Friday, June 26, 2708

Back to Cyran’s tent.  Before we enter, Alysha taps me on the shoulder.  “I just want to ask one thing of you.”

“Sure.”

“Lucinda had a rosary of cut rock crystal.  Can you tell me who got it?”

I look away, across the stony valley.  “The forest did,” I say at last.

(I see my arresting officer, a pimply-faced young sergeant, slip a rosary back into his pocket on his way over to me.  Weakling.

I stand quite alone, my belt and holster undone and held out, ready to hand over with a smile.  They can threaten my rank, but not my panache.

Yet I almost wish that I could pray.  I would beg whatever god or demon, ghost or sprite to answer,  that the army would send men where I told them to—but an order only counts if someone in authority says so, which, as of this moment, I am not.)

This time we find the tent jammed with about a dozen more people than the designer had in mind.  The table has gone back to the cart-siding and cargo from which it came.  I join the others and sit cross-legged, with just a skin of canvas between me and the cold ground, and no room to stretch out my legs.

(The Sargent takes the gun-belt from me and says formal words, while passing them off to a glaring private.  The private has not changed his shirt; he smells ripe and still has a crusty spatter of blood on his right shoulder—where a comrade died at his side?  I get it...he did not change because he wants me to see.  Charming.  Did he think that he could get through a war—no, get through life—without losing anybody?)

Whew—and I thought the air stale before!  But what can you expect of troops who get most of their protein from beans?  I notice a lot of new faces among the officers, and many that I miss.  The map now hangs above us, points marked where each separate band can scatter to at need.  I should never have doubted Cyran's handling of our numbers.

( I know exactly where I’d hide an army in those mountains, within reasonable range of Cherone’s hunting lodge and yet a world apart in its utter worthlessness for anything but concealment of a large force.  I drew them a map.  I could not have made it more plain.  Why did they place stars on my shoulders if they never intended to listen to me?)

Cyran points and different people speak.  We listen, give feedback if called upon in turn, and then e makes judgments on whatever we have to say.  “Divvy up the stapleseed, rye and chia evenly,” e says, “as much as everyone can carry, then send whatever’ s left in the barrels, with the cart and oxen, to this village here, Limanueva.  We can’t travel at ox-speed, and they got cut off from supplies by the hostilities.  They’ve been good friends to us, and we want to keep it that way.”

 (I offer my wrists for the handcuffs, and my arrester takes my hands as gently as his rosary; he seems to hang his head in apology for the private—as if we could be friends.  Are all women the Virgin Mary to him, until proven otherwise?

Whatever the case, he is a gentleman first and an officer second.  This annoys me even as I smile at him.  He has fastened the cuffs as loosely as bracelets;  had I been an actual menace, I could have easily slipped myself free and tested my hand-to-hand training against his.  But since I find myself in no position to discipline him, I might as well enjoy the relative comfort.  Not that I could ever completely enjoy a long ride with limited ability to move my hands, and annoying metal digging into me no matter how I rest them.

Ah well, the discomfort might drive me out of my body into one of those “military meditative states” in which the Tilián steep their soldiers.  Sounds rather silly to me, yet it does seem to work for them. )

Part of me takes mental note, in a compartment of my mind that never stops recording, per my training.  The rest of me observes the weariness of each and every speaker, and of Cyran hirself.  E’s not the only one wearing a bandage, either.  After this meeting Malcolm and I will have to head back to the infirmary tents where we started the day, and do what we can for as many as possible.

 (The oxcart to which he leads me looks uninviting, boarding two benchfuls of surly, unshaven dereliction-of-duty and public-misconduct cases.  They look well-punished already by their own misdeeds before we ever got to them, bruised and abraded and wrapped in bloodstained gauze—as if we hadn’t enough legitimate war injuries to occupy our medics!  That one green-faced youth, for one, looks perilously close to losing his liquor onto the nearest opposite lap.  But my MP lets me sit in the front of the cart, not with the rank and file chained together in back.  Also bad form, but slacking in the discipline for a female looks better to me all the time.

He’d have made a nice house servant, better than a soldier, full of fine sensibilities around his betters, knowing when and precisely how much to break the rules for decorum’s sake.  Perhaps he used to be one, before enlisting.  Poor baby—did his old master treat him badly?  Or did he love him and desire to protect him?  Or did he just get drafted?)

"Thanks for your report, Malcolm,” Cyran says as our dentist sits back down.  “Does anyone here still doubt the value of the house-servants to our cause?"  Hardly room for hir patented tail-swishing panther-pace, but in a few steps e manages it.  "You're going to face resentment in the ranks over this—for years the meritocracy has played on the tensions between those who slave indoors and those who toil without.  But you'll have to make sure that every trooper under you sees those prejudices as the plan and triumph of the enemy, fit target for the full violence at your disposal—and that means getting iron-hard on yourself, first—violent against anything inside yourself that ever wanted to smash in a smug butler's face."

E stops pacing and stares down on us.  "Because that would be my face that you’d smash.  Most of you don't know how often I've infiltrated the mansions of the high and mighty by posing as a maid or butler.  I've kept quiet about that till now, wanting to keep my cover for future occasions—but now I want you to let every single soldier in your commands know that Cyran has played the servant—yes, even in the presidential palace—and has not suffered any taint from it.”

(And now the cart lurches and jolts over a road that should’ve seen repair years ago, courtesy of the rebels who like to impair our mobilization, with a callous disregard to the destructive impact on the entire country.  Self-centered animals.

I hear a retch, a gurgling gush, and a sudden explosion of cusswords behind me.  The stale liquor smell reeks even in the open air.  The MP blushes a deep mauve color to hear such language in the presence of a lady.  I sit stiffly where he placed me, counting my blessings.)

“Diomedio, you and your sister Luka have done good work preventing road maintenance and blowing up pavement.  Let the government build all the jeeps they want!  They still can’t go where we can travel freely.  Now I want you to give more attention over here, to the east.  They’ve been turning more to smugglers lately.”

The hobby-archaeologist in me sighs deeply.  I can’t help but wonder about traces of Old Earth asphalt that I’ve sometimes seen, and what hidden artifacts might have fallen into or under it.  But war has never been a friend to archaeology.

(A deep gloom settles on me, my defenses lulled by the cart’s rough rocking.  I can’t count on the blessing that I most desire.  The army won’t send any force into that valley on just my word.  They hate taking me seriously, and right now they don’t have to.  I repeat this to myself as monotonously as the tinkling of the chains on my cuffs and the clinks of the heavier restraints in back.  I can’t seem to stop dwelling on it.  Do the Tilián have trances for that?

Yet perhaps someone still in command might get an idea from my message, and at least keep an eye on the passes in and out?  Let him take credit for the idea—I don’t care!  Let them blot my name out of it entirely if they must, but we won’t get this opportunity twice.)

"Now, as to the distribution of forces.  Deirdre, you've got two simultaneous missions before you.  I want your band to escort your set of refugees to a mountain enclave...here...where they can receive quick retraining as llama-herds for a textile company that's hiring."  E smiles on me.  "Llamas are smelly, ornery beasts, and the work may not be to the farmers' tastes, but it comes with a nomadic lifestyle in some of the most isolated terrain in the world—perfect cover till the heat cools down and they can go back home again.  If the Cumencians opt to learn spinning and weaving while they're at it, they can make a little extra cash and go home with a new trade."

"And the other job?"

"You'll hook up with Majid on the way, to pick up Rashid.  Damien will then lead you to the ruins of Koboros after that, where you and Malcolm will help Rashid set up a permanent hospital, and then go on your separate ways.  We need this seriously enough that I might travel with you for a time."  E keeps on smiling, but I can read in those cold blue eyes the intent to keep tabs on this slayer of her superior officer.  I can't say I blame hir.  “Yes, Memsir.”  I dare not move a muscle of my face.

(Sergeant Gentleman tries my patience by telling me all about his mother and his girlfriend troubles.  Perhaps he has no trusted female to confide in who could give him some advice.  His voice sounds as if it changed two weeks ago, and he casts shy glances my way as though I were his Madonna indeed, and not his superior officer, however disgraced.

I sigh and endure it.  I might even venture to advise him.  I’d almost rather have him undress me with his eyes, degrading as that is, as the other brutes do.  Why can’t anyone in this entire godforsaken army simply see me as a human being?

Ah well.  Humanity is overrated anyway.)

"Romulo, I want you to lead your band down south...this way...towards this munitions factory.  Leave the factory itself alone, and let all deliveries through to it, but harry every convoy that leaves the city, stealing what you can..."