“Well, if they’re anti-social, at least the Bangers’re not bland.”
Mulder peered at him to see if he was serious. “It’s all pan of the design package, Alan. Psychologists’ll tell you that young people need anti-social outlets. Adolescent rebellion is a natural phenomenon. You channel it, sublimate it into orgies and frenzy, and you don’t get student riots, politics, and trouble. Party-animals don’t join revolutionary political parties.”
“I….”
Mulder abruptly turned to the mural wall. “Any further news from the hospital?”
“Mr. Hand is out of surgery. The police have arrested a man, a member of one of the lib-reb groups.”
“Hmmph. Keep me posted.” He came around the desk to stand by Lessing. “Wrench tells me you want to set up a military force for the Cadre, a kind of Waffen-SS. You’re an experienced soldier, Alan, and people tell me you have talent.”
Wrench was fast. Lessing had first broached his idea last night at dinner. He said, “I can lead troops, sir. In tactical spesh-ops anyway. Policy’s someone else’s job.”
“But do you have commitment! Loyalty?”
“Yes… to those who treat me right. I’m loyal to you. I’m loyal to my troops. I’m loyal to my friends. You know that”
“Oh, I believe you. You’re a ‘mere’s mere,’ as Wrench once put it. You have great personal loyalty, but you don’t know what you’re fighting for… and so far you haven’t seemed to care.” He pointed a finger. “A Cadre military unit needs more than just a mere as its commander. We want commitment to our objectives. No hesitation. Can you give us that?”
Lessing didn’t reply. Far down inside himself, fathoms deep beneath the murky waves, something moved. He only glimpsed it: the scales of Leviathan, the great, staring eye of the kraken, the sleek form of the barracuda, the fangs of the killer shark.
He saw a flicker of ice-blue.
Very carefully, he said, “I don ‘ t know, Mr. Mulder. Commitment was never my thing. You need soldiers. I can lead them.”
Mulder plunged both hands into the pockets of his shapeless, tan slacks. “Duty and responsibility: two of the foundation stones for my grandather’s SS. You possess those, Alan, more than Morgan or Wrench or Borchardt or even Goddard, who lives and breathes the Party. You don’t share the rest of our beliefs, but you may come around to them too, some day.”
Lessing let him think.
Mulder shifted from one foot to the other. “I shall recommend to the Party… and to President Outram… that you be allowed to try. Outram needs soldiers and political support; he can’t afford to turn our offer down. I think you’ll get your Cadre unit. You’ll start with one division, the best-trained of the present Cadre. If that works out, we’ll push for more. I warn you, though: if you fail, we’ll cancel it.”
“Thank you, sir.” He felt a lot lighter somehow. The prospect of getting out of Mulder’s gilded cage was exhilarating.
“May I ask a question? A different matter?”
“Sure.”
“Pacov, Alan. Aren’t you curious about Pacov? Who sent you to Marvelous Gap? Who killed Gomez and your comrades? Who slaughtered a third of the human race?”
“I… yeah, I’m curious.” He actually wasn’t; for a mere, death was just the other side of the mirror. He’d seen too much, and he probably did suffer from moral ennui, the accidie that Mulder had spoken of. Conscience? His nightmares were subsiding. Fictional heroes might mourn and bemoan their fates forever, but not real
people. Weep, grieve, bury your dead— and get back to your life. It’s the only one you’ve got.
He said, “Wrench told me he still has Eighty-Five sifting data.”
“He does. But you never ask about Pacov, even though you had so much to do with it. Not with using it, of course. You know what I mean.”
Lessing started to shrug, then turned that into a restless stretch. He felt something bump against the floodgates of memory again, something big and probably horrible. He held those valves closed with all his might. “If Wrench finds anything, he’ll tell me. Has he found something?”
“Nothing much. A scrap here, a fragment there. A memo that leads from Gomez back to an untraceable address in the United States… and then to nowhere. Invoices for the weapons you had, sold to names that don’t exist and shipped to a lithographer’s shop in Detroit. The owner of that shop died in the first Starak attack. We also have a Detroit hotel statement and a drycleaner’s bill in the name of a ‘Mr. James F. Arthur,’ who otherwise does not exist. There are areas in Eighty-Five’s memory that have been dumped. Not just shoved into an oubliette file but physically erased.”
“What more can I do, then?”
“Don’t you want to know? The world wants to catch the genocides who nearly annihilated us. If there’s any one thing both the government and the Party keep hearing, it’s this: get those monsters and execute them… in ways that’d make Vlad the Impaler blanch! Yet you, the man who actually handled Pacov and lived to tell it… you act like you were sent to deliver a case of beer!”
“What can I say? That’s the way I am.” It was a lame excuse, but it was absolutely honest.
Mulder blinked at him in silence, sighed, and then faced the flow-chart on the wall. “What if we don’t buy Armikon Industries next spring?” He was talking not to Lessing but to Eighty-Five, playing his chess game of power again. The display rippled obediently, and colored lines, dots, and boxes danced around and over him.
“Interrupting?” a voice asked. It was Liese.
“No, no, come in.” Mulder did not look around. “Just showing Alan what we’re doing.”
She laid a stack of computer printouts on the desk. “Eighty-Five’s response to Boise attack. Small opinion swing in our favor.”
“What does Goddard say?”
“Not Vizzies. Lib-reb sabotage team. Best guess.”
“Tell Niederhofer at Home-Net to lay it on the Califomians for now. We can change it later if we have to.” He rubbed at his bald pate. “I hate making propaganda out of something this awful, but the psych people say every atrocity story is worth ten soldiers’ lives.”
“Wartime propaganda forgotten afterwards,” Liese confirmed. “Good example: little hostility between Americans and Japanese within ten years after World War II. Vietnamese and Chinese now friends, even after War of 2010.”
“Only the Jews have managed to keep the ‘Holocaust’ alive all these years.” Mulder stumped back to his desk and picked up a sheet of paper. “Here, Alan. This is my letter to Jonas Outram asking that a Special Forces unit be set up under Army auspices. Scott Harter, the Secretary of Defense, is a friend of ours, and he owes us favors. We’ll see that the unit is largely made up of Cadre personnel. You’ll be in charge, with authorization to set up a planning and procurement team. I think Outram will want the unit named ‘Winged Victory ‘ or ‘ First Freedom’ or something else unifying and patriotic. Green light?”
“You had this already written!”
Mulder spread his hands wide. “Somebody has to think ahead around here.”
“Congratulations!” Liese touched Lessing’s shoulder and murmured, “Talk?”
He took the letter and the related files Mulder handed him, shook hands, and left. Liese joined him outside, and they walked together along the powder-and perfume-fragrant corridor to Mrs. Mulder’s sewing room. At this hour the Fairy Godmother would be interacting with the beautiful people of soap-opera never-never-land, provided that Wrench and Morgan hadn’t managed to pry her loose from the TV.
The sewing room lay at the south end of the second floor, over the garage and the kitchens. Large and airy, it had originally been intended as a nursery. The wallpaper was gay with hyacinths, cornflowers, and sunny, yellow animals; the floor was of durable, blue Lino-Last; and the curtains were of white chintz. Mrs. Mulder rarely used the shiny Katayama sewing machine that stood squarely in the center of the room, however, and the boxes and trunks and bolls of fabric piled against the walls were mostly unopened. It was a pretty place, but there was an air of poignancy about it. Perhaps there were even little ghosts of the children the Mulders had never had. Lessing sensed a great loneliness here.