Роберт Бюттнер: Orphan's Journey

“Bergschrund. It’s the crevasse where a glacier pulls away from its head wall.”

“Whatever. If Ord hadn’t held off the Chinese, you’d be wolf shit now.”

“What kind of shit am I now?”

General Cobb stabbed the air in my general direction. “Don’t get smart!” He sat back, then sighed again. “Jason, what do I do with you now?”

“We both know I’m not General Officer material. I’m a mediocre Company-Grade officer, with rank for show.”

General Cobb pointed between my eyes. “Moose shit! I had you snuck into Command and General Staff College twice. You weaseled.”

“My aptitude scores—”

“Are so high you can define bergschrund! You just think administration and logistics are boring.”

“No. I just think they’re hypocrisy. You wouldn’t believe the scheme some Quartermaster weasel laid on me an hour ago.”

“I would. You’re not the first pup I’ve had that weasel bail out.”

“Oh.”

He sighed again. “Yes, command requires bureaucratic hocus-pocus. And you’re half right about your rank. You kept your field promotion because the world owed you—”

“The world owed the soldiers who died, not me.”

“And because a hero Major-General Adviser impresses Host Advisees. They usually get a middling Captain.”

“Which is what I really am. So let me keep doing what I’m suited for.”

“Suited for? Peru?”

“He was a butcher.”

“Kazakhstan?”

“They were going to stone those women to death.”

“That shoot-out in Sudan?”

“Okay. Maybe I’m not suited for advising.”

“The Pentagon thinks you’ve cowboyed up once too often. They think you’re suited for forced retirement.”

I stiffened. Most people would think retirement on a Major General’s pension would suit a thirty-something bachelor. But the Slug War had cost me my family, the woman I loved, and more friends than I could count. The Army was the only family I had.

I leaned forward. “No!” Something hissed in my chest. I coughed, which felt like gargling tacks. The monitor howled.

My therapist tore the door open, like a first-grade teacher policing a food fight. She pointed, first at General Cobb, then at me. “The taxpayers paid to regrow that lung once. You two juveniles buy the next one.”

She backed out, eyes narrow, then slammed the door.

General Cobb waved his hand, palm down. “Easy, son.”

“Sir, you know the Army’s all I’ve got. I’d die to save another GI.”

“That’s exactly your problem.”

“I should have let those Sherpas die?”

He leaned forward. “If that would have saved the mission. For which they chose to bet their lives. Yes.” He stared down into his hands. “You’ve heard me say that rifleman is the world’s hardest job. The truth is, sending riflemen to die is harder. But more vital. Jason, the Army may be a big family, but command is an orphan’s journey.”

“I know about being orphaned.”

General Cobb pressed his lips together. Then he said, “So you do. That’s why I convinced the brass that you were worth salvaging. They approved an alternate assignment. An old friend of ours actually requested you. It’s a slush tour. Just buying you time to grow up, and buying the Army time to sweep your private wars under the rug.” He tugged his Chipman from his uniform jacket, and keyboarded faster than a Stenobot while he talked.

“What if I never want to grow up and throw GIs into the meat grinder?”

“The Army doesn’t want Peter Pan. Neither do the soldiers who depend on their commanders to spend their lives wisely.” He shook his head. “This is no debate, Jason. Grow up. Or ship out. Besides, this posting’s where you and Ord can’t get into trouble.”

Old Nat had saved what remained of my ass! I nearly smiled. “There’s a place left on Earth where I can’t get into trouble?”

General Cobb downloaded the orders he’d typed onto my Bedside Reader, then patted my arm as he turned to leave. “No. Oh, no.”

In the doorway, he nearly bumped my therapist, then he pulled her head close to him and whispered.

She stepped back into my room.

I asked, “Did he tell you to re-break my legs?”

“No. He told me to tell you something he forgot to mention.”

I frowned.

“He said to tell you, ‘Tensing, wife, and baby are fine.’ Good news?” She smiled.

“Excellent.” I smiled at her. She was very pretty. “You should take special care of me. I’m really a pretty good guy.”

“Actually, the General said all that, too.”

Over the next two months, I worked up a monster crush on my therapist. The morning Bethesda discharged me, I asked her to dinner. She shook her head, patted my cheek, and said she thought of me more as a brother.

The last pretty girl who had told me that was the first person I spoke to when Ord and I got to our new duty station.

FOUR

THREE DAYS AFTER my therapist harpooned me, I stared at the Himalayas again. From twenty-three thousand miles up, through four inches of quartz porthole, Earth’s mightiest mountains were just brown-and-white wrinkles, with the blue Bay of Bengal shining to the south.

I flexed fingers that had death-gripped my armrest since takeoff. I liked spacecraft. I just hated space. I suppose that was because the last few times I traded a perfectly good planet for space, some disaster had shot me out into cold vacuum. Once explosively decompressed, twice shy.

Ord, in the seat beside me, tapped the rigid shoulder beneath my civvies. He pointed forward. “Almost there, Sir.”

I looked up, then sucked in gardenia-scented cabin air. Holo shows couldn’t do justice to New Moon. It revolved against black space, enormous, carrying the weight of its five thousand inhabitants, but as delicate as three side-by-side bicycle tires. And so white that I blinked. Cocooned in the tires’ center turned their common axle, the elongate, blue-black spider that was the Firewitch.

The attendant floated down the cabin aisle, dealing red silk arrival kits left and right. As she floated, she repeated, alternating Chinese and English, “Thank you for choosing New Moon Clipper.”

I smiled. Some choice. I felt fine. But New Bethesda wouldn’t guarantee my regrown lung against military-launch G-forces, yet. Therefore, the taxpayers had flown Ord and me up commercial, like the plush vacationers with whom we shared the Clipper’s eight seats.

Across the aisle sat a tycoon and his wife. He had spent the flight puffing the attendant how he owned all the Empress Motor dealerships in Western Pennsylvania, while she smiled and nodded.

The tycoon shook his head at his wife, as the Clipper drifted toward its mooring. “Look at that! Our room’s subsidizing half that boondoggle.”

Ord raised his eyebrows to me.

One of New Moon’s three rings was the Great Happiness-Hyatt New Moon. Its small rooms were strictly tycoon posh. But even the overall naming rights, for which Sino-American Lodging had paid The Brick, didn’t cover New Moon’s light bill.

Neither did the revenue generated by bike tire number two, the Multi-Use Ring. Multi-Use housed Holo Bouncers, overhead imaging, electronic snoops, vacuum-optimized manufacturing, medical research and rehabilitation, and a protruding observatory called the Hubble Bubble, named after a pioneer-days telescope.

No, mankind’s first permanent outpost in intralunar space existed strictly because of the alien war prize that formed New Moon’s core. That captured Pseudocephalopod Fighter-Escort, UN phonetic designator “Firewitch,” would teach mankind to fly to the stars.

Or so the Intel Spooks persuaded Congress. America, in turn, funded New Moon under the table, via the United Nations Space Force.