by Chris Walley
He caught a glimpse of his tired, troubled face reflected in the glass. But I must be careful. I must be sure that I alone take the glory. Neither Hanax nor the ambassadors must do that.
He smiled. How strange. My biggest fear is not of the Assembly, but of those on my own side.
13
After the memorial service, Merral’s life slipped into a routine. Every day except the Lord’s Day, he would rise at six, pray, and read his Bible, and then go for a twenty-minute run. Although Lloyd could move fast when the need arose, he was no runner and arranged for two young soldiers to accompany Merral, each carrying the new pocket-sized cutter guns hidden beneath loose running tops. After the run, Merral would shower, eat breakfast, and then be driven to the Planetary Administration building, where around half past seven, he would start his long day. Typically, what followed then was a succession of meetings, both real and virtual, interrupted at times by a trip to observe some piece of new equipment or oversee a new maneuver. Sometime after six, he would return with Lloyd to the Kolbjorn Suite where they would take turns cooking supper. After eating, Merral would work until late in the night, looking at papers, assessing plans, or reading reports. It was, he knew, an unsustainable pace, but he consoled himself with the fact that it didn’t have to be sustainable. He only had to keep it up for weeks.
But how many weeks? Merral kept a calendar chart on his wall on which he crossed off each day. It was a necessary evil, he decided, but the unrelenting reduction in the days left to the end of summer increasingly came to haunt him. Soon only sixty, and then fifty, days were left. And that, he grimly reminded himself, was the maximum.
Yet at first slowly, and then with an encouraging pace, the Farholme Defense Force grew. The regular forces were recruited, trained under programs devised and often supervised by Zak, and then assigned to units. The three regiments were dispersed to new bases across Menaya: the Eastern Regiment to a new site just west of Halmacent, the Central Regiment to a landing strip at the southern end of the rift, and the Western to just outside Varrend on the Tablelands. In order to provide some cover across the vast distances of the islands of the southern hemisphere, six mobile brigades, each 150 men strong, were raised and posted to six different islands.
Farholme became used to the sight of green-uniformed soldiers transiting through its airports and driving along its roads.
And in the lowest levels of the Planetary Administration building, a basement was cleared out, equipped to refuge standards, and given communication links and lockable doors. Merral was troubled by the name it became known by but knew of none better: the war room.
Merral tried to ensure that he had at least one undisturbed meeting a week with Vero.
Late one still and humid afternoon, three weeks after the memorial service, Merral met with Vero. On a whim, Merral arranged for Lloyd to take the two of them out on a small sailing vessel in Isterrane Bay. As Lloyd struggled to use the faint breezes to take them around the bay, Merral and Vero talked in the shade of a low awning by the prow.
“So, what’s the progress with the irregulars?” Merral asked.
Vero peered over his dark glasses. “It’s good and bad, my friend.”
“Tell me about the good first.”
“By now almost every settlement has a core group.”
“Whose task is to recruit others.”
“Right. That seems easy enough. Everyone wants to join. But in most of the large settlements, we have now issued a small cache of weapons and at least some explosives. There are a lot of people like your uncle Barrand tutoring the irregs in the handling of explosives. And there is the promise of guns as soon as enough are available.”
“So how many irregulars are there? Clemant asked me that the other day.”
Vero shrugged slightly. “He would. About twenty thousand. We have issued that number of the brown jerkins and berets. But there are more irregs than uniforms.”
“You can’t be more precise?”
Vero gave a wry smile tinged with concern. “My friend, let me tell you a secret.” He lowered his voice. “One of the positive features of the irregulars was that the enemy would never be able to know who they were. I now realize that this has a negative side.”
“You don’t either?”
There was a little awkward laugh. “Well, it’s getting that way.”
“Vero, that’s all very . . .”
“Irregular?”
Merral gazed across the bay where the haze of the sky met the silvery sea. “Vero, I have mixed feelings about them. Clemant is uneasy. And the prebendant too.”
“That goes without saying, Merral. I try to avoid Delastro. But look—what’s the alternative? Take the southern islands. There are a lot of people down there. Can you cover them all?”
“No.”
“Or even the main towns of Menaya?”
Merral sighed. “No.”
“There we are. And it’s good for morale. The public will see the irregs and think they are being protected, which they may be.”
“I thought the irregulars were secret?”
“You can’t hide training people with weapons and explosives.”
“I suppose not.”
Vero took a drink. “And your own plans. How are they progressing?”
“Well enough, I suppose. But how can I say when I have nothing to measure them against? The new cutter guns seem to be well liked—more power, less weight. But can we trust them?” He hesitated.
“I don’t think we can rely on cutter guns either. We are issuing chemical fuses for explosives to the irregs.” He gestured to where Lloyd stood at the helm of the yacht. “I see that connoisseur of weapons Lloyd is carrying an XQ gun in his bag.”
“I hadn’t noticed. I’ve given up looking inside. It scares me.”
“I think he’s a success.”
“Vero, he is definitely one of your very best ideas. I’m just made uneasy by the way he experiments with bits of weaponry. And his reading material is violent. And those ancient films . . .”
“Oh, those.” Vero sounded embarrassed.
“He says they were your idea. I watched bits and what I saw was either absurd or violent.”
“They are odd, aren’t they? I just thought he might find them, well, useful. Get some hints. That sort of thing. My friend, I think he’ll be useful.”
“I wish I thought you were wrong.”
There was silence and then Vero spoke again. “These XQ guns—are you pleased with them?”
“Yes. No electronics, just rocket-propelled bullets. An early twenty-first century design we found in the Library. It’s the best thing we have. The rounds are tungsten-tipped and will go through a wall. We’ve ordered ten thousand.”
Vero raised an eyebrow. “You don’t sound enthusiastic.”
“Vero, they raise issues typical of all the problems we face. For a start, we don’t know if they’ll work against Krallen. We know those things have angled hard surfaces so our bullets may just glance off them. But in the last few days, we’ve found a second problem.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Anya has been simulating Krallen attacks. We’d been thinking of head-on attacks. But she raised the question of what would happen when some Krallen forced their way into a unit of soldiers.” Merral pushed the fingers of his right hand deep into his left palm. “As happened at the lake. If the soldiers keep firing at them, they will soon be pumping ricocheting armor-piercing rounds into each other. In close-quarter fighting, weapons like that may be worse than useless.”
“I see.” Vero’s brow furrowed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Nor had we.” Merral thumped his hand against the hull. “You see, Vero, we are so naive. We don’t know about our enemies, and we don’t know how to fight. At times . . .” He paused, trying to recover his composure. “At times, I don’t think we can do it.”
Vero rubbed his head. “We must pray and trust, my friend. But you—we—are making progress. I watch and
I hear. . . . The long-barreled sniper’s rifle for instance. Are the rumors true?”
“Yes. The women are taking that up. They like it. All the regiments will have female sniper units.” Merral stared out to sea. “Amazing, isn’t it, how we can discuss weapons so easily now, eh, Vero? I had a conversation the other day with a materials engineer about the new blades that will replace the bush knives. ‘We can molecularly tune the edges to cut better against flesh,’ he said. What a world we live in.”
A long silence followed in which only the creak of the boat and the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull could be heard.
“My friend, we need better weapons on a large scale.” Vero’s voice was thick with worry.
“Yes. We examined the two vortex blasters we have in orbit. They were built to give planners and foresters a last-resort capability to sterilize large tracts of land. I can’t remember when they were last used. Anyway, they might be effective against large concentrations of enemy, but . . .”
“There is always a ‘but’ these days.”
“Indeed. But they’re slow to aim and each have only five firing charges. There are no replacement charges. We have ten shots, maybe. And I okayed the production of thirty artillery cannons that can fire shells a dozen kilometers.”
“Will they be ready?”
“We don’t know. And finally we have a handful of fliers that were designed for low-speed dispersal of plant seeds and fertilizer. We’re modifying them to carry weaponloads of bombs and flares.”
“Well, I suppose the good point is that we’re not tempted to put our trust in our weapons.”
“A limited consolation.”
“What we need is to stop them up there before they land,” Vero said, gesturing skyward. “That’s where they are vulnerable. Any progress there?”
“Vero, in a word, no. I talked to Gerry—always an enjoyable experience. She’s pursuing her work on space weapons, but all I saw were formulas, graphs, and speculations. ‘Not enough time,’ she said. ‘Not enough resources.’ She has taken a hint from the envoy’s words and is broadening her vision ‘to look at bold and brave ideas.’”
“Such as?”
“She was vague. Or I didn’t understand the physics. But she’s been talking about using a Below-Space delivery system to deliver a polyvalent fusion bomb. When I saw her last, she got quite animated. ‘There are some extraordinary possibilities for doing really serious harm. We could fry them all.’”
“I can hear her voice.”
“It’s great, but it’s all theory in almost every area.”
“By the way,” Vero asked, “how’s Zak doing? I hear stories.”
Merral read caution in his friend’s eyes. “Ah, Zak. Vero, I’m very ambivalent about Colonel Zachary Larraine. He’s undeniably a very gifted organizer and a talented strategist with an extraordinary flair for military matters. But his attitude to discipline borders on the brutal.”
“Really?”
“There was one case where Zak apparently pushed a soldier out of a hovering rotorcraft. The guy broke a leg. There was another where he is alleged to have denied medical treatment to heat-exhausted soldiers. I talked to him about them.”
“What did he say?”
“He was defiant. He always is. ‘Sir, I figured we don’t need cowards or weaklings.’ So I warned him. But Clemant backs him. ‘Perhaps his toughness balances your tenderness.’ That was his comment.”
Vero looked thoughtful. “Actually, there may be something in that.”
“You really think so?”
“Maybe.”
Just then Lloyd yelled, “I feel a breeze!”
The sails filled and the boat sawed swiftly through the water.
“Better take us back, Lloyd, I’ve a lot to do!” Merral called out.
He turned to his friend. “Vero, what else is happening? What do you see that I might have missed?”
Vero shook his head. “Our world continues to change. Farholme society is unraveling.” He pulled his diary off his belt. “Let me tell you what’s happened these last few days. In Kanamusa, there was a riot at a concert when a band failed to turn up. Hutertooth College—ah yes; two students cheated on their exams. Lewi Island: reports of gambling. In Marinoff Town the warden has refused to stand down at the end of his term of office. Numerous fistfights. Sound familiar?”
“Depressingly so. I saw a man the other day angrily protesting that all the military pilots were women and demanding to know why he couldn’t undergo flight training.”
“I heard about that. But look at this.” Vero tapped the diary screen and handed it to Merral. The image was that of another poster advertising a meeting. At the top of the sheet, written in a large and angry black font, were two phrases:
Ruling Farholme after the Gate has gone.
Toward a better way!
“This was found on the High Street in Clanmannera yesterday,” Vero said.
“I don’t understand its significance. Is it all that alarming?”
“Oh yes,” Vero said with a wag of a finger. “You see, Farholme has now got politics.”
The subtle changes taking place across Farholme made Merral’s task even worse. The universal and automatic trust that he had always taken for granted seemed to be fading away. Increasingly, he wondered at people’s motives and even questioned their judgment.
Corradon was a case in point. The representative was increasingly valued as an inspirational speaker and a general soother of frayed nerves in troubled times and seemed to view this as his main role. He took to giving a weekly state-of-the-world address in which he spoke with eloquence, dignity, and confidence. The broadcasts soon acquired a large following and Merral was fascinated to hear how often people would later quote something he had said. And between these Corradon continued his habit of visiting major towns to speak publicly, shake hands, listen solicitously, and generally be seen. And every time he spoke, the feedback from the hearers was always the same: “We are reassured by his confidence and encouraged by his hope.” Yet Merral sensed that Corradon found the speaking an excuse to avoid the hard issues resulting from the crisis. Although he had been given overall charge of affairs by the Council of Representatives his supervision seemed perfunctory.
Whenever Merral met with Corradon to get forms signed, he would generally find the representative either fine-tuning a speech or tending his plants. They would sit down together and Corradon would ask some questions about “how things were going.” He seemed to listen with apparent care, sometimes jotting down facts or a phrase that might be useful for a speech, before losing interest and gazing out of the window. Eventually, Merral would hand him the relevant forms and he would stare at the paper, grimace, and then, with a despairing shake of his head, sign them with his florid signature. Merral wondered how outrageous his requests would have to be before they were rejected.
But it wasn’t just Corradon’s inattentiveness that worried Merral.
“Merral,” the representative said one day as he signed an order for more weapons, “I have to be optimistic, but I really don’t know whether we can win against another attack by the intruders. Can you reassure me?”
Merral, seeing the worry etched in Corradon’s eyes, agonized for a moment. “No,” he said. “I can’t. Not honestly.”
“So what do I do?”
“Do what you can to reassure the people. Maintain a tone of cautious optimism. Encourage them to put their hope in the Lord of the Assembly.”
“Fine words,” Corradon said, massaging his nose. “Very fine words. But I begin to worry if I can carry this off. Some of these people—perhaps many of them—are going to die. Aren’t I lying?”
Merral didn’t immediately answer, but eventually said, “I don’t think so. You have to give them hope.”
He left the representative’s office with troubling questions ringing in his mind: How long can Corradon maintain this act? And what happens when it fails?
Clemant, with whom Merral
had dealings with on almost a daily basis, was very different, but no less worrying. With Corradon’s frequent absences and increasing detachment, the advisor made most of the day-to-day decisions in Planetary Administration. He never seemed to leave his austere office and relentlessly scrutinized the details of every order or initiative. Merral soon found Clemant’s desire to know exactly what was happening and manage it both irritating and perturbing.
The advisor’s attempt to create an effective police force, however, met a check. Although small in number—there were barely a thousand across the entire planet—the police proved to be singularly disliked. The reason was simple: both the regular and irregular wings of the FDF were accepted as being a necessary defense to counter a mysterious and dangerous threat from outside. But the police, especially once they were equipped with powers of arrest, were seen as having no such justification and the assumption grew that their sole purpose was to make the lives of ordinary citizens hard. Farholme being the world it was, the protests were muted and, in general, expressed in nothing more than restrained grumbles and dark looks. But the police got the message and took to staying inside their new offices and memorizing the new Farholme Penal Code. And Merral noticed that every time the word police was mentioned in his hearing, Clemant seemed to scowl.
Very soon, Clemant suggested that, far from hiding what was going on, Merral ought to allow at least some publicity for the FDF. Merral resisted; he had, by now, seen many old films of parades and displays and had found almost all of them objectionable in their celebration of military force. Clemant, though, was persistent.
“Commander,” he said in his deep voice as he leaned forward over his desk, “the people need reassuring. We need to make some broadcasts. We can film some training exercises, show them the transports, the new guns. And you, of course. You should be seen there personally—the man in charge.”
“Isn’t that Representative Corradon?”
Clemant gave him a sharp but inscrutable look. “Oh, of course. But it doesn’t hurt to have two such public leaders. After all, you never know. . . .” And his voice tailed away into an expressive silence.
