Benyamin shook his head. "Nope. Mmm . . . maybe, just a little. Truth to tell, I don't like shouting 'Follow me' all the time, and dashing first into God knows what. I do enough of that as is." He touched his fused right wrist. "Plenty of officers in the family, God knows. Shlomo the Asshole, you, both Zayda Bar-Els—figured we didn't need another, what with the General here coming online shortly." He patted his hip. "And since Galil just put me up for my first class senior's warrant, the pay's just fine."
"He got you your warrant?"
"Yeah." Benyamin smiled. "I was thinking about sitting around the barracks and sewing on new stripes tonight." He shrugged out of his field jacket. Beneath, his khaki shirt was unadorned, except for the chain-circled Shield of David on the left breast. That was common, among both officers and men, although Benyamin generally went for sewed-on stripes.
"Pin them on, instead." Tetsuo dropped a pair of first class senior's collar pins to the bed. They looked just like the three chevron-and-double-rocker insignia Benyamin was wearing, except that the white and black checkering was finer, more squares to the centimeter. That only showed close up; they would still look like a gray blob in a sniper's scope. "I'm thirsty."
"Oh. Fair enough." Benyamin held the pins in the palm of his hand and considered them for a moment. "How'd you know?"
"Galil and I had a little chat. He mentioned it."
"He mention anything else?"
Tetsuo looked long at Ari. "Yeah."
Benyamin exchanged his second class senior's pins for the new ones. He turned to Ari. "Tet and I are going into town, Ari; I think we need a few drinks—celebrate my new warrant. You're coming along. Tet, you want a Barak?"
Tetsuo shook his head. "I'm fine." He patted the pistol holster on the right side of his belt reluctantly before resting his hand on the butt of his sword. Tetsuo didn't like guns.
"Kiyoshi never wore swords."
"Ki couldn't cut worth anything," Tetsuo said. "Good hand with a phut gun, though."
It all felt less like a discussion and more like a performance for his benefit, and Ari wondered what the purpose of it was.
"Hang on a sec," Benyamin said, walking over to the arms locker, coming back with a holster, a pistol and two spare magazines. He dropped it on the bed next to Ari. "Put it on," Benyamin told Ari.
Benyamin picked up his assault rifle and expelled the magazine. He checked to see that it was loaded, the chamber empty, then slammed the clip home with a solid chunk. A quick manipulation and the stock was folded in; he secured it to the right side of his web belt, as though it were an oversized pistol.
"Put it on?" Ari asked. "Eh? What is it?"
"This is what we professional soldier types call a semiautomatic pistol—Belge copy of an old IMI Desert Eagle, the one that originally had the idiot safety. This leather thing is called a holster. What you do is you put the pistol into the holster, and then you put your arms through the straps there, and then tighten it up. Wear your fatigue jacket over it."
"I know what it's called."
"Good." Tetsuo gripped his hand, and pulled Ari upright. "You're carrying a pistol tonight."
"Why?" Ari shook his head. Whatever they had in mind, he didn't want any part of it.
"Trade secret," Tetsuo said, without the hint of a smile. "Something they don't teach you in Soldiering 105."
"I . . . I'd just as soon stay here."
"Look, maybe we shoot people for a living, but there are some bennies," Benyamin said. "Me, I like to travel to strange worlds, see strange sights—"
"—drink strange drinks, et cetera. I like et cetera particularly," Tetsuo said. And then there was a smile for just a moment. "There's a section of Gonfiarsi they call 'La Inguine'—I like it a lot."
Benyamin pursed his lips. "You would." He turned back to Ari. "We're going into Gonfiarsi. Orders are to travel in groups, armed always. And stay in touch." He undipped his headset from his belt and set it on his head.
"Two is a group, if you feel like arguing. I don't, so we're going to be three." Tetsuo's hand dropped to Ari's shoulder. "You're three."
Ari started to shake his head, but Benyamin's smile broadened.
Tetsuo didn't let go of his shoulder. "Come on."
"No. I don't feel like it."
"Oh, you don't feel like it? Too bad." Benyamin's face was grim. "Until things clear up around here, we don't want you just hanging around. Somebody might say the wrong thing to you, or you might say the wrong thing, or not say the right thing."
"Besides," Tetsuo said, "there's parts of your education that need some remedying. So, little brother, let's go into town." His grip tightened until it hurt. "Now."
Ari's smile felt weak. "Sounds good to me."
Benyamin tossed Ari a slicker.
The rain was easing as they left the barracks and walked the two klicks toward the distant front gate, past rows of low, squat buildings barely illuminated by the light poles. The sidewalk was chopped up; it looked as though it had been idly chewed, sampled by some passing behemoth that had nibbled at it and then moved on. They stuck to the side of the tarmac lane that ran parallel to the dirt tank road.
Underneath the skullcap of their radar domes, a squad of sky watches kept guard on the night, the quadruple snouts of their wireguns shifting position with a crisp suddenness that made Ari jump.
Benyamin laughed.
Off in the darkness, rows of circled tank platoons huddled in the night, one trio of the big steel monsters lit with painful whiteness by portable field lights while a team of Casa mechs in greasy coveralls worked and swore and grunted, changing a set of treads on a big Araldo V, tools squealing against steel and clicking against ceramic.
The huge tank looked oddly vulnerable, its tread spread across the tarmac, one side of the hull tilted up on a set of field jacks, its main gun depressed the full ten degrees. The steel monsters were silent and immobile, the silence interrupted by only the chick-chick-chick of the field generator, the click and creak and whir of tools, and the occasional muttered instruction or curse.
One of the work crew didn't have a tool in his hands; he threw a sketchy salute in their direction, Tetsuo and Benyamin returning it.
"Why'd you do that?" Ari asked Benyamin. "He wasn't saluting us, just Tet."
"He didn't know that." Benyamin smiled. " 'When in doubt, salute it' works on a lot of worlds. Not my idea of—"
"Heads up," Tetsuo said, stepping off the tarmac, snapping down his faceplate. Ari and Benyamin did the same.
Wind and water whipped against their slickers and faceplates as a battery of 200mm howitzers approached, then hissed past, the three big guns riding on their aircushion carriers, their tubes strapped down and pointed rearward.
"Glad of the rain," Benyamin said, wiping his faceplate, then raising it.
"Yeah. The grit would've cut us to shit if it'd been clear."
Buses left every five minutes from the front gate, rising into the air and hissing off into the night. The outbound one was half full.
The rain eased; they climbed aboard.
The smell of garlic and grilling fish drew them to a vendor, a red-faced man who took a mouthful from a wine bottle and swallowed half of it before leaning over the grill to spray the rest across the curled pieces of fish. Steam hissed out into the night.
"Clearprawns," he shouted over the din of the trumpets blaring from the bright end of the dark alleyways.
They bought three flat breads—sort of like matzot, but limp—wrapped around a crunchy, garlicky, meaty something.
"You like?" Benyamin grinned.
Ari nodded.
"Local breed of shrimp," Tetsuo said, echoing their big brother's grin. "Shellfish. Tref. Not kosher."
Ari stopped in mid-bite.
"But the law doesn't apply off Metzada, and we, little brother, are off Metzada," Tetsuo said, taking another big bite of his sandwich. "When in Nova Roma, eat what the Nova Romans eat, eh?"
"But we're in Gonfiarsi, not Nova Rom
a."
"Same principle."
They walked on.
In the sticky darkness and light of La Inguine, it was hard to think of Gonfiarsi as a city at war; it looked more like a city at play.
There was a sprinkling of uniforms among the men, maybe about twenty percent. The rest wore a variety of clothes, from the stained coveralls of the dockworkers, to the tailcoats and trousers of the officeworkers, to the elegant satin tunics and leggings of the grandees.
It all looked strange to Ari as they walked down the Via Giovale, eyeing the flashing lights, listening to the blare of music spewing from the narrow alleyways, from the bars' open doors. All of the clothes were different, but the men didn't seem to feel themselves awkwardly dressed. How did they know what to wear? He shook his head.
Among the young women, the uniform of the day seemed to be a tube dress in pastel, leaving them indecently uncovered from the tops of their heads almost to their nipples, from mid-thigh to their ankles.
Some of them were almost incredibly beautiful, although how they could walk on the ten-centimeter stilt heels—or why they wanted to—escaped him. But it did make their legs look longer, and somehow better. He liked the exotically short hair—hair cut short, not the pinned-up hair of a married woman—framing a variety of faces, none of which looked like they were related to others.
Very strange.
They pushed their way through the crowd into a dark bar, where two bartenders, one skinny, almost emaciated, the other beefy and red-faced, kept pitchers of red wine and golden beer coming. The tables were crammed with enlisted Casas and women with too much makeup keeping pace with them, all of them drinking and pounding in time to the heady beat of the six-piece combo at the far end of the bar.
"Check out the trumpeter," Benyamin said. Ari looked; it was Pinhas Shalvi, until today an S2 instructor, now an S2 sergeant for Second Bat. His eyes closed in concentration as he spurted out an improvised phrase, then opened when the fila player picked up the theme. He spotted the three of them and waved idly before putting the trumpet back to his lips.
A pair of paras and their women vacated a table; Benyamin grabbed the three chairs, beckoning at Tetsuo and Ari to get the drinks.
"Tends to be noisier in the enlisted places," he said when they returned, Ari carrying three glasses, Tetsuo with a pitcher of red. Benyamin poured each of them a glass and sipped. "Not too bad."
"Eh?" Benyamin had missed that last.
"I said, 'Not too bad, and it tends to be noisier.' " He turned back to Ari. "On the other hand, it tends to be a lot cheaper. Fair trade."
The broad-faced, balding sergeant at the table next to them had turned to eye them, then dismissed them with a shrug, but now he turned back and glared.
Ari looked away and sipped at his glass. He wasn't an expert on wine or anything, but it tasted good—fruity, without being sweet.
"You're wearing your bars, Tet," Benyamin said.
Tetsuo looked down at the triple bars of a Metzadan captain that decorated his collar points. He slipped them into a pocket with a friendly smile and a shrug at the Casa.
"Got any enlisted stripes on you?" Benyamin asked.
"Nah. Just—well, you know."
"Try these," Benyamin said, handing his old stripes to Tetsuo. Tetsuo put them on.
"Now," he said with a smile, "we're just three enlisted men out drinking. Drink up."
They listened to the music for a few minutes, a hot, syncopated theme that the fila player hammered out, then passed around to the guitarist, the keyboard man, then back to the trumpet.
"Tet, you think he's ever going to retire?" Benyamin asked.
Tetsuo shook his head. "Hell, no. Two things Pinhas likes: shooting people—up close and personal—and playing trumpet with real good musicians. You think he'll get a chance to do either in the rock?"
"Not that he's done a lot of shooting lately."
Tetsuo shrugged. "Cadre work sometimes gives you a chance." He smiled. "Case in point."
"Nah," Benyamin elbowed Ari. "Hey, you dead or something? What this is, see, is a conversation. What that means is that I talk some and Tetsuo talks some and you talk some, too."
"Nice of you to explain things to me."
Benyamin pursed his lips. "Shit, kid, don't make too much of it. Things didn't happen the way they were supposed to, but then nothing went right—I mean nothing. They don't tell you this in school, but usually, the first time out, we give you something easy to do and help you through. Gets easier after that." He looked at the bottom of his glass. "Usually."
Tetsuo drained his wine and poured himself another glass. "You, little brother, were fucked by the flying fickle finger of fate."
"Yup. You got dorked by the dangling dong of destiny," Benyamin echoed. "Pounded by the pulsating piston of perversity."
"Raped by the reaming rod of randomness," Tetsuo said. "So, you be a good little private, and keep your privates ready to haul out of here, and Benyamin will fix you up with something. Get yourself blooded on something easier than being ambushed. Shit, there's nothing—and I'm including amphibious assault—that's harder to get right than being on the wrong side of an ambush."
Ari didn't answer.
"Seems there were two generals, standing on a hilltop, overlooking a battle," Benyamin said. "An occasional stray shot whizzes by, but nothing much happens. All of a sudden, one of the generals takes a ding—just a flesh wound in the shoulder.
"Says to his aide, 'Lieutenant, bring me my red jacket.' His aide trots off.
"The other general says, 'Hey, why'd you do that?'
"First general says, 'I don't want the men to see that their general is injured; it'll ruin their morale.'
"Second general says, 'Fair enough.'
"Few minutes later, a shell comes close, right between them, so close they can feel the wind as it whips by.
"Second general turns to his aide, and says, 'Lieutenant, bring me my brown pants.' "
Tetsuo laughed. Ari didn't. His knuckles grew white around the glass, and he could feel his cheeks burning.
"Okay, little brother, maybe you're not cut out to be an infantryman. So what? You think there's not other things that need doing?"
What could he say?
The Sergeant, his uncle, had once said something about how when you didn't know what to tell an officer it was best to make something up, but when you didn't know what to tell family, the truth was best.
"I have to be an infantryman," Ari said. "I have to."
"Why?"
"Because I'm one of the Hanavi brothers." Ari drained his wine and poured another glass, splashing only a little. "You're all fucking heroes, even Shlomo the Asshole. You think I don't notice? You think everybody doesn't measure me against the rest of you? 'Well, Tetsuo may be a staff officer now,' they say, 'but you should have seen him on Endu, back when he was first out.' " He didn't mention what he knew about Tetsuo's other activities, about his suspicions that were just this side of certainty that Tetsuo was one of the nonexistent Metzadan assassins of myth. There were things you didn't ever think about, much less talk about. "Or—"
"Ari—" Benyamin started.
Ari waved him to silence. "—or, 'Benyamin? Benyamin Hanavi? Best damn trooper that ever there was. The bastard's an artist with an autogun, you should see him lay down a covering fire. Solid as Metzada.' Or, 'Ki Hanavi? He was always first in. Always.' " He didn't remember much about Kiyoshi. Ari had only been six years old when Kiyoshi Hanavi died in a muddy rice field on some Randian noble's estate, his legs blown off by a rebel mine.
Tetsuo had drawn his packet of tabsticks and extracted one. Ari took it from his fingers and puffed it to life. Metzada doesn't import luxury items: he'd never tried tobacco before. He coughed hard, and then washed the taste out of his mouth with more wine.
"Then there's Shlomo. For Shlomo, it's always something like, 'I wouldn't share a tent with the pig, and I sure as hell won't leave any prisoners under his care, but did you see w
hat he did on Rand?' Shit, you've heard it, just like I have, that the reason babies on Rand are born screaming—"
"—is because of Shlomo, and that they don't stop until the doctor pulls down the mask and proves that he's not Shlomo." Benyamin nodded grimly. "Who knows, there may even be some truth in it."
"And then there's me." Ari tried another puff of the tabstick. It wasn't so bad this time. " 'Looks good on paper,' they say, 'but paper don't mean shit, now does it? Pissed his pants and froze his first time out,' they say, and they're going to be saying it forever."
"They still call you 'the General,' " Tetsuo said.
"Yeah, sure they do. And they're laughing. Fat chance Ari's going to be a general, they say. Big fucking joke."
Tetsuo shook his head. "If you can't find it in you," he said, his voice low and serious, "fake it."
"Scusa." The maresciallo—warrant officer, second class—at the next table was glaring at them. He was a compact, stocky man, his movements careful and precise, his open collar darkly stained with sweat. "My friend asks, since you cannot manage to keep . . . quiet enough so that we can listen to the music, to please be noisy in Italiano so we that can comprehend it."
The lathe-thin, red-faced man across the table from him was half on his feet. "Cesare, that's not what I said."
The maresciallo made a be-still gesture with his right hand. "Close enough."
"But—"
"Be still, Caporal." He turned to Benyamin and gave an expansive shrug as though to say, What can you expect?
A quick look passed between Benyamin and Tetsuo; Tetsuo nodded fractionally, his eyes growing vague and dreamy. They had just picked out their targets, and neither of them had even thought of relying on Ari.
Ari felt like an orphan.
Benyamin nodded, once. "We're leaving, Maresciallo Capo," he said carefully. "My apologies for the disturbance."
The warrant held up both palms. "It's nothing. Sho-lom, ah?"
Tetsuo cracked a smile. "Indeed," he said, rising slowly.
The warrant shrugged; he gave them something between a deep nod and a slight bow, his hands still open, palms forward. "Buona sera, Sergente."
Hero Page 9
