“That’s our problem, Venn. We’ve been sleepwalking ever since Titan. I need to talk to somebody about command structure and discipline.”
Of course you do, I say to myself. “Happy to listen, Commander, but I’m not sure I’m the right guy.”
“I’m conflicted about Sanchez. I don’t like his story about Sudbury. Putting our soldiers, any kind of soldier, into the hands of monsters…”
“DJ and Tak and I wouldn’t be here without him. He saved our bacon, ma’am, and Sudbury was one mean son of a bitch.”
“Even so. I can’t talk to Litvinov, he’s too grief-stricken at the loss of Ulyanova.”
“She’s not dead, Commander.”
“She might as well be. And she’s taken one of the efreitors with her.”
“Vera?”
“We haven’t seen either of them since I don’t know when. That’s part of the problem… I have no idea when this is or where we are, and no actionable about where we’re heading.”
“Bird Girl says she and her fellow Antags are going home, but most or all of them have never been there. DJ thinks it’s Planet X.”
“I goddamned well can’t talk to the corporal. He’s too whacked for me.”
“DJ is smart and he’s straight, Commander.”
“Maybe it’s my lack, then, but I need to think about structure, about who we are, with somebody I think gives a damn.”
“If you don’t know where you are, you don’t know who you are.”
“Who said that—you?”
“A writer named Wendell Berry.”
“You read a lot, Venn?”
“I like to read. My mother read a lot, sometimes to me.” Borden is the current puzzle, I tell myself. Constrained rage, trying to appear so calm on the outside… What does she think we can do? We’re so reduced we could all hole up in a nutshell and leave room for the nut.
“What about Kumar?” I say. “He’s the civilian authority, right?”
“I haven’t trusted Wait Staff since before I broke you out of Madigan.”
“Well, he’s been pretty straight with us—except for that moment trying to remember what the Gurus meant to him. I’ve had my own lapses that way.”
“Venn, I want to gain traction here.”
“Tell me what you need, Commander.”
“We need to reestablish. We’ve long since exceeded our mission, and we’re down to Hershey squirts for orders.”
“Jesus,” I say, and laugh.
“I mean it. If we don’t get it together soon, we’ll go fucking native, and that is not any sort of option… is it?”
“Our enemy is in charge, but they’re no longer our enemy. Maybe you need to speak with Bird Girl.”
“That’s what I’m saying, goddammit! What’s her real name? What’s her rank?”
“I’ll ask next time we get together,” I say. Borden’s face is a mask of little-girl disappointment. I did not think she was capable of reviving her inner child, but here it is, she’s in pain, and there’s not a meaningful thing I can do. She’s my superior officer. We shouldn’t even be having this conversation.
Which proves her point.
“We need to have a mission,” she says, her voice falling off. She gives me a hard look. I have to think outside the box—that’s a direct order, isn’t it? All my life I’ve assigned leadership and planning to others—to Joe or people like Borden—to our DIs or battlefield commanders.
“Maybe it’s right in front of us,” I say. “We need to follow the Antags to their home world, get as much information as we can about their relationship to their own Gurus—their Keepers—and acquire as much intel as we can about where the Antags come from and what they have to offer in our effort to free Earth from all this bullshit.”
She looks squarely at me. “Like you say, obvious. But I’m maybe the least informed of anyone on this ship, the least sophisticated on things Guru and Antag—all book and paper training, right?”
I don’t respond to that. I’m still pondering what her highest directive was when she sprang me from Madigan. Was she already anticipating—along with Kumar and Mushran—that there would be a Guru mimic in their future?
“What do you suggest?” she asks.
“Litvinov and Joe and Jacobi could work with you to create a new set of directives. New orders reflective of our circumstances.”
“Where would Bird Girl fit in?”
“Maybe she wants us to contribute to their game plan, their new mission—but so far she’s just providing minimal education… and trying to overcome her hatred.”
“What about her commanders? Do we have any sense of how they work, militarily, socially?”
I make a wry face. “I’m not sure, but when we communicate, there’s something not stated—some place inside her thinking where I’m not allowed to go.”
“Can she wander in your head?” Borden asks.
“I don’t think so.” Can she? Would I feel it if she did?
“How many shoes can an Antag drop?” Borden asks, seriously enough, but with more wit than I thought she was capable of. We’re not often allowed to think such thoughts of our sisters in the military, and particularly not of rank, but for the first time, I can conceive of maybe enjoying a social occasion with Commander Borden—going out for drinks if not an actual date. She might laugh at my jokes. I might laugh at hers.
I’ve been out here a long, long time.
“Well, the big shoe that hasn’t been dropped is, where are the men?” I say. “Antag males, I mean.”
“They’re all females?” Borden seems surprised.
“That’s what Ulyanova says. Even rank is female. But there might be something more to the picture.”
“A different command structure?”
“Something odd.” Something big.
“Odd how?” Borden asks.
“I do not know, Commander.”
“Surely not as odd as the squid, right?”
I shake my head.
She looks alarmed, then disgusted. “You’re thinking the squid are the males?”
“No, they’re definitely from a different part of whatever world they all come from. The bugs knew about them in reverse, I mean, the bugs laid down some of the possibilities for the searchers way back when, but… no. They’re more different from Antags than we are.”
“Thank God,” Borden says.
And I have to agree. But what’s lurking in my scattered shrapnel of knowledge, now that we’re so far from anything like Bug Karnak? Now that Bug Karnak has been hammered into silence… Where are the Antag males, and what are they like?
“Thanks for a sympathetic ear, Venn.”
“Not a problem, Commander.”
“Keep me in the loop, okay?”
“Will do. And sir, I’d be happy to help you understand DJ. He’s a valuable member of our team.”
She shudders delicately. But then she sucks it up. “Sure,” she says. “We need more understanding, if we’re going to keep it together.”
BIRD GIRL CONVENES us all in view of the maze of supports and machinery forward of the node where the cloverleaves come together. She’s been joined by two searchers. I can’t keep my eyes off the way they grip and glide smoothly through the canes and a spiderweb of flexible cords. They help Bird Girl find her place at our center and even offer to help arrange us. Once again, we’re treated like flowers, and the squid seem to enjoy the little flourishes of who is planted next to whom, which some of us accept with tense reserve and others with a growing sense of perverse humor. Who can be most cooperative? After you, ma’am. May I pull up an arm, a tentacle? No, I insist.