Ryswyck

by L D Inman

  Barklay’s duffel was there, dropped by the door, and as he went in he saw Barklay himself, standing behind his desk, tidying skews of stacked record-books and stray styluses. He had turned off all the lights except the lamps on the conference table; their soft light reflected warmly on the gloss. He looked up as Douglas came in, and stopped.

  Douglas stood silently looking Barklay in the face. He had been right: it did hurt. It had hurt, too, to listen to Barklay’s last address—the visceral appeal of his voice, his capacity to make whatever he said seem like the truest possible thing— Douglas couldn’t duplicate that for his own command, and he couldn’t hear it without grieving the betrayal Barklay had cloaked in it.

  “I’ve cleared things out for you as best I could in the time,” Barklay said quietly. “You can take over my—the quarters next door without difficulty. I put what I couldn’t discard or take with me into a box. You can dispose of it however you will.”

  There seemed nothing to say to this. Douglas just nodded.

  “And I’ve made a list of all the things I could think of that you might need to know that aren’t in any of the files or books.” A painful little smile touched his lips. “You probably won’t need it. You’ll do things your own way, for good and ill. More good than ill, I predict.”

  The night before, they had sat quietly together in this office, and Douglas had grown aware of his own longtime, half-concious imaginations, of how he would command Ryswyck Academy: idle, theoretical thoughts about what he would do differently, how he would shape the tradition’s future. There was nothing idle or theoretical about his command now, nothing between him and this family of subordinates, this campus with its multifoliate sorrows.

  Once, those leaves had showed him joys.

  In the low light of the room, dim against the glow from outside, the lines of Barklay’s face moved in a plaint of longing. Douglas could barely endure it; and then Barklay uttered softly: “Douglas….”

  Douglas snatched his eyes away. “Barklay,” he said, “I really would rather you didn’t.”

  “You don’t owe me to listen,” he agreed. “It is not—not the heart’s right time. But it’s the only time I have. I would make it easier for you later, if I could.”

  Douglas inhaled. Held his voice quiet. “And, incidentally, make it easier for yourself now.”

  “That, too,” Barklay admitted, simply. “It is the same thing to me, at this point.”

  He ought to just walk away, Douglas thought. But his feet stayed firmly planted where they were. He waited, listening.

  After a moment, Barklay said: “I lied to you, before. When I said I didn’t love you.”

  This was making it easier? Douglas stopped avoiding Barklay’s gaze and stared back. “I knew that,” he said. “I knew it then.” Then a fresh pang of betrayal hit his solar plexus. “Or I thought I did. I couldn’t fathom why you’d lie. I thought that was the worst it could hurt.”

  “My dear—”

  “Was it ever me?” The question cracked itself out of him before he could stop it. “Was it ever me that you saw?”

  A silence. Douglas saw his own hurt mirrored in Barklay’s face; saw, too, the grim knowledge born of that impossible gap of years between them. Barklay was not new to the sensation of a breaking heart—his own, and those on whom he inflicted it.

  “I couldn’t help but see you, Douglas,” Barklay answered softly. “You were always larger than any of the stories in my head. It’s what I loved about you.”

  Douglas understood what he meant. It didn’t help. “Yet you didn’t give those stories up to meet what was really there,” he said, dead-level.

  “Doesn’t speak well of my love, does it?” Barklay’s gaze was even.

  “No.”

  There was another silence, longer this time. Douglas hurt clear through, too much to cry.

  “I would see you survive to heal,” Barklay said finally. “I would see you reach a day when this is swallowed up in a better joy.”

  “I didn’t want a better joy.” He heard his own voice speaking the last truth, light as gossamer on a breath. “I wanted you.”

  Barklay tried to compose himself. Douglas looked away, over Barklay’s shoulder into the daylight glow. He didn’t look back, not even when Barklay hesitated in hope of a better goodbye before starting forward. Seeing no response, he moved round the desk and past Douglas toward the door, shoulders bowed.

  Or would have, except that Douglas’s hand stopped him, gripping his shoulder. They stood, breathing, not looking at one another.

  Then Douglas’s voice scraped to life. “All will be well,” he said quietly.

  Barklay turned his head. “Do you really think so?”

  “I have to.” He turned fully, to look Barklay in the eye. “I have to,” he said again.

  It was not, as Barklay had said, the right time of the heart. But it was the only time they had. He took Barklay’s shoulders and kissed the corners of his lips, and then his brow, all the modes of love represented; then he did what Barklay had never allowed him to do before, and kissed his mouth, eyes closed as if to hurl himself through a barrier of glass.

  When he pulled away he saw that Barklay’s eyes were still shut. There were tears on his face. Yes, Douglas thought, almost savagely. I have done this. As if he heard the thought, Barklay nodded. Then he opened his eyes and drew a deep breath. Recovered himself.

  “Will you come to see me off?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Douglas said.

  ~*~

  The new density of duties for Ryswyck prevented a large number of Ryswyckians from going to the airfield, but some trooped out informally to watch Barklay and his two chosen volunteers board the shuttle with a few of Selkirk’s council. Selkirk’s shuttle was already lifting away as Barklay tossed his duffel up the loading ramp and mounted the steps of the personnel hatch. He paused in the doorway and twisted round, but he did not make a speech or even a gesture. Instead, he took in his last view of Ryswyck with a fond sweeping glance, offered a quick smile to the gathered company and Douglas, and ducked inside. The hatches were closed; the engines started. Several of the company, backing out of the shuttle’s way, turned altogether and started back to the main block. Douglas stayed where he stood and watched the shuttle take air and fly out of sight.

  He returned, with long calm strides, to the main block and went into the headmaster’s office. This was going to be his office and suite now. He wondered how long it would take Barklay’s still-vivid presence to fade.

  Slowly, he went to the windows and looked out through a gap in the drapes. The sheer white fabric magnified the light between itself and the glass, so that he felt himself suspended in a warm, numb glaze. Douglas was overtaken by a feeling like waking with a compressed limb, absorbing the fact of the body’s paralysis before the tingle arrived.

  The sky lowered, and raindrops sped down the glass. Abruptly, Douglas pushed aside the drape, widening the gap to let the bald light in. Then he found the pulley-strings of each panel, one by one, and pulled them all wide, until every drape was at its narrowest column. He turned around: the light in the room was strangely sharp and poised in its depth. Suddenly exhausted, Douglas took the few stumbling steps to Barklay’s desk chair and fell into it. He sat there, hands on the cracked pads of the armrests, and breathed slowly.

  He was still sitting there when Marag came in. Marag slowed his steps, taking it in: the naked windows, the still suspense of the room; Douglas slumped in Barklay’s chair. He came to a stop and drew himself to deliberate attention.

  “Sir,” he said quietly.

  Douglas sat up. “Captain.”

  A silence. Then Marag said: “I have been operating on the assumption that the senior officers will meet in here, sir.”

  Douglas glanced around. “I suppose this is the obvious place,” he said, reluctantly.

  Marag hesitated only a moment before going on. “The mess is still open. You would have time to eat before the meeting starts.”<
br />
  Marag knew Douglas: knew he was cavalier about meals, that when he was under stress the first thing to drop was his appetite. About to brush away Marag’s solicitude with irritation, Douglas paused. Marag also knew that Douglas liked to hide away when he had wounds to lick. That even in serene circumstances, he preferred to be near-invisible, out of direct notice even in his command.

  He couldn’t do that now.

  “Thank you, Marag,” Douglas said. “I’ll take your advice. If you would care to join me.”

  Marag smiled painfully. “I have eaten already, but I would be glad to take a cup of tea with you, Admiral.”

  In the act of getting up, Douglas recoiled at the address. Then he recovered himself. “Better get used to it,” he muttered. This brevet title of his was no different from an arbitrary fault, he thought. An arbitrary opposite-of-a-fault…if it was opposite. What was that that Speir had said? Packaged up, to carry without it dragging along one’s identity. Very well.

  He went with Marag to the mess hall, where his resolve was immediately tested when a cadet leaped up to ring the bell at his appearance. Many Ryswyckians were still in the hall for a late lunch, and they all scraped loudly to their feet and stood at attention. Douglas submerged another recoil; in the silence he could see their eyes all turned his way. Ryswyck was taking refuge in formality, he thought. There was more than one arbitrary…blessing being faced here. After a moment, he gave them a brief bow, closed hand to heart; and they resumed their seats.

  Douglas took a cup of chowder and a roll to the end table, where a few of the senior staff were still gathered. Many of the senior cadre remaining at Ryswyck were former Ryswyckians who had reached his and Speir’s former rank or its equivalent, and were now assisting the department heads as instructors, serving on rotation as their assignments elsewhere might permit. Selkirk had not bothered to make any distinctions between them and their superiors in the cadre; Douglas wondered if he had planned to go down the rotation list and quarantine all the officers not currently on Ryswyck campus. That would work out to a lot of personnel—good, competent, intelligent officers who served vital functions across the military and probably even served as instructors on other bases as he had done. Had Selkirk thought all of that through?

  Yes, Douglas decided, he probably had. Until Speir’s challenge provoked him, Selkirk had probably had a tiered plan of closing the school followed by systematically evaluating Ryswyckian alumni and instructors for reassignment, demotion, or discharge. He had responded to Douglas’s confrontation by simply returning to his original intent. Whatever arguments Douglas had for reinstating the school and approving a modified curriculum and tradition, the invasion could make for him, for the most part. If they survived it.

  The seniors at the table with him did not ask him many questions; they were waiting for the meeting. But their cautious acceptance of him in their midst encouraged several junior officers to approach. Lieutenant Rose was the first. He came over with his half-finished tray, inquired with a look if he might sit, and Douglas gestured to the place across from him.

  Rose had recently been promoted as one of the rota captains. He had several questions to refer from the junior officers in his rota; Douglas answered them patiently as best he could. They were all procedure and protocol questions, and Douglas could feel Marag next to him growing restive, eyeing Rose as if ready to tell him that he should be approaching the senior cadre with these and not coming to Douglas directly. Douglas deprecated Marag with a brief glance. Students had always felt free to approach Barklay directly, and Rose had once been under Douglas’s own supervision. And Douglas could feel the real questions being asked, questions that belonged to him, little as he could answer them.

  Are you still a Ryswyckian? Did you want to depose General Barklay? Are we in danger of being thrown out of the military? What is Barklay doing, and why is he not coming back? Has Lord Selkirk been pressuring you? Can he be trusted?

  Can you be trusted?

  Douglas had a question for Rose in his turn. “Have the junior officers called a meeting yet?”

  “Yes, sir,” Rose said. “It’s to be on the training floor during sparring court hour.”

  Douglas’s lips twitched into an irrepressible smile. Seeing it, Rose brightened visibly.

  “Would you care to brief me afterwards?” Douglas asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  After that, Rose took it on himself to murmur to the other junior officers who sat down nearby the answers Douglas had given him. A few more questions were asked; Marag helped with the answers, now that he had seen what Douglas was doing. By the time the meal was finished, many of the junior officers were looking less shattered. They got up to go about their duties with looks of firm determination.

  Douglas could scarcely rejoice. Their equilibrium was going to suffer worse when the invasion arrived on their doorstep. But at least it would find them recentered in their identity as Ryswyckians and soldiers.

  He went back to Barklay’s—not Barklay’s—office and gathered up the materials he would need for the senior officers’ meeting. The notes Barklay said he had left were in a folded sheaf of notepaper; Douglas sat down at the head of the conference table and unbent the crease to read them. The notes were things like who had keys to certain restricted areas, who had been keeping scorebooks updated, what days to expect deliveries or dispatches, quotidiana of Ryswyck that had changed since Douglas left, or that Douglas had never known. The sheet beneath held Barklay’s notes about his senior cadre, details and assessments for Douglas’s warning or use.

  Staff trickled in; at Douglas’s invitation they chose places at the table and settled themselves while Douglas contemplated, eyes unreading on the page.

  For the longest time, he had assumed he was not very special among those whom Barklay singled out for particular attention. Barklay had wanted someone to salve his occasional need who was willing, discreet, and (Douglas thought) stable-minded—a confluence of opportunity and attraction in which Barklay could have a certain kind of liaison and get away with it. That, he thought now, was probably all still true. But it hadn’t occurred to him that Barklay might be attracted to a certain type. Had he watched his students as they passed through his training, eye out for one who might remind him of his first failure, who could be groomed to play the same role without causing the same harm? As with his recognition of Berenia’s feint, Douglas felt his thoughts laboring in the wake of a horrible intuition. Were there other hearts broken like his? Were there other Ryswyckians dealing in their own private way with the burden Barklay had laid on them?

  These senior officers now filing in to take solemn places at the table: had any of them served Barklay in that fashion? None of them looked like Douglas particularly, but still it would be impossible to tell. Should he try to find out who Barklay’s confidants had been? Who could he ask? Not Marag, whose long experience with Ryswyck had already been turned as an accusation against him. Had Marag…? No, Douglas answered himself. There had been too much forlorn distance between him and Barklay for them to have had that intimate a contact. Douglas felt a fresh charge of anger at Barklay, for causing Marag to be made responsible for intimacies that were not his own, without any recompense. Douglas knew, without having to be told, exactly how Barklay had managed to make Marag feel that unjust burden as a compliment.

  He looked up at Marag, sitting near: Marag waited, eyes on the empty air, with that same quiescent look he brought to the judge’s chair in the arena; only paler, with more hollows and shadows, as if his skin had been sucked inward to the inward wound to his soul. He stirred, feeling Douglas’s scrutiny, and looked at him: and Douglas became aware that most everyone had now arrived and were only pretending to settle. Even the officers who had arrived too late to find a chair were glancing at him from their places against the wall.

  Douglas sat up, refolded his notes, and laid them down with his tablet. “I regret that there are not enough chai
rs,” he said quietly. “Come closer in, officers; this council includes everyone in attendance. We may as well begin.”

  Stevens, arriving on these words, said: “Shall I shut the door, Admiral Douglas, sir?”

  “No,” Douglas said, levelly. “This will not be a room for closed conferences.”

  No one failed to take his meaning; Douglas saw one or two glance over at the bared, rain-beaded windows. Stevens’s lips compressed grimly. “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s start with reports. Marag, Stevens, and Beathas, with their subreports, in that order.”

  “Yes, sir,” Marag said, and began immediately with a rundown of Ryswyck’s supplies in hand, along with an assessment of their lines of supply from Amity, the capital, and elsewhere. He called on a few others to supplement his numbers, suggested who of the junior cadre might be best suited to maintain those tasks, and sat back.

  Stevens had made good use of his time taking the temperature of the junior cadre, had further suggestions along Marag’s lines for adjusting the rota schedule, and had put together a scheme for hosting troops from other divisions. This provoked a long discussion. Douglas listened, chin in hand, until a few started glancing at him for direction; then he said: “I think we have the information we need for now. Stevens, why don’t you take Hallett and Oisel and work out the details.” Stevens nodded, and they moved on.

  Beathas, too, had made good use of the time. She outlined the geographic challenges both to them and to the invading forces, and offered a few informed speculations about what Berenia was likely to throw at Ryswyck. She seconded the request for extra comm boosters, and suggested that the tower be made fully blackout-compliant before nightfall. “Scudders are cheap,” she said, “which is why Bernhelm made so many of them instead of investing in long-range bombers for this operation. They won’t be careful of their craft, so I suggest we have comms crews review evacuation procedures, and move any stores out of the tower base. If we capture any downed pilots we can secure them there; it’s as safe and secure as any place on campus besides the drain-girt tunnels under the arena complex.” Which was to say, Douglas thought grimly, not very safe at all.