"And the other?"
He chuckled. "The other is a joke that we both wouldn't find funny." He looked at me a long time. "Sometimes I think you don't even understand yourself, nephew mine."
He was either talking nonsense, or talking over my head. "Maybe so," I said. It seemed like the thing to say. Maybe it was. The sky didn't split open and vomit fire on me. That's always a good sign. "You want to tell me the joke?"
"Eh?"
"The joke, the one I won't find funny."
He considered the end of his tabstick, then threw it overboard. "There was a sport, back in the twentieth century—in the US, pre-NAF—called baseball. Never mind the details—I don't quite understand them myself—but you have to know that the points scored were called 'runs,' and that for a man to score even forty of these points during a whole year was quite good, and nobody had ever scored sixty runs in one year until a man named George Herman Ruth did. You got all that?"
"Baseball. Sixty runs. George Herman Ruth. Got it."
"Good boy. Now the joke: Yankele comes running up to his grandfather. 'Zayde, Zayde,' he says. 'George Herman Ruth just scored sixty runs.'
"The grandfather sits for a long time and thinks, apparently puzzling over something important. Finally, he raises an eyebrow and looks over at Yankele. 'Yankele,' he says, 'this thing that Ruth did—is it good for the Jews?' " He lit another tabstick. "Funny, eh?"
I shrugged. "Not at all."
He smiled for a moment. "Exactly, Tetsuki, exactly. To you and to me, it isn't funny at all." He clapped a hand to my shoulder. "I'll leave you to your reading."
I must have read the next section a hundred times. It was all there. Shimon hadn't distracted me with his joke that wasn't funny. I had it. Even I could turn it all over to Yonni Davis now. There wasn't any more reason to keep Shimon Bar-El alive.
On the other hand . . . maybe I was missing something. I've always been a staff officer, specializing in slipping off and making people unexpectedly dead, not organizing a disperse-and-reform. Maybe I was missing something. And besides, Shimon would be able to implement it better than I could, better than anyone else could.
A while longer. I could let him live a while longer.
There was a whisk of leather soles on the deck behind me. This time I wasn't surprised. I shut the book, trying not to seem too hurried.
"Good evening, Inspector-General." Celia von du Mark stood nearby. Only one of her peacemakers was with her, a careful five paces behind.
The pages were still glowing; I thumbed them off. No need to draw attention to the book. It wouldn't have hurt if she'd read most of it, but the passages I'd been reading . . . well, there were things in there that she didn't need to know.
"Call me Tetsuo." I shot a glance at the upper deck, behind the wheelhouse. Soloveczik, the young skirmisher who had wanted to exercise standard booty rights, was up there, on guard. Well, he might not have been much on discipline, but he was a good shot.
"I'd rather not," she said. "I really don't like getting friendly with murderers," she added, in a voice so flat and even as to suggest that she was commenting on the weather.
"The docks today?" I pulled a tabstick from my pocket and struck it to life. In the darkness, the end glowed with a comforting redness. "That bothering you?"
"Yes." She held out her fingers in a V. I passed her the tabstick and lit myself another. A slow draw, then, "Filthy habit."
"Smoking? Or killing?" I shrugged. "We've got both on our consciences, you and me. If you have a conscience, that is."
"Me?" She was offended; Celia von du Mark was not used to getting lectures on morality from such as I.
"You. You could have had your peacemakers disperse the mob. It might have taken a whole ten seconds. Not that you give a damn about my sergeant, but it would have kept some locals alive."
She snorted. "You know a lot about mobs, eh?"
"Standard part of officer training on Metzada. Now," I said, warming to the subject, "Africans are tricky, but . . . take your basic Eastern mob—Pharsi, Indians, Hmong, Chinese, like that. Present them with a superior force and they martyr themselves all over you. Messy. But when you've got Westerners, almost any organized group can make them run. Usually." I spent a moment examining the glowing head of the tabstick, then flicked it overboard. "Doesn't always work. But it usually does. It would have, today."
"You're saying that I could have saved their lives."
"Exactly. They would have known that they couldn't stand up to wireguns. You," I raised my voice and called out to her guard, "how many rounds do you have in a clip? Fifty? Seventy?"
"Plenty."
I shrugged. "It really doesn't matter. The Dutch would have known that they couldn't stand up to your peacemakers' fire. In order to get the same result out of Levin's three bows, we had to kill."
She was silent for a long moment. Then, "You're just trying to rationalize your way out of it."
"Or you are. Or both. Fact: five men died today. I don't know that the lives of one Metzadan sergeant or a few reasonably nice Dutch settlers are properly any of your concern—"
"Don't you dare say that to me. You hated them enough to—"
I silenced her with a snort. "No, I didn't hate them. Matter of fact, Sweelinck impressed me as a good man, trying to make the best of a bad situation. Hell, Celia, if he'd really wanted me dead, I'd be cold by now. Decent man—had to work himself up to it."
"You say you liked him but you had him killed?"
I shrugged. She didn't understand. "One has nothing to do with the other. As I was saying, I don't know if those lives were properly any of your concern, but if they were, then you let your judgment be swayed by an old grudge, by a desire to see me dead, without having the blood—"
"They weren't going to kill you! After we left you at the landing strip, I found Sweelinck. They were just going to rough you up a little, scare you off. That's all. And you—"
I snorted. "Don't talk nonsense. Even if that's true, even if that's what you arranged with Sweelinck and his friends, there's no way I could have known that. And if I had known, I really wouldn't have cared, Celia—"
"That's Inspector von du Mark."
"Deputy Inspector von du Mark. A bit of free advice: you'd be better off, instead of trying to figure out what I'm going to do and how to mess that up, looking out for yourself. You're not going to catch us violating any of your precious import regs. Besides," I added, just for a bit of misdirection, "if we already did, it's too late."
" 'Not going to catch us.' That sounds as though it would be fairly dangerous for me if I did catch you, doesn't it?"
"You're not thinking it through again. Metzada's position is always precarious; I'd hardly take the chance of killing even a Commerce Department deputy inspector."
"I saw one of your men eyeing the peacemakers' weapons. So tell me what you'd do if you found that you really needed, say, five wireguns."
"The only thing I could think of is that—given that we really needed five wireguns—it would be kind of convenient if six Commerce Department personnel had been killed in a Dutch ambush. All surviving witnesses would swear to that. The rumors would hurt; witnesses are dangerous."
She started to open her mouth to call for her guard; I silenced her with a quick shake of my head. "Go easy. You've got four deaths on your conscience. Isn't that enough for today?"
Celia gave me a long, slow look. "You might be bluffing. I don't think you'd really kill everyone aboard this boat, just to avoid a beating."
I just smiled. "Would you?"
"No, of course not. I—"
"Would rather take a beating. Which suggests you've never been on the receiving end of a good working-over."
"And you have."
"A few times." I shrugged. "I didn't like it much." I lit another tabstick. "I'm not bluffing, Celia. I can't afford to. Never, Deputy Inspector von du Mark, never try me. Metzada has a reputation, the Bar-El clan and its Hanavi family have a reputation . . .
and I'm busy building one for myself. Don't try and find out if it's well-founded. Just take my word for it."
"Reputation is worth killing for?"
I smiled, remembering a deserted Kabayle hut on Endu.
"Easy, all. Tetsuo, it's your turn," the Sergeant says.
I nod; he kicks in the frame of the greased-paper window to distract those inside while I go in through the open door, rolling once, then bouncing to my feet.
"All clear," I say. The hut is deserted; the occupants have fled—but not too long ago, certainly not more than a few hours. The rocks from the central fire are still too hot to touch.
There's nobody here, but they've left behind almost everything. The multicolored blankets that they wear and sleep in, cooking pots, even a rack of spears, over against the far wall, away from the door. And not just spears, either. While they've taken all their guns, I find a box of cartridges over in the corner. They'd left in one hell of a hurry if they'd forgotten those.
Off in the distance, I can hear the bleating of goats. They've even left their livestock behind.
And then I see it, sitting on a shelf on the far wall: a wooden doll.
It's dressed in khakis and has the chain-circled magen David insignia on its left shoulder, a single stripe on its sleeves.
The Sergeant laughs. "A fucking demon doll," he says, as he takes it down from the shelf "No wonder they didn't want to hang around and greet us in person." There hasn't been a Metzadan in this part of Endu for fifty years.
"Well, Private, I think you deserve a promotion." He pulls a stylus from his pocket and adds another pair of stripes to the doll's sleeve, and then puts the doll back on the shelf.
"Okay, kill all the animals, smash everything except the doll, and then we move out. And keep your fucking eyes open. Next village might not be so easy," the Sergeant says.
"Perhaps," I said.
Without another word, she walked off. Thinking, no doubt, black thoughts. Wondering, certainly, what we had smuggled down to use on the poor, innocent Dutch.
It can get annoying when someone clever starts wondering, and just maybe Celia had developed a bit of cleverness in the past few years. Or maybe I'd lost some.
"Damn." I stared down at the book in the palm of my hand. It was too much of a risk keeping it around. A pity, that: an affection for books runs in my family. Still . . .
So I tossed it overboard, and watched it splash into the Nouveau Loire. Or Neu Hunse. The Bolivar steamed away from the ever-expanding ripples.
What have we smuggled down? Just an idea, Celia.
And a need, of course. People from rich worlds don't understand that. For Metzada, a million credits isn't merely a number on a fiche, but perhaps a shipment of iodine-heavy Endu kelp that will mean that none of my children get goiters.
I walked to our cabin, nodding in passing to Soloveczik, who was on watch outside.
Shimon and the skirmishers were already asleep. Line soldiers learn to get sleep when and where they can.
I stretched out on the bunk, and pillowed the back of my head on my hands. I didn't bother to undress. No need to go through the motions of trying to make myself comfortable; I wouldn't sleep much, or well.
I never do, off Metzada.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The New Eighteenth
Alsace, Northern Continent
Near Port Marne
03/20/44 0810 local time
I'd always thought that Colonel Yonaton Davis looked more like a shopkeeper than an officer: he was a short, wide man with only traces of hair on his shiny scalp, an easygoing smile on his broad face, and a slow way of moving.
Was . . . General Yonaton Davis wasn't taller or slimmer than Colonel Davis had been, and he didn't move any faster.
But the smile was gone, and not just from his face. He stood with his feet planted far apart, his back straight, as though he were carrying all two-thousand-plus men of the Eighteenth Regiment on his back. It's a cliché that a general's stars weigh heavily. It's a cliché because it's true.
He was waiting for us on the outskirts of the encampment, his bodyguards spread out along the riverbank, their eyes on the forest. Yonni always believed in general-staff-as-bodyguards. His personal guard consisted of his G-l, G-4, and G-5, their number-two assistants, plus his Logistics officer.
Off in the distance, the smoke from the French colony rose into the sky, muddying the horizon.
"Shimon," he said, smiling. "It's been too long. You need a set of khakis?"
Shimon Bar-El shook his head. "I'm unofficial this time. Just an adviser."
"You can still wear khakis. At least, around me you can." He nodded to a major with a G-2 flash on his shoulder patch. "Take care of it" The general turned to me. "Tetsuo," he said, taking my hand, "it's been a couple of years since our paths have crossed."
I nodded. "The years have a way of adding up."
Just his mouth smiled. "You don't show it."
I matched his light tone. "I'll have you know that my second wife is now officially the fourth-best reconstructive surgeon on Metzada When she had to rebuild my right side after that Rand mess, she decided to bring back the face of the twenty-year-old she married."
"And how is Suki? And Rachel, too?" he added quickly. You don't ask after one of a man's wives and neglect another.
"Both are fine. As are yours; I brought some letters," I said, reaching into my bag. "Last I heard, Shmuel was doing awfully well. He's got his company."
"Good. Still with the Twentieth?"
I nodded. "You should be proud of your son. All your children are doing well, far as I know," I said. I let that hang in the air. It would have been strictly contrary to protocol for me to ask directly. But, thank God, it wasn't improper for him to answer my unvoiced question.
"When you have the kind of casualties we've been getting, you also get a few field promotions, Tetsuo. Matter of fact, one Benyamin Hanavi of the Bar-El clan has been bumped all the way from private to full corporal. You might see him around camp." He laughed. "If I tried, I swear I could catch him rubbing dirt into his shiny new chevrons, trying to make it look like he's had them for a while." He nodded slowly. "A good boy. I'm thinking about recommending him for officer training." He snorted. "Even if he is a Bar-El."
A good boy. There was a time in our people's history when that phrase didn't refer to a blooded, seventeen-year-old warrior.
"I've got a Commerce Department deputy inspector and five peacemakers cooling their heels back in Marne. She's busy trying to get in to see Montenier, work out some sort of compromise," I said.
"She's just wasting breath. I know Montenier."
I shrugged. "Air's free, here—but I don't want to leave them alone too long. How about you giving me a quick tac briefing, then we head into Marne? I want to meet this Phillipe Montenier."
"I doubt that. Strongly."
"That's my problem, isn't it? The tac briefing, please. You don't expect us to fix everything blindfolded, do you?"
For just a moment, he relaxed. "You've got a way to do it?" he asked, more prayer than question.
There's long been a bit of tension between our Bar-El clan and Davis's Aronis. Shimon's answer didn't do much to relieve it. "Of course," he said. "It just took a little thought. Something we specialize in. You don't think I am stupid like an Aroni, do you?"
Davis didn't rise to the bait. "How?"
"With this." He tossed him the implement we'd borrowed from Skirmisher-Sergeant Levin.
"A shovel?" He raised an eyebrow. "A fucking shovel?"
"You're supposed to call it an entrenching tool."
He snorted. "I'm a general. One nice thing about the rank is that I can call a fucking shovel a fucking shovel. Now . . . what are you planning to do with this. Hit the Dutch over the head?"
It took him only a few minutes to tell us. I'd worked out most of it, but Shimon had a few extra wrinkles.
My memory isn't eidetic, but sometimes it is good. I closed my eyes, seeing in front
of me once again a shining page of Twain's Life on the Mississippi.
The water cuts the alluvial banks of the "lower" river into deep horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck, half or three-quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a couple of hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow, at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again. When the river is rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantation is back in the country, and therefore of inferior value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened: to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch, and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank (quadrupling its value), and that other party's formerly valuable plantation finds itself out yonder on a big island; the old water-course around it will soon shoal up, boats cannot approach within ten miles of it, and down goes its value to a fourth of its former worth.
Smiling broadly, Yonni Davis shook his head. "A typical bit of Bar-El insanity. How the hell did you think of—? But it might work. And there'll be one fine butcher's bill to pay, win or lose."
"This way, perhaps the Eighteenth doesn't have to pay the bill," Shimon said. "Besides, the sooner the hot part of this is over, the better. Rivka is going to want to take the Eighteenth out and put a lower-grade regiment in. There's going to be a big Neuva contract coming on."
"Oh?"
"Casas are hiring two divisions. Two full divisions. One armor, one infantry."
Yonni smiled. "We're coming down on the Casa side? Good."
I shrugged. "They're paying the butcher's bill. But forget that for now. You've got a campaign to settle here. And maybe we can give a lesson to the French about trying to hire Metzada for the impossible. Besides, when it comes to butcher's bills, it's better to collect than to pay, no?" I lit a tabstick. "And what do you mean, it might work? It damn well better work," I said calmly, levelly, as though Shimon hadn't just laid it out for me. "I'd better go deal with Montenier."
Not For Glory Page 18
