by John Ringo
“What are you talking about?” Morgen asked.
“Have you ever heard of the Melcon AI?”
“Yes, I’ve heard of the Melcon AI.”
“Does it still exist?” Herzer asked with a smile.
“No. It was destroyed in the AI wars,” Morgen said, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. “But this is the forty-first century not the thirty-first! Surely we’ve risen above that, wrestling in wars like boys on a playground!”
“This we defend,” Herzer said, shaking his head. “Or not, as the case may be,” he continued, looking at Shilan.
“What he is trying to say is, people have always been violent,” Courtney interjected. “There have always been wars and as long as we stay human beings there will always be wars. The period of the last thousand years was a golden age. And it would be nice to go back to that. But if the cost of going back to that is letting Paul decide what is right and wrong… You can try to limit it by diplomacy but the diplomacy has already broken down. It broke down in the Council hall. When Paul attacked Sheida.”
“Well, we only have her word for that,” Morgen pointed out.
“Oh, good God,” Courtney replied, throwing her hands up in the air. “Herzer, you try.”
“Nope ain’t gonna do it,” Herzer replied. “Morgen, you can say that you just want to sit this out. That’s fine. But people aren’t going to let you sit it out. You can choose to leave Raven’s Mill. I’m sure that there are going to be communities that are not going to enforce the requirements. You can even say that you have strongly held philosophical objections and train to handle casualties. But if you go elsewhere, to a community that says they just want to be neutral or ‘violence never settles anything’ sooner or later Paul’s forces will take you over and not ask your opinion. Or you’ll be in the way of Sheida’s forces and they’ll take you over and not ask your opinion. I for one am not going to let Paul Bowman tell me how to run my life. I know enough history to understand what that road leads to. And I would rather sit here on the ground in the rain and eat maggoty bread than allow him to gain absolute power over Mother.”
“But there’s no way to fight him!” Morgen said. “He’s a council member! They’re all council members. Let them fight!”
“It’s stalemated,” Herzer said with a shrug. “And Bowman wants the entire world under his sway. He is going to come for you, Morgen. And for me and Shilan. Because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. It’s his mission in life. You can sit on one side or you can sit on the other. But if you sit in the middle, you’re just going to get trampled.”
“That’s just… paranoia,” Morgen said, stamping her foot. “You’re all… warmongers! And you can just go to hell, Herzer Herrick!” With that she stomped away.
“Not bad, Romeo,” Cruz said, leaning back. “Pick her up in the morning, have your way with her all afternoon and she’s gone by evening. Not bad!”
Shilan took this opportunity to hit him in the shoulder as hard as she could with a week’s worth of built up muscle.
“Ooow! Jeeze!”
“Less than you deserve,” Courtney said.
“I was just joking,” Cruz replied, rubbing his arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After the argument Herzer hung out with the rest of the group as the afternoon descended into twilight. Two oxen had been roasting all afternoon and the evening meal was a communal barbecue. Reenactors who had either gotten quickly reestablished or who were permanent residents of Raven’s Mill had contributed various side dishes. Herzer got his first taste of cream corn and collard greens and decided that he could live with them. But what mostly surprised him was the incredible diversity. Before the Fall, finding or inventing different food had been an almost universal pastime. For all that there was a sameness. Before the Fall, all dishes were blazingly hot, some to the point of insanity. The only difference seemed to be what type of acid was included, whether you got the delightful piquancy of sulfuric or the there and gone nuclear attack of fluoric.
These foods on the other hand had so much more diversity, not only in the secondary spices that they used but in the very fact that many of them didn’t taste as if they were going to eat the insides off their containers. Some were dreadfully hot. He had a few bites of a cabbage dish and after a chewing on it for a moment he wondered why it hadn’t eaten the spoon. But many of the others were not spicy at all. They were sweet or delicately flavored with subtle herbs.
He was spooning down mushrooms that had had simply been sautéed in butter, wine and just a hint of some herb, absolute ambrosia, when Shilan sat down next to him with two cups in her hand.
“Master Edmund has graciously agreed to let the town raid his wine cellar,” she said, handing him a cup.
Herzer took a small sip and inhaled gratefully. The wine was heavy and sweet, with an almost earthy aftertaste and a decided kick.
“Ummm. This is good,” Herzer said, setting down the cup and spearing more mushrooms.
“Are you referring to the mushrooms or are you being existentialist?” Shilan asked.
“Well the mushrooms, yes,” Herzer replied, holding out some on the fork. “But what I really meant was this, here.” He shrugged as she leaned forward and delicately pulled the mouthful off, nodding her head in agreement. “Better than being out in the woods.”
“Not better than it was a month ago,” Shilan said darkly.
“Yes, true,” Herzer said, pushing the remaining mushrooms around. But there was an odd thoughtful frown on his face.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Shilan said, cocking her head to the side with a smile. But then she laughed.
“What?”
“ ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ ” Shilan replied. “How old is that saying?”
“Yes,” Herzer said, chuckling. “I mean, are you offering to pay a lot of money, or very little? It all depends on the value of the penny.”
“I am willing to pay a lot for your thoughts, Herzer,” she said, leaning forward again and looking him in the eye.
“Hmmm…” he replied with a frown. A muscle in his left cheek worked for a moment. “You said that it was better a month ago and I agreed.”
“Sure,” she said with a slight shrug. That reality was inarguable.
“Yes… and no,” he said, the muscle working again. “This… this…” he said, waving his arms around at the groups talking and eating; in the distance was faint laughter.
“This is two things that were not a month ago,” he continued. “One, it is real. It is not some Renn Faire where if the ground is too hard you can port in a pillow, and when it gets too late you can port home. This is real. If you want a pillow, you had better go out there and figure out a way to make a pillow. I don’t know why that is important, but I can feel it in my soul.” He held up his hand as Shilan started to say something.
“Hang on a second,” he said. “Give me a little bit. The second thing is that it has soul. Before, did you ever see so much passion? So much intensity out of people as you see today? No. Why? Because this is real. Before, before the Fall, no matter what you were discussing, no matter what you were arguing, you knew that the next day you would be getting up and going back and doing more or less the same thing all over again. But the point was, you knew you were getting up! You knew that you were going to be alive the next day.
“Now, the questions are not trivial. Not only lives but generations depend upon them. These people know that not only for themselves, but for their children and the children that they will have, they must work and succeed. And that Mother will not catch them when they fall. That brings a passion and intensity to things that I have never seen before.
“Now if I could press a button and turn it back to the way that it was before, would I? Yes. But that does not mean that I would not have regrets. There is a soul to this, to everything thing here. A soul that did not exist before the Fall. So, yes and… no,” he concluded, picking out one last mushroom. “Damn, it’s cold.”
“Wow,” Shilan said, frowning. “That was like… a chit’s worth!”
“Nah,” Herzer laughed, shaking his head. “You know like… maybe a tenth.”
“I begin to understand why you seem to have a girl on your arm whenever I see you, Herzer,” she said, smiling.
“Maybe you could explain it to me. It’s been a very recent and very unexpected thing. If you’re talking about that philosophical wandering: Bast hadn’t said a word to me until she walked up, looked me over like a piece of meat and told me that I needed a bath but otherwise I’d do.”
“Hmmm…” Shilan replied thoughtfully. She took a sip of her wine and cleared her throat. “Speaking of baths…”
“They’re probably packed.” Herzer shrugged, taking a sip from his own cup.
“Nope, most people are still eating and sitting around,” Shilan said.
Herzer looked at the crowd and had to admit that it was the vast majority of the town.
“If we hurry?” Shilan continued in a questioning tone.
“Okay,” Herzer replied, then paused. “Don’t baths…” he started then cleared his throat. “Don’t the baths make you feel uncomfortable?” he finally said in an absolutely neutral tone.
“Yes,” she said. “But it would be less so if you were along.”
Herzer started to smile, then an alarm bell went off in his head.
“Shilan, uhm… Cruz…”
“Cruz doesn’t have me staked out,” she replied, tartly. “I’m not planning on bedding you, Herzer. The operative term here is ‘bath.’ ”
“I’m aware of that,” Herzer said, not sure if he was aware of it or not. “And you’re aware of that. That the operative term is ‘bath,’ I mean. But Cruz’s feelings are going to be hurt if we go wandering off.”
Herzer suddenly realized, by the expression on Shilan’s face among other things, that he was in a situation where he was going to piss someone off, either Cruz or Shilan or, possibly, both. Shilan was not taking his careful hints and Cruz was not going to accept his explanation. Look, buddy, it was either have her all pissed off at me or you all pissed off at me. All it was was a bath. Okay, so I saw your girlfriend nekkid and you haven’t yet. Big deal! Nope. Definitely wouldn’t work. And this image of an axe or a mallet descending upon his sleeping head, wielded by either Cruz or Shilan, kept flashing through his mind. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. He finally came to the conclusion that if he was going to get bludgeoned to death anyway, he might as well see Shilan, who after all was a comely wench, naked before he died.
All of this flashed through his brain in well under a half a second, hardly a pause. He had just opened his mouth to seal his fate when he saw Rachel coming through the crowd.
“Hang on a second, there’s a friend of mine,” he said to Shilan, waving his arm. “Hi, Rachel! How’ve you been doing?”
“Hello, Herzer,” she said, walking over with a slightly abstracted frown. “How are the hands?”
“They’re fine,” Herzer said, holding them up, palms outward to show the heavy calluses. “I think you guys have met, but I don’t think you’ve met, met,” he continued. “Hsu Shilan, Rachel Ghorbani. Rachel, Shilan.”
“We met when you came out to the camp and gave us a briefing on… uhm…” Shilan said then paused.
“Mother has dredged up the ancient term ‘feminine hygiene,’ ” Rachel said with a smile.
“Oh, Lord, you’re not going to start talking about that, are you?” Herzer chuckled.
“I certainly hope not,” Rachel replied. “What are you guys doing?”
“We were just headed over to the baths,” Herzer said then paused awkwardly.
Rachel looked at both of them in the pause until Shilan chuckled.
“I think what he is avoiding saying is ‘would you like to come along?’ ” Shilan explained.
“Well, two’s company and three’s a crowd,” Rachel replied dryly. “And if it’s just more company, I’m truly not interested.”
“It’s not like that…” Herzer started to say.
“What Herzer would be saying if he could get his foot out of his mouth is that he would appreciate a chaperone,” Shilan said, pursing her lips.
“It’s not like that either!” Herzer said desperately.’
“So, what is it like?” Rachel asked, putting her hands on her hips. “First you go trotting off with Bast, then you’re rolling around in the woods with one of the serving girls and next you’re going to the baths with two women!”
“Hmmm, since you put it that way,” Shilan said, standing up and putting her hands on her own hips. She gave Herzer a mock scowl. “Would you care to explain yourself?”
“Oh for pity’s sake!” Herzer said, throwing his hands in the air. “How did I get myself into this?”
“I lured you into it if you’ll remember,” Shilan finally relented. “Come on, Rachel, it will be fun. And Herzer really would prefer someone else along. He’s got this weird thing about me and Cruz.”
“Who’s Cruz?” Rachel asked.
“I’ll tell you when we’re up to our necks in hot water,” Shilan said.
“Oh, all right,” Rachel replied. “And I’ll tell you all of Herzer’s dirty little secrets.”
“Deal,” Shilan said, sticking out her hand.
“And I’ll buy,” Herzer added, heaving himself to his feet. “That way I can brag about getting two women in the bath with me with a straight face.”
“If you do you will rue the day,” Rachel warned.
* * *
The baths, while not deserted, were not overrun either. Having stored their gear and collected their receipts, they worked their way through the stations. Herzer was as careful as possible about keeping his eyes in his head but he had to admit that both of the girls were extremely pretty, with or without clothes. Shilan was long and cool with high pert breasts and carefully sculpted hips and bottom. There was just enough rounding there to draw the male eye, but it was understated enough to be fashionable. Rachel on the other hand was very near his ideal of the female form: high, firm, well-rounded breasts with just enough sag to really accentuate their shape, lovely ribcage, narrow but not tiny waist, rounded hips, not wide but definitely flaring out from the waist and the most perfectly rounded bottom he had ever seen.
Not for the first time he wondered how much of his liking for the form was early canalization; he had had a crush on Rachel since before he knew what to do about it. Almost all of his “heroines” to be rescued had looked somewhat like Rachel, complete to the red hair and blue eyes.
He was very cautious not to let them catch him glancing and was even more cautious to control the natural male reaction to the situation. As he turned around to finish rinsing off he started to recite the names of all the Spartans at Thermopylae. When that, initially, was insufficient, he started at the end and worked his way back. The mental attention to details other than perky breasts, pertly rounded bottoms and mons venus worked and by the time he had a towel wrapped around him it wasn’t clear that he was evincing any interest at all. Then, of course, the sight of Rachel in a nearly transparent bath sheet caused him to start reciting again. The fact that the towel barely made it to the top of her thighs while being tugged down far enough to show a tremendous amount of cleavage, required that he concentrate on doing so in the order and nature of their deaths.
“Herzer, what are you muttering,” Rachel asked.
“Military history,” he said in an only slightly strained voice. “You first.”
Looking at anything but the two girls who preceded him, he followed Rachel to a tub that was unoccupied. There were about ten people in the room scattered around in groups and more than one of the males watched the two girls with a healthy amount of interest.
“This is why I hate coming in here,” Rachel said, turning around to sweep the other bathers with a glare. “I hate to be ogled.” She waited until she was sure no one was looking and shifted the skimpy towel around so that she could use
it as a shield as she lowered herself into the bath.
Herzer thought it was quite the most erotic thing he had ever seen.
“Well I don’t ogle you,” he said, primly.
“Well, of course not,” she snorted. She lowered herself until everything from the neck down was submerged in water and let out a sigh. “We’ve known each other since we were kids; of course you don’t look.”
“Well, yeah,” Herzer said, taking a covert deep breath and willing himself to utter flaccidity. Once he was sure he was under control he flipped the towel off with becoming modesty and lowered himself into the bath quickly.
“What about me?” Shilan asked, raising one eyebrow and smiling in what could be taken as invitation.
“You’re a friend,” Herzer replied with a shrug. Down boy! Down! Bad boy!
Shilan wrinkled her eyebrows and peered at him as if attempting to divine what his real answer was.
“Shilan,” Herzer sighed. “Do you want to go to bed? Or more precisely, do you want to go to bed to have sex?” When her face closed down he nodded. “Even if I was interested, it would take a real son of a bitch to press you right now, right?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“I am many things. Well… I can be a son of a bitch. But in this, I’m not willing to be.”
She wrinkled a brow again and then nodded, accepting the statement but still puzzled.
“Herzer,” Rachel said dryly, but looking at him in a very searching way, “always the paladin.”
“Not… always,” Herzer corrected with a grin. “Paladins don’t get laid much.”
Shilan laughed delightedly and even Rachel had to smile.
“Can anyone join this party or are only young folk allowed?”
The man who addressed them was small and wiry with a graying beard and bright blue eyes.
“Hello, Augustus,” Rachel said. “Of course you can join us.”
The man whipped off his towel immodestly and hopped into the water like a frog.
“These were a grand idea,” he said, ducking his head under the water and coming back up blowing. “I’d prefer a leathern tun, but we haven’t enough leather to make a decent shoe!”