Against the Odds

Chapter Twenty-Two

“I hate these islands,” Gelan Meharry said. “If I have to be stuck on a planet, it should at least be somewhere you can do something.” He was standing hunch-shouldered in the courtyard; the winter sun slanted in, but a razor-edged wind took all the warmth from its rays.

“I wish someone would invent one of those transporter rays,” Barin said. “Straight from this to a nice tropical island would be nice.”

“You’re right there, sir. But I’ve put my name in for ship duty. What about you?”

“Dunno yet. I’m still on a medical hold. If they hold it long enough, I might as well take my next required course while I’m here.”

“I was kind of hoping, sir, we might end up on the same ship.”

Barin gave him a quick look. “Oh? On the grounds that you already know the worst about me?”

“Something like that, yes, sir.” Meharry’s voice was placid, but his green eyes had a wicked glint. “My sister always said, if you find a Serrano you can stand, hook up with ’em.”

“Oh,” Barin said again, obscurely pleased. “Well, what kind of ship did you have in mind?”

They discussed the relative merits of the different classes until the transport came.

The flight to the weapons research facility was, despite the clear day, rough enough to make Barin wish he hadn’t eaten breakfast. Here were no walls and towers, just low buildings on a flat windswept space. Barin noticed that all the windows had been broken out, and some replaced with clearfilm and tape. He could see the black scars of fires and other destruction. But bleak as it was, it wasn’t as depressing as the prison island; he didn’t mind that they’d spend the next few days here.

“Who is that?” Barin asked. The stout man in the funny-looking jacket and fuzzy hat that he’d noticed on the flight from the mainland stumped around the blackened soil where the aircraft had been.

“That’s the professor.” Meharry grinned. “He was there when they pulled me out of the water. I think he’s crazy, the way geniuses usually are.”

“He’s a genius?”

“They all seem to think so.”

“Well . . . the beard’s right,” Barin said.

“He’s the reason Ensign Pardalt came along,” Meharry said. “She was his bodyguard when he went out to keep the mutineers from taking over the lab. I heard he asked for her again.”

“She didn’t want to come when I asked her,” Barin said.

The next morning, Barin came into the mess hall—its shattered windows now covered with clearfilm—and looked around. One table was all civilians, talking faster than they were eating. At another, the man in the yellow leather jacket—did he ever take it off?—was sitting next to Ensign Pardalt and leaning towards her.

Barin didn’t like the look the professor gave Margiu. She didn’t seem to mind it, but . . . she was young. Inexperienced. Geniuses probably thought they could do whatever they wanted, just because they were geniuses. He was determined not to make the mistake he’d made before, and fail to understand his people.

For a moment he remembered the annoying major on the ship he and Esmay had taken from the family reunion, but he pushed that aside. That had been different, if for nothing else than he and Esmay were the same age.

He went over and sat down beside Margiu. “Morning, Ensign.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“Young Serrano comes down like a wolf on the fold—or at least the spring lamb . . .” the professor said.

“Excuse me?” Barin suspected it was a quotation, but he didn’t know the source.

“I only meant that you, like me, chose to sit beside the most ravishing young creature here.”

“That’s not why I—”

“Tut-tut, my boy. Never suggest anything less to a lady. Whatever your real motive, such as, perhaps, that she’s got the only saltshaker on the table, it’s only gallant to tell her you came in pursuit of her beauty.”

“Professor—” Margiu looked embarrassed; Barin thought she should. What a wordy old flatterer the professor was, after all, and old enough to be her father. Even her grandfather.

“My dear, this is not about you. Unless Lieutenant Serrano thinks I’m a danger to your heart or your safety—” The professor looked at him, and Barin was suddenly aware of a very bright, very piercing glance from those gray eyes, a directness that reminded him of his grandmother. Then the professor looked down, and stabbed his waffle.

“I—thought Ensign Pardalt might not mind some—younger company.”

“She might, if you were single,” the professor said. “But rumor has it you’re married. To Esmay Suiza, in fact. Or is rumor mistaken?”

He was playing dirty, Barin decided. He wrapped himself in Serrano dignity. “Yes, I’m married,” he said. “And no, I’m not trying to express any interest in Ensign Pardalt which is inappropriate to . . .” He was floundering and he knew it; there was a wicked glint in the professor’s eye which said he was enjoying Barin’s difficulty. “As the senior present—”

“He’s not bothering me, Lieutenant,” Margiu said softly. “He’s sort of . . . crazy . . . but he’s harmless.”

The professor raised his eyebrows dramatically. “Harmless! And this is what I come to, after a life of dedication to the sweet beauties . . . to be called harmless.”

Barin’s anger evaporated, for no reason he could name. He grinned. “You don’t look harmless.”

“Thanks be for small mercies. And you, young woman, don’t ruin my reputation. My colleagues would tease me unmercifully if they thought I was losing my appeal.” He looked at Barin again. “Actually, you’ve done me a favor. They’ll see your challenge as proof of my performance, not my feathers. Now I’ll take myself off, as if you’d threatened me, and you two young people can enjoy breakfast.”

After the professor had gone, Margiu said nothing more, eating steadily.

“I’m sorry if I interrupted,” Barin said, finally.

“No . . . it’s just . . . he’s fun sometimes. He reminds me of home, in a way.”

“Xavier?” Barin asked.

“Yes. It’s just an ag world, but we do have a university. My parents are farmers, but they’re not stupid—” She said this as if expecting an argument. When Barin said nothing, she went on. “Before the—before the Benignity came, we had a house with wide porches, and every week my parents would invite people over. We kids would play games, and the grownups would talk and talk.”

“Did you lose your home?” Barin asked.

“Oh, yes. But we rebuilt, just not as big. In time, it will be. Dad says he can’t do without a porch to sit on and watch the sky over the fields. Anyway, the professor’s a lot smarter and more educated, but some of his talk reminds me of home. The teasing kind of thing.” She sounded wistful.

“Do you miss it?”

“Xavier? Sometimes. But I like Fleet, too. Sir—if you don’t mind—would you introduce me to Lieutenant Suiza sometime? I’d like to thank her personally.”

“Of course,” Barin said automatically. He didn’t feel like explaining that Esmay wasn’t in Fleet anymore. He wondered if everyone was going to think of him as Esmay Suiza’s appendage for the rest of his life, the way the family spoke of his aunt’s engineer as “Heris’s Petris.”

His deskcomp informed him he had downloaded messages waiting. Barin sighed. His parents had been sending him jaunty little get-well messages every week or so, but that was not what he wanted. What he wanted . . . was right there in front of him. personal on the header, and Esmay Suiza-Serrano down below.

His breath caught in his throat. She was back—it had all been a mistake, not his grandmother’s fault. She wasn’t Landbride anymore. She had a ship of her own. She loved him. She hoped he was better, and she was sending a cube.

He looked away, and blinked back tears. She was all right. She wasn’t dead, or hurt, or lost; she hadn’t gone back to Altiplano. He should have known she’d manage. Esmay always managed. Things always worked out for her in the end.

Whereas he . . . he shook his head hard. She loved him; he loved her. He was glad she was back in—of course he was. He was glad she had a ship—she deserved to have a ship. His mind automatically calculated how long it would be before he could hope for a ship, and he swatted it down. That didn’t matter . . . did it?

He looked at his reflection in the bureau mirror and grimaced. All the scars were gone—the visible ones—but he still looked gaunt and older than he had.

Because you’ve grown up.

Had he? Was this restlessness, this dissatisfaction, part of growing up?

He fled from that question and decided to follow his doctors’ recommendation to walk at least five kilometers a day. Around the training field, around the main buildings . . . and down to Q-town would just about finish the distance. His legs ached by the time he got to Q-town, and he was glad to stop and rest. Now which? He could eat supper here, just as well. He knew the name and reputation of each bar and restaurant, and shied away from Diamond Sim’s, where someone would be sure to comment on experiences. Mama Zee’s, on the other hand, served hearty food in its small crowded dining room.

He had finished his salad and was waiting on the main course when the door opened, letting in a cold gust of wind. He glanced up and met the professor’s inquisitive gaze.

“Lieutenant Serrano—what a pleasant surprise. May I sit with you?”

Barin had been in the mood to brood alone, but the professor was an older man, distinguished. “Of course,” he said.

“I wanted to apologize,” the professor said. “I should not have embarrassed you with Ensign Pardalt that way. It’s my instinct for mischief.”

“That’s all right,” Barin said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters,” the professor said. “You were only trying to protect one of your people from danger—albeit an imaginary danger.”

“Get you something?” That was the waitress, an older woman with gray hair. She handed the professor a menu.

“Ah yes.” He ordered quickly. When the waitress left again, he cocked his head at Barin. “Something’s troubling you, young man. Have you fallen for the fair Margiu instead of your own illustrious Esmay Suiza?”

“No, it’s not that.” Barin pushed the saltshaker back and forth. “She’s got a ship now, Esmay. She’s back in. And she should be.”

“Mmm?” The professor busied himself with his napkin, folding it into a precise triangle before putting it in his lap.

“You’re married, professor, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” The professor’s face softened. “Kata. Wonderful woman . . . I’ll tell you what, young Serrano, they get better as they get older. Softer. Mellower. When she was young, she was like a green peach, but now . . .” He smacked his lips. Barin found it a little disgusting. Esmay was not a peach at all. And yet . . . this was maybe the only married man he could talk to.

“We only had those few days,” Barin said. “And I don’t even know where she is . . .”

“I’m sorry, I’m not following this.” The professor leaned back against the rock. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

Barin started instead with Esmay’s disgrace as a result of the quarrel with Brun Meager, and worked his way to the family reunion, and their hasty clandestine marriage.

“You just ran off to a magistrate? How . . . charming.”

“We just couldn’t stand it,” Barin said. “What with the mutiny and my family and everything—we wanted to have some kind of link—”

“And then things hit the fan—”

“Not really. We made the ship by a hair, the captain chewed us out a bit but not much, and—it was so wonderful, those days.”

“Those nights, I suspect you mean, unless you were on third shift,” the professor said dryly.

“Well . . . yes. Both, really. Working together, at least part of the time, and then—”

“You found you could get along with half the sleep you thought you needed. Yes. Youth is wonderful that way. So what happened?”

“Esmay got new orders; she was to leave and tranfer at Sector V to another ship, and then on across to her final assignment. The next thing I knew, she wasn’t in the Fleet database. She’d been separated, and I didn’t know where she was.” Barin chewed his lip, remembering how frantic he had felt. Had she felt the same way?

“Did you think she’d gone back to Altiplano?”

“I didn’t know. And I was on a warship, a cruiser; I had no chance to start looking. I kept thinking . . . worrying . . . and then we were in combat and then—”

“I heard,” the professor said. The waitress reappeared, with a loaf of fresh warm bread and a bowl of butter. The professor pulled off a hunk and started eating. Around a mouthful of bread, he said, “They were determined to save your life, because you’d saved the ship, is what I heard.”

“All I did was stand still,” Barin said.

“Yes, well, sometimes standing still is the right thing to do. But you’re waffling, young man. Get to the point.”

Barin found himself blurting it out, more than he’d meant to say, and finished with, “And she’s older, and she’s got a ship, and I’ll always be behind . . .”

The professor stopped, folded his hands on the table and said, “It’s not a race.”

“Sir?”

“It’s not a race. Marriage. There is no ‘behind’ or ‘ahead.’ You’re not in competition; you’re a partnership.” He cocked his head. “Do you love this woman?”

“Esmay? Of course—”

“Not ‘of course’ . . . I mean really love her, heart and soul and body?”

“Yes . . . I do.”

“But right now you’re jealous, aren’t you? You think she’s the famous one, the hero twice over, the captain of a fine ship—because if she’s the captain, it will be a fine ship. You don’t want to be a bauble on her necklace, a trophy husband.”

Barin felt himself flushing. “It’s not jealousy, exactly.”

“Yes, it is—exactly. Barin, I’m going to talk to you as if you were one of my sons or grandsons. It’s probably going to upset you, too, just as it upsets them. Now it’s obvious to me that you’re a fine young officer, a proper Serrano. But your whole life has been Fleet, and one particular segment of Fleet. Here you’re a prince; you’ve inherited a name and all that goes with it. That’s fine, so far as it goes. But your wife’s not just Fleet; your wife’s a Landbride—or she was—and she’s got connections that go far beyond Fleet.”

“I know that,” Barin said.

“Yes, intellectually, you do. Emotionally—you haven’t begun to cope with it yet. I will bet that when you first met her, you thought you were doing her a favor.”

Barin felt his face going hot again. “I admired her,” he said, a little too firmly.

“Yes, but you knew more about Fleet, I daresay, and you were glad to show your expertise.”

“I suppose,” Barin said, and reached for the bread himself. “She did ask me things.”

“Yes. And you generously instructed her. And that’s fine, so far as it goes. Tell me how much you’ve learned about Altiplano.”

“Er . . . not much.” It occurred to Barin that he hadn’t even considered learning more about Altiplano.

“Tell me—what about those women the news media called your NewTex wives? What does your Esmay think of them?”

“Oh, them . . . they’re not a problem anymore.” He hadn’t thought of them in months, since his pay was no longer being garnished for their support. The professor’s eyebrows went up, and he explained. “Someone Brun Meager knows found them a home on a colony world someplace . . .”

“Someone . . . someplace . . . ? That’s not very specific. Do you feel any responsibility for them, these women who left their native world because they trusted your word?”

Put like that, it sounded as if he were an irresponsible selfish wretch. “I hadn’t really thought about it, not since they left. They seemed happy enough to go there.”

“Umm. Out of Fleet, out of mind? Only the standards here in Fleet are real to you? I suppose that’s why you’re so worried about being always junior to her.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that,” Barin said. He didn’t want to think of it like that, and he was relieved when the waitress returned with their food. He dug into his food and hoped the professor would forget what they’d been talking about. But the professor, halfway through his steak, returned to the topic.

“If you worry about her rank, Barin, you’ll make yourself miserable—and her, too. You can’t grow by cutting her down. This is what I meant by your needing a wider base. If you see everything through the narrow filter of Fleet, date-of-commission and all that, then you can only regret being born later. But if you see that both of you can grow in all dimensions . . . then what will it matter? What kind of person cares, in twenty years, if you were commissioned a year or two after her? Who’s wearing which insignia?”

“But that’s how we . . .” His voice trailed off.

The professor hammered another nail in that coffin. “Rank isn’t merit. Age isn’t merit. Neither young nor old, high nor low, but only the action, honorable or not.”

“You’re quoting again,” Barin said.

“Guilty as charged,” the professor said, grinning. “It’s part of my job, preserving ancient culture. Barin, there are dozens—probably hundreds—of ranking systems. Academic degrees . . . intellectual pedigrees, who you trained with . . . publications. Every organization in the universe has some kind of pecking order, and people who make themselves miserable because someone is ranked higher.”

“You think competition is wrong?”

“Of course not! Ask my colleagues—they’ll tell you I’m cutthroat when it comes to my career. But that’s not all my life—and your profession of arms shouldn’t be all of your life. A man who is just a scientist, or just a soldier, or just a woodcutter isn’t a whole man. I’ll tell you what I think a man is—and by man I don’t mean a featherless biped or something who just happens to have human DNA and a Y chromosome. A man is a person who has learned—is learning, is willing to learn—to know himself. Who can face the truth about himself and go on living, who makes the right kind of difference in the world.

“Truth’s not always easy,” Barin muttered into his potatoes.

“Truth is never easy,” the professor said. “Truth about yourself is the hardest. But men love, men protect those they love, men walk with honor. So can women—Kata would smack me with one of her carving tools if she thought I didn’t know that—but right now, because we’re both men, we’re talking about men.”

“What if you . . . make bad mistakes?” Barin asked.

“You fix them, as best you can,” the professor said. “Admit them, make amends, try again. I’ve certainly made them. Lots. It’s how you learn.”

“But other people can pay the price of your learning,” Barin said.

“Yes, absolutely. And that’s terrible, a burden you have to shoulder the rest of your life. It’s happened to you, has it?” The professor didn’t wait for an answer—he rarely did, Barin had noticed—but went right on. “Your Esmay’s had that experience, or she will. If you have, then you’ll understand her, and she’ll understand you, those nights you wake up at 0300 and see it all happen again.” The professor’s voice had a steely edge now, like someone who had been there.

“You, sir?”

“Oh, yes. Smartass young scientists can make deadly mistakes too, Barin. Think we know more than we know, forget that between the theory and the device, between the equations and the engineering, things . . . change.” He shook his head and applied himself to his food. Barin didn’t know whether to ask more or just wait, and chose the easy way of finishing his own food.

As they waited for dessert, the professor started in again. “Kata and I have been married forty-two years, and I can tell you there were some stormy times. Weapons scientists don’t get recognition, not even from peers, not early on. She had a name as a sculptor before I was through my first post-doc. She’d go off to some gallery show, where I could imagine all those rich men fawning on her. She loves shows; she’d come back all flushed and happy, and there I’d be with a sour taste in my mouth and a pile of tests I’d graded or something equally unglamorous.”

“So what did you do?” Barin asked, fascinated.

“I drank too much for a while,” the professor said. “Then I tried to boss her around, which is always bad, but particularly bad for a creative person’s spouse, because they can lose their gift, at least for a while. Kata tried to be what she thought was a good wife, and the gallery owner came over and screamed at me for two hours one day about how I was a patriarchal retrograde mastodon who didn’t deserve her and belonged in a history museum with a spear up my butt.”

“So?”

“So I threatened to demonstrate to the gallery owner just how retrograde I was, which cost me a fine later, but it was good in the long run. I thought about it, and joined the Society for the Preservation of Antique Lore with my friend Barry. Met a lot of fascinating people, learned a lot about historical weaponry which turned out to be useful, though I can’t tell you why, and worked off my frustrations on the field. Worked my way up to Knight-Commander of the White Brigade, which meant a lot of people fawned on me when they weren’t trying to crack my skull in tournaments. Did wonders for my ego.”

“And you’re still married,” Barin said.

“More to the point, we still want to be married. Yes, I ogle the girls, especially the shy ones who need it more than you might think, and yes, Kata still purrs and preens when some rich old fart tells her how talented she is . . . but the fact of the matter is, we’re each other’s best friend, and partner, and that’s how it is, was, and will be.”

“It sounds . . . good.”

“It’s better than good. And what it takes is character, commitment, and time. You have to find a partner who’s honest—because lying, even to yourself, will kill it. You have to find one who’s brave, because let’s face it, life is scary. Someone who’s openhearted, not grasping. And then make the commitment—both of you. And if you find that person of character, and stick with it, you’ll get the honey in the comb.”

“Esmay has character . . .”

“That’s what attracted you, probably, besides your hormones. You come from a heritage of character. And you know she has courage.”

“Yes . . . but I’m not sure I’m a match for her.”

“Ah. So we’re back to matching again. It’s not a race; it’s not a contest. All you have to do is be honest, brave, and true—something you were bred for, if I’m any judge. If that’s too much, you can always change your mind, decide that the marriage was a mistake. You can walk away. You can walk away from those NewTex women and never give them another thought, too. But if you walk away from too many of your responsibilities, you aren’t a man anymore; you’re a parasite. It’s addictive, walking out on things.”

“I don’t want to walk out on her,” Barin said. “But I don’t know how to be what I need to be.”

“You already are,” the professor said. “You’re just barely old enough to grasp this point, but I’ll try anyway. You’re comparing yourself to Esmay and your Serrano relatives. You don’t need to be anyone else, Barin. You need to be you, because you are enough. Anyone—anyone at all—can be enough. Smart enough, brave enough, good enough.”

“You sound so sure.”

“I’m not exactly a spring chicken; I’ve seen a lot of military men. I’ve seen Meharry around you. He’s not a fool; he’s not going to give his loyalty to an idiot, a coward, a dolt.” That bright eye speared him again. “The fact is, you’re revealed by your creation, and a military commander’s creation is the way his people act. You determine their bond, their morale. If your people get better, then you’re a good commander; if your people get worse . . . look to yourself. Meharry was nearly a wreck when we picked him up; I don’t know what hurt him so badly, but I do know what got him back: you did.”

“Oh.” Barin digested as they ate dessert. “So . . . if I’m not competing with Esmay, then . . . we sort of grow in parallel?”

“Exactly.” The professor beamed at him. “It’ll be easier if you’ll broaden your base. Something that will help you—in your career, and as your wife’s husband—is getting comfortable with more kinds of people. How many civilian friends do you have?”

“Civilian friends?”

“Yes. We’re not all dolts, you know. There are a lot of us. The more you know about civilians—all kinds of civilians—the more perspective you’ll have. The higher you go, the more you’ll have to interact politically as well as militarily.”

“I never thought of that.” Barin thought now. Civilians as something other than more or less docile sheep in serious need of shepherding had never crossed his mind. He was startled to realize that he didn’t know any . . . that his closest approach to civilians had been those depressed and frightened women and children from Our Texas. They had needed his help, his guidance, his support . . . that’s what he expected from them.

“Militaries always rest on the foundation of a civilian population,” the professor said. “They don’t feed themselves, or supply themselves . . . someone grows the food you eat, makes the cloth for your clothes, builds the ships, manufactures the weapons . . . and that’s not counting trade, entertainment and the arts. Start now building your networks in all these areas.”

“I guess I can use you for the sciences,” Barin said.

“You could indeed.”

“But . . .” Barin drew lines on the table with his dessert fork. “I still don’t know if I want to go back into space.”

“After being blown up, I don’t wonder. And you don’t have to. Not a race, remember. Not a contest. You can be an honorable, decent man and a good husband to Esmay if you never go out on a ship again.”

“Mmm.” That was a new thought, and a hard one. Unaccountably, just thinking it made him less afraid. Did he really want to stay on a planet the rest of his life? Not really. He had one reason to be scared and many reasons to go back to ships.

“Not that I think that’s your path; personally I think you’ll go out there and command a cruiser yourself someday. But what I think doesn’t matter. It’s your life.”

“It is.” Barin saw it then, a wavering vision that split and recombined like reflections on water . . . but lives—more than one life—in which he was someone he could respect. Someone Esmay could respect.

“If I were you, I’d check up on those women,” the professor said, pushing back his chair. “You’ll feel better for it.”

Barin nodded, but his thoughts were on Esmay. Now he could feel for her the joy he should feel—she had a ship, her own ship. She would be magnificent.

They would be magnificent.