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 face. 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.