by John Dalmas
The temperature had soared, and sweat had soaked through Varlik's twill shirt; workouts aboard the Quaranth had developed his sweat gland function well beyond the ordinary. After filling out brief forms and labels, they left their packaged cubes with the sergeant there for dispatch to Iryala in the day's message pod. Even by message pod, the sergeant told them, it would take 9.83 standard days for reports to reach Iryala—11.90 Orlanthan days.
From the communications center, it was no more than an eighty-foot walk down a corridor to the information office. At their knock, Trevelos called out to enter, and they did, Varlik holding the door for the other two. Trevelos's almost boyish pleasure of the day before was gone. The expression that met them now was stiff and guarded.
"How can I help you?" he asked.
It was Varlik who answered, "We'd like a vehicle."
Trevelos's expression became stiffer, yet vaguely unhappy. "I'm afraid I can't do that."
Varlik was dumbfounded. "Why? Yesterday you said we could have one or more if we wanted."
Trevelos's discomfort was tangible. "I'm afraid I overspoke myself. If you want to go somewhere, perhaps I can arrange a chauffeured vehicle."
"Okay. We'd like to be taken to the T'swa camp."
Trevelos didn't answer for several seconds. "I'm afraid that's impossible. The T'swa camp is off-limits."
"Off-limits? Why?"
"The T'swa's privacy is to be strictly respected."
"But lieutenant, I was there last night and had a direct invitation from Colonel Koda of the Red Scorpion Regiment to stay with them, to describe them and their training for the Iryalan public. He told me he'd expect me today."
Trevelos actually blushed. "I'm afraid I can't help you with that, Mr. Lormagen. Perhaps something else."
Hormones—something—surged through Varlik's body, with a feeling first of heat, then of internal numbness, incredulity, as he stared at the information officer. Then Bakkis spoke, his tone casual.
"What, specifically, did the general order, lieutenant?"
Varlik's eyes turned to Bakkis's sweaty, somewhat florid face, then to Trevelos again. Bakkis had put his finger on the problem, Varlik was sure: Lamons. But the only result was that Trevelos looked less uncomfortable, as if with a shifting of blame from himself to the general.
"I do not feel I should discuss my orders."
"Of course." Bakkis had taken over, and Varlik was willing, for now, that he should. "We can understand that," Bakkis went on. "In that case, we'd like to see the agricultural operation."
Trevelos brightened. "Certainly. When would you like your car?"
Bakkis looked at Varlik, "Varl?" he said.
"Uh—why not now?" At the moment he didn't care—he had no real interest in the Aromanis farms—but it was an answer.
Trevelos looked almost happily at Bakkis. "I can have a car and driver here in fifteen minutes. And I'll call the farm headquarters so you can have lunch there. Their executive dining room has a marvelous reputation among the general's staff; almost everything they serve is fresh, and the cooks are excellent."
Bakkis asked that they be picked up at their quarters in fifty minutes—half a local hour. After the lieutenant had made arrangements with the motor pool, the three journalists said goodbye and left. When the office door had closed behind them, Bakkis muttered an obscenity, but without heat, and started toward the communications center. "I'm going to dispatch my office and ask them to get this restriction lifted if they can. They were especially interested in the T'swa. Meanwhile, let's keep Trevelos happy and relaxed."
So Iryala Video had also been especially interested in the T'swa. "Messages will take ten days Standard each way," Varlik pointed out, "plus whatever time it takes at the other end to get an order issued—if it gets issued."
They had stopped outside the comm center door. "The next time we see Trevelos," Bakkis said quietly, "I'll tell him we've dispatched our offices for a reversal, and that we appreciate what he's done for us. He'll assume we're content to wait, that we're trusting our offices to take care of things for us. That's the way he'd do it. Maybe that will relax him about our wanting to get to the T'swa. Then, in three or four days, we'll try to get a car without a driver, to hop around and interview some Romblit troops. He's already feeling propitiative, and if he'll go for that, screw the restriction; we'll go see the T'swa."
Varlik wondered if that would work, and if Bakkis actually believed it might. One thing was certain: He'd drastically misjudged this man back on the Quaranth.
* * *
The trip to the farm had been more interesting than Varlik had anticipated. The travelways were lined with tall native trees. The headquarters buildings were comfortable, rambling, air-conditioned, and beautifully landscaped, with everything marvelously clean and well-tended. The cuisine was better than anything he'd experienced before. The Romblit personnel there seemed competent and friendly. Security personnel were numerous, well-armed, and relaxed—were paramilitary employees of Technite, Ltd., the firm that had long operated the Orlanthan fief for the Romblit government. The army apparently restricted itself to patrolling the surroundings, leaving the on-farm scene at something like prewar normal.
Remarkably little powered machinery was used in the agricultural operations; hand labor was compellingly cheap, apparently, and probably more precise for many tasks. Even the removal of weeds in large rowcrop fields was done by a line of tall thin workers, the hoes in their hands rising and falling in unison.
The field workers and domestics had given Varlik his first look at sweatbirds. They were a brownish people, slender except for barrel chests, their coarse brown hair straight and almost crested, their flaring eyebrows like tufts of golden-brown feathers that presumably served to divert sweat. And even those who served in the dining room showed little sign of subcutaneous fat. They reminded Varlik of kerkas, the tall wading birds of Iryala; their noses really were relatively long and pointed, and their necks too long as human necks go. Their physical structure seemed designed to maximize the body's surface/mass ratio for dispersing body heat. They were quite different from the husky T'swa, whose phenotype had evolved under considerably heavier gravity.
Varlik had wondered what the local sweatbirds thought of the war; perhaps, he'd told himself, they didn't even know about it, although all the nearby military activity must have told them something was happening somewhere.
After the farm, Bertol and Konni had been ready for a shower, to be followed by editing their field cubes in air-conditioned comfort. Varlik, though, had decided to take care of one final job, and jogged through dusty 120° heat to headquarters. After the aesthetics of the farm, the drab and dusty military base seemed utterly graceless. He knocked at the information officer's door and identified himself, and Lieutenant Trevelos's voice bade him enter.
"How can I help you?" the lieutenant asked when Varlik had entered.
"I'd like to see the Orlanthan briefing. It will give me a much better sense of the overall situation here."
Immediately the lieutenant looked worried, then apologetic. "Mr. Lormagen, I really dislike telling you this . . ."
"But you can't let me see it."
"That's right. You're neither a staff officer nor a command officer."
Varlik nodded slowly. "Well . . . thank you, anyway."
He turned and left, jogging back to his quarters for the postponed shower. While showering, he rehearsed several scenes with General Lamons, none of which, he knew, would ever occur. A couple of them were probably physically impossible. Then he too sat down to play his field cube of the day and record his article. When he'd finished, he had to admit it was good, something that readers would appreciate. But it wasn't what he was here for.
After supper he found out where Colonel Voker was quartered—a one-room hut of poured concrete in officers' country. Varlik stood hesitantly, unsure he should be there, then knocked. The colonel opened the door and scowled out at him.
"What do you want?"
/> "I seem to be running into brick walls at the information office. I hoped you could advise me. Again."
Voker's surliness softened slightly, and he gestured Varlik in. His quarters, though military, managed, through the prerogatives and resources of a senior officer, to reflect his personality. The windows were curtained. A small and clearly expensive tapestry softened one wall; a burnished wood bookcase with expensively bound books stood against another. The air conditioner held down the interior temperature to a luxurious 85°. Next to a lightly upholstered chair, a book lay open, face down on a small stand, and a red light glowed in an expensive cube player beside it.
"Specifically?" Voker asked.
Varlik told him of the prohibition against being taken to the T'swa camp, and of Trevelos's refusal to let him see the briefing on Orlantha.
"And this Colonel Koda invited you to stay with them?"
Varlik nodded. "Right."
"Huh." Voker gazed reflectively at him, lips slightly pursed, then abruptly grinned—a grin of pleasure tinged with something else. Malice. "So you still want to live with the T'swa. Well, fine. Be at the headquarters entrance at 05.50 hours tomorrow morning. And carry everything you absolutely need on your person, in case you luck out and make it to the T'swa camp—recorder, camera, toothbrush. The minimum. Don't be obvious—no suitcase. From there it's up to you—your wits and your guts. And your luck.
"And as far as the briefing cube is concerned, you got the essential picture from me aboard the Quaranth."
He stepped back to the door and put his hand on the handle. "And I don't mind telling you, I'll be interested in seeing what happens in the morning."
* * *
At 16.00 hours, Lieutenant Trevelos, reading a novel on the computer screen in his office, was interrupted by a knock. Irritatedly he cleared the screen before saying, "come in." It was Colonel Voker who opened the door, and Trevelos got quickly to his feet.
"At ease, lieutenant. I just came by to ask a question or two."
Trevelos receded into his chair. "Of course, sir." He looked around. "Would the colonel care to sit?"
Voker waved it off. "The reporter, Varlik Lormagen, and I got to know one another on the Quaranth. I ran into him on my way over here, and asked how he's doing. He told me he's been refused access to the Orlantha briefing. Can you give me the background on that refusal?"
"Yes, sir. Last night Mr. Lormagen went out to the T'swa area, and somehow the general heard about it this morning. It made General Lamons very unhappy, and he made it extremely clear to me that under no conditions was I to allow the media to go there again. He was particularly unhappy about Lormagen, and told me—these are his exact words—'You are not to allow this young fart any special privileges.' " Trevelos shrugged, spreading his hands.
Voker nodded thoughtfully. "I get the picture. Thank you, lieutenant. And have a good evening."
In the corridor, Voker allowed himself a chuckle. The situation was exactly as he'd suspected. In fact, he'd have given odds on it, but it was nice to know with certainty. Tomorrow he'd see just how good, and how lucky, young Lormagen was.
12
At the Aromanis Base of the Orlanthan Counterinsurgency Army, the working day began at 05.00. Varlik, Konni, and Bertol Bakkis were outside the headquarters building entrance a quarter-hour later, at 05.25, twenty-five minutes before the time Voker had told him. All three were in field uniform, each with a musette bag slung on one shoulder, video camera on the other. The sun was up, but by only a hand's breadth, and it was still "cool"—about ninety-five degrees.
Konni Wenter was thinking how hot it would be in another hour—worse, another two hours—and whether Lormagen had been truthful when he'd told them he didn't know what was supposed to happen, only that something was. And what his real reason might have been in suggesting they be here with him.
Varlik was glad they'd come. He had the definite idea that he was on somebody's shit list, and that he'd be much more subject to counteraction if he were there alone, perhaps being told he couldn't loiter outside the entrance. This way it wasn't Varlik Lormagen standing here, but a group of journalists.
Bakkis's mind was on idle, thinking nothing, an ability he'd always had when there was nothing requiring his conscious attention. He'd been fifteen years old before he'd realized that everyone didn't do that. Only an occasional thought drifted unbidden through his mind. Just now he was aware of moderate soreness in his thighs and abdomen; the evening before he'd gone to the officers' gym, a set of connected modules with assorted equipment, and begun the distasteful task of becoming physically less unfit.
At 05.45, a sergeant came out, followed by a captain, and told them politely to move aside a few yards, which they did. Moments later they could see a hovercar approaching, open to the heat. They watched it come up the surfaced travelway, through the vehicle park, and pull up before the entrance. The occupants were T'swa, their skin blue-black.
As the vehicle slowed, entering the vehicle park, more men issued from the headquarters entrance. Varlik glanced at them, relieved to find that none wore the novaburst of a general. The time, Varlik realized, was definitely at hand; what he didn't know was what to do about it. Almost unaware of what he was doing, he moved closer, out of the background, visor down, belt recorder on, camera in his hands, its red light blinking. Bakkis advanced beside him.
Varlik's eyes were on the T'swa as they dismounted from the light field vehicle. One of them was Colonel Koda, and one of the others also wore the stylized wings of a full colonel. All wore garrison caps tilted to the right, and by daylight their bristly, close-cropped black hair, like their skin, had a distinct bluish tinge. It was when Koda's feet were on the ground that Varlik stepped forward. A subcolonel in charge of the reception group glanced at Varlik angrily, his mouth opening to speak, but Colonel Koda, stopping to look at the reporter, spoke first.
"Lormagen! My visitor at the landing! I had expected you yesterday. Are you no longer interested in my invitation?"
"Very interested, sir. I was refused transportation to your camp; otherwise, I'd have been there."
The white subcolonel's brows had knotted, his mouth a rictus of consternation.
"Ah!" said Koda. "Are you a soldier? Or under military command?"
"No, sir. I'm a journalist. But I depend on the army for accommodations and assistance."
"Then it was only a matter of transportation?"
"That's right, sir."
"Are you available for additional employment, if it does not interfere with your existing assignment?"
This, Varlik realized, was the moment of decision. "Absolutely, colonel."
They stood there for just a moment while the subcolonel fidgeted inwardly.
"Well, then," Koda said casually, "perhaps you will consent to be my civilian aide—my press aide. I have never had a press aide before, but I imagine that your new duties will not interfere with those of your present employment. Perhaps they will even expedite and mutually strengthen each other."
Varlik felt a grin seep up from somewhere to spread over his face.
"I'd like that very much, sir."
"Good. You are now officially in the employ of the Red Scorpion Regiment, of the Lodge of Kootosh-Lan, of the United Lodges of Tyss, as the regimental press aide. You will accompany me until I instruct you otherwise." Koda turned to the other T'swa colonel and nodded. The other in turn spoke to the Iryalan subcolonel.
"Colonel, we are ready to be presented to your general."
The subcolonel was outranked. Stiff, expressionless now, he turned to the headquarters entrance and led the T'swa party—the two colonels, two majors who were their executive officers, and two captains who were their aides, plus Varlik Lormagen—in to meet General Lamons. A standard army headquarters had a briefing room, and it was there that the general awaited them with several other officers, including Colonel Voker and Lieutenant Trevelos. Lamons stared the T'swa coldly into the room, not noticing the uniformed Varlik behind them.<
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"Colonels," said the general, "I am General Lamons, commanding." He gestured to the officers on either side of him. "This is my executive officer, Brigadier Demler, and this is Major General Grossel, commanding Romblit forces on Orlantha. The other gentlemen are our immediate staff. Welcome."
He was reciting; there was no welcome at all in his words. Chairs stood around a long table, but they were neatly, uniformly shoved beneath it; General Lamons had no intention of inviting them to sit, let alone offering them the quasi-ceremonial courtesy of joma. As he'd spoken, the general's eyes had noticed Varlik, clearly no T'swi, and with his last words of welcome, he looked at the subcolonel who stood beside the T'swa.
"Colonel Fonvill, who is that white man with them?"
"He's their press aide, general."
"Press aide?!"
Trevelos elaborated in a tentative voice. "He's Varlik Lormagen, sir. The journalist from Iryala."
Lamon's face darkened, and he barked out a command as he speared Lormagen with his eyes. "Provost marshal, get that man out of here! Confine him!"
The provost marshal hadn't had time to move when the second T'swa colonel spoke, his voice a flat snap, his black eyes glittering not with rage but with intention.
"General, no one will touch that man!"
The general's head jerked as if slapped, his mouth slightly open, face darkening even more, his eyes narrowed. Then, in a calm voice, the T'swi continued. "I am Colonel Biltong, commanding officer of the Night Adder Regiment. More pertinent to the discussion of the moment, I am also the contract officer of the Lodge of Kootosh-Lan for this expedition. You received a copy of our contract, but perhaps you have not fully familiarized yourself with it. We are a military force of a foreign nation, contracted to Confederation service here. Journalist Lormagen is the civilian employee of one of our regiments. Our personnel are not subject to arrest on your order, except for proper, documented, and verified criminal cause, as expressly provided by contract. Any breach of that contract on your part is grounds for our departure."