As the second hand on Siegel's watch swung round, he hunched himself lower into the bunker, Tranh following suit. The sapper reached out one hand to push Han's head lower.
It's hardly the first time a man ever pushed my head down, the girl thought. This one, at least, means me well by it.
Then a half-pound of RDX based linear shaped charge and twenty-eight pounds of ammonium nitrate-based explosive rocked the earth. A pattering of silver painted gravel flew up and then fell on and around Siegel's bunker.
Headquarters, 4th Corps, Cristobal, Balboa
A silver-draped Christmas tree from uplands in the eastern part of the country could be seen from the street. James Soult glanced at it only briefly before he parked the staff car at the curb to let Carrera disembark. That human fireplug, Mitchell, bearing a submachine gun, was already on the sidewalk with his eyes searching for trouble before Carrera's feet touched the pavement.
A sentry called the building to attention as Carrera walked through the main doors. Carrera wished the man a merry Christmas and continued on to Jimenez' office. He found Jimenez hunched over his desk, a sheaf of paper spread out before him.
Jimenez stood to attention when he realized Carrera was present. "How can I help you, sir?"
That, in itself, was odd. Normally Carrera and Jimenez were on a first name basis on any occasion that didn't absolutely require formality.
"Nothing, Xavier," Carrera shook his head. "I just had nothing better to do for the morning and thought I'd stop by and see how your troops are doing."
"The corps grows, Patricio," the lean black answered. "I, on the other hand, am not doing so well."
Carrera had started to ask the problem when he glanced down at the papers scattered across Jimenez' desk. He picked one up, scanned it, glanced at the return address "The Estado Major's Ib wants to know how many of your machine guns are functional? Why? It's too trivial a concern for national level staff."
"I don't know," Jimenez answered, shrugging. "I just answer the mail. And, frankly, I and my staff have fallen behind. We've been in the field training. Sorry."
Carrera fingers continued sorting through the mess on Jimenez's desk, looking over the paperwork. "What? The II shop wants to know what percentage of potential recruits pass their physical. The Provost wants a list of crime statistics from the 4th Corps?" He read another: "They want to know how many people attend Sunday services in the regimental chapels?! That's absurd!"
Carrera replaced the papers on Jimenez' desk and thought, And I've a sneaking hunch it's my fault for not being there to prevent this sort of nonsense. It wasn't enough, apparently, just to keep staffs small so that people couldn't create the demand for this kind of crap. It has to be killed at the source.
Jimenez shrugged once more. "It's been getting worse lately, too. Ah, Patricio; it's not like it was when we were getting ready for the war. Those were good days, damned good. Just train, train, train and to hell with paperwork."
Carrera nodded, then asked, "Got anything to drink, Xavier?"
"Rum and coke? Wouldn't mind one myself."
"It'll do." Carrera took a seat as Jimenez rang for an orderly. A couple of flies buzzed above the top of Jimenez' desk. Carrera glanced at the flies with a certain interest.
As he waited for the drinks to arrive, a muttering Carrera looked over each demand for information littering Jimenez's desk. He looked back at the flies, now buzzing near a window. Finally he spoke. "Xavier, don't answer any of this shit. Still, I want you to do one more report. Nobody's asked for it, and I really don't want the information. But make up a flypaper report."
"A flypaper report?" Jimenez looked incredulous.
"Oh, yes," Carrera grinned. "A flypaper report. Direct it to the attention of the acting chief of the Estado Major. Put down the number of rolls of flypaper used, where they were placed, how high, how many flies were caught by placement. Throw in anything you can think of that might conceivably have a bearing on that critically important question: the efficacy of flypaper. Then send it up with an letter of apology for being late."
"Apology? Late? But no one's asked for a 'flypaper report' until now."
"I know." Carrera smiled knowingly. "Now let's have those drinks. And Merry Christmas."
Chapter Six
Besides failing to account for the cost of a given good, it is a great moral and logical fallacy of the universe, or at least upon the two planets of it which know Man, to measure good and evil only by their intensity and scope and never by their duration. War is the greatest of evils, so might Man (or at least Cosmopolitan Progressive, or Kosmo, Man) say, and so might he say, too, that we must never wage war even against the greatest oppression. And yet wars inevitably end while oppression goes on and on (and typically ends, if it ends, in war anyway).
War, however, is only the obvious extreme case. Consider reproductive rights. Surely a woman has a right to her own body to do with as she pleases. This is a certain, plain, obvious, and irrefutable good. But just as surely, the children of the women who do not feel that way will soon outnumber the children of the women who do. Those children will learn and carry the values of their parents, as will their children. Also, they will vote. And then expansive, liberal reproductive rights will democratically disappear to join with the children never born to the women most dedicated to those rights. Thus will a generation or two of free reproductive rights for women be followed by one hundred or one thousand generations that scorn them. Thus, the plain, certain, irrefutable and obvious good is meaningless, because it cannot last, because it destroys itself as it destroys the conditions which permitted it.
So, too, unlimited democracy . . .
—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza,
Historia y Filosofia Moral,
Legionary Press, Balboa,
Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468
Anno Condita 470–471 Casa Linda, Balboa, Terra Nova
The tree was decorated, the stockings hung, and the Hamilcar's Pashtun guards had even managed to figure out where the exterior lights went. (Also, since the lights would have tended to silhouette them, they'd figured out that they'd better double the number of guards and push them out, away from the house. As Lourdes said, "Paranoia, thou art a Pashtun. Thank goodness.") Now, as the clock neared midnight, Carrera and Lourdes had the Casa Linda mostly to themselves but for the guards outside and the ones keeping watch over Hamilcar, upstairs.
As midnight struck, Carrera walked to a console and removed a small box, the kind that would contain a necklace. He handed the box to Lourdes. She opened it to find a string of pearls, large and perfect, shining pink and iridescent in the subdued light. Lourdes made a happy sound, reached up to kiss Carrera heavily, and ran to where she had hidden her gift to Carrera.