The Lotus Eaters

Anno Condita 472 Carrera Family Cemetery, Cochea, Balboa, Terra Nova

Tranzitree wax candles burned in a perimeter around the man. Though they were not deadly to insects, as they were to people, the bugs tended to hate the smell of the things and so tended to stay away.

It still hurt, even if time had attenuated the pain.

Time, thought Patricio Carrera, is a funny thing. Here it is, only forty odd years since you were born, Linda . . . and centuries, it seems, since you died.

There had been a time when he would camp out by his late family's graves and drink himself into a coma, usually becoming hysterical sometime in the process. Time had, if not quite healed the wounds, at least reduced the intensity of the pain. Besides, he had other pains to eat away at him, and those he had caused himself.

Carrera sat, back against the tall white marble stele that marked the graves of his slaughtered first family. Next to him was a basket of plum-sized, gray and wrinkled Terra Novan olives. He always brought Linda and the kids a gift offering when he came. Birds fluttered from branch to branch and insects chirped in the grass surrounding the candled perimeter. A steady breeze added a rustling of fallen leaves and bent the grass under its push. Further away from the marker, past where family retainers kept the grass well trimmed, a gurgling stream—running even though the dry season and a near torrent now, in the middle of the wet—added to the music.

Carrera blanked his mind to everything but the sounds and smells for a moment, then thought, I have always loved this place. Partly because you came from it. But also because it is so quiet and peaceful. Everything so clean and fresh. As you were.

Your mother and father get along well with Lourdes. Maybe it helps that she's a distant relative. On the other hand, she tries very hard too.

You know I have more children now, three of them. Don't worry. No one will ever replace you in my heart. But they are fine children . . . I think you would like them. I tell them about you, too. The oldest, the boy, asks me about you and the babies all the time. He's been sent away. And even though I told him it was because he is my designated replacement, I know in my heart that I sent him away for safety's sake, too.

Watch over the boy, if you would. We need him. I think he's going to be better at this even than I am.

Balboa is changing. I wish you could be here to see it. Just about everyone with a will to work has a job now. Do you know, the City has the lowest crime rate of any major city in this hemisphere? Of course, there are those who call the punishment the crime. But I don't care what they think or say.

I never cared what anyone thought but you.

And that's all. I'll be here for a couple of days. I'll visit. I have to, after all. I've done some really shitty things I need to talk to you about.

Sadly, Carrera stood up and began to trudge the half mile back to the house. About halfway there he heard the steady whopwhopwhop of one of the Legion's IM-71 helicopters. He quickened his pace.

* * *

Fernandez was waiting at the Finca Carrera's front porch when Carrera arrived. The intel chief was seated in a white painted, wooden patio chair, under the eaves, reading a book and intermittently sipping from a rum and coke that had been brought to him by Lourdes. He noticed Carrera, afoot, walking up the gravel road to the house. Before Carrera could even ask, the intelligence officer sat alert, closed the book and blurted out, "We have an opportunity, Patricio."

"What's that? Can we talk about it here?"

Fernandez didn't even have to think that one over. "Best not. Let's walk, shall we?"

"Sure. Let me tell . . ."

"I already told Lourdes," Fernandez said. "She's chatting with Linda's mother."

"Fine," Carrera said, turning in place and walking back toward the cemetery. "Let's talk."

Fernandez stood, closing the book upon a place-saving finger. He followed Carrera back toward the cemetery. Once they were out of earshot of the house, Fernandez said, "The Charlemagne is coming. In about ten days."

Carrera thought for a moment, trying to remember where he'd heard the name before. He halted for a moment, poking his tongue around his molars for a while, while trying to recall. Then it hit him. "The Gallic aircraft carrier?"

"Almost a super carrier," Fernandez corrected. "And she's coming with her full battle group."

Carrera shook his head, doubtfully. "We don't have any reason to think the Taurans are planning to attack in a month."

"Clearly not," Fernandez agreed. "Though I expect the visit is for the air wing to train over our ground. But that wasn't what I meant. I mean that with the second Megalodon Class sub tested and ready for operations now, we have an opportunity to see if we can penetrate the ship's defensive screen to get at it."

"Ohhh. But why tip our hand?"

"I wasn't planning on tipping our hand," Fernandez answered as he kicked a small rock from the roadway. "I thought we could use the second one, with its clicker going, to distract the Gauls while the first one, clicker off, slips in close."

"You talked to Fosa about this?"

"Yes," Fernandez nodded. "He agrees it would be a unique opportunity to test the submarine."

"How are they going to do it?"

"We've got two built," Fernandez answered, "and another that's close enough to completion that we could make it . . . mmm . . . not seaworthy but at least floatworthy.

"Fosa's got two possible plans. Plan A, he says, is where we'll sail one out of the pens, with its clicker disengaged, and conceal it in some little inlet along the Shimmering Sea coastline. The almost finished one will take its place. The other finished one will then sail to a rendezvous point where it will meet with the one we hid by the coast. Plan B is we mount a clicker to the tender we use to shadow them for test dives. Both subs sail with clickers on, but at a predetermined time the one with the tender will shut its off, and the tender will start clicking to simulate the sub's being there."

"Plan B," Carrera said, without hesitation. "If we used Plan A, and someone spotted the sub and someone else, say Tauran Intelligence noticed it wasn't clicking, the secret would be blown."

"Plan B, then," Fernandez agreed. "The two of them will then link up at sea and sail to a point outside of the range of the Charlemagne's escorts and take station, one to a place above the lowest thermal layer—if there's more than one—that's still within depth capacity and one below it. The one with the clicker engaged will be above. There will probably be only one thermal layer, mind you, though with the cold current in the Shimmering Sea and the undersea volcanism there may be more.

"At the point where the escorts notice the one above and come after it, it will break off and head for the Puerto Lindo sub pens. The other will press on until it is within engagement range of the carrier and maybe scoot around a little to make sure they can't detect it. Then it will come home, too, and we'll move the floatworthy one back to the assembly plant as if we discovered some flaw during testing."

Carrera thought as the pair of them continued to walk. Possibility one: We don't test beforehand and when the war comes maybe we surprise the Taurans and maybe we're the ones who are surprised. Two: We test and it's a flop; the Taurans catch us and find out about the Meg Class. Three: We test and get away with it.

It's a better than fifty-fifty bet, I think, because we know we're running the test and the Taurans don't.

Ah, but what about the United Earth Peace Fleet? How do we keep them from spotting us? Marguerite hasn't answered the phone in quite some time now. Maybe that's my fault for shutting the communicator up so long. Anyway, there's no way to probe her to see. And the Yamatan intelligence has dried up. I wonder if she's even still in system.

He asked Fernandez about the problem of UEPF surveillance.

"I don't think they're watching very closely, Patricio," Fernandez said. "And, no, I'm not sure why and, yes, it does bother me. But there should have been something, some kind of reaction, to our operations in La Palma and Santander. For that matter, we've done enough recon flights over Atlantis Base with the Condors that there was a fair chance of visual spotting. But they don't seem to be looking.

"I think it's a good bet."

They walked in silence until reaching the cemetery. There, Carrera nodded and said, "All right. Tell Fosa I authorize him to do it."

"What are you reading?" Carrera asked, really noticing for the first time that Fernandez was carrying a book.

Holding up the thing, front cover toward Carrera, Fernandez said, "Memoirs of Belisario Carrera, Annotated and Abridged. Interesting stuff."

"It was right here, you know," Carrera said, sweeping an arm around the clearing.

"What was?"

"The first fight between my multi-great grandfather-in-law and Old Earth."

"Ohhh. It was here that they killed the slaver, Kotek Annan?"

Carrera pointed at a spot not very far from Linda's memorial. "His head stopped rolling right about there, according to family legends."

Fernandez stopped dead, then opened the book and thumbed back forty or fifty pages. When he found what he was looking for, a description of that first fight, he read the passage and then reread it. Then he furiously skipped chapters to get to the section about the second fight, the one in the city. This he read, too. For a long moment, Fernandez chewed on his lower lip, as if searching for something.

"What happened to the shuttle?" he asked, excitement in his voice. "The one they took out on the ground at the old UN station in Ciudad Balboa?"

Carrera shrugged. "Dunno. I imagine the Earthers recovered it. I doubt old Belisario knew how to fly one. And his people were all simple campesinos."

"Yeah . . . maybe. But, give the old boy his due; he was no dummy. Why would he leave the earthpigs with a repairable shuttle? Would you?"

"Now that you mention it, no," Carrera said.

Fernandez smiled broadly. It was so unusual an expression for him that Carrera was slightly shocked.

"Would you happen to know where are the unabridged memoirs?" Fernandez asked.

Carrera pointed down the road. "The original originals, I'm not sure. But there's a mostly complete copy at my old house a couple of miles down the road. I wouldn't recommend them, though."

"Why's that?"

"Handwritten, and old Belisario's penmanship was not of the best. Likewise, the paper he used was awful . . . crumbling, now, mostly. I understand that the PhD candidate who did the annotated version used up a lot of research assistant's time trying to preserve them and sucked up a lot of computer time trying to decipher them.

"I was going to try to publish them, myself, back before the war. I finally gave up on the old boy's penmanship."

"Would you mind letting me see the copies?" Fernandez asked.

"Would you mind walking a couple of miles?"

Fernandez shook his head no.

"Can you tell me why you're interested?" Carrera asked.

"I'd rather not; not just yet," Fernandez answered, thinking, Because it's such an outside shot I'd look like a fool if it doesn't pan out.

Carrera shrugged. "Come on, then."