The Lotus Eaters

Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova

"The problem, gentlemen," Carrera said, "is that I am terrified of taking command again."

"Terrified?" Jimenez asked. "You?"

"Yes . . . terrified . . . for my soul."

He held up both his hands, thinking, as he always did, miserable, dainty things. "See these. These are the hands of the greatest one-day-mass-murderer in the history of our planet and the second greatest in the history of the human race. I'd had friends in Hajar . . . children I'd held in my lap. And I murdered them." He shook his head. "Somebody who can do that? He's got no business being in command of anything."

"T'at may be true," McNamara said in English, "t'e first part, anyway. But it ain't t'e whole trut'. You know what, boss? T'em fockin' Yit'rabis ain't had no more truck with t'e Salafi mot'erfockers since Hajar. T'ey ain't had no money to give t'em cause t'ey had to spend it decontaminating and rebuildin' t'eir fockin' capital city. T'ey ain't had no sympat'y for t'e mot'erfockers, neit'er, since t'e Yit'rabis are sure it was t'e hand of God t'at set off t'at bomb. So maybe, yes, you killed a million people. But maybe, too, you saved ten or twenty million of 'em."

Carrera nodded slowly before answering, "The one is speculation. We know for sure about the other, though."

Jimenez snorted. "So we have to be sure about things before we can act, do we, Patricio? Fine. Let me tell you about some things we can be sure of. We can be sure of them because you set them up, and what you didn't set up you allowed. One of those things is that my country—I would have said our country but you've abandoned it—is bisected by a foreign occupier. Another is that a chunk of it is ruled by as vile a cabal of self-seeking corruption as ever went unhanged. We've got fifty thousand regulars under arms, and twice that in reservists, willing and eager to fight to free that occupied portion.

Jimenez stood angrily, jabbing his finger in Carrera's direction. "This is no speculation, Patricio. There's a war coming and it's your fault. You can't duck it. There are people going to fight that war because you formed them and you trained them. You can't duck that, either.

"Your soul, friend?" Jimenez sneered. "Screw your soul; you've got responsibilities."

Carrera sighed, then lifted and sipped at his drink. "You're a bastard; you know that, Xavier?"

* * *

"He's just been a bastard lately," Lourdes said to Artemisia,

sitting across the wooden kitchen table from her. "Grouchy . . . inconsiderate. Cold to me and to the kids . . . and being cold to the kids tears my heart out."

Sitting next to the two, the green eyed, light skinned Alena stifled a harrumph. Being cold to Hamilcar, Iskandr to her, who was to her mind and by her upbringing an avatar of God, was just beyond the pale. Even so, Alena was one of those odd people whose guesses were so good that she might as well have had second sight, if, indeed, she didn't have it. She had a very good idea of why the duque was so distant.

"Sex?" the younger and far more statuesquely built black woman suggested. Artemisia was inarguably the prettier of the two, as well, if not by much. Even so, Lourdes had eyes so large and so beautifully shaped they ought to have been against the law . . . of God if not of man.

"Oh, Arti . . ." Tears sprang to Lourdes' eyes. "He hasn't touched me since he came back from the war."

"Another woman?"

Lourdes dashed away the tears. Sniffling, though trying not to, she answered, "No, no, it's not that. He's barely left the house and never left the grounds since he came back."

"He sure ain't been trying to hammer my old ass," offered the cook, preparing dinner twenty-five feet behind the two.

At that, Lourdes couldn't help but laugh, even as her fingers continued to brush at her eyes. "Thanks, Tina," she said, adding sardonically, "You've no idea how much better that makes me feel."

"Well," Arti boasted, "over sixty or not, Mac's a randy goat. So I doubt Patricio is too old for sex."

"Mac has you for inspiration," Lourdes answered. Lovely eyes downcast, she added, "Patricio only has me."

Artemisia snorted. "Only you, eh? I would kill for your eyes, your lips, and your ass. To say nothing of your legs. No, honey, it isn't that any man would find you unattractive, still less Patricio. I think it must be something else."

For the nonce, Alena kept her own counsel.

* * *

"I feel unclean, you know," Carrera said. "Ever since Hajar I've felt dirty and unworthy of my wife or the kids she gave me."

"Did you ever tell her that?" asked McNamara, reverting once again to Spanish.

Carrera shook his head. "She doesn't know about Hajar. Not that I gave the order to destroy it, I mean. And if I told her, I'm afraid she'd feel the same way I do, that she'd feel I was unclean. I don't think I could take that."

* * *

"He thinks I don't know about the destruction of Hajar," Lourdes whispered, low enough that the cook couldn't hear. Alena caught her breath.

Artemisia leaned in and cocked her head to one side, whispering back. "What about Hajar?"

"He did it. He's never said so but . . . as if a man could keep from screaming during nightmares, or a wife not be able to figure what he was screaming about."

"He did," Alena confirmed.

"John never told me," Arti said, slowly. Turning to Alena she asked, "How do you know?"

"I rarely know how I know," the Pashtun woman answered. "Nonetheless, I know."

"I shouldn't have said anything either. Arti, you can't tell anyone. Ever. Not anyone. Nor you, Alena."

Both the black woman and the Pashtun looked scandalized, if for different reasons. Artemisia said, "Me? Tell someone we nuked a city? And maybe get ourselves nuked in return? Oh, no, Lourdes. That secret is safe with me."

"I don't talk much," Alena added, "and anything that might bring a risk to Iskandr? That's simply impossible." The Pashtun woman looked scandalized at the very thought.

Lourdes shook her head. "Whatever are you going to do when you have children of you own, Alena?"

That might not have been a sore point with another woman. With Alena, raised in a culture that placed a very high value on female fertility, it was an embarrassment. Nor was it lack of trying. As much as she knew, she simply didn't know why she hadn't yet conceived.

Nonetheless, she answered, "Raise them to serve my lord, Iskandr."