His heartbeat quickened as they neared the scene of action. And yet, Roland felt certain he wasn’t scared to die.
No, he was afraid of screwing up.
“Takka says it’s eco-nuts!” the recruit running beside him whispered, panting. Roland didn’t answer. In the last hour he’d completely had it with scuttlebutt.
Neo-Gaian radicals might have blown up a dam, someone said.
No, it was an unlicensed gene lab or maybe an unregistered national bomb — hidden in violation of the Rio Pact…
Hell, none of the rumored emergencies seemed to justify calling in peach-fuzz recruits. It must be real bad trouble. Or else something he didn’t understand yet.
Roland watched the jouncing backpack of Corporal Wu. The compact Chinese noncom carried twice the weight any of them did, yet he obviously held himself back for the sluggish recruits. Roland found himself wishing Wu would pass out the ammo now. What if they were ambushed? What if… ?
You don’t know anything yet, box-head. Better pray they don’t pass out ammo. Half those mama’s boys runnin’ behind you don’t know their rifles from their assholes.
In fairness, Roland figured they probably felt exactly the same way about him.
The squad hustled round the hedge onto a gravel driveway, puffing uphill toward the glaring lanterns. Officers milled about, poring over clipboards and casting long shadows across a close-cropped lawn that had been ripped and scraped by copters and magnus zeps. A grand mansion stood farther upslope, dominating the richly landscaped grounds. Silhouettes hastened past brightly lit windows.
Roland saw no foxholes. No signs of enemy fire. So, maybe ammo wouldn’t be needed after all.
Corporal Wu brought the squad to a disorderly halt as the massive, gruff figure of Sergeant Kleinerman appeared out of nowhere.
“Have the weenies stack weapons over by the flower bed,” Kleinerman told Wu in flat-toned Standard Military English. “Wipe their noses, then take them around back. UNEPA has work for ’em that’s simple enough for infants to handle.”
Any recruit who took that kind of talk personally was a fool. Roland just took advantage of the pause to catch his breath. “No weapons,” Takka groused as they stacked their rifles amid trampled marigolds. “What we supposed to use, our hands?”
Roland shrugged. The casual postures of the officers told him this was no terrorist site. “Prob’ly,” he guessed. “Them and our backs.”
“This way, weenies,” Wu said, with no malice and only a little carefully tailored contempt. “Come on. It’s time to save the world again.”
Through the bright windows Roland glimpsed rich men, rich women, dressed in shimmering fabrics. Nearly all looked like Han-Formosans. For the first time since arriving at Camp P6rez de Cuellar, Roland really felt he was in Taiwan, almost China, thousands of miles from Indiana.
Servants still carried trays of refreshments, their darker Bengali or Tamil complexions contrasting with the pale Taiwanese. Unlike the agitated party guests, the attendants seemed undisturbed to have in their midst all these soldiers and green-clad marshals from UNEPA. In fact, Roland saw one waiter smile when she thought no one was looking, and help herself to a glass of champagne.
UNEPA… Roland thought on spying the green uniforms. That means eco-crimes.
Wu hustled the squad past where some real soldiers stood guard in blurry combat camouflage, their eyes hooded by multisensor goggles which seemed to dart and flash as their pulse-rifles glittered darkly. The guards dismissed the recruits with barely a flicker of attention, which irked Roland far worse than the insults of Wu and Kleinerman.
I’ll make them notice me, he vowed. Though he knew better than to expect it soon. You didn’t get to be like those guys overnight.
Behind the mansion a ramp dropped steeply into the earth. Smoke rose from a blasted steel door that now lay curled and twisted to one side. A woman marshal met them by the opening. Even darker than her chocolate skin was the cast of her features — as if they were carved from basalt. “This way,” she said tersely and led them down the ramp — a trip of more than fifty meters — into a reinforced concrete bunker. When they reached the bottom, however, it wasn’t at all what Roland had expected — some squat armored slab.
Instead, he found himself in a place straight out of the Arabian Nights.
The recruits gasped. “Shee-it!” Takka commented concisely, showing how well he’d picked up the essentials of Military English. Kanakoa, the Hawaiian, expressed amazement even more eloquently. “Welcome to the elephant’s graveyard, Tarzan.”
Roland only stared. Tiny, multicolored spotlights illuminated the arched chamber, subtly emphasizing the shine of ivory and fur and crystal. From wall to wall, the spoils of five continents were piled high. More illicit wealth than Roland had ever seen. More than he could ever have imagined.
From racks in all directions hung spotted leopard pelts, shimmering beaver skins, white winter fox stoles. And shoes! Endless stacks of them, made from dead reptiles, obviously, though Roland couldn’t begin to conceive which species had given its all for which pair.
“Hey, Senterius.” Takka nudged him in the ribs and Roland looked down where the Japanese recruit pointed.
Near his left foot lay a luxurious white carpet… the splayed form of a flayed polar bear whose snarling expression looked really angry. Roland jerked away from those glittering teeth, backing up until something pointy and hard rammed his spine. He whirled, only to goggle in amazement at a stack of elephant tusks, each bearing a golden tip guard.
“Gaia!” he breathed.
“You said it,” Kanakoa commented. “Boy, I’ll bet Her Holy Nibs is completely pissed off over this.”
Roland wished he hadn’t spoken the Earth Mother’s name aloud. Hers wasn’t a soldierly faith, after all. But Kanakoa and Takka seemed as stunned as he was. “What is all this?” Takka asked, waving at the heaped stacks of animal remains. “Who in the world would want these things?”
Roland shrugged. “Used to be, rich folks liked to wear gnomish crap like this.”
Takka sneered. “I knew that. But why now? It is not just illegal. It’s… it’s—”
“Sick? Is that what you were going to say, Private?”
They turned to see the UNEPA marshal standing close by, looking past them at the piled ivory. She couldn’t be over forty years old, but right now the tendons in her neck were taut as bowstrings and she looked quite ancient.
“Come with me, I want to show you soldiers something.”
They followed her past cases filled with pinned, iridescent butterflies, with gorilla-hand ashtrays and stools made from elephants’ feet, with petrified wood and glittering coral no doubt stolen from nature preserves… all the way to the back wall of the artificial cave, where two truly immense tusks formed a standing arch. Tiger skins draped a shrine of sorts — a case crafted in dark hardwood and glass, containing dozens of earthenware jars.
Roland saw veins pulse on the backs of her hands. The recruits fell mute, awed by such hatred as she radiated now. Nothing down here impressed them half as much.
Roland found the courage to ask, “What’s in the jars, ma’am?”
Watching her face, he realized what an effort it took for her to speak right now, and found himself wondering if he’d ever be able to exert such mastery over his own body.
“Rhinoceros… horn,” she said hoarsely. “Powdered narwhal tusk… whale semen…”
Roland nodded. He’d heard of such things. Ancient legends held they could prolong life, or heighten sexual prowess, or drive women into writhing heat. And neither morality nor law nor scientific disproof deterred some men from chasing hope.
“So much. There must be a hundred kilos in there!” Takka commented. But he stepped back when the UNEPA official whirled to glare at him, her expression one of bleak despair.