The Road to Damascus (bolo)

by John Ringo

  Yalena stood up slowly, having to put down the book bag that was her only shield. She couldn’t walk very fast. Miss Peverell smiled at her, with warm encouragement, then did, in fact, give her a warm and wonderful hug.

  “There, now, let’s sit on the desk together.”

  She picked Yalena up, perched on the edge of the desk again, held Yalena on her knees, with one arm around her. “You children are so lucky to have Yalena in the class with you.”

  Everybody was staring, mouths open.

  “Yalena is a very brave little girl. It is not easy to be the daughter of a soldier.”

  Yalena went rigid, knowing that it was coming.

  Miss Peverell brushed her hair back from her face, gently. “Every day, a soldier may have to go and fight a war. It can be very hard, very scary, to be a soldier or a soldier’s child. And every day, when Yalena goes home, there is a huge machine in her back yard, a very dangerous machine.”

  Yalena wanted to crawl away and hide…

  “Now this machine, this Bolo, can do very good things, too. It made the Deng go away, many years ago, before you were even born. And that was a very good thing, indeed. But these machines, they are alive, in a way, and it is no easy thing to live in a house with a machine that is alive, waiting in case a war starts. Every day, Yalena is brave enough to go home and trust that the machine won’t have to fight a war, that night. I think that is the bravest thing I have ever seen a little girl do.”

  The other girls in the class were looking at one another. Some of them looked angry, as if they wanted to be braver than the horrible killer’s daughter. Others looked surprised and others looked interested. Even the boys looked surprised and interested.

  “There is something else I want to say to everyone,” Miss Peverell said, still holding Yalena. “Does everyone know what POPPA is? No? Ah, POPPA is a group of people, just like you, just like me, who believe that everyone should be treated just the same way, so that no one has to be poor or have people hurt them or be hated for things that aren’t their fault. This is one of the most important things POPPA teaches us. Everyone has the right to be treated well, to be respected.”

  Miss Peverell looked very sad as she said, “A child who does not respect other children is a bully and that is a very bad thing to be. POPPA wants all children to be happy and healthy and have a wonderful time, both at home and at school. It’s very hard to have a wonderful time at home, when you have a machine like that in your back yard and you never know what it’s going to do and maybe your daddy will have to go away and fight a war and you might never see him again. Soldiers are very brave and Yalena’s father is one of the bravest soldiers on our whole world.

  “But it is very hard to be happy when you’re afraid that a war might come. So it is most important that Yalena is happy when she comes to school. POPPA wants all of us to be nice to everyone. POPPA wants all of us to be happy. POPPA wants all of us to treat each other with kindness. I know that all of you are good children who want to do these important things and help others do them, too. So I’m very happy that all of you have the chance to make Yalena feel special and happy and welcome, every day.”

  Yalena started to cry, but nobody called her a crybaby this time. Miss Peverell kissed her hair and said, “Welcome to my class, Yalena. All right, you can go back to your seat now.”

  The rest of the morning was strange and wonderful. Nobody quite had the nerve to talk to her at recess, but everyone stared and whispered when Miss Peverell came over to where Yalena was sitting by herself and started teaching her the song she’d sung at the beginning of the class. It was a pretty song, a cheerful song, even if Yalena didn’t know what the words meant. By the end of recess, Yalena knew every word by heart and Miss Peverell had taught her what the words meant, too. It was a wonderful song, about growing oats and peas and barley and beans and it was all about farmers who sang and danced and played all day and all night, without ever doing any work at all, while the oats and things grew green in the sunlight. And at lunch, nobody left an empty seat between themselves and Yalena.

  She went home that night almost happy. She was afraid to hope, but the day she had dreaded all summer had been wonderful, instead. A magical day. She was terrified that it would all end the next day, but it didn’t. It was just as good the day after that and the next one, too. At recess on the last day of the week, one of the shy girls in her class, who didn’t play a lot of games with anybody else, came over to where Yalena was swinging. For a long moment, Yalena expected her to push her off the swing or say something nasty.

  Then she smiled. “Hi. My name’s Ami-Lynn.”

  “Hello.”

  “Would you teach me that song? The one in French? It’s awfully pretty.”

  Yalena’s eyes widened. For a minute, she couldn’t say anything. Then she smiled. “Yes, I’d love to teach you.”

  Ami-Lynn’s eyes started shining like stars. “Thank you!”

  They spent the whole recess singing the funny, wonderful words. Ami-Lynn had a pretty voice, but she had so much trouble saying the words, they both started giggling and couldn’t stop, even when the bell rang and the teachers called them inside. Miss Peverell, who insisted that everyone call her Cadence, just as though she were their best friend, not a stuffy teacher, saw them and smiled.

  That was the day Yalena started to love school.

  And when she went to bed that night, she hugged herself for joy and whispered, “Thank you, POPPA! Thank you for bringing me a friend!” She didn’t know who or what, exactly, POPPA was, except that it must be full of very wonderful people, if they cared enough to want her to be so happy. She knew her parents didn’t like POPPA very much, because she’d heard them say so, when talking to each other. I don’t care what they think, she told herself fiercely. Ami-Lynn likes me. Cadence likes me. POPPA likes me. And I don’t care about anything or anybody else!

  She was finally happy. And nobody — not even her parents — was ever going to take that away from her again.

  III

  “I won’t go!”

  “Yes,” Kafari said through gritted teeth, “you will.”

  “It’s my birthday! I want to spend it with my friends!”

  Give me patience… “You see your friends every day. Your grandparents and great-grandparents haven’t seen you in a year. So get into the aircar right now or you will be grounded for the next full week.”

  Her daughter glared at her. “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Oh, yes I would. Or have you forgotten what happened when you refused to leave the school playground last month?”

  The amount of malevolence a ten-year-old could fling across a room would, if properly harnessed, run a steam-powered electrical generating plant for a month of nonstop operation. When they’d locked wills over the playground, Yalena had threatened dire vengeance, but had discovered to her consternation that when Kafari said “do it or you lose datachat privileges for a week” you either did it, or you didn’t talk to your friends outside of school for seven days.

  Yalena, who should have been pretty in her frilly birthday dress and fancy glow-spark shoes, contrived to look like an enraged rhinoceros about to charge an ogre. Kafari, cast in the part of the ogre, pointed imperiously to the front door.

  Her daughter, stiff with outrage and hatred, stalked past her, pointedly slamming the door into the wall on her way out. Kafari pulled it closed, setting the voice-print lock that would, with any luck, deter their nearest neighbors from helping themselves to the contents of their home — the so-called “POPPA Squads” training on Nineveh Base had the lightest and stickiest fingers Kafari had ever seen — then followed her offspring out to the landing pad. Simon was already strapping her into the back seat of the aircar.

  “I hate you,” she growled at her father.

  “The feeling,” her father growled right back, “is mutual.”

  “You can’t hate me! It’s not allowed!”

  “Young lady,” Simon told her in an icy
tone of voice, “the right to detest someone is a sword that cuts both ways. You have the manners of an illiterate fishwife. And if you don’t want to spend the next year without datachat privileges, you will speak in a civil tone and use polite language. The choice is entirely up to you.”

  Lightning seethed in Yalena’s eyes, but she kept her acid tongue silent. She had learned, after losing several key battles, that when her father spoke to her in that particular tone, discretion was by far the wiser choice. Kafari took her seat and fastened her harness in place. Simon did the same, then touched controls and lifted into the cloudless sky. It was a beautiful day, with honey pouring across the rose-toned shoulders of the Damisi Mountains, to spill its way down across the Adero floodplain in golden ripples. The flight was a silent one, with only the rush of wind past the aircar’s canopy to break the chill.

  The crowding elbows of Maze Gap flashed past, then they were headed down Klameth Canyon, following the twisting route to Chakula Ranch, which her parents had finally managed to rebuild. The house was in a different place, but the ponds were functional again and the Malinese miners were buying pearls by the hundred-weight, as the war had sent Mali’s economy into a boom that apparently had no end in sight. Jefferson, on the other hand…

  Some things, Kafari didn’t want to think about too deeply.

  The ruination of Jefferson’s economy was one of them.

  Simon brought them down in a neat and skilled landing, killing the engine and popping the hatches. Kafari unhooked herself and waited while Yalena ripped loose the catches on her own harness. She slammed her way out of the aircar and glared at the crowd of grandparents, aunt, uncles, and cousins who’d streamed across the yard to greet her. She wrinkled her nose and curled her upper lip.

  “Ew, it stinks. Like pigs crapped everywhere.” She was glaring, not at the farm buildings, but directly at her relatives.

  “Yalena!” Simon glowered. “That is not language fit for polite company. Do it again and you’ll lose a solid month of chat.”

  Smiles of welcome had frozen in place. Kafari clenched her teeth and said, “Yalena, say hello to your family. Politely.”

  A swift glare of defiance shifted into sullen disgust. “Hello,” she muttered.

  Kafari’s mother, expression stricken with uncertainty and dismay, said, “Happy Birthday, Yalena. We’re very glad you could be with us, today.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Well, child,” Kafari’s father said with a jovial grin that managed to convey a rather feral threat, “you’re more than welcome to walk home again. Of course, it might take you quite a while, in those shoes.”

  Yalena’s mouth fell open. “Walk? All the way to Nineveh? Are you like totally stupid?”

  “No, but you’re totally rude.” He brushed past his grandchild to give Kafari a warm hug. “It’s good to see you, honey.” She didn’t miss the emphasis. From the look on Yalena’s face, neither had she. Kafari knew a moment of stinging guilt. Her father clasped Simon’s hand, shaking it firmly. “Don’t see enough of you, son. Come and see us more often.”

  “I may just do that,” Simon said quietly.

  “You can leave that,” he gestured dismissively at his gaping granddaughter, “where you found it, unless it learns to speak with a little more respect. Come inside, folks, come inside, there’s plenty of time to catch up on the news without standing out here all day.”

  He drew Kafari’s arm through his, smiling down at her, and literally ignored his granddaughter, whose special day this was supposed to be. Kafari’s eyes stung with swift tears as guilt and remorse tore through her heart, witnessing the confused hurt in her daughter’s eyes. Yalena was just a child. A beautiful and intelligent little girl, who had no real chance against the determined, incessant onslaught of propaganda hurled at her by teachers, entertainers, and so-called news reporters who wouldn’t have known how to report honestly if their immortal souls had depended on it.

  She and Simon had tried to undo the ongoing damage. Had tried again and again. Were still trying. And nothing worked. Nothing. Nor would it, not when every other significant adult in her life was telling her — over and over — that she could demand anything and get it; that she could rat out her parents or anyone else for an entire laundry list of suspicious behaviors or beliefs and be rewarded lavishly; and that she held an inalienable right to do whatever she chose, whenever she chose and somebody else would dutifully have to pay for it. Kafari knew only too well that Yalena received extra social conditioning simply because she was their child. It suited POPPA to plant a snake inside their home, to use as a threat and a spy, and it enraged Kafari endlessly that they did so without a single moment’s remorse over the damage they inflicted daily on a little girl.

  Kafari’s father gave her arm a gentle squeeze and a slight shake of his head, trying to convey without words that none of this mess was her fault. It helped. A little. She was grateful for that much. She glanced back long enough to reassure herself that Simon was keeping an eye on their daughter, who was glaring at her cousins. They regarded her with cold hostility and open disgust. That the feelings were mutual was painfully obvious. Her mother, who had coped with more heartaches that Kafari would ever be able to claim, waded in like a soldier going into battle, taking charge of the ghastly situation with brisk efficiency.

  “Everybody goes to the house. Come on, you mangy lot, there’s punch and cookies waiting and plenty of games to play before lunch.”

  Yalena stalked with regal disdain past her cousins, as though wading through a pile of something putrid. Her cousins, falling in behind her, lost no time in mocking the birthday girl behind her back, pointing their noses at the sky, marching with exaggerated mimicry. If Yalena turned around, she’d get a nice dose of unpleasant reality. If Kafari knew her nieces and nephews, Yalena would get several doses of reality before it was time to leave, all of them painful.

  Watching the ugly dynamics, Kafari hated POPPA with a violence that scared her. The sole comfort she derived from the situation was the realization that POPPA wasn’t succeeding in totally indoctrinating all of Jefferson’s children. Yalena’s cousins might be trapped in a POPPA-run school all day, but living — and working — on a farm provided its own strong and daily antidote to idiocy. When it came to milking cows, gathering eggs from nest boxes, or any of the thousand other chores necessary to keeping a farm operational, platitudes like “no child should be forced to do anything he or she doesn’t want to do” earned exactly what they merited: derisive contempt.

  If you didn’t milk a cow, pretty soon you had no milk. And if you weren’t careful, no cow, either. There was literally nothing in Yalena’s world to give her that kind of perspective. Kafari thought seriously about turning Yalena over to her parents this summer. If not for Simon’s position, she’d have plunked Yalena down on the farm already, come hell or high water.

  Kafari’s father, reading much of what was in her heart, murmured, “Hold onto your hope, Kafari. And do what you can to let her know you care. One of these days she’ll wake up and that will mean something to her.”

  Kafari stumbled on the way up the porch steps. “Thanks,” she managed, blinking hard.

  He squeezed her arm gently, then they were inside and people were swarming past, most of them jabbering excitedly, with the little ones swirling around their ankles like the tide coming in at Merton Beach. Kafari snagged punch and cookies and handed a cup and plate to Yalena while dredging up the best smile she could muster. Yalena, scowling in deep suspicion, sniffed the punch, pulled a face, then condescended to taste it. She shrugged, as though indifferent, but drank every bit as much as her exuberant cousins. She fought for her share of the cookies, too, which were piled high and dusted with sugar, or smeared with frosting of various flavors, or drenched in a honey-and-nut coating that Kafari had forgotten tasted so heavenly. Simon went for the honey-nut ones too, managing a brilliant smile for Kafari as he snagged seconds.

  Yalena’s cousin Anastasia, who was onl
y six months younger than Yalena, took the bull by the horns, as it were, and walked up to stare at her older cousin. “That’s a nice dress,” she said, in the manner of someone who will be polite no matter the personal cost. “Where did you find it?”

  “Madison,” Yalena answered with withering disdain.

  “Huh. In that case, you paid too much for it.”

  Yalena’s mouth fell open. Anastasia grinned, then said in a cuttingly impolite tone, “Those shoes are the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. You couldn’t outrun a hog in those things, let alone a jaglitch.”

  “And why,” Yalena demanded in a scathing tone that bent the steel window frames, “would I want to outrun a jaglitch?”

  “So it wouldn’t eat you, stupid.”

  Anastasia rolled her eyes and simply stalked off. Her cousins, watching with preternatural interest, erupted into howling laughter. Yalena went red. Then white. Her fists tightened down, crunching the cookie in one hand and squashing the paper cup of punch in the other. Then her chin went up, in a heartbreaking mimicry of a gesture that Kafari knew only too well, in herself.

  “Enough!” Kafari’s mother snapped, eyes crackling with dangerous anger. “I will not condone nasty manners in this house. Do I make myself clear? Yalena isn’t used to living where wild predators can snatch a grown man, let alone a child. Conduct yourselves with courtesy and respect. Or do you like living down to city standards?”

  Silence fell, chilly and sullen.

  Yalena, alone in the center of the room, stared from one to another of her cousins. Her chin quivered just once. Then she said coldly, “Don’t bother to try. I didn’t expect anything better of pig farmers.” She stalked out of the room, slamming doors on her way to somewhere — anywhere — else. When Kafari moved to follow, her father’s hand tightened down around her arm.

  “No, let her go. That’s a young’un who needs to be alone for a few minutes. Minau, why don’t you follow her — discreetly — and make sure she doesn’t wander too far? It’s springtime and there are jaglitch out there, looking for a snack.”