The Far Side (86 page)

“There are no guarantees,” Andie told him.

“And I understand that.  We are a few days before the Thanksgiving holiday.  Two weeks later are this term’s finals.  We excuse cadets from taking finals if they already have an ‘A’ in the course.

“What I would like to do is offer a few, perhaps three or four, of Norwich’s finest cadets, an opportunity to go through to Arvala.  They can skip the week of review, preparatory to finals.  They can skip finals week, and they can skip the three weeks of the season break.  I could, if persuaded, also agree to them skipping the first week or so of the new term.  That is five or six weeks, Miss Schulz.  Do you think you could arrange a program that would fill that time frame in such a way that would benefit my cadets?”

“You understand that they could get eaten?” Andie told him.  “That will be hard to explain to their parents.  “Arvala has had a recent civil war, a recent insurrection, and a recent invasion.  It is not the safest place in the universe.”

“You would recommend that my students stay away?” General Briggs asked seriously.  He could see Kris shaking her head emphatically “no.”

“No, General,” Andie told him.  “I’m just telling you that I don’t want it to fall to me to write the letter to some poor sod’s parents that he was eaten by a pterodactyl or that their daughter was taken by slavers, repeatedly raped, and then carried away into servitude.”

“I take full responsibility for any student I would send to you,” he told Andie.

“Sure, then feel free.  I’ve just started building a railroad north from the rookery.  Well, I haven’t started it -- Dick Haines here has.  We’re in the process of surveying the line north.  We could probably show them what’s involved in that, at least now.  It’s got our full attention.  Plus a little trip up to Arvala to meet the King and see the sights.  With luck, they won’t see hardly any dralka.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” the general told her.

Andie looked at Kris.  “What do you say?”

“Andie, I’m not sure anymore what I want.  This is as good an offer as you’re going to get.”

“I can live with this, General Briggs,” Andie told the Norwich president.  I’ll send Hank and he can get with your people about what your cadets can expect.”

“Me?” Hank Martindale said.  “You want me to tell eager beavers where to go and what to do?  You have to know what I’m going to say.”

Andie patted his arm.  “Hank, buddy, you and I both know you never do less than your best.  Can it.”

“Is there anything else?” General Briggs asked.

“Rescues?” Kurt asked.

“Unlike Far Side doors, rescues are not suspended.  I hate to send people into danger, particularly a situation where they can be nuked without warning.  We will have to think ten thousand times more about whether or not to open a Far Side door to go after someone -- but I don’t think we can give up on rescues entirely.”

Jon Bullman interrupted again.  “I can safely say that the next time the government decides to do something like what happened in Chicago, it will be done with better preparation and warning to all parties.  Unless it’s like what happened in France, then, of course, all bets are off.”  He paused and went on.  “The President has asked me if I would accept the position of the head of the Department of Homeland Security Office of Fusor Safety.  The job would entail liaison with any government agency that has to deal with a Far Side door situation, even if it doesn’t involve a rescue, ala Seattle.  I have agreed to accept the appointment.”

“I don’t know if I am happy to hear that rescues are still on or not, Tom,” Kurt told him.  “Obviously someone should be available to attempt to rescue those who we can actually safely reach.  It’s just that the variety of problems are enormous.  Vastly enormous.  But, if Kris is willing, so am I.  But no more non-combatants, Kris.”

Kris nodded.

“Okay,” the general said, summing up.  “Captain Stone will meet with Andie or her representatives.  We will define parameters for who we need to pick to go to Arvala and what they will see and learn there.  In the meantime, operations on the fusor side are on hold until we can study Andie’s idea, and the rescues will have to be carefully reviewed before we open a Far Side door.  Are there any questions?”

“I need to speak to you later,” Kris told him.

“That can, by definition, Kris, wait for later.  Nothing?  Then we’re done.”

The others left, but Kris stayed seated.  General Briggs stayed seated as well, as did his wife.

“Kris?  Is this about Erica?”

“No, sir.  She is justified in her request.”

“Then what is it, Kris?” he asked.

“Erica finds herself distracted by my activities.  Sir, I don’t find that I am.”  She held up her fingers of her right hand, a tiny fraction of an inch between her right thumb and index finger.  “This much, sir.  That’s what I’m using to solve these problems.  None of them require much analysis.”

“I’m sorry you think that, Kris.  You’ve saved a lot of lives.  A lot of lives.  Kurt isn’t one to go in for extravagant praise, but that’s what he does about you.  You make a real difference, Kris.”

“Perhaps, sir.  But I seriously doubt that Kurt would have come to a different conclusion in either rescue.  In fact, he would probably have saved a lot of Chicago real estate, because after the carbon monoxide attack, he’d have called off the rescue.”

“Perhaps,” the general told her.  “He did say that, like everyone else, he was just coming to terms that there was a warning when you turned off the machine and ordered everyone out.  And, as you’ll recall, we never opened the Far Side door again -- the damage had already been done.  It was you, not him, who had the wit to look at the place where the Far Side door had been.  Between you and the sharp-eyed and quick-witted robot-operator, you found the problem.  After that, really, it was out of your hands.”

Kris nodded, not surprised at all.  “The evening before last, sir, I was offered the job of ‘special assistant to the mayor of Seattle’ with very carefully described duties.  I hadn’t realized until I heard what was on offer, how much I would like to do something like that.”

“And you accepted?” General Biggs asked.

“No, sir.  Sir, I know you and a lot of others think I walk on water, and that I know what I’m doing.  I don’t.  I need more education, sir.  Norwich is a fine institution, and I want to continue here.  I just want to expand my curriculum.”

He chuckled.  “Kris, ask for it, and if I have to, I’ll hire a special tutor from half-way around the world -- the tutor will be here tomorrow.”

“Why, sir?”

He laughed.  “Our purpose, Kris, is to educate the next generation of our country’s leaders in what they need to function in the world of the future.  We try to specialize in military officers, but just producing worthy civic leaders and just all-around good citizens are worthy goals that we also pursue.  You are, so far as I can tell, far, far out there on the cutting edge.  Even if I don’t understand what it is you need; it behooves me to figure it out and supply it.”  He laughed.

“And then teach the same thing to as many of my students as I can.”

He paused and went on.  “What do you think of my request of Andie?”

“You may lose one or two cadets, sir.”

“I didn’t think the danger is that extreme, Kris.”

“I don’t think it is either, sir.  I think that, with due preparation, that we can deal with expected threats.  Except Arvala, sir, is filled with unexpected threats that you can’t predict.”

“Andie has two dozen people over there now, and they are all doing well,” he told her.

“Andie has two dozen people being paid exorbitantly to stay alive and to teach the Arvalans what they know.  She wishes that they’d tone down the football a little, but beyond that she has few complaints.  They don’t move around much, and they have plenty of guards.”

He contemplated Kris for a moment.  “Do you think we should do this or not?”

“Me?” Kris said, surprised.  “I’m all in favor.  Still, I’m not going to ignore the fact that I wouldn’t be surprised that you might lose one or two.”

“Can you get with Andie and see if you can reduce the risk?”

“General, we can do that.  And we will reduce the risks -- those that we know about.  We won’t affect the risks we don’t know about, not even a tiny bit.

“I hope you’re good at writing letters to the bereaved,” Kris told him.

“I won’t be happy if anyone gets hurt,” he told Kris.  “But I’d rather believe in the success of my cadets than their failure.”

“As you wish, sir,” Kris responded.

* * *

Charles Evans was one of three Norwich cadets who stood at attention, waiting for the briefing to start.  He couldn’t be sure if the other two cadets standing next to him were feeling the same sort of exhilaration that he was, but he had to admit that he was pretty pumped.

Charles’ most outstanding feature was a mop of flame red hair that had been shorn to a stubble.  That and he was six and a half feet tall.

Adam Mercer yelled, “Ten Hut!” when the man came in.  Like all three of them, Adam was wearing desert cammies, something that Norwich cadets didn’t normally don until after graduation.  Adam was five eight, with dark hair and a dark complexion -- he could easily be mistaken for an Arvalan, at least until he opened his mouth.

The third person of the trio was Sally Kemp, the youngest of the group, as Charles was the oldest.  She was a stocky woman and nearly six feet tall.  Everyone chose her first for the women’s basketball and football teams.  She had brown hair and brown eyes and one of the sharpest minds that Charles had ever seen.

Coming back to the moment, Charles didn’t let any emotion show on his face, knowing that Adam had stepped in it.  There was no insignia on the man’s fatigues, so there was no way to tell if he was an officer or not.

“Sit down, people,” the stranger said. “I’m Ezra Lawson and this isn’t the military that you are familiar with.  Get used to the fact that when in Rome, you will do as the Romans do.  The Arvalans don’t salute, they don’t stand at attention, and they don’t wear insignia of rank like you’re used to.”

He held up the back of his hands to them, and Charles could see two small tattoos, one on the back of each wrist.  Ezra wiggled his left hand.  “This says I belong to the Chain Breakers fighting order; it shows that I’ve taken a vow to fight to free the descendants of the Arvalans who were taken as slaves a long time ago.”

He wiggled his other wrist.  “This shows that I’m not just anybody in the fighting order.

“The Arvalans have seven fighting orders, although one is in the process of reconstituting.  The next oldest order are the Sea Fighters, and their symbol is something like an anchor.  After that are the Dralka, the Tarin, the King’s Guard, the Wall Fighters, and the Road Guards.  The Dralka are the order currently being reorganized.  The Tarin are guys you never, ever went to mess with.  A tarin is a critter that looks a lot like a T. Rex.  The youngest of these orders is about a thousand years old.

“Kris Boyle thinks that this trip will give you some perspective about things, and your President, General Briggs, agrees.

“Personally, I think that OJT in a combat zone is a tough way to learn your profession.”

He nodded at Sally Kemp.  “The Arvalans had no experience with women in combat until Kris Boyle and Andie Schulz showed up.  The Arvalans, you will find, are overly polite and utterly smothering in their regard of women -- if you let them.  Their desire to keep women safe knows no bounds.  Their women are expected to have babies, raise children, keep the home fires lit, and make more babies.  They are in culture shock, but they are adapting.  To be honest, it’s probably years and maybe decades before Arvalan women will see duty as noncombatants, but a few of them are already doing some lighter general work.

“One thing you will see there, something that bears repeating -- these people are alien.  The doctors are fairly sure that you can’t get one of their women pregnant, and our women probably can’t get pregnant from one of their men.  But, that is a difference you can’t readily see -- and I wouldn’t want to be the person who proved the docs wrong.

“One difference that you will be able to see in a million ways, although some of them are quiet and subtle, is that they don’t believe in gods or magic.  Luck they know and understand, but the concept of worshiping something that they can’t see isn’t something that they believe in.  They are, in many ways, far more rational than we are -- up to a point.

“You see, their rationality has to face the hard fact that they haven’t had the knowledge to underpin it.  Take something simple, like lightning.  They understand that it’s a natural phenomenon, but they haven’t a clue what causes it or what it is.  Our ancestors decided that it was something the Gods controlled.  The Arvalans just say, ‘We don’t know and we may never know.’

“That ‘We may never know’ idea, has crippled them, because they have a fatalistic approach to that -- since they may never know, they don’t go looking for the answers.  Now and then, someone gets an idea, and they figure something out, and then they can make extraordinary progress in a relatively short time.

“H
ere, the relative abundance of copper and gold is reversed from what we know back on Earth.  If you bring along a pocketful of copper pennies -- back when we made copper pennies -- you’d be obscenely rich over there.  As it is, even with a couple dozen of our current copper content pennies, puny as the copper content is, you would be able to get along quite well for a long time.