“And you can do a lot with him in three days?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, voice dangerous. “Oh, yes, indeed.”
Kafari shivered. And hoped Simon knew what he was doing.
“I’m going into Madison,” he said at length. “I’ve got to see the bank manager, among other things. You,” he said, placing both hands on her shoulders, “keep yourself and Yalena inside the house. Don’t open the door to anyone but me. And keep your gun within easy reach. Sonny’s on Active Standby Alert with orders to stop any attack on my quarters, but I believe in being prepared.”
Kafari nodded. “Do you want me to start packing for you?” Her voice didn’t quite hold steady.
Pain skittered through his eyes. “Yes, I think that would help. It would give you something to do. All the uniforms, please. And the personal sidearms. Besides the one I’ll be carrying, of course. Personal sundries, toiletries. A few changes of civilian clothing. I’ll be traveling light.”
“I’ll make two piles. The definites and the maybes.”
He kissed her, very gently.
Then headed for the door. She wanted to run after him, tell him to be careful, tell him everything in her bursting heart, but she let him go. No tears. Nor anything like them. She was a colonel’s wife. She realized fully, for the first time, what that really entailed. She lifted her chin, stiffened her resolve, and marched into the bedroom to sort her husband’s things in preparation for his new war.
And hers.
III
Yalena threw herself onto her bed and cried for a solid, miserable hour.
It wasn’t fair! The very thought of going somewhere else, leaving her friends, her home, going to another star system where she would never see Ami-Lynn again, left her shaken so deeply, she couldn’t do anything but cry, muffling the sound in her pillow so her parents wouldn’t hear. She hated the Brigade, had never hated anyone or anything so much in her life. She had tried to love her father, but she just couldn’t. Her mother… sometimes, she felt very close to her mother. And other times, they were like strangers, unable to talk to one another through the glass walls between them, so thick Yalena despaired of ever truly getting through and making her mother understand.
And now they wanted her to just go with them, just pack up her things and go away to a place where she wouldn’t know anybody or anything. The very thought of having to start over at a new school, where nobody understood anything really important, like saving the oceans or making sure that every child had legal rights to protect them, where nobody would like her because she was the new girl, different, with a father who killed for a living…
Panic rose up and choked her until she couldn’t breathe, because there wasn’t room for the air inside a chest too full of terror and humiliation to take in anything else. Yalena had thought she’d long outgrown that kindergarten terror, but it was still there, down inside, where nobody could see it. She lay shaking for a long time, soaking the bedspread with tears and a streaming nose. When the worst of the storm had finally passed, she sat up, feeling shaky and light-headed. It was awfully quiet, out there. Yalena crept to the door and listened, but there were no voices outside. She heard someone in her parents’ room, opening and closing drawers, it sounded like.
Yalena stepped to the window and peered outside, across the small yard to the landing pad. Her father’s aircar was gone. She clenched the curtains in one hand. He was gone! He hadn’t even said goodbye! Tears threatened again. Then reason reasserted itself. He couldn’t be gone, yet, because there weren’t any ships docked at Ziva Two, right now. Not even the Brigade could get a ship here that fast, could it? No. He must’ve gone into town. She finally realized what she was hearing, from her parents’ room. Her mother was packing.
Yalena swallowed hard. Was her mother going to leave, too? Where would Yalena go? She had the right to stay, but she wasn’t sure where that would be. Could she move in with somebody like Ami-Lynn’s parents? Or would she have to go out to Klameth Canyon and live with her grandparents. Yuck. That would be dire. Almost as bad as going with her parents. She’d have to start a new school in that case, too, and if she went to school in Klameth Canyon, it would be full of farmers who would hate her as much as her cousins hated her.
Panic threatened again.
Yalena finally thought to check on the datanet, to see what her rights actually were and what would happen to her if her mother insisted on leaving Jefferson, too. What she found wasn’t entirely reassuring, but if she had to live in a state-run dormitory, at least she could stay in her same school. That would help. If she lost her friends, she really didn’t know what she would do. She sighed, then decided to send Ami-Lynn a long chat message, to let her know what was happening. She knew Ami-Lynn had been scared, too, when Yalena’s mother had showed up at the classroom and yanked her out the door with a brief apology to her teacher for the inconvenience.
Yalena scowled. She didn’t understand why her parents had forced her to leave school just because her father was being fired from a job he hated and had to go off and be a soldier somewhere else. They could’ve left her in school while he went running off to town and her mother packed suitcases, instead of dragging her all the way out here, to do nothing at all. She pulled up her chat account and started the message.
“I’m okay,” she said, “and I don’t see why I had to leave school. I mean, it’s big news and all, my dad has to leave the planet and I don’t know if my mom is going with him. He has to go fight a war…” Her voice wavered unsteadily. Fight a war. She had never seen the Bolo in the back yard move. She’d talked to the machine a few times, but it scared her. It was huge, bigger than their whole house, and it had all those horrid guns and things on it. Her imagination failed, trying to picture what that thing must look like when it was moving and shooting at things.
She scowled again. Mrs. Gould, that horrible harpy, had lied to them about her father and his Bolo, all those years ago. She still hated her kindergarten teacher for making her miserable and sick, for saying things about her father that weren’t true, for making her feel like a dirty criminal. But Cadence had made everything all right again and she really hadn’t thought there would ever be another war, because they were so far away from all those other worlds that were fighting.
It didn’t seem real, that machines like the one in the back yard were shooting at living creatures who just wanted a safe place to live, when all was said and done. That was what her social dynamics teacher said, anyway, and Mr. Bryant was the smartest teacher she had ever had. She didn’t hate the Deng or the Melconians and didn’t understand why everybody in the Brigade thought the Deng and the Melconians hated them.
She backed up the recording to Ami-Lynn and started over. “Hi, it’s Yalena. I don’t know why Mom dragged me out of school, just to tell me Dad’s been fired from his job. President Zeloc is making the Brigade reassign him to another planet. He has to go off-world and command a different Bolo. He’s in town, I think, doing stuff at the bank, probably, a whole bunch of things before he leaves. I don’t want to get dragged off someplace horrible where I don’t know anybody. I won’t go. They can’t make me and I won’t. If my Mom goes, too, I’ll have to live in a government dorm somewhere in Madison, but I’ll get to stay at the Riverside Junior Academy and that’s the most important thing. So don’t worry about all the fuss, today. I’ll see you at school tomorrow, for sure, and I’ll send another message tonight, after Dad gets home and I find out for sure what’s going to happen with everybody.”