“If you commit, you commit. You don’t have to commit, so if you do, you don’t quit.”
Kris sighed. “To be honest, Kurt, I don’t know what I want any more.”
“Well, West Point doesn’t allow married cadets. I have a feeling that having a dependent would also disqualify you.”
“Diyala is not negotiable,” Kris said angrily. “If she can’t be a part of it, then nothing else matters.”
“Kris, any sort of military training, even in basic training as a private, will entail long periods away from dependents.”
“If I have to, I have to. But I won’t give her up.”
“Even if it might be better for her?”
Kris lifted her chin. “I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that. I killed her parents.”
“You and I killed her mother, Kris. Her father was last seen departing eastwards. Odds are he’s a hundred miles off the coast now. Collum is working on an expedition to go check, but they have to have a way of learning from a ship what they discover -- just getting sunk wouldn’t tell them anything.”
“I’ve been thinking about going back,” she admitted. “I could help.”
“You could,” he agreed. “But the question is could you learn something here that would make you more valuable there?”
Kris shook her head helplessly. “I have no idea. The more I think about it, the more confused I become.”
“I have a modest proposal,” he told her.
“Oh?”
“Yes, quite modest, actually.
“What do you know about me?” Kurt asked her.
“That you were in the Army, and then you acted as an agent or broker for stuntmen who used to be in the military. Now you’re in charge on the Arvala side of Far Side door. My father likes you, as do Ezra and Jake. Andie listens to you.”
“And you?”
Kris grinned thinly. “You’re my father’s age, Kurt. If I wasn’t my father’s daughter I’d be calling you ‘Sir’ and walking on eggshells around you.”
“Well, yes, once upon a time I was in the Army. I joined when I was seventeen, right after I graduated from high school. On my first enlistment I spent a lot of time working on correspondence courses, and when I re-upped, they asked me what I wanted. I told them OCS and showed them my BA.
“Recruiters are sick bastards, Kris. They make drill sergeants look like princes. The guy got me to sign on the dotted line, and off I went to OCS. That was 1982, and nothing was on the horizon. Oh, we still had the Soviet Union to contend with, but it was clear they were ailing.
“Promotions were, not to put too fine a point on it, glacially slow. A maverick, someone up from the ranks like me, got the shaft nearly every time. It took me ten years to make major, and the only reason I did was that I had a tank company in Desert Storm, and we killed a lot of Iraqis. If that war hadn’t have come along, I’d have been forced to retire as a captain.
“Soldiers and dogs -- keep off the grass. There used to be signs like that. Nine years after Desert Storm I had my twenty years in, and I was still a major with no prospects, so I retired. I was thirty-seven years old.
“I was young and fit, so I came out to Hollywood and got a job as a military advisor on a project, and when some guy racked himself up on a stunt, I filled in for him. The rest is, as they say, history.
“I made a lot of friends while I was in the army, Kris. One of them was Tom Briggs, my brigade commander in Iraq during Storm One. I impressed him, Kris. In any other war we’d have gotten a chance to know each better and who knows? But ground combat in that war lasted only a hundred hours -- four days. We crushed them.
“I was out on the pointy end of the stick when the orders came down for one more push.
“We went up a hill, and there was half the surviving Iraqi army spread out along a road at the base of the other side of that hill. We cut loose and started killing them. Kris, I tell you true, for an hour, all I cared about was racking up kills. Then it dawned on me -- those stupid fuckers had given up. They didn’t want to fight, they no longer had the will to fight, and what we were doing was murder, not war. I called on my company to stop firing and promptly got screamed at by higher headquarters to keep banging away at men whose only desire was to survive.
“I told that damn general to go fuck himself. On an open mike on an open circuit that everyone from captains on up could hear. They didn’t cashier me, but there was nothing Tom could do for me. Worse, in five minutes, everyone on that fucking ridge had stopped shooting and we let the survivors go.
“You’ll read it in the history books that it was some asshole in Washington that ordered the halt -- but it was me.”
“I’d like to think I’d do the same thing,” Kris told him.
“I’ve heard that a hundred times from people I respect the hell out of Kris. At the time what happened to me was a bitter pill, but over the years the respect of those people has meant a lot... that and I make a hell of a lot more money in Hollywood than I ever would have in the Army!”
Kris smiled.
“So, Tom called me the other day. He and I keep in touch, and he was fascinated by what we’d done. I told him about your wanting to go to West Point, and he told me, ‘Why would she want to do that? Have her come see me. I’ll give her some more stars, Kurt.’”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Tom Briggs is the President of Norwich University, which is perhaps the best military school outside of West Point. He is convinced that the future is going to have a lot of blue doors to the Far Side, and he wants to prepare his people for that. You, Andie, and Ezra are the only people I know of who have been there and done that. Andie wouldn’t like this, I’m pretty sure. I know Ezra would hate it.
“What Tom is looking for is someone who could guide the beginnings of such a program, someone with experience and know-how. Someone not afraid to get their hands dirty.”
“And an eighteen-year-old high school graduate would directly work for him?” Kris asked skeptically.
“Kris, OJT is OJT. You’ve actually done this. You’ve talked with alien kings, generals, and military officers... you name it. You’ve negotiated with them, you’ve made agreements; you’ve done the whole nine yards.”
“I had no idea what I was doing.”
“He knows that,” Kurt said with a laugh. “But the proof is in the pudding. You came away with solid agreements, fast friends, and while the State Department is still having the shits, your father is quietly lobbying for a ‘Department of External Affairs’ that would have authority over off-world activities.”
“I’m not sure that three months experience is going to cut it,” she told him.
“At first it will. And I’m here to tell you that Tom Briggs isn’t a man who sits on his ass. He says they are working on a program now at Norwich. They’re building a complex that will house a number of fusors, plus the required quarantine and medical facilities. It’s currently under construction, but he’s expecting that it’ll be ready to go by the first of the year. He’s going all out on this, Kris.
“He told me that Diyala is not a problem. He’s told me that he will sign you to year-to-year contracts if you wish. A six figure salary. All you have to do is give some lectures and consult.”
“Six figures? Can we tell that to Kit? I want the fucking asshole to squirm.”
“We can do that. Andie has requested that we stop shooting near him every day. Her lawyers have sued him for the clothes he’s wearing -- but the fact is that he has confessed to kidnapping, although there are still pending charges of attempted murder that he tried to kill you, Andie, and Ezra. He might be able to beat the attempted murder raps, but the kidnappings are a slam dunk. He’s going away for twenty years, at a minimum, and most likely, the rest of his life. Andie wants him to live a long, long time, reflecting on what could have been.”
“Has he said why he did it?”
“Oh, sure... Art talked to his uncle, who was a big wheel at Chevron.
The uncle advised him to steal the work, and if Art helped suppress it, he’d get a huge payoff. Art was willing to cut Kit in on it as well. Kit says Art was planning on stiffing his uncle as soon as he got the money in the bank.
“Kit said, ‘I’m as honest as the next person, until you get to seven figures. Eight? They offered me a hundred million dollars to bury the technology and get rid of the inventor.’”
Kurt laughed nastily. “You understand that his uncle was busted as well? He was planning on killing Art and Kit as soon as he was sure that you wouldn’t be coming back. He started spreading money around in Washington and Sacramento to make sure that if anyone reinvented fusors, they’d meet with other fatal accidents. They think he bought two hundred and fifty members of Congress of the United States, the President, Vice President and governor of California for a hundred million dollars.”
He met Kris’ eyes. “I swear, it wasn’t us, okay? But four days after Art’s uncle confessed to the FBI, he was shot to death as he was being moved to a new safe house.”
“Kurt, it sounds like you wouldn’t have needed to. You just described a couple of hundred suspects, any one of which would have had ample reason to do it.”
Kurt nodded. “Yeah, I left out cabinet members. Odds are that it was the Attorney General who bought the hit. Your father is leading the charge to clean this up, from top to bottom. Alas, he isn’t going to do it the way the Committee of Vigilance cleaned up Deadwood.”
“Pardon?”
“They hanged everyone and apologized for the mistakes afterwards.”
Kris grimaced. “Getting back to your friend. Kurt, thanks, I really mean it, thanks. But -- I only have three months OJT. I don’t think that amounts to much, not in the great scheme of things.”
“Like I said, treaties agreed to, battles fought and won... Kris, no matter what the liberals think, those are the true measure of international -- and now interstellar -- relations. Please, for me, at least talk to Tom. I’m just a passed-over major. He’s eloquent.”
“I suppose.”
“Good, wait a few and I’ll get him on the phone.”
Kris sighed. Once upon a time quarantine meant you couldn’t see and talk to anyone. These days, you could both see and talk to practically anyone on the planet -- and yet never break quarantine.
The call came in to the message center, which was a fancy name for half a dozen sound-proofed cubicles.
The man wasn’t much older than Kurt, but he had two stars on his uniform that Kurt didn’t have.
“Major General Tom Briggs,” he said, introducing himself.
“Kristine Boyle, sir.”
“I am honored to meet you, Miss Boyle.”
“Sir, all I did was get cast away. I’m not sure that’s worthy of being honored.”
“It’s not,” he agreed. “It’s what came after that. Miss Boyle, while the President no longer exercises the influence he once did, the liberal mainstream media do. Almost nothing has been made public about what happened to you on the other side of the sky. Kurt Sandusky has told me about some of it, and I have to say, I know Kurt’s not easily impressed. From his description of what happened to you, I admit to being impressed myself.”
“Sir, to me bravery and courage are doing things you’re not expected to do. What I did, sir, was to keep myself and my companions alive. It wasn’t all sweetness and light.”
“Miss Boyle, Kurt said you’ve killed a man an arm’s-length away from you and another not much further away than that. Others, you killed in battle, where they had firearms and you had crossbows.”
“Did Kurt explain to you that I still have ambivalent feelings about those deaths, even though they seemed justified at the time? Not to mention, I shot a couple of them as well.”
“Miss Boyle, no civilized person can escape those feelings. If you should ever escape them, you stop being civilized.”
“Kurt says you want me to talk to some of your teachers and students about what happened and help plan what is needed on the other side of one of those blue doors.”
“That’s what I want. Miss Boyle, let me be frank. Undoubtedly you feel that your experience doesn’t justify such a position and that the length of time you served doesn’t meet a rational yardstick of experience.
“Miss Boyle, for about half of the history of Norwich, we were unable to employ combat veterans. In 1828 our last revolutionary war veteran retired -- we didn’t have but one man from the War of 1812 and he had been a general’s secretary. In 1894 our last Civil War veteran died -- the next time we hired a combat veteran was 1900. In 1932 our last World War I veteran retired -- our next combat veteran was hired in mid-1942, and he was a paratrooper who had been severely injured in training.
“Right now I have a staff who can teach our cadets everything they need to know about how to conduct irregular warfare against terrorists. We have never, ever, employed someone who has not only commanded in battles, but negotiated more than cease fires and treaties with the American Indians -- treaties, I must add, that were all subsequently broken in Washington.
“Miss Boyle, Andrea Schulz’s discovery is one of the most momentous in the history of our planet. We can go places and do things that we could only dream about before. You, Miss Boyle, have gone to one of those places. You’ve made friends, you’ve made enemies, you’ve made treaties... Miss Boyle, this is the stuff of B-adventure novels!
“Above and beyond that, it is going to happen again and again. There is an entire universe out there! Norwich, Miss Boyle, is a school where we teach leadership -- not where we practice following.”
“And I don’t have to sign half my life away?”
“No.”
“And my ward?”
“I understand you rescued a survivor of a shipwreck.”
“Kurt Sandusky put a mortar round into an open black powder magazine hatch. It was a rather spectacular wreck.”
“Somehow, Major Sandusky forgot to mention that part of the story,” the general told her. “I wonder what else that he forgot?”
“Did he tell you that one of his men was eaten by a flying dinosaur?”
“No, no I can’t say as he did. Eaten?”
“Killed and eaten,” Kris said harshly. “It isn’t a picnic out there. One thing Jake Lawson said that I overheard was that for the first time he understood why the terrorists spend so much time watching the sky -- and he’d never bothered. Seeing a brother soldier dead like that does concentrate your attention.”
“And you, were you ever attacked by a flying dinosaur?”
“Three times. Twice someone else killed it for me, once I had to fend for myself.”
“May I ask how you were armed?”
“My friend Andie showed them how to make crossbows with old sword blades. I had one of those. Nine-mil pistols were useless.”
There was a moment of silence, and then the man went on. “Miss Boyle, I can’t say that there is nothing I wouldn’t do to get you here, but I will say that there’s not much I wouldn’t do. Please come and visit.”
“So long as you understand that I’m ambivalent about the whole them-or-us thing.”
“As I said, Miss Boyle, that’s what civilized people feel when they have the luxury of time to think about things. I’ve been in your shoes, Miss Boyle, and I’m willing to bet that when you had to, you didn’t even think.”
“No, I didn’t. Oddly, that bothers me.”
“As it should. On the other hand, there’s a reason why you and I are talking about that, instead of the other guy talking with his buddies about how easy it was to kill you.”
He looked at her via the connection. “Miss Boyle, please. Come to Vermont, be my guest. All expenses paid. Bring your dependent. Bring a marching band -- I don’t care. Please come and see our program and talk to us.”
Kris made a final decision. “Yes, sir. I’ll do that. I still have a couple of more days of quarantine to run. You realize that there is a slight, but I think trivial, risk that I�
�m carrying a plague that could wipe out the human race?”
“Miss Boyle, I’ll tell you a secret, one not even known to Major Sandusky. Once upon a time, a long time ago, your mother and my wife were interns together. Your mother has been filling in Marjorie, my wife, with every nitty-gritty detail of the biology that she’s learned. You understand that my wife, like your mother, has been a frustrated xeno-biologist all these years and is finally in heaven. It’s why every time I show the least bit of reluctance to push ahead with the fusor project here, she gives me a swift kick in the pants.”
“That’s news to me,” Kris admitted. In fact, for three weeks, Kris and her mother had interacted only to the extent of her mother’s daily demand that Kris roll up her sleeve for more blood work. Kris was heartily sick of having blood drawn every single day -- no matter who did it.
“I’ll talk to Kurt and he’ll arrange things. I understand that, regrettably, there are still security issues.”
“We get a dozen death threats a day,” she told the general. “All threatening us with death if we leave quarantine. Most of them come with a hodge-podge of nutty comments. My favorites are the ones accusing us of faking everything, but they are going to kill us anyway to keep mankind safe.”
“Yes. I’m not going to tell anyone that you’re coming. Miss Boyle, you understand that for the most part, you’re unknown?”
“That’s what I’ve been told. There were only a few early leaks about who we were, and those the administration promptly squashed.”
“Yes. Your name is bandied about on a few nutroot websites, but the mainstream media think you and Andie are publicity hounds and refuse to cover anything of what you and Andie have done.”
The Far Side Page 55
