While he did not like having his aide de camp chosen for him without any input on his part, his first impression of the slight, dark haired young man was favorable. Understandably nervous in the presence of highly ranked superiors, the lieutenant was obviously uncomfortable that the tray of coffee he was carrying prevented him from rendering the requisite salute. The general had just had time to reflect that the young man’s gray silks were, appropriately, immaculate, when the first impression took an abrupt turn for the worse as that idiot Pryce tripped over his own feet and dumped the entire tray of hot coffee and accessories thereto into his lap.
“Holy fuck!” Beed jumped to his feet, face beet red in pain, rage, and shock as the hapless junior officer brushed ineffectually at Beed’s now soaked and stained silks with the small paper napkins that had been on the tray with the coffee. It probably would have been better had the napkins not already been soaked with the spilled coffee, themselves. As it was, he restrained himself from giving this utter moron the dressing down he deserved, barely, with the knowledge that such a display would not look good in front of the more highly ranked general, and worse, his infernal AID. Damned things recorded everything, including understandable but embarrassing moments best forgotten. While embarrassing, the present situation was definitely not understandable, but the junior officer’s dressing down would properly be done privately by his own current CO.
“Jenny, could you send Corporal Johnston in with some paper towels?” The major general did not appear fazed by his aide’s social faux pas. “Pryce, why don’t you get the general a fresh cup of coffee.”
“Uh, no! I mean, that’s quite all right. I’m fine.”
“Actually, we’re about done with the face-to-face material here, anyway. I’m sure you want to change into a fresh uniform as soon as possible, so why don’t I just send Pryce here around with a printout of the background and briefing materials on your new command. I know you prefer hardcopy.” Vanderberg stood and offered his hand and there wasn’t much Beed could do other than shake it, even though he was less than thrilled with his new CO. “Welcome aboard.”
“Glad to be here, sir. Appreciate the opportunity.”
After the still dripping brigadier general had gone, Vanderberg turned to the hapless lieutenant and broke into a grin, “Lieutenant’s bars become you, General Stewart. Especially with that peach fuzz face of yours.”
“Hey, can I help it if I’m still a fairly fresh juv? So why were you so insistent that I drop hot coffee on the prat?” General James Stewart poured himself a fresh cup of coffee from the tray Corporal Johnston had brought in immediately after Beed left.
“I didn’t tell you why I hate his guts?” He pulled open his side desk drawer and removed an unlabeled metal flask, unscrewing the cap and pouring a generous dollop into his own mug, raising an eyebrow at the younger man.
“No, General, I took it on faith that you had a very good reason.” He extended his cup and stirred in what smelled like, and was, very decent scotch.
“You met Benson. She used to work for me in logistics before she took leave to raise a family.” Vanderberg leaned back against the edge of his desk, taking an appreciative sip from his mug.
“Brunette, about up to here?” Stewart’s hand indicated a point roughly even with his chin.
“That’s the one. She used to work for Beed. Had one of the worst OER’s from him I’ve ever seen. Derailed a promising career. Benson was, by the way, excellent in logistics, and a fine young officer, in my estimation.”
“You’re saying she didn’t earn the lousy OER.”
“I’m saying the son of a bitch fucked her because she wouldn’t fuck him. But she couldn’t prove it. No wonder the bastard won’t have an AID anywhere in his vicinity. Not to mention that there have been several incidents where his fellows from the Hudson School for Boys have just barely saved his ass.”
“Okay. That explains the coffee.” Stewart grinned. “So why this particular setup, and why the masquerade?”
“Tell you over dinner. Jane hasn’t seen you in a long time.” He tapped a cigarette out of his pack. Cigarettes had enjoyed a resurgence in popularity among juvs, now that they couldn’t hook you or kill you. “Jenny, call Jane and set dinner up, okay?”
“I’ll get right on it, Peter.”
“Oh, by the way, you’re going to have to have your AID disguised as a PDA. Beed barely tolerates the latter because they can be told to turn off, instead of recording everything and dumping it all to the Galactics’ central storage like the AIDs do. Beed will have you tell it not to record. A real PDA would obey that order. Your AID not only won’t obey, but is smart enough to understand the necessity of acknowledging the command as if it were going to comply. God, I love real AI,” he said, grinning evilly.
“Doesn’t it ever bother you that the AIDs have learned how to lie?”
“It probably would, except that I learned long ago not to waste my time and energy worrying over things I can’t change. So, James, have you talked to Iron Mike lately?”
“Had a letter from him last week, as a matter of fact, apologizing for not being able to make the triple nickel reunion.”
“Not even by AID?”
“The Posleen on Dar Ent were getting frisky. He was in the middle of a battle.”
“Now if that isn’t just like him. Other than that, did you have a good turnout?”
Chapter Five
The most popular car on the road that year was a copper Ford Peregrine coupe. The second most popular was a silver CM Smoker sedan. It took her about an hour to find a reliably nondescript ’45 model year of the latter with a real tag at a used car lot. It had a faint odor of stale french fries and cookie crumbs that brought a fleeting memory of heat and a greener, more sprawling cityscape with taller, more elongated trees, tall pines and poplar mixed in among the oaks, and she put a hand absently to her throat, which was feeling oddly tight. Perhaps an effect of the local industrial smog. She paid ten percent over in FedCreds for the salesman’s poor memory, including forgetting to switch out for a dealer tag. She pulled into the lot of an office park and took the time to hack the DMV and reactivate the thing before getting on 74 to Indianapolis.
Right outside the valley the city gave way to trees on steep hillsides with open cuts of whitish-gray sedimentary layers of something between clay and soft rock. Or they could have been mountains, technically. She didn’t know. They just didn’t seem all that high after the Smokies along I-40. She drove through the Cincy suburbs and out into the Ohio countryside of short, fat, hills and, mixed into the patches of paler spring leaves, a profusion of short, fat cedars.
It was a nearly cloudless day, and with the rolling hills of the Ohio countryside long gone, the sky stretched overhead, enormous, deep, and blue, fading to an odd periwinkle haze near the horizons. Even after darned near forty years away from Rabun Gap it always seems so damned flat out here. No wonder people used to think they could fall off the edge. Outside of the city the road bisected miles and miles of low and growing corn interspersed with great squares of darker green plants, low, with itty bitty leaves. Her forehead wrinkled in puzzlement for a few minutes before deciding they were probably soybeans.
Indianapolis was a surreal Twilight Zoney kind of place, like Tom Sawyer could have lived there or something, minus the white picket fences — the everytown USA a famous theme park had tried to capture and not quite pulled off. It was so pure and wholesome she kept expecting to drive past a row of wood-sided wholesome little houses and look back to see the false fronts of a movie set. She couldn’t help hunching over a bit as she drove through, as if, if there really was such a place, she shouldn’t be in it.