Iron Orchid

ELEVEN

HOLLY STOOD WITH A DOZEN other trainees in the smaller of the two gymnasiums at the Farm. An instructor with a clipboard walked into the room, counted the names on his clipboard, counted the trainees, then tossed the clipboard aside. Another sergeant, Holly figured, but this one a marine. He was fiftyish, her height, wiry and had a severe whitewall haircut. At his age, only an ex-marine would walk around with that. What was visible of his hair was black, except for a white streak over his forehead.

“Shut up,” he said, though everyone was already quiet. “You can call me Whitey, and when I talk, you listen.”

Holly looked up into the rafters and involuntarily sighed.

“Am I boring you?” Whitey asked.

Holly gazed at him but didn’t reply at once.

“No, sergeant,” she lied.

“I told you to call me Whitey.”

“No, Whitey.”

“You’re a smartass, aren’t you?”

“Possibly.”

He glared at her for a moment, then turned back to the group. “This is a fighting class,” he said. “It is not a self-defense class; it is a hurting class, a maiming class, a killing class. As far as the Agency is concerned, the best opponent is a disabled or dead opponent. Is that dear?”

“Yes, sir,” the class replied as one man, except for Holly, who replied, “Yes, Whitey.”

Whitey heard this and glared at her again. He walked over and stuck his face in hers. “You don’t want to call me ‘sir,” huh?“

“You asked me to call you Whitey,” Holly replied.

“What’s your name?”

“Harry One.”

He looked her up and down. “Yeah, ”Harry‘ is the perfect name for you.“

“Was that a reference to my sexual orientation, Whitey?” Holly asked. She tried not to sound annoyed, though she was annoyed. She had put up with that sort of thing in the Army for years.

“Take it that way, if you like.”

“I don’t like.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to demand an apology,” Holly said. “Right now.”

“Apology for what?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve read the manual we were given, Whitey, but I have. There is a clear prohibition in the manual against personal slurs, particularly of a sexual nature, and there is a prescribed procedure for dealing with them. Now, you can apologize, or I’ll subject you to that procedure.”

He was back in her face again. “You’d better be careful how you speak to your superiors in this place,” he said.

“I hold a field-grade commission in the reserves of a branch of the United States military,” Holly said. “What’s your rank, Whitey?”

“I’ll show you what my rank is,” Whitey said. He turned, walked two paces away, then faced her, his hands at his sides. “Come over here and hit me in the face,” he said.

Holly walked over and stood loosely and unthreateningly before him. “How hard, Whitey?”

“Just as hard as you can, Harry One.”

She knew he expected her to back down. Holly didn’t hesitate; she shot a straight left at the middle of his face and felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage. Whitey sat down hard on the mat, blood gushing from his nose, then he was on his feet and coming at her when somebody stepped between them.

“Hold it, Whitey!” the man said. He was in his late fifties, slim and dressed in khaki trousers and a polo shirt. He turned to Holly. “Why did you do that?”

“My instructor instructed me to hit him as hard as I could,” she replied. “I’m afraid I partly disobeyed.” She looked at Whitey, who was holding a bloody towel to his face. “I hit him, but not as hard as I could.”

Whitey started to move toward her, but the man put a hand on his chest and shoved him backward. “Go to the infirmary and get that fixed,” he said.

Whitey glared at Holly again, then turned on his heel and marched out of the gym.

The man turned back to Holly. “What’s your name?”

“Harry One,” she replied.

The man looked at the group. “This class is dismissed until same time tomorrow.”

The group left, but the man crooked a finger at Holly. “You stay.”

When everyone had left the gym, and he had watched them do so, he turned back to Holly. “What did he say to provoke you?”

“He insinuated that I was a lesbian.”

“Nobody here cares if you’re a lesbian,” the man said.

“Whitey does,” she replied. “He doesn’t like lesbians.”

“No, I guess he doesn’t. Why did that make you so angry?”

“I did twenty years in the Army, and I heard that sort of thing a little too often.”

The man nodded. “I apologize, on behalf of the staff here.”

“Thank you,” Holly said. “And, just for the record, I’m not a lesbian.”

“I never thought you were. Your group will have a new instructor tomorrow, and you won’t see Whitey here again.”

“I didn’t want to get the man fired.”

“Call it the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Holly nodded.

“A word of advice: if you should ever encounter Whitey again outside this establishment, be very careful. He’s good at what he does, and he likes doing it a little too much.”

“I’ll remember that,” Holly replied.

“Go get some lunch,” the man said, and he turned and walked away from her and out a door.

Holly went to get some lunch.