The Lotus Eaters

Anno Condita 471 Hotel Rustico, San Antonio, Balboa, Terra Nova

The town was situated in the caldera of a long dormant volcano. Because of that volcanic soil, the caldera was lush and green beyond the power of mere words to describe. Mathematics could describe it, after a fashion. Simply multiply the greenest thing imaginable by something approaching infinity. That would have been a fair approximation.

The hotel, itself, was almost snug up against the sheer western side of the caldera. This area was, if anything, greener still, except where it was an explosion of flowers. Too high up for mosquitoes, the place was almost supernaturally healthy. Some of this health may have derived from the sheer joy of being there.

Many well to do Balboans kept holiday places there, some, like the hotel and its name, quite rustic, other nearer to palaces. Legate Pigna, for example, of the Seventh Legion, kept a place there, as did several twigs of the Rocaberti family tree. For that matter, so did Arias, the senior man of those police still loyal to the old government and president Rocaberti. It had, in fact, been the policeman who, upon hearing of the mass ass chewing delivered by Carrera to all his senior leaders and staff, had found and sounded out Pigna before inviting him to this meeting.

* * *

"Oh, take the idiotic fake mustache off," said one of the men gathered in the back room of the Hotel Rustico. "It's not like any of us don't know who you are, Pigna. It's not like everybody who is anybody in Balboa doesn't know everyone else who is anybody."

Pigna glared down at the speaker, one of the rump President's nephews, a young but very fat man he knew only by sight. That clan tended to run to fat, anyway, and as far as he was concerned, they all looked alike. He was about to reply when he heard a group of Cadets or perhaps Young Scouts marching by the front of the hotel singing:

". . . together with the legions then,

Rise up together with the legions then.

In the morning we rise early

Long before the break of dawn,

Trixies screeching in the jungle,

Moonbats scurrying from the sun.

Now assemble, mis compadres.

Gather, boys, and muster, men,

Hand to hand with butt and bayonet,

Let their blood across the homeland run.

And you are welcome, Balboenses.

Side by side we'll make our stand

Hand to hand with butt and bayonet.

We'll rise up together with the Legions then . . ."

"That," said one of the men present—Pigna assumed he was foreign, probably Tauran, Gallic, from his accent, "is a chilling thing to hear from the throats of barely post-pubescent teenagers. I'm de Villepin, by the way."

"Your children don't sing songs like that in Gaul?" Pigna asked.

Villepin shook his head, confirming his origins. "No . . . not anymore. The bureaucrats would have apoplexy. There they sing about peace and love, the Family of Man, and glories of the Tauran Union."

"It's aimed at you, you know," Pigna said. "They're raising a generation here that, with the best of democratic motivations, wants to rip out your throats and drink the blood."

"We know," Villepin replied. "It is . . . worrisome. It is even worrisome to my . . . superior, General Janier. We must put an end to it before that generation grows to manhood."

"Never mind all that," said another of the men present. Pigna recognized him as, the old head of the police, one of the Arias brood, now reduced to lording it over the couple of companies of police left to the old president in the old city. "We all know what the problem is and why we're here. We have to put a stop to all this . . . this . . . madness."

"It would be better if you could do that for yourselves," said Villepin. "Oh, yes, we would help behind the scenes. But still, in the long run, it is best if you take the initiative."

"With what?" said the policeman. "I've got less than five hundred men that I control and no more than that number that would go along with me in the hope of restoring old times again."

"Ah," said Pigna, "but I have over four thousand. And by the time I am in a position to do anything it will be closer to ten thousand."

"In a position?" Villepin enquired.

Pigna sighed. "On the scale of the force being created my one legion doesn't count for much. Applied in the right place, it could count for a lot. But I can't just mobilize it and move it. We'd be intercepted and destroyed on the road or in the air. On the other hand, in about a year or fifteen months we'll do our annual training at the Centro de Entrenamiento Nacional, at Fort Cameron, not all that far from here. That would put us in a position to seize certain key facilities."

"You've been giving this some thought," Arias accused.

Pigna didn't deny it, but did say, "Enough to know that I can't do it alone. I can possibly hoodwink my men into seizing President Parilla, for example, if I told them it was Carrera's order, but they would never, not in a million years for a billion drachma, seize Carrera. I can get them to, say, take over the television and radio stations, and seal the City off from traffic. They would not attack other regiments in the Legion, unprovoked."

He looked very pointedly at de Villepin and added, "Any plainly Tauran activity, any attack, made openly, would shatter the illusion I would create for those men, and lose me control over them."

De Villepin nodded agreement. This one had been giving it some thought.

"We can probably restrict our activities to the fairly clandestine," the Gallic intelligence chief agreed. "Say, using a commando group to take Carrera and sundry other of the Legion's highest ranking men. And perhaps Parilla if we decide that's would be best."

"The corps commanders and General Staff," Pigna said. "Get them and I'm a fair shot for first among equals. If my legion is in a position of control, I would be first among equals."

"I doubt we could keep such a vast enterprise secret, or hide our involvement long before being discovered," the Gaul objected.

"Block the road from the City to Valle de las Lunas and you would take more than half out of the picture, at least for a while. And, if you chose the right place and right method of blocking, it could be many days before anyone discovers your involvement."

This, de Villepin considered. "Perhaps," he conceded. "It would help if we could somehow convince the Federated States that we were acting in their interest in doing all this." He mused, "Perhaps a bit of lawfare would be in order."