I don't want to describe her. A man's description of his favorite wife has always seemed to me to necessarily either traffic on matters that are properly private—or be manifestly superficial. Let's just say that she's a slim but lovely woman, whose body shows little evidence of having borne three children—two of them by Shlomo, one by me—and whose long black hair is always bound up in public.
Little enough of my life is private. Her waist-length hair enfolding the three of us is something I'll set off, sequester from the rest of my life, shared only with Rachel. It was something I had always envied my brother. Yes, I had lusted after my brother's wife, and when he died, I married her.
The second is common on Metzada; the first was wrong.
When I meet God, I'm going to ask Him why. Not that it'll be my first question.
"ETA four minutes."
Zev, Sofaer and I huddled around her while she spoke into her microphone.
"No," she said to the distant listener. "You tell him that he is to come out when he's assigned to, just like—he won't—? Then have Ari tell him. Dammit, you know that he doesn't take to regeneration—I've got him projected for the OR with the rest of the criticals, and that means he goes right in. No, I've got a schedule to meet, too—there's a brand new right supraorbital ridge sitting in the mold waiting for . . . never mind. Just tell him to get out in the prescribed order."
She looked over at me. I raised an eyebrow.
"Dov," she said, putting her hand over her microphone. "He says he's coming out with Ari."
Zev smiled. "Dov. Figures."
"That it does." I nodded. "I'll handle it, Sergeant."
Sofaer ingratiated himself to me by accepting that with a nod, walking away, and jacking in his own headset a few meters away.
There are thousands of Dovs on Metzada. But when somebody in the family uses the name without a modifier, it means Master Private Dov Ginsberg.
"What kind of injury?" I didn't see what the problem was. If Dov were awake enough to discuss the matter, his injuries were at least ten days old. Another few minutes could hardly make a whole lot of difference. If he were under treatment, the treatment could be expanded to include an appropriate sedative.
The women in my life seem to read my mind; it annoys the hell out of me. "Not an injury," she said. "And I don't want him already doped up when the anesthesiologist gets her hands on him." She shook her head. "It was shipboard—he's got a hot appendix. Lahav has been pumping him full of valda oil and antibiotics, packing his belly with ice, and sitting up with him for the past week. He should have cut. It's a hell of a lot easier than a godamn bowel resection, which the medicians do all the damn time, but you goddamn men don't have any self-confidence with a knife, unless you're using it to . . . Can you help?"
"Let's see." I pulled my own headset off my belt, plugging it in next to hers as I set it on my head. "Inspector-General Tetsuo Hanavi," I said. "Give me Ari."
"ETA three minutes. Shuttle on elevator." The stone walls vibrated with the sound of distant machinery.
He must have been in the same compartment as the senior medic; it was only a half-second until I heard my baby brother's firm baritone. "Yes, Tetsuo?"
"What the fuck is going on?" I asked, politely.
Zev snickered. He and Ari did not get along. Some people in Section develop a bit of scorn toward those who bear weapons openly, who don't have to pretend.
"Nothing I can't handle," Ari said. "Dov's right here with me. He can hold out another few minutes—he figures he's responsible for me until we're in Metzada."
My uncle Shimon told Dov to watch out for Ari. Dov tends to interpret instructions his own way. Or, rather, the way he thinks Shimon would want him to.
Great. Just what I need, I thought, to get caught in a disagreement between my brother and my wife. Or, more properly, it was Inspector-General Tetsuo Hanavi being caught in a dispute between Lieutenant Colonel Ari Hanavi and Dr. Tetsuko Hanavi.
Ninety-nine percent of me being inspector-general is a fraud; my number-one deputy, a master colonel, is really the IG; I wear the stars both as a cover for my real profession and to keep busies out of Zachariah's hair. Trouble was, this fell into the one percent that isn't.
Usually a problem. Not this time. "Put him on," I said, as I turned my face toward the wall. A whisper is as good as a shout, sometimes.
"One second, then."
"ETA two minutes."
"Yes, sir." It was Dov's voice, flat, emotionless. Real emotion was a part of him that got chopped off long before I ever met him.
"I may be leaving to pay a call on Uncle Shimon shortly." I whispered. "Perhaps within a week. If you have medical clearance, I'll put in for you to go with me. No promises, but I'll put in for it. If you have medical clearance."
There was no answer.
"Dr. Hanavi is your doctor. She will provide medical clearance, if anyone does."
Still no answer.
"You're going to have to spell it out," Zev said. "He's not too bright, our Dov."
I put my hand over the mouthpiece. "Shut up, Zev.—Dov," I went on, taking my hand away, "she won't provide medical clearance if she's angry with you. And I'll have to go see Shimon alone. For whatever purpose I'm assigned."
That registered. "Understood, sir. I will leave the shuttle with the wounded, sir."
I unplugged the phones. "We're all set," I said as I turned to Suki, and went personal long enough for a quick kiss on the lips. "And with—"
"ETA one minute."
"—one minute to spare."
We pay for the life of our people with pieces of ourselves.
Sometimes that's a figure of speech; often it's literal. The teams of stretcher-bearers first brought down men who were missing pieces.
It was a bloodless affair. Outward bleeding had been stopped for hundreds of hours.
"I'll wait here while you have your little reunion." Zev snickered again.
"Just what I was going to suggest." Asshole.
As the stream of stretcher-bearers worked its way from the shuttle toward the doors, I ducked my head as I stepped out into the frosty air, then dodged to one side to avoid two thickset medicians carrying the upper two-thirds of a man on a stretcher. He was missing from about the thighs down.
Don't talk about regeneration therapy. It doesn't always work, and when it does, it takes a bitch of a long time to regrow anything that's both major and peripheral, like a pair of legs. Two years, minimum, until you'll see baby-pink toenails; another year until new muscles learn to work hard enough to match the ones they've replaced. And that's if you push hard on your therapy sessions.
The stretcher cases ended, followed by the walking wounded.
The next man, walking quickly, not at all supported by the medician at his right, seemed unhurt, save that his hands were missing.
The next one, an uninjured man supporting each arm, half-guiding, half-carrying him, had a well-bandaged face, his features swathed in cloth like a mummy. Eyes aren't too bad. Unless the nerves leading back to the brain have been thoroughly damaged, it only takes about six months to grow them back, six months of walking around in the dark.
The next was Master Private Dov Ginsberg.
Dov was a huge and ugly man; his ragged hairline came to within a couple of centimeters of his heavy brows. From within deep sockets, two seemingly unblinking eyes stared coldly at the world as he walked down the stairway from the skipshuttle all by himself, one thick hand pressed against his abdomen, as though trying to hold himself together.
He brought his free hand up against the side of his face, a sound like a butcher slapping a side of beef, then walked out of the line of walking wounded, gesturing me to accompany him.
It's not his size that makes Dov what he is, although that and his strength helps. I'm not sure what it is, really; it's Something Extra. A Talent, Rachel calls it, like the way her mother can work miracles with a cube of rock and a chisel.
It's not his training in hand-to-hand�
��he's never had any. Master Private Dov Ginsberg is something else. Leave it at that.
"You say you are going to see Shimon." The voice didn't quite match the body. It's almost high-pitched, not at all the basso rumble you'd expect, and it cracks at unexpected moments. That's about the only thing that does. Dov's loyalty to Shimon Bar-El never wavered. It's a personal matter, going back to before his name was either Dov, or Ginsberg—before he was a Metzadan or a Jew.
"I said perhaps." I shrugged. "The old woman got a letter from him. He says he has some knowledge Metzada wants. If it's important enough to involve us, it may—may—be important enough to bring you in on." I didn't go into detail.
He thought that over for a moment. "You won't try to hurt him this time, sir." It wasn't really a question. Or a threat Just random movements of his mouth, while he tried to figure out what Shimon would want him to do.
"Don't be silly," I said. "Of course not." Unless it was necessary. Which he knew as well as I did. He also knew that I'm an inveterate liar. That comes with the job.
But Dov had learned long before that he couldn't kill everyone in the universe who might want to hurt Shimon Bar-El. "I will see you before you leave, sir," he said. "Whether it's with me or without me."
"Very well."
Wordless, he limped off, pressing his hand to his side. At the door, the medicians with Suki hustled him into a wheelchair and rolled him out of sight.
The stream of wounded ended, to be replaced by the rest of the shuttle's human cargo.
I nodded. In the back of my head I'd been keeping a running—or is that limping?—count of the wounded.
Everything can be reduced to numbers. We see six men screaming in pain, lying on the ground, or lying white-faced, eyes distant and unfocused, too far gone to cry. Next to them, we see one man lying dead, and we turn that into a statistic: Metzadan casualties run about five or six injuries to one death. I'd counted two hundred and twelve injured men coming off the shuttle; deaths would run thirty-five and a third, statistically speaking.
There's something special in the face of a soldier getting off a troop carrier; it's the kind of relief you can see in combat when the shot hits the next man.
I made it home, it says. As I always knew I would.
The survivor guilt hits later.
The stream of khaki-clad men thinned, then ended, and there was a still moment before he appeared in the door, looking good, but haggard.
My baby brother. Ari Hanavi. When we played as boys, all of us called him the General, even then. We always knew Ari was going to wear stars someday, if he lived. Real stars, not the phony ones the inspector-general wears.
When I was a boy, the generals I saw and heard about—except for Uncle Shimon—were all stern, strong-jawed types. The sort of man who you just know could have been a master private if he had only decided to refuse promotion. I've since learned that that's not always true. One of the best generals I've ever met looks more like a shopkeeper than a soldier. Uncle Shimon always looks like an unmade bed.
But my brother fits the stereotype, at least on the outside. And he carried the double oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel on his shoulder like they were a pair of stars.
He paused a moment in the hatch, spotted me, then bounded down the stairs two at a time, apparently not having to readjust himself to Metzada's 120 percent of the standard gravity the transports keep. His knapsack was on his back, and the ancient IMI Desert Eagle he always uses as a sidearm—he may as well carry a handgun; he's a lousy shot, anyway—was in a snapped-down holster at his hip. His hand strayed to tighten his web gunbelt; Ari may have been ready for the heavy gee of home, but his gunbelt wasn't.
Ari always makes a fetish of carrying his own gear. I think that's a rebellion against Uncle Shimon, who always went into battle carrying nothing more than a notepad and a few spare stylos. There's something to be said for doing it your own way, no matter what that way is.
Behind him, loaders closed the skipshuttle's hatches and pulled the rolling stairways away, shooing all of us toward the doors.
He extended his hand as we walked toward the nearest door. His handshake was firm and warm. The only injury that I could see was on his left hand, and that covered by a clean bandage.
He dismissed my look of concern with a quick pursing of his lips.
"I see you made it," I said.
He shook his head, dismissing that. "Problem." He was still in general-officer mode. "We had some men captured by the Legion. They caught a platoon assault group during a sweep."
"And?"
"Some legionnaires decided to make Haim Elazar talk. They cut off his hands."
I nodded. About the only other way a man can lose both of his hands without getting killed is in bomb-disposal work.
"They hacked them off," Ari said. "For practice. For fun."
"What happened to the platoon?"
He smiled. "A very pretty diversion and rescue. We got all the live ones out. 'The Legion may be tough—' "
" '—but they're still dumb.' "
The French Foreign Legion is still, after all these centuries, an army of moderately well-trained scum soldiers, but they're scum soldiers under tight discipline, always commanded by Saint Cyr officers, although the Legion's home is now on Thellonee, rather than Corsica, for obvious reasons: it's a hell of a lot easier to recruit scum on Thellonee than anywhere else.
Neither Metzada nor the Legion would like to get into a private war, which would serve neither the interests of Greater France nor of Metzada—so we tend to tiptoe around each other. They do more tiptoeing, and that's the way we like it. Rule of thumb: Metzadan line troops can, all things being equal, beat Legion scum soldiers about eighty percent of the time, but the only general to do so without taking horrible casualties has been Shimon Bar-El.
Our casualties are the only ones that count. Casualties among legionnaires don't matter to the French; that's the advantage of using scum soldiers. They're usually people you'd have to jail or shoot anyway.
As we stepped through the door, two gray-suited loaders slammed it shut and then spun-locked it.
There were easily forty soldiers crowding the lock, waiting for Ari, rather than rushing off to their families. That's one of the perks of being a line officer: you get the chance to earn some loyalty. People do things for you that they don't have to.
A tired-faced private who looked, and probably was, about seventeen, spoke up. "What's happening about Haim, Ari?" He called my brother by his first name, but he made it sound like he was saying "sir."
Ari raised his voice. "Everybody, go home. I've put in the complaint." He looked over at me. "You'll get the official charge later. For now?"
"I'll get busy on it, as soon as I see the deputy premier. Which will be any time now. But I'll still need the paperwork."
"You'll have it. I'll do it tonight."
"Sure you will, Ari." Zev snorted. Sometimes Zev didn't have the brains God gave Frenchmen.
Two sergeants and three privates started to turn toward him, desisting when Ari gave a quick shake of his head.
"Families," he repeated. "Go."
The question would be how to deal with it, and that would be at least partly political. We had long had an explicit POW agreement with the Legion commandant; my quasi-deputy had negotiated it himself, back before I became IG. Basically, full Geneva rights adhere to prisoners properly belonging to the Legion and Metzada—and each command was responsible for punishing any lapses of its own people, and denying tactical advantage to any unit where infractions occur.
A medician pushed his way through the crowd, a phone in his hands. He jacked the base into the wall. "The deputy wants to see you now, she says."
Ari raised his eyebrows. "Something hot?"
"Family matter," I said, as I decided to take Rivka's "you" to mean all three of us. I held out my hand for the phone; the medician handed it to me.
I opened the phone, said, "On our way," listened for a second, heard not
hing, snapped it shut, and handed it back.
CHAPTER THREE
"Make It Look Like an Accident"
Metzada, Bar-El Warrens
Effron family quarters
12/20/43, 1348 local time
I've always thought that we live too close to our archetypes.
It's rare that we get a general who doesn't think of himself as Ariel Sharon, Mickey Marcus or David Warcinsky, unless he thinks of himself as another King David. Too many privates think of themselves as Samson in the Temple. Colonels in assault battalions tend to think they're Yonatan Netanyahu. I never met a male politician who didn't think he was really Moses, going to lead us back to Earth, back home to Eretz Yisrael. I doubt there's a female politician who doesn't, in her heart of hearts, think of herself as Golda Meir.
Except for the age and the hair, Deputy Premier Rivka Effron didn't look the part. She was a short, slim woman, who looked about sixty, and had looked about sixty for the past ten years. Her gray hair was tied in a tight bun, only a few strands out of place. She tried to pat them back into place as she ushered us out of the public corridor and into her quarters.
"You're late," she said to me, softening the words with a smile that she didn't mean. "We were going to start without you. Welcome back, Ari," she said.
She didn't mean it. She meant, What are you doing here?
"Thank you, Aunt Rivka," he said, as though he meant it. Which he didn't.
Just to be sociable, I would have said something I didn't mean, but I couldn't think of anything really good.
"Aunt Rivka," I said. That was close enough. She wasn't really our aunt, but my mother's sister's aunt—call that whatever relationship you want to. Well, actually, Aunt Leah is really what people on other worlds would call my mother's half-sister, although we don't use the "half" designation in Metzada. Those who are blood of my blood and bone of my bone are not half of anything.
Modest living is part of the Golda image; except for the walk-in kitchen on one end and the private shower and toilet on the other, the apartment was a typical one-room, suitable for up to three adult bachelors or a single or paired widow with no children at home: basically, a single, a box four meters square, two and a half meters high. Inside was a couch that could convert into a bed at night, a table, and a dozen chairs stacked in the corner for visitors. In the far corner of the room, a desk with a terminal stood next to the delivery tube. The rug was a simple surface-grass mat.
Not For Glory Page 5
