The Lotus Eaters

Anno Condita 470 Main Parade Field, Legates' Row, Isla Real, Balboa, Terra Nova

The plane was a high winged monoplane with a great deal of glass to it. Called a "Cricket," it performed, more cheaply, a number of tasks within the Legion that most armies used helicopters for. The scout/command and control plane's engine droned loudly as it made a steep descent to the parade field fronting Quarters One. Looking down, Carrera shook his head, ruefully. He put his mouth to Lourdes' ear and said, "I'm getting old."

"How's that, Patricio?" the woman asked.

In answer, he grimaced and put his right index finger near the window, jabbing it downward three times. Lourdes looked out and saw a sea of humanity, partially pixel-clad and in at least equal measure in civilian, dry season white, packing the parade field. The troops and their families had thoughtfully left a rectangular open area, just slightly larger than required to land a Cricket. She looked and smiled, pleased that the people still loved her husband as she did.

"So much for coming here unannounced," Carrera said.

"But how . . . I mean, you told hardly anyone. We didn't even bring any bags." Which wasn't strictly true. Carrera had a carry-on and Lourdes a small trunk. But from her point of view that was no baggage.

He shook his head. "Grapevine. Rumor control. One of the centurions at the Casa paying back a favor to an old friend on the island. Or, most probably, all three."

Which is why "secret, unannounced Annual General Inspections" are never secret or unannounced.

"It's very hard to keep a secret these days," he added, "if people don't think it should be kept or owe favors to or need favors from people who don't want it kept."

Lourdes looked suddenly guilty. "Well . . . I did tell Artemisia that we were coming. Someone, after all, had to make sure Quarters One was ready."

Again, Carrera shook his head. "She didn't spread the word. Arti can keep a secret."

Lourdes briefly considered nukes and destroyed cities and mass murder and thought, Lord, I hope so, her and Alena . . . well, about Alena, at least, I have no doubts whatsoever. I'd be jealous of her, I think, and her relationship to Hamilcar, if I weren't so completely sure that if a meg were coming for Ham, the fish would have to eat through Alena to get to my boy . . . and she'd be prying its teeth loose from the inside while kicking its gut into jelly the whole time it was swimming.

As the plane practically auto-hovered over the landing spot—there was enough of a head wind for the thing almost to take off on its own—Carrera glanced over the assembly. He saw that it was not just people, soldiers and their families, but that someone had arranged an honor guard in legionary dress whites, set up a public address system, and had a limousine on station. He turned his head slowly, looking for someone senior he could tear a new asshole in for ruining his planned, private landing.

But, No, no one above a junior centurion that I can see. And I'm not going to chew one of them out for being . . . well . . . for being polite, I suppose. And it is kind of thoughtful.

I hope to Hell they aren't really expecting a speech.

* * *

"That was a very nice little speech," Lourdes said, as the two walked from the limousine to the open doorway of Quarters One. Artemisia stood in the doorway. "Especially since you weren't planning on giving one."

"I didn't say a word to anyone except my uncle Xavier and Mac," Arti announced, loudly. "And they wouldn't have told."

Xavier wouldn't, Carrera silently agreed. Mac? I'm not so sure. Though I am sure that if it was the Sergeant Major he'd have covered his tracks well enough that I'd never find out even if I tried. So why bother? Hell with it.

As Carrera and Lourdes began to ascend the steps to the wide, columned wrap-around porch, they heard a hellish screech, which screech was soon followed by a brightly feathered head bearing remarkably intelligent eyes.

"Jinfeng!" Carrera exclaimed, stopping and bending down to skritch the blue, green, red and gold reptilian bird atop its head. This particular bird had been the pet of—though perhaps companion to was closer to correct—Carrera's late wife, Linda.

The bird pulled its head back as if to say, You don't visit in years. You don't write. You don't call. Harrumph!

"I'm sorry, Jinfeng," Carrera said, apologetically. He kept his hand outstretched while saying, "I wasn't well for a while."

Bright the bird may have been, about as much so as a gray parrot. Still, it wasn't bright enough to understand the words. It understood the tone well enough, though . . . well enough to give one last indignant screech and a half-hearted snap that deliberately missed the fingers before moving its head into Carrera's reach.

"I've been feeding them," Artemisia said.

"Them?" Carrera asked.

Arti didn't have to answer. While Jinfeng was being well skritched, three more heads suddenly popped out of the bushes and offered their own screeches.

"Jinfeng! You're a mother!"

* * *

The very existence of the Noahs was surmised from three factors, a handful of artifacts, the Rift itself, and the very strange variety of life on Terra Nova.

That life came, broadly speaking, from several sources. One source was Terra Nova itself, though little of the planet's naturally evolved life had survived the introduction of other, more highly evolved life. Little of it, too, was commercially valuable, though Terra Novan olives—a gray, wrinkled skin, plum sized, and highly astringent stoned fruit—were. Likewise, chorley was a native grain obtained from a low, sunflower-like plant, that made an excellent, buttery bread. Too, there were various forms of peppers, from Joan of Arc to Holy Shit to Satan Triumphant, which spiced up, literally, Terra Novan cuisine.

(Actually, no one could really eat Satan Triumphant in anything except the most dilute trace amounts, but it had found commercial value as a vesicant, a blister agent, during the planet's Great Global War which had ended sixty-one years before. It was also used occasionally as a food preservative. This was touchy, though, as the slightest trace too much of Satan Triumphant and the food would be completely preserved. Not only would bugs not touch it, neither would people.)

Then there was the alien, and possibly genengineered, life. Almost all of that was dangerous. There were the septic mouthed, nocturnally predatory, winged reptiles called "antaniae," with their nightly cries of "mnnbt, mnnbt, mnnbt." Among humans, these were dangerous mostly to children, especially small children, and the old and weak. The moonbats were predators of a particularly nasty sort. Venomless, their bite would begin an infection that only heroic measures could defeat, and then only if caught in time. Otherwise, the victim would succumb to the infection, more moonbats gathering as it weakened, until the combination of numbers and weakness allowed the vile creatures to descend and feed on the still living victim. Antaniae were especially fond of eating the eyes and brains of the very young.

Besides the antaniae, there were at least three species of plant life deadly to man, the Tranzitrees, the Progressivines, and the Bolshiberries. All of these, pleasant to gaze upon and sweet to eat, produced a toxin not dissimilar in its effects to C. Botulinum. This toxin was particularly insidious in that it affected only higher forms of life. Thus, domestic herd animals could, if not carefully kept from doing so, consume the fruit of those plants, build up the toxin in their systems, and deliver highly fatal doses to man.

It was surmised that both the antaniae and the deadly plants had been genengineered expressly to be dangerous to intelligent life. Certainly, casualties among early settlers to the planet had been horrific enough, as evidenced by such place names as Desperation Bay, in Lansing State, in the Federated States, "Gagandie," in Wellington (a city founded and christened by Australian thought-criminals whose country on Old Earth had not been given a settlement area of its own), and "Ni Hoi Thlee," in Zhong Guo.

With the arrival of man had come all of man's domestic animals and food crops, from horses to goats and from wheat to blueberries. Additionally, many species endangered on Old Earth had found, or been given, a home and a new lease on life on Terra Nova.

However, when man had first come they had discovered that Terra Nova had already had an abundance of life so endangered that it had already become extinct on Old Earth. This accounted for the presence of Jinfeng's subspecies of archaeopteryx, or "trixies," as well as beasts of land and sea from saber tooth tiger to carcharodon megalodon.

* * *

"What happened to the father?" Carrera asked. Breeding Jinfeng had been a pet project for some years, he'd even imported several males to the Isla Real for her to choose from.

"You know males," Arti said, sardonically. "Once he'd had his fun he bugged off. I think he hangs around the solar tower. At least, I've seen Jinfeng winging it in that direction, from time to time, the shameless little hussy."

And did you get the holes in the wall fixed that you and Mac made, thumping the bed against it? Carrera wondered, raising one eyebrow and grinning. Arti knew well enough what he was thinking and ignored grin and quizzical eyebrow, both.

The solar tower, more properly the solar chimney, was an extremely tall reinforced concrete structure, with an enormous circular greenhouse off center and down slope from its base, towering three-quarters of a kilometer above the island's dominant terrain feature, Hill 287. An enormous circular concrete tunnel running up the slope of the hill connected the greenhouse with the base of the tower. Heated air running through the thing turned turbines that provided all the island's power needs, and to excess, for the fifty-thousand men and women of the Legion plus the families. The top of the tower was perpetually shrouded in mist.

There were several others in the Republic of Balboa, all built at Legion expense and to Legion profit, that provided whatever of the nation's electric needs the hydroelectric dams did not. Moreover, the towers sold their electricity eastwards towards neighboring Santa Josefina. Carrera had never given orders to cut electric power either to the Tauran occupied Transitway or the rump government in Old Balboa City. Though he'd never explained it to anyone, his rationale had been, If I cut them off now, it will inconvenience them for a while and at the same time cause them to make themselves invulnerable to my cutting the electricity off at a later, more critical date.

"He also comes by here, sometimes," Arti continued, "mostly for free eats. At least, I think the one that comes by here is the father."