheating!” the general laughed.

  “I’m Miss Bee; that’s the hint,” Kris told her. She looked at General Briggs.

  “It’s something I learned up there on my own ridge, sir. How to concentrate on what’s important, how to ignore things that aren’t important and above all, never to forget my humanity.

  “I’m not sure where wheels fall in there, though,” Kris told him.

  “Nowhere,” he said cheerfully. He turned to the dark-haired captain. “Captain Stone, you are disqualified for the contest.” He turned back to Kris. “You see, no one here would dream that I’m breaking three dozen federal laws building this. Not the Commandant of Cadets, not the rest of my Board, not the professors, not even, I’m sorry to say, any of the students. All are free to rubberneck, and everyone, except Captain Stone now, is eligible to win. But their minds just won’t stretch that far.”

  Kris nodded.

  Captain Stone frowned. “I’m missing something here, sir. This is against the law? How? Why?” She waved at the construction going on.

  “Good grief, yes!” Ezra said.

  Kurt just grinned. Diyala had the most revealing comment. “This doesn’t look like the other machine you showed me. Is it the same?”

  “It is the same idea, it’s just a different way of doing it,” Kris told her. “I hope you won’t mind, General, if I send Andie a note about wheels?”

  “No, no. That was actually my idea, I’m pleased to say. There are still a few new things left in my ancient brain.”

  Kris faced him directly. “You understand that I came here with every intention of saying yes. That hasn’t changed. But I can’t be a lecturer and consultant. I just don’t have the qualifications.”

  He shook his head. “You gave an amazing brief in just a few minutes.”

  Ezra said something to Kurt, and it was Kurt who spoke up. “I’d like to put in my two cents, General.”

  “Go ahead, Major.”

  “There are security concerns here, sir. At some point in time where Kris is will leak. That will be a distraction and a half for your corps of cadets. The longer it takes for that leak to happen, though, the more likely something will come along and replace it in the news cycle.”

  “I don’t think that’s very likely,” General Briggs told him. “Not with Miss Bee’s father’s plans. He’s going to be in the news for months, at the very least, and if he starts securing indictments, as I suspect he will, the attention will redouble. I am prepared for that.”

  “I don’t suppose I could be a slightly inexperienced Rook?” Kris asked.

  “You could be,” the general told her, “but you’d be a lion amongst the lambs, and a good part of your schedule is going to be what I want, not what you want. There are a lot of routine things that you can dispense with or learn on your own time. It’s not like close order drill requires any real thought.”

  Kris wasn’t sure why the others all laughed.

  “A student entering now, sir?” Captain Stone asked. “I mean...”

  “I know. However, it is probably for the best. She’ll be a part-time student, Captain. Most of the time she’ll be working for me, here.” He waved at the construction.

  “I’m afraid what this is still escapes me, sir,” the captain told him. “Actually, this whole conversation pretty much escapes me.”

  Kurt Sandusky exclaimed, “General! You’ve trained her well! She has the guts to make an observation, even if she doesn’t know what to make of it!”

  The captain seemed upset but managed to contain herself.

  “General,” Kris told him, “I know about security concerns. For the last three and a half months people have been trying to kill me. I am not going to live the rest of my life like this -- in hiding. Ezra and Kurt will get with you and work out security. It will not be overpowering. If I can’t be one of your students, even if in name only, I’d rather be someplace else.”

  “As you wish. You understand, I thought I was supposed to be shy about using your name.”

  “You didn’t hear that from me, sir. My father worries, as well he should -- of course, I’m not the one trying to pull down half the government. I’m more like Bilbo Baggins -- There and Back Again.”

  That brought a laugh from the men and blank stares from the two women at Kris’ words.

  “I would just as soon be myself, and I hope you aren’t trying to hide that,” Kris waved at the construction.

  “No, I’m not trying to hide it, although the Board has had a couple of questions about the money.”

  “Kris,” Kurt said, speaking up, “your mother and Mrs. Briggs are old friends. Otto left a large chunk of his fortune in your father’s care, and he agreed with Helen to support this research.” He chuckled, “Andie has donated a quarter of the money in her father’s name, even if she doesn’t know it. Your father has donated forty-five percent in Marjorie Briggs’ name and another fifteen percent in the name of Norwich. The rest came from Norwich proper.”

  Captain Stone was more focused on something else. “Your father is trying to bring down the government? Is he one of the protestors?”

  Kurt roared with laughter, but General Briggs held up his hand. “I haven’t said this before, and I guess I should make it known now, Captain.

  “On the Fourth of July the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the individual Chiefs, the heads of all Reserve and National Guard formations, regiment-sized or larger, along with all state and local police agencies, were ordered by the President to use, and I quote ‘all necessary means’ to prevent the general strike and to suppress any protests.

  “Along with a number of other commanders in the various services in the rank of colonel and above, I signed a joint letter that we sent to the President. The first sentence was hotly debated and consisted of polite noise. The rest was two sentences and that was what counted: ‘Mr. President we, the undersigned, officers of the Armed Forces of the United States of America, took oaths to defend the United States of America and its Constitution -- there was nothing in any of those oaths suggesting that we defend you. With respect, sir, your order is refused.’”

  Ezra whistled. “You mutinied?”

  “The UCMJ specifies circumstances when members of the armed forces are to refuse orders and how it is to be done. That’s what we did.” He turned to Kris. “So your parents could walk to the podium in downtown LA, and people all over the United States walked to podiums and aired their grievances in peace, while the troops and police stayed home.”

  “I spent the summer serving with Linda Wallace,” Kurt told the general. I have never met anyone braver. Not ever.”

  “She is who?” the general asked.

  “She is Andie Schulz’s friend; she’s the woman who leaked to the Internet the nature of the questioning she underwent. Mine was not as bad, but one of the six of us vanished the first day and they later said he was a Chinese spy shot while trying to escape. That’s part of the discovery Ollie Boyle is seeking.”

  “Linda Wallace was the one they beat, over and over, stripped nude, and then they broke her legs?” General Briggs asked.

  “That’s the lady. She has more balls than you and I, sir.”

  “Good God! I thought she was still in the hospital!”

  “Sir, as soon as she could get around in a power chair and then a walker, she was working on rescuing Kris, Andie and Ezra. There were times when she would stand in pain that left her weak and trembling. Then she’d get it together again and continue. Not just once, but over and over.

  “She went through with us when we did the first survey. She went through with us when we went to stay. Like I said, I’ve never met anyone braver.”

  Diyala, the only one who hadn’t talked until then, spoke up. “Don’t forget to tell them that your soldiers killed my mother, my uncle, my aunt, their two sons, their daughter who was an inf
ant, and more than four hundred others.”

  Kurt spoke first. “You make it sound like a bad thing, girl. And you were where you were, doing what, eh? Did you sail all that distance across the sea to make friends -- or take slaves?”

  “Slaves, of course. You are barbarians.” She looked around and closed her mouth.

  “Well, girl, you might as well know that I was the one who did the killing, not Kris. She commanded, but it wasn’t as though I needed to be told what to do.”

  Kris could see Captain Stone looking at her when Kurt said she’d commanded. There was no doubt that Melek had put her in charge. Ezra was considered on the edge of nobility to the Arvalans -- but Kurt was an unknown factor. Sure, she’d actually gone along to translate, but it had been made clear to Collum and Melek that she was in charge, no matter how hollow that was.

  Kurt had hardly said six words to her -- he’d set up the mortar in the right spot, and when the time came, she told him to shoot, and he fired one shell that, unexpectedly, did the trick. None of them had expected what happened, but the fact was it happened.

  Diyala bowed slightly to Kris. “You captured me.”

  Kris lifted her head and looked at Captain Stone, who was still working through the whole thing.

  “Captain, those devices will, in the next few months, be fusor containment chambers -- the sort that open doors on other planets. The wheels will facilitate moving them, trying to find a good place to explore. They are, so far as I know, still not permitted, except the one that was built to rescue Andie, Ezra and myself.

  “The government has let the first one remain in operation, because there are human beings on the other side, and all sorts of scientists have questions they are desperate to ask them. It’s kind of slid under the radar.”

  “Oh! Kristine Boyle! I heard the name but not much more!”

  “I’m hiring Miss Boyle to consult with us on exploration beyond the Far Side doors, not to mention on the doors themselves. She’s interested in learning from us as well,” General Briggs added.

  Kris nodded. “Captain,” Kris said, pulling Diyala lightly to stand next to her. “One thing about blue doors to the Far Side -- prejudice and political correctness have to stay on this side. There are objective truths and realities, and everything is not relative. Diyala Trennys is the daughter of the man sent to conquer a continent that is probably at least the size of Asia -- and enslave every man, woman and child he doesn’t kill.

  “He’s black -- and their preferred slaves are white. The people we were with were white. Some of them were crooked, some evil and some splendid. If you don’t use your judgment, if you let those judgments, based on your preconceptions, guide you, you can end up dead, other people in the party can end up dead -- or worse, you end up slaves.”

  “That seems -- unreal.”

  Kris gestured at Ezra. “We found a chamber in a cave where once upon a time the occupants kept slaves. The regular folks slept on hammocks, up and down the walls. The slaves slept sitting up on the floor, lest they throw themselves off an upper level hammock and kill themselves. Those slaveholders were white people too.

  “Andie and I were women, in a culture that esteems women -- as wives and mothers. They thought I was a man because I wore pants, and Andie at four feet six inches tall, confused them entirely with short hair and long pants. Women in their culture wear dresses and long hair and most are within an inch or two of five six.”

  “Judgment, Captain. Judgment and values are what will carry you through. Not political correctness or relativism.”

  “You’ll never guess why I think Miss Boyle will be an asset to our program,” the general said dryly.

  “There is one other thing, something that no one else has thought of,” Kris told them. “People are making fusors in their basements and garages, all over the planet, I understand. Some of those fusors are the variety that make doors. People are going to make a lot of doors here in the next few years.

  “It isn’t that difficult to make Far Side doors. That means we’re going to have a lot of people going through a door and getting lost or getting in trouble and the same thing is true in the reverse. It must be a huge universe out there, or we have just been lucky we haven’t been visited yet in modern times.” She waved at Diyala. “Imagine how exciting it would be if the Tengri had a door that opened here. Chew on that for a while.”

  Kurt whistled. “Jesus! I never thought about the shoe being on the other foot!”

  Ezra was more prosaic. “After what it took to do a simple rescue like ours, you have to wonder what it’s going to be like to rescue others.”

  “And, considering the current degree of unhappiness with things,” Kris added, “there will always be the possibility that some of those leaving have neither intention of coming back nor any desire to be rescued.”

  “There’s definitely a lot to chew on,” General Briggs said. “What say we go back to campus and have lunch and we can talk about it some more?”

  * * *

  Andie Schulz sat expressionlessly across the conference table as Jon Bullman sat down opposite her.

  He held up two pages of paper, clipped together.

  “Is there anything else?” he asked with a little laugh. Two pages of three columns each, 10 point type -- Andie’s wish list.

  “That’s a start.”

  “You need to do another list,” he told her. He let the pages flutter. “I understand this, and I don’t have a problem with any of it. The panty-waists and stuffed-shirts will, though.”

  “That is my bottom line,” she told him.

  “Fine, just fine. But the chicken-shit crowd will look at this and decide that you have to be stopped -- for your own good, of course. And then you would have a very difficult time -- at least for the time being. Better, Miss Schulz, to have another list -- one that will set their little politically-correct, liberal-progressive hearts beating with pride.

  “Instead of a UAV, you should have the collected works of Mao. Instead of thirty more P90s, you need some of the poems of Maya Angelou. Things like that.” He smiled genially. “You should have a few Native American canoes, instead of three outboards, and it should be a ‘Pacific Islander’ catamaran instead of just a two-hull cat boat.”

  She looked at him without expression. “None of us have been able to figure you out, Mr. Bullman. Not even Linda. She said the book on you is mixed. You helped with the ten million person march, but that you had been planning on running for the NY state Senate this fall.”

  “I had to withdraw from the race,” he told her. “Late this spring, my oldest daughter was talking to her friends at school during lunch when she collapsed, jerking and suffering serious convulsions. She was diagnosed with ‘Uncertain Origin Epilepsy.’ They have done MRIs, CAT scans, ultra-sounds -- they took her brain apart virtually, and they can find no cause for the seizure.

  “While she was undergoing testing, she had another seizure and since she was wired up to an EEG at the time, they had a good read on what was happening -- even if they still didn’t know what’s causing the seizures.

  “They put her on some drugs, and in the five months since, she has had no more seizures. There is no certainty in life, Miss Schulz -- they could return at any time. About a half percent of her brain cells die with each seizure. She has trouble remembering a few things now.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. My father’s death has given me a new perspective on compassion that I never imagined. I am truly sorry.”

  “He was a very brave man, strong and determined,” Jon told her. “I admired him, I admired his struggle and I greatly admire the way his daughter turned out.

  “Just because I’m a New York Democrat, do not assume I have much in common with most of the members of my party. Like a lot of people, my actual beliefs don’t fit into the neat little boxes people have made for us.

  “I do think you acted rashly and foolishly, without thinking everything through. That said, you are eighteen; at that age no one
spends enough time thinking things through and even when you think you have, you have so many gaps in your experience that major concerns are omitted. You were not malicious and, in hindsight, it’s now clear that the doom-sayers were wrong once more. People like me, Miss Schulz, are getting almighty tired of narrow-minded bigots defining what can and can’t be done in this country -- whether they come from the left or the right.”

  “And this answers my question in what way?”

  “For reasons I don’t pretend to understand, back in February the senior senator from New York ended up seated next to me at a Democrat Party fund-raising dinner. We struck up a conversation, and he seemed genuinely interested in my candidacy for the state senate. Since then, he’s aided me a few times. Clearly, I was being cultivated and courted.

  “People at his level do not engage in clear quid pro quos. There is nothing so crude, even, as a mention of ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’ When I had to withdraw from the campaign for personal reasons, he was quite supportive and told me that there would be a next time. There is always, he told me, a next time.

  “When they were looking around for someone to come here, he offered my name as a suggestion. Good Democrat, former shop steward, and then popular line foreman and a bunch of other ticket punches like the Lion’s Club -- where I volunteer because they have an outreach program for handicapped kids, and I love helping kids.

  “They completely ignored, as near as I can tell, everything else in my history that doesn’t fit their idea of what a liberal-progressive should be. Now my would-be mentor is in the dock with a lot of his peers, and he’s too busy trying to save his ass than worrying about me. In fact, except for the couple of dozen panty-waists and moron scientists that have shown up here, no one is paying any attention to me at all.

  “So, Miss Schulz -- do up another list. An innocuous list. Do what you please, however. I would be willing, if nothing else, to offer advice if you would let me.”

  “Advice, as opposed to mandates?”

  “Miss Schulz, your sins were those of youthful exuberance. I have trouble seeing that as a bad thing. You lack experience, to be sure, but at the same time, I don’t think you are someone who makes the same sort of mistake twice.”