"Kotek, my fine boy," said Simoua, rising and taking the younger man's arm warmly. "So good to see you. And how is your most excellent great-great-grandfather?"
"He is well, Your Excellency, in rigorous good health. I saw him in Kumasi just a few days ago. He told me to pass along his thanks, both for my appointment and for the antiaging treatments you ordered for him."
"Well," began Simoua, "it is sad but we are just in the infancy of antiagathic therapy. If your esteemed ancestor can hang on, even greater things may be possible. Besides, we people of the right views have to watch out for each other, do we not? And no one else is going to if we don't, eh?"
"Indeed, Your Excellency," Annan readily agreed. How could he not? His family-and he, personally-benefited immensely from the "I'll scratch your back; you scratch mine" philosophy of nearly all of those elites who worked for the great supra- and transnational organs of the Earth.
"Please, sit, my boy. Can I have anything brought to you? Coffee? Tea? Something stronger, perhaps?"
Annan shook his head as he sat in the proffered chair. "No, thank you, Your Excellency."
"As you wish," said Simoua, taking a chair himself opposite Annan. "I wanted to discuss your new command, the Amistad, and the others that will follow."
"Ah, yes," Annan agreed. "I have been up to see my new ship. It's a wonder."
"Indeed. It is the finest that America could build." Simoua laughed. "We took it in lieu of a UN dues payment that they would never have given us anyway."
"A wonderful ship it is, Excellency, but I confess I am a bit confused about my mission."
"Govern the island on the new world that is our enclave. Atlantis, they call it. Observe… for now," answered the secretary general. "Spread our influence. Organize the fleet we will send you. It's going to be thirty-three ships, eventually, you know."
Chapter Twenty-Six In the Cain-and-Abel conflicts of the 21st century, ruthlessness trumps technology. -Ralph Peters
Hospital Ancon, Cerro Gorgia, Ciudad Balboa, 15/7/461 AC
Mango trees and chirping birds surrounded the long, five-story hospital atop Cerro Gorgia, or Gorgia Hill. They stood, and smelled, in pleasant contract to the unadorned brick walls, antiseptic odor, and continuous business bustle of the "body shop."
The hospital had once had a different name. This was when it had been the major medical facility for the FSC forces in Balboa. It was not so major now; not every ward had been reopened. At the very least, though, it was fully staffed and equipped for Jorge Mendoza's needs. Now that they were not so pressed for medical care, and the question had become merely one of money, Campos and the War Department had come through on their promise of equivalent care, restoration and prosthesis for the legion's wounded. In some cases, this meant anything up to millions of drachma for the very latest.
His new "legs" were a marvel. Flexible, strong and computer controlled; they'd cost half a million drachma each from the Sachsen company that made them. Jorge would rather have his old ones back. Marvelous these new legs may have been, but they couldn't feel. Worse, he was still not really able to use them naturally and spent most of his time not in bed in a wheelchair.
He took the loss of the legs well enough, if not precisely cheerily; he was that kind of young man. But his eyes…
"Jorge, there is nothing wrong with your eyes that I can find," the doctor had said. "Here, let me show you." The doctor flicked a finger at Jorge's eye. The eye blinked.
"Did you feel that?"
"Feel what?" Jorge asked.
"The blink. I just poked my finger at your eye and you blinked. Your eye blinked because it saw my finger. But your brain won't let vision through."
"I saw nothing," Mendoza insisted. "I just blinked because… well… people blink."
The doctor poked at the eye again and, again, it dutifully blinked. "Twice in a row is not coincidence, Jorge," the medico said.
The orderly at the desk just melted when the tiny… well, tiny, yes, that… but perfectly symmetrical, charmingly symmetrical, vision of a young girl fluttered her eyelashes and asked if she could please visit Private Jorge Mendoza. She'd said her name was "Marqueli Cordoba."
"Jorge, a Miss Cordoba to see you."
Private Mendoza turned his wheelchair toward the voice, bumping his bed as he did so. Blind, with both legs off below the knee, his reconstructive surgery had only been able to heal the more visible scars. Mendoza's green hospital robe hung down below the point at which his legs ended. The young soldier looked his age, about eighteen years old.
Cousin Lourdes didn't tell me he was so gorgeous, Marqueli thought, no eyes for the legs but only for the face.
It was characteristic of Balboan society that the government didn't do much. Nor had the legion had time and opportunity to set up a large and complex bureaucracy to deal with personal problems. Instead, the extended family took care of things. Thus, naturally, when Lourdes had seen a problem to be dealt with she hadn't thought of anything too very formal as a solution. Instead she'd called a family member, in this case Marqueli, and said, "There's a really nice soldier who was hurt in Sumer. Could you go make sure he's all right?" Lourdes being family, Marqueli had, also naturally, agreed.
As a system it wasn't much. Where it worked it tended to work well. Where it didn't it failed completely. Looking over Jorge Mendoza, Marqueli decided instantly that here, at least, it was going to work.
"Private Mendoza, I'm Marqueli Cordoba. My cousin, Lourdes, suggested I look you up. It's wonderful to meet a hero who's fought in the war."
Mendoza scratched behind his ear. He caught the slightest whiff of perfume. He sensed someone small and somehow soft sitting in the chair next to his bed. "I don't know if I fought. It's more like they fought me."
"It's fine," Marqueli answered. "You're fine." She turned and asked a nurse on the ward, "How is his recovery going?"
"Jorge is doing very well. He has some minor reconstruction still to go. Then we have to get him used to his new legs. That's going to take longer. And then, of course, there's physical therapy, and-"
"But he will be getting mostly better, then," the girl announced, in a voice like a love song. "I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get here, Jorge. Do you mind if I call you 'Jorge'? I was in school. And it took me a while to find out where you were since you started out in the hospital near Hamilton."
She has a nice voice, thought Mendoza. "No, Miss Cordoba, I don't mind."
"Wonderful!" she bubbled and the sweet sound cheered up the entire ward. She reached out to touch a hand. "And, please, I'm Marqueli."
"Marqueli," he said, uncertainly, "… yes, I was in Warren Branch Hospital in the FSC for a while. They did a lot of the work on me there. Hmmm… Lourdes," he puzzled. "I don't know any… Ohhh, the Legate's… wife."
"They're not married," Marqueli laughed, bouncing lightly on her chair. "Wicked, naughty Lourdes. Bad, bad, bad Lourdes. I hope they will be sometime but my cousin told me she was willing to wait."
"She seemed like a nice woman," Mendoza observed neutrally.
"She's wonderful," Marqueli enthused. "Smart and clever and tall and… well, she's just slinky. And those eyes! I'd like to be just like her except that she's almost a foot taller than I am and I don't think I'm going to grow."
Mendoza made an estimate of Marqueli's height based on where the voice seemed to be coming from. True, she was sitting in a chair but, even so, just under five feet was his best guess.
God, though, she smells and sounds wonderful. Height? Well, I'm a shorty myself. Otherwise I'd never have ended up in one of those cramped Volgan tanks. Moreover, I am especially short now, he thought. Shorter by a couple of feet… and two legs.