A Desert Called Peace cl-1

by Tom Kratman

  "She seemed like a nice woman," Mendoza observed neutrally.

  "She's wonderful," Marqueli enthused. "Smart and clever and tall and… well, she's just slinky. And those eyes! I'd like to be just like her except that she's almost a foot taller than I am and I don't think I'm going to grow."

  Mendoza made an estimate of Marqueli's height based on where the voice seemed to be coming from. True, she was sitting in a chair but, even so, just under five feet was his best guess.

  God, though, she smells and sounds wonderful. Height? Well, I'm a shorty myself. Otherwise I'd never have ended up in one of those cramped Volgan tanks. Moreover, I am especially short now, he thought. Shorter by a couple of feet… and two legs.

  Camp Balboa, Ninewa, 20/7/461 AC

  Whatever she lacked in height, Irene Temujin of Amnesty, Interplanetary (a subsidiary of the Marquisate of Amnesty, Earth) made up for in determination. She barged furiously past the guards on the headquarters gate to force her way in and directly to Carrera's office. How she got onto the compound, how she got into the freaking BZOR, had to wait. She was here and, Carrera supposed, she had to be dealt with.

  Just shooting the bitch is right out, I suppose, since she hasn't technically violated any rules. I might have the fucking guards shot, though; that, or make them wish that I had.

  "Legate Carrera, I am-"

  "I know who you are, Ms. Temujin." Carrera interrupted, sliding onto his desk the report he had been reading. "I read the papers when I can. What I don't know is why you are here."

  "I'm here to investigate credible reports that you and your… mercenaries," Temujin spat out the word, "are torturing prisoners in your camp."

  Carrera's face assumed a highly amused look. "Mercenaries is such a loaded term. Inaccurate, too, since, under Additional Protocol One we are no such thing. My men make about the same pay as in the Civil Force of Balboa, you see, and there's nothing in the rules to suggest one is a mercenary unless one meets every condition. As for torturing people here… no… no, I'm afraid we're not. Sorry, but your reports are ill-founded."

  Temujin sneered, "Then you wouldn't mind if I looked around?"

  "Considering your affection for and affiliation with the enemy," Carrera answered, calmly, "I would. But, if you are willing to be confused a bit, so that I know you are not pacing off corrections for the mortar attacks we seem to receive about twice a week, then yes, I'll let you… look around. To your heart's content, as a matter of fact. I'll even escort you myself."

  Fernandez burst into Carrera's office. "Patricio, I just hea-"

  "Ms. Temujin, may I introduce Tribune Omar Fernandez, my intelligence officer? Tribune, this is Ms. Irene Temujin of Amnesty, Interplanetary. I've just told her she could look around the camp… 'to her heart's content.' Ms. Temujin seems to think we are torturing people here. And," Carrera sighed deeply, "she doesn't seem to want to take my word for it that we are not."

  His face assuming a very somber expression, Fernandez answered, "That is most sad, Legate."

  "I'm going to escort her myself. Ms. Temujin, did you bring a camera team with you? Ah, you did not. Fernandez, would you call the PSYOP people to provide a camcorder and operator for Ms. Temujin?"

  "I'll see to it, sir," Fernandez answered, as he hurried out of the office.

  "Ms. Temujin? Some coffee while we wait for the camcorder team?"

  The camp was still under construction. Indeed, it would remain under construction for years if things worked out as Carrera planned. While some things were complete, work continued in part to provide better living arrangements for his troops but equally to provide continued work and-at least as important-job training for the Sumeris who worked there. The legion had become the largest single employer in the province, and that wasn't even counting the several hundred Sumeri whores-widows, many of them, with no other recourse-who had been given a small quadrant of the main and each outlying camp.

  Well… they're going to work at what they do, anyway, had been Carrera's thought. It only makes sense to protect and regularize them. Keep down the incidence of clap among the troops, too.

  The perimeter was roughly rectangular, but only roughly. A thick berm of earth zigzagged to provide lines along which any attacking enemy would have to bunch up for easy harvesting by the machine guns at the angles and corners. The berm had been formed from a deep ditch excavated out of the soil. It stopped at the river edge, where one corner of the camp continued on the other side. The water purification equipment, four Secordian-built reverse osmosis water purifiers, or ROWPUs, were dug in at the friendly side of the river by that corner. A few small motor launches stood bobbing in the murky water, tied to a short pier. Another, longer pier was being built as it was intended, eventually, to bring in parts of the classis to patrol the river.

  Topping the berm were dozens of towers, each standing about fifteen meters high. They were effectively indistinguishable. No one not a long-time denizen of the camp could hope to find their way about by reference to the towers.

  On each side there was a complex gate. Like the walls, these were formed of earth. Moveable barbed wire barriers helped to control vehicular access and block off any dismounted enemy that might try to force one of the gates.

  From the gates four dirt and gravel roads ran inward to a central parade field fronting the headquarters building. On either side of the roads, and all around the parade field, mixed crews of legionaries and locals worked at putting up adobe buildings. Not every legionary was in adobe, however. Many tents, pink Misrani-manufactured ones, still stood. These were beginning to grow a little ragged.

  For the purposes and under the circumstances, adobe was a nearly ideal material. Once the legion had received its long-term contract from the FSC's War Department, it had let a further contract to a machinery company in Hindu-speaking Bharat for a fairly large number of earth-block forming machines. Some of these were automated; still others used muscle power. The blocks, a uniform ten inches by fourteen inches by three and a half, were emplaced by hand without mortar, indentations on each side and at the edges serving to hold them together.

  Irene Temujin thought them interesting.

  "The block houses are reasonably cool, once we add a double roof," Carrera explained. "Moreover, they're also fairly bullet and shrapnel proof. At the current rate of progress, we should have the camp completed, at least for the number of troops on hand, within a month or so. It's taken longer than we thought it would. For after that, we've formed a building company from the Sumeri workers here who will take possession of the machines and build housing for the locals… for profit."

  Despite her initial fascination with the machines, the word "profit" drew a sneer from Irene.

  "Ahhh," Carrera said, understanding instantly. He smiled broadly. "You're one of those Kosmos who used to be a Marxist, aren't you? Tell you what: I'm putting Sumeris to building decent housing for money. In all the other ZORs every bleeding heart organization in the world is trying to put up housing for free. Let's make a bet… any sum you care to name and put in escrow," Carrera smiled wickedly, " any sum, that in six months I'll have a larger portion of the population housed, more decently, than anywhere else in Sumer outside of the capital at Babel."

  Temujin merely scowled.

  "Up to you," Carrera said, grinning. "But if you decide to take me up on it just let me know. I'll be happy to take your money."

  Two uniformed men trotted up, one of them bearing a camcorder. They stopped and the senior saluted, reporting, "Sir, Corporal Santiago and Private Velez, PSYOP, reporting as ordered."

  Carrera returned the salute, saying, "Gentlemen, this is Irene Temujin of Amnesty, Interplanetary. She wishes to tour the camp, which request I have approved. You are going to film whatever it is she wants filmed. You will then, when the tour is done, turn the film over to her without altering it in the slightest. Understood?"

  "Yessir. Only it's a disc, sir, not film."

  "Whatever. Ms. Temujin, will a disc do? Good. A
s I said earlier, you are the enemy and I can't have you pacing off correction for insurgent mortars. I'm going to blindfold you now, spin you like a top, and drive you someplace where you will not recognize exactly where you are. Then I'm going to spin you like a top, again. After that, and from there, you can remove the blindfold and go wherever you would like."

  "I am neutral, " Temujin insisted.

  "Yes. As I said, you're the enemy. Now, do we blindfold you or do I have you tossed out of the camp? Your choice."

  Gritting her teeth, Irene answered, "Blindfold me then."

  "Corporal," Carrera ordered.

  One of the escorts from Fernandez's section took a black blindfold from his pocket and placed it over the woman's eyes. Then he spun her around several times, in both directions. At Carrera's summons a four wheel drive vehicle pulled up, into which the woman was helped. The vehicle sped off, doing several otherwise unnecessary turns, before stopping at one wall.

  Temujin was helped out of the vehicle, spun more, and her blindfold removed.

  "From here, go where you like," Carrera said. "We're just along for the ride."

  After almost two hours of aimless wandering during which Temujin saw nothing, Carrera's attention was caught by Siegel, standing at a camp street corner. Siegel gave the thumbs up.

  "Ms. Temujin, you really want to see our POW compound, don't you?" Carrera asked. His finger pointed down one street. "It's just down that way, about a quarter of a mile."

  "You mean now that you've had to chance to hide the evidence," she growled.

  "We've hidden absolutely nothing," Carrera assured her.

  Gathering her soiled dignity about her-representatives of major cosmopolitan progressive organizations like Amnesty were used to more respect!-she walked in the direction indicated.

  Irene Temujin first heard the screams when she reached a point about one hundred meters from the separately walled compound. She began to hurry. The guards at the gate attempted to bar her way until Carrera signaled that it was all right for her to enter. Once past that inside gate, the screaming grew oppressively loud.

  A row of five gallows, wire nooses hanging empty, stood just inside the gate. They were low structures, each with a stool underneath, obviously intended to let their victims strangle rather than to mercifully break their necks. Temujin almost retched at seeing them.

  Worse was the stink. As soon as Temujin entered the adobe building nearest the gate her nostrils were assailed with the mixed smell of feces, piss, blood, and burnt pork. Once again, a guard made as if to bar her way until Carrera signaled that she was to be allowed in.

  Once inside, she saw four men, their arms bound behind them, hanging by those arms from meat hooks attached to the wooden beams of the ceiling. The men's heads hung low, the very picture of abject misery, while their toes barely touched the floor.

  "Would you like to record their faces?" Carrera asked genially. When she didn't answer immediately he walked up to the nearest of the hanging men and, grabbing him by the hair, lifted his face for the camera.

  Temujin was so shocked she didn't even wonder at Carrera's arrogance in showing her all this horror. Doesn't realize I'm from Amnesty? Or that I have pull around the globe?

  "Be sure to get this, gentlemen," he told the camera team. "Ms. Temujin will want it all recorded." He did the same with each of the others.

  "Irene, would you like to see the rest?"

  Normally tawny face gone white with horror, the woman gulped and answered, "Yes."

  In the next cell, a small room showed a half naked man bound to a metal chair. Wires led from a field telephone to the floor where they were lost in a mass of wires. Wires also were attached directly to the prisoner's genitals. A Sumeri, in the uniform of Sada's brigade, asked questions of the bound prisoner. When answers were not forthcoming, another Sumeri sitting at the table began to turn the crank on the field phone. The bound prisoner screamed and writhed piteously. There was a puddle of urine on the floor. A smell of overripe shit escaped the cell's small window.

  The next cell showed a man on a wooden table. Another interrogator asked questions while an assistant played a blowtorch over the far side of the prisoner's leg, farthest away from the door. The screaming was absolutely hideous and nauseating. There was an overwhelming smell of burnt pork.

  Temujin turned and began to storm out. Before she made it she bent over suddenly, adding the smell of her own vomit to the sickening stench that pervaded the facility.

  Babel, Hotel Ishtar, 21/7/461 AC

  Carrera had provided an escort for Irene all the way to Babel. "It would never do," he explained, "for you to be killed in my ZOR." At least once we've accepted you in and assumed a sort of tacit responsibility. The escort had consisted of two light wheel vehicles and a heavier truck with a tarp pulled over it. Fernandez had volunteered to serve as escort officer.

  Once back at her hotel, Temujin had wasted no time in calling for a press conference. At that, she had made her statement and shown her video of the horrors being perpetrated near Ninewa. She called, forcefully and sincerely, for, "This illegal occupation to end."

  At about that time, Fernandez walked into the back of the large press room containing hundreds of reporters. He had a fairly large armed escort with him. Temujin, closing her prepared statement, wondered for a moment if they were here to arrest her. She pointed and started to say, "There's one of the torturers-" when she recognized the face of one of the armed men standing by Fernandez's side.

  Oh, shit, she thought. The bastards.

  She didn't need to say it. As one the assembled media types turned around and saw for themselves.

  The man to whom Irene had pointed had appeared on the film she had just shown. He appeared on the film not as one of the guards or interrogators, but as one of the "victims," the very first one hanging with his arms behind him, as a matter of fact. (For, unnoticed by Irene, another rope had run from the bound hands to encircle his waist under his clothing.) Despite the current highly amused smile, the face was completely recognizable. So were the faces of every other man in Fernandez's escort, every man who had ridden to Babel in the back of a tarp-covered truck, every man who had been seen under "torture."

  Yet here he was, here they were, free and armed. That meant…

  The reporters turned their questioning faces back toward Temujin who sat there, dumbly.

  "If she'd seen nothing," Fernandez shouted over the hubbub, "she'd still have reported the same thing. It's her business to find torture in the world. It's so much her business that she didn't even think to question the show we put on for her. I've got to ask you people, how stupid are you that you would assume accurate reporting from a woman as gullible as that?

  "Now, if any of you would like to talk to the 'victims,' they're at your disposal."

  Camp Balboa, Ninewa, 22/7/461 AC

  "Patricio, that was just mean! " Lourdes chided as they watched the television in the three-bedroom adobe bungalow the troops had put up for them. The party, Carrera and Lourdes plus Sada and his wife, sat on the floor on cushions. Ruqaya, Sada's wife, had shown Lourdes how to make a first class kibsa, which sat mostly eaten (with fingers) on a tray in the middle.

  Carrera couldn't answer at first; he was laughing too hard.

  "He was perfectly correct to do this, Miss Lourdes," Sada insisted. "Prestige drives these people, that and their perks. Humiliation is what they fear the most. That woman is personally crushed, probably forever. Her entire organization is humiliated. Patricio has pulled the incisors of a major enemy."

  "It was really Fernandez's idea," Carrera submitted humbly, though it was a hard statement to get out through his laughter. "Frankly, I couldn't believe that she'd be stupid enough to fall for it, that anyone would be stupid enough to fall for it. The tricky part was collecting the special effects, the blood and shit and such, to make it seem real. Fortunately, one of the mess halls had some pork we could burn up with a blowtorch. And the 'victims' and 'interrogators' had alrea
dy been rehearsed."

  "Those were important, Legate Patricio, but she saw what she expected to see," Sada explained. "She made herself fall for it."

  "It was still mean," Lourdes insisted.

  "But it was clever," Sada's wife, Ruqaya, answered, sipping at her tea.

  Hospital Cerro Ancon, 23/7/461 AC

  If I were truly clever, thought the doctor, I'd have thought of this myself. It's just amazing what a young girl looking on or helping can do to move progress along. The doctor smiled indulgently as young Private Mendoza walked-with difficulty, true, but he walked- with one arm over the shoulder of the lovely young girl who came to see him every day. Her arm was about his waist.

  "This is so hard, 'Queli," the boy said, "and I'm too heavy for you."

  "Nonsense, Jorge. Did you forget I'm a farm girl, not some soft, city-bred wilting flower?"

  Mendoza had wondered what she looked like. At some level he knew it could not matter to him so long as he couldn't see. On the other hand, looks or not she was shaped right. That, he could tell from the press of her tiny body against him and the times they walked with only his arm around her waist for support. God, is she shaped right!

  The pair reached as far as they could in the physical therapy and prosthetics area. Marqueli guided Jorge in a half-stumbling turn and they began the return promenade.

  "I heard Legate Carrera and Duce Parilla have decreed a beca "-an educational scholarship-"for all seriously wounded or decorated veterans," Marqueli said.

  "Something to think on," Mendoza agreed. "But I've only got a high school education. And then there's the farm to think about."

  "Well, as to the farm," the girl answered, "you really don't need to worry about it. Your mother told me over the phone that she's found someone to work it for her."

  "I know… but that land's been in our family for over four hundred years. It doesn't feel right having someone else work it."

  Marqueli understood that call of the land. Her family, too, had been ranching the same patch for as long as Mendoza's. Indeed, she'd checked the local histories and birth records and discovered that they'd both had ancestors who'd ridden with the semilegendary Belisario Carrera in his war against Earth. The reason she'd checked, though, had been to find out degree of consanguinity. They were, it seemed, roughly seventh cousins… though it was more complicated than that as there was more than one link. The reason she'd checked that… well… that was for later.