Passage at Arms Read online

  After we leave the beacon the Commander repeats all the tests made at Fuel Point. We commence our patrol in earnest.

  I watch a Climber die. Twice. Our first two observation pauses bracket the event. We drop hyper, allow the light of it to overtake us, then jump out and let the wave catch us again. Like traveling in time.

  There’s little but a long, brilliant flash each time, like a small nova. The spectrum lines indicate massive CT-terrene annihilation. Ops compartment remains quiet for a long time. Laramie finally asks, “Who was it, Commander?”

  “They didn’t tell me. They never tell me-----” He stops.

  His role doesn’t permit bitterness before the men.

  “Forty-eight souls,” Fisherman muses. “I wonder how many were saved?”

  “Probably none,” I say.

  “Probably not. It’s sad. Not many believers anymore, Lieutenant. Like me, they have to meet Him, and Death, face to face before they’ll be born again.”

  “It’s not an age of faith.”

  For four hours men not otherwise occupied help maul the data, searching for a hint that the other firm precipitated the Climber’s doom. Nothing turns up. It looks like a CT leak.

  Climber Command will add our data to other reports and let it stew in the big computer.

  “It doesn’t much matter anymore,” Yanevich says. “She blew three months ago. The way they bracketed us, they were rechecking something they already knew. Glad we didn’t have to take a closer look.”

  “There wouldn’t be anything to see.”

  “Not this tune. Sometimes there is. They don’t all blow. Ours or theirs.”

  I feel cold breath blowing down the back of my neck. Firsthand studies of a gunned-out hulk aren’t my notion of fun.

  There’s nothing going on in this entire universe. Beacon after beacon, there’s nothing but bored, insulting greetings from squadron mates who were in before us. Decked out in his sardonic smile, the Old Man suggests the other team has taken a month’s vacation.

  He doesn’t like the quiet. His eyes get narrower and more worried every day. His reaction isn’t unique. Even the first-mission men are nervous.

  First real news from outside. Climber Fleet Two says a huge, homebound convoy is gathering at Thompson’s World, the other team’s main springboard for operations against the Inner Worlds. Second Fleet hasn’t had one contact during the forty-eight hours covered by their report.

  Neither have we.

  “Them guys must be taking the year off,” Nicastro says. Today he’s Acting Second Watch Officer, in Piniaz’s stead. Weapons is having trouble with the graser.

  I’m exhausted. I hung around past my own watch to observe Piniaz in command. Guess it’ll have to wait. The hell with it. Where’s my hammock?

  Climber Fleet Two reports a brush with hunter-killers way in toward the Inner Worlds. Nothing came of it. Even the opposition’s baseworlds are quiet.

  This patrol zone is dead. We’re caught in a nightmare, hunting ghosts. You don’t want action, but you don’t crave staying on patrol, either. You start feeling you’re a space-going Flying Dutchman.

  Beacon after beacon slides by. Always the news is the same. No contact.

  Once a day the Commander takes the ship up for an hour, to keep the feel of Climb. We spend the rest of our time cruising at economical low-hyper translation velocities. Occasionally we piddle along in norm, making lazy inherent velocity corrections against our next beacon approach. There isn’t much to do.

  The men amuse themselves with card games and catch-the-eido, and weave endless and increasingly improbable variations in their exchanges on their favorite subject. To judge by their anecdotes, Throdahl and Rose have lived remarkably active lives during their brief careers. I expect they’re doing some creative borrowing from stories heard elsewhere. They have their images to maintain.

  I’m making some contact with the men now. Through no artifice of my own. They’re bored. I’m the only novelty left unexplored.

  The days become weeks, and the weeks pile into a month. Thirty-two days in the patrol zone. Thirty-two days without a contact anywhere. There are three squadrons out here now, and the newly commissioned unit is on its way. Another of the old squadrons will be leaving TerVeen soon. It’ll be crowded.

  No contact. This promises to become the longest dry spell in recent history.

  The drills never cease. The Old Man always sounds the alarm at an inconvenient time. Then he stands back to watch the ants scurry. That’s the only time we see his sickly smile.

  Hell. They’re breaks in the boredom.

  This is oppressive. I haven’t made a note in two weeks. If it weren’t for guilt, I’d forget my project.

  I think this is our forty-third day in the patrol zone. Nobody keeps track anymore. What the hell does it matter? The ship is our whole universe now. It’s always day in here and always night outside.

  If I really wanted to know, I could check the quartermaster’s notebook. I could even find out what day of the week it is.

  I’m saving that for hard times, for the day when I need a really big adventure to get me going.

  We’re a hairy bunch now. We look like the leavings of a prehistoric war band. Only Fisherman has bucked the trend and is keeping some order about his person. The only smooth faces I see belong to the youngest of the young.

  The Engineers express their dissatisfaction by refusing to comb then” hair. I’m the only man who takes regular sponge baths. Part my fault, I suppose. I spend a lot of time in my hammock. And I won’t share my soap, which is the only bar aboard..

  Curiously, these filthy beasts spend most of their free time scrubbing every accessible surface with a solution that clears the sinuses in seconds. Our paintwork gleams. It’s a paradox.

  One point of luck. No lice or fleas have turned up. I expected herds of crab lice, acquired from hygienically lax girlfriends.

  Fearless Fred is sulking. He’s the most bored creature aboard. No one has seen him for days. But he’s around, and in a foul mood. He expresses his displeasure by leaving odiferous little loaves everywhere. He’s as moody as the Commander.

  Something is bothering the Old Man. Something of which this patrol is just part. It began before the mission, before I found him at Marie’s.

  He’s no longer my friend of Academy days.

  I did expect to find him weathered by the Service, changed by the war. War has to change a man. Combat is an intense experience. Comparing him to other classmates I’ve encountered recently, I can see how radical the changes are. Even Sharon wasn’t this much transformed. The Sharon of the Pregnant Dragon always existed inside the other Sharon.

  A few of the changes are predictable. An increased tendency toward withdrawal, toward self-containment, toward gloominess. Those were always part of him. Pressure and age would exaggerate them. No, the real change is the stratum of bitterness he conceals behind the standard changes.

  He was never a bitter person. Contrarily, there was a playful, almost elfin streak behind his reserve. A little alcohol or a lot of coaxing could summon it forth.

  Something has slain the elf.

  Somehow, somewhere, while we were out of touch, he took one hell of an emotional beating. He got himself destroyed, and all the king’s horses...

  It’s not a career problem. He’s very successful by Navy standards. Twenty-six and already a full Commander. He’s up for brevet Captain. He may get his first Admiral’s star before he turns thirty.

  It’s something internal. He’s lost a battle to something that’s part of him. Something he hates and fears more than any enemy. He now despises himself for his own weakness.

  He doesn’t talk about it. He won’t. And yet I think he wants to. He wants to lay it out for someone who knew him before his surrender. Someone not now close, yet someone who might know him well enough to show him the path back home.

  I admit I was surprised that my request for assignment to his Climber went through. There were a hundr
ed hurdles to surmount. The biggest, I expected, would be getting the Ship’s Commander’s okay. What Commander wants an extra, useless body aboard? But the affirmative came back like a ricochet. Now I know why, I think. He wants a favor for a favor.

  The Commander’s moods are a ship’s moods. The men mirror their god-captain. He’s aware of that and must live the role every minute. This’s been the iron law of ships since the Phoenician mariners went down to the sea.

  The role makes the Old Man’s problem that much more desperate. He’s tearing himself apart trying to keep his command from going sour. And he thinks he’s failing.

  So now he can’t open up at all.

  I now dread the future for more than the usual reasons. This is a miserably long patrol. And it’s demonstrated repeatedly that the best Climber crew, highly motivated and well-officered, can start disintegrating.

  More than once the Commander tracked me down and asked me to accompany him to the wardroom.

  He makes a ritual of our visit. First he gives Kreigshauser a carefully measured bit of coffee. Just enough for two cups. There’s been no regularly brewed real coffee since we learned we’d be on beacon-to-beacon patrol. What we call coffee, and brew daily, is made with a caffeine-rich Canaan bush-twig that has a vague coffee taste. That’s what the Commander drinks during his morning ritual. After yielding his treasure, the Old Man stares into infinity and sucks the stem of his tireless pipe. He hasn’t smoked in an age. The old hands say he won’t till he decides to attack.

  “You’re going to chew that stem through.”

  He peers at the pipe as if surprised to find it in his hand. He turns it this way and that, studying the bowl. Finally, he takes a tiny folding knife and scrapes a fleck off the meerschaum. He then plunges it into a pocket already bulging with pens, pencils, markers, a computer stylus, a hand calculator, and his personal notebook. I’d love to see his notes. Maybe he writes revelations to himself.

  He has his ritual question. “Well, what do you think so far?”

  What’s to think? “I’m an observer. The fourth estate’s eido.” My response is a ritual, too. I can never think of anything flip, or anything to start him talking. We drift through these things, waiting for a change.

  “Remarkable crew?” Today is going to be a little different.

  “A few individuals. Not as a whole. I’ve seen them all before. A ship produces specific characters the way the body produces specialized cells.”

  “You have to get through the hide. Get inside, to the meat and bones.”

  “I don’t think I’m that good.” I’m not. I keep seeing the masks they want me to see, not the faces in hiding. I may have been exposed too long now. An immunological process may be taking place. Something of the sort happens in every closed group. After jostling and jousting, the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place. People adjust, get along. And they stop being objective about one another.

  The Old Man says, “Hmm.” He’s developing that sound into a vocabulary with the inflectional range of Chinese. This “hmm” means “do go on.”

  “We’ve got people who want to be something the ship has no niche for. Take Carmon. He believes his propaganda image. He wants to be Tannian’s Horatio at the bridge. The rest of us won’t let him.”

  “One right guess. Carmon aside, did you find anybody who gives a rat’s ass about the war?”

  Have I stumbled onto something? They are volunteers-----

  This is as near an expression of doubt as I’ll ever hear from the Commander.

  I’m too eager to pursue it. My sharp glance spooks him.

  “What did you think of Marie?”

  I think the relationship is symptomatic of a deeper problem. But I won’t say that. “She was under a strain. An unexpected guest. You about to leave...” There’re things a man doesn’t do. One of mine: Never say anything bad about a friend’s mate.

  “She won’t be there when we get back.”

  I knew that before we left.

  Well, it isn’t the realization of his own mortality that has gotten to him. This isn’t the odds-closing-in blues that plagues Climber Commanders. If I look closely, I can catch glimpses of the … it can’t happen to me of our age group.

  Is it the realization of his own fallibility? Suppose last patrol he made a grotesque error and got away with it through dumb luck? The kind of man he is, that would bother him bad because forty-seven men might have gone out with him.

  Maybe. But that’s more the kind of thing that would break a Piniaz. The Old Man never claimed to be perfect. Just close to it.

  “She’ll be gone when I get home.” His eyes are long ago and far away. He had had these thoughts before. “She won’t leave a note, either.”

  “You really think so?” I nearly missed the cues telling me to ask.

  Marie isn’t his problem. A problem, and a symptom, but not the problem.

  “Just a feeling, say. You saw how we got along. Cats and dogs. Only reason we stayed together was we didn’t have anywhere to go. Not that it didn’t look worse.”

  “In a way.”

  “What?”

  “Hell probably offers a sense of security to the damned.”

  “Yes. I suppose.” He draws his pipe from his pocket, examines its bowl. “You know Climber Fleet One hasn’t ever had a deserter? Could be.”

  For a moment I envision the man as an old-time sea captain, master on a windjammer, standing a lonely, nighted weather-deck, staring at moon-frosted wavetops while a cold breeze fingers his strawlike hair and beard. The sea is obsidian. The wake churns and boils. It glimmers with bio-luminescence.

  “For what distant, heathen port be we bound, o’er what enchanted sea?”

  He glances up, startled. “What was that?”

  “An image that came to me. Remember the poem game?” We played it in Academy, round robin. It was popular during the middle class years, when we were discovering new dimensions faster than we could assimilate them. The themes, then, were mostly prurient.

  “My turn to come up with a line, you mean. All right.” He ponders. While he does so, Kriegshauser delivers the coffee.

  “Zanzibar? Hadramaut? The Ivory Coast? Or far Trincom-alee?”

  “That stinks. It’s not a line, it’s a laundry list.”

  “Seemed to fit yours. I never was much good at that, was I?” He puts his pipe away and sips coffee. Under ship’s gravity we can drink from cups if we like. A small touchstone with another reality. “I’m a warrior, not a poet.”

  “Ah?”

  “‘Ah?’ You sound like a Psych Officer.”

  Whatever its nature, his bugbear won’t reveal itself this! time. Not without inspired coaxing from me. And I have no j idea how to bait my hook. ‘

  I think I know how a detective hunting a psychopathic killer! must feel. He knows the man is out there, killing because he wants to be caught, yet the very irrationality of the killer makes him impossible to track-----

  Can his problem be this role he lives? This total warrior performance? Is there a poet screaming to get out of the Commander? A conflict between the role’s demands and the nature of the actor who has to meet them?

  I don’t think so. He’s the quintessential warrior, as far as I can see.

  He chose me because I’m not part of the gang. And maybe now he’s hiding from me for the same reason.

  “You slated for CommandCollege?” I ask, shifting my ground. If he hasn’t made the list, that might take him by the balls. Passing an officer over amounts to declaring he’s reached his level of incompetence. No one gets pushed out, especially now, but the promotions do end.

  “Yes. Probably won’t get there before this fuss is over. I’m slated for the squadron next two missions, then Staff at Climber Command. Won’t get off Canaan for at least two years. Then back to the Fleet, probably. Either a destroyer squadron or number two in a flotilla. No time for war college these days. All on-the-job training.”

  A weak possibility lurks here. Upward mo
bility threatened by war’s master spirit: Sudden Death.

  “Why did you volunteer?”

  “For Climbers? I didn’t.”

  “Eh? You said...”

  “Only on paper. I asked for Canaan. Talk to the officers our age. A lot of them are here on ‘strong recommendation’ from above. What amounted to verbal orders. They’re making it simple. The Climbers are the only thing we have that works. They need officers to operate them. So, no Climber time, no promotion. You have an unprofessional attitude if you don’t respond to the needs of the Service.” A bilious glow of bitterness seeping through here.

  He drains half his cup, asks, “Why the hell would I ask for this? The chances of me getting my ass blown to ions are running five to one against me. Do I look fucking stupid?”

  He recalls his role. His gaze darts to Kriegshauser, who may have overheard.

  “What about rapid advancement? Glory? Because Canaan is your home?”

  “That’s shit for the troops and officers coming up. Navy is my home.”

  My stare must be a little too sharp. He changes the subject. “Strange patrol. Too quiet. I don’t like it.”

  “Think they’re up to something?”

  He shrugs. “They’re always up to something. But there are quiet periods. Statistical anomalies, I guess. They’re out there somewhere, slipping through. Maybe they’ve found a pattern to our patrols. We don’t really run random. Human weakness. We have to have order of some kind. If they analyze contacts, sometimes they figure a safe route. We change things. The hunting is good for a while. Then, too, Command wastes a lot of time taking second and third looks at things.”

  There’s bitterness whenever he mentions Command. Have I uncovered a theme? Disenchantment? He wouldn’t be the first. Not by thousands.

  There’s no describing the shock, even despair, that clamps down on you after you’ve spent a childhood in Academy, preparing for a career, when the Service doesn’t remotely resemble classroom expectations. It’s worse when you find nothing to believe in, or live, or love. And to be a good soldier you have to live it, to believe your work has worth and purpose, and you have to like doing it.