He began shoveling down the fiery curry, washing it down with water and a surprisingly drinkable red. Drinkable compared to ration issue, that was. And to think I was accounted a gourmet once, he thought. Polo, hunting, balls, theater, fine uniforms and parades and good restaurants, handsome youths, witty conversation. . surprising how little he'd missed them, in the five years since Raj Whitehall had been given command of the 5th Descott and sent out to teach the wogs not to raid the Civil Government borders.
I resented him then, he mused. Gerrin had been senior. . but he'd needed a commander to bring out his best. A furious perfection of willpower possessed Raj; Gerrin could recognize it without in the least desiring to have it himself. And it's never been boring. Back then, he'd been so bored he'd fiddled the battalion accounts out of sheer ennui.
He finished the plate. Fatima was sitting on the edge of the bunk, eyes demurely cast down; a good imitation of humility. What an actress. The stage lost something when she was born Colonial. Natural talent, he supposed, plus being hand-in-glove with Suzette Whitehall in her impressionable years.
Gerrin sighed again. As far as he was concerned, sex with women was like eating plain boiled rice without butter or salt-possible, but. . On the other hand. A soldier learned to make do with what was at hand; when all you had was boiled rice, that was what you ate.
* * *
The mournful sound of the locomotive whistle echoed through the night. It was evening, and twilight was falling over the rolling hills of the Upper Hemmar River. To their right the last sunlight glittered on the surface of the river below, like a ribbon of hammered silver tracing its way through the darkening fields. The same light caught the three-meter wings of a pterosauroid as it soared over the water, gilding the naked skin and the short plush white fur of its body. Higher, the hills were dusty-green with olive trees, or carpeted with vines in their summer lushness. Terraced fields of barley were brown-gold on the lower slopes; cypresses and eucalyptus lined the dusty white streaks of roadway and surrounded the whitewashed adobe of villas.
Raj looked up from the maps. Center could provide better, holographic projections with all the information you needed, but he'd been raised with paper and it still had something the visions lacked. His father had taught him to read maps, going around Hillchapel-the Whitehall family estate, back in Smythe Parish, Descott County-with compass and the Ordinance Survey, until he learned to see the ground and the markings as one.
"Sentahvo for your thoughts, my heart," Suzette said.
She had her gittar in her lap, gently plucking at the strings.
"Thinking about Descott, and Hillchapel," Raj said. "Damn, but it's been a long time since we've seen it."
Suzette nodded. She'd fitted in surprisingly well; if she considered it a bleak stone barn in the middle of a wilderness, she'd never said so. Well, compared to East Residence, that was what it was; a kerosene lamp was a luxury, in Descott. Most of the County was upland volcanic wilderness, thin forest and thinner stony pasture where you needed ten hectares to feed a sheep. Bandit country too, and bad for killer sauroids.
He missed it.
"This is as domestic as we get, I'm afraid," Suzette said lightly.
Raj glanced around the railroad car. It had been fitted with table and chairs; there was a commode behind a blanket screen, a couple of skins of wine-and-water hanging from the wall, a lantern overhead, and a box of field rations-Suzette's version, and a vast improvement on Army issue. One of his aides was snoring on the floor.
In a car behind, the troopers were singing-they probably thought of it as singing, at least-in a roaring chorus:
* * *
"We're marchin' on relief over burnin' desert sands
Six hundred fightin' Descotters, t' Colonel, an' t'band
Ho! Git awa', ye bullock-man-ye've heard t'bugle blowed
The Fightin' Fifth is comin', down the Drangosh Road-"
"We're luckier than they are," Suzette said, lifting her head and looking off into the gathering night. "We're together, at least. . Their women have to sit and wonder. And every time someone rides up to the farmhouse door it might be a messenger with a bundled rifle and saber that's all they'll see of a lost husband, or a son."
"It's not much of a married life I've given you," Raj said.
Suzette smiled at him. "I wouldn't exchange it for any other," she replied. "I don't think you're one of those who're allowed to have a normal life, anyway."
"Not yet, at least," Raj said. Never, went unspoken between them.
It wasn't as if Barholm would give Raj an honored retirement, even, as a reward for victory.
i have found it unwise to use the term never, Center said.
Suzette's fingers strummed the gittar again. Raj pulled the greatcoat around his shoulders and let his head fall back. Just a moment, he thought. A moment's rest.
"Git yer arses out offen t'floor," the sergeant barked. "We'll be there anytimes."
Corporal Robbi M'Telgez blinked awake.
"Jist when I waz gittin' t'hang a sleepin' on these things," he said mournfully, picking straw out of his hair and yawning in the hot close darkness of the boxcar, thick with the smell of sweat.
The train was slowing, swaying more from side to side. All around was the flat irrigated plain of the Upper Drangosh. M'Telgez put his eye to the slats in the boxcar; it was good-looking country, dry but fit to sprout shoelaces where there was water. The wheat and barley were in, the fields being plowed for a summer crop of corn or millet; cotton and sugarcane and indigo were all well up, and there were orchards in plenty as well, mostly dates and citrus.
Good land fer the gentry, hell on farmers, he thought idly. Rich land meant poor men to work it; they'd all be peons around here. Hotter n' blazes, too.
They passed through a belt of country places, retreats for rich cityfolk built in an open, airy style that looked indecent somehow compared with the foursquare solidity of the houses he was accustomed to-but then, Descott was a long way north of this, and highland country too. He didn't suppose it got cold here even in winter. Then there were shanties on both sides of the rail line, crude booths of straw and reeds. He swore softly when he saw who was in them, besides refugee peasants from the countryside. Among them were men in Civil Government uniforms, only infantry, but still. . they looked hungry.
"Ain't they supposed to pay 'em when they calls 'em in from t'farms?" he said.
The troop sergeant laughed sourly. "Wuz ye born yesstiday, M'Telgez?"
Trooper Smeet put his eye to a crack. "Good's a place t' croak as any," he said mournfully. "We'll a' git kilt, ye know. I hadda dream-"
The rest of the platoon threw bits of hardtack and cold bacon-rind and anything else handy.
"Ye keep sayin' thayt long 'nuff, it'll happen, yer bastid," M'Telgez said disgustedly.
Smeet grinned; he was missing his two front teeth, and his face was a brown wrinkled map of twenty years' service. "Ye knows a way 't live ferever, loik?"
Just inside the city walls the train screeched to a stop; he braced himself against the planking and shaded his eyes as the doors were thrown open.