Starfist: Wings of Hell (14 page)

“I’ve handled this badly,” Hway whispered. “Badly, badly. I-I’m sorry, Sonia.”

Dr. Felipe Montez, a short, spry old man, arrived shortly. He had treated the Kuetgens family members for so many years he was virtually one of them; he had delivered Dean
and
his mother and in her last illness he had attended Hway’s grandmother in prison. “What? What? What do we have here?” he asked. He knelt beside Dean.

“He’s had a seizure—”

“This is the healthiest boy I’ve ever seen. What’s going on here?” He examined Dean carefully as the women stood by nervously. The aide stuck his head through the door but Hway waved him away. “Seizure my ass!” Dr. Montez announced. “The boy’s had a temper tantrum.” He shook a bony forefinger under Hway’s nose. “What the hell brought this on?” He glared in turn at both women. Neither would answer.

“Will he be all right?” Sonia asked.

Dr. Montez shook his head in disgust, picked Dean up, and laid him gently on a nearby sofa. He turned and faced Hway. “You told him, didn’t you? Sonia, what’s your involvement in any of this?” Sonia briefly told him of her visit to Thorsfinni’s World. “Good girl. At least
you
have some sense, and you were following orders, no matter how stupid, but
you,
young lady,” he turned on Hway. “God
damn,
what scares me is we put the fate of our government into the hands of people like you! How can you manage Wanderjahr when you screw up with your only child like this? I
told
you that you’d have to be very careful about telling him.” He shook his head in frustration. “The boy’s vitals are normal. He hasn’t ruptured or broken anything. Only time will tell what’s happened inside his head, or
here.
” He tapped the left side of his chest.

Dr. Montez was one of those rare individuals who could, or thought he could, chew God out if he had to and get away with it. “All right, all right.” He shook his head in perpetual wonder over the abysmal ignorance of the human species. “Matter at hand, matter at hand. What to do with this child? Here.” He punched out a prescription on his writer. “Give him this tonight and call me in the goddamned morning.” With that he gathered up his things, kissed each woman lightly on the cheek, muttered into Sonia’s ear, “Ah, if only I were sixty years younger,” and stalked out.

Hway looked at the prescription and smiled at Sonia. It read, “Tender loving care, Montez.”

Hway Kuetgens had been raised to always hide her emotions. After her parents’ death, her grandmother and guardian, Lorelei, Oligarch of Morgenluft Staat, had groomed Hway to be her successor as the ruler of the state. A calculating, scheming realist, Lorelei tried to instill her values in her granddaughter and had almost succeeded, until Joseph F. Dean came along with Thirty-fourth FIST and awakened something in the young woman. In the intervening years, after the Marines departed Wanderjahr, Hway had worked very hard to exercise coolheaded logic in all things and, since she had never experienced much affection growing up, it was not difficult for her to put Dean out of her mind, at least during the daytime. But while she loved her son, a constant reminder of their brief affair, more than anything in the world, it was difficult for her to express unfiltered, spontaneous affection toward anyone. Her son, in turn, could express rage but not the love he felt for his mother or the longing for his father. But now, after her son’s reaction to Sonia’s message from Corporal Joseph Dean, Hway realized it was time to break down the emotional barriers.

Dean Kuetgens was a precocious child in the sense that he could understand some things far beyond his years. He realized after he’d recovered his composure that the way he had reacted to Sonia Motlaw’s message had been wrong. He loved Sonia as much as his mother and was profoundly disgusted with himself for having attacked her and for what he had said in anger to her and his mother. So, as he lay in bed the night of his rage, he realized he would have to make up for that somehow. As it turned out, he didn’t have to, because his mother did it for him.

“Are you awake?” Hway asked as she came into her son’s darkened room. Dean did not answer but lay stiffly in his bed, pretending to be asleep. He knew it was his chance, the opening he needed to jump up and embrace his mother and make up for what he had done, but he couldn’t. He felt the mattress adjust to his mother’s weight as she sat at one end of the bed. “It was all my fault, son,” she began. “I should have told you about your father, but I couldn’t. How do you explain to a child that his father does not even know him? What else could I do? I suppose I should have continued the lie until you were old enough to understand.” She rested a hand gently on Dean’s leg. “But I just could not do it.” She began to weep. “I miss your father as much as you do,” she confessed. Dean sat up suddenly and they embraced as if it were the first time either had ever done that with someone they loved.

Later, Dean said, “Please tell Auntie Sonia I’m sorry.”

“She knows that already. But in a few minutes you can tell her yourself. Son, I have brought your father’s letter. It’s a real one this time.” Hway smiled through her tears. “And I thought you might like to read it now.” She flicked on a reading lamp in the headboard and handed Dean the duraplast sheet. “Read it. I’m going to get Aunt Sonia. When I come back we’ll talk about many things and Aunt Sonia will tell you about your father.”

“But it’s late, Mother. I have school in the morning.” Dean realized immediately that was the most ridiculous statement he’d ever made.

“No, you don’t—and I am taking today off. Now read. I’ll go fetch Aunt Sonia and then we’ll make some plans. I promise you, son, great changes are about to happen around here.”

At first Dean had to blink his eyes many times to clear his vision but then he read. The letter began,
“My dear son. I am writing this letter in a car in the snow on a world far, far away from where you live. An angle has just told me all about you. She’s almost as beautiful as your mother.”
When he wrote these words Joe Dean had glanced at Sonia Motlaw sitting there beside him and smiled, and that’s when his fingers slipped on the keyboard. But the boy knew his father must be referring to Auntie Sonia, not Euclid, because she
was
beautiful. The letter went on, the boy savoring every word.
“I can’t come to see you now,”
Dean concluded,
“because I am needed here, but when this mission is over, I will come to Wanderjahr and the whole world will know I am your father and we are a family and we shall never be separated again. Joseph F. Dean, Corporal, CMC.”

Dean Kuetgens, the son of Joseph F. Dean, did not know what exactly a “corporal” was but he knew now, with absolute clarity, that when he grew up that is just what he was going to be.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“This heat! This terrible
heat,
” Livy groaned, “is causing me to melt away. Is there no way, Auntie, we can convince this, this,
dreadful
general to put us up somewhere else on this godforsaken world? And the
food
! My God, Auntie, it’s inedible! I shall lose forty precious kilos on this trip!”

“Auntie,” or Senator Anteus Baibu Query, leader of the Confederation Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding mission to Arsenault, smiled and applied a damp cloth to Senator Olivia (“Livy”) Kancho Smedley-Kuso’s lower left leg. They both sat naked on the bed in the quarters assigned to Senator Query upon his arrival at Task Force Aguinaldo’s headquarters. Both did suffer in the heat since they carried more weight than was good in such a tropical environment, but General Anders Aguinaldo had made it clear to every member of the delegation that they would have to live as his troops did—and he himself did—while on their visit. “We are training for the invasion of the enemy’s home world,” he had explained, “so it’s necessary to acclimate ourselves to what we believe is a very wet, warm environment.”

“But the
food,
General, it’s awful!” Senator Query complained. They had just tried to eat lunch in Aguinaldo’s mess.

“Well, sir,” Aguinaldo replied, “I want my staff to be lean and hard when they get to Haulover, so there are no luxuries in my mess. Just enough to keep body and soul together. The troops, they’re different; they work off the calories. But I want you to see that it’s no luxury to be a member of my staff in this task force. I want you to go back to Earth, Senator, and let everyone know that we are not living high out here, and I want our citizens to support us, as I know you do yourself, sir.” He smiled warmly at the delegates, but behind that smile he was thinking,
You’ve come here to screw with me so the sooner you’re gone the better for everyone.

Livy sighed. “The old jarhead wants us gone, Auntie. Why not override him, have him put us up at that
wonderful
resort, you know, Jefferson and I stayed there some years ago. We could commute.”

“Oceanside, Livy. It was ruined in an earthquake or something, remember? They haven’t reopened it yet. More’s the pity.” He rubbed the cloth down Livy’s sweaty leg and gently massaged her toes. “We’ll be gone soon enough, my delicious little mountaintop. Just wait until Grimmer gets his glommers on Aguinaldo’s short parts,” he said with a chuckle. Grimmer had the reputation of doing hatchet jobs on generals and admirals, something he enjoyed since he’d been passed over for promotion in the Holloway Armed Forces and retired an embittered man. “And how
is
Jefferson?” Query asked with a grin.

“Oh, Auntie, why bring
him
up at this divine moment?” Livy drawled. She shrugged her massive shoulders, not at all pleased at the mention of her husband’s name. “He’s at home, doing what husbands do: porking the servants.” She laughed lightly to cover her hatred of the man and her anger at Query for reminding her of him. “Or whatever,” she concluded airily.

“Um, yeeesss, my delightful little snow cone,” Auntie sighed. He wet the cloth and applied it to Livy’s ample breasts. She groaned.

“Why have you never married?” Livy asked suddenly, propping herself up on one elbow. Her turn in the repartee.

“Well, my dear,” Senator Anteus Baibu Query of Holloway’s World answered, jiggling Livy’s left breast playfully, “why ruin all my perfect relationships with marriage?” He leaned forward and brushed his lips gently over an enormous nipple. “And besides, you are now my mound of adipose, Livy, which I have hardly begun to consume.”

“Well, be careful, Anteus,” Senator Olivia Kancho Smedley-Kuso, of Wilkins’s World, said in her most sharply senatorial voice, “that this ‘mound of adipose’ doesn’t consume
you.
”

“Promises, promises,” Query sighed.

Major General Pradesh Cumberland, Task Force Aguinaldo Chief of Staff, set aside his spoon in disgust. “I don’t know, Anders, this field ration gelatin is just too…too”—he shrugged—“
glutinous
for my taste.”

General Anders Aguinaldo laughed. “You only have to eat it so long as those politicians are breathing down our necks.” He shoveled a spoonful of the mass into his mouth. “Goddam, Praddy, reminds me of those lunches old Admiral Porter used to feed us in his mess back at the Heptagon.” He laughed harder. “Something called ‘macaroni’ and, oh, yes, ‘Jell-O.’ Now that Jell-O stuff had the consistency of this but it tasted better.”

“Christ on a rubber crutch, Anders, don’t you think maybe you and I, in the dark of night, could rustle up something more, more,
edible
than this crap? I remember these rations from when I was a second lieutenant! I thought they were bad then! Now? Ugh! Do you think they’ll catch on?”

“You mean that this stuff is twenty years out of date? Oh, yeah. And they know I want them gone. They may be venal, egotistical, self-serving swine, Praddy, but they’re not stupid.” Somehow Aguinaldo had found in storage somewhere on Arsenault a cache of field rations that hadn’t been issued to anyone in nearly two decades. As soon as he learned he was to be the host for the Senate Armed Services Committee fact-finding delegation, he ordered the rations served exclusively in his private mess, where the delegation would eat most of their meals. The troops ate modern, Class A rations while in garrison and much more tasty field rations when on maneuvers. Aguinaldo saw no reason why
they
should suffer because of the senators’ visit.

“This Colonel Grimmer.” Cumberland shook his head. “I almost strangled him twice this morning. These rations would be ideal for that bastard.” He was referring to Lieutenant Colonel, Retired, Sneedly Grimmer, Senator Query’s senior military aide. Whiplash thin, Grimmer always wore a sour expression on a face accentuated by a sharp nose, and a mouth perpetually turned down at the corners as if he detected a foul odor in the air no one else was aware of.

“He’s one of those aides who wears the senator’s mantle like we wear our stars and novas, Praddy. Life’s full of them. I checked his service record. He was a finance officer in the Holloway army. Never rose above the rank of light colonel.” Aguinaldo shrugged. “Now he’s got a blank check to wipe his feet on us. But he’s dangerous because he does know something about the military, enough to cause trouble. Keep your eye on him at the briefing tomorrow.” Aguinaldo had set up a commanders’ briefing for the next morning where the senators would be given a full orientation on what TF Aguinaldo had accomplished and what the plan was for engaging the Skinks on Haulover. Then they would be taken around to visit the various troop units, talk to the personnel there, ask questions, dig into everything. And then, hopefully, go home.

“I wish Oceanside were up and running again,” Cumberland said. “Then we could plant them there and they’d be out of our hair. Let them luxuriate on the beaches instead of bothering us.”

“Yeah, if luck were with us, Praddy, maybe a tsunami would come in again and wash them all out to sea. Damn, did I actually say that?” Aguinaldo laughed.

“I guess we’re fortunate old Haggel Kutmoi isn’t out on this junket,” Cumberland said. He reached into a cargo pocket and took out two cigars, which he clipped expertly. Aguinaldo took one and they lit up.

The mess personnel had been dismissed, since the two officers were dining alone that night, so Aguinaldo got up from the table and opened a cabinet. He took out a full bottle of Old Snort. “You know Colonel Raggers, Seventh MPs? He brought me this bottle of bourbon, best damned stuff I’ve ever tasted. They distill it back on Ravenette. They’re famous for it. Since it’s only you and me, Praddy, let’s crack it over these cigars. We can afford to live dangerously for one night.”

They sipped and smoked for a while. “Yeah, Kutmoi. You’re right, we’re lucky that sleazeball isn’t along. Just ask Alistair Cazombi about that sack of shit. We’re lucky he’s running for president. But Praddy, if he wins…”

“I know.” Cumberland blew a smoke ring. “Even money is saying he does.”

“More than even, I hear.” Aguinaldo leaned back and blew smoke toward the ceiling. “If the Old Girl loses the election we lose this war against the Skinks, this campaign, anyway. And then things will go disastrously wrong for humanity, until, in its own good time, mankind finally catches on, as it always does. So in the long run this senatorial junket is a fart in a whirlwind. Goddamned politicians,” he said with feeling.

“But will they, Anders?”

“What?”

“Humanity. Catch on.”

Aguinaldo finished his drink, poured some into Cumberland’s glass, and refilled his own. He toasted Cumberland and sipped. “That, my friend, is the question.”

The briefing for the senators, although conducted in the most professional military style, was a disaster—for the senators, that is. That was mainly because the auditorium where it was conducted was a hotbox. All the windows were open to admit even the slightest breeze. Flying insectlike creatures sizzled loudly in the protective screens over the windows, often distracting the senators and their staffers as they tried to concentrate on what the briefers were telling them.

Things were not made any easier for the senators by the briefers themselves, who had been told to concentrate on the most complicated aspects of their training and logistical preparations for combat on Haulover. Worst in this regard was the G4’s presentation, which displayed an endless parade of charts and graphs, rows of figures on ammunition rates, short and long tons of supplies, replacement parts, all the sinews of war, vital statistics for commanders to know, but deadly boring stuff for the legislators slowly dehydrating in their seats.

The visitors and their retinue wilted visibly in the heat and humidity, that is, all but Sneedly Grimmer, who sat primly attentive throughout, whispering comments into Senator Query’s ear. The senator was then expected to stand up and question the briefing officers, but after an hour he just sat there, virtually comatose in the heat, unable to respond. Smedley-Kuso couldn’t help dozing. She had charged one of her young female aides to poke her in the ribs if she began nodding off. The military personnel in the huge auditorium found it difficult to suppress snickers as they watched the large woman’s head bobbling on her fleshy shoulders, trying to look as if she were paying attention to what was being said.

But the military people, acclimated to Arsenault’s tropical climate, were fresh, full of energy, confident, professional.

The very first briefer, a Colonel Hiram Brisque, a former instructor at the Confederation General Staff College on Arsenault, was anything but brisk. He was the chief planner in the Operations Section of Task Force Aguinaldo headquarters, and he’d been personally selected by General Aguinaldo to conduct the overview portion of the briefing. That was not just because he was a brilliant strategist but mainly because he was well-known for his droning lectures, which tended to put his students to sleep. He stood there, twenty kilos lighter than before he’d been assigned to the task force, his uniform hanging limply about his frame, waving his pointer at the vid charts like a saber. Regardless of how his words were received by his slowly slumping audience, Colonel Brisque was enjoying himself enormously.