Peacemaker

by Gordon Kent

  6

  August

  IVI.

  Rose had stopped going to the cafeteria for morning coffee because there was too much to do. Or that was what she said—and believed. An outsider might have said she had found work to fill that time. An outsider might have said she liked to boast of never having a minute, even for the cafeteria.

  Suter stopped by sometimes. Rose found she rather liked him. She knew he was coming on to her. Many men did. So?

  “At it again,” he said, leaning in her office door. “Got a minute?” He always had some excuse for visiting her. She didn’t discourage him. She learned stuff from him. And was flattered by the attention. Suter was a good-looking guy. Unlike Alan, however, he was aware of it. Vain.

  “Half a minute,” she said. “I’m swamped.”

  He had learned to bring his own coffee. Hers was terrible, made by some Seaman Apprentice first thing in the morning and left to cook down to its acidic worst all day. He told her some bit of detail about adjustments in the launch angle and said, “So you want to be an astronaut.”

  “Sure do.” She was writing notes to herself about the launch angles.

  “Ride the Vomit Comet? Join the Team of Heroes?”

  “You got it.”

  “I might be able to help you there.” She looked up. Her face was expressionless and did not give him the encouragement he wanted. “I know some people in the program.”

  “I like to make it on my own,” she said.

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “That why you left the Navy?”

  He had never mentioned his Navy career to her. It irritated him that she knew something like that without his having told her. “How’d you know that?” he said.

  “My husband.”

  Of course! That shithead Craik had told her all about him. He could picture the letters Craik had written home from the boat, full of self-pity and bitterness. He felt better. “I can imagine what he said about me,” Suter said with a smile.

  “Really?” She had been writing, finished, looked up. “Actually, he didn’t say anything. I was the one who mentioned your name, and he put two and two together and guessed you were his old boss.”

  “And then what’d he say about me?”

  “Nothing.” She seemed surprised that he’d ask.

  Well, of course he couldn’t believe that. Craik must have given her an earful. That was okay; bad press was better than no press. Maybe she found her husband just a bit of a shithead, too? “At least you mentioned my name to him,” he said with a grin.

  “Valdez!” she shouted. She had a hell of a voice when she needed it; Suter resisted jumping out of his chair at her sudden bellow. Somebody had passed behind him out in the corridor. What the hell? he thought. A male voice behind him said, “Yeah,” and Rose called over and through Suter, “Show me how to acquire the Orbit Adjustment file out of White Sands, will you? I keep getting some message saying I’m committing an illegal act and I get closed down. It hurts my feelings.”

  “Yeah, ma’am, I told you twice already.” He came in, a compact, dark, near-teenager in blue jeans. “Hey, how ya doin’?” he said to Suter without looking at him. He went right to Rose’s computer.

  “Valdez is my resident geek,” she said. The words had a final tone to them, as if she had said something like, Oh, look how late it’s getting, meaning it was time for Suter to go. She turned away from him and toward Valdez, who was leaning over her computer.

  “Uh—” Suter was annoyed. He didn’t like being dismissed. He liked even less being dismissed in favor of a Latino kid who had barely finished high school. “Maybe I’ll stick around and learn something,” he said.

  She gave him a dazzling smile. “Valdez is the smartest computer jock in LantFleet. He’s got Silicon Valley after him—don’t you, Billie?”

  “They jus’ want me for my body,” the kid said. His head was close to hers over the keyboard. Suter saw that he had a tiny tattoo behind his ear. Suter hated him.

  Late in the day, Rose and Valdez caught a flight out of BWI to Houston. She was starting to ride herd on the thousands of details that affected the ship and the launch hardware; from Houston, they would go to Newport News to pick up the civilian ship for her week’s orientation. Go and go and go.

  It was not enough for Rose to be assured by somebody else that things were going well. She had to see it for herself. She had to see the drawings, the mockups, the prototype. That first launch was not going off without her understanding everything about it. Valdez went along because he was her personal computer whiz—requested by name from her old squadron, where she had learned almost everything she knew about computers from him.

  “How come you know so much, anyway?” she said as they flew over West Virginia, for once not using the flight to press her nose against the screen of her laptop. This was not a sudden desire to relax; Valdez was showing signs of unhappiness, and if her computer geek was unhappy, she knew she was going to be unhappy somewhere down the line.

  “I’m a genius.” He meant it as a joke, but it was literally true, if you went by IQ scores.

  “You weren’t born a computer geek, Valdez.”

  “No, ma’am, I was born a spic. I was goin’ to be a criminal mastermind, but Mister Carvarlho got to me first.”

  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll ask—who was Mister Carvarlho?”

  “We called him ‘Mister Horse,’ because caballo means horse. You say ‘Carvarlho’ fast, it sounds like caballo—horse, okay? I hated him. He was PR, half black, he always wore suits, he was a born-again Christian with an attitude.”

  “Not your ideal.”

  Valdez laughed. “My nightmare! That guy was the opposite of everything I was gonna be. I was a gangbanger at eleven; at twelve, I was carrying a gun. No kiddin’! I had this Rossi .38 special, nickel, real shiny—I thought I was cool. I shot it once—I’m runnin’ the street at two a.m., just for the hell of it I shot it. Blam! I only had five bullets, that’s what it held—like a Chief’s Special, right, only a Rossi?—it was light, nice, but a lotta recoil for a little kid. Anyway, I carried that; I had a place I put it outside the school, I’d leave it in the morning, pick it up as soon as I got out. I was bad.”

  The Navy didn’t like people who had been ba-a-a-d, she thought. He must have got awfully good awfully quick. “You never got caught?”

  Valdez hesitated. He was slumped down in his seat, his left knee and calf pressed against the back of the seat in front. He was frowning. “My dad caught me. Him and me didn’t get along then. My dad—” Valdez squirmed upright. “He was workin’ two jobs, sendin’ money home, didn’t speak English—I came in drunk one night, he was comin’ home from his night job—I’m twelve years old, remember—and the gun drops out on the floor. He just looks at it, and then he starts to cry. I thought he was a jerk. I di’n’t know, you know? I see it now—the guy was worn out, beat down. But Jeez, to be a hotshit gangbanger and see your old man cry—! I thought I was so cool, man.”

  Valdez plucked at a little packet of salted peanuts that had been put in front of him. “You understand about bein’ Latino?” he said. “In Cleveland?”

  “Probably not.”

  Valdez sniffed, like a bull inhaling. “Couple days later, I’m walking down the hall in school—I’m in junior high, seventh grade through ten are all together—and this hand comes outa nowhere and grabs my shoulder. I was gonna deck the guy. Nobody touched me—tough guy, huh? That’s when I found Mister Horse was one strong born-again Christian. One hand, he held me, I couldn’t move. ‘Come in here, young man,’ he says. Whoosh! I’m in his room. He holds me like a frigging vise! When I’m quiet, he says, ‘You are the newest member of the Computer Club. Welcome to the Club.’ I think he’s loco—I think he’s lost something up under his hair. Later, I find him and my father are in a Bible-reading thing together. My father has told him about the gun. Mister Horse sits me down in front of my first computer and puts a joystick in my hand and he t
urns on a simulation game.

  “I’m hooked.”

  He chewed on his peanuts. He shrugged. “Couple months later, I was doing simple programming.”

  “How’s your father now?” she said.

  “He died.” Valdez chewed. “He took my gun, he threw it in the river. I hated him. Then he was dead, I understood him a little better. Too late. Sad story, huh?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Lotsa sad stories. World is full of sad stories. Let’s change the subject.” Valdez squirmed again, shot a glance at her. “I’m not real happy with this job,” he said.

  That was a surprise. A shock, in fact. “It’s a great job!” she said.

  “Great for you, maybe.” He shook his head. “They’re not giving me stuff.”

  “Who?”

  “Them. Whoever.” He waved a hand. “In computers, what difference is who? Difference is what, Commander. Lemme put it in Navy: ‘Insufficient data are being provided to Petty Officer Valdez.’ See? No who.”

  “Insufficient data about what?”

  “If I knew that, I’d have the data, woul’n’t I? What I mean is, there’s too much code for the stream I’m getting.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can tell. That’s like me asking you how you can tell a chopper is loaded wrong from the way it flies. I can tell.”

  She was already protective of Peacemaker. “You don’t have a need to know,” she said primly.

  “Bullshit I don’t have a need to know! You think I’m gonna trust my work on a system where I’m closed out of part of the data stream? I might as well ask for a transfer right now.”

  “Valdez!” She sat upright, turned on him. “What’s this ‘transfer’ crap?”

  “I might do it.” He looked like a stubborn child. “I believe in freedom of information.”

  “This is the goddam US military, and information is classified, not free!”

  He rolled his head toward her. He had large eyes the color of dark chocolate. “You know what MP3 is?” he said.

  “Are you changing the subject on me, Valdez?”

  He shook his head. “MP3 is the way you download music and play it through your computer so you listen to what you want, when you want—no CDs, no albums, no nothing decided for you by somebody else. That’s freedom of information. You know what open source code is? Same kinda thing. I believe in those things. I also believe in the US Navy, but if the Navy gonna put me in a position where I got to knuckle under to somebody else’s idea of what comes through my computer—” He made a horizontal chopping motion. “Finito, man.”

  She was angry—she recognized that she was getting on top of the job because she was beginning to get angry about it more often, caring—but she controlled herself and said, almost but not quite flirting with him, “Valdez—you wouldn’t desert me, would you?”

  But he wouldn’t look at her. The movie had come on and he was watching it without headphones. “You find out what’s bein’ kept from me,” he said.

  Rose sat back, arms folded. Problems, problems.

  On the flight to Newport News two days later, it was as if settling into the seats and snapping the seatbelts put them back where they had left off. Nothing had been said in the interim; in fact, they had hardly seen each other. But clearly, the earlier conversation had been somewhere on her mind, because the first thing she said after they took off was, “Can I ask you something personal?”

  “Sure, why not?” He flashed her a grin, all teeth and big brown eyes. “Maybe I won’t answer, though.”

  “What’s that tattoo behind your right ear?”

  “Pachuco.”

  “What’s that?”

  He didn’t believe it. “You don’t know pachuco?” He laughed, made the face that means, This is fucking incredible! “You know Zoot Suit.” He said it as a fact, not a question.

  She was laughing now—at herself, at both of them. “What’s Zoot Suit? I’m sorry, Billie—”

  “You don’ know Zoot Suit? Edward James Olmos, man! Luis Valdez!” Now, he was pleading with her to know. Then it was too much; he threw himself back in his seat and gave up. “I’ll bring you the video.” He started to take out his earphones, then turned to her again. “I saw Zoot Suit when I was a little kid. Another kid put the pachuco mark behind my ear; most guys got it on their hand, here, between the fingers so it doesn’t show. Then I did him. We weren’t gangbangers yet; we were being cool, big-time, but—It meant something to us! Zoot suits!” He shook his head. “It was a Latino thing. I kind of gave it all up when I went to Jesus, but, you know, it’s part of me, man.”

  “Are you a born-again now?”

  He folded his arms and stared at the seatback. “Yeah, and yeah, and finally no. I been to Jesus so many times I get frequent-flyer miles. You not laughin’? That’s one of my best lines, Commander; guys always laugh, ’cause it’s cool.” He slouched lower. He was a small man and the seat fit him. “Jesus got me out of the gangs and He got me through high school and into computers, but I couldn’t take church. Jesus, si, His people, no way, Jose. So, Jesus and me got our own church.” He looked at her, his head now lower than hers. “Okay?”

  “Your mom and dad disappointed?”

  “Yeah. Big-time. But after my old man died, my mom, she kind of toned it down. Maybe one day she’ll go back to the priests, I think—one of those little old ladies in a black shawl, goin’ to mass every mornin’. She believed the pentecostals because he did, I guess.”

  “How did he die?” Rose asked gently.

  “Fell off a scaffolding. Tired out.” That was enough of that; he wriggled upright. “Hey, did you find out what I ast you?”

  “About the data stream?” She shook her head. She was a little embarrassed; the truth was, she didn’t understand the question well enough to ask it.

  “Okay, I tell you how we goin’ to get the information. The Peacemaker electronics bein’ done on the cheap—off-the-shelf. That’s fine; there’s good stuff out there. But what it means is, someplace there’s a contract for all the software. You get that for me. Once I see all the software laid out, I know what’s goin’ on.” He pulled down his tray-table. “You want to keep your computer geek happy, remember, Commander.” He started to put on the earphones, then held them away for a moment. “You get me the list of software, I get you a video of Zoot Suit.”

  Right. One more detail to take care of.

  Washington.

  At home in his rental apartment after Mikey went to bed, Alan had started “flying” a simulator on his PC. It was like a parody of the idea of going to flight school. It was a mockery of his desire to get out of his job. His old squadron friend Rafehausen had asked him to visit him at the War College at Newport, where he’d give him a real flying lesson, he said, and Alan had so far refused because he had had some dumb idea that by staying home he was being loyal to Rose. Or something.

  One night, he crashed a Cessna three times in a row on the virtual ramp of his virtual aircraft carrier, and then he telephoned Rafe and said When should he come up? They made a date for it, and he told Rafe that he’d just learned that his board had deep-selected him for 0–4 for next year. It wasn’t like telling Rose, but she was on the road somewhere.

  Off Hampton Roads.

  The USNS ship Grace Orbis rolled in heavy swells and took enough water over the bows to splash against the bridge windows as if it had come from a monstrous bucket. Below, Rose and Valdez made their way along a narrow corridor whose steel bulkheads were studded with rivets, their path partly blocked by “knee-knockers,” those unmovable metal uprights—fire-hose connections, corners of lockers, sills of watertight doors—that put bruises on the shins of everybody before a voyage is over. The ship’s roll swayed Rose against a bulkhead and then out again, and she giggled. Ahead of her, Valdez was walking with his feet wide apart and his hands out at each side to keep himself off the bulkheads. He looked to her like a mechanical toy. She giggled again.

  “Well,”
she shouted over the storm, “you wanted a change!”

  “Hey, man, this is too much like being a sailor!” he bellowed.

  They were doing a quick familiarization cruise. She was air Navy; now she had to learn more about what the despised line officers did. The Grace Orbis was a much smaller ship than Philadelphia, the one that would launch Peacemaker, but Philadelphia was at Newport News being refitted for the launch. She figured that if she could stay upright aboard Grace Orbis, Philadelphia would be a cakewalk.

  A ladder led up to a watertight hatch and the deck. To Valdez’s disgust, she wanted to see the storm close up. She gave him a shove. “Move it!”

  Valdez started up. The bow rose and he swayed back and she thought he was going to come down on top of her; she put a hand in the middle of his back and pushed. The bow started down and he swayed to vertical again, and she started up after him. He was at the hatch, reaching for the big white handle, and she was halfway up the ladder when the ship made a more abrupt move to starboard, the bow going down and the deck swinging far over to her right. She started to make some sound to show she wasn’t scared, the sort of sound you might make on a roller-coaster, and then she felt Valdez sway back and down and into her, and her feet were going out from under her, sliding, and briefly she was airborne and then slamming against the metal rail. She slid down, banging her shins on the ladder, feeling a sharp, horrible pain in her gut and then hitting hard on the bottom step and bouncing once more to the steel deck below. Valdez was beside her in two jumps.

  She thought I’ve hurt myself, and then almost at the same time, Don’t show it, don’t show it! and she was clutching his arm, feeling the bow come up, taking her with it, swaying; she clutched his arm and said, “I’m all right—I’m all right—” She clawed herself halfway upright. The pain flashed down her abdomen and into her thighs and she thought she would fall again, and she held on to his arm with both hands, staring into his brown eyes so she wouldn’t pass out. “I’m really all right—!”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he was moaning, “oh, help us, Jesus—!”