The Lotus Eaters (7 page)

"My dear friend, the Marchioness of Amnesty, wrote to me of what wonderful command of your tongue you had," the SecGen said, twisting his chair to one side. "Before we discuss weightier matters, show me."

Jorge Mendoza, warrant officer, and Ricardo Cruz, Senior Centurion, saw each other, recognized each other, and immediately pushed through the ranks of the men to wrap each other in grand bear hugs, pounding each other on their backs. Cruz was careful not to knock Mendoza over. Jorge's legs, both of them, were made of artificial carbon fibers, enhanced with computer control. Mendoza and Cruz had been pretty tight for some years now, ever since Jorge, though blind at the time, insisted on joining in a political street battle at Cruz's side. Guts like that, Cruz tended to appreciate.

"Jorge!" exclaimed Cruz, "I haven't seen you since—"

"Not since you were in the Senior Centurion's Course and took my class in
Historia y Filosofia Moral
," Mendoza supplied.

"It was a good class," Cruz complemented. "I got a lot out of it."

"Thanks, Ricardo. I appreciate that. I had—"

Mendoza was interrupted by a familiar voice, McNamara's. "Gentlemen, the President of the Republic and the Commander of the Legion."

The enormous room hushed to a deathly stillness as every man braced to attention. The stillness was soon broken by the sounds of Carrera's and McNamara's boots, tap-tap-tapping down the stone walkway. Parilla's softer civilian shoes made no comparable sound.

A murmur began right at the inner corners of the mass of humanity where the stone walkway divided them. It spread from there, across the rear rank and down toward the front like a wave. Too, like a wave, or perhaps a tsunami, the volume grew as more and more of the legionaries heard and passed on, "He's really come back to us. Our
dux bellorum
has returned."

Discipline held until Carrera, Parilla, and Mac were almost two thirds of the way to the stage on which rested a podium and the gold and silver eagles. At that point a junior centurion along the central aisle twisted and looked over his shoulder and said to himself,
To hell with it; I'm going to shake the commander's hand.

The centurion broke ranks and stood right in Carrera's path with his hand outstretched. "Welcome back, sir," he said.

Another commander might have been angry. Carrera was . . . more than touched. Tears glistening in his eyes, he took the centurion's hand in a firm grip, pumping it and saying, "Thank you. It's good to be back."

At that point, the thing became a near riot, with legionaries jostling and pushing to get close to the man who had led them to victory through two wars and a police action of sorts on three continents. Even McNamara's voice couldn't get the men back into order until Carrera had shaken five hundred or more hands, and endured more back-slapping than was, strictly speaking, healthy or safe.

In the end, Mac had to use his size and presence—he towered over the average legionary, to force his way past the throng, up onto the stage and to the microphone.

"Enough, you bastards," he said, the words reverberating from the walls. "Cease and desist. You'll kill the man and here we've just gotten him back."

The G-2's name tag read de Villepin. He entered Janier's office confidently. And why not? He was at least as politically well connected as the general and could do at least as much damage to Janier as the latter could do to him, rank notwithstanding. Moreover, Janier knew it. His words—"by the scruff of the neck"—had been for his toady, Malcoeur's benefit. And Malcoeur had basically shrugged that off.

Before Janier could say a word, de Villepin raised a hand and said, "I didn't worry about telling you, or order that your time with your mistress be interrupted, because, however large it may be—and yes, it's almost twice the size of our little pocket division—it's not equipped to attack anybody. I have people inside, besides.

"More importantly, the reason for the assembly is that their old commander, Carrera, is back. I had thought, we had all thought, he'd retired. Apparently this is not the case. The assembly is likely his little way of announcing he's back and in charge."

"You say you have your people inside?" Janier asked.

"Well . . . people who work for me, about eleven of them, if every one managed to attend." De Villepin smiled sardonically. "Technically and legally, I suppose they're Carrera's people. I'll have an admittedly incomplete report by tomorrow evening at the latest. More details will follow as more of my spies check in. It may be a week or so."

"So late?" Janier asked.

"If they aren't careful, Carrera's intelligence organization will catch them." De Villepin added, ruefully, "That ferret-faced bastard, Fernandez, is pretty good at what he does . . . and has methods available to him that are not permitted to me . . . usually. What would happen to my people if he caught them would not be strictly in accordance with the World League's Charter of Human Rights."

"Whatever it takes, then." Janier agreed, with a shrug.

Though she'd come prepared, in more ways than one, to do whatever it took to secure her ends, Wallenstein balked, for the first time in a long life. It surprised no one more than herself, too. Still, memories of servicing her "betters" since she'd been a teenager had risen to the surface. So, too, had memories of being betrayed and abandoned by those "betters," once they'd had their fill of her.
I've prostituted myself for well over a century and what do I have to show for it? Nothing? No, not nothing, but not enough, either. And enough is enough. Diadems are
enough.
Teenagers being cut up on the Ara Pacis is
enough.
Enough!
The confusion, uncertainty, and indecision on her face was replaced with a steely hard determination.

"No," Marguerite said to the SecGen. "You don't need me for that and doing it would say nothing positive about my ability to deal with the problems you and yours have created and let fester. You want your cock sucked; ring the bell for the
major domo.
I've had enough of you Class Ones and your puerile obsessions with your genitalia."

Without bothering with a departing proskynesis, Marguerite turned on her heels and began walking, head proudly erect, to pick up her valise.

"Stop," the SecGen commanded. Unseen, he smiled, the smile possibly having an element of satisfaction to it. "Have a seat. You are, of course, right. I don't need you for your mouth but for your mind. You're also right that we have problems of our own making."

Wallenstein did stop. Her chin raised in anger. "I have conditions," she said, without turning.

"Let us discuss them, then," the SecGen agreed. "And you may assume that whatever may happen with the general meeting with the Consensus tomorrow, my word will carry."

Carrera, a bit battered perhaps but beaming all the same, ascended the stage and walked to the podium with its microphone. He already knew, from McNamara's command to the boys to "Cease and fucking desist," that the volume was properly adjusted anyway.

Well, you'd expect little things like that to go right with a good organization.

"Without belaboring the obvious," Carrera began, "It's good to be back. I'm . . . I'm truly sorry it took so long." He shook his head slightly. "I'm not going to give you any explanations. That's not because you don't deserve them; it's that there aren't—"

A warrant officer near the front shouted out, "We don't need any explanations, sir. It's enough that you
are
back."

Carrera smiled, half shyly. "Thank you, then, again, for that. So let's get to the meat of it; where do we go from here and why?

"The why should be obvious, our base, our
country
, is under occupation, both by foreigners and by an illegal rump of a corrupt government that those foreigners protect. To get rid of them requires at least the threat of war, and possibly the actuality. They know this, and so we can and must assume that they, too, are preparing for war.

"We've got three things," Carrera continued. "We've got a home base—or most of one—with a government that cares for us. We've got twenty-four regular line combat cohorts in the ground elements, plus another eighteen drilling reserve cohorts, mixed infantry, mechanized, and
cazadores
, and individual reservists enough to fill twice that. We've got supporting arms for all of those, generally in plenty though we are short in some areas, notably artillery and air. And . . . we've got enough money, over eighty billion Federated States Drachma, to make every regular in the Legion here or elsewhere wealthy for
several
lives, let alone one."

He gave a shrug and waved a hand deprecatingly. "I don't want the money. I never have, for its own sake. As far as I'm concerned, you could split it up among yourselves. But there's one big problem. I could give you the money, but I couldn't then give you a safe place to raise a family. I couldn't keep the United Earth Peace Fleet off your backs. I couldn't get rid of the Tauran Union which has occupied the most important and valuable chunk of Balboa, or the rump of a false government that shelters under the Taurans' greedy claws. I couldn't get rid of the stinking Kosmos"—Cosmopolitan Progressives—"that insist every form of decay is progress and do everything they can to hasten that decay. I couldn't keep them from taxing it all away from you and giving it to their"—Carrera sneered—"no doubt deserving selves."

Carrera scratched beside his nose as his lips formed the tiniest of smiles. Rhetorically, he asked, "You all already knew all that, right?

"That, however," he continued, "does not mean that you are not going to be
earning
more money. Note where the emphasis was in that last sentence. 'Earning.' You're going to earn it because we are going to change the force radically. To expand it, yes—and that's how you are going to be earning more money, as you advance in rank much faster than any other soldiers on the planet—but also to change it.

"Our days of providing a regular force so that we could rent ourselves out to foreigners to fight their wars for them are, for a while, at least, over. Our days of concentrating on counter-insurgency are over, too. Our first fight, in Sumer, a decade ago, has more to say about our future than any number of operations we have undertaken since."

"There is one possible exception to that," Carrera said. "We might—it is at least within the realm of the possible, and we are mutually bound by treaty—have to send troops to support President Sada and the Republic of Sumer against Farsia. Even that is only a partial exception, as a fight with Farsia would be heads up, conventional combat. Conversely, though, we have a finger on at least one good legion from Sumer that will come to us at need. If you doubt that, let me remind you that in Pashtia, Sada sent us everything he could spare, and then some."

"What
are
we going to do," Villepin asked, "if the subject of the meeting is war between those legions and ourselves? I mean, a few years ago when they had almost everybody deployed to Pashtia we could have taken them with only minor reinforcement from Taurus, nothing that couldn't have been flown in over the course of a few days. Now that they're all back they could walk in with a rock in each hand and still beat the shit out of us."

"Nonsense," Janier insisted. "We are still a first rate, professional and, above all,
Tauran
force facing amateurs who've been lucky in only fighting third raters to date. Though, yes, it will be harder now." The general sneered. In the light of day the doubts and fears he'd entertained several nights previously seemed ephemeral and silly. "If the bastard Columbians hadn't interfered I'd have done just that, too, beaten these peasants like I owned them."

De Villepin didn't correct Janier, but did think,
That's probably true, though the casualties they'd have inflicted on our forces in Pashtia in revenge would have been disastrous and politically insupportable. And neither of us can afford to lose our political support. Which we would if we fought a war on behalf of those who support us and lost it . . . or suffered too many casualties.

The SecGen tugged at one altogether too perfect ear. "The last time we got involved in a war, directly, on the ground of Terra Nova, we had out asses handed to us. It was too far and too hard to support. And the guerillas impossible to eradicate."

"That's true," Wallenstein conceded. "But it's not as if we sent very good people to fight that war. We were still consolidating our hold here and simply didn't have the quality to spare."

"I don't have it now, either," the SecGen said. "You've seen the streets of Rome, the strutting parasites living off of the achievements of their elders, sporting their diadems, and simply assuming that this way of life is eternal, without any need for sacrifice. Moore, I know, showed you the
Ara Pacis
and the . . . sacrifices. I
have
no worthwhile Class Ones to send you, Admiral. The few of them that are both capable and trustworthy I need here."

"I'll make do with good Class Twos and Threes," Wallenstein answered. She was surprised, shocked really, that the SecGen saw Earth pretty much as she did. He likely didn't see his entire Class the way she did though.

I wouldn't take any Class Ones if you offered them. Well, I'd prefer not to, anyway.
"And I intend to use locals to do our campaigning for us. There are many there who would prefer to see the enlightened rule of United Earth."

"That hasn't worked out that well so far," the SecGen said.

Wallenstein nodded. "Martin was, perhaps, overly ambitious," she answered.

"The program is ambitious," Carrera admitted. "But it is not, as a practical matter, more ambitious than the one that brought us from an idea, to a staff, to a small legion, to two small ones, to two larger ones, to four of them, plus supporting arms.