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.
For any superiors who might have been less than enchanted with her nose or eyes, Wallenstein's breasts were simply magnificent, which magnificence had been considerably aided by low, shipboard gravity. Hard work and genetic predisposition had seen to the maintenance of a narrow waist and shapely rear, ship's gravity notwithstanding. For that matter, she could have had her nose and eyes surgically altered. Why she hadn't remained a mystery even to herself. Perhaps it was simple pride.
A speaker mounted to the wall of the observation deck announced, "Incoming intelligence update, Admiral."
Unseen by the officer, Wallenstein nodded and said, "Record for my later review."
She doubted the update contained anything new. Mentally Wallenstein ticked off the areas lost that she knew of. Southern South America . . . lost . . . Buenos Aires sacked and burned and the new front line of civilization is Montevideo. Canada, at least most of it, is under glaciers. The Great Plains between the Rockies and the Mississippi? Held by horse riding nomads ethnically mixed between what used to be called "Native Americans," blacks, Asians, and whites, but culturally more similar to Genghis Khan's Mongols . . . those, or Attila's Huns. Southeastern Asia has revolted, restored Roman Catholicism, and massacred the punitive force the Consensus dispatched. And outside of Cape Town, Southern Africa is in anarchy. Northern Europe is ice. Revolts brewing in Central America . . .
She almost shivered in anticipation. It was pretty clear at this point that the Consensus did not intend to space her. The bastards need me now, all right. I wonder if I could get away with . . .
Wallenstein's reveries were interrupted by a call from the observation deck's speaker, "Final approach run impending . . . shorten sail . . . stand by for braking . . . Admiral to the bridge . . ."
On the surface of a different world than the one approached by Wallenstein's Spirit of Peace, in a small and normally fairly insignificant country, a huge bridge, the Bridge of the Columbias, was packed on both sides, with traffic slowed to a crawl where it wasn't halted outright. Stuck in that traffic, with the tropical sun beating on the roof of his vehicle and threatening to overwhelm the air conditioning, Legate Xavier Jimenez, 4th Legion, Commanding, fumed.
I hate driving through the Transitway Area.
Jimenez was a physical oddity. Hair and features, but for color, were basically Caucasian, and more than handsome Caucasian, at that. His skin, though, was a high gloss anthracite. The coloration and the good looks ran in the family. So did a great many less genetic attributes, notable among these a fierce patriotism.
It's not bad enough that, after nearly a century of colonialist occupation, the old government brought in a different group of colonialists to secure their own persons at the expense of the country. Oh, no, to add injury to insult, the Tauran Union troops, nearly twelve thousand of them, who provide that security, sometimes, and for no obvious reason, cut off traffic into and through the Transitway, stopping and searching cars and their drivers and passengers as if Balboa were somehow Tauran territory. Bastards.
The Transitway Area itself was a slice right through the middle of the country, smaller in some areas than it had been during the previous occupation, but encompassing now in practice certain sections of the capital, Ciudad Balboa, that had never been under colonial administration since the ouster of Old Earth's United Nations, about four centuries prior.
Jimenez fumed about that, too. Sure, the country was under threat and sure, we had to take the legions we'd created off to the war. But did we really have to bring in the stinking Taurans for local security? The gringos were obnoxious enough, but they couldn't hold a candle to the Gauls . . . or the Anglians. And then the gringos had to broker a peace deal . . .
Mentally, Jimenez spat. Still, he was honest enough to admit to himself, On the other hand, there was going to be a civil war with the old government and its supporters once Parilla was elected president. And the old government didn't have a lot of choice, either, since a prominent part of Parilla's platform was trying the lot of them for corruption.
And, of course, the Federated States had a strong interest in the Transitway. Hell, the whole world does. But those interests don't trump ours.
The Federated States, the gringos (which epithet had followed them across the galaxy, just as "Frogs" had followed the Gauls), had paid for the Transitway, had secured it for the better part of a century, and still took a proprietary interest. It was that interest, and the threat of a local civil war, that had impelled them to broker a deal whereby the old government would retreat to, and hold sovereignty over, a portion of the capital, the Taurans would stay to guarantee the safety of that government and the Transitway, and Jimenez, Parilla, Carrera and the legions would fume.
The Transitway, itself, was an above-sea-level canal connecting both of Terra Nova's two major oceans. It was not only a money and time saver for the roughly fourteen thousand merchant ships a year that used it; it also allowed the Federated States Navy to switch warships from one ocean to the other more or less overnight. That ability allowed it to dominate both oceans, since none of the other players on Terra Nova cared to spend enough to match the entire Federated States Navy. Indeed, the rest of the planet combined didn't care to spend enough to match the FSN.
(For that matter, had the Federated States decided to convert the wet navy to a space navy, which it was very close to being able to do, technologically, there was nothing even United Earth could have done short of nuclear war to prevent them from dominating local space as well.)
At the moment, from his temporarily halted vehicle, Jimenez glanced right and looked down from the Bridge of the Columbias at the Transitway's northern mouth, just as two moderately large and apparently rusty ships passed each other, one heading out into the Mar Furioso, Terra Nova's largest ocean, and the other heading inland to pass through the locks on its way to the Shimmering Sea.
* * *
"Makes no sense to me, Legate," Jimenez's driver, Pedro Rico, said. "I mean, it isn't like we couldn't cut them off from sea, land and air if we wanted to. What's there? Maybe twelve thousand of them; better'n fifty fucking thousand of us. Closer to a hundred and fifty if we called up the reservists."
"It's more complex than that, Rico," Jimenez answered. He was a pretty egalitarian sort and didn't mind—rather enjoyed, actually—conversing with the enlisted legionaries. In this particular case though, he couldn't speak freely.
The problem, son, Jimenez thought, is that Patricio set us up for a particular kind of war, in which the timing was critical. We don't even know for sure what that timing was supposed to be, since he kept it all—well, most of it—in his head.
Which is precisely why we're going to see the son of a bitch. We need him, now as never before, and he's got to snap out of it.
* * *
To snap Carrera out of it was something easier said than done. He'd always been a pretty tough sort, so everyone agreed, but the combination of ten years of the continuous strain of command in war, first in Sumer and then in Pashtia, to say nothing of the various peripheral campaigns on land and sea he'd sponsored, coupled with having the blood of over a million innocents on his hands (though very few people knew about that), had effectively broken him the year before.
For five local months, a full half of a Terra Novan year, the man had not said a word, but simply stared off into space. He'd eat if someone fed him, otherwise not. Even if he wouldn't speak, he'd still screamed regularly at night. The old nightmares he'd suffered were gone, but now he had a brand new set of them.
His wife—his second wife; the first was dead along with the three children she'd borne Carrera—made it nearly her entire life to nurse her husband back to health. In this she'd been notably successful, at least in comparison to the state he'd been in when he'd returned to her, catatonic from, among other things, his nuclear demolition of the Yithrabi city of Hajar.
On Terra Nova no one outside of Carrera's immediate circle knew about that nuclear attack. At least one person off world, the current commander pro tem of the United Earth Peace Fleet, knew. Or thought she did, which amounted to the same thing.
Truth be told, few on the planet even suspected. It was much easier to believe that the Salafi Ikhwan, the terrorist scourge of the planet, had somehow gotten hold of a large nuke, which nuke they had inadvertently set off in the compound where it had been stored, which compound just happened to be the family holding of their late leader.
* * *
"Think it'll work this time, Boss?" Rico asked. This was not the first time they'd driven to the Casa Linda, always at least in part to try to swing Patricio around.
"It has to, Pedro," Jimenez answered. "If I have to have you put a gun to his wife's head while I beat some sense through his own thick skull, it has to."
There's no more time for him to convalesce. I wish there were; he needs it. But there isn't and so he can't have it.
"Yeah," Rico half agreed. "But what if the bitch meets us at the front door with a submachine gun again?"
Two armed guard rode in seats behind Wallenstein as her shuttle descended to the Eternal City.
Rome, much restored, spread out beneath them as that shuttlecraft broke through the clouds. Marguerite resisted the urge to press her face to the porthole of the little craft. After all, the guards were lowers, Class Fours, she thought, and they would be watching. Even so, her head twisted, her chin dropped, and her eyes searched out the landmarks she had not seen in more than a decade, even since her last trip home to convey the late—I hope the bastard is "late" . . . though Carrera never expressly promised me to kill him—High Admiral Martin Robinson to his new command around the alien star.
Just as Geneva was the bureaucratic locus of United Earth, so was Rome its emotional heart. Indeed, nearly half of Old Earth's half million Class Ones made the city their home. Why this should be so Wallenstein was not quite sure. Perhaps it was the more pleasant weather, especially as more northerly Europe, like Canada, was in the grip of a little ice age. Little, they call it . . . but it seems to go on and on and has since the early twenty-first century. Perhaps it was a harkening back to the glories of the Roman Empire.
Wallenstein slowly shook her head. But I think it has more to do with the emotional satisfaction of having triumphed over a stifling Christianity and taken the Vatican for ourselves. Certainly, when the last pope was burned by the Ara Pacis, we at least half-intended to show that we were the power in the world . . . and Christianity was dead.
Of course, Christianity is demonstrably not dead on Terra Nova, though it is rather arguable how Christian it is. And it wasn't just Christianity we wanted to extirpate here; all the Abrahamic religions had to go, except for Islam which had earned itself a place.
Marguerite shivered, unconsciously, in fear for her planet. At least it wasn't very "Christian" of Carrera to nuke an Islamic city in revenge for his first wife and their children. I wonder what he'll do if and when he finds out that Martin was at least partially responsible for that. Can a couple of hundred light years be space enough to shield Old Earth from a vindictiveness of that magnitude?
A great black shape stood in the open doorway to the casa, framed by two of the guards the Legion still kept on Carrera's person and residence, part of the couple of hundred in and around the house. The guards were Pashtian Scouts in the Legion's employ. From their point of view they were actually there to guard Carrera's son, Hamilcar, whom some of them, or perhaps all of them, had decided was the avatar of God. They could hardly do that without at the same time guarding Carrera.
The black shape was Sergeant Major John McNamara. Though considerably older, old enough to have retired from the Federated States Army a dozen years before, and though considerably less good looking, Mac was otherwise a near twin for Jimenez. Both were tall, black, whippet thin, and simply mean looking. Appearances, moreover, were not the only points of relation. McNamara was married to Jimenez's niece, Artemisia, about four decades his junior and pregnant with their second child.
A former Miss Balboa, even pregnant Arti still turned heads and made younger men groan with desire.
"He's inside," Mac said. "I got Arti to take away Lourdes' submachine gun. She wouldn't shoot a pregnant woman . . . though she just might have shot me. They're together now in the kitchen with Tribune Cano's wife, Alena."
Speaking English, his native tongue, McNamara had a lilting Maiden Islands accent and a tendency to mispronounce the diphthong "th." Speaking Spanish, as they were now, he was accentless.
Under the cover of returning the salutes of the guards on the door, Jimenez affected not to notice the sigh of relief breathed by his driver, Rico, at the news that Lourdes had been disarmed and was, so to speak, being watched.
"Have you talked to him?" Jimenez asked.
Mac shook his head. "I figured it would be better if we double teamed him, while Lourdes is out of the picture."
Jimenez nodded slowly. While neither man had much doubt that he was much smarter than McNamara, likewise neither had any doubt that the Sergeant Major General of the Legion was much the wiser, much the better at handling men, much the more "people smart."
"Where's Patricio?" Jimenez asked.
"Up on the back porch, drinking." Mac switched to English to mutter, "He does too fockin' much o' t'at."
"Let's go up and chat, then, shall we?"
"I'll grab anot'er bottle and some glasses," Mac replied, still in English. Then, switching to Spanish, he said, "Rico, you can park the car around back. You know your way to the guards' mess, right? Hope you like Pashtian food."
"I got used to it, Sergeant Major," the driver answered.
Old Earth transportation was, for the most part, fairly conventional. The styles might have excited comment on Terra Nova, the mechanics would not have. The big difference was that, at least on the reasonably prosperous parts of the other world, private conveyance was common. On Old Earth, it was the perquisite of the high and mighty.
"The SecGen wanted to chat with you before you made your presentation to the Consensus the day after tomorrow," said Wallenstein's escort, another Class Two named Moore, as their car sped through Rome's uncrowded streets. "He told the Admiralty to stuff it, that they could see you after important matters were taken care of."
In appearance, Moore seemed a near brother to the captain. Albeit a bit taller, he was likewise blonde and blue-eyed, as were most of Old Earth's ruling class.
"Can it wait until tomorrow?" she asked. "Gravity aboard ship is less than here and I find I'm very tired."
"He assumed that," Moore answered. "You're set to meet tomorrow, over lunch."
Lunch with the SecGen? Wallenstein mused. Or am I supposed to lunch the SecGen? Well, whatever the market will bear. I'll bring kneepads in a satchel, just in case.
"How did he take the news of the loss of the High Admiral and the Marchioness of Amnesty?" Marguerite asked. Note: I didn't say "deaths;" I said "loss."
Moore sighed. "Rather hard, actually. He and the Marchioness were very close."
"Did he . . . ?" Wallenstein let the question trail off.
"Yes," Moore answered. "The entire Consensus accepted your version of events." He knew from her tone that Wallenstein had been worried about that.
Now Marguerite sighed, and hers was with relief. If there had been any suspicion that she had turned the High Admiral and Lucretia Arbeit, the Marchioness, over to the Terra Novans, she'd have been for the chop, she was quite sure.
Fortunately, the only people who know that are myself and another Class Two who wants a caste lift. Oh, and Carrera back on Terra Nova . . . but he's not likely to tell anyone.
Carrera didn't look up as McNamara and Jimenez took seats to ether side of him around a small wooden table on a largish balcony that overlooked Terra Nova's greatest ocean, the Mar Furioso. Indeed, he didn't acknowledge their presence until Mac placed another bottle of whiskey, along with two glasses, next to the nearly drained bottle sitting by the ice bucket in the middle of the table. At that, Carrera only said, "Welcome."
Jimenez thought, It's funny; despite the gray hair he actually looks younger than he has in years.
Mac filled the silence that followed Carrera's one word by taking the open bottle and pouring what was left, half and half, into the two glasses he'd brought from the bar.
"Lotsa history made right here," Mac commented, as he transferred ice from the bucket to the glasses.
Eyes still affixed on the ocean in the distance, Carrera said, "That's so lame, Top. You couldn't come up with a better opening line than that?"
"Man's got to play the hand he was dealt, sir," McNamara said, while plinking ice into his own glass.
"I suppose," Carrera conceded. He turned his eyes from the ocean to McNamara's dark, seamed face. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would you? Lourdes won't buy me any. I haven't felt up to driving in a while. And she's threatened all the help with death if they give me one."
Tobacco on Terra Nova had been infected with a local virus that tended to make it much less carcinogenic than was the case on Earth. Even so, it couldn't precisely be called good for anyone.
"Sure, boss," the grizzled older man said, reaching into a pocket and pulling out a pack of Carrera's preferred brand, Tecumsehs, imported from First Landing in the Federated States, and a lighter. These he slid across the table.
"You're not drunk," Jimenez said in surprise, gesturing at the now empty bottle.
Carrera shook his head. "I sip. But that bottle's been on that table for over a week, ten days maybe. I find if I get drunk that I feel things I don't want to feel any more, remember things I'd just as soon forget.
"Not that I don't remember them in my dreams, mind you."
For reasons known only to himself, Moore directed the driver of the vehicle to pass by the Ara Pacis, Augustus' Altar of Peace and the holiest spot on all of United Earth. Here the last vestiges of open Christianity had died—been burned, rather—and one couldn't get more holy than that.
"I don't mind that it's a bit out of the way," he informed the Class Four driver.
"Yes, Lord," the driver answered.
"What's with the ribbons around the heads? They're kind of attractive. Should I wear one to keep in style?" Marguerite asked, once she noticed that about one in twenty of the people they passed on the street wore them.
Moore snickered, "The diadems? No, I don't think so. They've become something of a fashion statement by the children of the Class Ones. From our point of view, it saves trouble by telling us lowly Class Twos exactly whom we must bow and scrape to. There's a color and ornament coding to it I can brief you on later.
"It isn't just the children, actually," Moore amended. "Some fairly older Class Ones have taken to wearing them, too, the last couple of years. The SecGen, however, has not."
Whatever the Class Four driver thought of the subject of diadems or fashion statements, he kept it to himself.
"Ara Pacis coming up on the left, Lord," the driver announced, slowing his vehicle to a crawl. The Altar itself had been modified some centuries prior, with a matching white marble roof having been placed over it, and overhanging the sculptures on the sides. Along with the roof two narrow sets of marble steps lead off, at right angles to the steps that led inside. The building that had once housed it and protected it from the air pollution was gone. With so few cars and so little industry operating, it was no longer needed.
Moore didn't bother to look right away. Marguerite, however, did, and was surprised—perhaps better said, shocked—to see rivulets of red running down the Altar's creamy marble sides. She looked up and saw five muscular men in outlandish garments, all gold and feathers, two of them holding a sixth who was naked but for a loin cloth.
"It's an Azteca day," Moore explained, though the bare words explained little. "Those come only a few times a year." He added, "Some objected, of course, to using the Altar of Peace for human sacrifice. On the other hand, the Azteca have or influence a significant block of votes within the Consensus. And the Orthodox Druids were on their side since they wanted to have burnings and hangings here."
Marguerite gulped as she watched the sixth, near naked man forced down to the stone roof and flipped over. A black, jagged obsidian knife, the hilt wrapped in cloth, in the hand of one of the other five flashed down. Out came a dripping heart, probably still beating, which was held aloft. As the heart was squeezed out and then tossed over the side of the altar, she looked away. Even so, however repulsive the scene, it was still fascinating. She turned her eyes back to the Altar.
"Just thought you might find it interesting," Moore said.
"Where do the victims come from?" Wallenstein asked.
Moore shrugged, saying, "Some are political prisoners from Central America. It's been in a state of near rebellion for years. Some, too, supposedly, are genuine volunteers."
The next victim was a beautiful, young, brown-skinned girl. She wept and screamed and struggled pitifully with the larger men dragging her to her death. Even through the sealed windows of the vehicle Wallenstein heard the girl's screams. She heard, too, when they were abruptly cut off.
"The Azteca insist it's a necessary terror against the lowers," Moore said, just as the car left the area and drove off. "And if you think this is a bit much, you ought to go to The Burning Man this year."
"The problem, gentlemen," Carrera said, "is that I am terrified of taking command again."
"Terrified?" Jimenez asked. "You?"
"Yes . . . terrified . . . for my soul."
He held up both his hands, thinking, as he always did, miserable, dainty things. "See these. These are the hands of the greatest one-day-mass-murderer in the history of our planet and the second greatest in the history of the human race. I'd had friends in Hajar . . . children I'd held in my lap. And I murdered them." He shook his head. "Somebody who can do that? He's got no business being in command of anything."
"T'at may be true," McNamara said in English, "t'e first part, anyway. But it ain't t'e whole trut'. You know what, boss? T'em fockin' Yit'rabis ain't had no more truck with t'e Salafi mot'erfockers since Hajar. T'ey ain't had no money to give t'em cause t'ey had to spend it decontaminating and rebuildin' t'eir fockin' capital city. T'ey ain't had no sympat'y for t'e mot'erfockers, neit'er, since t'e Yit'rabis are sure it was t'e hand of God t'at set off t'at bomb. So maybe, yes, you killed a million people. But maybe, too, you saved ten or twenty million of 'em."
Carrera nodded slowly before answering, "The one is speculation. We know for sure about the other, though."
Jimenez snorted. "So we have to be sure about things before we can act, do we, Patricio? Fine. Let me tell you about some things we can be sure of. We can be sure of them because you set them up, and what you didn't set up you allowed. One of those things is that my country—I would have said our country but you've abandoned it—is bisected by a foreign occupier. Another is that a chunk of it is ruled by as vile a cabal of self-seeking corruption as ever went unhanged. We've got fifty thousand regulars under arms, and twice that in reservists, willing and eager to fight to free that occupied portion.
Jimenez stood angrily, jabbing his finger in Carrera's direction. "This is no speculation, Patricio. There's a war coming and it's your fault. You can't duck it. There are people going to fight that war because you formed them and you trained them. You can't duck that, either.
"Your soul, friend?" Jimenez sneered. "Screw your soul; you've got responsibilities."
Carrera sighed, then lifted and sipped at his drink. "You're a bastard; you know that, Xavier?"
* * *
"He's just been a bastard lately," Lourdes said to Artemisia,
sitting across the wooden kitchen table from her. "Grouchy . . . inconsiderate. Cold to me and to the kids . . . and being cold to the kids tears my heart out."
Sitting next to the two, the green eyed, light skinned Alena stifled a harrumph. Being cold to Hamilcar, Iskandr to her, who was to her mind and by her upbringing an avatar of God, was just beyond the pale. Even so, Alena was one of those odd people whose guesses were so good that she might as well have had second sight, if, indeed, she didn't have it. She had a very good idea of why the duque was so distant.
"Sex?" the younger and far more statuesquely built black woman suggested. Artemisia was inarguably the prettier of the two, as well, if not by much. Even so, Lourdes had eyes so large and so beautifully shaped they ought to have been against the law . . . of God if not of man.
"Oh, Arti . . ." Tears sprang to Lourdes' eyes. "He hasn't touched me since he came back from the war."
"Another woman?"
Lourdes dashed away the tears. Sniffling, though trying not to, she answered, "No, no, it's not that. He's barely left the house and never left the grounds since he came back."
"He sure ain't been trying to hammer my old ass," offered the cook, preparing dinner twenty-five feet behind the two.
At that, Lourdes couldn't help but laugh, even as her fingers continued to brush at her eyes. "Thanks, Tina," she said, adding sardonically, "You've no idea how much better that makes me feel."
"Well," Arti boasted, "over sixty or not, Mac's a randy goat. So I doubt Patricio is too old for sex."
"Mac has you for inspiration," Lourdes answered. Lovely eyes downcast, she added, "Patricio only has me."
Artemisia snorted. "Only you, eh? I would kill for your eyes, your lips, and your ass. To say nothing of your legs. No, honey, it isn't that any man would find you unattractive, still less Patricio. I think it must be something else."
For the nonce, Alena kept her own counsel.
* * *
"I feel unclean, you know," Carrera said. "Ever since Hajar I've felt dirty and unworthy of my wife or the kids she gave me."
"Did you ever tell her that?" asked McNamara, reverting once again to Spanish.
Carrera shook his head. "She doesn't know about Hajar. Not that I gave the order to destroy it, I mean. And if I told her, I'm afraid she'd feel the same way I do, that she'd feel I was unclean. I don't think I could take that."
* * *
"He thinks I don't know about the destruction of Hajar," Lourdes whispered, low enough that the cook couldn't hear. Alena caught her breath.
Artemisia leaned in and cocked her head to one side, whispering back. "What about Hajar?"
"He did it. He's never said so but . . . as if a man could keep from screaming during nightmares, or a wife not be able to figure what he was screaming about."
"He did," Alena confirmed.
"John never told me," Arti said, slowly. Turning to Alena she asked, "How do you know?"
"I rarely know how I know," the Pashtun woman answered. "Nonetheless, I know."
"I shouldn't have said anything either. Arti, you can't tell anyone. Ever. Not anyone. Nor you, Alena."
Both the black woman and the Pashtun looked scandalized, if for different reasons. Artemisia said, "Me? Tell someone we nuked a city? And maybe get ourselves nuked in return? Oh, no, Lourdes. That secret is safe with me."
"I don't talk much," Alena added, "and anything that might bring a risk to Iskandr? That's simply impossible." The Pashtun woman looked scandalized at the very thought.
Lourdes shook her head. "Whatever are you going to do when you have children of you own, Alena?"
That might not have been a sore point with another woman. With Alena, raised in a culture that placed a very high value on female fertility, it was an embarrassment. Nor was it lack of trying. As much as she knew, she simply didn't know why she hadn't yet conceived.
Nonetheless, she answered, "Raise them to serve my lord, Iskandr."
Though Moore had politely offered to bed her, Wallenstein had begged off, citing fatigue and the need for rest. He'd taken it quite well, she thought, but then sex was the cheapest and freest commodity on Old Earth.
She'd claimed the need for rest, but she wasn't resting. From a balcony of her guest quarters, overlooking the brown-flowing Tiber and the Mausoleum of Augustus on the other side, Marguerite stared in the direction of the Ara Pacis.
I wonder if that was the secret we'd never admit to, that war is a constant and the only choice you have is war between outsiders and war against your own. Funny that they never discussed this at the academy.
And so we have peace, here, on Old Earth. If, by "peace," we mean a constant series of insurrections, a vast secret police apparatus to quell the lowers, terror in the form of human sacrifice for any of the lowers that raise their heads from the muck . . . beautiful young girls being dragged off to have their hearts cut out to terrorize the families of beautiful young girls.
Oh, and a ruling class that's taken to wearing the emblems of demigodhood to let the rest of us know our places. That must be very important to "peace," as well.
Could I change any of it? If I get permanent command of the Peace Fleet and get myself raised to Class One, I mean? I am inclined to doubt. After all, the direction we're heading is all down. Ten years ago there was a little trouble in the outlying provinces. Now rebellion is open in many of them, simmering just below the surface in others. Ten years ago there were no human sacrifices. Now the Orthodox Druids—thank whoever may be listening that I am Reformed—hang and burn men to propitiate the gods. Now the Azteca cut out the hearts . . .
Marguerite turned away from the balcony and its view of Mausoleum and ancient flood. Sitting down on a broad sofa in the suite's salon, she drew her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins.
On the other hand, these simpering nancies of the First Class are weak. Weak! Martin was among the best of the lot and I was a lot more capable than he was. Give me enough time, and as a Class One I'll have all the time in the world, and put me in a position to elevate some other Class Twos—that Moore fellow seemed unhappy enough at the current set up—and maybe, just maybe, I can reform this planet. Make me a Class One, give me those assistants, and leave me in command of the Peace Fleet and what would the diadem wearers have to stop me with?
Which still doesn't answer the question: What does one do to reform a planet gone so rotten? But, again, as a Class One, I'll have all the time in the world to figure out the answer to that.
If, that is, I can stop the barbarians on Terra Nova from springing out of their hole like Temujin's hordes and upsetting everything here before we can right ourselves.
That's my advantage over Martin. He could only think of a way to make Terra Nova cease being a threat to us as we are. That's why he had to be so absolute. I, on the other hand, can think of a way to make us something Terra Nova will not be a lethal threat to . . . given the power and given the time.
Wallenstein looked around at her temporary quarters, which went way past adequate and even opulent all the way to decadent. And there are some perks to the effort.
"We've kept Quarters One open for you, on the Isla Real," McNamara said.
Jimenez snorted. ""We'd have had a mutiny if we tried to fill them." More seriously, he added, "Really, Patricio; we've been able to keep things going as well as we have in good part because we could tell the troops you would be back. That's been getting pretty threadbare for a while now."
"I've missed the boys," Carrera admitted with a sigh that sounded as if it were of longing. "But you might as well have turned the quarters over to the commander of the Training Legion. And your own, as well."
"Why's that?" Mac asked.
"Because we're going to have to move the legions and tercios—yes, almost all of them—from the Isla Real to the mainland."
"We're?" Jimenez asked.
Carrera sighed once again. "Yes. 'We're.' Bastards.
"And I'll need to talk to Raul . . . and the leaders of the legislature. I'm not taking sole responsibility for the shit that I do anymore, if only because I don't quite trust my own judgment anymore."