Oberheim (Voices): A Chronicle of War, Christopher Leadem [recommended reading TXT] 📗

and at the evening meal ate little. Then he rose, ruffled the boy's head, and disappeared into the second shallow chamber of the back.

He was gone a long time, and the girl took the boy outside, and when she returned he had still not come out. Then as she knelt on the ground, playing some game with the child, a man emerged from the back and she nearly collapsed from fear.

She ran to the wall, seized the rifle and would have shot. But a familiar voice stayed her.

"Put down the rifle, Elonna, or one of these times you really will shoot." The voice, she thought, came from the stranger, a square, Russian-looking man with dark eyes and a shaved head. He was clad in the blue and black of a Cantonese army officer, the emblem of the clenched white fist sewn to his breast, a small black cross in its center. His face wore the sharp look of command but his eyes, in that moment, seemed to contradict it.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "And what have you done with Lawrence?"

"I'm right here, Elonna." The officer opened his jacket and unfastened the garment beneath, pulling it open at the neck to reveal a dark collar and chest, with tight curls of hair like thorny bushes covering his breast.

"Lawrence!" One of her hands lost its grip on the rifle. "You scared me half to death."

"I'm sorry for that. I thought you had gone out."

At that moment she realized two things: that he was going into great danger, and that she cared for him very much.

"When must you go?"

"Very soon." He resealed the uniform.

"Be careful, will you?"

"Yes." He pulled a different weapon from among the equipment against the wall, examined it carefully. "I have to go." He started for the door. She stopped him halfway and embraced him, her eyes gleaming at the corners.

"Be careful."

"I will." He pulled away and stood in the entrance. He looked back at her strangely, hesitated as if wanting to say more, then turned and was gone. He did not return that night.

*

The next day the woman was genuinely concerned. She had just begun to lose hope, when the smoky film of the entrance dissolved and opened out onto the cleft. A man stepped through, but it was not Lawrence.

"Morgan? What's wrong, where's Lawrence?"

"He's dead."

Such an empty shock. "What? What happened?"

He was trying to sabotage a missile base, with several others. His papers were challenged and he was shot. I'm sorry."

"Dead," she stammered. "Dead. Will they kill us all, one by one?"
She began to weep.

"Unless we stop them."

"How, damn it! How?"

"A piece at a time."

"But you said you had a plan. For ME."

"I do."

"Well what is it? Stop treating me like a child!"

"Not now. I'll come back tomorrow after dark."

"All right. God." She could not believe it. He turned to go.

Without turning. "You'd best harden your heart, Elonna, or it will freeze inside you. I'm sorry about Lawrence.

He was gone.

*

The next day seemed endless, but at last he came. He looked over the equipment leaned against the wall, then came and sat across from her. He was at once both kinder and colder.

"I have a plan, Elonna, and them is a reasonable chance it will work. But it may be more than your mind is equipped to handle. Also. . .it is sexual in nature."

"You think I don't know that, the way you're always looking at me?"

"Listen first. Save your scorn for the enemy. You will need it all."

"I'm sorry. I'm not mad at you."

"Never, NEVER apologize. And don't ever feel pity for a man who's done you wrong. If you do at a critical time in this, we're lost."

"You're worse than he was."

"Yes, and I'm still alive." He stirred uncomfortably in the chair. "I didn't mean that. Have you got any water?"

"Yes." She sent the boy to get some.

"Try to understand, Elonna. As undersecretary to Hunter, I'm surrounded by them constantly. These guerrillas, even Lawrence, flit in and out of the fire."

"Lawrence did more than flit."

"Yes he did. And if I could change that, I would….. But I live in the midst of it. I can't afford the luxury of emotion. And I want desperately to bring them down. That they're my own people doesn't help."

She studied him more closely.

"You say they're your own people. What about us? Are we just pieces on the board?"

"Not a fair question. You don't know what we're up against." The boy handed him a filled cup.

"Lawrence was found of saying that, and he's dead."

"Yes, and I'm likely to end the same way."

"Then why do you do it?"

"Because they ARE my own people. Maybe you pity them, try to understand. I don't. There's no excuse for this, Elonna. None. It's all been played out a hundred times before.

"There lives are empty and harsh," he continued. "So they say it must be somebody's fault. Surely their God can't want them to suffer, apple of his eye as they're supposed to be. So it must be anti-God. And who is this? The blacks and other minorities, the corrupt and inept liberals, a benign socialist colony two systems away. For God's sake, we've been in Space for two hundred years, we should know better. They forget, or choose to ignore, all the lessons it's taught us: that we're only very small, and should help each other. They turn their backs on history and the simplest understanding, and still find some dark corner in which to masturbate their hatred. There's no excuse for it. None."

She was silent for a time, then spoke. "What do you want me to do?"

"Don't say yes until you've heard what it is. Lawrence cared a great deal for you, and if only for his sake, I must show some restraint."

"And what about you?"

"For myself, I would rather not ask a woman to do it. Also, it flushes me out of the inner circles for good."

"But you think it could work, and be worth it."

"Yes."

"You want me to sleep with someone and kill him." She had forgotten the boy. "Johnny, would you run off in the back and play? I'll be there in a few minutes."

"Yes, Miss Elonna." He walked reluctantly into the back.

"You want me to sleep with someone and kill him."

"Yes and no."

"What do you mean, yes and no?"

"You say it as if it's nothing. I'm not asking you to sleep with some soldier in a guardhouse and slit his throat. We're talking about Roland Hunter, the head of Internal Affairs."

"THE Hunter? The man who ordered the purges?"

"Ordered, planned and executed, and the man who makes sure there is no rebellion of conscience among the whites, no dissent of any kind. A big target, Elonna, and very wary." Again she was silent.

"Still. If you could arrange it….. I think I could do it."

"With what weapon, Elonna?"

"Well, what about a poison needle?"

"No good. You will be thoroughly searched. Thoroughly."

"All right, then. Stop turning it around. You're the one who's supposed to have a plan."

"Yes, though I'm not particularly proud of having thought of it."

"Morgan, you're forgetting what he's done to us."

"All right. Have you ever heard of Sanlen 12?"

"It's some kind of nerve poison, isn't it?"

"Yes, like's snake's venom: poison to the blood but not the stomach."

"What are you saying?"

He told her, in detail.

"But that's horrible. God, what a way to die. . .and to kill."

"You would have to want to kill him very badly, and not hesitate at the critical moment. That's why I've been such a harsh judge of your character. This is no game, and the stakes are life and death." She looked into his eyes, and knew he was in deepest earnest.

"I need time to think." The boy came back into the room.

"I'll be back tomorrow night. Think about it in the cold light of day.
You must be very sure." He lifted his rifle.

"Before you go….."

"Yes."

"How would you set this up? How would you make him trust me?"

"Oh, he won't trust you, not for a minute. But he does trust me, as far as he trusts anyone. As for setting it up, that's fairly simple. Many of the cabinet ministers and high military men have taken mistresses, and not all of them white. If the Undersecretary of Affairs should happen to come across a beautiful black woman he fancies, a non-person with no rights, why shouldn't he keep her for himself? And if he's ruthless and full of ambition, as I'm supposed to be, why shouldn't he offer to share her with the Secretary, or even keep her discreetly hidden for his private use? I've been known to do such favors in the past."

"But if he hates us so much, why would he want me?"

"You don't understand men very well if you have to ask, at least not that kind of man. Power and domination are what he craves, sadism and total control. Do I have to say more?"

"No."

"I'll come back tomorrow if I can." He shouldered his weapon. "You see why it was so hard for Lawrence to ask of you. Toward the end, he had decided against it. Just so you know, the thought of sending you in with that monster….. I'm not that cold. Not yet. But they are. Good-night." He switched off the shield and left the cave.

"Good-night." She stared at the table.

*

Morgan returned two nights later. He looked tired and grim.

"Elonna. I'm sorry I couldn't make it yesterday. I almost couldn't come now. They're preparing the full offensive against Marcum-Lauries. I'm just sick thinking about it. The Laurians don't stand a chance. And they're good people." As he glanced at her briefly she saw something in his eyes that she had not expected. He looked away. "Hello, Johnny," he said absently. Without being asked, the boy ran into the back to get him some water.

"Sit down, Morgan. Don't worry about me, I'm all right. I'm even grateful for the extra day. I'm finally clear in my own mind."

"You know you don't have to do this."

"Yes. But I want to, Morgan." She handed him the cup and sat down. "Only. . .I can't do it by hating them. I've tried. I tried remembering my husband's death, but that only made me feel a terrible loss, not hatred. So I tried thinking about what they had done to Lawrence. Sometimes I think all he ever wanted was to live out his remaining years in peace. But he couldn't. They had taken even that away from him. He was no soldier, any more than Eric was. War was the last thing either wanted, and it killed them both—-my husband quickly, and Lawrence slowly, from the inside. He tried to be hard and cold, but his faith in life had been shaken too deeply. Do you know what I'm saying?"

"Yes, though I think there was more to it than that."

"Maybe. I'm just trying to tell you how I feel."

Their eyes met. "Go on."

"I'm going to try to kill him, because I know something must be done. But it's not in my nature to be