Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

As I reached for the hose, my seat cushion tipped, and I had to catch myself with my free hand. The Headman’s smuggled Marini moonshine had left me zogged, as the price of politeness.

I grimaced as I sat back, and my bladder sent its own signal about impending business. Purple Face’s liqueur was as diuretic as it was intoxicating, but after four hours wasted on small talk this was no time for a pee break.

I had a regrown lung and no-smoking orders from New Bethesda. But I had more immediate concerns, and refusing to smoke the old boy’s janga wouldn’t resolve them.

I slipped the hose mouthpiece between my lips, sucked, and choked back a cough as my throat constricted. “Very mild!”

The Headman grinned. “My mother chewed this batch herself.”

An hour later, I didn’t care what his mother chewed. I was pretty sure I had covered the major points of the proposed alliance, a tentative order of battle, a loose time-table, and an invitation to the first meeting among the heads of state.

The Headman seemed to have grown two more eyes, my skull pounded, my bladder throbbed, and Niagara thundered in my ears.

The Headman’s extra eyes were a janga hallucination, but the Niagara was real. Night had fallen, and the Headman’s household slaves had dropped the tent sides against the storm, which had proven to be this desert’s once-per-year scorpion-drowner.

Rain drummed above my head and trickled through the tent’s seams.

The Headman chopped the air with his hand, and said to me, as fuzzily as though he spoke through a pillow, “The risks are too great. The Marini have cities and ships to lose. We have nothing. Perhaps the devil will ignore the Tassini. I must say no.”

I said, “The devil — the Slugs — won’t ignore you!”

“If God wanted us to fight, He would give me a sign.” He squinted into the smoke cloud between us like it was a holo generator, and said, “I see no sign.” He shook his head, again, in wide arcs.

Drunk and stoned as I was, I still knew I was losing this war before it even started.

“You have to see!” I pounded my fist into a pillow, then countered his head shake with my own, even broader, one. That was a mistake. The room spun, I pitched forward into my cushions, and passed out.

FORTY-NINE

SOMETIME LATER THAT NIGHT, cold rain dripped on my face, and woke me in dimness punctuated by distant lightning. The storm still pelted the Headman’s tent so hard that it cascaded a frigid stream onto the upper-bunk rope hammock into which somebody had slung me. Whoever had put me to bed had also stripped off my armor, so I lay shivering in my underlayer.

I had to pee worse than ever, but I was still so drunk that I didn’t dare try to roll out of the hammock to stagger outside.

Through my stupor, I realized that I couldn’t have screwed my diplomatic mission worse. The Headman had already turned me down. Now I had passed out in front of him, and had been put to bed drunk, by him or by his slaves. Without the Tassini, the Casuni would bolt. Without the Casuni, the Marini would bolt.

My head spun worse than ever, and I just peed where I lay as I passed out again.

I woke near noon the next day, and looked around. One tent side flap was up again, and a clear day shone through it. A woman, veiled, and covered head-to-toe in a coarse robe, stood at the tent’s far edge, hanging a woven rug to dry in the breeze. When she saw me staring at her, she ran away.

My head hammered as I climbed down from the upper hammock. The lower was empty, as was the rest of the tent, but outside I heard the slapping stride of an approaching Tassini wobblehead.

I found my armor, and started dressing. Then the Headman stepped in through the open tent flap, brushing dust from his cloak.

His jaw was set.

I looked down at the tent floor. “I—”

He said, “Well, it’s done. It disgusted me, but it’s done now.”

“I can’t blame you. But I really think—”

He chopped air with his hand and cut me off. “The entire Council of One Hundred still must meet. But I rode out at first light and met with two other Headmen, so the Council will be only a formality.”

Wasn’t it enough that he had turned me down? Did he have to advertise? My blood chilled. No, he didn’t. So he had to be talking about something else. I must have broken some taboo I was too blitzed to remember. Had I puked on an altar? Peeked under a woman’s veil in my stupor, and now the Tassini were meeting to decide to chop off my hand?

He walked to a low, lacquered chest in the tent’s far corner, took out a jeweled sword, and it rang against its scabbard as he drew it.

My heart skipped, and I stood there unarmored. I swiveled my head back and forth, searching for my M-40.

The old man held his sword up between us, and the blade flashed as he turned it in his hand. He stared into its light, and his eyes glistened. “I take no joy in sending my son to war. But as I must, my blade will go with him.”

My jaw dropped. “What did you tell the other Headmen?”

He raised his indigo eyebrows. “That the Tassini must join you in this war, as the Ogre and the Bitch have done. Your arguments were stated with reason and passion. I was reluctant, but the sign was unmistakable.”

I stopped with one leg in my armor, then sat on a cushion, shaking my throbbing head. After thirty seconds, I found my voice. “Sign?”

“After I put you to bed, I sat up for one turn of the glass, and waited. But God gave me no sign. I smoked another pipe, but still no sign. I shivered in the cold rain. Then I took to my bed.” He pointed at the lower hammock. “And I prayed, one last time. And God’s rain came upon my face. And I felt His rain, and it was warm!” He raised his eyes to the tent roof and smiled.

If I ever write a Brief for the State Department, I bet they won’t let me add a section on winning allies by peeing on them.

The downside of the rainstorm was that it flooded the wadis that separated me from Casus, Rosy, and, ultimately, the Royal Barge. The Scouts — my scouts, now — and I were forced to camp two nights, until the water sank low and slow enough that our wobbleheads could wade across.

I spent the first forced layover teaching the Scouts to fire my M-40, plinking targets one shot at a time. Then one of them discovered the full auto position on the selector switch, and sprayed my last magazine across the desert like he was watering a lawn.

He apologized profusely, and promised to make it up to me by roasting the testicles of the next dozen Casuni he met. I spent the second layover day teaching the Scouts the etiquette of allied operations.

By the time I rejoined the outriders that Casus had left at the Border, reclaimed Rosy, and bid them farewell, I was almost two days behind schedule for my Royal Barge rendezvous. Casus was already en route to the Alliance’s first meeting of heads of state. If I missed my boat ride, I’d be stranded upriver while the Clans planned their war without me.

Just in case that happened, I tasked Jeeb to Cruise and Snooze, an overnight surveillance above the Slug Troll. I hoped Jeeb could gather data on incubation progress, so Howard and Ord would have a better idea how much lead time the Alliance had to plan its war.

I rode Rosy harder than I should have, but she never complained and never slowed.

By the time Rosy staggered to the escarpment’s lip, we were both panting. And, for all our efforts, sixteen hours late.

Rosy and I looked out across the valley of the Marin. The sun set at our backs, while the Royal Barge dwindled to a speck, disappearing into the downriver mist.

I popped my visor, waved, and hollered, though I knew I might as well have been an ant calling the moon. I sighed. I had been promising Rosy turnips for days.