That chance was very slight. Any messages Lady Miriam had were for the second-ranking tank lord, seated to her left by custom: Sergeant-Commander Grant.
There were seven of the mercenaries, not eight as I had believed. I saw mostly their backs as they sat at the high table, interspersed with the lady’s maids. Lieutenant Kiley was in animated conversation with the baron to his left, but I thought the officer wished primarily to distract his host from the way Lady Miriam flirted on the other side.
A second keg of beer—estate stock; not the stuff brewed for export in huge vats—had been broached by the time the beef course followed the pork. The serving girls had been kept busy with the mugs—in large part, the molded-glass tankards of the baron’s soldiers, glowering at the lower tables, but the metal-chased crystal of the tank lords was refilled often as well.
Two of the mercenaries—drivers, separated by the oldest of Lady Miriam’s maids—began arguing with increasing heat while a tall, black-haired server watched in amusement. I could hear the words, but the language was not ours. One of the men got up, struggling a little because the arms of his chair were too tight against those to either side. He walked toward his commander, rolling slightly.
Lieutenant Kiley, gesturing with his mug toward the roof peak, was saying to the baron, “Has a certain splendor, you know. Proper lighting and it’d look like a cross between a prison and a barracks, but the way you’ve tricked it out is–”
The standing mercenary grumbled a short, forceful paragraph, a question or a demand, to the lieutenant, who broke off his own sentence to listen.
“Ah, Baron,” Kiley said, turning again to his host. “Question is, what, ah, sort of regulations would there be on my boys dating local women. That one there”—his tankard nodded toward the black-haired servant; the driver who had remained seated was caressing her thigh—“for instance?”
“Regulations?” responded the baron in genuine surprise. “On servants? None, of course. Would you like me to assign a group of them for your use?”
The lieutenant grinned, giving an ironic tinge to the courteous shake of his head. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Baron,” he said.
Kiley stood up to attract his men’s attention. “Open season on the servants, boys,” he said, speaking clearly and in our language, so that everyone at or near the upper table would understand him. “Make your own arrangements. Nothing rough. And no less than two men together.”
He sat down again and explained what the baron already understood: “Things can happen when a fellow wanders off alone in a strange place. He can fall and knock his head in, for instance.”
The two drivers were already shuffling out of the dining hall with the black-haired servant between them. One of the men gestured toward another buxom server with a pitcher of beer. She was not particularly well favored, as men describe such things; but she was close, and she was willing—as any of the women in the hall would have been to go with the tank lords. I wondered whether the four of them would get any farther than the corridor outside.
I could not see the eyes of the maid who watched the exit of the mercenaries who had been seated beside her.
Lady Miriam watched the drivers leave also. Then she turned back to Sergeant Grant and resumed the conversation they held in voices as quiet as honey flowing from a ruptured comb.
In the bustle and shadows of the hall, I disappeared from the notice of those around me. Small and silent, wearing my best jacket of black velvet, I could have been another length of darkness cast by one of the light-blocking beams. The two mercenaries left the hall by a side exit. I slipped through the end door behind me, unnoticed save as a momentary obstacle to the servants bringing in compotes of fruits grown locally and imported from across the stars.
My place was not here. My place was with the tanks, now that there was no one to watch me dreaming as I caressed their iridium flanks.
The sole guard at the door to the women’s apartments glowered at me, but he did not question my reason for returning to what were, after all, my living quarters. The guard at the main entrance would probably have stopped me for spite: he was on duty while others of the household feasted and drank the best-quality beer.
I did not need a door to reach the courtyard and the tanks parked there.
Unshuttering the same window I had used in the morning, I squeezed between the bars and clambered to the roof along the antenna mount. I was fairly certain that I could clear the barrier of points and edges at the base of the wall beneath the women’s suite, but there was no need to take that risk.
Starlight guided me along the stone gutter, jumping the pipes feeding the cistern under the palace cellars. Buildings formed three sides of the courtyard, but the north was closed by a wall and the gatehouse. There was no spiked barrier beneath the wall, so I stepped to the battlements and jumped to the ground safely.
Then I walked to the nearest tank, silently from reverence, rather than in fear of being heard by someone in the palace. I circled the huge vehicle slowly, letting the tip of my left index finger slide over the metal. The iridium skin was smooth, but there were many bumps and irregularities set into the armor: sensors, lights, and strips of close-range defense projectors to meet an enemy or his missile with a blast of pellets.
The tank was sleeping but not dead. Though I could hear no sound from it, the armor quivered with inner life like that of a great tree when the wind touches its highest branches.
I touched a recessed step. The spring-loaded fairing that should have covered it was missing, torn away or shot off—perhaps on a distant planet. I climbed the bow slope, my feet finding each higher step as if they knew the way.
It was as if I were a god.
I might have attempted no more than that, than to stand on the hull with my hand touching the stubby barrel of the main gun—raised at a sixty-degree angle so that it did not threaten the palace. But the turret hatch was open and, half convinced that I was living in a hope-induced dream, I lifted myself to look in.
“Freeze,” said the man looking up at me past his pistol barrel. His voice was calm. “And then we’ll talk about what you think you’re doing here.”
The interior of the tank was coated with sulphurous light. It was too dim to shine from the hatch, but it provided enough illumination for me to see the little man in the khaki coveralls of the tank lords. The bore of the powergun in his hand shrank from the devouring cavity it had first seemed. But even the 1 cm bore of reality would release enough energy to splash the brains from my skull, I knew.
“I wanted to see the tanks,” I said, amazed that I was not afraid. All men die, even kings; what better time than this would there be for me? “They would never let me, so I sneaked away from the banquet. I—it was worth it. Whatever happens now.”
“Via,” said the tank lord, lowering his pistol. “You’re just a kid, ain’tcha?”
I could see my image foreshortened in the vision screen behind the mercenary, my empty hands shown in daylit vividness at an angle that meant the camera must be in another of the parked tanks.
“My Lord,” I said, straightening momentarily but overriding the reflex so that I could meet the mercenary’s eyes. “I am sixteen.”
“Right,” he said, “and I’m Colonel Hammer. Now–”
“Oh Lord!” I cried, forgetting in my joy and embarrassment that someone else might hear me. My vision blurred and I rapped my knees on the iridium as I tried to genuflect. “Oh, Lord Hammer, forgive me for disturbing you!”
“Blood and martyrs, boy!” snapped the tank lord. A pump whirred and the seat from which he questioned me cross-legged rose. “Don’t be an idiot! Me name’s Curran and I drive this beast, is all.”
The mercenary was head and shoulders out of the hatch now, watching me with a concerned expression. I blinked and straightened. When I knelt, I had almost slipped from the tank; and in a few moments, my bruises might be more painful than my present embarrassment.
“I’m sorry, Lord Cur
ran,” I said, thankful for once that I had practice in keeping my expression calm after a beating. “I have studied, I have dreamed about your tanks ever since I was placed in my present status six years ago. When you came I—I’m afraid I lost control.”
“You’re a little shrimp, even alongside me, ain’tcha?” Curran said reflectively.
A burst of laughter drifted across the courtyard from a window in the corridor flanking the dining hall.
“Aw, Via,” the tank lord said. “Come take a look, seein’s yer here anyhow.”
It was not a dream. My grip on the hatch coaming made the iridium bite my fingers as I stepped into the tank at Curran’s direction; and besides, I would never have dared to dream this paradise.
The tank’s fighting compartment was not meant for two, but Curran was as small as he had implied and I—I had grown very little since a surgeon had fitted me to become the page of a high-born lady. There were screens, gauges, and armored conduits across all the surfaces I could see.
“Drivers’ll tell ye,” said Curran, “the guy back here, he’s just along for the ride ‘cause the tank does it all for ’em. Been known t’ say that myself, but it ain’t really true. Still–”
He touched the lower left corner of a screen. It had been black. Now, it became gray, unmarked save by eight short orange lines radiating from the edge of a two-centimeter circle in the middle of the screen.
“Fire control,” Curran said. A hemispherical switch was set into the bulkhead beneath the screen. He touched the control with an index finger, rotating it slightly. “That what the Slammers’re all about, ain’t we? Firepower and movement, and the tricky part—movement—the driver handles from up front. Got it?”
“Yes, my lord,” I said, trying to absorb everything around me without taking my eyes from what Curran was doing. The west wing of the palace, guest and baronial quarters above the ground-floor barracks, slid up the screen as brightly illuminated as if it were daylight.
“Now don’t touch nothin’!” the tank lord said, the first time he had spoken harshly to me. “Got it?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Right,” said Curran, softly again. “Sorry, kid. Lieutenant’ll have my ass if he sees me twiddlin’ with the gun, and if we blow a hole in central prison here”—he gestured at the screen, though I did not understand the reference—“the Colonel’ll likely shoot me hisself.”
“I won’t touch anything, my lord,” I reiterated.
“Yeah, well,” said the mercenary. He touched a four-position toggle switch beside the hemisphere. “We just lowered the main gun, right? I won’t spin the turret, ’cause they’d hear that likely inside. Matter of fact–”
Instead of demonstrating the toggle, Curran fingered the sphere again. The palace dropped off the screen and, now that I knew to expect it, I recognized the faint whine that must have been the gun itself gimbaling back up to a safe angle. Nothing within the fighting compartment moved except the image on the screen.
“So,” the tanker continued, flipping the toggle to one side. An orange numeral 2 appeared in the upper left corner of the screen. “There’s a selector there too.” He pointed to the pistol grip by my head, attached to the power seat which had folded up as soon as it lowered me into the tank at Curran’s direction.
His finger clicked the switch to the other side—1 appeared in place of 2 on the screen—and then straight up—3. “Main gun,” he said, “co-ax—that’s the tribarrel mounted just in front of the hatch. You musta seen it?”
I nodded, but my agreement was a lie. I had been too excited and too overloaded with wonder to notice the automatic weapon on which I might have set my hand.
“And 3,” Curran went on, nodding also, “straight up—that’s both guns together. Not so hard, was it? You’re ready to be a tank commander now, and”—he grinned—“with six months and a little luck, I could teach ye t’drive the little darlin’ besides.”
“Oh, My Lord,” I whispered, uncertain whether I was speaking to God or to the man beside me. I spread my feet slightly in order to keep from falling in a fit of weakness.
“Watch it!” the tank lord said sharply, sliding his booted foot to block me. More gently, he added, “Don’t touch nothing, remember? That”—he pointed to a pedal on the floor which I had not noticed—“that’s the foot trip. Touch it and we give a little fireworks demonstration that nobody’s gonna be very happy about.”
He snapped the toggle down to its original position; the numeral disappeared from the screen. “Shouldn’t have it live nohow,” he added.
“But—all this,” I said, gesturing with my arm close to my chest so that I would not bump any of the close-packed apparatus. “If shooting is so easy, then why is—everything—here?”
Curran smiled. “Up,” he said, pointing to the hatch. As I hesitated, he added, “I’ll give you a leg-up, don’t worry about the power lift.”
Flushing, sure that I was being exiled from Paradise because I had overstepped myself—somehow—with the last question, I jumped for the hatch coaming and scrambled through with no need of the tanker’s help. I supposed I was crying, but I could not tell because my eyes burned so.
“Hey, slow down, kid,” called Curran as he lifted himself with great strength but less agility. “It’s just that Whichard’s about due t’take over guard, and we don’t need him t’find you inside. Right?”
“Oh,” I said, hunched already on the edge of the tank’s deck. I did not dare turn around for a moment. “Of course, my lord.”
“The thing about shootin’,” explained the tank lord to my back, “ain’t how so much’s when and what. You got all this commo and sensors that’ll handle any wavelength or take remote feeds. But still somebody’s gotta decide which data t’call up—and decide what it means. And decide t’pop it er not.” I turned just as Curran leaned over to slap the iridium barrel of the main gun for emphasis. “Which is a mother-huge decision for whatever’s down-range, ye know.”
He grinned broadly. He had a short beard, rather sparse, which partly covered the pockmarks left by some childhood disease. “Maybe even puts tank commander up on a level with driver for tricky, right?”
His words opened a window in my mind, the frames branching and spreading into a spidery, infinite structure: responsibility, the choices that came with the power of a tank.
“Yes, my lord,” I whispered.
“Now, you better get back t’whatever civvies do,” Curran said, a suggestion that would be snarled out as an order if I hesitated. “And don’t be shootin’ off yer mouth about t’night, right?”
“No, my lord,” I said as I jumped to the ground. Tie-beams between the wall and the masonry gatehouse would let me climb back to the path I had followed to get here.
“And thank you,” I added, but varied emotions choked the words into a mumble.
I thought the women might already have returned, but I listened for a moment, clinging to the bars, and heard nothing. Even so I climbed in the end window. It was more difficult to scramble down without the aid of the antenna brace, but a free-standing wardrobe put that window in a sort of alcove.
I didn’t know what would happen if the women saw me slipping in and out through the bars. There would be a beating—there was a beating whenever an occasion offered. That didn’t matter, but it was possible that Lady Miriam would also have the openings cross-barred too straitly for even my slight form to pass.
I would have returned to the banquet hall, but female voices were already greeting the guard outside the door. I had only enough time to smooth the plush of my jacket with Sarah’s hairbrush before they swept in, all of them together and their mistress in the lead as usual.
By standing against a color-washed wall panel, I was able to pass unnoticed for some minutes of the excited babble without being guilty of “hiding,” with the severe flogging that would surely entail. By the time Lady Miriam called, “Leesh? Elisha!” in a querulous voice, no one else could have sworn that I hadn’t enter
ed the apartment with the rest of the entourage.
“Yes, my lady?” I said, stepping forward.
Several of the women were drifting off in pairs to help each other out of their formal costumes and coiffures. There would be a banquet every night that the tank lords remained—providing occupation to fill the otherwise featureless lives of the maids and their mistress.
That was time consuming, even if they did not become more involved than public occasion required.
“Leesh,” said Lady Miriam, moderating her voice unexpectedly. I was prepared for a blow, ready to accept it unflinchingly unless it was aimed at my eye—and even then to dodge as little as possible so as not to stir up a worse beating.
“Elisha,” the lady continued in a honeyed tone—then, switching back to acid sharpness and looking at her chief maid, she said, “Sarah, what are all these women doing here? Don’t they have rooms of their own?”
Women who still dallied in the suite’s common room—several of the lower-ranking stored their garments here in chests and clothes presses—scurried for their sleeping quarters while Sarah hectored them, arms akimbo.
“I need you to carry a message for me, Leesh,” explained Lady Miriam softly. “To one of our guests. You—you do know, don’t you, boy, which suite was cleared for use by our guests?”
“Yes, my lady,” I said, keeping my face blank. “The end suite of the east wing, where the king slept last year. But I thought–”
“Don’t think,” said Sarah, rapping me with the brush she carried on all but formal occasions. “And don’t interrupt milady.”
“Yes, my lady,” I said, bowing and rising.
“I don’t want you to go there, boy,” said the lady with an edge of irritation. “If Sergeant Grant has any questions, I want you to point the rooms out to him—from the courtyard.”
There Will Be War Volume VII Page 3