The Lotus Eaters (3 page)

Cara shivered at the thought. "Any word on the
duque
?" she asked, changing the subject slightly.

"No, none. I'm tempted sometimes to ask you to presume on your friendship with Lourdes . . ."

"I can't. She has enough troubles."

"I know," he agreed.

No matter what that Old Earth bimbo told me before she left, I
know
I could take these peasants out now
. So thought an elegantly slender man dressed, perhaps absurdly, in the reproduction blue velvet uniform of a marshal of the army of Napoleon. Impatiently and repeatedly, General Janier, Army of the Republic of Gaul, slapped his unawarded marshal's baton into the palm of his left hand. The baton, like the uniform, was reproduction. Fake or not, both captured something of the spirit of the man, as did his hawk-like, pugnacious nose.

Not that Janier had much of the republican sentiment of a Lannes or the family fidelity of a Davout (Janier's mistress lay asleep nearby in a suite of offices he'd had converted to an apartment for her) or the stoic loyalty of a MacDonald. He had some of the sheer courage of a Ney. And he had the one thing virtually all of Napoleon's marshal's had shared, love of glory.

And why shouldn't I? I am related to half of them and descended from more than one.

Sad, sad it is; to be a man of my inclinations and breeding, and be saddled with the wretches who rule the Tauran Union. Pacifist swine. Eunuchs, the lot of them.

A flash in the distance lit Janier's sneering face. In this case, the flash came not from the more distant lightning, but from an explosion somewhere across the Transitway, at Balboa's premier training facility, the Imperial Range Complex, nestled in the corner formed by
Lago
Chagres and the Transitway, rather, that portion of it called the "Gallardo Trench." The Legion and the Tauran Union troops shared the complex, not always amicably.

Mine, preparing to fight theirs, or theirs, preparing to fight mine, I wonder. No matter. No one is going to fight anyone right now. With their leader incapacitated, the locals won't start anything—more's the pity—and with my political masters unwilling to fund me or give me the troops I need, I
can't
start anything. That Wallenstein woman was wasting her time telling me not to do something I can't do anyway.

Still, this is all a house of cards. I sit athwart the Transitway. Ultimately, the Balboans—the ones in power—won't accept that state of affairs. The Balboans who will accept it rule over a tiny corner of the country and dream of ruling it all again. And why should they not dream? There's little for them to steal where they are. And theft is in their very genes.

The general ceased slapping his baton into his palm. He shook his head.
As is crime, generally. Even now, they fund themselves—they think I don't know, the fools—by assisting in the drug trade and taking their cut.

Well, if they're criminals at least they're good at it. They cover their tracks well. All the pressure to stop the trade, all the pressure coming from the Federated States, falls on those who have nothing to do with it. And them, the peasant Parilla and his defunct renegade Carrera? They can't deal with the real problem because that real problem is guarded by us and guaranteed by the Federated States.

A house of cards; let one thing come loose and it will all crumble.

On the other hand, the sinister hand, if it all crumbles while the Balboans—the enemy Balboans—are ready and I am not, I just might lose. No glory, no name, no place in the history books. Simple defeat and a footnote to avoid my example.
That
is intolerable.

Perhaps things will improve when the permanent High Admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet comes to us, be it Wallenstein or someone else. At least the filth in the Tauran Parliament will listen to him or, if Wallenstein's appointment becomes permanent, her.

A dozen or so miles to the southeast of Janier's headquarters there was a ship anchored in the lake, rocking violently in the wind-driven waves. It was well guarded at all times, though the guards only changed at night. It hadn't moved in at least a year. Someday, it would, but only to get rid of the last traces of evidence when it was finally sunk into a deep ocean trench.

Whether the ship would have any people aboard when it went down was a matter of some speculation for the group of guards who manned it in rotation. They reported to Carrera's chief of intelligence, Omar Fernandez, and he was noted for tying up loose ends neatly.

Loose ends?

* * *

There was an evil-looking, weasel-faced man waiting in one of the ship's offices when former High Admiral Martin Robinson and the Marchioness of Amnesty, Lucretia Arbeit, were escorted in. Both of the Old Earthers bowed deeply and respectfully to the man. They'd long since had their arrogance beaten out of them.

"I have a little problem," said Legate Omar Fernandez, weasel face splitting in an unpleasant grin.

"A problem, sir?" asked Robinson, worriedly. Arbeit merely shivered in place. Though both measured their years in centuries, and both, as Class Ones and members of the Peerage, had received the best anti-aging therapy Old Earth could offer, both looked to have aged like cheese left in the sun, all wrinkled and hard and dry. This despite neither of them having been subjected to real torture in many months. Indeed, they'd been
wrung
dry long ago.

"A couple of problems, really," Fernandez said, his eyes flickering once at Arbeit, and then a second time, at Robinson. "One is that we haven't been able to get your old shuttle working again. I don't suppose you know anything about the flight computer?"

Robinson gulped. "No, sir. It wasn't anything in my training. I can fly one but . . ."

Arbeit shivered still more; her naval rank came from her civil position. She didn't even know how to fly one.

"Pity," Fernandez said, in a voice that seemed to contain real regret. "Well, there goes one reason to keep you both alive."

Arbeit crumpled to her knees then, bending until her face rested on the floor and weeping as softly as she was able. Fernandez felt a certain pity for the woman. Had he known her life story; he'd have felt nothing but disgust.
He
tortured. He didn't generally enjoy it.

"Are there other reasons?" Robinson asked, hopefully. "Could there be?"

Fernandez shrugged. "Possibly. Much depends on whether or not the two of you, or either of you alone, has seen the error of your old ways and decided to join our cause for the betterment of humanity.

"You see," Fernandez continued, "we're getting rid of this ship and what it represents. It should have been done a while ago, but . . . well, never mind.

"The current storm is expected to last another three days. The ship sails in the morning out into the Shimmering Sea where a terrible accident will take place. The crew and your guards, of course, will be evacuated in time . . . since they're mine."

Arbeit heard. She had the sudden image of herself chained in her cell below decks as the waters arose and the rats scurried across her body and face and then the bubbles began leaking from her nose and . . .

She screamed, once, a very long and drawn out, "Nnnooo . . ." before she began to vomit with fear onto the floor.

Robinson was more composed, if only slightly. "Please, Legate," he begged, getting to his knees and clasping hands together, "tell me whatever I can do to help. Anything.
Anything!
"

Arbeit didn't have words. Even so, the pleading look she gave Fernandez, as she raised her vomit-dripping chin from the floor, echoed Robinson's words, "Anything."

I wish there were something I could do
, Lourdes mentally sighed.
Anything, really, to bring my husband back. It's so lonely, despite Artemisia, Alena, and the kids. I need my man again.

An unpleasant thought intruded.
What if
I
am the one holding him back? I mean, I thought I was doing the right thing when I chased off Xavier Jimenez with one of Patricio's guns . . . but what if he needs the work and the purpose more than the rest? I just don't know . . . I just don't know.

* * *

Carrera heard nothing, what with the lashing rain, the driving winds, the thunder and the pounding of the surf below. Still, he became aware slowly of a presence or, rather, several of them on the balcony with him. One, he felt, in the chair next to but slightly behind his own, was very small.

"Hello, Ham," he said, over the natural roars surrounding them.

"Dad," the boy answered.

"What are you doing up?"

"Thunder woke me . . . my guards said you were out here . . . didn't think you should be alone."

"You know," Carrera said, "for an eight year old, you're a pretty bright kid."

"Chip off the old block," the boy answered, as if by rote. "But, really, Dad, you shouldn't be alone up here."

"Maybe not," the father half conceded.

"I like the storms, too," Hamilcar said. "Or, at least, I'm drawn to them."

" 'Chip off the old block,' " Carrera echoed, adding, more softly, "and in more ways than that."

The boy looked out over the trees to the sea. A flash of lightning showed fierce waves. "Will our boat be in any danger?" he asked. The boat he referred to was the family yacht, at fifty-four feet nothing too extravagant compared to what could have been purchased. Rarely used, and then more often by Carrera's staff than by anyone else, the boat rested in a small harbor at the base of the steep slope that led from the
casa
to the sea.

"It'll be fine," his father answered.

Carrera pointed out to sea and said, "Wait for the lightning again and you'll see a yacht down there, a big one, struggling against the waves."

Hamilcar looked to where his father was pointing. Lightning flashed again and he saw it, as not much more than a big speck. "What kind of idiot takes a yacht out on a night like this?" he asked. "Drug runners?"

"It's possible," Carrera answered. "But we can't know and I hope we're not sending a small patrol boat out to intercept in this shit.

"Even so, 'it's pleasant, when the sea is harsh and the waves are dashing about, to watch from the shore the struggles of another.' "

Around his father the boy could curse. "That's actually bullshit, Dad. I know you, because I'm like you. You want to be out there, fighting with the sea."

For something which has, from time to time, been alleged to be a mere invention, war is remarkable for having been independently invented in all times, in virtually all cultures, and by all races. The trivial exceptions do nothing except to prove the rule. Nor is the phenomenon unique to mankind; lower animals, some of them, wage war, even though they invent nothing.
In short, the allegation of invention is nonsense; war is part of us, part of having the will to live and prosper, the desire to cause our genes, our classes, our countries, and our cultures to live and prosper, the heart to fight, the courage to risk . . . even to die, and the intelligence or instinct to organize the better to do those things. Any other position is, in the universe in which mankind lives, wishful thinking at its worst.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral
,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468

To an outside observer, had there been any, the ship would have appeared brighter than day. Some of this was the refection of direct sunlight from the ship but still more was the reflection of that sunlight off of the huge sail that propelled the ship between the jump points and braked it at the end of the journey. In contrast, the Earth ahead of it was mostly swathed in night, only one thin crescent to the right side lit by the sun, and a larger area to the left lit by the moon's reflection. A corona of sunlight framed the sphere, except for a small part covered by the moon.

On the night side, the side from which the
Peace
approached, a few cities and resorts of the elites could be seen by their artificial glow. Outside of those, at this distance, not even major continents and oceans were visible except through image enhancement.

At least none of the cities are burning
, thought Captain Marguerite Wallenstein, as she watched the approach from the observation deck. As subsequent messages had made clear, once
Peace
passed the rift, one of the reasons she'd been recalled to Old Earth was precisely that; that the reverted areas, those areas over which the Consensus, Earth's high governing body and the successor to the old UN Security Council, had lost control, were growing even as the barbarians within them grew more aggressive.

Relaxing back into the seat reserved for the High Admiral of the United Earth Peace Fleet, a position the Captain hoped to assume very soon and permanently, Wallenstein crossed long, shapely legs, while her fingers unconsciously toyed with mid-length blonde hair. One might have thought her to be perhaps twenty-five years of age, and a young looking twenty-five at that. In fact, she was several times that, courtesy of the anti-agathic treatments that were Old Earth's last scientific breakthrough and the right only of the upper castes, Class Ones and Twos, who replaced themselves but slowly and were critical to the management of the planet. Even at that, Class Twos didn't get the full treatment and could only be expected to live about two and a half centuries. Class Ones? Not one who had received the full treatment had yet died to natural causes.

Wallenstein was only a Class Two, something she also hoped to rectify with this trip.

Tall, generally slender and even svelte, Marguerite Wallenstein, Captain and Admiral
pro tem
, fell just shy of true physical beauty, with a nose a bit too large and eyes that, while of a very lovely blue, were just slightly too small. Despite these minor flaws, however, she managed to exude an earthy sensuality that, coupled with a willingness to use her body to get ahead, had seen her through difficult times in the UEPF. Indeed, that eager willingness had seen her to her present, exalted, permanent rank.