“I can’t see that it matters much.”
Caulie goggled at her. “It might have some bearing on the investigation.”
“Obviously,” the general said. “But why the hell don’t you ask them yourself?”
“What? Ask the dead soldiers?”
“Yes, they’re very chatty. Turns out that death is crashingly boring, who would have guessed? You are dismissed, Dr. Alexandrian.” The general turned away. “You are thoroughly dismissed.”
Caulie didn’t move immediately. She stared in confusion until Shanter broached the prescribed distance yet again and grasped her collar. He pulled her backward through the HQ and into the frigid wind.
“When did you last eat?” he asked.
“Four days ago.”
“No wonder she’s so dim,” Shanter muttered. “Let’s get her fixed up.” He turned to her. “Caulie, you need food and warmer clothes. Won’t you let me help you?”
Chapter 10
For a hungry, underdressed Haphan overlord, Front East was a find-and-take operation. After Caulie cleared four trays at the officer’s mess, Shanter led her to a small building made from wood slats, where she cracked the ice off a trough of water and bathed for as long as she could stand. Afterward, they progressed to a storehouse filled to the ceiling with cast-off clothing, organized not at all. It was too cold for her to search at length and she was so beyond caring about her appearance that she let Shanter do the work. For sleeping, he located a small officer’s pavilion that looked abandoned. At least, its canvas walls were rolled up and the four cots within were exposed to the elements, shimmering under a layer of ice.
“I’ll lower the sides, with your permission,” Shanter said, not waiting for permission. “It might get cold tonight.”
When Caulie sat, her frozen cot crackled under her like broken glass. She pulled out her tablet, found it frosted over and unresponsive, and then sucked on her forefinger for a full minute so it could register her fingertip. It finally lit with its familiar glow.
“Ugh, what’s that noise?” Shanter cried from the dark. “It sounds like a brain bird if you turned it inside out.”
She glanced at the display. Had she really not accessed her tablet for the previous three days? Impossible. And Shanter could apparently hear the bird’s song . . . had she known that about the Tachba? How their range of hearing was wider than that of normative humans? She was too exhausted to think it through.
“Tablet,” she said, “stop playing that noise. Save the file though. Label it ‘for the next bird bear.’”
“Done and done! Caulie, you have a note from Jephia.”
“What does it say?”
If this somehow finds you on the other side of the world, call your affectionate friend. Wondering how you’re getting on at the eternal front. That and other things.
“Affectionate friend,” “that and other things.” These were code words that Jephia and Caulie had come up with to share sensitive information. More precisely, they were code words that Jephia used and that Caulie never understood quickly enough.
“Tablet, how are you connected to the communication grid? I thought we were supposed to be isolated down here.”
“I have acquired a signal from the panther,” the tablet answered. “It is weak and full of noise, but I can connect to it here and from the mess hall. Surmise: a window in the mountain topography. The panther itself is connected to the military communication grid but I do not know how.”
“Link me to Jephia.”
To Caulie’s astonishment, the video connected immediately. The tablet zoomed to show a dark room, an off-kilter jumble of sheets, and bright blonde hair. “Caulie, is that really you? It’s been months!”
“It’s only been four days—trust me, I was counting. I arrived a few hours ago.”
On the screen, Jephia sat up and rubbed her eyes. She squeaked. “Caulie, what have they done to you? Only a few hours, you say?”
Caulie switched the tablet to mirror mode and looked at herself. “Oh. I understand.”
Shanter had picked out several medical scrubs, each a different color, for Caulie to wear under her new uniform, and now her narrow neck seemed to protrude from a thick calico carapace. To keep her ears warm, she wore a bulky green forager’s cap, to which Shanter had insisted on adding a long white handkerchief to indicate she was a noncombatant—though he may have been teasing. She still wore her bloody, stabbing-victim jacket, much too big for her but so warm. To complete the look, she had her dangling earrings.
“Don’t worry, I’m still me under all this,” Caulie yawned. “By which I mean that my first layer of clothes is still my shorts and that blouse I borrowed from you.”
“You must accept that blouse as my gift and never think of returning it.” Jephia squinted at the screen. “I wonder if that is blood on the jacket?”
“It shows? I tried to rinse it out. The blood of my first helpie, who died before I met him. I tried to find a warmer jacket but his was the best.”
“Better that you look like a Tachba, like some kind of Tachba, than a Haphan soldier, I suppose. You’ll be further down the list in terms of being a target.” Jephia paused fractionally, then added: “Caulie dear, have you made any new friends yet?”
Caulie leaned close. “They’re all mad! I might be the only sane person on the front.”
Jephia was, oddly, smiling at her. “So you haven’t fallen in with a handsome, lonely boot with riveting eyes? Nothing like that?”
“Why are you making fun of me? I have never felt so alone—and you know I can’t stand people. I actually miss the university.”
“For some reason I just don’t believe you.” Jephia finally cracked open into an actual, bona fide giggle.
Unsettled, Caulie switched back to mirror mode on the tablet. Shanter’s face hovered over her shoulder, right next to her ear. Caulie watched herself blush in high definition.
“Lady Jephesandra Liu Tawarna, may I introduce my Shanter, a helpie.”
“O you wicked girl!” Jephia cackled. The camera view zoomed and briefly showed the underside of the bed as Jephia dropped her tablet. She dropped it twice more, still laughing, before placing it onto the blankets.
“I was wrong earlier, la,” Shanter said. “This sounds like the brain bird.”
“Acquaintance, helpie,” Jephia finally managed.
“That lady looks nearly naked!” Shanter exclaimed. Then he added, “I will answer with the word ‘acquaintance.’” He cleared his throat. “Acquaintance.”
A new round of laughter from Jephia. “My poor little Caulie. This might be the best thing I’ve ever seen.”
“She’s endlessly noisy,” Shanter observed.
“How do I record on this thing?” Jephia crowed. “It’s too late, I probably missed the best parts! Damn me.”
Caulie felt the same way. Jephia had laughed aloud precisely five times in her presence over the years, and one of those had been when Lieutenant Luscetian had assumed she was Caulie. It was something to do with the aristocracy, the idea that braying laughter was undignified and indicated weakness of character. This disrupted girl on the screen was new to Caulie. She tried not to grin as she said, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m fine, that I got here. I should sign off and get to sleep—”
“Helpie,” Jephia broke in. “Helpie, attend me.”
“La, ma’am?” Shanter said.
“I need you to understand that Dr. Alexandrian is highly ticklish.”
Caulie didn’t need mirror mode to feel the mortification on her face. “Jephia, this is not a secure line.”
“I would never tickle her,” Shanter said, perplexed. “The prescribed distance, and all that.”
Even as he said the words, his scruffy cheek brushed Caulie’s temple. She wanted to point out that he’d been handling her all day, prescribed distance or not, but she knew how that would sound to Jephia’s ears.
“Is he sleeping in your quarters, Caulie?” Jephia raised an
eyebrow.
She didn’t rightly know. “Are you?”
“It’s either that or I freeze into a block of ice overnight,” Shanter said. His sharp gray eyes wouldn’t meet hers.
“There you go, then,” Jephia said. “It’s all perfectly respectable.”
“Please, Jephia, give it a break.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know you’re uncomfortable—”
“I’m in mortal danger at the front.”
“—And you’re in danger. But I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Don’t be mad at me, Caulie! I wouldn’t be so amused if I didn’t have real affection for you. I hope that sounds sincere.”
“She is pretty enough to cause madness,” Shanter murmured, eyes locked on the screen.
“Don’t mind Shanter,” Caulie said quickly. “He thinks aloud sometimes. I already tune him out.”
“It’s his inner monologue, but directed outward.” Jephia switched to the lecturing tone she used in her classes. “It’s the self-talk you get with children before they start internalizing. For some Tacchies, the development is delayed, or it never completes.”
“Just my luck, she thinks I’m a child,” Shanter said.
“You can try to rejigger his brain by interrupting when he self-talks. Just blurt any old thing.” Jephia gleamed another smile in his direction. “He’ll be confused, so his Pollution will internalize the self-talk as an efficiency measure.”
“Are you telling me to reprogram my helpie?”
“Tell him I don’t think he’s a child.” Jephia dimpled at him again. It was all most unlike her. “Tell him he might be one of the most handsome boots I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“She’s not just pretty, she’s perceptive too,” Shanter said. “I should answer her. I’ll say . . . what shall I say?”
For all love, are they actually flirting with each other? “Please, Jephia. Can’t we have a normal conversation as if I’d never left the university? Nothing makes sense down here. This isn’t my world.”
“Of course, I’m sorry dear,” Jephia said. “But first, give your helpie the tablet.”
Caulie surrendered it with a sigh. Shanter held it to his face as he paced around the pavilion tent, which still hadn’t grown warm, even after he’d closed the walls.
“Helpie, you must keep my friend safe on the eternal front,” came Jephia’s voice. “If one hair on her head is touched, or even bent unbecomingly in standard overhead lighting, I will take the most gruesome revenge on you personally.”
“She threatens me,” Shanter reported to Caulie.
“I will slit you from your scrotum to your chin, helpie, and you will never heal from it. I will order your unit to use your open corpse as a latrine. Then I will find five, no, ten beautiful young Tachba maidens of eligible age and have them look upon your remains. In their minds they will think how unsuitable you seem. Indeed, they will think you were always unsuitable. Sullied and Polluted, inside and out. None of them will desire you. None of them will remember or mourn you when you finally die.”
Caulie couldn’t believe her ears, but Shanter didn’t seem shocked. “La, that sounds proper horrifying, ma’am. But tell me, where will you find ten Tachba girls of eligible age? They’re quite rare in the wild.”
Jephia’s voice: “If I tell you where they are, you’ll leave Caulie alone and go looking for them.”
“I’d never abandon Caulie. Service, and all that.”
“I’m not threatening you, helpie, and I am not laughing or teasing. I am making a promise. Caulie must not be harmed. It is your service to keep her happy, innocent, and completely untouched. Otherwise I will hunt you down and take revenge.”
Shanter’s pace slowed, then stopped.
Caulie saw it then. The flicker of dire madness in the man’s eyes. The Pollution. The ancient twisting of his people. Jephia’s words had reached him, and though they sounded like ludicrous hyperbole to Caulie, Jephia had crafted them to work upon his mind and his restraint; she specialized in psychological control. Caulie didn’t need Jephia’s interference—she felt she had Shanter under perfect control—but she couldn’t drag her eyes off his changed face.
Shanter’s attention hadn’t wavered from the screen, even as Jephia had progressed to the eligible maidens and the humiliation. Now the Pollution wanted him to answer. It would be goading him to respond—with anger, with threats. Even though the man might intellectually understand that his ego was being tested, underneath it all was the cruel rewiring of the Pollution. He would be struggling to continue to view this as a simple conversation.
After a moment, Shanter’s expression softened. He rapped the screen with his knuckles. “You can’t reach me, little manleader. You’ll never break through this glass. You’re too tiny to cause me any threat.”
He passed the tablet back to Caulie without meeting her eyes.
“He’s a clever one,” Jephia said. She didn’t seem happy about it. “I doubt he’s ever seen a video call, but he knows I’m not stuck inside the tablet. It’s merely something a primitive person is supposed to say. You must be careful with the ones who can deflect like that.”
Shanter shrugged innocently.
“Get him busy for a moment,” Jephia continued. “Tell him to start the heater. I saw your little love nest as he swung the tablet around, and he hasn’t turned on the heat yet.”
“It was next on the list.” Shanter went to the corner of the tent and opened a trap door in the pavilion floor. “It’s going to be balky and annoying, and I was only putting it off . . .”
Caulie watched and Jephia waited as Shanter tweaked something inside the trap door. He turned quickly and left the tent to arrange a power supply.
Once he had left, Caulie turned back to the screen. “Was all that atrocious talk really necessary?” Caulie said softly. “He was completely unimpressed by it.”
Jephia shrugged. “It works better in person with the imperial presence. And yes, it was necessary. I don’t want you harmed. It wasn’t about the threats, I wanted to see his reaction.”
“I saw him get mad and then get not mad.”
“You haven’t seen mad, Caulie, and pray you never do. No, it was all testing. Telling him you’re ticklish—he was properly bashful. The ‘love nest’ stuff got no reaction. The flirting worked but it always does, it’s more of an ego check-in for me. And the threats—they rolled off his back. He played dumb and then quickly redirected. I bet he manages all the Haphans around him. He is high-functioning and controlled.”
“You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“It is.” Jephia loomed in the screen, her expression a mix of concern and anger. “Look where you are, Caulie. You’re among the Tachba now, and not just the regular dangerous Tachba. You’re among the most Tachba of the Tachba. The most Polluted. The mountain inbreds of Ed-homse, a tribe that was so isolated before the Haphan expansion that their very craniums have mutated. I don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to get that much genetic drift in a twisted race when every generation essentially builds itself from the same template.”
“So I’m luckier than I deserve?” Caulie said, without any hope of being right. “I’m lucky to have such an intelligent helpie?”
“Why is he a helpie and not an officer? How has he not been noticed and exploited? We happen to need every erg of brainpower we can scrape together to run the war. Tell me, did anybody seem to know him?”
“In fact, no,” said Caulie, with a sinking feeling.
“How did he attach himself to you?”
“Nothing too suspicious,” Caulie hedged. She hadn’t let herself dwell on this aspect, and she knew Jephia wouldn’t like it. “He stabbed my helpie to death and took his place.”
“Gods. What have you gotten yourself into?” Jephia stared up from the screen, thinking hard. She ground her teeth, making her jaw bulge. It was one of her tells, one of the few Caulie could recognize even with her behaviorism training. “It’s probably noth
ing. I’m probably giving myself an ulcer for nothing.”
“How can you say that after making him into the most suspicious-sounding creature on the planet? How can all of that be nothing?”
Jephia thought a moment longer, then shrugged. When she spoke again, her voice was flippant. “Because really, Caulie, what could it be? There’s no intrigue on the eternal front, and only an idiot would seriously consider something like spying. It would be suspicious if he was a Haphan, but he’s a Tacchie. My highborn instincts were triggered, that’s all. It’s like reading the undercurrents at one of mother’s garden parties. It’s the only way I can stay sane sometimes—or, if not sane, at least diverted.”
Caulie found this dismissiveness even more disconcerting. Her friend could be so ulterior, able to switch her manipulation on and off with such casual disregard for others that she might not even know she was doing it. It was a skill that Caulie both envied and feared.
“By the way, you’re in trouble,” Jephia said next.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Investigators from the Gray House visited the lab. They were wondering where you’ve gone, asking why your tablet can suddenly be traced to a secret military vehicle from the home world. That last part was news to me, by the way. You have to tell me all about it when you get the chance—or maybe you shouldn’t.”
Caulie’s hands trembled. Jephia was talking about the real, actual secret police. “I’m on an official army assignment. How can they not know where I am? I thought everything was arranged. Isn’t there coordination between the army and the Gray House?”
“Normally, yes. You’re sure it’s an official assignment?” Jephia shook her head. “Never mind, of course it’s official. Silly of me to say that.”
“Why do they care about me, Jephia? Are they keeping tabs on me? On me of all people?”
“It’s your delicate, innocent brain,” Jephia said. “It’s full of proscribed information about the Pollution, about the Tachba, and about the Haphan Empire’s relationship to the Tachba. They’re not keeping track of you, they’re keeping track of your information.”
What the Thunder Said Page 8
