David Drake - Patriots

"Hey, sir, how you doing?" a man called to Easton 's obvious agitation. "Don't have cabbage blight, do you?"

The laughter was general but good-natured. Easton 's troops didn't hate him. That would be like hating a teddy bear.

"Now, vegetables," the captain said as he trotted along. He was too lost in dreams of expanded plantings to notice his troops or hear what they might be saying. "What sort of a selection of edible plants can you supply?"

"Anything your heart desires, Captain," Mark said soothingly. "Anything you can dream of can be in your hands in seventy-two hours."

In so big a fort, an influx of troops could be concealed far beyond the corridors connecting the garden and the Command Center. There wasn't any reason for such deception, though. Nothing Mark saw appeared to have changed from the previous visit.

And Captain Easton was the same man. It was hard to imagine circumstances in which the Alliance would reinforce this base but leave Easton in command of it.

Mark knew to hold his breath as they strode past the pump room converted to an open latrine. Amy didn't, and the smell shoved her against the far wall in midstride.

"Wonderful natural fertilizer!" Easton muttered. "Most of it well rotted into the best nitrate enrichment you could imagine! And then my troops flatly refuse to remove and spread it for me. Mutiny! If I weren't a forgiving man, I'd…"

"It's certainly well rotted," Amy agreed in a faint voice.

"The door's supposed to be closed, though," Easton added, pulling the panel shut. That was the first evidence Mark had seen that any aspect of the normal world could penetrate the tangle of vegetation choking Easton 's mind.

When Mark stepped close to Amy in case the brown miasma had stunned her into falling, he noticed that her small belt purse whirred. Her camera was scanning through a hole in the front of the purse. Though she wasn't able to spread the triple lenses to get a direct three-dimensional image, the camera's microprocessor would be able to build complete holograms from changes in perspective the lens got jouncing down the corridor.

Always assuming that nobody noticed the camera and had Amy shot as a spy. He hadn't guessed she was going to take such a risk.

The door with the hand-printed COMMAND CENTER sign was ajar. It couldn't be fully closed, since the latch and jamb Yerby had smashed six months ago still hadn't been replaced. Instead of dithering outside as he had before, Captain Easton barged straight in.

Lieutenant Hounslow was arguing with a forty-year-old woman wearing sergeant's chevrons on the collar of her fresh-looking uniform. Both of them turned when the door opened. Hounslow seemed surprised, but the sergeant's expression remained one of angry frustration.

"Hounslow!" Easton snapped. "How many troops do you have?"

"Well, with the addition of Sergeant Papashvili's squad, sir, fifty-one effectives," Hounslow said. "I'm sorry to say that the sergeant here is questioning my task assignments, however."

He glared at Papashvili. Hounslow had been filling out another multicolored duty chart before the sergeant had come into the office. Now another thought struck him; he whisked the sheet of graph paper off his desk to hold behind his back. He seemed to be afraid Captain Easton had gone nuts and would start tearing up the items of greatest value to Hounslow.

Well, nuts in a different way from usual.

"I need them all," Easton said. "Immediately! We don't have much time-"

"Oh, heaven be praised, Captain!" Sergeant Papashvili cried. "I knew you both couldn't be completely bughouse!"

"-before the narcissus planting season here is over," Easton continued, ignoring the sergeant. "We'll need a border spaded around the outer circuit of the walls, three feet wide and I think six inches deep."

He pursed his lips and added, "Though we may have to settle for a shallower bed, given the time available. Well, see to it, Hounslow."

The lieutenant and sergeant both stared at Easton, transfixed. They regained control of their tongues and blurted simultaneously, "Are you crazy? "

Easton drew himself up stiffly. "Stand to attention when you address your commanding officer!" he ordered.

Hounslow and Papashvili clicked their heels as they obeyed. They looked like a couple being savaged by their pet goldfish.

"Sir, my duty rosters are made out for-" Hounslow began.

Easton brushed the protest aside incomplete. "Well, you'll have to change them, then," he said crisply. "This is a time-dependent project. It's going to be close, getting so many bulbs ino the ground before first frost anyway."

" Captain, " Sergeant Papashvili said in a despairing moan. She looked like a sturdy, no-nonsense woman, but the week she'd spent on Dittersdorf had obviously shaken her. "For heaven's sake, sir, there's a permanent garrison of five hundred troops arriving next month and I've got the job of refurbishing living quarters for them. Not to mention temporary accommodations for up to four thousand more who might stage through here. One month!"

"Why, I'd forgotten that!" the captain said in sudden cheerfulness. "Five hundred troops! Wonderful! Why, I'll be able to develop the courtyard after all!"

"Change my charts," Hounslow repeated sepulchrally. He stared at the half-completed roster in his hand as if it were his death sentence. "I don't believe this."

I believe it, Mark thought. You've known Easton a lot longer than I have, so it shouldn't be a surprise to you either that he's around the bend.

"I wonder if we might look at the courtyard?" Mark said aloud. "To get a notion of how best to convert it into a garden."

As they flew in, he'd noticed pieces of tarpaulin-covered equipment which hadn't been there when Yerby and Mark visited earlier. If they were fighting vehicles, the raiders had to know about it.

"A Garden of Eden," Amy added, "with a man of your genius guiding the project."

"Yes, of course," Easton said absently. "Papashvili, take them up, will you? You and your engineers will be a great help on this, sergeant. A great help!"

"Oh God," the sergeant murmured. "Our help in ages past…"

"Ah, young man?" Easton asked in sudden concern. "Would it be possible for me to keep your catalog until you return with the initial order for narcissi? In three days, you said?"

"That's right, Captain," Mark said. "And sure, you're welcome to hold on to the catalog. I hope it'll make your days a little brighter."

"Oh, it will!" Easton said, snatching the reader from Mark's hands. "Now, let's see. At six inches between bulbs, that will be…"

Mark and Amy followed Papashvili out into the corridor. The sergeant walked like an unusually gloomy zombie. Behind them, Captain Easton was calculating aloud the number of bulbs he'd need.

Mark felt a twinge of guilt. This was certainly better than shooting people, but Mark really did feel as though he were being mean to a teddy bear.

Yerby Bannock's left index finger followed the green holographic route Mark's reader projected in the caravansary's common court. He swigged from the bottle in his left hand, careful not to lift the container high enough to block his view.

"Seems to me, lad," he said, "we're best off to land right here, slap in the middle." His finger tapped air in the courtyard. The longer path from the hatch by Captain Easton's garden was blue.

Amy's camera could project miniature images for editing, but they'd decided to transfer the chip to Mark's reader for the sake of the larger display. The whole force, now swelled to eighty men and women by transients recruited in the port, was trying to watch. It wasn't necessary that everybody be able to see, but if anybody thought he or she was being ignored there'd be hell to pay.