“A public execution,” said the Pontiff. “To discourage others from such a path.”
Chapter 48
Jeffrey: “Prison and palace and reverberation”
His holiness departed as quickly as he had arrived. Jeffrey peered out the window of the building, watching the street far below, and saw the papal coach departing before he spoke. “The man is insane. A public execution?”
His father finished his whiskey. “It's not without precedent. In Mexico ordinary people have been burned as heretics, just for refusing to 'donate' lands to the Church there.”
“Yes, but those 'ordinary people' you're referring to were wealthy landowners who worked the poor like slaves. I'm not saying it was right to execute them without a real trial, but their hands weren't exactly clean. This apprentice you have, he's done nothing. Are you really going to let Pope Ricky burn him at the stake just for being who he is, a raw apprentice?”
The Honcho poured himself another glass. “It's not what I would prefer to do, no. But we need what they have. I don't like it, but it's as simple as that.”
Jeffrey slammed his hand down on the table, making the bottle jump. “No it isn't! It's not the only way. They can't have found every bit of alien tech in Texas. And if they have, maybe that apprentice can learn how to make what you need. Have you considered that? He must have talent, for Xander to recruit him. Maybe all he needs is time. But we'll never know if you let the TCC turn him into a human candle.”
The Honcho stared into his glass. “Killing the old wizard didn't help his attitude. Lester doesn't want to help us, certainly not against his own country. And he's not eager to let us know the true extent of his abilities. As far as he knows, his best move is to convince us he's harmless. I'm not sure I know how to change his attitude fast enough for him to be useful. Do you?”
Jeffrey mulled it over. “I don't know. He wants to live. Why don't you give him a piece of pipe and see if he can make a swizzle out of it? Don't tell him what it's for, just make it a test. If he can't do it you can always trade him for the gear you need, but if he can it's a start. Then you can start getting your oil.”
Chapter 49
Kristana: “one thing does not change”
Three days and still no word. She was beginning to fear her operatives in Dallas had been discovered. It weighed on her mind as she approached the infirmary. And not only her mind. If they couldn't tell him something soon, Xander was likely to attempt another escape, and if this kept up they'd be passing him his meals through a slot in the door. The problem with mounting an armed guard on him was he knew she didn't want him shot again.
There had been no more scouting sorties either. Had the Honcho learned what he needed to know? Or had he decided to postpone the invasion until Spring?
She pushed the door open and looked in in on him. Xander was sitting up in the bed, a book open in his hands, his angry eyes flicking left and right as he scanned the lines. She tilted her head to read the title on the spine: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. “Where did you get that one?”
His eye flicked up, then back down at the page. “I had Aria fetch it for me from my quarters.”
“Why the ancient history? Don't tell me Hitler is one of your heroes.”
“Very funny,” he grunted. “It's been a long time since I read it, and I thought it might be helpful to review, considering our situation.”
And maybe it helps distract you from the fact that your apprentice is in the hands of our enemies. But she didn't say it out loud. “Helpful how?”
“Hitler was the first to realize the possibility of a new kind of war that his motorized divisions made possible. Up until his time the automobile had been largely viewed merely as a replacement for horse-drawn vehicles. But Hitler saw that the ability of the motorized vehicle to cover a lot of ground rapidly without resting, as horses and men on foot have to do, made possible an entirely new kind of war: the blitzkrieg, or lightning-war. Before him, armies moved a few miles per day. Hitler did what Caesar was famous for – advancing more rapidly than expected – and did it even better, thanks to the gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. His lightning-swift advance into Poland surprised everybody, especially the Poles, whose old-fashioned horse cavalry (that had been effective in the wars prior to WWII) were useless against Hitler's motorized divisions. His war was the first in which modern transportation was more important than gunpowder or swords.”
“But that was made possible by his factories,” she pointed out. “The Honcho has none. He's discovered a cache of motor vehicles, true, but not thousands of them, and he can't make any more in the near time frame.”
“No he can't. But if he can come up with fuel for them, a few dozen tanks and armored personnel carriers could make a big difference against our troops, especially if they move faster than we expect.”
She sat down on the edge of his bed. “How do we counter them, if he manages to use them?”
“I have some ideas,” he said. “We have some time to prepare. From what your spies reported, he has no fuel. He has the old oil wells, but it will take him some time to pull out enough and put it into a usable form for the old motors.”
She reached out and closed the book in his hands. “We need to talk about Aria,” she said. “She asked me yesterday what the Governor's blood type was.”
He sat up straighter in the bed, then winced and let himself fall back again. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her I didn't remember. But we both know she'll eventually ask Daniels about it. You know how he is about the truth. Once he tells her the Governor was B positive, she'll know it's hardly likely that he and I produced an O negative daughter.”
He sighed. “So we have to tell her before she figures it out herself.”
“Yes. I'm not looking forward to that.”
He looked her in the eye. “We didn't do anything wrong. He was gone.”
She looked down. “I know that. But you know that won't make any difference. She'll still feel betrayed because we never told her. Because in her eyes it'll seem that we never trusted her enough.”
“You know that wasn't why, damn it. You'd just taken over for Roberto. Colorado needed a grieving-but-tough widow, carrying on his Dream, not a happy survivor carrying another man's child.”
“Not happy,” she said, looking away. “No one could have made me happy, not then. But you certainly helped me be less unhappy. I'll never forget it.”
“Nor I. You can't imagine how much I wanted to marry you. But to the people of Rado, Aria was a symbol of hope, the last good thing they would ever get from their General. So I kept my mouth shut and stayed in my place as the weird old wizard. But it wasn't easy. I never stopped loving you, but if all I could ever be was the consoling friend who helped you make a baby, I told myself I would accept that.”
“You were more than that,” she said. “You're not the only one with regrets. You're not the only one who's had to give up dreams for the people of Rado, for the General's Dream. You've no idea how lonely it is to be the Governor.”
“No,” he agreed. “Just how lonely it is to be the Governor's wizard.”
Chapter 50
Kristana: “Where the word is unspoken”
She told him to try to sleep and made herself leave the infirmary. Yes, she thought, we all have our own knowledge of loneliness. Xander has to stand near me, when he can, not touching, and I have to hold my place, wanting to be touched. Never to show affection in public, never to know the reassurance of human contact. A ruler must be separate. Must be seen as always confident, always having a plan. Always sufficient unto herself.
Especially when she's not.
It had been a hard decision. She remembered as if it were this morning, Roberto lying there on the bed. He had just closed his eyes, never to open them again. “That's my girl,” he had smiled, after she had shouted at that fraying soldier, putting backbone back into the frightened man. Her first real command as Governor, holding the line. “T
hat's my girl” Roberto had said, and smiled and closed his eyes, and that was all. End of a legend.
No one knew yet. She would have a little time to weep alone, to still be soft.
Her tears fell on the sheet as he shoulder shook. She sobbed quietly, but so wholeheartedly that she did not hear the door open and Xander slip into the room. He took in the scene in an instant, and, after giving her a minute to weep alone, had taken her unresisting form into his arms and wept with her just as quietly. There are some moments where the word is unspoken. Where it is unnecessary. Neither of them said it: he is gone.
After a couple of minutes she was still. He stroked her hair on the back of her neck and whispered to her. “Now comes the hard part.”
Gently, she let go of him and separated herself. “I know. Now I have to wear his hat.”
Xander smiled at her brave joke. “No. You can't be him. They know you're not the Lion. But you can be the Lioness. It's what he would have wanted. What he trained you for.”
“But how can I? How can I be Commander-in-Chief, when I've never been in the Army? I'm a fraud, a pretender, and they'll know it. You should take over. Take this cup away from me.”
Xander put his hands on her shoulders. “That's not what he would have wanted. I can't be the Governor. I'll help you all I can, but the Governor has to be one of the People, one of them, and I've lost that, by being what I am. I'm too strange for them to love. They may respect me, and will definitely fear me a little, but love? No. The shaman is never the leader of the tribe. He does weird things, and gives advice. But he is never the leader.”
“Why is that?” she asked. “I think you're as strong as he was, but in a different way.”
“Because the leader is a role model,” he said, looking down at Roberto's peaceful smile. “The leader has to be someone they can imagine themselves being. They don't look up to me. They look across to me, across a vast canyon of strangeness. But they will look up to you.”
She drew a ragged breath. “Why should they look up to me?”
“Because they know he approved of you. That he respected you enough to marry you. And you have to use that now. You have to be the tough-as-nails widow of the General. Since the two of you were man and wife, they'll assume you must be like him in some ways.”
“But I'm not,” she said. “Opposites attract. He was the controller. I'm more the supporter, the nurturer. I'll never be him.”
“Well then, it's time to nurture Colorado,” he said. “Nurturing can mean giving what someone needs, or helping them to get it. Right now your country needs hope, needs confidence. You can give that to them, by helping them to believe you can hold it all together. By giving orders and expecting to be obeyed.”
“Then I order you to take my place,” she said smiling.
“With respect, madame Governor, you know that I cannot. But I'll do whatever else you need. You know my priority is establishing the school for wizards, but that can't happen without a stable environment around it, so I'm your most loyal citizen. I'll fight for you, lie for you, steal for you, die for you as long as I can get the school going and keep the Dream alive. We can't let it end like this.”
“No, we can't, can we?” She gazed down at Roberto. “Don't worry, my love, we'll follow the Dream.” After a moment she looked up again. “What's the first thing we need to do?”
“The first thing you need to do,” he corrected, “is to address the troops. By now the commanders and senior staff are assembling as you asked in the Council chamber. It's time to let them see their new Governor.”
It was a month before they began sleeping together. In public Xander acted as if nothing had changed. As he told her, “Once the staff find out who the boss lady is sleeping with, she loses a lot of her authority. We can't let that happen.”
Nine months later Aria was born. Everyone assumed she was the General's last gift. It must have killed Xander a little to go along with that. But he did.
Chapter 51
Lester: “but only of proper sowing”
It was almost annoying when someone came to visit him again. He'd gotten quite distracted with his new ability to see through walls. One thing he discovered right away was that he could warm up his cell. Evidently the prison had only one floor above ground, because when he wove the pathspace to make his ceiling transparent, sunlight flooded in, bringing warmth in with it.
Once, when his meal was brought (and he did notice right away that the standard fare was less savory than what they brought the Honcho when he dined with him) he was nearly caught by surprise, because at the time he was gazing up at the clouds. The rattle of the key in the door jarred him out of this contemplation and he barely un-wove the ceiling transparency pathspace in time before the guard got the door open.
This time he was looking through the door, however, so he had plenty of time to make it opaque again before it swung open. The identity of the visitor surprised him.
“You really should work more on looking haggard,” Jeffrey told him. “It's a prison. You're not supposed to be cheerful.”
“And hello to you too. How is Commander Glock doing? Is he recovered enough from his bang on the head for me to kill him now?”
Jeffrey grimaced. “He's up and about. How did you learn his name? I'm not sure you understand the gravity of your situation.”
“I asked a guard. Gravity? Weird way to describe it. I feel my normal weight.” He hopped experimentally, then sat on his cot. “Sorry, I'm just jerking you around. I realize I'm not in a good place. But what can I do about it?”
“Good question. I'm glad you asked that. You know, it's a shame we met the way we did. You seem, a decent fellow, and under other circumstances we might have been friends.”
“I know what you mean. Compared to Brutus, you don't seem so bad yourself.”
Again Jeffrey grimaced. “Compared to him, a rattlesnake isn't bad. It might kill you, but it wouldn't enjoy it. But my father thinks Brutus is a necessary evil.”
“Well then sorry, but I disagree with your father, although he didn't seem too bad when he came to visit me.”
“So do I. There are many things we disagree on. For example, your situation. I'm sorry to tell you this, but it's worse than you might think. The Church wants us to hand you over to them for a public execution.”
Lester scratched his stubble. “I see. And does the Honcho usually do what the Church wants? Too much of that would make him look weak.”
“That's what I think. But he considers them useful, and they have something he really wants. If the only way he can get it is by handing you over, he'll talk himself into it soon enough.”
“Again, I don't see that I can do anything about that.”
Jeffrey pulled something out of a vest pocket and handed it to him. It was a short metal tube, less than an inch in diameter and only four inches long.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“I couldn't bring you anything longer, because you might try to club one of the guard with it. But it might still save your life.”
“I don't see how. Am I supposed to beat it into a key or something? Then you should have brought an even smaller one.”
“Let's get something straight,” Jeffrey told him. “My father doesn't see you as dangerous because you're only an apprentice. But that also means you're not very valuable. He'll trade you for more valuable things if he feels he has to. Then the Church will burn you at the stake. Your only hope of survival is to show him you can be more valuable to him alive.”
“How?”
“Can you make this a swizzle? He needs swizzles, but the Church won't let him have the ones they've confiscated unless he hands you over.”
Lester turned the metal tube over in his hands. “If you'd asked me a week ago, I would have said probably not. Maybe I can now. But why does he need swizzles? I thought he wanted to rebuild the world without alien technology.”
“He does. But in the short term he needs pumps more powerful than hand pum
ps, and that means swizzles. If you can make them he doesn't have to trade you for them.”
“I get it,” said Lester. “This is a demo. What makes you think I want to be helpful to your father?”
“Let me put it this way. Do you want to be firewood? Sorry, but those are the choices.”
“I'll get back to you on that,” said Lester. “Let me see what I can manage.”
Chapter 52
Aria: “the light shone in darkness”
Sometimes she felt as if her entire life was being spent scribbling. Word problems! Exercises in futility was what they were. What was the point? There would always be advisors to calculate numerical answers for her.
“Aria,” said Mr. Chang, “you're not concentrating.”
“I just don't see the point of this. It doesn't mean anything!”
The barest lifting of an eyebrow. “What? But everything means something.”
“Does it?” She put down the piece of chalk and surveyed the dusty scribbling on the board in front of her. “Am I any better of a ruler if a field produces twenty bushels of corn instead of fifteen? The number is meaningless unless we combine it with others. Is fifteen enough to feed a country? Hardly. The output of a single field, and the appetites of a single family tell us nothing until we combine them with all the others and compare the total harvest to the total population that must be fed.”
“True,” he said. “But that's not the point of this exercise. The task is to take all of the given factors into account and to render an accurate result, which in this case is the amount of corn left sixty days after harvest. You've left out the spoilage due to mice, so your result is unreasonably optimistic.”
She surprised him with a curse, because he was right. “But it's still unreasonable even if I include it,” she said. “What about insects? What about pilfering by vagabonds? What if an army takes it all – or burns it?”
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