Si Vis Pacem

by Robin Banks

  Dee and I make ourselves a makeshift bedroom in the service closet at the bottom of the stairs. It’s small, but it’s cozy. Nate and Rody make the same arrangements in the other tower. For the first time since this all started, I manage to sleep all through the night. I don’t know if it’s because the tower walls muffle the screams a bit better or because people are having less nightmares. Either way, I start the day rested, and everything seems a little bit easier. It’s just as well, because the rest of the Patrolmen arrive that evening, nearly doubling our workload.

  All we can do for a few days is put a foot in front of the other, do whatever task is next, and collapse in our beds every time we have a moment with nothing to do.

  The constant exhaustion is having some funny effects on my brain. There is a new degree of clarity to my thoughts, as if all the spurious side-processes of my brain had been deactivated. Sometimes I find myself stumbling over the most amazing revelations, logical leaps that my regular self could never manage. Sometimes I can’t remember how to operate a door handle. I kind of like it, except for when I don’t, but even then I am too tired to actively object to it. Whether it’s good or bad overall is beyond my ability to evaluate. It doesn’t matter, anyway: it is what it is, and it’ll carry on being so until we’re good and done.

  A few days into it, I lose all sense of time and space. I walk out of a room and I don’t know where or when I am. I search inside me for a feeling about that. When I can’t find one, I realize that I don’t really know who I am, either. Nate finds me sitting on the stairs, trying to remember what I’m trying to remember. He tries to talk to me, but my brain can’t make sense of the words, so he picks me up and puts me in the first bed he can find. It’s not my bed, but it’s a flat surface.

  When I open my eyes again, I still don’t know where or when I am, but I feel much better. That feeling evaporates when I find out how long I’ve been sleeping and how much slack the guys have had to pick up. They tell me that it doesn’t matter, but of course it does. I realize just how much it mattered when I find Nate passed out in the ‘fresher. He must have sat down to take a shit and fallen asleep. I manage to maneuver him into a more comfortable and less embarrassing position, lock the ‘fresher door, and threaten bloody murder on anyone who bothers him. When he comes around he chides me for letting him sleep, but I tune him out. Dee does the same for Rody the day after, minus the ‘fresher aspect of it, and Rody for her the day after that. None of us has any idea how Martyn keeps going, but we all believe that when he finally crashes he will probably not resurface for days, so we dread that moment.

  Things get better every day, though. You’ve got to hand it to the Patrolmen: as soon as they can do without our help, not only they gladly do so, but they turn to helping their buddies. They can’t perform medical duties, but they slowly but surely take over pretty much everything else, which frees up my time and Dee’s, which allows us to help the guys more, which allows them to help Martyn. I really appreciate that, but what I appreciate even more is their general attitude to their situation and to this entire affair. I don’t have a word for it, but it seems to be a mixture of determination, acceptance, and joyful badassery. However bad things may be, their reaction is to be to process them, flip them the finger, and move the fuck on. Some of the ways in which this manifests are unconventional, to say the least. When I first heard them call the amputee guy “Stumpy,” I was rather taken aback, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Dee disapproves wholeheartedly of this kind of thing, but, from what I can tell, it works for them. It makes them feel good, and they feel good to be around.

  They’re also an unmanageable, unruly bunch of assholes. They only listen to what they want to hear, and that’s if you scream it at them. Half the time they ignore it anyway. They have the manners of toddlers and the patience of boiling kettles. Getting them to do anything in an organized fashion is like herding cats.

  A prime example of that is the chaos they cause when we finally receive the crates with their effects. I know they’ve been waiting for weeks now, but all they need to do is wait a few more minutes for me to open the crates, sort everything out, and bring them their gear. Instead, as soon as they get wind of what I’m doing, they mob me. There’s simply not enough room for all of them to cram themselves into the office I’m working from, so they take to snatching stuff out of my hands, bellowing names, and passing it over people’s heads to its intended recipient. After making myself hoarse screaming at them to back the fuck up and calm the fuck down, I give up and let them get on with it. If anything goes missing, they’ve only got themselves to blame.

  It doesn’t take them long to be done and clear off, at least. When the dust settles, I pile the damn crates out of the way, ready for the service staff to collect. That’s when I spot McGee peering at me through the door.

  “What can I do you for?”

  “Just checking that there was nothing for me.”

  “I wouldn’t know. You guys wouldn’t let me do this properly.”

  “Sure. Alright.”

  He doesn’t budge, though, and he’s looking way too much like a kicked puppy. I stifle a long string of swearwords, and check the shipment list.

  “Nope. Sorry. Not everybody got their stuff, though. There’ll probably be a second shipment coming soon.”

  His expression darkens. “Who else didn’t get anything?”

  “How is this any of your business?”

  “Humor me. Please.”

  “I can’t remember. I’d have to go through the list again.”

  “Could I have a look at it?”

  “Sorry, no. It’s an official document. I can’t circulate it.”

  “Circulate it? I was only gonna…”

  His voice trails off and his eyes get a hopeless, glassy cast. It makes me feel like a total asshole. I’m just about to ignore my orders and let him see the list, when he brightens up.

  “OK. There are 84 of us here, right? How many people got stuff?”

  I scan through the list. “77.”

  “Shit.” His face goes so pale I worry that he’s going to pass out.

  “What?”

  “If I tell you a few names, can you tell me whether they got anything?”

  “I shouldn’t, but go ahead.”

  He starts counting on his fingers. “Kane, Evans, Nielsen.”

  “No. Nothing for them.”

  “Syed, Barnes.”

  “No.”

  He stares over my head, in the distance.

  “Then it’s just me and Skip.”

  “Skip?”

  “Ryan Brady. The other ginger. Quiet guy.”

  That’s the understatement of the year. The guy hasn’t said a word since he’s come here. They tested him for brain damage, but they can’t find anything.

  “Yes. Nothing for him either.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “What?”

  “The other guys didn’t get anything because their carriers got blown up. Skip was on my carrier. You can put two and two together.”

  I’m so tired that it takes me a while to work out what he’s saying. When I do, I understand why he looks so upset.

  “Just because you didn’t get your gear it doesn’t mean that your carrier didn’t make it!”

  “Sure. It’s probably just a coincidence that Skip and I are the only two other people here who didn’t get anything. You got the list of dead from Pollux?”

  “No. And if I had it, I couldn’t show it to you.”

  “Haven’t they published it somewhere?”

  “No. Why?”

  “I thought they’d have a memorial or something. I mean…” His eyes go blank. “They are burying this. They’re burying this, and us with it. Do you know what that means?”

  “What?”

  “That we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

  He turns on his heels and storm off. I don’t see him for the rest of the day. He doesn’t come down for his meals, and when I knock
at his door to find out if he’s OK, he tells me to go away. I figure that ignoring his clear request would do more harm than good, so I leave him alone.

  When the first of our Patrolmen gets medically cleared, the next stage of the cycling process starts. Four weeks is no time at all to get someone a job, or the qualifications he needs to get a job. I’m the best one of us at that kind of thing and I kind of suck at everything else, so I get taken off med bay duties and shoved in an office to sort it all out.

  It’s neither simple nor pleasant. A bunch of them want to get back to the Patrol, but can’t, because they won’t be able to meet the basic physical requirements within the time allotted to them. Explaining that to them is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Another bunch of them don’t want to go back, but they aren’t qualified for much else. Telling grown-ass men that they need to go back to school isn’t that easy, either. Some of them can’t nor won’t go back, which would be fine, but it leaves them with a distinctive shortage of options.

  The hardest thing for me to deal with is their calm: they are being treated incredibly shittily and they know it, but they don’t take it out on me. They all just thank me, as if the help I’m trying to give them could make up for how fucked up the situation is. Their lack of anger is making me so fucking furious that I’m pretty sure I’m getting an ulcer.

  I feel marginally better the odd times one of them protests. McGee is a prime example: when I tell him that he has to retake his pilot test, he promptly blows a gasket.

  “I’ve been flying since I was fourteen! You were barely out of nappies!”

  “Aside from the fact that the minimum age for pilots is nineteen…”

  He scoffs. “Yes, because that matters when there’s work to be done.”

  “…it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been flying, not according to Fed regulations. You crashed your ship, so your license has been suspended.”

  His face gets so red it nearly matches the stubble on his head. “I was in the middle of a fucking battle! I got fucking shot down!”

  “I get that, but it makes no difference. According to the regulations…”

  “And you think that’s right?”

  “No! I don’t! But it’s not up to me! I’m trying to fucking help you here!”

  “Telling me I have to retake my license is helping me?”

  “It’s all the help I can fucking well give you, OK?”

  We pant at each other until we can speak without screaming.

  He nods. “OK. Sim test?”

  “You need to pass your theory first. Keep eyerolling like that and you’re going to detach a retina.”

  “Alright. Just tell me where to go and when.”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  I’m so busy organizing everyone’s schedules and filling and re-filling application forms that I hardly get to do anything else. Things become even more fun when the Patrolmen we left behind in the care of the Fed medics get cleared en masse. That relieves the Bens to come and help in the towers, which is great. The drawback is that some of those Patrolmen are obviously nowhere near OK yet. Martyn doesn’t have the clout to undo what the Fed medics did, so he just swears for a couple of minutes before arranging to have them moved to the towers. The rest of them don’t need urgent medical care, but that doesn’t mean that they are fit for duty. While I am prioritizing the third-classers, I don’t want any of the second-classers to end up stranded with nothing. Although their situation is not as dire, it’s still fucking shitty. I end up spending two solid days working out their training needs and testing schedules. I just stay at my desk and keep working until I’m done.

  I emerge on the evening of the second day, fairly incoherent with exhaustion, and realize that maybe I ought to have paced myself. I make my way down the tower, praying that the cot in my cupboard will be empty when I get there and that I’ll make it there without falling over. About halfway there I bump into McGee, literally. I just didn’t see him. He didn’t see me either, apparently. When he looks at me I wonder if he can see anything much. There are rings around his eyes as red as his scars.

  I’m not computing terribly well, so I just let my mouth do the thinking. “Are you OK?”

  “Like it matters.”

  He pushes past me and storms up the stairs. I’ve got no call to follow him, even if I had the energy, so I leave him to it. I don’t find out what the fuck happened until I wake up the following morning, and it’s not from him. One of the Patrolmen tells Nate, who tells me.

  “You are going to have to cut him some slack, flower.”

  “What the fuck happened?”

  “He failed his pilot retest. No, that’s not right: he failed to take it. He couldn’t get himself into the sim.”

  “What? All he has to do is sit down. His mobility is great and his ass is just about the only part of his body that didn’t get fucked up.”

  Nate shakes his head, his eyes huge. “That wasn’t it. He freaked out so much he couldn’t get himself on the seat. He crashed his ship, you know? That’s how he got burnt. They had to cut him out of the wreck. I guess that kind of thing leaves a mark.”

  “But he was so looking forward to it! He’s been talking about nothing else but getting back on a ship!”

  “I know. I guess he didn’t know. Now he does.”

  “So what is he going to do?”

  “I don’t know. Try again, I guess, next time they can fit him in. I don’t know, though: it sounds pretty serious. Do you have a plan B for him?”

  “Nope. He was hell-bent on piloting.”

  “I hope he can think of something else.”

  Aside from organizing their initial testing and training schedules, we have no involvement at all with the Patrolmen’s cycling process. It’s none of our business and we’re busy enough with what we’ve got to do. The Patrolmen seem strangely reticent to talk about it, too, and when they do it’s in private, and quietly. We can always work out how they are doing, though, because we can read it in their faces. The relief or despair are so obvious they’re practically palpable.

  That’s how I know that McGee still hasn’t managed to pass his pilot test: every time I see him, his expression is less determined and more haunted. Then, after a week of relentless trying, he just gives up. He doesn’t go for anything else, either. He just stays in his room all day, not even going out for meals.

  Reggie comes to talk to him that night. I’d not seen him for what seems like ages and I can’t believe how much he’s changed. It’s not just that he looks so worn out he could be ten years older; the way he carries himself is different, too. There’s something new about him, but I can’t spot what it is, until Rody tells me.

  “I would hate to get on that dude’s wrong side. He’s gone perma-angry, like you, but he’s got plenty of clout and super ninja skills. Not that you don’t, but between the two of you I’d rather get on the wrong side of you. And believe me, that is saying something.”

  “I’m not perma-angry, whatever that means.”

  “You are, but you need to be. Size of you, if you didn’t raise your voice, half the time most people wouldn’t even notice that you’re talking. It’s still not fun at all for the odd civilian casualty, though. I guess Reggie has had enough of swallowing shit, and now he’s handing it back with interest. I just hope whatever he’s got in store for McGee doesn’t kill him.”

  “I thought they were friends.”

  “I’m not sure how much that matters around here, baby girl. If McGee doesn’t sort his shit out, in under two weeks he’s going to be out on his ass. Reggie can’t help that. Maybe that’s why he’s so pissed off about everything: because he can’t do enough to fix this shit.”

  “Maybe. Maybe that’s why I’m pissed off too, and you just don’t get it.”

  “Maybe. Still, I look forward to missing having you around all the time.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “With the Patrolmen cycling out, Martyn will send you back to school.�
��

  “Yeah, right. The Pollux refugees will start arriving soon.”

  “We won’t need you to help with them.”

  “And you know that how?”

  “Logic. We’re not getting any of the people who were involved in the fighting. Those are either dead, one way or the other, or off somewhere the Fed can’t get them. The folk sent here are displaced civilians.”

  “And you think they won’t need help?”

  “Not medical help.”

  “I admire your optimism. From everything I studied, civil wars tend to be profoundly uncivil.”

  I don’t know what Reggie told McGee, but it gets him to play ball for two whole, peaceful days: he eats his meals, doesn’t moan about his check-ups, and attends his scheduled training. He also removes himself from the pilot testing schedule, something I only find out when I check it. I could have done that for him, same as I’d do it for anyone else, but I understand him not wanting to talk about it with me. All in all, though, his behavior seems much improved.

  That lasts until he receives a com. He still doesn’t have a reader, so he goes to the public monitors to read it. That evening he doesn’t turn up.

  In theory, there is nothing wrong with that. He is technically no longer in our care. He is not obliged to respect any kind of curfew. He is a grown man, and we have neither the obligation nor the need to ensure that he’s safely tucked into bed every night. All that apparently means fuck-all in practice, because I just can’t go to sleep not knowing if he’s safe.

  I can’t afford the luxury of losing sleep and wasting time, so I drag my insomniac carcass to the office and do some work on the application forms. I’ve nearly run out of shit to do and swearwords to mumble, when McGee stumbles up the stairs. By the time I reach his room to give him a piece of my mind, he’s already asleep in his tank, snoring his head off. I try to shake him awake, because something really isn’t right here, and I can’t. I just can’t rouse him. I am just about to run and get Martyn, when I smell the alcohol on his breath. They asshole isn’t ill: he’s fucking wasted.