CHAPTER TWO
1227 A.F.
310 Y.O.
"People
are going to think we're weird," Jeffrey said, panting.
"Hell,
we are weird, Jeff," John replied.
They
fell silent as they raced up the slopes of Signal Hill, past
picnicking families and students-it was part of the University
Park. The switchbacks were rough enough, but John cut between
them whenever there weren't any flowerbeds on the slopes. At last
they stood on the paved summit, amid planters and trees in big
pots and sightseers paying twenty-five centimes apiece to look
through pivot-mounted binoculars at the famous view over
Santander City. Jeffrey threw his hand-weights to a bench and
groaned, ducking his head into a fountain and blowing like a
grampus before he drank.
John
stood, concentrating on ignoring the ache in his right foot,
drinking slowly from a water bottle he carried at his waist.
Signal Hill was two hundred meters, the highest land in the city
and right above a bend in the Santander River. From here he could
see most of the capital of the Republic: Capitol Square to the
northwest, and the cathedral beyond it; the executive mansion
with its pillars and green copper roof off to the east, at the
end of embassy row. The Basin District, the ancient beginnings of
Santander City, was below the hill in an oxbow curve of the
river, and the canal basin was on the south bank, amid the
factories and working-class districts. Southward the urban sprawl
vanished in haze; northward you could just make out the wooded
hills that carried the elite suburbs.
The
roar of traffic was muted here, the hissing-spark clatter of
streetcars, the underground rumble of the subway, the sound of
horses and the increasing number of steamcars, even the burbling
roar of the odd gas-engine vehicle. He could smell nothing but
hot stone and the cool green smells of the park, also a welcome
change from most of the city. The sun was red on the western
horizon, still bright up here, but as he watched the streetlights
came on. They traced fairy-lantern patterns of light over the
rolling cityscape, amidst the mellow golden glow of gaslights and
the harsher electric glare along the main streets.
He
grew conscious of someone watching him: a girl about his own age,
but not a student-her calf-length dress was too stylish, and the
little hat perched on one side of her head held a quetzal plume.
She smiled as he met her eyes, then turned to talk to her
matronly companion.
"Looking
you over, stud," Jeff said.
John
half-grinned. Objectively, he knew he was good-looking enough;
tall like his father, with yellow-blond hair and a square-chinned
face. And he kept himself in good enough shape . . . but they
don't know. His foot twinged.
He
punched his brother on the arm. "Like Doreen down in the
canteen?" he said. They sat on the grass and passed a towel
back and forth. "Thank me for it, bro. If I hadn't gotten
you into this weird Chosen stuff you'd still be a weed and
skinny. She's eating you with her eyes, my man."
Jeffrey
Farr had filled out, although he'd always be slimmer than the son
of his foster-mother. Only a trace of adolescent awkwardness
remained, and his long bony face was firming towards adulthood.
"Doreen? All
she'll do is look. Her folks are Reformed Baptist, you know; I've
got about as much chance of seeing her skirt up as I do of
getting the Archbishop flat. I tried pinching her butt and she
mashed my toe so hard I dropped my tray."
John
clucked his tongue. "The Archbishop's butt? Hell, I didn't
know you had a taste for older women. . . . Pax, pax!"
Jeffrey
lit a slightly sweat-dampened cigarette. "Those things will
kill you," John said, refusing the offered pack.
"And
the other Officer's Training Corps cadets will think I'm a pansy
if I don't smoke," Jeffrey said, leaning his elbow on his
knee and looking out over the city. "I'll admit, the phys ed
side of it is easier because of all this exercise shit you talked
me into."
"How's
Maurice taking you going into the army?"
Jeffrey
shrugged. "Dad's just surprised, is all. Every Farr for five
generations has been navy."
"Since
the days of wooden ships and iron men," John agreed.
The
Republic hadn't had a major land war in nearly seventy years, and
the army was tiny and ill-funded. The navy was another matter,
since it had always been policy not to let the Empire gain too
big an edge.
"More
like iron cannon and wooden heads. When do you hear from the
diplomatic service?"
"Next
week," John said. "But I'm pretty confident."
"You've
got the marks for it."
Thanks to Center, he said silently.
Jeffrey's
green eyes narrowed and he shook his head. Even Center can't
make a silk purse out of a sow's udder, he replied, through
the relay that the ancient computer provided.
correct,
Center said. i have merely shortened the period of instruction
and made possible a broader-based course of study.
Think we'll have enough time before the Chosen take on
the Empire? Jeff
thought.
chosen-imperial war within the next two years is a 17%
±3 probability. within the next four, 53% ±5. within the next
six, 92% ±7.
"I
should have my commission in a year," Jeff said.
"You'll be a member in good standing of the
striped-pants-and-spooks brigade."
"Much
good it'll do the Empire," John said gloomily, splitting a
grass stem between his thumbs.
North
lay the rest of the Republic, and the Gut-the narrow waterway
that divided the mainland along most of its width. North of the
Gut was the Universal Empire, largest of Visager's nations,
potentially the richest, and for centuries the most powerful.
Those centuries were generations gone.
"And
we're doing fuck-all!" Jeff said. "I know politicians
are supposed to be dimwits, but the staff over at the Pyramid are
even worse, and the admiralty isn't much better, apart from
Dad."
"We're
doing all we can," John said calmly. "The Republic
isn't doing much yet, but some people see what's coming-Maurice,
for example. And he's a rear admiral, now. We ought to have some
time after they attack the Empire."
"I
suppose so," Jeff sighed. "Hey, you keep me on an even
keel, did I ever tell you that? Yeah, even the Chosen aren't
crazy enough to take on us and the Empire at once. When that
starts, people will sit up and take notice-even them."
He nodded towards the capitol building's dome.
"Maurice
sometimes doubts they'd notice if the Fleet of the Chosen steamed
up the river and began shelling them," John said lightly.
"Dad's
a pessimist. C'mon, let's get back to the dorm, shower, and grab
a hamburger. Maybe Doreen will take pity on me."
"Teamwork,
teamwork, you morons!" Gerta Hosten gasped, hearing the
others stumble. "Johan, your turn on point."
The
jungle trail was narrow and slick with mud. The improvised
stretcher of poles and vines was awkward, would have been awkward
even without the mumbling, tossing form of the boy strapped to
it. His leg was splinted with branches; the lianas that bound it
to the wood were half-buried in swollen-purple flesh.
Gerta
dug her heels in and waited until the stretcher came level, then
sheathed her knife and took the left front pole. The man she was
relieving worked his fingers for a moment, drew his bowie and
plunged forward to slash a way for his comrades. She took the
left from pole, Heinrich carried both rear poles, and Elke
Tirnwitz was on the right front. Johan Kloster moved farther
ahead, chopping his way through the vines. Etkar Summeldorf was
getting the free ride; he'd broken a leg spearing a
crocodile that tried to snack on them while they forded a river
yesterday.
They'd
eaten a fair bit of the croc. You got nothing supplied in the
team-endurance event that concluded the Test of Life. Well,
almost nothing: a pair of shorts, a pair of sandals, a cloth
halter if you were a girl, and a bowie knife. Then they dropped
you and four teammates down a sliderope from a dirigible into the
Kopenrung Mountains along the north side of the Land, and you
made the best time you could to the pickup station. Nobody told
you exactly where that was, either. The Chosen of the Land didn't
need to have their hands held. If you couldn't make it, the
Chosen didn't need you-and you had better all make it. The
Chosen didn't need selfish grandstanders, either.
"Leave
me," Etkar mumbled. "Leave me. Go."
"We can't
leave you, you stupid git," Elke said in a voice hoarse with
worry and fatigue-they were an item, and besides, Etkar had
probably saved their lives at the river. "This is a team
event. We'd all drop a hundred points if we left you
behind."
They'd all
saved each other's lives.
It
was hot: thirty-eight degrees, at least, and steambath humid. Bad
even by the Land's standards. The Kopenrungs were in the far
north, nearest to the equator. That was one reason they'd never
been intensively developed, that and the constant steep slopes
and the lateritic soils. And the leeches, the mosquitoes, the
wild boar and wild buffalo and leopards and constant
thunderstorms and tornadoes.
Sweat
trickled down her skin, adding to the greasy film already there
and stinging in the insect bites and budding jungle sores. The
rough wood pulled at her arm and abraded the calluses on her
palm. Muscles in her lower back complained as she leaned back
against the weight of the stretcher and the slope. Branches and
leaves swatted at her face.
"Heinrich, min
brueder," Gerta said, pacing the words to the muscular
effort. "Tell me again how wonderful it is to be
Chosen."
Elke
made a sharp hissing sound with her teeth. The Fourth Bureau was
unlikely to be listening, but you never knew. Heinrich grunted a
chuckle.
"Shays,"
Johan swore. "Shit." There was wonder in his tone.
"What
is it?" Gerta asked. She couldn't see more than a few paces
through the undergrowth; this section of hillside had burned off
a while ago, and the second growth was rank.
"We
made it."
"What?"
in three strong young voices.
"We
made it! That was the clearing we saw back on the
crest!"
None
of them spoke; they didn't slow down, either. Gerta managed a
sweat-blurred glimpse at the mist-shrouded, jungle-covered
mountains ahead. They looked precisely like the mist-shrouded,
jungle-clad mountains she'd been staring at for the entire past
week.
When
they broke out of the cover onto the little bench-plateau they
broke into a trot by sheer reflex. There were pavilions ahead,
and a crowd of people-officers, officials, Protégé servants. A
doctor ran forward at the sight of the stretcher.
"How
is he?" Elke said.
The
doctor looked up and frowned. "The leg doesn't look too bad.
Now. He'd have lost it in another twenty hours."
Protégés
held out trays. Gerta grabbed at a ceramic tumbler and drank,
long and carefully. It was orange juice, slightly salted. She
shut her eyes for an instant of pure bliss.
A
man cleared his throat. She opened her eyes and snapped to
attention with the other members of her team; all but Ektar, who
was out with a syringe of morphine in his arm.
The
man was elderly, bald, stringy-muscular. He had colonel's pips on
the shoulders of his summer-weight uniform, and a smile like
Death in a good mood on his wrinkled, bony face. She was acutely
conscious of the ring on the third finger of his left hand, an
intertwined circlet of iron and gold. The Chosen ring.
"Gerta
Hosten, Heinrich Hosten, Johan Kloster, Elke Tirnwitz, Etkar
Summeldorf. The ceremony will come later, of course, but it is my
honor to inform you that each of you has achieved at least the
minimum necessary score in the Test of Life. Accordingly, at the
age of eighteen years and six months, you will be enrolled among
the Chosen of the Land. Congratulations."
One
of the others whooped. Gerta couldn't tell which; she was too
busy keeping herself erect. Six months of examinations, tests,
psychological tests, tests of nerve, tests of intelligence, tests
of ability to endure stress; all topped off with seven hellish
days in the Kopenrung jungles-and it was over.
I'm not going to be a Washout. She'd decided long ago to kill herself
rather than endure that; a large proportion of Washouts did. Born
in a Protégé cottage, and I'm Chosen of the Land.
She
snapped off a salute, arm outstretched and fist clenched. A
blood-boil burst and left red running down her mouth as she
grinned; the pain was a sharp stab, but she didn't give a damn.
"You
are a very wealthy young man," the River Electric Company
executive said, looking down at the statement in surprise.
"I
had some seed money from my stepfather," John explained.
"The rest of it comes from commodities deals, mainly."
Courtesy of Center's analysis; that made things childishly easy.
"And investment in Western Petroleum."
His
formal neckcloth felt a little tight; he suppressed an impulse to
fiddle with it. The room was on the seventh story of one of the
new office buildings between the Eastern Highway and the river,
with an overhead fan and shuttered windows that made it cool even
on the hot summer's day. The River Electric exec had very little
on the broad ebony expanse of his desk, just a blotter and a
telephone with a sea-ivory handset. And the plans John had sent
in.
"This
. . ."
"Mercury-arc
rectifier," John supplied helpfully.
"Rectifier,
yes, seems to be very ingenious," the executive said.
He
was a plump little man with bifocals, wearing a rather dandified
cream-colored jacket and blue neckcloth. There was a parrot's
feather in the band of his trilby where it hung on the rack by
the door.
"However,"
he went on, "at present the River Electric Company is
engaged in an extensive, a very extensive, investment program in
primary generating capacity. Why should we undertake a risky new
venture which will require tying up capital in new manufacturing
plant?"
John
leaned forward. "That's just it, Mr. Henforth. The rectifier
will save capital by reducing transmission losses. The
expense of installing them will be considerably less than the
savings in raw generating capacity. And the construction
can be subcontracted. There are a lot of firms here in the
capital, or anywhere in the Eastern Provinces-Tonsville, say, or
Ensburg-who could handle this. River Electric's primary focus on
hydraulic turbines and turbogenerators wouldn't be
affected."
Henforth
steepled his fingers and waited.
"And,"
John went on after the silence stretched, "I'd be willing to
buy say, five hundred thousand shares of River Electric at par.
Also licensing fees from the patent would be assigned."
"It's
definitely an interesting proposition," Henforth said,
smiling. "Come, we'll go up to the executive lounge on the
roof and discuss this further with some of our technical
people." He shook his head. "A young man of your
capacities is wasted in the diplomatic service, Mr. Hosten.
Wasted."
"Skirmish
order!"
The
infantry platoon fanned out, three meters between each man, in
two long lines. The first line jogged forward across the rocky
pasture, their fixed bayonets glittering in the chilly upland
air. Fifty meters forward they went to ground, taking cover
behind ridges and boulders. The second line moved up and
leapfrogged forward in turn.
Ensign
Jeffrey Farr watched carefully through his field-glasses. The
movement was carried out with precision. Good men, he
thought. The Republic's army wasn't large, only seventy thousand
men. It wasn't particularly well-paid or equipped, either; the
men mostly enlisted because it was the employer of last resort.
Bottle troubles, wife troubles, farm kids bored beyond endurance
with watching the south end of a northbound plowhorse, sheer
inability to cope with the chaotic demands of civilian life in
the Republic's fast-growing cities. They could still make good
soldiers if you gave them the right training, and trained men
would be invaluable when the balloon went up. The provincial
militias were supposed to be federalized in time of war, but as
they stood he had little confidence in them.
He
raised his hand in a signal. The platoon sergeant blew a sharp
blast on his whistle and the men rose from the field, slapping at
the dust on their brown tunic jackets. Their stubbled faces
looked impassive and tired after the month of field exercises
through the mountains.
"Good
work, Ensign," his company commander nodded. Captain Daniels
was a thickset man of forty-promotion was slow in the peacetime
army-with a scar across one cheek where a Union bullet had just
missed taking off his face in a skirmish twenty years ago.
"Very
good work," the staff observer said. "I notice you're
spreading the skirmish line thinner."
"Yes,
sir," Jeff said. He nodded at an infantryman jogging by with
his weapon at the trail. It was a bolt-action model with six
cartridges in a tube magazine below the barrel. "Everyone's
getting magazine rifles these days, except the Imperials, and new
designs are coming fast and furious. We've got to disperse
formations more."
Although
to hear some of the fogies talk, they expected to fight in
shoulder-to-shoulder ranks like Civil War troops equipped with
rifle-muskets.
"Yes,
I read that article of yours in the Armed Forces Quarterly,"
the staff type said. "You think nitro powders will be
adopted for small arms?"
major belmody, Center said. A list of biographical data
followed.
The
major looked pretty sharp, if a little elegant for the field in
his greatcoat and red throat-tabs and polished Sam Browne. And
being a younger son of the Belmody Mills Bemodys probably hadn't
hurt his rise through the officer corps either; thirty-two was
damned young to get that high.
"I'm
certain of it, sir," Jeff said. The Belmodys were big in
chemicals and mining explosives. "No smoke, less fouling,
and much higher muzzle velocities, flatter trajectories, smaller
calibers so the troops can carry more ammo."
Captain
Daniels spoke unexpectedly. "I don't trust jacketed
bullets," he said. "They have a tendency to strip and
then tumble when the barrel's hot."
"Sir,
that's just a development problem. Gilding metal can't take the
temperatures of high-velocity rounds. Cupronickel, or straight
copper, that's what needed."
The
older officer smiled. "Ensign, I wish I was half as
confident about anything as you are about everything."
"God
knows we could use some young firebrands in this man's
army," Major Belmody said. "In any case, you and Ensign
Farr must dine with me tonight."
"After
I see the men settled in, sir," Jeff said. The major raised
an eyebrow and nodded, returning his juniors' salutes.
"You'll
do, Farr," Captain Daniels said, grinning, when the staff
officer's car had bounced away over the pasture with an
occasional chuff of waste steam. "You'll go far, too,
if you can learn to be a little more diplomatic about who you
deliver lectures to."
Lieutenant
Gerta Hosten leaned back against the upholstery of the seat and
watched out the half-open window as the train clacked its way
across the central plateau. The air coming in was clean; this
close to Copernik the line had been electrified, and the lack of
coal smoke and the pounding, chuffing sound of a steam locomotive
was a little eerie. There was plenty of traffic on the broad
concrete-surfaced road that flanked the railway, too, steam or
animal-drawn. This was the most pleasant part of the Land, a
rolling volcanic upland at a thousand meters above sea level,
cooler and a little drier. The capital had been moved here from
Oathtaking only a generation after the first wave of Alliance
refugees arrived. Copernik's beginnings went back before the
coming of the Chosen, right back to the initial settlement of
Visager, but nothing remained of the pre-conquest city. Over the
past generation as geothermal steam and then hydropower
supplemented coal, it had also become a major manufacturing
center.
Gerta
watched with interest as rolling contour-plowed fields of sugar
cane, rice, soya, and maize gave way to huge factory compounds.
One of them held an airship assembly shed, a hundred-meter
skeletal structure like a Brobdingnagian barn. The cigar-shaped
hull was still a framework of girders, with only patches of
hull-cladding where aluminum sheet was being riveted to the
structure.
She
buttoned the collar of her field-gray walking-out uniform,
buckled on her gunbelt with the shoulder-strap, and took up her
attaché case. Normally she'd have let her batman carry that, but
there were eyes-only documents in it. Nothing ultra-secret, or
she wouldn't be carrying them on a train, but procedure was
procedure.
Behfel ist Behfel, she recited to herself: orders are orders.
She also had a letter from John Hosten in there. Evidently he was
doing well down in the Republic; he'd gotten some sort of posting
in their diplomatic service.
It
was a pity about John.
"Wake
up, feldwebel," she said.
Her
batman blinked open his eyes and stood, taking down the two bags
from the overhead rack. Pedro was a thickset muscular man in his
thirties, strong and quick and apparently loyal as a Doberman
guard dog. Also about as bright; in fact, she'd owned dogs with
more mother-wit and larger vocabularies. It was policy to exclude
the upper two-thirds of the intelligence gradient when recruiting
soldiers and gendarmes from the Protégé caste. She had her
doubts about that, and she'd always preferred bright ones as
personal servants. More risk, but greater potential gain.
Behfel ist behfel.
The
train lurched slightly as it slowed. The pantograph on the
locomotive clicked amid a shower of sparks as they pulled into
the Northwest Station. There were many tall blond young men in
uniform there, but not the one she instinctively sought. Heinrich
wouldn't be waiting for her; that wouldn't be seemly, and anyway
she had to report to Intelligence HQ for debriefing.
My lovely Heinrich, she thought. I'd fuck you even if you
were my birth-brother. An exaggeration, but he was a dear,
and of course incest taboos didn't apply to adoptee-kin. And
this time when you ask me to marry you, I'm going to say yes.
The
implications of the documents in her attaché case were clear, if
you could read between the paragraphs. It was time to do her
eugenic duty to the Chosen; even with servants, infants took up a
lot of time and effort. Best do it while there was time.
In
a couple of years, they were all going to be very, very busy.