What the Thunder Said

by Walter Blaire

  “I met her and felt the same urge,” Caulie snapped. She was surprised at herself, but Shanter didn’t have time for long-winded introductions. “Whatever you were told about me, you have no reason to goad an innocent servitor into violence. You’re hurting my . . . you’re taking a disciplined, high-affect helpie out of service.”

  “I’m afraid there’s only one answer to an attack on a Haphan officer. We can’t stuff them away and shoot them behind the lines, because, well, since we’re artillery, we never leave the lines. It’s the rope or no justice at all, and with no justice there is no discipline.”

  “Please just cut him down.”

  The colonel finally seemed to register her agitation. He turned to Captain Nance. “Captain, don’t we have the reprobate hanged by the neck out there?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “See? It’s settled.” He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. “My, erm, condolences on your servitor. In normal circumstances, you’d simply pull another out of his bunk by the collar and start yelling at him. Your circumstances, however, are not normal.”

  Rather than sitting, Caulie tried to step to the window to look out onto the plaza. Grampharic grasped her shoulders and guided her to the chair. The soldier’s hands were so gentle that she sat before remembering to resist.

  “There is an impressive array of charges against you,” the colonel murmured. He held a clipboard in one hand and flipped through the pages of printed text. The use of paper was primitive, like everything else on the eternal front. “This part in particular caught my attention. Cohabitation with a Tachba in a ‘love nest.’ Sharing your tent with a servitor.”

  He leaned forward, adopting an expression of curiosity. “That isn’t regular dissident behavior, young woman. That isn’t the well-intentioned activism you’ll no doubt offer in your defense. Cohabitation points to a moral failing.”

  That kind of impropriety, observed and commented, would have pierced any Haphan heart. Caulie didn’t flinch at his words; she was merely confused. Couldn’t he see? It didn’t matter how she appeared to him. Shanter was suffering. If he wasn’t dead, he was alone in the cold, thinking that he’d failed Caulie. Or worse, that she’d failed him.

  And this man, this ridiculous man across the desk, wanted to chastise her? He seemed to be acting out a scenario where he was a hero and she was a traitor, where he would wear her down into giving some kind of confession—no doubt one with many lurid details to savor. To him, Caulie might be nothing more than a chance to interrupt what must surely be the most boring job on the eternal front. He doesn’t grasp that I could be right in any sense, she realized with a jolt. He can’t see past his assumptions, and worse, he’s not even worried about what he can’t see.

  This man was like every other person in the world who baffled her and who was baffled by her in turn. She could tolerate it in doses at the university where she had a lab in which to hide, but she’d always thought that this . . . this nonsense would clear away when it mattered most, like when someone was dying on the gallows from a simple misunderstanding. What kind of robot was he, that he didn’t have any self-doubt?

  Very well, then. If he refuses to be a thinking person, then I’ll treat him like a set of behaviors. She knew by the specific crime he’d selected from what looked distressingly like several pages of wrongdoing what he was: he was a prude, just like she was.

  “If I understand correctly,” Caulie said, her voice level, “you are asking about my sexual activity.” He flinched. “Those papers in your hand, do they order you to explore my intimate experiences with other men? Did your superiors select you to personally learn how I perform intercourse?”

  He leaned away from her in his chair. “I think I’ll be asking the questions, young lady.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She studied his body language. “You’re supposed to arrest me and give me to the real authorities? Yes, I see that’s the truth. In that case, why should I bother with you?” She raised her hand and he shied away again. “Give me the clipboard.”

  The colonel hesitated.

  “Let me see the charges,” she said. “I have the right to see them, under the Haphan Expeditionary Force Military Code.”

  Finally, finally, uncertainty entered his expression. Maybe she was channeling Jephia after all, and her peremptory tone had been what did it. Maybe she should have let herself off the leash years ago.

  He passed the clipboard over.

  A quiet trill of music played in her ear.

  She’d forgotten she was wearing one of her earrings, and had forgotten too about the “new connection” notification sound. It happened so frequently at Falling Mountain that she hardly noticed it, but she hadn’t heard the trill since arriving at the front. The clipboard, which looked like a regular primitive eternal front object, was a computing tablet in disguise.

  Caulie kept her face empty. She’d only wanted to see the papers to find some place to generate doubt—anything that might crack this man and make him listen. If Shanter was still struggling on the gallows, they could still cut him down and then perhaps the Haphan medic . . . Concentrate, Caulie. Her earring’s connection opened an entirely new set of options.

  It was not a sophisticated device—the softness of the trill indicated the clipboard was a single-purpose communications deck, fit only for short distances. The colonel probably used it to communicate with a forward command post. As her fingers moved across the surface under the clipboard, corresponding sounds echoed in her ear.

  Savage clarity flooded her mind. She had a plan.

  Caulie connected the clipboard to her other earring on the artillery piece.

  “There’s something I don’t understand, Bessawra,” Caulie said, running the finger of her free hand down the list of charges.

  “Colonel Bessawra, young woman,” he said.

  “Then I’m Dr. Alexandrian to you.” She flipped the page. “You have authority over this tiny corner of Ed-homse. You are the voice of command, and apparently of propriety and virtue as well. Perhaps you can explain this thing I don’t understand.”

  “I await your question with bated breath.”

  She barely registered his sarcasm. Indeed, she barely registered her own words. Her attention was with her hands on the clipboard, where her fingers tapped a hurried rhythm. She was thinking in multiple threads with a fury born of desperation. It was like her dissertation defense all over again. She should have leaned into the concept of double-thinking much sooner and embraced the double-dealing approach like everybody else in the world. What had anxiety and wary naïveté ever brought her? If she hadn’t been so willfully blind and oblivious her whole life, maybe she wouldn’t be so frantic now.

  “What I don’t understand,” she said, “is how you envision a chain of plausible events that leads to this list of half-truths. Don’t you wonder how a simple university researcher could copy proscribed data onto a tablet when every file transaction is monitored? Don’t you wonder how an unconnected nobody like myself could smuggle proscribed technology out of the city—much less hijack a, what was it now, a classified vehicle? Did none of this trigger any suspicion? I wonder how you fell for this political ruse and took Captain Nance down with you.”

  The song she was tapping was an improvisation, and a highly distracted one at that. It was based on the warming song, but twisted—she held an impression of the logic rings loosely in her mind, turning them and intuiting the tempo changes. How would “go offline for servicing” sound? Caulie’s song encouraged a mood of impending breakage with a whiff of urgency—but why just a whiff? She tapped out the stench of urgency.

  The colonel was speaking again. She didn’t register his words, but while his face remained cool and blank, spittle had appeared at the edge of his lips. He was as enraged as an impassive Haphan could reveal himself to be in the presence of servitor Tachba.

  She gathered he was saying something about his years on the eternal front. Caulie broke in: “To be clear, i
t’s not about your service. I only lack confidence in your judgment.” He dropped off, astonished. She said, “I need to consider your fitness for command. Let’s stop all this racket.”

  Colonel Bessawra and Captain Nance were still staring at her when, one by one, the great guns on the mountainside ceased. The world dropped into silence.

  “Colonel?” Captain Nance crossed to the window. “I hate to state the obvious, but the unit has disengaged. I might wonder who changed the orders of the day.”

  The colonel’s gaze remained fixed on Caulie. “What have you done?”

  He was still impassive, but his face had turned purple—a most glaring loss of imperial presence, Caulie thought. If word ever got out among his colonel friends . . . she gloried in herself for only a moment and then tapped a new song, one derived from a simple command in her daggie translation software.

  Suspicious, Bessawra extended his hand for the clipboard. Caulie didn’t pass it back.

  “Service, Grampharic,” the colonel said crisply. “Take that clipboard from the captive’s hands.”

  Grampharic didn’t respond. It was as if he hadn’t heard—he hadn’t. The audio term was ducking, when one acoustic thread reduced volume so a separate one could be heard.

  To Grampharic and the other Tachba, the barrage had gone quiet and then the entire world had gone silent. They could still hear—they simply didn’t realize they could.

  “Grampharic, snap out of it.” Bessawra rapped his knuckles on his desk, to no effect.

  Captain Nance turned back from the window, her brow furrowed.

  Caulie’s fingers continued tapping. She was least confident about this final pattern but she had no choice.

  New leadership.

  New loyalty.

  Protect the maiden.

  Bookmark and refresh.

  It was the worst butchery, but she had to move quickly. The mechanics were difficult to study, but aural ducking probably functioned to preserve the Tachba’s hearing during battle. If it was meant to counteract nearby explosions, it would probably correct itself quickly. Indeed, Grampharic seemed to already have recovered.

  “Pardon, sir,” he said. “I didn’t catch that.”

  The other Tachba shifted, glancing between them. “Strange moment of peace,” one of them muttered.

  The young, talkative one grinned. “Hear nothing, owe nothing. Had an uncle-meh who was full deaf and the happiest lunatic you ever seen.”

  “Service,” Captain Nance snapped. “Quiet in the room.”

  “Grampharic,” the colonel said, his voice loud and distinct, “you will take this young woman to detention. She is not to communicate or have access to anyone or anything without my express permission.”

  Grampharic stepped forward and placed his hand on Caulie’s shoulder. “Detention where, sir?”

  “Put her in the closet where we keep the supplies. Set a watch on the door.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The hand closed on her shoulder like a vise and lifted her from the chair.

  Caulie kept her voice calm. “One moment, Grampharic.”

  The hand paused.

  Grampharic said, “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Send some men to cut my helpie off the gallows. Be careful. I don’t want him harmed any further.”

  Grampharic issued an order. Two of the other Tachba left at a run.

  Colonel Bessawra’s mouth dropped open.

  Captain Nance said, “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Orders, captain,” Grampharic answered stolidly.

  “Orders from this criminal? Really. By your love of the empire, I order you to—”

  “Disregard orders from other Haphans,” Caulie murmured. “I need to borrow you for now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Grampharic’s hand left Caulie’s shoulder. She settled back in the chair.

  “You’ll be my squad,” she added, “until you wish it otherwise.”

  “Service is service,” the Tachba said. Grampharic didn’t seem troubled or otherwise confused by the change in leadership. Perhaps, to his conscious mind, it was simply more Haphan strangeness and wasn’t worth pondering. “Let’s see this play out,” he said.

  Caulie turned to the colonel. “Bessawra, I am sorry for this drama, but I couldn’t think of anything more efficient. If you’d like your artillery back, you must promise not to arrest me. I don’t have time to be arrested. If I’m harmed, you’ll never hear your guns fire again. ”

  The man only stared at her. Of his earlier composure and superiority, nothing remained. He almost looked frightened.

  “Did you inform HQ that you captured me?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Of course you didn’t.” Caulie frowned, thinking hard. “You wanted to learn what was this was about. I didn’t think of that. What about General Andretiae? Is she still in control or has she been replaced yet?”

  The colonel opened his mouth to answer but nothing emerged. Captain Nance cleared her throat. “She’s still in command, but that could change soon. I imagine you belong to the general?”

  Caulie disregarded the question. Doublethink, double-dealing: if you assumed deception, it made everything easier. How had she never noticed? It made the motivations of these Haphans as clear as day. “You were saving news of my capture for the future. A gift for whomever was still standing when the dust settled. An early success to curry favor.”

  Captain Nance shook her head with a jerk. “Nothing so crass I hope. It’s simply unclear where the battalion’s interests lie. All we want is to keep the South in their trenches. These factional games in the Gray House trickling down to the eternal front, they only make it harder to fight the war.” She gestured out the window at the silent artillery guns. “Case in point.”

  Caulie stood and backed around the chair. “I’ll give you back your unit, but you must promise not to distract me.”

  The woman looked torn.

  “I’m on your side,” Caulie added, “if that helps.”

  The colonel finally stirred. “You’re not a dissident, obviously. Gray House? Secret police? What are you?”

  She didn’t have an answer. She needed to see Shanter. “Questions only bring more questions. I’m something new and unknown. Think of me as ‘that woman.’”

  She was nearly at the door when the colonel spoke again. “Since you’re, erm . . . since you seem to have an idea . . . I wonder if I can ask, I mean, I wonder if I can wonder aloud.”

  She turned impatiently. “What is it, colonel?”

  He pointed a finger upward. “There’s something on the mountain peaks above the artillery emplacements. We can see it moving sometimes through high-powered binoculars. Whatever it is, it’s wreaking havoc with our communications.”

  The panther. So, it had indeed found her again. Whoever was controlling the creature knew where she was.

  “It’s a beast from the old days,” she said, glancing at the Tachba. “Don’t confront it. It’s here for me, not you. I’ll leave as soon as I can and it will follow me. Business as usual again, once I see to my helpie.”

  “I watched them cut him from the gallows,” Captain Nance said. “I think he was still moving. I’ll send the medic.”

  “I’d regard that kindly.”

  She was through the door before her nerve gave out, thank goodness.

  She collapsed against the wall, still hugging the clipboard, eliciting looks from the staffers in the main room. She had seriously distorted the right order of the world in that office, and as an order-loving Haphan, she was nearly as disoriented as the officers she’d just left. The only difference was that Caulie knew she’d caused it, while the officers could only see evidence that she was connected, important, and powerful.

  Grampharic and his squad loomed around her with solicitous frowns. They were hers, weren’t they? More men for her to worry about. She had quite a collection now. Like a little manleader, she thought.

  “I need to get to my b
unker,” she told them, “but I have no idea where it is.”

  Grampharic shook his head. “No. What you need is food and rest.”

  “Why is everybody so bossy to me?”

  “Ma’am, when did you last eat?”

  She had to think. “Last night. Something called battle smear.”

  “La, no wonder you’re acting crazy. Battle smear!”

  “I liked it,” she said. “I didn’t have to chew anything.”

  For some reason, this made the squad smile. Grampharic said, “Let’s get you sorted out.”

  “I need one more minute to—oh.”

  It was happening again.

  Grampharic scooped Caulie into his arms and carried her briskly out of the HQ. She couldn’t understand it. The first thing everybody on the front wanted to do when they met her was pick her up and carry her somewhere.

  “Grampharic, what did you mean when you called me crazy?”

  “I’d never!”

  “You said, ‘La, no wonder you’re acting crazy. Battle smear!’”

  His face shifted into innocent recognition. At least she didn’t have to worry about double-dealing with the Tachba.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “You were ordering the colonel around like a servitor. Filling the room with odd noises that weren’t coming from your mouth. A performance like I never seen. It was almost frightening.”

  “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

  “Neh. What would be the point? The eternal front will kill us all in due time.”

  “Good to know,” she said. After a moment, she whispered, “I’m afraid of me.”

  Chapter 23

  Outside the building, the squad encircled Caulie and Grampharic like a defensive screen. In the distance, farther afield, two more squad members carried Shanter between them. They had his arms over their shoulders and his legs dangled limply behind. His odd boots with their wrapped cloth bands bounced over the rock, and his head rolled on his neck. It rolled too much: his back was to Caulie but she could still see his face. His head bounced with horrible looseness between his shoulders.