What the Thunder Said

by Walter Blaire

  “Oh, he’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “The helpie? Who can say? La, it takes so long to hang a man these days. He might have a spark in him yet.”

  “But look at his head! His neck is broken.”

  Grampharic glanced again at the far body. “Often a bad sign, yes.”

  By the time they caught up, the two soldiers had Shanter at the bunker. They cracked his head not once on the carved stone teeth but twice, and then a third ridiculous time. Caulie winced with each impact. When they finally mastered the hole, they laid Shanter on the bench by the fire. His limbs hung off it on on every side.

  Caulie checked Shanter’s wrists and then his distended throat for a pulse. She thought she felt something, but knew it could be wishful thinking. She caught Grampharic’s eye and tried to frame a question he might offer a useful answer to. “If this man was somebody you wanted to save from death, what would you do to help him?”

  “Which the captain said a medic was coming,” said Prodon, the talkative squaddie.

  She didn’t trust the Haphan medic. “Most of the time you don’t have medics. So what would you do instead?”

  Grampharic didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he crouched by Shanter’s head and, oddly, pressed his forehead against Shanter’s. “La-meh! I don’t know if he’s alive, but he’s not dead. How he must’ve suffered on the gallows.” He pursed his lips. “Stroke of genius if you want to make a Tacchie afraid: we so hate strangulation. There’s always the chance it takes too long, and the worse chance that it won’t work and we might continue living.”

  Caulie didn’t know how to interpret that. “You’re saying you don’t want to recover after being strangled?”

  The squaddies laughed. Prodon said, “La, who would want that set of memories?”

  “To answer your question, ma’am,” Grampharic said, “if we wish a man to heal, we give him a little peace and quiet. Let the Pollution have him. We’ll learn in time if there’s more service in him.”

  Caulie couldn’t simply give Shanter peace and quiet. That wasn’t their dynamic. Besides, his head, twisted like that . . .

  Over the next five minutes, she straightened his neck by adjusting his skull. It was stressful work, and when she finished, the neck was still too long for her taste. Its shape was all wrong too—it was distorted and pinched, and the skin had darkened to a deep purple.

  In all, it didn’t look encouraging. She’d hoped for better advice from the troops—some battlefield lore or a time-tested folk method that she couldn’t know from her academic readings. Since the squaddies did nothing but loom and stare, it seemed like this would be book-learning or nothing at all. For dislocated limbs: shove them back into place. Broken bones: set and immobilize. For gastrointestinal wounds: shovel the viscera into the body cavity and let the body sort it out. For lacerations: pinch them closed and use some tape if the edges wouldn’t glue.

  These tips were from passing mentions, insertions, and asides in papers written by incurious Haphans about unrelated topics. If specific step-by-step procedures were recorded somewhere, she had not seen them in her research areas. Every anecdote she’d found, however, seemed to point toward something that assured a maximal level of pain; Tachba battlefield medicine sounded like how Caulie had used to fix her dolls.

  Caulie tried again to ease Shanter’s head closer to his shoulders. With her fingers supporting his neck, she felt the cervical vertebrae shift against each other. The gaps between the bones seemed to shrink, but not by enough. The procedure was deeply unsettling, to Caulie if not the rapt soldiers surrounding her, but at least Shanter’s neck looked better and no longer twisted like fabric. It made her hope that perhaps the . . . things inside him were falling into place.

  “It still feels off,” she muttered. The spine below his skull had knobs in odd places and bad curvature.

  Grampharic said, “Well as for that, ma’am . . .”

  Before she could stop him, he swung his fist like a mallet and pounded the top of Shanter’s head. The neck closed with an audible grinch.

  “For all love!”

  “It’s the common remedy for sore neck,” Grampharic said, shying from her voice. “And drunkenness.”

  “Many marvelous things can be achieved simply by striking the skull,” Prodon added. “Doesn’t he look better now? Gramphy, you should set up as a surgeon.”

  In fact, Shanter’s color did seem to be returning, but Caulie couldn’t be sure, the bunker was too dim. His pulse fluttered, then strengthened, under her fingertips.

  “Well done, Grampharic,” Caulie said. “Can I ask a blunt question?”

  “La, it would be a relief if you kept them all blunt. The Haphans want to wrap everything up and it takes a week to turn it sensible in the mind.”

  “And then they call us stupid,” Prodon added, but he was smiling.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Caulie studied each of the squad members. They still towered over her but they did not seem menacing anymore. In the end, she gave up trying to frame it with the imperial presence and trying to hint that she was merely testing them. She said, simply: “Why are you helping me?”

  “Why, as basic service. You are an overlord.”

  “I mean, why did you help me at the headquarters? The colonel and the captain ordered you to lock me up.”

  “Yes, that. Good question.” Now Grampharic seemed uneasy. His hand twitched and he eased it out of view behind his back. “Was it not said aloud? I thought it was. Sometimes things are more precise when they are said aloud.”

  “Was what said aloud?”

  “Well, ma’am, back in the office it sounded like you were the new officer, the new voice for us to hear. ‘Here’s a better duty,’ Pretty Polly seemed to say. It sounded like we were supposed to listen to what you said. It seemed that was the message.”

  He trailed off with a shrug. Caulie nodded. She used the same style of waffle-wording with her students when she tried to explain something she didn’t understand herself. Keep it vague and let the meaning fill itself in. Hope the moment passes smoothly.

  Grampharic continued: “So some of it was Pretty Polly, and who knows what she thinks? I also wanted to watch your game play out. The colonel has other Tachba if he wants them, but it seemed unfair for you to be alone and without proper supervision. Your concern for your helpie was also very touching.”

  “But there was something else, wasn’t there?”

  “Which the pretty girl isn’t wrong,” Grampharic allowed. “There is the matter of the magic you made, and the ancestors who whispered your desires in the air.”

  “There was magic?” she prodded.

  “I shouldn’t speak it aloud. Stompfootie, Brutal Butcher, Sister Sneeze, or some other trench god may hear it spoken and come to silence us all.” The other squaddies twitched.

  “Then don’t speak it aloud,” Caulie said quickly. “It was just questions, idle questions. I seem to have too many.”

  “Idle questions are the worst,” Grampharic agreed. “Vile, multiplying things.”

  She turned to Shanter and felt his forehead. To her astonishment, he responded to her touch. His brow furrowed under her palm; his chest rose in a deep breath. It seemed like magic even to Caulie.

  “You are now my squad,” she told the men. “I will rely upon you to keep me safe.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “If you want to return to your unit, you may. Just tell me before you do.” She shot Grampharic a look. “So I can properly mourn losing your friendship.”

  His grin showed he knew exactly what she was doing. “As you desire, dashta.”

  Caulie turned back. It was so marvelous to see Shanter breathing, almost like watching him sleep again. “Can I ask for some privacy in here?”

  “Of course. You can ask without asking first.”

  But none of the squad members moved. She realized they were being clever with her and, though she rarely smiled at jokes, for some reason the childishness made her g
rin. “Then please, give us some privacy in here. Maybe find some coal too. And food! More battle smear if you can find it. Or something better, if that’s even possible.”

  In a moment, she had all the privacy she needed.

  Chapter 24

  Caulie’s tablet connected directly to Falling Mountain.

  Jephia’s face appeared on the screen and her brow immediately furrowed. She was at the lab, and she stepped into the archive chamber, sealing the door.

  “Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Jephia asked. “Never mind, I’ll just tell you. The good news is that you’re still able to make a tablet call.”

  Caulie nodded. “And the bad news?”

  “There is a writ out for your arrest. Just a temporary setback, nothing to worry about.”

  “A writ? Not an actual order?”

  “No, little Caulie. If there were an actual order, you’d already be arrested and stuck in detention somewhere. An actual order would spread up and down the trench and you wouldn’t have a place to hide.”

  Caulie noted Jephia’s significant pause and said, “My goodness!” She wasn’t an actress. While her exclamation was appropriate for little Caulie, she didn’t sound very convincing even to herself. Jephia didn’t mention it.

  “We have to establish that you’re on legitimate business down there, Caulie, because right now they’re claiming you went off the rails. Tell me where you are and what you’ve found out about the problem we discussed.”

  She means the wizard, Caulie thought. “If I tell you, won’t the secret police listen in and learn everything? Aren’t we still concerned about security?”

  “I took your call using a one-time encryption plug-in. The family has a bunch from the home world. Don’t worry about my side of the—”

  “But can’t they just ask the panther where I am? The panther is under their control, isn’t it?”

  “The creature is obstructing them for some reason,” Jephia said, shrugging. “Maybe it’s fallen in love with you. It’s insisting on protocols, so the Gray House have been up in arms looking for the machine’s override code. They can’t ask Lieutenant Luscetian because they idiotically disappeared him—so they have to ask the military for help. Except the military is pissed about Luscetian’s disappearance, so nobody’s cooperating with anybody. The military high command will only receive the request through proper channels, from the full security committee, but it’s the weekend so good luck with that.”

  “It’s the weekend?” It seemed bizarre to Caulie that there were still notions like like weekdays and weekends.

  Jephia leaned confidentially close to the tablet. “My mother invited two members of the security committee to our estate for a visit, and oops there’s a broken communication relay that we won’t discover until business opens next week. My mother is more devious than I am.”

  Caulie pulled Colonel Bessawra’s clipboard into her lap and thumbed through the papers, looking for a specific passage. “You’re using a one-time encryption plug-in, Jephia? That sounds like a valuable device.”

  “One-time encryption plug-ins are software, Caulie. We can make as many as we want and the only expense is answering stupid questions about them.” Jephia arched an eyebrow to take the sting out of her words, but her voice was slowing and she seemed puzzled. “The problem is that, since Landing Day, the Gray House possesses the skeleton key for all new encryption. Our good stuff was compiled on the home world and smuggled into the convoy. Look, I hate to rush a good software story, but you are under a tight deadline.”

  “Yes,” Caulie murmured. “Lots of urgency going on.”

  “Dear, a friend of yours might hope that you’d stop with the academic detachment. On the front, after all, everything is very personal.”

  Caulie returned her attention to the tablet’s screen. Lovely, brilliant, unreadable Jephesandra. She felt queasy. “Yes. We have arrived at the point where I tell you everything I found on the eternal front.”

  Jephia said nothing. She watched Caulie carefully.

  “Before I tell you everything, can you share who filled out the writ against me? Where did the specific information come from?”

  “I’m sorry, Caulie, I don’t know. Our insider saw the charges against you, but the identity of the informant is never included with the charges. It’s a whistleblower protection thing, I believe.”

  Caulie held up the clipboard and pointed to the passage:

  ALEXANDRIAN bragged to REDACTED that she had made a “love nest” with her Tachba orderly.

  She kept her eyes on Jephia’s face but discerned no change. Her friend’s expression could have been carved from granite.

  After a fractional pause, Jephia said, “Quite insulting, isn’t it?”

  “I have to say, Jephia, you’re not the only person to insinuate something inappropriate about my helpie”—Caulie repressed a tremor of sadness—“but you’re the only person who called my tent a ‘love nest.’”

  “I know, dear. I know.” Attuned to any change in her friend, Caulie saw that she was no longer relaxed. In day-to-day life, Jephia’s conversation had the feel of recitation, as if she were unfurling thoughts prepared a week earlier. Now she was staring straight ahead, her words dribbling out. “It’s what I feared, then. Our calls haven’t been private at all. They’re using our own conversations to complete the writ.”

  “That’s a plausible explanation,” Caulie said.

  “Don’t stare at me like that, Caulie. This might be good news. They’re not allowed to manufacture complaints out of thin air. They need a real informant before they can take action, and if they don’t have a real informant then we have leverage over them.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to read all the charges against me. When I go through them, what if I find information that only you would know, Jephia? Information we didn’t discuss through the tablet?”

  She watched Jephia’s face and tried not to notice her own deep sadness. If she noticed it, she would start to cry.

  Jephia herself didn’t express anything like sadness. Her voice was heavy. “Then you’d have to suspect me. It would be prudent.”

  “So you see my problem. I’m sorry.”

  Jephia shook her head. “This is how it goes with everything I touch. Why does it sting? I should be more blasé by now.” She met Caulie’s eyes again. “Very well: I’ve lost your trust.”

  “This is more than a writ, it’s an actual order to arrest me.”

  “See? I don’t know everything.”

  Unless you wanted me to blunder into HQ and get arrested.

  “The Tacchies are so much more straightforward,” Caulie murmured. “There is no double-dealing, not even about the things they wish to hide.”

  “Yes, aren’t they refreshing?” Jephia sighed. “Sometimes I want to be a Tachba myself. How are you making out down there?”

  Caulie hesitated to answer.

  “Don’t tell me anything you wouldn’t tell the secret police,” Jephia added, with a wan grin.

  Still feeling heavy, Caulie let the topic shift. She plumbed her mind for something to say. “Oh, I know. This is very strange: people keep calling me pretty! And they keep picking me up and carrying me places. They don’t seem very professional.”

  “You wanted something more warlike?”

  They grinned at each other.

  “Truth be told, you are a pretty girl,” Jephia continued. “I’m sorry to be the one who has to tell you.”

  “Sorry? Why?”

  “I know how it might complicate the narrative you’ve made for yourself. In reality, you are handsome and imposingly tall. A daunting presence when you don’t curl your shoulders. It might not be the thing here at Falling Mountain, but I bet the Tacchies love it.”

  “I’ve finally found my people.”

  “You may have.” Jephia squinted up at her. “Where is your handsome helpie?”

  “He has a name.”

  “I know his name. Shantanthic Felson Goldros
.”

  “He has a middle name?” Suspicion stabbed at Caulie again. Jephia read it on her face. “Yes, I looked him up. It turns out he has an actual record. He was offered an education twice, but declined both times. Once at a school in Ed-homse, and once at the Officer Academy at the Haphan War College.”

  “That’s . . .”

  “Rare in the extreme. My brother is in the academy and he’s barely making it. You have a Tacchie genius on your hands. Like I said, be careful with him.”

  “Shanter denied the offers? I didn’t know they could do that.”

  “It had never come up until him. A Tacchie refusing service, refusing training, and by implication refusing a command appointment. Of course they made a file on him. He’s been missing for the last few months but it was probably only one of those AWOL vacations the difficult ones take. According to his file, his family lives close to the front, so he was probably at home. All well and good, but suddenly he shows up to be your helpie. Questions upon questions! Do you think he’s a friend of our Lieutenant Luscetian?”

  Caulie’s instincts told her this was dangerous. Shanter had been linked to her once already and it had not turned out well for him. If Caulie was in trouble, she shouldn’t be friends with someone whom the empire considered disposable.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” Caulie said flatly. “Shanter is dead.”

  Jephia raised an eyebrow. “Ah? I’m sorry he’s dead. The file also said he had a quick temper and was prone to violence—I was getting to that part, was about to issue more warnings for you to ignore. He’s dead, though—that’s too bad. It happens like that, little Caulie.”

  “He was hanged when I was arrested,” Caulie said.

  Jephia winced. From guilt?

  “That’s too bad,” Jephia repeated. “I’m sorry for your loss. I know you, and you probably grew attached to him. To someone else, I’d say another will be along soon to take his place.”

  Caulie thought about Grampharic. “Actually, I already found another.”

  “Fresh drinks! Is he handsome too? What’s his name?”