A Few Good Men

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  If the summer spent in the North American woods—I’d since found out it was not in the old USA territory, but near it, at the edge of what had once been the country of Canada—had been my golden summer, this was winter, in metaphor as well as reality. Life was hemmed-in with duty, places I had to be and things I had to do, most of them mechanical and uninteresting, and yet all of them tiring.

  I think I’d have given up eating altogether—not difficult as my house was being run on a skeleton crew, and eventually by no one, almost every able-bodied person having joined the war effort. If I didn’t ask for food, I didn’t get it—but I was not allowed to starve. When Betsy had found out my idea of dinner was a sandwich I made myself and choked down with a glass of milk if there was any or water if there wasn’t, before collapsing on my bed at the end of the day, she’d let me know I had not just a standing invitation, but a standing order to join her family for dinner every night. They’d retained the nannies who looked after the children and who had now taken on the additional duty of cooking and cleaning. And Martha helped, though she rarely stayed for dinner. On those rare occasions, though, we talked, and I came to prize her company and her good sense.

  And that, that hour or two a day spent in the company of the children—Betsy and Sam were more often than not absent and eating at their desks—might have been all that saved me from becoming . . . I don’t know what, but not good. An automaton going about tasks someone else set for him. But the children, even if they were much like Goldie—creatures that didn’t understand what was happening or what we were engaged in—came to look forward to having me at the table, the one adult they saw all day other than their nannies. I’d more often than not read them to sleep at night. The nannies thought it was very good of me and very patient. I found out that this was something Nat usually did, because Sam and Betsy had never been very good at making the time. And so, to me this duty became a rope to salvation, taking me out of my new cell and into a light of freedom of sorts. Because, see, though I was theoretically free, I had become an asset of the revolution and jealously guarded, and it seemed like my day was as sterile and hard-bound as my time in that cell. I did things because it was time to do them, and I couldn’t just leave and do something else. And I had nothing but the children to remind me of what this was all about.

  The kids reminded me. I could imagine that what I was enduring was for them, so they would grow up free; so they wouldn’t ever have to spend decades in a cell for things they didn’t know they’d done wrong. So they’d live under the rule of law.

  Besides, they seemed to like me, which, like Goldie’s affection for me, was reassurance that I’d not been born some sort of freak, some unlovable, terrible monster, cut off from humanity.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Martha told me, one of the few nights when she’d come in for dinner and helped me put the children to bed, after watching in open-mouthed disbelief as I read to them and helped with their prayers—they being Sam’s and Betsy’s children, their nightly prayers were of course for the restoration of the republic, to which I’d added a prayer for the safe return of our soldiers, which might not be canonical, if we even had a canon, but which was my own plea for shorter casualty lists. And for Nat’s life.

  Without the kids, I’d have been lost in the darkness I’d lived in for fourteen years and started thinking lovingly of cots dropping on my face, and of chewing through my own wrist. Though at least my new confinement had better opportunities for suicide. I could always have opened my veins in a warm bath. Only I couldn’t, because the children needed someone more than their distracted nannies, more than parents too busy with the revolution to be parents.

  “Don’t be absurd. Of course you’re human. And I never saw anything more monstrous about you than about anyone else.” Then she’d looked at me, straight on, and said, “What have you been doing to yourself, Luce? What is chasing you down the dark corridors of your mind?”

  I had no idea what she meant, feeling like she’d just used some line of poetry. Had to be. Only lines of poetry were that strange. Or perhaps the woman had an inconsequential mind, at odds with her solid and sensible exterior. Must have, because her next question was just as absurd. “Has Nat sent you a letter? They don’t let them call, did you know? Too easy for the communication to be traced and troops to be found.”

  I shook my head and had the impression she was surprised, which was silly. Everyone seemed to imagine some kind of grand relationship between Nat and I, because we’d both lost lovers, and because, I suppose, we were the only ones of our inclinations most people knew. That wasn’t true, either. I’d found quite a few more among our people, amid my household, amid Betsy’s secretaries, for that matter. Like Royce, who improved on acquaintance though he’d never be one of my favorite people. But it was none of my business to expose other people’s secrets. And in a way they were right. Nat was the closest thing I had to a friend. The closest thing I’d had to a friend since Ben died, because Ben had been that too. I’d lost both, my best friend and my lover, when he’d died. And then I’d lost the illusion of his ghost in Coffers. I’d not seen him, not even in my mind, since then. When I tried to pin down his image in my memory, it shifted and changed, and I couldn’t remember his features exactly anymore.

  “Well, mind you,” Martha said. “That man is the worst correspondent in the world, and the two letters he’s sent me were nothing but veiled instructions for me to be a good girl, make sure I eat and brush my teeth at bedtime. No, not that blatant, but that’s what it amounted to. But he did ask me to check on you.”

  I knew as she said it that she was lying, and a little more ice accumulated over my life. She tried to explain to me why I was so important for the cause, why I was chained to transmitters of various kinds, sending transmissions to keep people in Olympus quiet, recording transmissions for our North American protectorates, recording messages for the troops in the field. “People are making a huge change, and even for those of us, and I’d say we’re no more than maybe a tenth of the population—Usaians I mean. There are more than that who want this change, but we’re the only ones who have looked forward to this day for centuries . . . anyway, even for us, it is difficult. It’s like . . . in the twenty-first century, when technology was changing the way people lived at such a fundamental level that people weren’t sure of anything. You can get irrational decisions and a sort of madness of the crowds then. We don’t need that, not while we’re engaged in the larger battle. So, we need to give them a minimum of security. They and their ancestors have been conditioned to look to the Good Men as being something special. And you’re one of them, but you’re one of us, too. You believe that it’s worth it, and that there’s something wonderful on the other end of this war. And they have seen that holo of you rescuing Nat—most of them have by now, even outside our ranks—and they know just how extraordinary you are and yet that you care enough for one of us, for someone who is just average, to go into a jail and bring him out, almost dying in the process. You’re a walking propaganda coup, Luce, and it’s no wonder Mother is working you into the ground. But I’ll have to talk to her, or she’ll work you under the ground.”

  I told her not to. A pampered princeling I might be, but the last thing I needed was to have a woman more than a decade younger than me take up my defense as though I were a poor, lost creature. I’d be a man, I’d endure this. I’d prove Ben wasn’t wrong in his trust in me. And Nat too, if he trusted in me.

  Coincidences are an odd thing. That night when I got to my room there were two folded sheets of paper on my bed. They were folded on themselves and wrapped with bands of the sort of ceramite that can be encoded with an address and a destination and be delivered by robots. It was one of the many things that had never been allowed into production by the old Good Men, perhaps because of the ability they allowed people to communicate without supervision. We’d put them in production, I’d found through Martha, to allow fighting men to communicate with people back home without risking the c
ommunications system which was still in the grip of the Good Men. Not that this was without supervision. Clearly these sheets had been clumsily removed from their address bands, read, censored and put back into the bands. I’d later on find out this was procedure. Sam had gone into a lecture about how this sort of temporary violation of the rights of expression was acceptable in the cause of greater freedom. I didn’t care. I cared slightly more for a very official-looking note folded into each of them, apologizing for the delay, because these two notes had been sealed into another band and gone to the family of another fighting man, and only directed to me by the correspondence office when that family pointed out their mistake.

  How they’d found out who it had come from, much less whom it was supposed to go to was beyond me, unless it all hinged on a pattern of otherwise random seeming dots along the top of the sheet, because the notes—both of them—were short on anything personal or even full names.

  The first one read in its entirety. “Dear Luce, I hope you’re well and they’re not working you too hard. They’re working us into premature old age here, but it’s good to be doing something, at last. Heard from the (censored band of liquid ink) and the idiot dog is doing well. Make sure (censored band) doesn’t enlist. (Long censored band) much too young. I hope you’re taking care of yourself. NGR.”

  The second one said, “Dear Luce, Mother tells me you (long censored band) and that’s good. Thanks for looking after the littles. Mom and Dad mean well, but (long censored band). (Short censored band) Goldie (censored band) but they got the antivenom in time and he’s doing fine. Syracuse (censored band) not something I want to live through again. But at least wartime is good for (censored band) promotions. Stay well and safe. (Short censored band) NGR.”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and I have no idea what the censors were thinking. For instance, what could there be in the fact that Goldie had got bit by a snake to make them carefully censor it? Not that Nat’s letters would have been much better without those. I had occasion to find out, he truly was the most dreadful correspondent, or, for that matter caller. When away from the person he was trying to talk to, he seemed to forget the human touch and yet feel he should have it, so his messages were an odd mix of straightforward information and attempts at showing some sort of emotion, which did not translate well in straightforward information mode.

  Not that I was much better, as I found out when I tried to write to him, realizing that this was even possible and that I had, possibly, been remiss. As remiss as I thought he’d been.

  My note to him, conscious that he probably had next to no privacy in whatever lodgings he had, and that this would be read by censors and by who knew who else, was “Dear Nat, Keeping busy. Much too busy, but never mind that. Didn’t realize I could write till Martha told me. Having dinner with your family every night, and reading to little ones.” Realized he must have known that from his last letter, but still felt I should reassure him. “Glad Goldie is all right. I miss him. I pray a lot before reading casualty lists. Don’t be on one of them.” I hesitated a long time over the closing, before writing, all in a rush and feeling terribly brave, “Yours, LDMK.”

  I found out later that most of it, including my moment of foolhardy and rather timid daring had been carefully covered in censorship ink.

  But the letters showed that, while under fire and under peril of death, Nat had thought of me as much as he thought of Martha. It gave me heart.

  Perhaps I’d come across as truly pathetic, because Martha, Jan and Simon started including me in their war councils, which I suppose is what passed for parties these days. Their councils were about as boring as Sam’s and Betsy’s talks, but sometimes there was wine to go with the boredom. And I wasn’t sure what was going on with Jan and Martha. Martha said it was all very complicated because Jan felt he couldn’t marry her, because he could never give her children and also because he didn’t know what was going on with his position nor how it would end up.

  This conversation was on my terrace, outside my room, overlooking the ocean. Part of the good side of being at war is that the seacity was no longer under particular attack. The battle lines had moved a little far off and we weren’t nearly as affected, so the terrace was safe. We’d come back from one of our meetings—the problem we were trying to get around being how Simon could declare the revolution in his own island without bringing retribution on himself. Right now, he was useful to us, since he could get us news from inside the Good Men councils, and provide us with advance knowledge. Not that he was fully trusted. In fact the only reason he was still alive was that his father was technically still alive and I guessed the old guard hoped their friend would come back. Which was part of the reason that Simon acted like an idiot—so he could look inoffensive enough that they didn’t try to kill him, as they’d tried to kill me even before I was in open rebellion. He too improved on acquaintance, which didn’t help us decide what the right moment was for him to pivot between playing the fool to being truly the man in charge there and declaring la revolution, which is how he referred to it, for Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite.

  I’d tried to argue the last two had no business being imposed from above, but Martha had made frantic shushing motions, and I’d shushed. And now, she was sitting on the terrace wall, and talking about her relationship with Jan, and revealing far more feeling than I’d ever seen her even allude to. “Maybe I should take up smoking like Nat,” she said. Then gave me an odd smile. “Or maybe Nat and I will eventually lose patience and drown you and Jan, like a litter of misbegotten kittens.” She’d grinned. “You should see your face, Luce. I’m joking.”

  Still I cared enough to reel back on my heels when the next battle report came in. Maybe it was to be expected. So far our people had escaped, had survived in some number to fight another day because the other seacities had failed to organize enough to come down on them like a united force. This was partly because Good Men were no better at working together than any other wild and solitary animal. They had their small groups, their alliances. But uniting the whole might of the forty-five or forty or however many of them were left was an impossible task.

  Or had been, until a couple more seacities turned and killed their Good Men. And then they, or most of them, had brought . . . not armies . . . strike forces. Exterminators, as it were, falling upon each infected place, each focus of infection, and cleaning out our grand army in the same way as they’d once exterminated rogue broomers. And seemingly with no more effort.

  The casualty lists went for days, and you could read them, pages and pages and pages of them. I read them till my eyes ached, till they felt dry and gritty and hot. It was difficult because many of them weren’t even in alphabetical order. Through them I found out about Liam’s death and Tommy Long, the Long’s oldest son, and of Jane Long, too. Through them I found out that there had been attacks on areas of North America thought to be hotbeds of rebellion.

  Nat’s name I didn’t find at all. But I couldn’t be sure I hadn’t just accidentally skipped it, so I kept reading again and again to verify.

  A Grand Expedition

  I woke up with the door to the tunnel opening, and I was sure I was dreaming. I sat up and said, “Light,” and caught Nat in the glare of it, dazed, blinking, looking at me as if he didn’t recognize me.

  He was wearing a uniform. We’d started having those, partly to give the units cohesion, partly because there were so many seacities fighting and it helped to know which seacity you were with. Olympus had—I had very little to say to this, and I suspect, honestly, it was Royce’s idea—a sky-blue uniform, with a mountain peak for a patch, shown at sleeve and chest. It clearly came in the two army sizes I’d read joked about since the twentieth century: too large and too small. Tradition, I suppose, since there was no reason for this at a time when we could have printed the uniform to the measures of each soldier.

  Nat’s uniform managed to be both, hanging off him in folds and leaving his ankles and wrists uncovered. Though p
art of the reason for the folds was revealed in those ankles and wrists, both looking like there wasn’t a spare ounce of meat, let alone fat on them. His face too had gone much as it had looked when I’d first met him, under the grief of Max’s discovered death and the horror of what he’d done to Max’s body: all harsh planes and sharp, pointy angles, and circles under his eyes that made them look even darker and for once completely opaque. I have no idea what he’d done for haircuts. I was fairly sure he hadn’t taken garden pruning shears to his own head, and yet that’s what it looked like with long swipes of hair cut almost to the scalp, and long strands that overhung one ear and fell into his eyes. Beard inhibitor cream must be one of the things that they were running low on, because the light glinted on blond hair all over his face. His lips looked chapped. There was a patch of something dark and greasy across his forehead, and he appeared to be dead on his feet. I could smell him from where I was: sweat and something that stank chemical and burnt.

  But he was alive and that was better than I’d ever expected. I was off the bed before he’d stopped blinking at me. I unbuckled the holster slung across his middle. He was not, I think, fully rational, because he tried to hold on to it, before I pulled it off and said, “No, Nat. You’re home. If someone comes in, it’s my job to shoot them.”

  He didn’t smile, but he nodded, and he let me take the holster and the other holster from around his waist. I wanted to drag him into the fresher. I wanted to get him food. I wanted to have him home, to look after him, but I guessed what he needed the most was bed. And as short on personnel as my house was, and as much as there might be no one to wash those sheets in the next month, I dragged him to the bed and told him to lie down. I only had to say it once. I think he was asleep before he was fully horizontal. Screw the sheets. I’d burn them.

  He slept for almost forty-eight hours, playing havoc with my schedule, though my schedule was in a shambles too, since Betsy didn’t know what I should tell people. Or to whom I was telling it. Our news was patchy because the Good Men had at last cut us out of the broadcasting network, so that we weren’t even getting their propaganda. Simon told me at least one of the cities that had rebelled had fallen and the Good Men had put everyone, man, woman, child to death. Whether true or not, rumor of it spreading to the other cities was solidifying Good Men rule. The two broadcasts I made were meant to keep the people in Olympus from rushing my house and killing us all. Not that I even knew if there had been any rebellion. Because other than those two broadcasts, I spent the time in my quarters, keeping an eye on Nat. I wasn’t sure how much he was like himself. I wasn’t sure who would wake up when his long sleep was over.