Mulvaney paused, and when he continued, used the trainee's given name. "Isaiah signed a warbot agreement last Sixmonth, so he's been bottled. When the sedative has worn off, he'll undergo therapy for neural trauma and be tested for neural functionality. But the conversion team doubts that he can function as a warbot."
After the CO had finished, Speaker Spieler led the company in a prayer for Isaiah-not simply for his survival, but beseeching God that their brother could fight as a warbot.
Afterward, more than thirty new agreements were signed by B Company trainees.
Esau considered signing, and talked to Jael about it. "That's fine, if you want to," she answered. "But I've decided not to. I want to have babies if I possibly can, whether I'm crippled or not."
Esau nodded. "Well then," he said firmly, "I won't either." And chuckled. "Because if you have babies, I want to be the father."
Chapter 32
The War at Home
"Mr. Garmisch, Supervisor Reinholdt will see you now."
Paul Garmisch got uneasily to his feet. He didn't know what this was about, but a guilty conscience had made him wary. The production supervisor's receptionist was indicating a door. It had opened, and a neatly-dressed, athletic-looking man waited by it. He was not Supervisor Reinholdt, but neither was he an office assistant. He looked too hard, too sure.
"Come in, Mr. Garmisch," the man said.
The words, the tone were mild, but to Paul Garmisch they sounded sinister. Garmisch was addicted to adventure cubes, and now he realized what this man reminded him of. He looked like the CIS men on shows about crime detection.
Garmisch entered the office. It was not Production Supervisor Reinholdt who sat behind the desk. It was a woman, someone Garmisch had never seen before. Reinholdt stood to her left, somewhat removed. "Please sit down, Mr. Garmisch," the woman said, and beckoned toward a chair. To her right, also not close, was another man, seated in a chair with a monitor arm and key pad. A small, brown, wiry man with probing, deep-seeing eyes; inwardly Garmisch squirmed, trying to escape them. A foreign immigrant, he thought. Perhaps a Malay. He'd known a Malay family once. The parents had looked somewhat like this man.
The woman repeated herself. "Please be seated, Mr. Garmisch. I am Ms. Sriharan."
She did not identify her function. The omission troubled Garmisch, and so did the chair she'd indicated. He'd never seen one like it before. It stood apart, on a low, apparently portable platform. He stayed where he was. "What is this about?" he asked. His tone was neither challenging nor indignant. It was wary. Frightened.
"I am about to tell you. But first, please sit down." She still sounded affable, looked affable. Her name was foreign, perhaps Asian he thought, but from her blond hair and blue eyes, she could be pure German. Garmisch did not consider himself hostile to non-Germans. "Let them live here, work here, vote here." He'd said it more than once. But he regretted genetic mixing, certainly with non-Nordics.
It was, he knew, much too late to be prevented. Non-Nordics had been trickling in for centuries. Perhaps as far back as the Troubles. (In school, history hadn't taken with him.) After a few generations, little remained of their origins except foreign surnames, sometimes dark skin. African hair. He himself was of mixed origin; it was hardly avoidable. But in his case, so far as he knew, his non-German ancestors were Aryan: Moldavian, Polish, and Croat. In school he had even taken German as one of his electives, learning it well enough to carry on limited conversations.
"Mr. Garmisch," she said. Her voice was still mild. "If you do not sit down, I must arrest you."
Garmisch looked at her, then at "the CIS man," then the Malay. What is a Malay doing here? he wondered. And what is he thinking? Hesitantly he stepped to the chair and sat. Perhaps, he told himself, the questions would not be about what he feared. Perhaps he had no reason to worry.
"Thank you, Mr. Garmisch. Let me complete the introductions." She gestured toward the supposed Malay. "This is Forensic Technologist Balaug, and the gentleman who admitted you is Senior Investigator VerDoorn. Both are of the Commonwealth Internal Security Directorate. You already know Supervisor Reinholdt, of course. He was kind enough to let us use his office."
The security directorate! The confirmation added weight to the stone in Garmisch's belly. He looked from one to the other. Ms. Sriharan leaned back in her chair like someone who'd just eaten a very fine meal. "It has been brought to our attention," she said, "that military blasters assembled on your line have been found defective. The assembler program had been altered, and a small but essential component was omitted, converting each blaster to a small but quite deadly bomb. A man died testing one; it blew his head quite off, and his arms to the elbows. We trust you can enlighten us on how this came to be."
Garmisch looked at Production Supervisor Reinholdt, who looked back at him grimly. Garmisch's gaze turned to his knees, and stayed there. It seemed to him that at the very least he would be discharged from his position. It was a good position. In these days, of course, there were many good jobs, but if they decided that what he had done was deliberate…
"First though," she continued, "let me advise you that you are not required to answer our questions. What you tell us may be used against you in a court of justice. Or to exonerate you, as the case may be."
They know. They surely know. I prepared the assembler program. I am in charge of it. Perhaps if I help them… Otherwise, it seemed certain he would be put in prison, where there were dangerous people who might harm him, beat him up for pleasure, or stab him to death so he could never tell what he knew. Inwardly he shivered.
Ms. Sriharan was looking steadily at him, as was Supervisor Reinholdt. And the Malay, and the senior investigator, whose names had not registered with him. They were all looking at him, waiting for him to speak.
"I have a neighbor," he said softly, as if not wanting to be overheard. "Sometimes he asked me into his apartment, where we would drink beer together, and talk. It is very nice to drink beer with someone and talk. One time he asked me if I would like to go to a football game with him. He had tickets. There is always a party afterward, he said. There will be women, some of them looking for a good man…"
The prime minister's office, five thousand miles from Leipzig, was considerably larger than Supervisor Reinholdt's. And the people gathered there were interested in the broad issue of sabotage, of which defective blasters were only a part.
"It may be time," the prime minister said, "to take the issue to the public. Saboteurs have presented us with several cases having the potential of great harm, including defective equipment in warships and armored floaters. Even defective stasis lockers on troopships. All potentially serious, and a drag on the defense effort.
"Now, from Luneburger's World, we have a case in which several parachutes arrived from the Indonesian Autonomous Republic improperly packed. One of them was used in a training exercise, and a soldier nearly lost his life-a nineteen-year-old from New Jerusalem. His body was effectively destroyed; he would not have survived the day had he not signed a warbot agreement."
Foster looks worn out, the president thought, and the day has little more than begun; he needs more sleep. He would not, however, urge it on him. Defense of the human species took priority. Perhaps if his ability to function seemed threatened… But his friend would never agree to ease off. He'd argue that in Terran gravity, Lunies habitually looked tired.