A Desert Called Peace cl-1 Read online

  Chapter Two

  I loved you

  And so I took the tides of men into my hands

  And wrote my will across the sky in stars…

  -T. E. Lawrence

  Cochea,

  Provincia del Valle de las Lunas, Republica de Balboa,

  Terra Nova, 10/7/459 AC

  Art, precious metals and the occasional young slave were not the only in-demand product of Earth. Music, too, was popular, in particular the wild and violent sounds of the twentieth century. Earth literature also had its place on the new world. Both had been brought by the original immigrants in the form of computer discs. Much had been lost, of course, but much had survived the days from when the old computers wore out. Indeed, developing new machines capable of reading the old discs had given Terra Nova a leg up in artificial intelligence, generally.

  As with many immigrant tongues on Old Earth-American English, Quebecois French and South African Dutch, for example- many of the languages of Terra Nova retained many features that had been lost to their mother tongues. Indeed, a man or woman of the twentieth century would likely have found the English of the Federated States more comprehensible than that commonly used by the Anglic-speaking proles of Old Earth. In any case, this made much of the older music of Old Earth quite in tune with Terra Novan listeners.

  Of course, Latin hadn't changed in millennia. It was LatinSatanic flavored Latin at that-which flowed from the speakers in the book-stuffed library:

  O Fortuna

  Velut Luna…

  High on one wall of the library hung an ornate, embossed certificate, in Spanish, signifying a high decoration for valor from the Republic of San Vicente. The gilt name emblazoned on the award was Patricio Hennessey de Carrera. Posted beneath the certificate, framed with obvious pride, hung a letter of reprimand-in English-from a general officer of the Army of the Federated States of Columbia. It was addressed merely to "CPT Patrick Hennessey." Both certificates-dated fifteen years prior, long before Hennessey's promotion to his terminal rank-described the same series of events, though in rather different terms.

  The library was large, with bookcases covering three of the substantial room's four walls. Against the fourth, under the certificate and the letter of reprimand, stood a desk and chair, each made in the main of dark-finished Lempiran mahogany, hand crafted and richly carved. A man approaching middle age, just beginning to go gray at the temples and with a face weathered beyond its years with the wear of sun and rain, sat at the desk, eyes fixed on a book.

  The book was one of many. Reaching floor to ceiling, the volumepacked shelves of the library held the essence of a lifetime's interest and study, more than seven thousand volumes in all. Even over the broad, deep desk more bookshelf space was stacked and-like the other shelves-filled to overflowing. Still more reference material resided on computer micro-discs inside cases stuffed to the brim.

  Despite appearances, there was an order and a theme to the volumes. The library was, in the main, about war. If there was a book on the plastic arts-and there were several-the owner had studied them because he knew that art had propaganda value in war. If there was a book on music-and there were dozens-that was because music, too, was both a weapon of war and a remarkably subtle yet powerful tool for training for war. If there were books on the Marxism that had made its reappearance under the Volgan tsar during the Great Global War-and there were some few-it was because the reader believed in knowing one's enemy.

  There was even a copy of the Koran.

  However, most of the library was more obviously military. The collection covered, as nearly and completely as possible on Terra Nova, every human age and culture as it pertained to armed conflict. An English translation of Vegetius rested next to another copy in the original Latin. Apparently not as confident in his Greek as in his Latin, the reader kept most of Xenophon in bilingual texts-Greek and English alternating pages. Plato, Rousseau, Machiavelli, Aristotle, Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Annan, Nussbaum, Harris, Steyn, Fallacci, Yen, Peng and Rostov… war was about philosophy and politics, too, and so the reader studied those as well.

  Eyes fixing upon the Nussbaum work, a gift from his parents many years prior, the reader thought, Amazing that that line of thought should have succeeded in contaminating not one but two worlds. What utter nonsense!

  A stranger, given time to realize the single-minded purposefulness of the library, might eventually have concluded that the reader considered war his art; perhaps all he cared about.

  The stranger would have been wrong. War was not all the reader cared about, nor even what he cared most about. It had been a job and was still a hobby; it was not a life.

  The reader, one Patrick Hennessey, late of the Army of the Federated States of Columbia, put down the book he had been studying and closed his eyes, deep in thought.

  Decision Cycle Theory, the Observation-Orientation-DecisionAction loop, plainly was working against Nagumo at Midway on Old Earth. How and why is combat on the ground different? Friction? Scale and scope? The vulnerability of large single targets like aircraft and aircraft carriers compared with the endurance and ability to soak up punishment of ground forces composed of many small units and separate individuals? Nagumo's pure frigging bad luck?

  Hennessey's aquiline face frowned in concentration. Pale blue eyes, normally slightly too large for the size of that face, narrowed. A viewer would not have been able to see the darker circles around the irises that typically gave those eyes their frighteningly penetrating quality. "The eyes of a madman," said some, not always jokingly.

  Have to think on this one. Hennessey resumed his reading.

  The satanic sounding Latin piece ended, to be replaced by:

  "I see a red door and I want it painted black

  No colors anymore I want them to turn black…"

  To Hennessey the music was a drug, a way of purging the unwelcome feelings and emotions, most of them dark, that otherwise might have taken possession of him. Between that, his calming scotch, cigars and cigarettes, and-most especially-his wife, he kept the surge of feelings under control or, at least, at bay.

  A cigarette burned in the ashtray on the maple inlaid into the mahogany desk, smoke curling up about twelve inches before being sucked outside by a ventilation fan. The fan dispersed it to a courtyard surrounded on all sides by the house Hennessey and his wife, Linda, had had built following his departure from the FS Army.

  The cigarette was interesting, or, rather, the tobacco in it was. Despite many disapproving clucks from progressives back on Old Earth, a number of the early colonists had made sure to bring tobacco seeds. Once planted on Terra Nova, the tobacco had come under attack from a virus unknown on Old Earth. Whether this virus was native to Terra Nova, or a mutation from the earlier transplanting by the Noahs, or something unmodified and native to Old Earth that had either died out or never been identified; no one knew. The subject was hotly debated.

  The effect of the virus, though, was to remove nearly all of the carcinogens from the tobacco. It remained addictive and was still rather unhealthy. It remained highly profitable to sell, the more so as it was considerably safer than Old Earth tobacco.

  Of course, the sale and use of tobacco had come under even more virulent attack as Terra Nova developed its own brand of "progressive." Couching their arguments in terms of health, what these truly objected to was the profitability of the commodity. Progressives hated profit.

  They hate profit, Hennessey thought, unless it's their own.

  Hennessey knew about progressives. Especially did he know about cosmopolitan progressives, or Kosmos. He should have; he'd been raised to be one. The lessons had never quite taken.

  Hennessey's library was in the very back of the house and reached from inner courtyard to rear windows. By turning his chair towards the rear Hennessey could see the one hundred and twenty-five foot waterfall that had made his wife, Linda, fall in love with this particular piece of land. The waterfall had its memories, memories that brought a smile to his f
ace. There by the swimming hole, under the screened bohio… when the kids were all asleep… Oh, my…

  The smile disappeared when Hennessey looked at his hand as it picked up the cigarette. He took a satisfyingly deep drag and pulled the cigarette away. Dainty disgusting thing, he thought, holding his hand out. Sickening for a soldier to have such small, miserable, soft hands. Oh well, the rest isn't so bad. And it isn't like I'm a soldier anymore, anyway.

  "Not so bad," was it. He was never going to win any beauty contests but…

  Hennessey was somewhat slight of build and regular featured, with extraordinarily intense blue eyes. A reasonably well formed chest topped slim hips, themselves atop legs unusually massive, the result of many, many miles of heavy-pack forced marching in his younger years. They were infantry legs, plain and simple. Even several years of relative idleness had not robbed them of their strength. He was developing a slight paunch, something he made some effort to combat.

  Turning his attention away from his utterly unsatisfactory hands and fingers, Hennessey's eyes wandered over the bookcases containing his library. He put the cigarette down, replacing it in that hand with the iced whiskey. The cubes made a tinkling sound as he sipped while continuing to peruse the library's shelves.

  Hennessey's eyes came to rest on a simple metal-framed picture of Linda, his wife, now visiting his-mostly estranged-relatives in the Federated States.

  He looked at the picture and glowed with love, thinking, I am one lucky son of a bitch.

  Twelve years now they had been husband and wife; twelve years and three children. And still she looked like the eighteen-year-old girl he had married. If anything, so her husband thought, she was more lovely now than when he had married her.

  Next to the one portrait was another, that of Linda with their son and two daughters. We do damned good work, don't we, hon? Miss you.

  Hennessey looked up from his family portraits. He thought about waterfalls, then left the library to take the short walk down to the one behind the house. There was a small bohio, or shed, there, along with some garden furniture. He sat down in one of the padded chairs, losing himself in the sight and sound of the splashing water.

  God, I love this place, he thought. He didn't mean merely the waterfall, nor even the entire property. He meant Balboa, possibly the only country in which he had ever felt truly at home.

  Odd thing, that. But what's not to love… outside of, maybe, the government here? The people are bright, hardworking and friendly. The men are brave; the women loyal and lovely. The land is… well, "beautiful" hardly does it justice. He watched Linda's multicolored pet "trixie," Jinfeng, sail across the waterfall. It came to rest on the branch of a large mango tree and began to eat the fruit it found there.

  Just beautiful.

  Balboa, being largely jungle and also somewhat sparsely settled, retained more than the usual amount of pre-settlement flora and fauna. Jinfeng was one example. But mixed in with the green of the jungle around the waterfall were some other species, bluegums and tranzitrees, the latter so named because their bright green-skinned fruit was intensely appetizing to look upon, and the mouthwatering red pulp inside intensely poisonous for man to eat.

  Lower animals could eat tranzitree fruit without ill effect. It was conjectured in some circles that tranzitrees had been developed and placed on Terra Nova by the Noahs-the beings who had seeded the planet with life untold eons ago-expressly to prevent the rise of intelligence. Certainly the tranzitrees had been artificially created, as had bolshiberry bushes and progressivines. The latter two were, likewise, poisonous to intelligent life but harmless to lower forms. Their complex toxins did build up in some food animals, were they allowed to eat of them, rendering those animals equally toxic. This, too, would have tended to limit the development of civilization, even had early intelligent life managed to survive the tranzitrees, bolshiberries, and progressivines, by limiting the food supply.

  The tranzitrees had no real use but aesthetics. The bluegums, on the other hand, were cultivated locally for their edible nuts, high grade lumber for cabinetry and furniture, and the refinable resin-a rubberlike compound-which gave them their name. All were blue, as were the trees' leaves. The leaves were used to make a rather good dye.

  Of course, there's no law in this place. It's all who you are related to, who you know, who are your friends, what bribes can you pay, and how much clout do you have. A well-connected man can get away with murder-some of my in-laws have- manslaughter, anyway.

  Want to set up a new business? "Well, my brother-in-law is at the planning commission. I am sure he could help you if you made it worth his while." Need to buy a chunk of land? "My cousin, the procurator, could probably help but he doesn't come cheap." That's all fine for me; I'm connected through Linda's clan. But what about the average Joses? They're screwed, unless, that is, they know somebody.

  Add a little law, a little integrity, to the government and this place could be perfection.

  The maid, Lucinda, found him under the bohio, lost in thought.

  " Senor?"

  "Yes, Lucinda?" he asked.

  The woman was older, from a poor family, and never terribly pretty. Nonetheless, her family had been in service to Linda's for generations. This explained why she had taken a job even at the wretched salary earned by a domestic in the undeveloped and unindustrialized parts of Terra Nova. Hennessey tried to treat her kindly and, had she been asked, the maid likely would have voiced no ground of complaint.

  " Senor, there are two men here to see you. One is from the Fuerza Civil; a Major Jimenez. The other is General Parilla. You know, sir, the old dictator?"

  "Xavier? Here? Great! And Parilla? Wonderful, Lucinda." Hennessey rousted himself from his chair and walked briskly to greet his old friends and former enemy.

  He reentered by the back office door, then walked briskly across the cobblestoned way that led through the courtyard. In the open courtyard Hennessey stopped briefly to study the clouds gathering overhead. To himself he muttered, "Storm again, from the west, it seems. Oh, well, I've always liked the rain."

  The door leading from the courtyard to the foyer was open, befittingly so in country so warm. Hennessey passed through it without pause and saw two men, rising politely from the overstuffed chairs in the iridescent bluegum-paneled foyer.

  Rank had its privileges. He thrust out a welcoming hand first to retired (forcibly retired) General Raul Parilla; short, dark, gone a little fat now with his years of service behind him. Most of the general's still abundant hair had gone to gray.

  The general returned the clasp warmly. "Patricio, it is good to see you again after all these years."

  "Sir… you too, sir." Hennessey meant it. Cut off, as he was, from his old army, he valued the contact even with a foreign one. Though it would be pushing things, really, to call Balboa's Civil Force an army.

  Smile broadening at his other guest, Hennessey greeted a friend of much longer standing and even deeper feeling. Indeed, so close were he and Xavier Jimenez that neither of them much minded that they had once fought each other nearly to the death… and had fought to the deaths of many of their followers.

  Where Parilla had grown a bit rotund with the years, Jimenez remained whippet thin, a lean, black hunter and racer.

  No words passed between Jimenez and Hennessey. With friends so close, none were needed.

  "Lucinda," Hennessey called. "Please bring a bucket with ice, a bottle of rum, some coke and some scotch to my library. And three glasses, as well, please. Gentlemen?"

  With that, Hennessey led the way back across the courtyard. Parilla and Jimenez stopped to admire a statue of Linda Hennessey that stood at one end.

  "She hates that thing," Hennessey said, "but it helps me when she's gone."

  "It's a beautiful piece of work, though," Parilla commented.

  "So's Linda," said Jimenez.

  First Landing,

  Hudson,

  Federated States of Columbia, 10/7/459 AC

 
There was a screeching of tires followed by curses and the tinkling of broken glass as Linda began to walk across the street to the restaurant where she was to meet with her husband's cousin, Annie. She scrunched her neck down, looking somehow guilty, and proceeded to cross.

  For some women the word "breathtaking" was only bare justice. Linda Hennessey was one of them. Though she would never have claimed to be so, she was beautiful; simply beautiful, the kind of woman who can stop traffic on a busy downtown street just by being there. Hennessey had seen her do just that, more than once. It didn't usually cause a traffic accident, though. Still… that happened, too, sometimes.

  On the other side there was a man leaving the restaurant in company with a woman. He walked into a lamppost. Linda tried not to notice.

  She had to repeat herself three times to the maitre d' before he actually heard a word she said, and he was plainly gay. That wasn't caused by her accent. A wave of awed silence washed across the restaurant floor as she was led to the table where Annie awaited. Conversation didn't resume until she was seated and, for the most part, out of sight.

  Dark complected, she had a high cheekboned, heart-shaped face set off by large, liquid brown eyes. She also had a classic 90-60-90 centimeter figure and though for modesty's sake she wore a bra, she didn't need one. Her breasts stood out and up on their own, as if she'd won the war with gravity and dictated her own terms. She had perfect teeth, even, straight and white like newly polished ivory. Her midnight black, wavy hair gathered light and cast it about her face like an angel's halo.

  Unusually enough, her looks meant little to her. They were a gift to share with her husband, yes, as well as a gift to pass on to her children. But she hadn't earned any of that perfection; she'd been born with it. She didn't even have to work at it. Even though she valued those looks less than someone who did have to work at it might have, she knew they usually had an effect on people, and generally a very positive effect.

  Thus, she didn't understand, she could never understand, just why her husband's family loathed her so. She was sweet to them, as she was sweet to everybody. She dressed well. She carried herself with a bearing that was aristocratic, true, but never arrogant. She never condescended. She spoke well, both in the Spanish they seemed to refuse to admit was a civilized language and in rather cultured, if accented, English, as well.