War World X: Takeover (25 page)

Harmonies used treated human waste as fertilizer, “an old German recipe” as the Reverend Castell called it, but Castell City and Docktown and Cambiston and all the other settlements tended to sluice or pump raw sewage into Havenhold Lake and the rivers, without regard to Harmony of any kind. Civilization brings its own ambiguities and oxymorons, always; Wilgar studied Earth’s many moribund cultures for just such lessons, and he often asked aloud how they could be so willfully stupid. Neither his teachers nor even First Deacon Kev Malcolm had any answer. All of them fell back on Harmony platitudes, emphasizing how truly important a genuine search was for Harmony—for cultures as well as individuals.

It was a hollow only big enough for a small man, or a boy of thirteen. It had been created by water erosion, rare on Haven except where leaky sewers met. And the erosion had exposed the buried ends of seven of the palisade’s posts. A ragged square of cloth some might recognize as a Harmony robe, albeit a stained and tattered one, covered a crude hole through the palisade.

Wilgar lifted the cloth and slipped under it, into the Harmony compound. He scrambled on all fours along the small tunnel, touching places his own hands had carved. The tunnel ended about three man-lengths past the palisade, and turned up.

Standing, Wilgar carefully lifted the wood hatch, really just a chunk of board with no hinges: Dirt slid from the board. Wilgar saw nothing but chickens, so he scrambled up into the south-east corner of the coop, where the grain was stored in a locked shed.

Replacing the board so it covered the tunnel hole, the boy used his feet to scrape a layer of dirt back over it. He snatched a handful of grain and scattered it onto the dirt. He studied it for a second, nodded, then turned and moved from behind the shed.

Chickens pecked and clucked around him, and roosters challenged his shins. Wilgar walked through droppings, ungathered down-feathers and swirls of agitated, near-mindless chickens. Haven’s orange light had clouded some of the chickens’ eyes. Other chickens had developed bigger pupils. Most did nothing unearthly except produce more eggs and more rooster-crowing during Eyerise.

Dashing now, Wilgar crossed an empty space, then came to roost atop the south corral fence. It was split-rail in design, but the fence was altered to fit Haven standards, being made of much shorter, stouter planks, due to the trees available and zigzagging much more than any earthly counterpart, to accommodate bundles of thorn-bush set in each wedge.

Wilgar balanced for a moment, one foot on a post-top, then hopped down, catching his balance by touching a white-faced, mottled Long Angus hybrid. Its stubby horns and husky shoulders gave it a baleful look, but Wilgar simply slapped the beast’s rump and moved past it, crossing the corral half-crouched while the Long Angus wandered off chewing cud.

Boosting the fence on the far side, the boy ran hard across another open space, leaping over a dip-trench and vaulting a water-trough. He fell flat and rolled under a wagon, and then for a few minutes simply panted, forcing Haven’s thin air to give up more oxygen than it seemed willing to give. As he lay on his back, he gazed up at the underside of the wagon and touched the fingertips of his right hand to those of his left. Snatches of a Harmony prayer-song came from him and as his breathing settled, more of the soft, simple melody escaped him.

“Lazing,” came a gruff male voice.

Wilgar rolled out from under the wagon and gazed up at First Deacon Kev Malcolm. “I was seeking Harmony with the horizontal,” the boy said.

Kev’s face showed pain. “You mock our precepts,” he said, but his voice carried fatigue more than exasperation.

Wilgar hung his head and said, “Peace is mine to offer. I’m sorry, First Deacon. My humor has no sense, as you often tell me.”

Kev smiled down at the boy’s bowed head, but the smile vanished quickly as Wilgar looked up at him. Kev said, “We must prepare for a trek. We must visit some farms.”

“It’s that deal we made with the spy, isn’t it? He’s not what he seems, I asked around and he hasn’t even visited one bordello. What kind of off-worlder fails to do that? Except Harmonies, and he’s not one of us, that’s for sure.” As soon as Wilgar saw the look of horror on Kev’s face, he stopped jabbering and bowed his head again and said, “I’m sorry.”

“You’ll be coming with me,” Kev said. “And as of this minute, it’s not a suggestion, but a damned good idea.” And he strode away from the boy, back straight and arms swinging stiffly; it was almost the way the Reverend Castell walked when in the grip of a vision.

Wilgar, still gaping from the rare profanity, hurried to catch up. As he walked at Kev’s heels, he gazed around at the compound as if to memorize it, or perhaps seeing it for the first time in a new way.

“Tell you what,” Cole said, shivering despite the hood, three sweaters and makeshift scarf. “Keep east, and drop me on Splashdown Island.”

Ishmael grunted and belched, but passed the buoy and kept the skiff aimed at the island, visible only as a bulk of silhouette in the distance. To their left Castell City and Docktown glittered with a thousand points of light, like some shipwrecked dream. Without neon, streetlights, or anything but private electricity, Haven’s first and largest city flickered with frontier fire as gloom gathered. Clotted darkness revealed Hecate and Brynhild, riding low as yet, but still catching Byerlight as Cat’s Eye slid into ecliptic.

“We ride trench,” Ishmael said, pulling the rudder hard to port which made the skiff slew starboard. City lights dwindled behind them now. The bottom of Havenhold Lake was shallow in many places, due to sandbars constantly shifting in the confluence of the rivers. There were trenches which went down to unplumbed depths and in them navigation was smoother because the surface-water wasn’t constantly pushed upward by bottom. Tides could even steer barges when drag-anchors and stabilizer fins were lowered. Only wayward sandbars threatened bigger craft, but pilots knew the patterns better than Mark Twain could have imagined, so accidents were few and due mostly to novices.

In a skiff, however, only exposed sandbars posed a hazard as the boat’s draft was so shallow. Cole hunched a bit nearer the can of smoldering coals and warmed his hands. His hired chauffeur hawked phlegm to port and coughed bubbles from his lungs, but seemed otherwise to thrive in the gathering chill.

A sentry boat, swift vee-hull cutting water like a blade, intercepted Ishmael’s skiff and Cole rose at once to bellow a code. He almost fell overboard when a random chunk of ice thunked the bow.

A searchlight from the sentry blinded them. “We have you in our gunsights,” came a bored Marine’s voice through a bullhorn. “Identify and state reason for violating island space.”

Cole shouted his codes again, and this time the Marines heard him.

“You’re slightly overdue, sir,” the bullhorn roared. The sentry’s engine revved down, then the boat itself drifted closer and the searchlight flicked off.

In the sudden dark, afterimages danced. Cole blinked them away. His eyes watered, and the tears felt as if they were freezing solid on his cheeks. He hated the breezes wafting around them as Haven settled in for a long Eyeless night.

Ishmael caught a line and tethered his craft to the sentry boat. He cut his engine off and locked the rudder-ratchet in neutral. In a few minutes they’d been towed to a concrete quay at the point of the triangular island which pointed almost due west. On the opposite side of Splashdown Island a long, flat cliff overlooking a pebble beach provided perfect line-of-sight for the north-south splashdown zone, which was wide enough to accommodate the equivalent of three separate spaceport runways. Three separate splash-ships could come down at once, or would be able to, once the floating baffles defined the lanes and blocked hull-wave slosh-over.

Cole hopped up onto the quay, where a grim sergeant in CD Marine uniform glared at him, one hand held out palm up. “ID, sir,” the Sergeant said, his shaved scalp and puckered cauliflower ears red in the cold.

Handing over an ID chip the size of his thumbnail, Cole said, “I’ve got to meet with your comman—”

A gunshot broke the air, interrupting the spy.

Only Cole reacted, by crouching and drawing a weapon. Glancing down at the skiff, he saw Ishmael’s body flopped half over the gunwale. One hand trailed into the water, like a tourist idly testing the temperature. Cole imagined the fingers freezing solid, if one of the imported pike didn’t snap them off first for an appetizer.

“Tried to escape,” a voice called up, and the grim Sergeant nodded.

“Friend?” he asked Cole, who quickly straightened the surprise off his face and said, “I’m not familiar with that term.”

Good, the sergeant’s expression said. They walked in light provided by kerosene lanterns, the mantels of which glowed blue-white, attracting Haven’s few species of moth. “My CO’s been waiting for word from you, sir,” the Sergeant said, as they entered a corrugated tin building and jogged up a short, dark flight of metal steps.

A door opened, and Cole walked ahead of the Sergeant into a room so overheated and so full of kerosene fumes that he dizzied at once. A tall, rugged man with brown hair, blond eyebrows and flinty black eyes stood and squinted at him, then extended a hand. He wore a plaid lumberman’s shirt and jeans, but Cole knew it must be the island’s garrison commander, so he took a chance and said, “Colonel.”

“Call me Spike.” The man did not smile, so it was not, apparently, a joke. When Cole looked puzzled, the man said, “Just Spike. Nickname. Got it on Sauron. Killed a berserker. Railroad spike. Weapon of convenience, just grabbed what was there. Worked good, though. Plain old Spike ever since. You settin’ things up for us? Little action be nice, after all this sitting.”

He rubbed his buttocks as if they were numb and as if the numbness was at least partly Cole’s fault. Glancing at the other three officers, all in uniform, with whom he’d been playing poker, Spike said, “My office,” and inclined his head. “Brief me.”

Cole followed, his lower lip behind his front teeth and he considered his options and alternatives.

In a plain room with a GI porta-desk, two folding chairs, a file-cube, screen, battered antique keyboard, jury-rigged voice-activated computer interface system, a single lantern and a map on a wall beside the desk, Spike said, “Best billet available. Pathetic. MWR’s corrupt and I won’t pay, so we get amenities a hermit crab wouldn’t want. We even have a hacker on this pig of a jury-rigged network, can you believe? But fuck ’em. Soldiers, damn it. We can take it, tough’s what you save up to dish out later, huh?” Spike laughed as he sat behind the desk.

Cole chuckled, then sat in the other chair. It creaked but held. “Okay, first a quick-sketch overview: Pretty soon all hell’s going to break loose, uh, sir,” he began. His hands, still cold, gestured stiffly. “There should be explosions in a few hours from Hell’s-a-Comin’ to Docktown, Cambiston and Castell City proper. I might even have one arranged for the Haven Compound.”

Spike’s brows rose. He said nothing.

Cole continued. “Meanwhile, stockpiles of semi-refined ore are being secreted at various Harmony farms and settlements in the outlying area. That’s arranged, and it means that we can catch them with the goods, prove their complicity in what we’re going to call the revolt.”

“Unrest, violence,” Spike said, smiling. “And my boys get blooded.”

“At first, but then you call for reinforcements and an official request for an interim governor while CoDominium status for Haven is debated.”

“Questions,” Spike said, leaning forward, rubbing his hands.

And for the next hour or so Cole answered ever more detailed questions. He found himself elaborating his plan in more detail than he’d done even for himself. After all, as per Director’s Assistant, CoDominium Bureau of Intelligence Marshall Wainright’s advice, he’d been winging it, applying the Free Hand principle of ad-libbing on the ground. And having been promised Kennicott and Dover help, Cole now found himself grateful for this CD Marine Colonel’s unexpectedly trenchant analysis. Between the two of them, the plan coalesced and became layered, almost intricate, but subtle enough to respond to the inevitable changes first contact with any enemy causes to all battle-plans.

“Those poor harmless Harmonies,” Spike said.

And for once, Cole himself almost felt pity. Almost.