When the Devil Dances

CHAPTER 20 Rabun Gap, GA, United States, Sol III 2047 EDT Friday September 25, 2009 ad

“Cally, don’t take this as an insult,” Mueller said, leaning back from the table with a grin. “But you’re going to make someone a great wife some day.”

“It’s not like I enjoy cooking,” Cally said, with a shrug. “Well, not much. But if you want to eat up here, you have to do it all yourself.”

Dinner had been a rousing success. Papa O’Neal had cut about ten pounds of moist, succulent pork off the pig, thinking that would be enough and intending to cut the rest up and freeze it for later meals. As it turned out, he had had to go back to the porker twice for more meat. In addition to the corn on the cob and cornbread, Cally had cooked wheat bread, a creamed green-bean casserole and new potatoes, all of which had been eaten. Dessert was pecan pie.

The children, stuffed to the gills, had finally been sent off to bed leaving only the “grownups” — Cally seemed to be included in that group — sitting at the table, picking over the remains of the meal while the CD player cycled in the background.

“I know what you mean,” Shari laughed. “There are cafeterias in the Urb, but the food is really lousy; there are days I could kill to just call Domino’s.”

“I sort of remember them,” Cally said with a shrug. “But the last time I ate fast food was the month that Fredericksburg was hit.” She shook her head and shrugged. “We went on vacation down to the Keys and there was still a McDonald’s open in Miami. We fix pizza sometimes, but it’s made from scratch.”

“None of the kids even remember fast food joints,” Wendy said, pulling a piece of pork off the haunch Papa O’Neal had brought in. “Well, Billy and Shannon do, a little bit. But not really. They sort of remember the playgrounds and the meal toys. But that’s about it.”

“It all just went away so fast,” Shari said quietly.

“It did that,” Mosovich replied. “Wars tend to cause that sort of thing. Ask Germans of a certain age about how things change in a real war, or read diaries of Southerners in the Civil War. Gone With the Wind is a good example; one day you wake up and your whole life is gone. Some people adjust to it, thrive even. Some people just curl up and die, either in reality or inside.”

“Lots of that in the Urbs,” Wendy said. “Lot of people that just gave up. They sit around all day, either doing nothing or talking about when the good times will come back.”

“Ain’t gonna come back like of old,” Mosovich said. “I’ll tell you that. Too much damage. Hell, even the ‘fortress cities’ that they made out in the boonies are basically toast. A city is more than a bunch of buildings filled with soldiers. Richmond, Newport, New York, San Francisco, they’re just hollow shells at this point. Making them cities again… I don’t know if it’s gonna happen.”

“The interior cities ain’t any great shakes either,” Mueller pointed out. “We were up in Louisville a few months ago at Eastern Theater Command. Most of the people there were trying to get into the Urbs. At least the Urbs were set up for foot traffic; with the shortage of gasoline, getting around in cities is really difficult. Just getting to the store is usually a long hike.”

“Especially with the weather being as bad as it’s been,” Shari said.

“What weather?” Papa O’Neal asked.

“Well, we get the reports down in the Urbs; there were record lows all winter. They’re already talking about a new ice age from all the nuclear weapons.”

“Huh,” O’Neal laughed. “Can’t tell it by me. If there was an ice age coming on, farmers would be the first to know. Now, the Canadian harvests were screwed up, and it probably was in part due to the China nukes, but even that has stabilized out.”

“I can’t really blame the Chinese, either,” Mueller said. “Except for thinking they could beat the Posleen on the plains. Once they lost most of their army, slagging the Yangtze was the only way to keep the Posleen off the stragglers.”

“Oh, hell,” Papa O’Neal grunted. “They were slagging the stragglers there at the end. That way the Posleen would slow down to eat. And it’s not like even that slowed ’em down, it only took ’em a month to reach Tibet. Hell, with all the antimatter and nukes we’ve built up, better hope we never get to that point; we’ll end up glazing the whole eastern U.S. And probably to about as much use.

“But as to the weather, we’re in a long-term aggressive weather cycle, but that’s affected by a pod of warm water in the Atlantic and it was predicted before the invasion. Other than that, the weather’s been fine. Great, this year. Rains just on time. Could have been a bit more, but then I’d be wishing they were a bit less.”

“We’re always hearing these terrible weather reports from the surface,” Wendy said. “Record cold, snow in April, stuff like that.”

“Well, I’ve been living here for… well, for a long time,” he said, looking sidelong at Shari. “And this has been as good a year as we’ve had. Yeah, it snowed in April. Happens. It was seventy-two two days after the nukes.”

“Did that person just say what I think they said?” Elgars asked.

“Who?” Papa O’Neal replied, looking around.

“On the CD player,” she said, pointing into the living room. “I think he just sang something about smearing the roast on his chest.”

“Ah,” said Papa O’Neal with a smile. “Yeah. That. Warren Zevon.”

“Warren who?” Wendy asked. Elgars had been picking up socialization fast and she had to wonder if the captain had just done a very deliberate topic change. If so, go with it.

“Zevon,” Mosovich said. “The Balladeer of the Mercenary. Great guy. Met him once. Briefly.”

“Where?” Shari asked. “I recognize the name, but I can’t come up with a song and…” She listened to a few lyrics and blanched. “Did he just say what I think he did?”

“Yep,” Papa O’Neal said with a grimace. “That’s ‘Excitable Boy.’ It’s… one of his rougher pieces.”

“I dunno,” Cally said with a malicious chuckle. “Why don’t you sing her a few bars of ‘Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner’?”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Shari said with a smile. “And, believe it or not, I can take a little black humor.”

“Oh, yeah?” Cally said with a sly grin. “Why’d the Posleen cross the road?”

“I’ll bite,” Mueller said. “Why did the Posleen cross the road?”

“To get to the fodder side,” Cally said.

“Okay,” Mosovich said. “That was pretty bad. Try this one: How do two Posleen resolve an argument?” He waited, but nobody jumped in. “Thresh it out between them, of course.”

“Ow!” Papa O’Neal said. “What’s the difference between a lawyer and a Posleen?”

“I dunno,” Shari said. “One gets paid to eat you alive?”

“No, but that’s pretty good,” Papa O’Neal said. “No, one is a vicious, inhuman, cannibalistic monster; and the other is an alien.”

“You hear the new slogan for the Posleen that fight Marines?” Wendy asked.

“Hah!” Mosovich said with a grin. “I can imagine a few. Oh, that would be sailors.”

“The few, the proud: DESSERT!”

Cally looked around for a second then grinned. “How do you know that Posleen are bisexual? They eat both men and women!”

“I can’t believe you said that!” Papa O’Neal grumped as the others laughed.

“Christ, you have me listening to Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, Granpa!” Cally said. “And that little joke bothers you?”

“What’s wrong with Black Sabbath?” he protested. “It’s a good group. Great lyrics.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Cally said. “The name?”

“Christian!”

“Catholic, thank you very much.”

“Okay, okay, breaking the mood here before bullets fly,” Mueller said. “How many Posleen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“I dunno,” said Papa O’Neal grumpily. “How many?”

“Just one,” Mueller said. “But it takes a really big lightbulb.”

“I don’t get that one,” Elgars said.

“They’re hermaphroditic,” Wendy said. “They can’t really self impregnate, not without help. But any two can reproduce with any other two so since ‘go screw yourself’ is an insult, people joke about them screwing themselves.”

Elgars nodded her head. “I still don’t get it.”

“Think about it,” Cally said. “In the meantime: Why did the Himmit cross the road?”

“I don’t know,” Elgars said.

“It didn’t; it’s on the wall behind you,” Cally said with a grin.

Elgars regarded her calmly. “This is a joke?”

“Never mind,” Wendy sighed. “Then there’s the one about the Himmit who sat in his car for three days, in a no-parking zone, blending into the upholstery of the driver seat.” She paused for a moment. “He got toad.” She looked around. “Get it? Toad. T-O-A-D.”

“Aaaagh!” Papa O’Neal shouted. “That’s awful!”

“I don’t get it again?” Elgars said. “What is a Himmit?”

“One of the Galactic races,” Cally answered, shaking her head and throwing a biscuit at Wendy. “They sort of look like big frogs. They can blend into the background so well it’s like they’re invisible.”

“Thank you,” Wendy said, bowing at the table. “Thank you… Or the Himmit in the piano bar? One of the customers says to the piano player, ‘Do you know there’s a giant invisible frog having a beer on the wall behind you?’ And the piano player said: ‘Hum a bar or two and I’ll pick it up.’ Or the one about the extrovert Indowy? He looks at your shoes while he’s talking to you.”

“Those are awful!” Cally said.

“Worse than the bisexual joke?” Mueller asked. “Okay. Two soldiers in a foxhole. One says, ‘I heard about two orphans passin’ through town today. Those godamn aliens hit their town a week ago, killed their dad — he was a marathon runner, of all things — and ate their Ma. Didn’t eat him — just her. Crazy damn aliens, why’d they do that?’ The other says, ‘You idiot. Their Pa’s lean’.”

“That’s terrible,” Shari said. “Nearly as bad as this one. What’s a good mascot for the ACS? A lobster: so good to eat, so hard to peel.”

“Hey!” Cally said. “My dad resembles that remark! What do you call a Crab on a sugar high? Flubber. It just bounces and bounces… You know what they call a Crab studying Marine Biology? Speaker to shellfish.”

“How do two hungry Posleen greet each other?” Papa O’Neal asked, not to be outdone. “With salt and pepper of course.”

“Why did the Posleen leave an honor stick at the McDonald’s?” Cally asked. “They saw the sign ‘6 billion served.’ ”

“You barely remember McDonald’s,” Papa O’Neal said suspiciously. “Who told you that?”

“Just… a guy,” Cally said with a twinkle in her eye.

“Oh, shit,” Mueller muttered. “Hey! How did the bus full of lawyers escape from behind the Posleen lines? Professional courtesy.”

“What guy?” Papa O’Neal asked.

“What did the Posleen say when they took Auschwitz?” she asked, ignoring the question. “ ‘I prefer Sushi.’ ”

“What guy, Cally?” Papa O’Neal asked again.

“Just a soldier,” she answered. “At the Piggly Wiggly. He told a joke and so did I and I left. It was no big deal…”

“What do you call Posleen in the open and a Fuel Air Explosion?” Mueller asked desperately. “A Whopper and fries.”

“What do you mean, no big deal?” Papa O’Neal said dangerously. “I don’t want them changing the song to ‘Cally went down to town.’ ”

“Okay,” Shari sighed. “Look at me, Michael O’Neal.”

“Yes?” he said grumpily.

“What do the Posleen call call Carl Lewis?”

“I dunno,” Papa O’Neal said, shaking his head. “You’re not going to let me pursue this, are you?”

“No. Fast Food.”

He snorted. “Okay.”

“What did the Posleen say when confronted by an Ethiopian?”

“I dunno,” he said smiling at her. “What?”

“ ‘Nouvelle Cuisine AGAIN?’ I gotta million of ’em. What do the Posleen call a doctor?”

“What?”

“Lunch. What do the Posleen call a construction worker?”

“I dunno.”

“Lunch. What do the Posleen call a politician? Competition. What do the Posleen call a lawyer? Trouble. Do you know why they substituted lawyers for Posleen in their chemical warfare experiments? Lawyers bred faster. There are things a Posleen won’t do. And the researchers were taking pity on the Posleen.

“And last, but not least: Why did the Posleen take less than a month to go through China? Well, you know how it is, you eat Chinese and an hour later…”

“Jeeze, you’re something,” O’Neal said with a laugh.

“You got any Van Morrison in this dump?” she asked.

“I think I’ve got his ‘Best of,’ why?”

“Because I want to dance,” she answered, taking his hand and standing up. “Come on.”

“I’ve got two left feet,” he protested.

“You put your arms around me and shuffle around,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “How hard’s it gonna be?”

“You might want to rephrase that,” Mueller muttered.

“Oh, shut up.”

As the music changed in the background, Elgars poured a small sip of the better moonshine. She swirled it in her cup and looked at Mosovich. “I think now is a good time.”

“Now’s a good time for what?” Cally asked.

“I told Mosovich about a flashback while we were walking,” Elgars answered. “There was something about it he really didn’t like.”

“Yeah,” Mosovich said. “You’re right.” He poured himself some of the moonshine and leaned back. “What I didn’t like about it is that the person who had that experience is real, and she’s really dead. I saw her die.”

“Where?” Cally asked.

“Barwhon,” Mueller interjected. “We were both on a recon team that was sent out before the expeditionary force even got there. We were guinea pigs to see how dangerous the Posleen really were.”

“You can’t remember that time,” Mosovich said. “But… there was a lot of disbelief. ‘Alien invasion? Right, pull the other one.’ That got dispelled pretty quick when a high-level delegation on Barwhon got eaten, and the tape got back to the World. Anyway, we were on a recon of Barwhon doing an order of battle and analysis of the terrain and fighting conditions…”

“Bad and bad,” Mueller said.

“I guess we did our job too well,” the sergeant major continued. “We got a call to capture a Posleen and return it. I figured that we could capture one of the nestlings easier than an adult so we attacked a camp that was also holding some Crabs as a walking larder. When we did, the Posleen turned out to be a bit better at fighting than we had given them credit for. All the stuff we know now; the sniper detection system and the way they just swarm to the sound of fighting. Anyway, we lost a bunch of real legends in the special operations community, including our sniper, Staff Sergeant Sandra Ellsworthy. The description of your flashback correlates exactly to her death.”

“Yep,” Mueller said. “I thought the same thing. It’s like listening to Sandra tell it, complete with the southern accent.”

“You know,” Wendy said. “That’s hardly coming out at all anymore. The accent I mean.”

“Anyway, that’s why we freaked,” Mosovich said.

“What do you think?” Elgars asked quietly. “Do you think that the Crabs put your friend’s head in mine? Am I Anne Elgars or this Ellsworthy person? Similar name, both snipers? You think that’s it?”

“Not really,” Mosovich said. “Ellsworthy was… stranger than you are. Spooky weird. You seem a lot…”

“Stabler,” Mueller said. “Don’t get me wrong, on a mission Ellsworthy was great. And she was a good sniper trainer. But she was a wild-child when she wasn’t in uniform; you’ve got ten times her stability in many ways, even with your head not completely screwed on.”

“Why thank you, Master Sergeant,” she said tartly.

“No offense, ma’am,” he said hastily.

“So, how does this affect your report to Colonel Cutprice?” she asked Mosovich.

“I think I’ll just send him a message with the whole crazy story,” the sergeant major replied. “You move good in the woods and we know you can shoot. If you were a private or a staff sergeant it wouldn’t be any question. But for a captain he’ll have to make up his own mind. For what it’s worth, I think you could learn to do the job.”

“Thanks,” Elgars said. “I have to wonder. And I have to agree I don’t know what else might be buried in the depths of my mind. Or, really, who I am.”

“Oh, I think you’ll get over that,” Mosovich said. “Although it brings a whole new meaning to ‘getting to know yourself.’ Long term, I think you’ll be fine. Well, as fine as any of us are these days.”

He looked into the living room where Papa O’Neal and Shari were now dancing to “Magic Carpet Ride.” “Some of us, of course, are doing better than others.”

O’Neal walked over holding Shari by the hand and gave them a sort of wave. “Night, folks. We’re kind of tired so we’re calling it a night.” With that they both walked towards the stairs, hand in hand.

“Well, will you look at that,” Cally said bitterly. “Tell me not to go downtown!”

“They’re both old enough to make a rational decision about it,” Wendy pointed out. “Old enough to be your grandfather in one case and your mother in the other.”

“And he’s old enough to be her father,” Cally pointed out.

“The Koran says that the perfect age for a wife is half the man’s plus seven years,” Mueller intoned. “That makes you still too young for me. In fact,” he looked at the ceiling and fiddled on his fingers. “I think that means the perfect age for a guy for you would be… yours.”

“On the other hand…” he said, turning to Wendy.

“Hang on a bit,” she said, reaching into her back pocket.

“Ah, hah!” Mosovich exclaimed. “It’s the notorious boyfriend picture.”

Mueller took it and looked at it with a grin on his face. Then he looked puzzled for a moment followed by shock. “Jesus Christ.” He passed it over to Mosovich.

Wendy was in the picture, grinning at the camera in a happy-goofy way. She was flanked by a male in Mar-Cam, wearing much the same expression. What was difficult to grasp about the picture was that Wendy, who was no tiny young lady, looked like a baby-doll next to the… mountain next to her.

“That’s your boyfriend?” Mosovich asked.

“Yeah,” Wendy said. “He’s an NCO in the Ten Thousand. Six foot eight, two hundred and eighty pounds. Most of it muscle.

“We met during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Well, not really. We went to school together for years. Let’s just say I never really noticed him until the Battle.”

“Well, do I have to wait to be rescued in the middle of a battle?” Cally asked. “Besides, I’m more likely to do the rescuing.”

“No, but you should wait a few more years before you go making any life commitment decisions,” Wendy said with a laugh.

“I get the point,” Cally said with a shake of her head. “Noted and logged. Okay?”

“Okay,” Wendy said.

Elgars stood up and walked over to Mueller, tilting her head to the side. After a moment she leaned down and yanked one of his arms over her shoulder then got her shoulder into his midsection and heaved him up over her shoulder. She bent her knees a couple of times experimentally then nodded her head.

“I can do this,” she said. There was no note of strain in her voice.

“What, exactly, are you doing?” Mueller asked, hanging more or less vertical. He noted that his head was just about at the level of her derriere.

“As far as I know, I’ve never been to bed with anyone,” she answered, walking carefully towards the stairs. “You’ll do.”

Mosovich opened his mouth and raised his finger as if to protest, but then lowered it. Since he and Mueller were Fleet and Elgars was Ground Force it didn’t, technically, fall under the fraternization regulations. As long as they survived the stairs, everything should be fine. He downed his moonshine and looked at the table with trepidation.

“I think that leaves it up to us to clean up,” he said. “Since I choose to avoid the wrath of both the boyfriend and the local farmer.”

Cally sighed and started stacking plates. “One of these days,” she said, looking towards the stairs.

“One of these days there will be some good news,” Monsignor O’Reilly said, looking at his newest visitor.

The Indowy Aelool made a grimace that was the Indowy equivalent of disagreement. “Why should there be good news? It is not the trend by any stretch of the imagination.”

The four foot tall, green, “fur”-covered, bat-faced biped was swinging its feet back and forth in the chair like a little child for all it was probably over two hundred years old. Unlike virtually every Indowy in O’Reilly’s experience, the Clan Chief of the Triv Clan, all fourteen of them, never seemed worried or flustered by the presence of humans. Either it realized bone deep that humans, omnivores though they might be, were not going to suddenly kill it for some mistake, or it was almost preternaturally courageous. O’Reilly had never figured out which it was.

“Oh, just some minor good news would do,” O’Reilly said, waving the message. “Our old friend is on his way back to Earth. He should already be here, as a matter of fact.”

“Dol Ron,” the Indowy said calmly. “So I had heard. I wonder what mischief he is up to this time?”

“Well, the first visit we lost Hume, shutting down the only official group that was closing in on the secret of the Darhel,” the monsignor said. “The second the Tenth Corps was hacked and the hacking was pinned on the Cybers, who were the only group who was working at breaking the GalTech codes. Oh, and an attempt on the life of Cally O’Neal, which would have destroyed her father. The third was the death of General Taylor, and the elimination of two Société branches. Now this trip. I wonder who is going to die this time?”

“Not a soldier,” Aelool said. “The Cybers would never stop the killing until the last was done. And they are very good assassins.”

“Perhaps we should send a few groups of our own,” O’Reilly said bitterly. “It’s not as if we don’t know the Devil when we see him with our own eyes.”

“Dol Ron is a known quantity,” Aelool said with another grimace. “If he were removed, we would have to develop an information network on a completely different Darhel. Not the easiest thing to do. And then, of course, we could lose it at any time if we run into a ‘Cyber’ moment. It might be well to, sometime in the near future, create another ‘Agreement.’ The only problem being that they are often so entangling.”

“Well, I’m going to pull in my horns and teams,” O’Reilly said. He knew that Aelool had been against the Cyber agreement. The Indowy was clan chief only by dint of being the senior survivor of over fourteen million other clan members; he no longer tended to worry about the odd loss here and there. “As well as sending a warning to some ‘exterior’ groups.”

“The O’Neals?” Aelool asked.

“Yes, among others,” the monsignor answered. “We don’t have a team there anymore; we lost Team Conyers trying to prevent the Ontario sanction. So I think they’ll be on their own. But I’ll warn them that there might be hostile visitors.”

“Keeping the O’Neals, and Michael O’Neal specifically, functional has positive long-term implications,” Aelool said with a nod. “It is a thread that is being monitored at the very height of the Bane Sidhe. I have methods to contact them discreetly; would you prefer that I do so?”

“Go ahead,” O’Reilly said. “And then get ready for a storm.”

Shari ran her finger up a long scar on Papa O’Neal’s stomach and fingered a twist of gray chest hair. “That was very nice; you’re good.”

“Thanks,” O’Neal said, rolling over without breaking contact and snagging the bottle of muscadine wine he’d left by the side of the bed. “So are you; you wear an old guy out.”

“Fat chance,” Shari said with a chuckle. “I’m pretty old and tired myself.”

“You’re not old at all,” O’Neal said, pulling her closer against him. “You’re no teenager, but I wouldn’t want a teenager in my bed; a person who doesn’t have any scars isn’t worth my time.”

“I don’t have any scars,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding. “See?” She waved down her body. “Well, an appendix scar, but that’s about it.”

“You know what I mean,” O’Neal replied, looking into her eyes. “I think for all the knife slashes and zippers I’ve got on my body, I’ve probably got fewer scars than you. Not many fewer, but fewer.”

“Liar.”

“When you say that, smile,” Mike Senior said, but he smiled as he said it. “Seriously, I made a mistake a long time ago thinking that young and pretty was enough. It’s not; a person who hasn’t been through the fire doesn’t know what the world is about. They think that it’s all sweetness and light. It’s not; the world is at best chiaroscuro. I swear, my ex-wife still believes you can talk to the Posleen and show them the error of their ways. ‘Bring them to the Goddess.’ It makes me want to puke. Especially when I think about all the time and effort the ‘peace at any price’ assholes cost us in the early days of the war. And there are people that are, frankly, five times as bad as the Posleen. The horses don’t have any sense or a way out of their cycle; humans can choose. The fact is that too damned many of them choose evil.”

“I don’t think that violence settles everything,” she said. “And calling humans evil is pretty questionable, even my ex-husband who is about as close as it gets. But it is certainly the only language the Posleen understand. I… didn’t always believe that. But I haven’t been the same person since Fredericksburg.”

“I know,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “You’re better.”

She leaned into him and nipped at his shoulder. “You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“No, I’m saying that to get laid,” O’Neal said with a laugh. “If you feel better, that’s what they call a fringe benefit.”

“What? Again? Did you get a Viagra prescription?”

“For you, baby, I don’t need no Viagra!” O’Neal intoned with a waggle of his hips.

“What?” Shari yelped. “Now that is corny! Not to mention insulting!”

“Sorry,” the farmer repented with a laugh. “I must have been channeling Bruce Campbell there for a second.”

“Well, as long as you don’t come out with something like ‘baby, you got real ugly’ I’ll let you live,” she said with a kiss.

Later she ran her fingers up his spine and whispered in his ear:

“ ‘Bad Ash, Good Ash, you’re the one with the gun.’ ”