Recoil

by David Sherman

  Kindy wasn’t bigger than Bingh and Kare, but he wasn’t shit-faced drunk like they were, which was why he’d been able to handle them so easily.

  Bingh and Kare were among the last to leave the Snoop ’n Poop in the wee hours of the morning. By then, more than half of the Force Recon Marines who had been in the place had left, as had all of the women Marines; unlike the men, who were still on leave, the women had to report for duty in the morning. Some of the stragglers, as had some of the earlier Marines to leave, went in search of rooms in Havelock to spend the night. The rest, as had some of the earlier departers, caught a liberty bus back to Camp Howard and the barracks. But not all those who left earlier left alone. Alone in this case meaning with only other men.

  So there they were, Sergeants Wil Bingh and Brigo Kare, muscles and joints kinked and cramped from sleeping in the chairs, heads aching and mouths dry, suffering from monumental hangovers.

  “Corpsman up,” Kare moaned.

  “Water,” Bingh groaned. He pulled his sprawled limbs inward as the first step in rising, thought better of it, and went limp. “You try,” he rasped.

  “Try what?” Kare opened a bloodshot eye and rolled it toward Bingh.

  “Getting up.”

  “Why?”

  “Find a corpsman. Get water.”

  “Uhn.” Kare slowly began straightening from his curled position, stopped when his upper hip encountered the arm of the chair, preventing him from rolling onto his back. “Can’t.”

  “Can’t isn’t in the Force Recon lexicon, Sergeant!” a jovial voice boomed at them, making both sergeants flinch and groan in agony. “My, my, I spy—two sergeants who did far too much partying last night.”

  Bingh’s eyes painfully fluttered open and oriented themselves on the source of the entirely too cheerful and loud voice: Hospitalman Second Gruff, one of the company’s five corpsmen. Like the two Marines, Gruff was in civilian clothes. Unlike theirs, his were clean and neat and had not been slept in.

  “Did you get any?” Gruff asked jovially.

  Bingh’s valiant attempt to glower at the corpsman died a painful death; even his lips hurt.

  Kare didn’t even try; he would have had to turn his head to see Gruff, and turning his head was simply too difficult.

  “I didn’t think so,” Gruff said. “If you had, you wouldn’t need these.” He held up a large bottle of water and a smaller bottle of what Bingh immediately recognized as hangover pills.

  “Gimme,” Bingh groaned as he thrust an arm in Gruff’s direction and partly rose from the chair. He moaned and fell back.

  “Wha . . . ?” Kare struggled into a position from where he could see Gruff.

  Gruff smiled cheerfully as he twisted his wrists, shaking the bottles that dangled from his fingers. “The cure,” he murmured.

  “You’re a sadist, Doc,” Bingh mumbled.

  “Torturing sick men you could cure so easily,” Kare added.

  “Say pretty please.”

  “Kill you if you . . .” It took more effort than Bingh could manage to complete the sentence.

  “P-Pretty p-please,” Kare croaked.

  “Yes, Sergeant Kare, Doc Gruff has the cure for you.” He circled Bingh, making sure he was out of easy reach, to Kare’s side and decanted a pill from the smaller bottle. “Drink this down with a liter of water,” he instructed, dropping the pill into Kare’s open mouth and handing him the water bottle. He turned back to Bingh and pulled another bottle of water from out of nowhere. “Wil?”

  “Oooh . . .” Bingh worked his mouth to dredge up some saliva. “P-Please.”

  “Pretty please. With a cherry on top.”

  “Kill you.” Bingh struggled without much success to climb out of the chair.

  “You know, Doc, he probably will if you make him get better on his own,” said Sergeant Kindy from the entrance to the squad leaders’ lounge. Unlike the other two squad leaders, Kindy was freshly shatshoweredshaved and wore fresh civvies. He was also grinning like a legendary cat.

  “Hmmm,” Gruff mused. “You may be right, Him.” He turned to Bingh. “Open wide, like a fish going after a worm on a hook.” Back to Kindy. “You look nice and fresh. Did you stay in last night, instead of going out carousing like these two?”

  Kindy’s grin widened. “Only part of the night, Doc. Only part of the night.”

  By then, the hangover pill and water were taking effect on Kare so he was able to turn himself around and sit up. “Him,” he asked softly so as to not upset his still unstable equilibrium, “are you saying you had, ahh, contraband in our room last night, and that’s why you wouldn’t let us in?”

  Kindy’s grin grew more broadly yet. “What I don’t tell you can’t be used against me in a court-martial.”

  “Lemme at ’im,” Bingh croaked. The pill and water hadn’t had time to do much for him so it took massive effort for him to lever himself out of the chair. He stood tottering for a moment, then leaned forward until he had to step to avoid falling on his face. He moved forward by alternately leaning, nearly falling, and stepping. Kare got to his feet and followed him past Kindy into the corridor, toward the squad leaders’ room, along with Gruff. Kindy hung back but went along as well.

  The pill and water worked on Bingh, and by the time he reached the squad leaders’ quarters, he was almost walking normally. Inside, he wasn’t able to look and see everything from one place; each of the squad leaders had his own small room, cubicle really, separated from the common area by low partitions. Bingh made a circuit of the main room, looking into each cubicle. His and Kare’s racks were unslept in, as was Sergeant Williams’s. So was Kindy’s—but his had fresh bedding.

  Bingh sniffed loudly. Sniffed again. “Fee fi fo fum, I smell the musk of a woman,” he snarled. He turned around, looking for Kindy, saw him. “You brought a woman into the barracks last night? Are you out of your ever loving mind? Do you realize what could happen to you if the officers found out?”

  “Find out what?” Kindy asked, all innocence, looking all around. “You’re saying a woman’s in here? Where? I don’t see a woman.”

  Fists clenched tightly at his sides, Bingh advanced on Kindy. “You brought a woman into the barracks last night?” he snarled. “And made me and Brigo sleep in the lounge, and you want to act like nothing happened?”

  “What happened?” Kindy demanded indignantly. “Nothing, that’s what!”

  Doc Gruff stepped in front of Bingh, blocking his advance. “Calm down, Marine. Nothing happened.”

  When Bingh went to step around Gruff, Kare grabbed his upper arm to hold him back. “Let it go, Wil,” he said. He immediately regretted the sharpness of his tone—he wasn’t recovered enough yet from his hangover to not feel a painful physical reaction to his own voice.

  “But—”

  “No ‘buts,’ ” Gruff said. “Nothing happened. And if Kindy got lucky and you didn’t, so what? It’s the breaks of the game.”

  “I had to sleep on a chair in the lounge!”

  “Beats sleeping in the mud on Ravenette.”

  Bingh turned his still bloodshot eyes on the corpsman. “This isn’t the bush. This is different.”

  “You could have gotten a room in town; you didn’t have to come back to the barracks,” Gruff insisted.

  “Wanted to save m’ money for more liberty,” Bingh mumbled.

  “We’ve slept in the lounge before, Wil,” Kare said. “Come on, let’s grab a shower. We’ll both feel better. Then we can take Him back into town and see who gets lucky tonight.”

  Bingh looked at Kare for a moment, then said, “A shower. You’re right, I feel like shit.” He twisted his arm out of the other’s grasp and aimed himself at his own cubicle, shedding his clothes as he went. A moment later, a towel wrapped around his hips, he was headed for the squad leaders’ showers.

  When he heard the water running, Kare stepped up to Kindy and said, “You son of a bitch,” and punched his shoulder. It was a friendly punch, but still hard enough to s
ting.

  Havelock

  Not much more than an hour later, the three squad leaders were sitting at a table in a Havelock diner, having a steak-and-egg breakfast even though it was late in the lunch hour. They were far from being the only Marines in the diner but, thanks to the hangover pills Doc Gruff had given Bingh and Kare, they were in much better shape than many of their fellow diners, who were still showing the effects of the previous night’s drinking. Others of their number looked quite chipper and self-satisfied—Bingh and Kare had a very good idea of why they looked so pleased with themselves and glowered at them. Then:

  “Either of you know where D’Wayne is?” Kindy asked between bites. The others shook their heads.

  Kare thought for a moment, swallowed a mouthful of steak and eggs, and said, “The last time I remember seeing him, he was hanging out by a side door at the Snoop ’n Poop.”

  Bingh thought back, then nodded. “Right, I saw him there too.” He looked at the other two and mused, “I seem to remember, the woman he’d been dancing with slipped out that same door right before I noticed him. Good-looking woman.” He glanced at Kindy. “When we find him, I’ll bet he looks just like this guy.”

  Kindy gave him an eyebrow-raised, “Who, me?” look, but opted for taking another bite of steak instead of saying anything.

  “Him,” Kare said, chewing slowly and swallowing, “I don’t remember you dancing with any one woman in particular. So who’d you nail?”

  “Brigo, please!” Kindy said with exaggerated indignance. “A gentleman never discloses such things.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “Yeah, who?” Bingh demanded. He hefted his mug and took a sip of hot kaff.

  “No, no, no,” Kindy said, waving his fork. “You believe I had a woman in our quarters last night, and that’s why I didn’t let you in when you came knocking. If I say, then you’ll know. If I did bring a woman into the barracks—and I’m not saying I did, because we all know that’s a violation of regulations—I’d be admitting I did something wrong. You can’t expect me to convict myself now, can you?”

  “You already admitted it when you said a gentleman doesn’t talk about it,” Kare told him.

  “Ah ha! But not telling can also mean maybe I didn’t.”

  “You’re jerking on us, Him,” Bingh snorted. “Confess! We both know you did.”

  “Are you going to see her again?” Kare asked, and took a bite of toast.

  “My lips are sealed on the matter.” Kindy put a hand to his face and pressed his lips together with his fingertips.

  “Now, listen here,” Bingh leaned onto his elbows and poked his fork at Kindy. “I’m the senior squad leader in the section, and—”

  “Speaking of senior,” Kindy cut him off, “did either of you see Gunny Lytle or Staff Sergeant Fryman leave?”

  Bingh and Kare looked at each other.

  “You know, I think you’re right,” Kare said. “They must have left earlier than we did.”

  “And the sheepdogs were gone early too,” Bingh added.

  “Well, what do you know,” Kindy breathed as he mopped up the last of his egg yokes and steak juices with the end of his toast.

  Kare thought about the implications of their own leaders and the two sheepdogs leaving the Snoop ’n Poop while some of the women were still there. He shuddered. “That’s going above and beyond. Can you imagine doing a female gunny?”

  Bingh and Kindy also shuddered.

  “That’d be almost as bad as doing a male gunny,” Bingh admitted.

  “Maybe worse,” Kindy said, then gave the others a “What now?” look in response to their shocked expressions.

  “What might be worse?” a familiar voice asked. The trio looked up and saw Sergeant Williams, who had come to their table unnoticed while they were contemplating the above-and-beyond heroism of Lytle and Fryman pairing off with the sheepdogs.

  “Where the hell have you been, D’Wayne?” Kare demanded.

  “Sit down,” Bingh ordered.

  “Have you had breakfast yet?” Kindy realized that Williams’s expression must be much like his own had been an hour or so earlier.

  “I had an early breakfast.”

  “So where have you been since then?” Bingh asked.

  Williams gave the others a smug smile. “She had duty this morning and had to go back to Basilone. So I went back to sleep.”

  “And you just now got up?” Kindy asked, trying to deflect questions about who she was from Bingh and Kare.

  “A little while ago. I had breakfast earlier, but I could use a bit of lunch now.” He pulled the menu to himself, but his angelic look told the others he was giving more thought to the woman he’d spent the night with than he was to the menu.

  “So who is she?” Bingh asked.

  “And does she have friends for us?” Kare wanted to know.

  Kindy leaned back with an almost inaudible sigh; it looked like Bingh and Kare would soon be off his back about who he’d spent the night with. At least for the time being.

  When Williams placed his lunch order, the other three decided to join him. So what if they’d just finished breakfast; it was lunchtime!

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  SIX

  Brattle Household, New Salem, Kingdom

  Moses was engaged in his favorite pastime—playing in the mud outside the Brattles’s home—when Dr. Joseph Gobels stepped out of his hopper. Moses took one look at the doctor and ran screaming into the house. “Mumee! Mumee! Devil! Devil!”

  “Good God!” Gobels gasped. “It can speak English! You didn’t tell me that, Braggle!” he said, turning to Zechariah accusingly.

  “You didn’t ask,” Zechariah answered. He’d given up correcting Gobels’s mispronunciation of his name and wanted now only to get the unpleasant business over with and see the scientists’ departing backs. He was not looking forward to what he knew was going to happen. Zechariah had not informed his family they were coming; otherwise, he was afraid, they would have tried to hide Moses somewhere. He felt badly about that but his sense of duty to the Confederation overrode his guilt.

  Gobels turned to Fogel. “It can speak English! My, my,” he chortled, rubbing his stubby hands together enthusiastically. He began laughing that annoying, high-pitched giggle of his that cut through Zechariah Brattle like a knife blade.

  The flight down to New Salem from Haven with the two scientists had been very unpleasant in the cramped passenger compartment because Fogel farted and Gobels’s breath stank.

  Zechariah endured most of the flight with a hand over his nose. About halfway into it he could stand the pair no longer. “Next time you go on a flight somewhere, Bogel, kindly move your bowels before you leave, and as for you, Bobels”—he derived great pleasure from mispronouncing their names—“try brushing your teeth once in a while, would you?” For the rest of the flight they sat in frigid silence staring out the ports at the landscape passing beneath them.

  Hannah Brattle, wiping her hands on her apron, stood looming in the doorway as the three walked up to the front door. Moses, clutching her skirts, peeked out from behind her. She knew instinctively what was about to happen. “No, you don’t,” she said menacingly as the three approached. Hannah had always been a formidable woman.

  “These men have come for Moses, Hannah. We must give him up to them. It is the law.”

  “To hell with the law! Moses belongs to us and not to Caesar!” Hannah bellowed.

  “Hannah—”

  “Madam,” Gobels said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead as he stepped forward, “we shall not harm him and he shall be returned to you when we are done with him.” His insincere smile revealed dirty teeth, and Hannah visibly recoiled at the sight as much as from his foul breath.

  “No! Joab, Samuel!” The two boys emerged from the back of the house where they’d been studying their Bibles. They realized immediately what was happening and took up protective positions on either side of
their mother.

  “Hannah, you will give him up now. These men are scientists on an important government mission. Moses will be returned to us when they are done with him. Now stand aside and give him to me. I will tolerate no more of this foolishness.” Hannah and her boys began to cry now. Zechariah made a sudden grab for Moses but the boy was too quick and scuttled away into the house grunting in terror. “You stay here!” Zechariah told the scientists and brushed Hannah aside.

  What happened next was heartbreaking. Moses, motivated by mortal fear of the scientists, scooted away from Zechariah. He was aided by his small size, which permitted him to crawl into narrow spaces and under pieces of furniture, and he was very quick on his stubby little legs; he was even faster on his belly, zipping across the floor as though he were in water. Zechariah stumbled after him, barking his shins against furniture and knocking things over. “Moses, come here! Moses, come here!” he shouted, to no avail.

  Outside, Gobels and Fogel stood by apprehensively, listening to the crashing and yelling, keeping a wary eye on Hannah and her boys. But the Brattle family’s attention was focused on Zechariah inside the house, not on the scientists who didn’t dare take part in the chase. Gobels turned to Fogel and whispered, “This is fucking hilarious!” He glanced slyly at Hannah but she had not heard him, thank God. “Reminds me of a goddamned cartoon show,” Fogel whispered back, and the two giggled surreptitiously behind their hands. “Nobel, Nobel, Noble Nobel,” Gobels chortled happily. It was hard for him to resist dancing on the spot. A live Skink! All mine, all mine! He felt like singing.

  At last Zechariah, flushed with anger and exertion and breathing heavily, emerged from the house grasping Moses firmly about the waist. “Dada! Dada! No! Nooooo!” Moses shrieked.

  “Now, you two,” Zechariah gritted, “you take him and get the hell out of here!” He handed Moses, still struggling, to Fogel, who carried a harnesslike device that he strapped onto Moses; as he did that Hannah screamed and might have collapsed if Joab and Samuel had not supported her.

  “It is all right, it is all right,” Gobels cautioned. “We won’t hurt him!”