"Oh. Interesting?"
He shrugged. "Only as a study in how easy it is to see things that aren't there, if that's what you want to see."
She grinned and headed up the stairs to her bedroom, with Boomer trailing her by inches. She removed her suit and inspected it for further wearability, decided it would pass for another day, and hung it in her closet.
It's been a month since I last talked to Helen. How long since I last saw her?
She made a mental note to call her friend in the morning, donned a baggy fleece sweat suit, and descended to the kitchen, with Boomer once again in her wake.
After months of struggle against what seemed insuperable obstacles, Malcolm had broken the barrier that the mighty Louis Redmond had never been able to surmount: he had taught Christine how to make acceptable coffee. Now that she had the trick of it, she seldom wanted to drink anything else. She found it odd that others considered coffee a beverage for after a meal, but not for before or during one.
Once the pot was up, she settled at the kitchen table to wait for it to drip, and tried to sift through the revelations and emanations from Rolf. Boomer curled against the base of the table, settled his head onto his forepaws and closed his eyes.
It could be just that he's a natural worrier. He doesn't think much of his leadership skills, but they're there, and the need to see into the future is a really big ingredient in the mix.
Or it could be that he fears for me personally, which would be sweet. I don't think I should tell him how little need there is to worry about me. It might put him out of reach.
Or it could be that he fears for himself.
The taste of that last possibility was unpleasant. The coffee pot emitted its terminal gurgle; she rose, poured herself a cup, and returned to her chair.
He's never been short on appreciation. He sings my praises to everyone who asks. Maybe he's worried that I might leave his team for fresh new vistas? Or that I'm about to catapult over his head?
It was more plausible than she liked to think. What reason did Rolf Svenson have to believe that his new engineer would bind herself to him?
I turned down that little prick Arkham. That should be something.
At length she decided it was a topic to be brooded over earlier in the day. She drained her cup and wandered out to the living room. Malcolm was marking his place in his book and rising from the sofa. "Shall we spar tomorrow?"
She grinned. "Sure, why not? And war games on Sunday?"
"As usual. You know, I'm running out of material for you."
"Come on, Malcolm, tell me something I can believe."
"I'm serious." He rose. "You've covered the ground so much faster than I expected that I have only one area left. After that, your only reason for having me here will be the pleasure of my company."
"Malcolm, you know you can stay here as long as you like."
He shook his head. "As long as you like. This is your house, not mine."
"Well, yes, but why would I retract my invitation? Are you planning to start throwing wild parties without inviting me?"
He chuckled. "No, not at the moment. Let it rest. I'll see you in the morning." Seconds later he had closed the door of his bedroom behind him.
How many women have two Mystery Men in their lives?
She and Malcolm had made a household together with unexpected smoothness. She had no complaints about him, and so far as she knew the reverse was true as well. Yet proximity had not opened him to her. He remained as inscrutable as before.
She had tried to elicit the sources of his marvelous, encyclopedic knowledge of warfare from him. He had deflected her probes without acknowledging them. She had indirectly invited him to discourse on his background and personal experience. He had changed the subject. She had not yet posed any direct questions.
Maybe because I'm afraid he'll answer them?
No maybes about it, Christine.
Oh, for Christ's sake, Nag, that wasn't addressed to you.
Really? Well, for Christine's sake, Christine, you'd better spend a little time deciding how much you want to know about your two Mystery Men. And how much you want to know it. Because they'll answer whatever you ask.
The Nag's certainty set her back on her heels.
You think so? Then why are they both so evasive when I give them an opportunity to reveal themselves to me?
Her inner advisor was a long time in answering.
It could be that they fear you, Christine.
WHAT?
Remember that they know as little about you as you know about them. Neither has ever seen anything like you. Neither believes he understands you. Incomprehension engenders fear. Fear engenders evasion and concealment.
The voice was the Nag's, unmistakable. The words were Malcolm's, and there was no doubting the truth of them.
And when that which one fears attempts to end one's evasion and penetrate one's concealment, the fear swells, and solidifies, and engenders flight, or violence.
She breathed deeply and willed calm to return.
Thank you, Nag.
The Nag's response carried a note of surprise. For telling you what you already knew?
I think I needed to hear it. From you.
There was another long pause. You're welcome, Christine. Of course.
Her gratitude toward the inner voice, so often overlaid by irritation, was joined for the first time to a measure of affection.
==
Chapter 42
Christine and Malcolm cleared away the Sunday breakfast dishes and reseated themselves at the kitchen table. Malcolm stared at his coffee mug as if studying it.
"We have talked," he said, "about all the strategies known to man for dealing with an armed enemy. We have talked about every aspect of deadly conflict. Every moment of every discussion we've had to date has been backlit by the consciousness of objectives and costs: attaining the one and constraining the other. And one of the first things we talked about was the importance of insuring that you don't overpay for what you seek."
She kept silent and listened.
"What if you can't, Christine? What if your objective can't be bought at an acceptable price?"
She pressed her lips together, then said, "You abandon it."
He smirked. "It's hard even to say it, I know. But reality is sometimes insensitive to a general's desires. On those occasions, you must learn how to walk away. And that, my dear, is an art form of its own."
He straightened up. "Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn't control all those conditions. If he did, he'd never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he's compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not."
"What conditions can do that to you?"
His mouth quirked. "Yes, what conditions indeed?"
Oops. Here we go again. "Weather could do it."
"How?"
"By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion."
"Good. Another."
"Economics. Once the economy of your country's been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you're running out of resources."
"Excellent. One more."
She thought hard. "Superior generalship on the other side?"
He clucked in disapproval. "Does the opponent ever want you to fight?"
"No, sorry. Let me think."
He waited.
Conditions. Conditions you can't control. Conditions that...control you.
"Politics. The political leadership won't accept retreat or surrender until you've been so badly mangled that it's obvious even to an idiot."
The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.
"It's the general's worst nightmare," he whispered. "Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry's charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not don
e. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads -- to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.
"It hasn't been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills."
Christine held her peace. Malcolm was in the grip of some awful memory, and there was nothing she could do except wait for him to force it down.
"Napoleon wrote that it was a commander's duty to resign rather than allow himself to be made into the instrument of his country's ruination. Unfortunately, a field commander who resigns during hostilities is usually tried for treason and executed. The better his reasons for resigning, the more likely he is to be executed, so being right is no protection.
"Your last unit of study, with me at least, will be in how not to fight when evading combat is your primary aim. There's a lot of good, general strategy available, that's studied in regular war colleges, and we'll cover that. But we'll also cover another aspect of combat evasion that the war colleges could never address, because of who they work for: how to set to work on that envelope of conditions, to change it so that you'll have the avenue of escape you and your men need. It's the filthiest work in the general's domain, and it's important that you learn to do it well."
She nodded. "Or?"
"Or you'll do a lot more of it than you really need to."
***
Terry Arkham sauntered through the gray corridors of Onteora Aviation's engineering center. He needed to be certain that he was alone. It took three circuits of the floor before he was certain.
All these other assholes have lives. Not little Terry. Little Terry lives for his work. Little Terry can come in on a Sunday. Twice, if need be.
He seated himself in his cubicle and logged onto the development mainframe with the System Administrator's password, making himself omnipotent. The SysAdmin was Carey Berglund, an elderly troll of no particular competence who spoke only when spoken to and sometimes not even then. Berglund hadn't changed the Administrator's password in more than five years. Not that it mattered to Arkham. If the old fart ever did think to change it, Arkham's invisibly hacked replacement for the administration program would deposit the new password in his account as it invalidated the old one.
He positioned himself to the Simulation Group's account tree. As he'd expected, it wasn't particularly large. He copied it to his private disk under a meaningless name, and sat a moment in thought.
Can't look as if it was done deliberately. Got to look like some sort of random disk scramble. Something a static discharge might cause, or a subtle failure in the operating system.
Everyone on the system relied on Berglund to perform backups. What the SysAdmin called his "backup procedure" was more like an invitation to the Fates to drop rocks on his head: he copied the working accounts from the development disks onto tape as his first act each Monday morning. Every Monday he used the same reels of tape. If Arkham could corrupt the Simulation accounts this evening, Berglund would write them over the only sound copies tomorrow morning at seven when he came in, which was well before anyone else showed his face here. So be it.
He began to write his bomb.
The bomb did indeed exploit a subtle shortcoming in the operating system. It was fragile in the face of certain kinds of resource exhaustion, most notably disk space. Arkham's program would deliberately corrupt the disk by making the Simulation Group's files look like available storage, and would then delete itself. Another program would then ignite, allocate large amounts of disk and fill it with a data pattern that resembled the output of one of the test analysis programs. The data pattern would smear Simulation's precious development files into an opaque jam. Berglund would perform the final stroke tomorrow at seven AM sharp, and it would be all over but the shouting.
You're short, bald, homely, and without any of the redeeming social graces, but you're still the best, Terry me boy.
He finished his work at about seven PM, mulled over what traces he might have left, satisfied himself that he'd covered his backtrail, and logged off. On the way home, he sang along with the car radio, at the top of his lungs. That he didn't know the words to any of the songs didn't trouble him.
***
"Hello?"
Christine started at the unfamiliar female voice, a soprano higher than Helen's. "Helen, is that you?"
"I'm sorry, Helen isn't home at the moment. Who's calling, please?"
"My name is Christine D'Alessandro." She spelled it and gave her phone number.
"And what might this be in reference to?"
"I'm a friend. Would you ask her to call me, please? No, strike that, tell her I'll call her sometime during the day."
"Miss D'Alessandro," the unfamiliar voice continued, in a cooler tone, "if you're a friend of Helen's, you must know that she works days, and isn't available for personal matters."
She is to me, sweetie.
"You're right of course, how silly of me. Just tell her I'll be in touch, then. Is that all right with you?"
There was a long silence on the line. "Yes, of course. Good night."
"Good night." Christine hung up her phone feeling that something enormous had slipped by her, silently in the night, while her attention was elsewhere.
==
Chapter 43
When Christine arrived at work Monday morning, she found a message slip wedged into her keyboard. Boomer made himself comfortable under her desk. She shrugged out of her coat and set down her purse, plucked the slip from its resting place, unfolded it one-handed, and read:
Christine:
Please stop by my office as soon as you get in. Thanks.
R. Orloff
Well, Rolf told me.
"Stay, Boomer. I'll be back in a little bit." She picked up her purse again and set off for the Administration offices.
***
Svenson arrived about ten minutes later. He threw his coat at his guest chair and slid into his desk chair in a fluid motion. His fingers logged him onto the development server without conscious intervention.
Not much further to go. Once I've checked Chris's look-down clutter simulation, we'll be locked and loaded. And still two weeks to go before the customer demo!
He positioned to the main working directory for the AAR environmental simulations and called for a file list.
No Files Found.
What?
He reissued the file list command. The same absurd message appeared. He had to repeat it twice more before his brain agreed to grapple with the reality of it.
We must have had a disk fault over the weekend.
He rose from his chair, the blood beginning to pound in his temples, and sprinted down the hall to Carey Berglund's cubicle.
***
Dick Orloff smiled in his most fatherly way at his prize acquisition. "So how do you like it here, so far?"
"I'm having a wonderful time, thanks," Christine said. "And Rolf is terrific. Thanks for putting me in his group."
He chuckled. "I got a lot of static for that."
"Oh? From whom?"
"The VP for research and development wanted you put directly into Tactical, under Terry Arkham. I argued that we couldn't take a chance like that, since you were untried." He lowered his brows. "Any interest in a transfer, now that you've been here a while?"
She pursed her lips. "Into Arkham's group, you mean?"
"Yes. He's already made inquiries about whether you might be available."
She hesitated. "Mr. Orloff -- "
"You can call me Dick, Christine. Everyone does."
"Thank you, Dick. I really like working with Rolf. I'd like to keep doing it for a long time, if that's all right."
Either she doesn't know the scuttlebutt, or it hasn't affected her. Good.
"I'm glad to hear that, Chris, because the two of you have made a spectacular team. Everyone has been raving about th
e amount you've accomplished in the past six months. And I don't like to break up an obviously successful arrangement. You can stay in Simulation as long as Rolf is willing to have you there."
She broke into a radiant smile. It was as if the sun had risen right there in his office. A warmth grew in his chest that came from more than just the sense of having done his job properly.
***
Terry Arkham had been watching for Svenson to come sprinting past. When it happened, he couldn't resist slipping the man a passing dig.
"Yo, Sven, how're they hangin'?"
Svenson called back over his shoulder, "Later, Terry," and plunged on toward revelation and despair.
Arkham sat back in his chair, folded his hands on his belly, and allowed himself a foretaste of victory.
***
"Well, if you're happy about that, maybe you'll like this even better." Orloff pulled a stapled sheaf from his Out box and slid it across his desk toward Christine.
"Take a moment to read the first two pages. The rest is mostly boilerplate."
She did. He waited until she looked up again.
"This is a ten-year contract."
Orloff nodded. "That's right. With a generous schedule of raises and grade elevations built into it, and a no-terminations clause. And it's for you."
"No terminations?"
"Means you can't be laid off, and can only be fired for breaking a major company rule. Don't worry about those, we don't have that many."
"Mr. Orloff...Dick, I've only been here six months, and this is my first job. How can you be so sure you want to keep me around already?"
He chuckled. "How can I be sure the sun will rise in the east tomorrow? Christine, don't you know how good you are?"
The question seemed to fluster her. Her eyes darted about the office as if she hoped to find the answer written on the walls.
Is she really upset? An attack of impostor syndrome, maybe?
"Chris, Rolf says you're the best he's ever seen, 'way better than he is." He kept his voice low and friendly. "That's high praise, and you've backed it up with the most extraordinary performance I've ever seen. In six months, you've taken seven man-years worth of tasks off his back. And those numbers weren't sandbagged. I used to be an engineer myself, and I know when a schedule's been padded. That makes you fourteen times as valuable as the average OA software engineer, before we factor in your amazing quality of output. If I didn't try to get you to commit to us long term, I'd be derelict in my duty."
On Broken Wings Page 33
