I started to turn away, but Lizard grabbed my arm. "Stay," she whispered. "We're not through with you yet."
A fresh manna mushroom feels like soft bread; it has a delicate sweet taste. One that has had a chance to begin drying will collapse in a dusty shower if it is touched. One that has completely dried out will simply explode like a dandelion, leaving a pink haze of spores floating in the air.
Very much like Terran mushrooms, each of the manna puffballs is filled with millions of spores, each one smaller than a particle of dust. A field of ripe puffballs represents trillions and trillions of spores, just waiting to take to the air. Under the right circumstances-a hot dry wind-the entire field of spores will be liberated into the atmosphere all at the same time. This includes all the spores of all the fruiting puffballs as well as all the spores of all previous generations of puffballs that may still be present in the environment.
Given a large enough area and a strong enough wind, an incredible tonnage of manna spores can be picked up, carried, and ultimately redeposited on the landscape.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 39
Resigned To Fate
"The hardest part of war is staying out of it."
-SOLOMON SHORT
We followed Uncle Ira and Danny Anderson down a long catwalk until they were both sure we were well out of earshot.
"This'll do," said Wallachstein.
As he turned to me, Danny Anderson was already pulling out a sheaf of papers and a pen. He handed them across. "Here, sign all three copies-"
"Can I read them first?"
"Trust me, they're all in order," said Wallachstein. He glanced at his watch. "We don't have a lot of time left. Anderson and I have to be off this ship in thirty minutes, and we still haven't had a chance to kiss the bride."
"Don't get impatient," I snapped. "We haven't had the wedding yet. We've only had time to make a baby. Hey-" I looked up, startled. "These aren't promotion papers. You have me resigning from the Special Forces!"
Wallachstein and Anderson both looked startled. "You didn't tell him?"
Lizard looked unhappy. "I didn't have a chance." She shook her head in resignation and apology. "I figured it would be better if you explained it."
"Explained what?" I demanded.
"General Wainright doesn't like you. Dannenfelser hates you."
"So?"
Danny Anderson spoke up. "I'm afraid you've made rather a had enemy of the Wicked Witch of the West. Nobody does revenge like a faggot."
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Excuse me-?" I remembered Lizard telling me once that Danny was gay.
"It takes one to know one. The point is, the son of a bitch has filed charges against you. You nailed him to a wall, didn't you?"
"Not hard enough, I guess. He pried himself loose."
"Well, aside from the fact that there are several dozen members of the general's own staff who'd like to shake your hand, there's also a disciplinary hearing pending. You're damned lucky that it isn't a court-martial. You have got to be the luckiest goddamned son of a bitch in the whole United States Army. Your history is full of this kind of crap. And you've never even had your wrist slapped. That business with leading the renegades to the storage facility, the appropriation of military property, your absence without leave, the assumption of Captain Duke Anderson's identity, that raid you led on the renegade camp, the executions that followed-you left quite a trail of bodies."
Uncle Ira interrupted, "We covered for you then because you were treading very close to several other operations that we needed to protect."
"I never assumed that it was out of any sense of loyalty to me."
Uncle Ira ignored my interruption. "We also protected you because General Tirelli felt that your testimony might assist the President in making the decision to use nukes in Colorado."
"God only knows why we bothered," Danny Anderson said. "That cute little exercise with Major Bellus-well, you pulled a real rating with that stunt. We wouldn't have covered for you on that one, but you have a friend in the President's ear." He didn't have to look to Lizard; I knew what he meant.
"Danny-" Wallachstein stopped his colleague with a touch on the arm. He turned back to me. "The joke is that we can protect you from a charge of murdering civilians-that's easy-but we can't protect you if you rough up a general's catamite. After I put you on the plane to Panama City, I found out that Dannenfelser had filed charges against you-obviously, he did that with Wainright's backing; the son of a bitch does not stay bought-and now the MPs are looking for you to put you under arrest. I had to do some very fast tap-dancing. Lucky for you, I'm good at it. I managed to lose your paperwork for a while, so they're still looking for you in Idaho or Alaska or somewhere in transit between those points. Hell, for all I know, you might be in Saskatchewan. I don't know where you went. In fact, I'm not even here myself."
"These papers," said Anderson, indicating the sheaf of documents I still held, "are predated. If you resigned your commission before you decked Dannenfelser, he can't bring a military action against you, only a civilian one."
"I see," I said. "And when did I resign my commission?"
"Verbally, to General Tirelli, when you were replaced as science officer on this mission. General Tirelli will confirm that." I looked to Lizard. She nodded.
"This paperwork makes it official. It doesn't protect you if Dannenfelser wants to bring charges against you in civil court, but I think that's highly unlikely. This is going to catch them very off balance."
"I seem to be missing something here. I resign from the Special Forces and everybody's off the hook, right? I assume that means I'm also off the mission-and if that's true, why did Lizard reclassify me and why did you let me into your Double-Q, Red Status briefing?"
"Would you finish looking through the papers, please? And would you sign them quickly? You're holding up lift-off."
I shuffled through to the bottom of the stack. "What the hell?"
"Congratulations," said Wallachstein. "You're going to be the first Indian scout the federal government has hired in more than a century."
"Indian scout-?"
"Uh-huh. The United States Army is authorized to hire civilians for specific purposes as needed. Civilians with special aptitudes. Indian scouts. You're one-quarter Cherokee, aren't you?"
"Does that matter?"
"Not really. It just suits my sense of irony."
"One-eighth Cherokee, actually," I explained. "My maternal grandmother. I'm also one-quarter black and one-quarter Hispanic on my mother's side. We're sort of a one-family melting pot. I've got Jewish and Irish blood too."
"Never mind. That's close enough," Wallachstein cut me off impatiently. He pointed to the papers. "That contract guarantees your employment for the duration of the war, or until either party requests its termination. Your wages will be four times what you earned in the Army; plus, you're eligible for the continuation of all current military insurance, medical, financial, and other allied benefits. And, yes, you'll continue to collect bounties on every worm you kill directly or indirectly, on a pro-rata basis. You'll find that the schedule of bounties for attached civilians is significantly higher than that of military personnel."