“Sort them for me,” said Wat pouring gravy on small brown bodies, “Put messages about warrior business on my desk. Put messages from public eye channels down the waste chute. Bring the rest here.”
For several minutes Wat sucked delicate meat from small bones and disposed of a salad. He was pouring coffee when Jenny laid a sheaf of pale violet papers beside the cup. Wat said,
“Good man, Jenny. Have my pony saddled and waiting in twenty minutes. I may go out.”
“Would not a horse be a more suitable mount, Colonel Dryhope? The late general’s favourite, Bucephalus, is both elegant and docile.”
“I’m no an elegant horseman,” said Wat pleasantly, “Go away and do what I said, Jenny.”
The prints contained intimate portraits and were mostly from women who adored him for qualities they had noticed through the public eye. A few were from older women he knew well; they pleased him best. He was hurt to find nothing from Nan but she hated warrior business and probably disliked him being a colonel. A note from her daughter Annie begged him to call at once. He did. In a voice full of happiness and tears she said, “O Wattie Wattie. O Wattie Wattie.”
“Hello there.”
“O Wattie I was daft to be feart when ye were mad at me this morning, my aunties and grannies have telt me I was daft, all soldiers have wee mad fits when they’ve been in bad wars, they say, and it doesnae hurt the bairns they get so I can see ye again, Wattie! Tonight if ye like!”
He took a moment to remember what she was raving about then said awkwardly, “That’s good, Annie, but tonight I want to see your mother, if she’ll have me. Do you think Nan will have me?”
He heard a wailing from Craig Douglas which made him glad he had not made a visual connection. He said hastily, “Yes Annie. Fine. Aye. Mhm. Since your grannies don’t mind I’ll mibby see ye in a fortnight, but of course — ” (he tried to cheer her with a joke) “ — your mammy might want to give me to one of your sisters.” She cut him off.
He sighed and looked out. The clear sky was now patterned with clusters of saucerlike cloudlets, the remotest tinted pink by the evening sun. Beneath each was a house, in each house was at least one bedroom where he would be ecstatically welcome. He regretted leaving his work on the training programme but Jenny was right, he would work better if he relaxed first. He stared at a cloudlet beyond the wooded top of Bowerhope Law. Beneath was Bowerhope house, less than two miles away by the shore path. Two friendly sisters there had been kind to him more than once. Their private names were Myoo and Myow and they always bedded together. He called their room at Bowerhope and said, “Myow?”
“Myoo.”
“Colonel Wat Cat is coming, pussies.”
“Mwoopee.”
When he reached the path to Bowerhope shadows were darkening under the trees but there was a soft glow in the sky and on the loch. The path was level and without abrupt turnings. Sophia, refreshed by rest and good feeding at the Warrior house, went at a satisfying pace. Wat, happy in his destination, gave himself to more thought about the training programme.
Men usually became soldiers through a disciplined extension of war games they had played as children, but many of the world’s best fighters, like himself, had come late to the army after work with other things, perhaps because delay had strengthened their determination. He would soon command the first determined army of late starters the world had seen since Cromwell’s in the historical era. Then he remembered George Washington’s troops — Napoleon’s generals — Ulysses S. Grant — Leon Trotsky — Che Guevara. The world would be watching him with these in mind, a wonderful, fearful thought! He prevented excitement by thinking how to work harder and set better examples than the trainee officers lent by neighbouring clans, though these would all be good men. He thought of Archie Crook Cot, a famous physicist, intelligent man, very good speaker. His muscular strength and coordination were better than his bulky body suggested. Like many gurus he relaxed by hunting and fishing and had gained local fame by it. Archie would adapt fast to war games and must already be imagining himself general of Ettrick. Wat smiled and muttered, “No yet Archie. Let’s see you after your first wee war.” He would manage Archie by giving him tough assignments and, if he handled them well, by promoting him. He would ask him, even now, to pick a company of volunteer divers and bring the Ettrick standard back from the North Sea. This would show Colonel Dryhope in command from his first day in office, and delight Ettrick traditionalists, and soothe Crook Cot’s vanity. Wat raised his wristcom to call Archie and saw the dial was lightless except for the word BEAMBLOCKED. He shook and tapped it, wondering why it gave such an impossible reason for malfunction. Beams were directed from satellites by human agencies. In a squabble between two satellites for a habitat zone a mischief maker had once temporarily blocked a rival’s part of network, the nearest thing to lawless fighting humanity had known for over a century, but nobody, however mischievous, used interplanetary energies to play a prank on someone’s wrist communicator.
Suddenly his ear was teased by the repetition of a sound no louder than the lapping of small waves on the shore to his left: an occasional soft tinkle from the wooded slope on his right. Looking there he saw a glowing violet spot travelling against darkness under the branches: obviously (he thought) an oddly coloured public eye many yards away. With another soft tinkle it floated out in front of his face. It was a bubble less than half an inch across with a violet outline and contained a head with abundant black shoulder-length hair and a womanly face, though too small to be recognized. He stared sternly at a point above it and heard a tiny, distinct very girlish English voice which became tough American then huskily Germanic. Throughout these accent shifts it remained mockingly, whorishly female and roused him in a way he detested.
“Please don’t ignore me sir, I am the fairy Tinker Bell who will make all your dreams come true, but you can call me Phyllis Marlowe. I’m a private eye, not a public eye and I’m absolutely and utterly yours, darlink.”
“Fuck off,” said Wat coldly, “I’m giving no interviews to crack-brained voyeurs, public or private.”
The bubble recoiled as if struck and settled on Sophia’s head between the ears. These twitched as the small voice shrilled, “Ooooooo why are you so crooooooel to me?” and made sounds like bitter sobbing. Sophia did not alter her pace. Wat urged her into a jolting trot which was the fastest she could go but the bubble stayed between her ears.
“I’ll tell you a story, dearie,” said a voice amazingly like a Scottish granny’s, “There was once a wee lad who didnae like the lassies of Ettrick and ordinary war games, he liked wild historical wars that were fought without rules and changed the world, wars fought with wild glamorous women and explosions and spaceships which carried him to new worlds. In sentimental moments he also enjoyed gardening, so he decided to be a star seeder.”
“A third of humanity starts that way,” said Wat scornfully.
“This boy was unique, dearie. He was taller than the rest and ashamed of it because he thought women couldnae like him — and he certainly didnae want any poor lassie who did. That’s why he wanted new worlds, worlds where he would not be an outsider because he dominated them. He also had the smeddum to work hard at what he hated, so he must have been terribly unhappy. After three painful years of keyboard work he knew enough astrophysics and biology to get into space, though his mind was not exactly scientific. Two years in satellite greenhouses ended his love of gardening. A talk with an immortal ended his dream of reaching new worlds — he could only do that by forgetting childhood dreams. He came home, became a soldier like his daddy and is now a world-famous hero. That won’t content him.”