by John Varley
“What can I do?”
“Open yourself again,” Virginal said, without hesitation. “You have sealed off the possibility of love. Not only from your mother. There is a girl in your office. You hardly see her. She admires you. She might be your friend. She might be your lover. I don’t know. But there is no possibility for either thing as you are now.”
Once again Nova was bewildered.
“Who are you talking about?”
“I don’t know her name. You would see her, if you looked.”
“I don’t know how.”
Virginal sighed.
“Nova, if you were a Titanide I would tell you to go away for a time. If this disease of the soul infected me, I would go into the wilderness and fast until I could see things clearly again. I don’t know if it works for humans.”
“But I can’t. My job…Cirocco needs me…”
“Yes,” Virginal said, sadly. “You’re right, of course. So good-by.”
Twenty-eight
Cirocco found Conal sitting on a hillside, overlooking Boot Camp.
It was located on a big, long island in the middle of Moros. Tents had been set up. There was a big mess hall and a parade ground. The air was filled with the shouts of sergeants, and the tiny figures of new recruits marched in lines or scrambled over obstacle courses. He looked up as she sat beside him.
“Some place, huh?” she said.
“Not my favorite,” Conal confessed. “But you’re sure getting the recruits.”
“Thirty thousand, last time I checked. I thought I’d have to offer bonuses in pay and food rations to get so many, but they keep coming. Isn’t patriotism a wonderful thing?”
“I never thought about it much.”
“You been thinking about it now?”
“Sure have.” He gestured out over the fledgling Bellinzona Army. “You say they aren’t going to have to fight. But I wonder. They look like they want to. Even…”
“After all they’ve seen on Earth,” Cirocco finished. “I know. I thought it would be hard to raise a volunteer army here. But I don’t think some…deep, basic taste for warfare will ever be gone from the human race. One of these days Bellinzona will grow too big. We’ll establish another city somewhere nearby, maybe in Iapetus. Not too long after that they’ll start trading back and forth. And pretty soon they’ll be fighting each other.”
“Do they like running around and taking orders?”
Cirocco shrugged.
“A few. The rest…lots would go back home if they could. We didn’t tell ’em enlistment’s for the duration, and a medical discharge is the only way out. Half the people down there are thinking they made a mistake.” She pointed to a fenced area. “That’s the stockade. It’s a lot worse than the work camps. When they get out, they soldier very hard.”
Conal knew that; he knew a lot of the things she had just said. He had spent some time here, trying to understand it. He had been born much too late for the days of large armies. Military discipline was foreign and frightening to him. The soldiers he talked to seemed…different.
“They’re sure getting ready to fight,” Conal observed. It was true. The drilling below was in earnest. Sword production was way up. Each soldier was to be provided with a short sword, a hardened-leather chestplate or—for the officers—one of bronze, an iron helmet, good boots and trousers…the basic infantry equipment. They were organized into legions and cohorts, and had learned Roman tactics. There were legions of archers. There were combat engineers learning how to construct siege towers and catapults, which would be built on the site from native materials. Some units had already departed, and were busy in Iapetus and Cronus repairing the bridges of the old Circum-Gaea Highway.
“They have to be ready,” Cirocco said. “If the big fight, the one between me and Gaea…if I lose that, the war won’t be over for those soldiers. They’ll be stuck a long way from home, and Gaea won’t call it off. She’s got maybe a hundred thousand people in Pandemonium, and they’ll all fight. They won’t be trained—Gaea’s too slipshod. But our people will be outnumbered four to one. I owe it to them to see they’re ready to fight.”
Conal took a moment to add this up in his head.
“But we’ve already got thirty thousand, and more coming…”
“Some will die along the way, Conal.” He turned to look at her, and saw she was watching for his reaction.
“That many?”
“No. I intend to do some weeding out. But there will be casualties. How many is up to you, in part.”
He understood that, too. These “Roman” legions would march under the constant threat of air attack. It would be his job to fight off the Gean Air Force.
“How many planes? Do you know that yet?”
“Buzz bombs? I’m pretty sure there are eight combat groups left. That’s eighty planes. How’s the training going, by the way?”
“Very well. I’ve got more good pilots now than I have planes.”
“Well, in planes, what you’ve got is all you’ll ever have. Don’t waste any.”
Conal was momentarily annoyed. It wasn’t like Cirocco to say something like that. He looked at her, and was frightened to see, just for a moment, that she almost looked her age. It must be a hell of a burden.
“Conal…maybe this is a bad time to bring this up. I just got back from a trip with Robin, and I detected a…nervousness about her.”
“What do you mean? What kind of nervousness?”
“Oh…I got the feeling that…maybe she was afraid I was enjoying all this too much.” She gestured with her head out toward the camp, but the gesture implied a lot more.
Conal had had the same thought.
“It did occur to me,” he said, “that nobody’s going to take your job away from you. Not even if you stood for election.”
“You’re right.”
“It’s a great deal of power.”
“It is, indeed. I told you something of what it would be like when we all first discussed this. But hearing about it and seeing it are two different things.”
Conal felt a coldness creeping over him. It hadn’t happened in a long time. The hub of his universe was this enigma called Cirocco Jones. Their relationship had begun in blood and agony. It had moved slowly through the politics of terror and submission, into acceptance, to something close to worship…and finally to friendship.
But there was always a tiny chip of dry ice down there in his soul.
There had been a time, up in that cave, when he thought he was going to die. Cirocco and Hornpipe had not been back in over a kilorev. What little food had been stored for him was long gone. He existed in a half-waking state appropriate to the unchanging light. He watched the meat melt off his bones, and knew they had abandoned him.
That didn’t seem right. He hadn’t expected Cirocco to do that.
But it made him feel oddly superior. He had learned some lessons about himself, and the fellow who starved to death in a few more weeks would be a better man than the one who walked up to the black-clad stranger in the Titanide bar. If she let him die, it would be her loss.
Then Hornpipe had clambered into the cave one “day,” and Conal’s new-built world crashed around him. They were testing me, he thought. Let him get hungry, see what he thinks about that. So what if he goes a little crazy? It’ll make him more manageable.
It lasted only a fraction of a second. Then he saw that Hornpipe was badly injured, bleeding from a dozen wounds, one arm in a sling. How he had made it up here in such a state…
“I am deeply shamed,” Hornpipe had said, in a weary voice. “Had it been within the realm of possibility, I would have been here long since. But we have been unable to move. Cirocco bade me bring you her word that, should she survive, she will apologize to you personally. But live or die, she now grants you your freedom from this place. You should never have been left here.”
Conal had been filled with a thousand questions, none of which seemed important when he saw the food. Hornpipe prepared a meal o
f broth, and stayed with him a short time to be sure he was going to be all right. He would not answer any questions, when Conal got around to asking them, except to say Cirocco had been badly injured but was in a moderately safe place.
Then the Titanide had left again, leaving a cache of food in glass jars, a stove and some fuel, and a parachute. He explained its operation, assuring him his chances of survival were excellent if he were forced to use it—at least until he was on the ground. But Hornpipe emphasized that the cave was, at that moment, the safest place in Gaea, and that he was going to bring Cirocco there for that very reason. Terrible things were abroad in the land, Hornpipe told him, and he would do well to stay until the food ran out. Hornpipe swore that nothing but his own death would prevent him from returning to the cave. If Hornpipe didn’t show up before the food was gone, Conal was to jump.
But Hornpipe was not gone long. He returned with Cirocco, whose injuries were too numerous to count. She had lost blood and weight—and two fingers, which later grew back. She was feverish and semiconscious.
A Titanide named Rocky had come with them. He was a healer, and gradually nursed her back to health.
But it took a while, and during that period an opportunity had come, as Conal had known it would. Both Titanides were at the mouth of the cave, doing that half-sleep, half-waking thing. Their backs were to him. Cirocco slept on a pallet a few feet away.
He had worked the gun free of her pack. He had pulled the hammer back with his thumb. He had pressed the barrel against her temple. And he had waited to see what he was going to do next.
A few ounces of pressure against the trigger and she would be dead.
He remembered glancing to see if the Titanides were watching him. They were not. Another suspicion came, and he looked quickly to see if the gun was loaded. It was.
So he moved it away from her head, carefully lowered the hammer, and put it away. When he looked up, both Titanides were standing a few feet away from him. They had odd expressions, but did not seem angry. He knew they had seen him put the gun away. Later, he understood they had known everything he did, and his belief in the judgment of a Titanide was complete from that moment.
It was shortly after this that Rocky had put his ear to Cirocco’s head and proclaimed he heard something in there….
“Conal?”
He looked up, startled.
“You looked like you were a million miles away.”
“I guess I was. You were asking me if I was worried you would become permanent dictator of Bellinzona.”
Cirocco stared.
“I didn’t actually come out and ask it…but I guess that was the idea.”
“The answer is, I don’t care. If you did, I think you’d do it better than anyone else, except maybe Robin, who I’m planning to convince to get out of government and go live in a little cabin in Metis with me and maybe have a couple more babies, and you and Nova and Chris and all the Titanides can come visit us on their birthdays. And I think you know what you’re doing. And I don’t think you’ll stay on in the job…if only because you’re too damn smart for that.”
“Whew.” Cirocco shook her head, then laughed. “You’re right. It’s seductive, even to a confirmed old solitary bitch like me. But you’re right again when you say it isn’t that seductive.”
“So what did you come up here for?” Conal asked.
“To get an honest opinion, I think. These days, I get so paranoid I think even the Titanides are just telling me what I want to hear.”
“And I didn’t?”
Cirocco grinned.
“Sure you did, Conal. It’s just that from you, I believe it.”
Twenty-nine
It was to be the last meeting before the Great March began, only one hectorev away. Plans for the big parade were being finalized. It was a nuisance—the troops would have to be barged into Bellinzona, landed, paraded through the city to the cheers of multitudes, re-loaded, and barged to the south end of Moros, where the overland trek to the highway was flat and easy. But it couldn’t be helped. The city needed to see its army. The army needed to know the people were behind them as they moved into harm’s way. It was deadly to underestimate the importance of morale.
The meeting was a nuisance, too. Cirocco sat quietly and listened to the usual complaints, suggestions, and displays of ego, and waited her turn.
The big tent easily held the four Generals, twenty Colonels, and one hundred Majors who formed the top brass of the army. She knew all of them by name—part of being a politician was to remember everyone’s name, and she had been meticulous about it—but privately she liked to think of them by the names of their commands.
There were four Divisions, each led by a General. Thus, there was a General Two, Three, Eight, and One Hundred and One, leading the Second, Third, Eighth, and One Hundred First Divisions. That there were no First, Fourth, etc. Divisions did not bother Cirocco. She had picked the numbers for historical reasons that would appeal to Gaea.
Each General presided over five Legions, commanded by Colonels. The Legions had two thousand soldiers each, and were numbered consecutively.
There were five Cohorts in a Legion, ten Companies in a Cohort, two sections in a Company. Companies were commanded by Sergeants, of which there were sixteen hundred in the Bellinzona Army.
These numbers had resulted from endless wrangling, and were still the cause of debate. Most of the senior staff agreed the officer/enlisted ratio was hopelessly small. Forty thousand soldiers needed more officers, in the view of these professional military people.
The second major complaint was lack of weaponry and equipment. Procurement had fallen short of expected goals. Cirocco listened to General One Hundred and One expounding the numbers: a shortfall of X in swords, Y in shields, Z in breastplates.
The third was lack of training. The brass complained bitterly of having no one to practice on. As a result, there were no blooded troops except a handful who had fought on Earth.
Cirocco listened to it all, and finally stood up.
“First,” she said, and pointed to General Two, “you’re fired. You have contempt for human life, and ought to be back on Earth pushing buttons and creating deserts. I’d send you back if I could. As it is, I’m sending you to the prison camp for two kilorevs. Your bags are packed. Go home and write your memoirs.”
She waited in the thick silence as the red-faced man marched from the tent. She pointed to Colonel Six.
“You’re promoted to take his place. There’s a star sitting on your bunk. Pin it on when you get there. Pick your successor for the Sixth Legion—and it doesn’t have to be one of your Majors.” She pointed three more times. “You, you, and you. You’re not Colonels anymore. You’re not good enough to run a Legion.” The three got up and left. If anything, the silence was even thicker.
“I don’t know the Majors well enough to make reasoned judgments on their performance, so you can breathe easier. But I urge all of you here to do whatever is necessary in the way of discharges and demotions to make this a more efficient outfit.
“And now…I’m going to solve all your problems. I am going to decimate your troops.”
She waited for the buzz of conversation to die down, then addressed the Generals.
“I want the orders to go out to the Sergeants. Each of them is in charge of twenty soldiers. I want them to pick the two worst they have, and send them home. I want them to choose the rawest recruits, the guy who keeps tripping over his bootlaces or stabbing himself with his sword, the girl who can’t keep her head down or remember which end of the arrow fits over the string…. I want all the fuckups and misfits and weaklings and idiots weeded out. Muster them out within twenty revs, honorable discharges, no stigma attached.” She waved a hand negligently. “It doesn’t have to be two from each Section. Some sections are going to be solid all the way through, and others will have four or five rejects. Have it worked out on the Company and Cohort level…but work it out. In twenty revs, I want this army to b
e ten percent smaller.”
There was more conversation, as she had expected. She repressed a smile. It damn sure improved the officer/enlisted ratio, but it wasn’t what they’d had in mind at all.
“Next step,” she went on. She pointed at General Three. He cringed slightly. “Yours is the newest Division, with the highest percentage of recruits. I believe you to be a good General, with a genuine concern for the welfare of your troops. It isn’t your fault that your Division is the weakest of the four. Nevertheless, it is the weakest. So you become the Home Division.”
“Now just a—”
Cirocco did not have to glare very hard to silence him. The man realized he had overstepped his bounds, and shut up.
“As I was saying, your Division will stay behind. This will solve the equipment problem, and help with the training problem, since you will be leaving all your equipment behind and continuing to train your troops while the rest of us are marching on Pandemonium.”
The General swallowed hard, but remained silent.
“You will be receiving new equipment as it is manufactured. The rest of us will have to make do with what we bring along…which will now be adequate. Your mission is to set up two garrisons, one at the east road leading to Iapetus, and one at the western pass into the mountains. These garrisons should be defensible if Gaea sends armies into Dione. You will also establish outposts on the northern rim of Moros. In consultation with the civil authorities, you are to establish a Navy to patrol Moros. I am leaving tactical decisions up to you, but I recommend some degree of fortification of the city, and a certain number of troops—possibly one Legion—stationed nearby. If we fail, the defense of Bellinzona will be up to you.”
The General was looking a lot more interested, though Cirocco knew there was no way to make him like the assignment.
“One more thing, General. When we leave here, we will be leaving the worst Division behind. When we return, I want it to be the best, or you should look for another job.”
“It will be,” he said.