The Lotus Eaters

Casa Linda, Balboa

Two turbaned guards stood outside the conference room. Two others were within. There were always that many, or more, for when the boy slept two of them slept on thin cushions to either side of his bed while two more stood awake and watching, arms in hand, their pale green, gray, and blue eyes barely blinking.

They did other things, too, those guards. Hamilcar Carrera-Nuñez, eldest child of Patricio and Lourdes, was already a crack shot, could fight with fist, dagger or lance, at least within his weight class, or even a bit above it, and could ride like the wind. The guards seemed to take a personal pride in passing on the lessons learned by their tribe of nearly three thousand years of combat on two planets.

Despite the guards' surpassing paranoia where his safety was concerned, Hamilcar was not in the conference room for safety's sake. Rather, he had learned to hijack the computer to play wargames from the Legion's educational programs on the conference room's big Kurosawa screen. On that screen now, thousands of electronic shadows were dying as a young student of the art of war swung in his flanks onto the opposing exposed flanks and smashed his cavalry into the computer enemy's rear.

It's a lot better, now, thought Hamilcar. Much, much better since dad snapped out of it. Mmm . . . mostly snapped out of it, the boy corrected. I can hear when he screams at night no less than mom can. And she doesn't really know, not the way I do, why he screams. After all, I was there.

Poor dad; when I'm a little older I'll be able to take some of the burden away.

Hamilcar knew, because his father had discussed it with him, that within a year, a year and a half at most, he would be going to Pashtia on his own—or, rather, with his company of guards—to grow some in ways the local schools could never teach. He suspected that it had more to do with getting him someplace comparatively safe than it did with furthering his education. Not that Pashtia was precisely safe, or perhaps ever would be. But there he would be guarded by hundreds, really thousands, of fanatics, every one of whom from the chief down to the least little girl milking a goat would eagerly die to prevent anything from happening to "Iskandr, avatar of God."

"Which is nonsense," the boy muttered aloud, his fingers sending a recall command to his light cavalry. "I'm not an avatar of any god. I'm just eight years old. With maybe some skills and knacks. And a slight resemblance to a nearly three thousand year old image on a gold plate in a dusty cave somewhere in Pashtia."

On the big screen, trapped shadows, nearly eighty thousand of them, continued to die.