Chapter 49
Kristana: “one thing does not change”
Three days and still no word. She was beginning to fear her operatives in Dallas had been discovered. It weighed on her mind as she approached the infirmary. And not only her mind. If they couldn't tell him something soon, Xander was likely to attempt another escape, and if this kept up they'd be passing him his meals through a slot in the door. The problem with mounting an armed guard on him was he knew she didn't want him shot again.
There had been no more scouting sorties either. Had the Honcho learned what he needed to know? Or had he decided to postpone the invasion until Spring?
She pushed the door open and looked in on him. Xander was sitting up in the bed, a book open in his hands, his angry eyes flicking left and right as he scanned the lines. She tilted her head to read the title on the spine: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. “Where did you get that one?”
His eye flicked up, then back down at the page. “I had Aria fetch it for me from my quarters.”
“Why the ancient history? Don't tell me Hitler is one of your heroes.”
“Very funny,” he grunted. “It's been a long time since I read it, and I thought it might be helpful to review, considering our situation.”
And maybe it helps distract you from the fact that your apprentice is in the hands of our enemies. But she didn't say it out loud. “Helpful how?”
“Hitler was the first to realize the possibility of a new kind of war that his motorized divisions made possible. Up until his time the automobile had been largely viewed merely as a replacement for horse-drawn vehicles. But Hitler saw that the ability of the motorized vehicle to cover a lot of ground rapidly without resting, as horses and men on foot have to do, made possible an entirely new kind of war: the blitzkrieg, or lightning-war. Before him, armies moved a few miles per day. Hitler did what Caesar was famous for – advancing more rapidly than expected – and did it even better, thanks to the gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. His lightning-swift advance into Poland surprised everybody, especially the Poles, whose old-fashioned horse cavalry (that had been effective in the wars prior to WWII) were useless against Hitler's motorized divisions. His war was the first in which modern transportation was more important than gunpowder or swords.”
“But that was made possible by his factories,” she pointed out. “The Honcho has none. He's discovered a cache of motor vehicles, true, but not thousands of them, and he can't make any more in the near time frame.”
“No he can't. But if he can come up with fuel for them, a few dozen tanks and armored personnel carriers could make a big difference against our troops, especially if they move faster than we expect.”
She sat down on the edge of his bed. “How do we counter them, if he manages to use them?”
“I have some ideas,” he said. “We have some time to prepare. From what your spies reported, he has no fuel. He has the old oil wells, but it will take him some time to pull out enough and put it into a usable form for the old motors.”
She reached out and closed the book in his hands. “We need to talk about Aria,” she said. “She asked me yesterday what the General's blood type was.”
He sat up straighter in the bed, then winced and let himself fall back again. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her I didn't remember. But we both know she'll eventually ask Daniels about it. You know how he is about the truth. Once he tells her the General was B positive, she'll know it's hardly likely that he and I produced an O negative daughter.”
He sighed. “So we have to tell her before she figures it out herself.”
“Yes. I'm not looking forward to that.”
He looked her in the eye. “We didn't do anything wrong. He was gone.”
She looked down. “I know that. But you know that won't make any difference. She'll still feel betrayed because we never told her. Because in her eyes it'll seem that we never trusted her enough.”
“You know that wasn't why, damn it. You'd just taken over for Roberto. Colorado needed a grieving-but-tough widow, carrying on his Dream, not a happy survivor carrying another man's child.”
“Not happy,” she said, looking away. “No one could have made me happy, not then. But you certainly helped me be less unhappy. I'll never forget it.”
“Nor I. You can't imagine how much I wanted to marry you. But to the people of Rado, Aria was a symbol of hope, the last good thing they would ever get from their General. So I kept my mouth shut and stayed in my place as the weird old wizard. But it wasn't easy. I never stopped loving you, but if all I could ever be was the consoling friend who helped you make a baby, I told myself I would accept that.”
“You were more than that,” she said. “You're not the only one with regrets. You're not the only one who's had to give up dreams for the people of Rado, for the General's Dream. You've no idea how lonely it is to be the Governor.”
“No,” he agreed. “Just how lonely it is to be the Governor's wizard.”
Pathspace Page 49
