Empire (8 page)

Reza favored her with an impish grin as he looked around at the nearby groups of laboring children, then at the sun. “I think it’s time to have lunch,” he announced, clapping his hands and rubbing them together as if a truly tasty meal awaited them. He stood up, cupping his hands to his mouth, and shouted, “BREAK!” to several figures off to their right. He repeated it to the left, and the other eleven members of his field team gratefully sat down for their noon meal break. It was the only one they were allowed during their twelve to sixteen hour workday.

Nicole got out the meatloaf sandwiches she made for them that morning. The meatloaf was a spread from a can. Reza had observed drily that it had probably not come from any sort of animal, so probably was not any sort of meat, nor had it ever been part of any kind of loaf. But that was their feast for today. She set the sandwiches out on a white embroidered cloth she always brought with her for the occasion. It was something she had managed to make in her free time, virtually all of which she spent in the library with Reza and Wiley. Making their lunch had been her idea, and the extra work it took made her feel good, and it had since become a kind of tradition. It was a tiny thing that bound them a bit more closely together, staving off a little of the ugliness that filled their lives. Again reaching into her pack, she pulled out two battered metal cups and poured water for the two of them. Then she settled down to wait as Reza went about his noontime ritual.

She watched as he walked toward one pair of his team. He talked with them for a moment as they ate, making sure they were all right, then moved on to the next. He had always made it a point to take care of his people first, something he once told her he had learned from Wiley. On days when there were problems – and there were plenty of those, even on a job as mundane as this – he often did not get to rest or eat at all. The librarian, Mary Acherlein, whom Nicole had instantly liked, once told her that Reza had been a team leader for over a year before Nicole had arrived, despite his young age and Muldoon’s best efforts to the contrary. Of course, Muldoon did not try overly hard to get in Reza’s way: his team consistently outperformed the others in House 48’s field clearing totals, and that made Muldoon look good.

If that was possible
, she thought sourly, thankful that the ponderous bulk of a man had left her alone, aside from an occasional visual appraisal that left her skin crawling with the memory of that loathsome first day when she had been trapped under his throbbing mass. She shuddered, pushing away the memory.

Watching as Reza started back toward her, most of his own eating time gone, she could not help but wonder if someday they might not become something more than friends. It was a pleasant thought, a dream that she kept quietly to herself. But for now, she treated him much like a brother who just happened to be very mature for a boy so young. He was still prone to mischief and the other emotional conundrums that plagued children his age, perhaps even more so now that he had someone to express them to, but there was no denying that he was already a young man, and she found herself very attracted to him.
Someday
, she thought.

“Well?” she prompted, handing him a sandwich.

He peered between the thick slabs of bread – one thing they had plenty of – and made a face. “Gross,” he said, a grin touching his lips. Nicole batted him in the shoulder. “Everybody’s okay. No more than the usual, except for Minkman. Said he had a broken finger on his left hand.”

“What did you do?”

Reza laughed. “I told him to use his right hand and not to worry about it.” Nicole frowned, sometimes not quite sure if he was joking or not. “Okay, okay. I splinted it for him, too. If he wants more than that before he can get to the infirmary tonight, he has to go to Muldoon, which he did not want to do. I can’t imagine why.”

“
Bon
,” she said. “Now, sit down and eat.”

“
Oui, madame
,” he said, this time with a perfect La Seyne accent. He plopped down across from her, somehow not getting dirt all over the picnic cloth. Taking a long swallow of water from his cup, he began to devour the first of three sandwiches and an anemic apple that served as dessert. The first day Nicole had offered to pack his lunch for him she had only made one sandwich, and Reza had been more anxious than usual to get back from the fields, this time to the dining hall instead of the library. He had never said a word about it, but she had felt awful when she saw how hungry he was that evening. She had not repeated that mistake since.

She stole a glance at him as he was looking off into the distance at something, the left side of his face turned toward her. Despite the scar that marred his skin, the keepsake left by the Kreelan warrior who had killed his parents, he was a handsome boy. He wasn’t gorgeous or glamorous as some children promised to be upon their entry into puberty, but his face and his body radiated his inner strength and spirit. His skin was a golden color, not all of it from the tan from his years of work in the fields. Nor was it quite the olive color often associated with descendants of Terran Mediterranean races, nor was it European. He was all of those, yet none of them. The same was true of his hair. Almost chocolate brown, bleached somewhat by the sun, it was thick and lush, almost oriental in its texture. Haphazardly cut close to his skull when she had first met him, she had taken it upon herself to give him a proper haircut. Now it tapered evenly in the back to his neckline, with his ears and forehead neatly exposed in what she jokingly referred to as House 48’s
haute couture
hairstyle.

“You’ll be leaving soon,” he said quietly.

“What?” she asked, unsure if she had heard him correctly.

“Wiley got your acceptance papers this morning from Lakenheath Training Center,” he told her, his eyes focused on the ground. “You maxed out on almost all those tests you took a few months ago. Made you look like kind of a hot shot, I guess. There’ll be a ship coming to pick you up on your birthday next week.” He smiled, still not looking at her. “You’ve reached ‘free fifteen.’” He finally looked up. His eyes were a confused mixture of relief that she had been accepted and sorrow that she would be leaving him, probably forever. “I… I wanted to tell you as soon as I found out this morning, but…” He trailed off. “I couldn’t,” he finally whispered. “I didn’t want to say it, that you’re really going to be leaving. But I couldn’t put it off any longer.” He offered her a sad smile. “Congratulations, trainee fighter pilot Carré.”

Nicole was speechless for a moment, her mouth working, but no words came out. The time had passed so quickly, her brain sputtered. It was too soon. It was impossible.

“Reza…” she managed. And then, like a dam bursting, she began to cry. She wrapped her arms around Reza and held him tight, overcome with joy that her future was not completely bleak, that she had something to look forward to. “Oh, Reza,” she exclaimed, her French accent nearly obliterating the Standard words, “this is so wonderful! We can leave this rotten place! And in only a few days! We…”

“I can’t leave, remember?” Reza reminded her softly, fighting to hold back tears of his own as he held her. He had lost so many friends to time and circumstance that he thought he would be hardened to this, ready for it when it came, when it was time for her to leave. But he wasn’t. He could never be ready for the things he felt now, inside himself. He knew she had to go, knew that it was the only thing for her. But it hurt so much to think of what things were going to be like without her.

In that moment he knew the truth about his feelings. He loved her. He knew he was only a barely pubescent boy with emerging hormones, but he knew in his heart that it was true.

Her voice faded away as the realization forced itself upon her like Muldoon’s groping hands.

“
Mon cher,
” she whispered, the joyful tears suddenly becoming bitter and empty. “Oh, Reza, what will you do?”

He tried to smile, failed. “The same as I always do,” he choked, shrugging. “I’ll make do somehow. I’m just happy that you made it, Nicole,” he told her. “As much as it’s going to hurt to see you go, I’m so glad for you.”

They held each other for a while longer, trying to forestall the bittersweet future that vowed to separate them, brother and sister in a family bound together not by blood, but by trust and love.

Finally, without saying another word, they rose unsteadily to their feet and got back to work.

* * *

Muldoon let the field glasses he had been holding to his eyes slap against his chest, the once bright finish of the instrument long since corroded by hours of being held in his sweaty palms.

He spent a goodly portion of his day watching Gard and his crew from an unobtrusive distance. He especially enjoyed watching the French girl.
Yes
, he thought, licking the sticky sweat from his lips,
especially her
. After the confrontation that very first day, Muldoon had been forced by Reza’s tactics to leave them more or less alone. He had taken out his frustrations on his usual victims, although he had never thought of them as such. To Muldoon they were only young children who should have liked him, but did not for some inexplicable reason. But the lust in him for the little wench from La Seyne refused to die. If anything, it grew the more he tried to satisfy his urgings in other ways.

Muldoon had received word through his grapevine that Nicole would be leaving soon, and the diabolical device that served as his brain was churning through possibilities, looking for options, an opening.

Yeah
, he thought to himself, feeling his crotch begin to throb,
I’d like to explore an opening, right between the little bitch’s legs
. And he would not mind sticking it to her little boy benefactor, either, he thought as his teeth ground together in frustration. Just before he choked the life out of the little bastard.

He turned to get back in the van, his mind still churning, looking for a scenario that would work. He was not worried about the house administrators, or even the Navy ship coming to get the girl. It was the kids themselves, plus the joker that was the old man. Muldoon had always thought him a senile idiot, at least until he had tried to push the old Marine around, threatening him after Wiley had witnessed one of Muldoon’s little indiscretions. The ground had never hit Muldoon that hard or fast. When he came to, the old man was sweeping the floor nearby as if nothing had happened. He was a wild card, and one thing Muldoon despised was unpredictability.

His mind began to bubble with frustration. He was usually so good at making plans quickly, and he kicked one broken-arched foot at the steppe grass, watching the dust trail away like smoke.

Like smoke
.

And then it came to him. “Oh, that’s just rich,” he told himself, chuckling softly as he swung his bulk into the driver’s seat. “Brother Muldoon,” he said, “you certainly do have a way.”

He started the engine and drove off, heading for the compound to make the arrangements for the French girl’s coming of age.

* * *

Reza frowned. “That Muldoon,” he muttered under his breath. “What an idiot.”

It was the day before Nicole was to leave. The two of them, plus four others from Reza’s team, had been assigned a ridiculously small quadrangle to clear. But it was not the area’s size or shape that puzzled Reza, but the location: on all four sides there were quads of wheat that were almost ready to be harvested. Genetically modified over decades from original Earth stock, Hallmark’s grain grew taller than Reza could reach with his arms extended over his head and produced four times as much grain per hectare. Normally that didn’t matter to him. But now, standing inside this quad, it was impossible to see anything past the wall of gently waving stalks, and it made Reza nervous.

“What difference does it make,
mon ami
?” Nicole asked, reluctantly putting her gloves on. “Rocks are rocks,
non
?”

“Sure,” he replied, “but you don’t normally bother clearing little patches like this just before the harvest. It’s easier to wait until the wheat’s been taken out so you can get the rocks through to the road.” He remembered how Muldoon had come to pick them up that morning in one of the huge combines, a first in Reza’s time on-planet. Neither the large buses that were their normal transport when working far from the house, nor Muldoon’s van could penetrate the wheat to get them to the barren quad where they now stood. They had to walk in from the road. And it wasn’t his full team, just the six of them.

She touched his shoulder. “Perhaps we should get to work, Reza,” she told him quietly, a tentative smile on her lips. “I think perhaps you have other things on your mind that make a little thing seem very big.”

Reza looked at her. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” he sighed. Her leaving was indeed a big thing on his mind, and it did seem to make everything else – the bad things – worse. But a part of his mind still wondered why Muldoon had put them here. It was different, out of his normal routine, and that made Reza worry.

* * *

The morning passed without incident. Reza was working hard on digging out a particularly recalcitrant rock, simultaneously considering the feasibility of a lunch break, when he heard Nicole call to him from where she was digging a meter or so away.

“Reza,” she asked, pointing to the north, “what is that?”

He looked up, and his heart tripped in his chest. There was smoke. Lots of it. And close.

“Oh, damn,” he hissed, tossing down his pickaxe. His eyes swept the horizon around them, his stomach sinking like a lead weight over a deep ocean trench. Smoke billowed out of all the adjoining quads, as if nearly a combined hectare’s worth of wheat had simply decided to ignite.