The Lotus Eaters

Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

The boy stood in front of his father's grand desk, hands clutched behind his back and head thrust forward. A sea breeze wafted through the window, bringing with it the not unpleasant aroma of the salt sea to the north. Outside birds chirped in the trees below the balcony. Closer still, on that balcony, a half dozen trixies, plus one, took turns grooming each other.

"What now, Dad?" Hamilcar asked.

"Now we bring the war to them in ways they probably never even imagined," Carrera answered.

The boy frowned, slightly. "Did you know this would happen?" he asked.

Carrera sighed, chewing his lower lip and looking up towards the ceiling of his office. His face scrunched of its own accord. "I knew something like this would happen. That's not really your question though, is it?"

The boy shook his head. "No. I really want to know why it's worth it."

"It's complex," Carrera said. The boy looked directly at his father as if to ask, Do you think I'm not bright enough, even at nine years old, to understand?

The father understood the unstated question. "All right, then," he said. "We are going to war with the Taurans in anywhere from one to three years. We can win that war, provided the Federated States stays at least neutral. To make them stay neutral, we have to deal with their concerns. Of those, a big one is the drug trade."

"But you've told me before that that problem is entirely of their own making, entirely their own fault."

"And I told you the truth, son," Carrera answered. "But the mere fact that it is their own fault has very little to do with whether they accept that it's their own fault. They don't. They won't. Maybe, even, they can't. I don't think they can, anyway."

Carrera sneered. "After all, how can they blame the innocent, rich, white stock broker who feeds several thousand drachma a week up his nose when there's a guilty, brown, and dirt-poor huánuco grower iniquitously cultivating the stuff to feed his starving family?"

"Huh?"

Carrera laughed, bitterly. "Never mind. Just accept that people often not only don't think logically, they often can't, and that certain forms of government often make this worse. Accept it, because it's our reality. Just as it's our reality that we are the most powerful of tiny states on this planet, but are still tiny for all that."

"All right," the boy agreed. "So you accepted that some of our people would be killed?"

"Acceptance is perhaps not the right word, son, implying it was a happy compromise. Let's say I understood it would happen, or at least could, and I was prepared to fight it, mitigate it, and retaliate for it."

Hamilcar's eyes narrowed. "That's bullshit, Dad," he said.

"All right then," Carrera said. "Call it 'acceptance,' if you insist, so that we could prevail in an inevitable war—at least I think it's inevitable—to recapture all of our country."

"Hard on the people who were killed, Dad," the boy observed. "Some of them were my age . . . or even younger."

"How many would be killed to no purpose if we fight the war that is coming and lose?"

"More, I suppose."

"More and to no good," Carrera said. "And on the subject of people your age being killed, your mother and I are agreed; you are leaving the country sooner than we'd planned."

The boy's eyes narrowed again, even as his little shoulders stiffened. "It's wrong to send your own family out of a danger you've helped bring on everyone else, Dad."

The father nodded slowly and deeply, agreeing, "Yes, it would be wrong. But I'm not sending you away to protect my son. I'm sending you away to preserve my replacement."

Hamilcar thought about that for a moment. It made sense and was possibly even the right thing to do. "Where are you sending me?" he asked.

"You, and your Pashtun guards, and Alena, and her husband, Tribune Cano, are heading back to Alena's people. They will preserve you. And possibly teach you some things you need to know."

"All right then," the boy agreed. While his mother would cheerfully have sent him out of harm's way because he was her son, his father, he knew, would never shame him that way. "Since you're heading east tomorrow, Dad," Hamilcar asked, "and since I'm leaving soon, can I go with you?"

"I wish," Carrera said. "But no, I have to preserve my replacement. Besides, the first part of the day I have to meet with Parilla. You'd be bored to death."

The boy looked crestfallen, enough so that Carrera added, "But in a few days there is a ceremony of sorts I want you to undertake before you go."