Si Vis Pacem

by Robin Banks

  I don’t know why we are doing this to each other. Being together now hurts so damn much. If we’d paid enough attention, it would have hurt all the way through. The more you have, the more the loss is going to smart. What’s the point in having, then? You’re only setting yourself up for a fall. All the same, we cling together, as if that made sense, as if our feelings could make a difference.

  I know something awful happened when Nate walks into the room at normal human speed. I am not alone in thinking so: we all stop what we’re doing and look at him. He takes a bottle of whiskey out of his coat pocket – an actual bottle of actual whiskey, commercially produced, with a label and everything – and puts it on the table. It must have cost him a fortune. I know right then that whatever it is, it’s really serious.

  He clears his throat a couple of times before speaking. “Don’t you guys want a drink?”

  “Do we need one?” squeaks Dee.

  “Probably. It’s not anything bad, but it’s news. Sit down.”

  We all take our usual places around the table while Nate pours us rather generous portions. He downs half of his before speaking.

  “I got a com today. I’ve been offered a training spot. Orthopedic surgery. It’s what I want to do, I think.”

  Rody’s mouth drops. “But this is great! Where?”

  “Juno. It’s not a great facility, but it’s good enough.”

  “Good enough? Nate, it’s great!” He gets up, pulls Nate off his chair, and hugs him. “This is great. This is so great. You’re going to do so well.”

  “I will miss you so damn much,” mumbles Nate into his shoulder.

  “I know. Me too. When does it start?”

  “End of term. You won’t come with me?”

  Rody pushes him off to look at him. “No. But when you get your qualification, you can come and do some real work with me, OK?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “No going off to install diamond-studded patellas on first-classers.”

  “No way. It’s just five years, man, six max.”

  “Just five years.” Rody chokes a little. “I’ll hardly have a chance to notice that you’re not there. You have my blessing. You may go.”

  Nate gives him a bone-crunching squeeze, lets him go, and steps back from him. “This isn’t all of it. The position I’ve got, it doesn’t pay shit but the perks are good. Really good. Free schooling for all my dependents.”

  “But man, you don’t have any.”

  “I know. I just thought…” He whirls around, his frown etched deeper than normal. “Dee, would you like to marry me?”

  “Say what?” chokes Dee.

  “Not like that. It’s just… I know you’d like to get into terraforming, and they run the courses there.”

  “But Nate… I like you, but it’s not…”

  “I know. I just thought we could get married, you could come along, do your studies, then we could split. I can’t guarantee you’d get through it before my training is up, and if I flunk out you’d be stuck, but I don’t want to flunk out. I think I can make it. You wouldn’t be earning anything unless you moonlight, but I’m going to make enough to keep us both.”

  She takes a few deep breaths. When she finally speaks her voice is still unsteady, though gentle. “But honey, wouldn’t you like to marry someone for real? Someone you love? Someone who loves you like that?”

  He shrugs. “Yes. But I don’t know anyone like that right now, and I know you. We get on. I don’t want to go on my own, really. I wish I could take all of you, but I can’t, and this is something you want to do. It’s up to you, though. If you don’t want to…”

  “It’s not that. It’s just… It’s all so sudden. I have to think about it.”

  “Don’t think too long. I have three days to accept the offer. If you want to come with, we’d have to get married before I do. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t rush you if I didn’t have to.”

  “You are sorry? Honey, don’t be. You are being so kind.”

  “Not really. I like you. You make me happy when you’re around. But now, if you guys are OK with it, I’m going to go for a walk. I need to clear my head and say goodbye to the place. This is a lot to digest.”

  Rody gets up. “I’ll come with you, if you’ll have me.”

  “Of course. You know I’d marry you too, right?”

  “Of course. You’d marry the lot of us.”

  “Too right.” Nate picks up the bottle, fills our glasses up, and puts it back in his pocket. “We’ll see you soon, OK?”

  We just nod at him. He flicks us a smile, nods, and walks off with Rody.

  Dee’s eyes are glued to the table. When she finally looks up, they fill with tears.

  “Dee, you have to go.”

  “I don’t. I don’t want to leave you. Curse that boy for suggesting it!”

  “Take it back, Dee. You know it’s a good thing. You have to go. It’ll be great for you. This is a chance to realize your dream.”

  “The hell it is. I won’t realize my dream were I to live to be a thousand years old.”

  “Working towards it is good enough. That’s what you taught me.”

  “What if I flunk? I’d have wasted years of my life and a stack of Nathan’s credit.”

  “You won’t flunk. And if you do, you can get a job. You won’t be any worse off than you are now.”

  “But what about you? I can’t just leave you here! Everyone is going! Why didn’t Nate ask you, anyway? You’re way closer. He should have asked you first.”

  “He knows you want to study, and he believes in you. And Dee… I have a plan, sort of.”

  “What? And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I didn’t quite know how to… You were still looking, and I wasn’t going to decide… But if you’re going with Nate…”

  “Out with it!”

  I briefly consider asking her not to flip out, but I know it’d be pointless. “I think I want to serve.”

  “You what?” She slams her glass on the table so hard I don’t know how she doesn’t break it.

  “I could stay here on the tech track, maybe, but the competition is fierce, what with the Pollux lot taking up a bunch of spaces. And it wouldn’t change anything. I’d have a comfy hiding spot, but out in the real world, shit would just go on as normal.”

  “And you think joining the fucking Patrol would change that? After all you’ve seen? Didn’t it teach you anything?”

  “It taught me that Patrolmen are people. Not all of them are great examples of humanity, sure, but they don’t stop being people when they put a uniform on. And at least they try to make a difference.”

  “Didn’t you listen to them? To what the Fed made them do?”

  “The Fed gave orders. They didn’t have to follow them.”

  “Yes, they did!” Her voice is getting so shrill that she’s starting to sound hysterical. “They swore an oath, Alya! You’d have to swear it, too!”

  “I’ll figure something out.”

  “There is no way out! If you join, you’ll be under oath.”

  “I don’t care what I say to the Fed. I’ll tell them what they want to hear and do what I want to do, same as always.”

  “You’d make yourself a liar, at a minimum. A liar and an accomplice, more likely.”

  “No. I will never do anything against my morals just because the Fed tell me to. I will always question authority and I will never use being under orders as an excuse for my behavior.”

  I thought that might reassure her. Instead, it makes her lose her shit. She stands up and starts to pace the room, flailing her arms all over the place and screaming.

  “That’s not how it works! That’s not how anything works! If you join, you’ll become part of that machine. You will become one of the people whose boots are on people’s throats. An enforcer. And for what? For the feeling of power that a badge and a blaster can give you?”

  “It’s not going to be like that! I’m still me!”

  She
stops pacing and stands in the middle of the room, her fists clenched tight. “I don’t know what that means anymore. I thought I knew you, but clearly I don’t. My Alya would never, ever become one of them. Not for anything in the universe. I was wrong about you all along.”

  “You weren’t! I swear, you’ve got this all wrong.”

  “You swear? Last time you made a promise to me it was that we’d never, ever join the Patrol. Your words aren’t worth the spit they carry.”

  And with that she leaves the room, slamming the door behind her.

  I wait for her for hours. I can’t do anything else. When Rody and Nate come back, I tell them what happened. They aren’t happy with me. They don’t make a scene like Dee did, but their stunned silence is almost worse.

  I see Dee at dinnertime, but she pretends not to see me. When I realize that if I sit with Nate and Rody she’ll only go and sit elsewhere, I turn around and head straight to the return hatch. My stomach is cramped so tight that I couldn’t eat, anyway. I drop my untouched tray and head back to our room. Her room. The pressure behind my eyes is getting just too much and I have to do something to relieve it before it starts relieving itself, so I do the only thing I can think of: I get my bag and start packing.

  It takes longer than it should because my eyes keep going funny and my throat keeps clenching shut. Everywhere I look there’s something that hurts: Dee’s drawings, the seat where we used to huddle, the dirty mark on the bunk partition through which we used to ‘path.

  Dee has been the best part of my life since always and now I fucked it up, and it’s over. It’d be over anyway, with all of us getting scattered every which way, but this is different. This is something I never thought would happen, and it’s so big a deal that I can’t even feel it all. It’s a pain so big that, instead of hurting me, it just ripped a chunk of me clean off. Now all I can do is stare at the hole where all the goodness in my life used to be.

  When I’m done clearing my spoor out of the room, I turn back just once to look at it. I think of my life here, how sweet it was, how good it felt. Then I put a nail right through it and walk away from it.

  I’ve not really thought the next step through. I know that I can’t stay here, but I don’t know where I can go. My feet take me to the towers out of habit and I wonder about going back to our service cupboard. The mere thought of being there without Dee hurts like a kick in the guts, so I figure that’s what I need. Everything is broken, everything is over, and the sooner I deal with it, the better it will be.

  In the morning, I’m groggy as hell because it’s not as if I could sleep, but I’m alert enough to sort out a new rota for myself and bring it over to Reggie’s office. There are so many empty spaces in our classes that swapping around is not a problem, so I manage to make sure that I won’t bang elbows with Dee. There is nothing I can do about my shifts at the med bay clashing with the guys’, so I just quit. There isn’t so much work that they can’t do without me, and they’ll have to find someone to replace me soon enough, anyway.

  Nate and Dee get married at lunchtime on the second day. They go down to the Fed office, sign their contracts, and that’s that. I get to hear about it as juicy gossip. I don’t attend, because I’m not invited. I spend the rest of the day trying to be happy for them. I mostly fail.

  By the third day, my new life has a shape. It’s not a comfortable shape, but it does what I need it to do. It’s only a few weeks, after all. I was alone before. I will be alone soon. My mistake was in getting used to having something like that, in fooling myself that the shape of anyone’s life is anything but a long string of loneliness and hurt, occasionally punctuated by wonderful blips that only serve to make you feel worse when things inevitably go to shit. I focus on the stuff I can do something about: I finish my coursework, take my last exams, eat and sleep when I can, and generally get on with it.

  Nate tries to speak to me a few times, but I give him the slip. I’m good at that. Rody seems wholly focused on Dee, which is just how it should be. I’m just fine on my own. I’m used to it.

  Each day seems eternal, but they chase one after the other at an unbearable speed. When the last day of term comes, I feel as if I’d just flown at full speed into a wall: it happens so fast I can hardly see it coming, I can’t stop it, and it fucking hurts.

  I don’t go to the Chancellor’s office to check out the results: I know I graduated, I know Dee made sure she failed, and I don’t much care about anyone else.

  I spend my last eighthday in my nest, feeling the time pass. I have nothing I need to do and I can’t do what I really want to do. I keep trying to convince myself that it would make no odds, that in a few days all the people I care about will be gone, and my life with them. I keep reminding myself that staying here without them would be even worse than going. It all makes good logical sense, but it does nothing to stop the hurt.

  The day of my passing out ceremony, I don’t wake up, for the simple reason that I never went to sleep. I put on my formal cadet’s uniform. I have never worn it before and it feels weird. Everything feels weird, barely half real, senseless and unstable. I just put a foot in front of the other until I find myself in the assembly hall.

  I’ve spent hundreds of hours in this room, but today it feels more unfamiliar than it did on my first day here. I can’t sit at my regular seat, because they want us to step to the podium in alphabetical order. I try to block out everything bar what I need to do, but I fail.

  Dee is here. She’s not looking at me, but she’s here. Rody and Nate are sitting on either side of her. They look at me, but they seem none too happy. They are here, though, all of them, and they didn’t need to come.

  Rody and Dee sit like statues for the whole endless hour the ceremony takes. Rody stares straight at me, his face totally emotionless. Dee stares at the floor. Nate is the only one who looks alive and awake. He keeps catching my eyes and smiling at me, but it’s a wonky smile that droops at the edges.

  I can’t think of anything but them, but it doesn’t matter: I know the ceremony by heart. I read it and studied it for days, trying to find a way to get out of it. In the end, I had to admit that I couldn’t: no oath, no entry to the Patrol.

  There are nowhere near as many graduating cadets as there ought to be, but there’s still a bunch of us. We go up to the podium in groups of twenty and take turns to swear the oath. We’re going up alphabetically and the wait seems to take forever. When my turn comes, I place my hand on my heart and say my piece.

  “I, Alya Pax, do solemnly and sincerely declare that I will fitfully serve the Foundation for Exploration and Development as a Patrolman; that I will execute the powers and duties of my office without fear or favor; that I will, to the best of my power, keep the peace and prevent offences against the peace; and that I will obey without question all lawful orders of those set in authority over me.”

  I look down at the guys and they’re all staring at me. Nate and Rody are grinning. Dee’s eyes widen till they seem to swallow half her face and she starts to cry. By the time Reggie comes around to hand me my badge and warrant card and shake my hand, it’s all I can do not to cry myself.

  I have to go out with the rest of the cadets, parade all the way down to Landing, watch the raising of the Fed’s flag, and parade all the way back.

  When we finally get back to the Academy, they’re waiting for me in front of the tower. Dee is still crying and Rody is hugging her. Nate is the first one to spot me. He runs right up to me and hugs me so tight he makes me squeal.

  “I knew it. I knew you’d find a way.”

  When Nate lets go of me Rody is standing next to us, scowling.

  “Baby girl, you just got up in front of a room full of brass and took an oath to fitfully do your job. Fitfully. For real and no shit.”

  “Yeah. And I intend to keep that oath.”

  “I have never liked you more.”

  “That’s not saying much.”

  “Fact. But what about that bit about obeying orders
without questions?”

  I shrug. “The Fed don’t have laws. Hence, there are no lawful orders. And even if we ignored that, which they clearly did, they forgot to specify who does the authority-setting. The day I decide that someone is in authority over me, I’ll gladly obey their orders. Until then, I’ll continue to pick and choose.”

  “You could have gotten into serious trouble.”

  “Unlikely. It’s just my accent, you know. It gets worse under pressure.”

  “Come here.” He opens up his arms and I walk right into them. Nate wraps himself around both of us.

  When they let go, I look past them to find Dee still crying. I thought I’d fixed things between us, but clearly I haven’t.

  “Dee, look, I know that the spirit of the oath is still…”

  She cuts in. “Fuck the spirit of the oath. I am so sorry.” She starts sobbing. “I’ve given you absolute hell.”

  “You didn’t know…”

  “That’s because I didn’t listen. I didn’t trust you. I don’t know what was wrong with me. I am so, so sorry.”

  I don’t quite know how it happens, whether I fall into her arms or she walks into mine, but we find each other hugging. We don’t let go for a while.