Patriots

34. Back to the Funny Farm

Amy circled the fortress slowly, a hundred feet in the air. She was carefully avoiding the appearance of being sneaky or threatening. "I didn't really think they'd just shoot us out of the air without warning," she said in a small voice.

"Me neither," Mark agreed heartily. Of course, the car's radio might not work, leaving the fort with no way to warn intruders that they were about to shoot.

"Though I wasn't sure they could warn us," she added. "I don't trust the radio." Great minds running in the same direction, Mark thought. Nervous minds, at any rate.

Amy was driving to provide an excuse for her presence. It might have strained the credulity of even Captain Easton to believe that a Terran seed company had sent a pair of salespeople over so many light-years. This car was a twin-fan design, inherently unstable despite stub wings that worked only in forward flight. It was in better shape than the vehicle Yerby'd rented six months before, though, and Amy was a better driver. Less ham-fisted, at any rate.

"There he is," Mark said, pointing to the figure hoeing energetically in the garden to the west of the fort's outer wall. "It must be Easton, I mean."

Amy brought them in fast. Hovering in a two-fan aircar was like riding a bicycle along a tightrope-and just as likely to be fatal if you screwed up.

"Don't crush his plants!" Mark warned. He remembered the kids' nickname for Easton and added, "Especially his cabbages."

Amy sniffed. She turned the car ninety degrees just before touching down, aligning the undercarriage perfectly with the outer furrow and a foot beyond it. Easton looked up with a puzzled expression.

"Good evening, Captain!" Mark called as he hopped out of the vehicle. "I'm with Sunrise Seeds of Vermont, and you're clearly just the sort of discerning customer we're looking for. Have we got a deal for you!"

"Seeds?" repeated Easton on a note of rising hope. "No, let me come to you, young man. You might…"

Easton hopped spryly to Mark's side, the tools in his belt jingling. His red waterproof boots didn't so much as brush a leaf of his carefully tended plants.

Mark held his catalog reader so the captain could view the projected images. He ran his thumb over the index button and said, "Have you ever seen more gorgeous examples of-"

Problem. Mark didn't have the slightest idea of what the projected flowers might be.

"Heliotrope!" Captain Easton gasped. "Hellebore! Ageratum!"

Not a problem after all. As for "gorgeous," Mark had never seen a catalog image that wasn't at least as pretty as any example of the object that existed in the sidereal universe.

"Perhaps we could go inside, sir?" Mark prompted. "I'm sure you'll want to take some time with these, these riches."

"By heaven I will!" Easton said. He started for the armored access port in the wall nearby.

"Perhaps the gentleman would like to fly into the courtyard, sir," Amy suggested with sugary deference. "It seemed to me, humble driver though I am, that there are wonderful expanses for sheltered planting within these walls."

Easton paused with his foot raised for another step. He turned his head. "In the courtyard?" he repeated.

"Our prices are very reasonable," Mark said. "I'm confident that Sunrise Seeds can undercut the prices you're now paying by…"

He raised his eyebrow. "Am I correct in supposing that all your supplies come by special order from Earth?" he asked.

"Except for some of the bulb stock that provides me with its natural increase," Easton agreed. "I have a long-term plan to border the external wall of the fort in paper-white narcissus. Though of course that's very long-term."

Mark waved his hand airily. "Sunrise Seeds has built a warehouse on Dittersdorf Major to supply this entire arm of the galaxy, sir," he said. "For no more than the cost of what you have in the ground here-"

He nodded toward the garden, about an acre and a half of varied plantings. The growth was lush. The plot must have good soil, and Mark was sure there was a sufficiency of rain everywhere on Dittersdorf.

"For no more than your present cost," he continued, "you can have enough narcissus to plant a border three feet wide. And our narcissi are of particularly white paper, I might add."

Amy winced. "Paper?" said Easton. His puzzlement turned to a frown. "Ah, you're joking. Well, have your joke, young man, but I trust that by the time you're my age, you'll have learned that plants are no fit subject for humor!"

"I beg your pardon, sir," Mark said contritely. Apparently paper-white narcissi weren't paper after all. "I assure you that our prices are no joke, though. Ah-do you have the labor on hand to carry out a beautification project of such magnificence?"

"Come on inside," Easton said brusquely. "Never mind the courtyard for now. We'll deal with that later. We've got to see Hounslow at once. He'll supply the labor!"

Easton popped through the access door like a rabbit diving for its burrow an inch ahead of snapping jaws. "You know," his voice drifted back as Mark followed Amy down the ladder, "I could do a two-level border with narcissi against the wall and a row of erythronium on the outside. Or even three-level…"

Mark and Amy had to skip from a walk to a run to keep up with Captain Easton's course along the half-lit corridors. The tunnels of the fort were an environment as changeless as the depths of the sea. The lights never went out-unless they failed, in which case they never came on again. There was no more maintenance than the depths of the sea had, either.

Children's voices echoed, but there weren't any specifically martial sounds. The civilian port controller on Major hadn't any idea how big the ship that arrived last week had been. Each of the vessels Mark had seen when he first landed on Zenith had several hundred soldiers on board, and they'd also been carrying heavy equipment of the sort that was already stockpiled in enormous quantities on Dittersdorf.

The troops lounging in the corridor looked pretty much the same as those Mark had seen when he was here the first time. He couldn't swear they were the same people, but they looked equally scruffy and there weren't any more of them visible.

"Hey, sir, how you doing?" a man called to Easton 's obvious agitation. "Don't have cabbage blight, do you?"

The laughter was general but good-natured. Easton 's troops didn't hate him. That would be like hating a teddy bear.

"Now, vegetables," the captain said as he trotted along. He was too lost in dreams of expanded plantings to notice his troops or hear what they might be saying. "What sort of a selection of edible plants can you supply?"

"Anything your heart desires, Captain," Mark said soothingly. "Anything you can dream of can be in your hands in seventy-two hours."

In so big a fort, an influx of troops could be concealed far beyond the corridors connecting the garden and the Command Center. There wasn't any reason for such deception, though. Nothing Mark saw appeared to have changed from the previous visit.

And Captain Easton was the same man. It was hard to imagine circumstances in which the Alliance would reinforce this base but leave Easton in command of it.

Mark knew to hold his breath as they strode past the pump room converted to an open latrine. Amy didn't, and the smell shoved her against the far wall in midstride.

"Wonderful natural fertilizer!" Easton muttered. "Most of it well rotted into the best nitrate enrichment you could imagine! And then my troops flatly refuse to remove and spread it for me. Mutiny! If I weren't a forgiving man, I'd…"

"It's certainly well rotted," Amy agreed in a faint voice.

"The door's supposed to be closed, though," Easton added, pulling the panel shut. That was the first evidence Mark had seen that any aspect of the normal world could penetrate the tangle of vegetation choking Easton 's mind.

When Mark stepped close to Amy in case the brown miasma had stunned her into falling, he noticed that her small belt purse whirred. Her camera was scanning through a hole in the front of the purse. Though she wasn't able to spread the triple lenses to get a direct three-dimensional image, the camera's microprocessor would be able to build complete holograms from changes in perspective the lens got jouncing down the corridor.

Always assuming that nobody noticed the camera and had Amy shot as a spy. He hadn't guessed she was going to take such a risk.

The door with the hand-printed COMMAND CENTER sign was ajar. It couldn't be fully closed, since the latch and jamb Yerby had smashed six months ago still hadn't been replaced. Instead of dithering outside as he had before, Captain Easton barged straight in.

Lieutenant Hounslow was arguing with a forty-year-old woman wearing sergeant's chevrons on the collar of her fresh-looking uniform. Both of them turned when the door opened. Hounslow seemed surprised, but the sergeant's expression remained one of angry frustration.

"Hounslow!" Easton snapped. "How many troops do you have?"

"Well, with the addition of Sergeant Papashvili's squad, sir, fifty-one effectives," Hounslow said. "I'm sorry to say that the sergeant here is questioning my task assignments, however."

He glared at Papashvili. Hounslow had been filling out another multicolored duty chart before the sergeant had come into the office. Now another thought struck him; he whisked the sheet of graph paper off his desk to hold behind his back. He seemed to be afraid Captain Easton had gone nuts and would start tearing up the items of greatest value to Hounslow.

Well, nuts in a different way from usual.

"I need them all," Easton said. "Immediately! We don't have much time-"

"Oh, heaven be praised, Captain!" Sergeant Papashvili cried. "I knew you both couldn't be completely bughouse!"

"-before the narcissus planting season here is over," Easton continued, ignoring the sergeant. "We'll need a border spaded around the outer circuit of the walls, three feet wide and I think six inches deep."

He pursed his lips and added, "Though we may have to settle for a shallower bed, given the time available. Well, see to it, Hounslow."

The lieutenant and sergeant both stared at Easton, transfixed. They regained control of their tongues and blurted simultaneously, "Are you crazy?"

Easton drew himself up stiffly. "Stand to attention when you address your commanding officer!" he ordered.

Hounslow and Papashvili clicked their heels as they obeyed. They looked like a couple being savaged by their pet goldfish.

"Sir, my duty rosters are made out for-" Hounslow began.

Easton brushed the protest aside incomplete. "Well, you'll have to change them, then," he said crisply. "This is a time-dependent project. It's going to be close, getting so many bulbs ino the ground before first frost anyway."

"Captain," Sergeant Papashvili said in a despairing moan. She looked like a sturdy, no-nonsense woman, but the week she'd spent on Dittersdorf had obviously shaken her. "For heaven's sake, sir, there's a permanent garrison of five hundred troops arriving next month and I've got the job of refurbishing living quarters for them. Not to mention temporary accommodations for up to four thousand more who might stage through here. One month!"

"Why, I'd forgotten that!" the captain said in sudden cheerfulness. "Five hundred troops! Wonderful! Why, I'll be able to develop the courtyard after all!"

"Change my charts," Hounslow repeated sepulchrally. He stared at the half-completed roster in his hand as if it were his death sentence. "I don't believe this."

I believe it, Mark thought. You've known Easton a lot longer than I have, so it shouldn't be a surprise to you either that he's around the bend.

"I wonder if we might look at the courtyard?" Mark said aloud. "To get a notion of how best to convert it into a garden."

As they flew in, he'd noticed pieces of tarpaulin-covered equipment which hadn't been there when Yerby and Mark visited earlier. If they were fighting vehicles, the raiders had to know about it.

"A Garden of Eden," Amy added, "with a man of your genius guiding the project."

"Yes, of course," Easton said absently. "Papashvili, take them up, will you? You and your engineers will be a great help on this, sergeant. A great help!"

"Oh God," the sergeant murmured. "Our help in ages past…"

"Ah, young man?" Easton asked in sudden concern. "Would it be possible for me to keep your catalog until you return with the initial order for narcissi? In three days, you said?"

"That's right, Captain," Mark said. "And sure, you're welcome to hold on to the catalog. I hope it'll make your days a little brighter."

"Oh, it will!" Easton said, snatching the reader from Mark's hands. "Now, let's see. At six inches between bulbs, that will be…"

Mark and Amy followed Papashvili out into the corridor. The sergeant walked like an unusually gloomy zombie. Behind them, Captain Easton was calculating aloud the number of bulbs he'd need.

Mark felt a twinge of guilt. This was certainly better than shooting people, but Mark really did feel as though he were being mean to a teddy bear.