Orphan's Destiny

by Robert Buettner

  She shrugged. “I write. Tech stuff free-lance. I thought there might be an article in the V-Star thing.”

  “And is there?”

  She laughed. “Article, sure. Sale, no. The technology’s too old.”

  “But the National Park Service makes a mean cheeseburger.”

  We both laughed at that.

  We sat and talked while the wind rocked her little car as it sat at the curb.

  She and her husband had moved from Minneapolis. Technical ghost-writing was a good living in the District. Most bureaucrats couldn’t spell “declarative sentence.”

  She looked across at me. “The travel sounds exciting. People love you. Why so gloomy?”

  I shrugged. “I’m telling the world that the Slugs are all gone so we don’t have to spend money defending against them.”

  “That’s not true?”

  “That’s not knowable. Between you and me, Lynn, I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  We talked another hour. About the last Worldbowl, Broncos against Vikings. About her kids. About what makes a good cheeseburger. We laughed a lot.

  She offered me a lift to my hotel. I smiled, out in the wind, as I closed her car door. “Nah. It’s an infantry thing. We walk.”

  I was still smiling a half hour later, gone midnight, as I lapped the Mall again. People like Lynn Dey renewed my faith in humanity.

  “General Wander?” The voice shouted, battling the wind. I jumped and turned my head.

  The speaker wore a civilian overcoat, neck-tied collar peeking from between the lapels. But his eyes scanned me, and everything around me, like a soldier’s eyes when walking point.

  “If you’re offering therapy, I already had mine for tonight.”

  He knit his brows. “No, sir. Nothing like that. Agent Carr. United States Secret Service, sir.”

  He wore an earpiece. Protection Service, not a counterfeit-money chaser. I cocked my head. “You want me?”

  “I don’t, sir.” He turned his head and nodded. At the curb thirty yards away, limousine headlights shivered as it idled. “Someone would like to meet you.”

  I tugged up my collar. The limo would be out of the wind. This was my night to seek shelter in mysterious automobiles.

  The protection-detail agent opened the rear door and swept his palm at the darkness within.

  I ducked my head inside and let my eyes adjust for four heartbeats, before I could make out the silhouette pressed against the opposite door.

  I barely recognized her.

  Nineteen

  “Jason, can you spare a moment?”

  I had to lean farther into the limo to understand her. The ’zines had always carped that she was too soft-spoken to be President. Tonight, a rejected ex-President, Margaret Irons barely whispered.

  Arms clasped across her chest, legs crossed, she coiled as thin as a doll twisted from pipe cleaners, and shivered in the wind that swirled through the open door. The Secret Service agent nudged the door against my butt, I climbed in and he shut it behind me.

  “Jason.”

  Head bowed beneath the velour headliner, I shook her extended right pipe cleaner. “How . . . ?” I paused. No need asking how the Secret Service had found me. I fingered my chest. Implanted beneath every soldier’s breastbone was a GPS tracking and Graves Registration dogtag chip. Government satellite tracking of natural persons was unconstitutional, but “soldier’s civil rights” was an oxymoron. “How can I help you, Madame President?”

  The smile that launched a hundred million ballots warmed that mahogany face as she shook her head. “You already have, Jason. All of you. I wanted to thank you for what you did.”

  The partition separating us from the driver’s seat hushed open and the agent glanced back and asked, “Ma’am? Usual stop?”

  President Irons nodded, the partition closed, and acceleration pushed me back into the seat cushions.

  She sat back and eyed me. “You look older than I expected, Jason.”

  “They say it’s not the years, ma’am, it’s the mileage.”

  She smiled and fingered a parchment cheek. If six hundred million miles and one war had aged me, her White House days had robbed her of a lifetime. “You’re glad to be home, Jason?”

  “It doesn’t feel like home, ma’am.”

  The limo slowed and stopped. We had only traveled a few hundred yards.

  “I know the feeling. I grew up in Washington. My daddy was a janitor at the National Gallery. I worked here all my life in one job or another.”

  She said it like she had waited tables, not been a senator, secretary of state, and vice president.

  Her shoulders sagged. “Now, I have to go out at night, so I don’t run into someone who lost a husband in Pittsburgh or a child in New Orleans and thinks I should have prevented it.”

  “Madame President, nobody could have prevented it.”

  She shrugged. “Or I’d run into somebody who thought we paid too high a price to end it.”

  “That’s stupid. We had to fight.”

  She shrugged again as the Secret Service agent rounded the car and opened the curbside door for us.

  We stepped out into the cold darkness as she said, “They say the only thing worse than fighting a just war is not fighting it.”

  She turned to the protection-detail agent and touched his elbow. “Tom, Sarah packed sandwiches and coffee in the console. There’d be enough for an infantry squad even if Jason, here, eats for three. You get in out of this wind and help yourself.”

  The agent’s lips tightened. I knew the look from my own personal security detail days. You didn’t leave your subject. Unless ordered.

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  She leaned into the wind, quivering but unbreakable as steel cable. Ahead of us stretched the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

  We made it halfway up the stairs before her knees quivered and I had to catch her by the elbow and boost her. Finally, we stood side by side in the dim lighting, at Lincoln’s feet. We stood for three minutes until her ragged breathing smoothed. “I come here every night.”

  “Ma’am?”

  She gazed up at Lincoln’s unyielding marble face. “If there had been Instapolling in 1863, Lincoln’s numbers would have been worse than mine were at the end. Sometimes I think Abe’s the only person in this town I can still talk to. Politicians are a strange breed, aren’t they, Jason?”

  “I couldn’t say. I’m no politician, Madame President.”

  She swiveled her head and looked up at me. “The best soldiers aren’t.”

  I looked around at the marble walls, carved in gold with the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural. “Then why me, ma’am?”

  She stepped to the wall and ran her fingers along the marble. “Do you understand what your baby-kissing is about, Jason?”

  “Yes, ma’am. The public needs reassurance.”

  She shook her head. “The war’s over. The public’s already reassured about that. We won. We paid a terrible price. The issue is where America and the world go now. The military is expensive, Jason.”

  The image of the crater that had been Cairo flicked across my mind. Mankind needed every nickel to rebuild the world. “Civilian spending’s good, ma’am.”

  She nodded. “But in politics it isn’t enough to be good. Something else has to be bad.”

  “Ma’am? I’m new here, but that seems stupid.”

  “It is. But if things turn sour, they need an unsympathetic target. They also need one who hasn’t learned to shoot back. And one who has skeletons in his closet.”

  I smiled. “Ma’am, I’m no target. I’ve made mistakes but I’m not ashamed of them. And I figure if I tell the truth I can never get in trouble.”

  She stared down at the marble floor, shook her head, and sighed. “You are new here.”

  We left the Lincoln Memorial after that. The ex-President of the United States gave me the twenty-five-cent driving tour of the city she knew better tha
n anyone else in the world, while we ate ham sandwiches. Then her limo dropped me at my hotel.

  She leaned across the seat as I stepped out. “One last tip, Jason. In this town, if you don’t want to see it on the Washington Post frontscreen, don’t say it!”

  Twenty

  The next morning I lay in bed while pale light filtered through my bedroom’s curtains. Jeeb hovered at the door, opened it with one forelimb, then swooped into the hall and returned with our complimentary Washington Post.

  He dropped it on the floor next to the bed, settled in front of it, and trained his optics on the front page. Next to the masthead, the weather forecast called for cold, gray, and dry. Like every other day since the war started. “No. Not now. I need to think.”

  He folded all six limbs beneath himself, drew in his antennae, and shut down with a sigh. I laced my fingers behind my head and stared at the chandelier.

  Over the last two days, Tway had educated me, alright. Infantry had no place in the post-war world. People like Brace, and the zoomie projects he managed, were all the military the world needed now. In fact, me vegetating under linen sheets like I was doing at the moment, while drawing major general pay, was taking bread from the mouths of Egyptians and Iowans and Panamanians for no reason.

  Today was the last day to opt out of the Army under the Gratitude Act. If I did, Tway could no longer drag me around like a show dog. I’d collect a pension big enough that I could sit around and write a proper autobiography. If I didn’t want to lend my name to an Aaron Grodt holo, I wouldn’t have to. If I wanted to say Slugs might still be around, I could. I shuddered even at that thought. Maybe I wouldn’t go so far as to say that.

  The smart thing was to join Munchkin and Brumby as a civilian. I nodded to myself. Command experience had made me decisive.

  Opt-out was simple. Any GEF veteran just talked up the Website, confirmed ID, then checked Box Number One, orally. You were prospectively discharged officially as of that moment, even if out-processing took longer.

  I smiled. That could wait. My last soldierly act would be to order whatever I wanted for breakfast. I waved up room service on the phone.

  “How may we help you, General?”

  I felt a pang. There was a certain cachet to the title. I’d miss that.

  “You have any protein bars?”

  “We used to carry them, sir. But the guests complained they tasted, well, like dung.”

  I grinned at the ceiling and stretched. “Perfect. What do you recommend, then?”

  The phone whined. Emergency override. I frowned up at the crown molding and said, “Hello?”

  “Put me on visual.” It was Tway.

  I waved her up, then raised my hand and shaded her image against the window light, because her complexion looked purple.

  It was purple. She seemed to be stalking down a hallway.

  “I’m on my way to your room. Have you seen this morning’s Washington Post?”

  Twenty-One

  I sat up, swung my pajamaed legs over the bedside, nudged Jeeb off the morning paper, and picked it up. Below the weather forecast and masthead I read:

  Ganymede’s Hero Claims Slugs Still a Threat Wander Calls Defense Cuts Bogus

  “What the hell? I never said—”

  Jeeb shot to the door and opened it. Tway stepped through and stood in front of me, arms crossed. Jeeb hovered, then dropped a probe against my carotid artery. He did that if my breathing elevated.

  The article’s byline read “Lynn Dey, Special to the Washington Post.”

  “Fuck!” I slapped the page.

  “Then you did say it?” Tway’s eyes burned me.

  I pointed at the sub-headline. “Well, I never used the word ‘bogus.’ I didn’t know she was a reporter!”

  Tway leaned forward. “She lied to you?”

  “Well, she said she was a writer. I didn’t think—”

  Tway’s breath hissed between her teeth. “Jason, how many times have we had this talk?”

  I slumped. “Too many, Ruth.”

  This was the end of nightly mints on my pillow. Which was fine by me. “Politics is impossible. You have to balance things when neither way is right. I’m tired of hotel sheets. I’m tired of eating dung bars to look prettier. I’m tired of being told what I shouldn’t say. I was going to tell you. I’m opting out.”

  Ruth shook her head. “Too late for that.”

  “Huh?”

  “This administration has sweated bullets. It has called in every favor from every legislator with a defense contractor in his or her state or district. It has finagled around every possible filibuster. It has set in stone for next week a vote on an appropriately lean defense budget.”

  “It’ll be leaner with one less general to pay.”

  Tway said, “Lieutenant.”

  “Huh?”

  “Read the fine print. You can’t opt out under the Gratitude Act if you’re the subject of pending disciplinary proceedings.”

  “I’m not under discipline.”

  “You are now. Your demotion to lieutenant was filed two hours ago. You’re in the Army until your demotion’s final.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “When the Army says so.”

  Now there was the military circularity I had come to know. “But if I’m such a screw-up, why do you still want me in? Me opting out is exactly what you should want.”

  “Because we don’t have a replacement, yet. We’ve invested in you as our poster child. If you stay in and do what you’re told from now on, your years of service will still be adjusted by the Gratitude Act formula. You’ll still be allowed to retire with an honorable-discharge General’s pension.”

  Jeeb buzzed. My blood pressure had hit pre-stroke levels.

  “And if I don’t? I could talk to Grodt. My autobiography would sell better with a chapter about how the Hero of Ganymede got railroaded.”

  Tway smiled and shook her head. “We can add lots of chapters to your bio, if that’s how you want to play it.”

  “Huh?”

  What had President Irons told me last night, a million years ago? In Washington, it’s not enough to be good. Something else has to be bad.

  “Ruth, you know I never did anything bad.”

  “That won’t matter to the media. Let’s pretend you go public. Here’s how it will play out.” She pulled a silver saucer from her pocket. “I’m stenobotting this.”

  She cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Wander, you’ve had your share of disciplinary problems in the service, haven’t you?”

  Crap. “I’m not proud of everything I’ve done. But I’m a better person and a better soldier for it now.” That sounded pretty good.

  Ruth ran down my Basic training record. Brawling; insubordination; half-ass drug abuse, just some ill-timed Prozac II, and a horrible training accident that resulted in the death of a soldier I called my friend.

  I rebutted. “Those incidents were resolved. There’s no double jeopardy under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.”

  Ruth nodded. “Lieutenant Wander, let’s turn from your early history in the service to more recent events.”

  I breathed easier. As an eighteen-year-old wiseass, Basic training had been my soldierly low point. What happened since I shaped up would be better.

  “You were the first soldier to actually encounter a Pseudocephalopod Warrior.”

  “Yeah. On the moon. We recovered the Slug’s body.” I straightened up. I’d nearly gotten killed, but the intelligence we gained helped us win the war.

  She frowned. “When you returned to Luna Base, an investigation was convened into the circumstances of the prisoner’s death.”

  My heart thumped. “He was never a prisoner. We fought. He died.”

  “Hmmm. So the Army’s official investigation concluded.” Ruth paused the stenobot. It sounded like I had abused a prisoner!

  “Lieutenant, regulations strictly prohibit confraternization among combat troops?”

 
“Absolutely.” Crap. I knew where this was going. “However a commander in the field has broad discretion—”

  She cut me off, again. “Regulations weren’t followed during the Ganymede campaign, were they?”

  “General Cobb decided you couldn’t coop up five thousand men with five thousand women in a spaceship for six hundred days and expect—”

  “Regulations weren’t followed during the Ganymede campaign, true?”

  I nodded. “True. But it didn’t affect the soldiers’ performance.”

  “Not even the pregnant ones?”

  I felt myself redden as adrenaline tingled through me. “There was only one pregnancy. A soldier married to another member of the Joint Force.” I had given Munchkin away at the shipboard wedding, myself.

  “One you know of. Since more than ninety percent of those soldiers were killed and buried on Ganymede, you don’t know how many were pregnant, do you?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Or whether their condition got them killed?”

  I had chewed Munchkin out, myself, for letting herself get pregnant when After-Pills had been nonprescription for decades.

  I drew a breath. “That’s unfair—”

  “Let’s move to another topic. Substance abuse got a friend of yours killed in Basic.”

  “We’ve been through that.”

  She nodded. “So you of all people know how strictly the armed services regulate substance abuse.”

  I nodded. Now what?

  “During your tenure as commander of GEF, did your troops manufacture and consume alcohol?”

  She was talking about the still that my guys had maintained on Ganymede.

  “I—”

  “And you knew it?”

  We had nothing else to do on Ganymede during seven months stranded following the war’s end. My survivors had been through hell. Of course I had looked the other way.

  “Not officially.”

  “Ah.” An imperial nod.

  Did Ruth think anyone cared whether GIs cranked out a little bootleg moonshine? Aboard Excalibur, Brace, the ship’s master, no less, had served rum at Captain’s Breakfast, himself!

  Ruth reached into her pocket and dropped papers on the mattress beside me. “Recognize these?”