Renzi grinned broadly. “Oh, do I not! Our math tutor used to call him the ‘performing flea.’ Said it made him dizzy to watch Gabrel swinging from a rafter while he chalked a solution to a differential equation across the top of the board. Gabrel said he had to do something to work off the excess energy in his body while he was thinking.”
Isovel smiled. She could just picture an adolescent Gabrel leading his class while driving his teachers crazy. “Yes, well, he’s still like that. Were you in the same crêche – I mean, class?”
Renzi laughed. “You could say that. You know, we don’t live all packed together like they say you do on Harmony. We had one room at the crossroads for formal schooling, and all ages inside the room. Even bringing in kids from the farthest-out farms by float and flitter, the most we ever had at one time was twenty-three. But Gabrel and I were much of an age and, um, both bored by lectures. We had to do something to liven up the classes.”
“I can imagine. It sounds as though swinging from the rafters was the least of it. What else did you get up to?”
Renzi happily began a rambling narrative of stupid adolescent pranks, holidays hunting in the bush beyond the settled land, teasing Gabrel’s sisters, festivals bringing all the scattered farm families together. As he talked, Isovel could envision a younger Gabrel delightedly spreading chaos whenever he was bored, but throwing himself into any tasks or lessons that engaged his whole mind.
She had to admit that it sounded like an idyllic childhood. Every child had siblings and adults who took a personal interest in him, instead of crêche mothers who had to treat all the children exactly alike. And clearly the boys had enjoyed much more freedom than she’d had in her crêche. Isovel had been shocked when she first learned how Gabrel had been brought up, but now she was beginning to see there were some advantages to the Esilian approach. Traveling miles by flitter, unsupervised by adults, just to get to school. Families who actually knew what you were learning, and why, and who brought you up sharp when you were slacking off, instead of just sending tepid approval of your test scores. Adventures ranging from hunting greatcats to evading older sisters who’d caught you eavesdropping on their swains. Isovel sighed. She’d never had an adventure before her brief affair with Jonny Kelso, and that hadn’t exactly turned out well, had it?
Renzi misinterpreted her sigh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to go on and on at you. It’s just that sometimes – well, one grows up. One has real work to do. But I never had so much fun as during those years with Gabrel. But you’re not here to listen to tales of an Esilian childhood.”
Oh, yes, I am. But talking about Gabrel, drawing out stories about him, was a dangerous indulgence. She’d been a fool to start this. She would never see him again; the sooner she forgot all about him, the better. She could start now. Isovel forced herself to pay attention to Renzi’s instructions.
“You see, it’s just like an e-reader. You start reading at the top of the page.”
Obediently Isovel followed Renzi’s pointing finger to a line of text in archaic spelling. “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds…” She looked up. “Is this what your Governor Aberforss sent to Harmony? No wonder the Central Committee thought he was insane!” The page was littered with words and phrases that were practically encouraging the worst sort of Discord: unalienable rights, the consent of the governed, the right of the people…
“No, this was written centuries ago. We’re not the first people who desired to dissolve the bonds which had connected us with another.”
“To rebel.”
“To demand freedom.”
Isovel skimmed down to the bottom of the page. “What an odd document. It just stops in the middle of a sentence. Or…. Can I scroll down?” She brushed her fingers along the flimsy. Nothing happened.
“Not like that.” Renzi sounded as if he was restraining a laugh. “Look, you turn the page like this.” He pinched the right side of the flimsy between thumb and forefinger and lifted gently. The right edge of the printed flimsy rose up; then, as Renzi guided it, the whole flimsy fell over the box cover on the left to reveal a new page.
“Oh, my. And you have to do that over and over? What a nuisance. And how do you adjust the text size?”
“You don’t,” Renzi informed her.
“Well!” She bit back the words “What a bad design,” and substituted, “It all seems very inconvenient. I really prefer my e-reader.” She looked over the crowded bookshelf. “Aren’t these things heavy as well as not being very user-friendly? Why on earth did you bother with this system?”
“You can’t read this document on your e-reader,” Renzi told her.
“Well, of course I can’t, it’s at home.”
“Doesn’t matter. No matter how many Harmonica readers you check, you won’t find the Declaration of Independence on them.”
“No? But I can always download it.”
“That,” Renzi said with his arms folded, “you cannot do. It does not exist on any data base controlled by the Central Committee.” He went on to tell her a long and, frankly, improbable story about how early deportees had discovered that the books which had inspired their dissent were being sucked off their e-readers and erased from the data base. “We – they – immediately disabled the ‘net connections on their readers. We didn’t lose very much… well, we don’t think we lost very much. About half of Hobbes’s Leviathan, and some of Plato’s Republic – could have been worse, given what remains of the Republic.” He sniffed. “Philosopher-kings. Censorship. It might have been a design for Harmony’s government, surprising they tried to delete it. But I suppose they just went after anything dissidents had been reading, without bothering to understand it.”
The creation of these printed books had been one of the earliest projects of the deportees. They’d stolen the first governor’s 2D printer, which was really designed only for printing regulations and short memoranda, and had put years into secretively printing the books they valued most – learning obsolete arts like bookbinding along the way – just to be sure that no government could stealthily edit or erase these books.
“What if someone steals or burns your precious books?” Isovel asked. If the Central Committee knew about this stash of forbidden writings, they’d surely destroy it as soon as the war was over.
“Redundancy.” Renzi grinned. “Did you miss the part where we printed multiple copies of every book? The university has five sets distributed around the campus. Every public library has a set, every one-room schoolhouse has a set. And there are more sets in secret locations. Even Stinking Billy would have trouble finding all the copies. And anyway, he’s too stupid to recognize that you can make war with ideas. He wouldn’t understand that these are our most powerful weapons.” He patted the stack of books at his elbow. “So go ahead, read as much as you want to. And if there’s anything you’d like to discuss, talk to me or anybody else you choose; these are in the basic curriculum for secondary school, so we’ve all read them.”
He left Isovel to read, and she stayed in the tent until her eyes began to burn and her head was swimming. The Esilians’ prized texts were such an odd mixture; common sense on one page led to outrageous opinions on the next. They made frequent reference to something they called “natural law,” but didn’t seem to have any way of enforcing it. Harmony’s system of consensus, with self-criticism sessions for those who had wrong ideas, was vastly superior to some kind of “natural law” that was never defined and held no penalties. Wasn’t it?
In mid-afternoon Renzi poked his head into the tent. “Still reading? You must like our library.”
“Don’t get too excited,” Isovel said, stretching. “I haven’t had anything to read since your terrorists kidnapped me. At this point I’d probably read Princess Paulina’s Prince if you had a copy.”
Renzi looked worried. “Really? Gabrel must have changed. I’d have thought he would be only too happy to let you use his e-reader.”
Not that it mattered, since she’d probably never see him again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Private Wever was unhappy.
Not that that differentiated him from the other two hundred and nineteen privates in the leading column. He knew that. But his blisters, and his aching legs, and his anxiety were bothering him a lot more than the problems of the other guys.
He felt as if he’d been trudging uphill forever. He told himself not to exaggerate; it had only been three days since the float had stopped and his platoon had been told, “You walk from here.” Walk, ha! Walk, wade, scramble, climb along this eternal river splashing down from the high snow-capped mountains. What a barbaric place. Must be two hundred years since the colony was established, and here in the mountains they still didn’t have proper roads.
And it had been three long, wet days. The uniform kept his body dry and even stretched out to form a hood that covered his head, but his socks were not smartcloth; somebody in Purchasing had been cheated, or more likely, had pocketed the difference between socks knitted of smartcloth fiber and ordinary wool socks. And he was paying for the difference now, squelching along in flooded boots and probably acquiring new blisters with every step.
He jumped at a hooting noise and saw a white shape out of the corner of his eye, then relaxed as the noisemaker ruffled white feathers and flew off.
“Thought it was the White Woman, didn’t you?” his buddy Sulivan teased.
“Of course not. That’s just a local superstition. Civilized people don’t believe that malarkey.” The story had spread among the ranks during their march. The mountains were said to be haunted by a woman dressed in white whose wailing cry portended the death of someone nearby.
“Yeah, well, I’m beginning to feel less civilized all the time.” Sulivan shifted the weight of his pack. “With every meal of healthful nanosludge I can feel myself going more barbarian. I’m starting to dream about real food. The White Woman can visit for all I care, if she brings some decent chow along with her.”
They hadn’t been told exactly why the supply train had been delayed. Rumors ran from ‘typical incompetence’ to ‘massacred in cold blood by people you can’t see until they slip out of the trees to kill you.’ Wever vastly preferred the first version, and kept telling himself that the first rule of evaluating information was, ‘Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.’
But their general, Rauf Dayvson, was supposed to be extremely competent, for all he’d been hauled away from his beloved history books to invent an army. And Wever found himself studying the shadows between the spiky needle trees more closely than a perfectly confident man would.
“What d’you think happened to Taldi?” Their tent had been missing one man last night.
“Womanizing? He’ll be back tonight boasting of his conquests.”
“What conquests? There aren’t any women here for him to harass.” Wever hated Taldi’s swaggering, boastful manner. All the same, he didn’t like people disappearing like that.
“Maybe he slept with the White Woman.”
Wever fought an involuntary shiver. “Sleeping with the White Woman” sounded like a euphemism for death. “I’m gonna wring out my socks,” he decided abruptly. “Catch you later.”
Sulivan trudged on ahead while Wever sat on a nice wet rock – at least his smartcloth uniform protected him from that – unlaced his boots, wrung approximately half the river out of his socks, and put them back on. Damp but not squelchy was at least some improvement.
When they halted for the night, Taldi was missing from their tent again.
So was Sulivan.
Sleeping with the White Woman?
***
“You’ll never be able to conquer our army,” Isovel told Colonel Travis. “You can send little groups of men out to harass and kill, but you simply haven’t enough people to stand up to a full army. Unless you want a permanent occupying army, you’d be wise to make whatever terms you can.”
“I don’t recall appointing you as my military adviser, young lady.”
She wasn’t seriously trying to change the colonel’s mind. She just wanted to plant doubt and despondency in the minds of his dinner guests that evening, Lieutenant Mirez and Captain… somebody.
“Think about it. Harmony has two million Citizens. What’s your population? A couple of hundred thousand? There’s no way you can field enough soldiers to survive a pitched battle. You don’t even have artillery.”
Captain Whoever was looking gloomy. Then the insufferable Lieutenant Mirez piped up. “We don’t have to – oh, sorry, sir.” The captain was glaring at him. “You were going to say?”
“Nothing,” said the captain loftily. “We don’t have to pay heed to the babblings of a foreign spy. And a girl at that.”
The colonel spoke up. “Might I remind you – all three of you – that we also don’t have to defeat Harmony in a pitched battle. All we have to do is drag this out and make this war unprofitable and unpopular. The Central Committee will let Esilia go rather than risk losing power to a rebellion at home.”
“That’s what I was going to say,” Mirez muttered under his breath. Isovel felt a rare moment of sympathy with him. She knew exactly what it was like to have one’s ideas squelched or appropriated by a superior. That described ninety percent of her interactions with her father. She decided to change the subject.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, Colonel.”
“What, asking instead of telling? What a refreshing change.”
Isovel colored at the teasing but went on, “You have people coming in from the field with reports nearly every day, but all I ever hear about is terrorizing our soldiers and picking them off one at a time. Don’t most – ah – revolutionary forces also attack infrastructure?”
“You mean, like breaking the solar power plants on the plains, or the hydroelectric generators along the river, or degrading the irrigation system.”
Well, at least she didn’t have to worry that she’d given him ideas; obviously they’d already begun discussing infrastructure targets.
“Well – yes. Wouldn’t any of those have more impact than merely harassing our forces?”
Colonel Travis smiled. “Doubtless they would, in the short term. But in the long term, that’s our infrastructure you’re talking about, and we want to be able to use it after the war.”
“Whereas soldiers from Harmony are –”
“Expendable. Yes. We don’t need them.”
Sometimes the colonel’s smile made Isovel think of a hungry greatcat. He didn’t look like a kindly middle-aged man at all.
***
Rauf Dayvson gathered the reins of his donkey in one hand and frowned at the rain-soaked flimsies his aide-de-camp had brought him.
“You say these are turning up all along the column? How do you know that?”
“Enough men have handed them over to show me that they’ve been distributed the length of the column. I do not, of course, know how many men have picked one up and not brought it to one of the officers.”
“One would hope that the answer is ‘None.’” Andrus, the political officer, sniffed disdainfully. “I have never seen anything so flagrantly anti-harmony. Even the grunts must realize that something like this is forbidden literature.”
Rauf gave the man a sour look. He loathed having to bring Andrus with him, knowing that he was reporting back to Harmony independently and that his principal task was to see that no one on Rauf’s staff did or said anything that could be construed as anti-harmony. Around these creature
s of the Central Committee he felt that he had to pick all his words very carefully. It was like walking on eggshells, trying to work with his officers while all of them – himself included – had to be as concerned with not offending the political officer as with their real job of winning the war.
Rauf believed with all his heart in the basic principles of Harmony. He knew that he was doing the right thing here, fighting to bring these erring people back into Consonance. But how had these principles led to his own people spying on one another, and everybody terrified of accidentally saying something that could be considered seditious? Something had gone badly wrong. When this little war was over, he’d have to get together with his friends back home and figure out how to get his country back to honoring standards in the spirit as well as in the letter, instead of fomenting suspicion and distrust.
“We don’t exactly have the usual bars to dissidence,” he pointed out. “What are you going to do if you catch a soldier reading one of these leaflets? Send him to Esilia? He’s already here.”
“Anybody who’s caught with one of these things should be sent back to the city, to the stockade you built,” Andrus said, tight-lipped.
Rauf snorted. “So for every grunt who picks up one of these out of curiosity, I’m to lose three – that man and the two detailed to escort him? Do you want this expedition to fail?”
“Better a military failure than the degradation of our principles.”
Oh, well. There was a limit to how long an honest man could tiptoe around this political malarkey. Rauf leaned forward from his seat on the donkey and hooked his finger into the man’s collar. “Listen to me, Andrus, and listen carefully. My daughter is somewhere in these mountains. I will take the war to these cowards who hide in the hills, and I will rescue my daughter. And heaven help anybody who interferes with me.”
Andrus was purple with rage when Rauf released him. “Do you put your personal desires above the principles of harmony?”
“I believe that in this matter they are aligned,” Rauf said. “I’ve been charged with bringing these mistaken people back into consonance with the Way of Harmony, and they will be much more inclined to the Way after I’ve thrashed the grubby terrorist bands who infest these hills. Most of the common people will doubtless be grateful to be rid of the parasites, and those who don’t will at least have a better understanding of what happens to those who resist Harmony. To do this I need a strong, confident army. You – will – not start witch hunts that will further demoralize my soldiers. Is that understood?”
Insurgents (Harmony Book 1) Page 13
