“You’re abnormal!” said one of lads. “I haven’t seen a woman for six weeks. Even the colonel’s bulldog bitch was starting to look sexy.”
Ewen laughed. “Women get posted to the front, too. And if one eighth of what my cousin Dimitri told me is true, we’ll catch up on our shagging. Everyone is scared and everyone is bored. There is nothing much else to do but shag and die. But booze . . . Enlisted men are allowed two blasted beers a night—if you’re not in frontline trenches. Dimitri said they end up buying the stuff from those rats. Reminds me. You guys had better buy whatever chocolate you can get and smuggle it in. The rats will pay through the nose for it.”
“I hear there are a lot of places in town that won’t admit men in uniform,” said another one of the men, cracking his knuckles suggestively.
“Keep out of trouble, Isaacs,” said SmallMac. “The town’s crawling with MPs. I’ve heard they get a bonus for every Vat they beat up and toss into the cells.”
“Huh. They’ll have to catch me first. So what are you going to do, SmallMac? Kiss a horse or two?”
“That’s not a polite thing to say about my wife and daughters,” said SmallMac, looking indecently happy.
It left Conrad Fitzhugh feeling indecently sad instead. SmallMac was one of the few who got regular mail. Somebody out there loved him. Which was both sad and frightening at the same time. Fitz hadn’t spoken to his father for two years, since his mother’s death. Who else did he have to see? They were either in the army or belonged to the other life that that stranger, Conrad Fitzhugh, Shareholder, had led. Or both. SmallMac had someone that he could go back to. And to whom it mattered if he was killed.
Fitz wondered now, from a dispassionate distance, what Candy would have said if he had killed himself. Or if he was killed in the war. He hadn’t thought about her much in the last six weeks. He resolved to go and straighten things out. After all, Cartup was either dead or he wasn’t. One way or the other it didn’t really matter now. And he’d go around and see his father, too.
He caught a bus into town. Took another to Van Klomp’s apartments on Clarges Street, on the off chance that Bobby’s army plans had gone awry. Besides, he hadn’t a lot else to do, except look at the girls on the street. It was quite amazing how beautiful they’d become over the last six weeks.
The door opened. Meilin, Van Klomp’s factotum, manager of his small electronic repair business, general fix-it woman and fanatically loyal Vat-servant, looked at Fitz blankly. Fitz had been a regular caller for the last five years.
“Where is Bobby?” he asked with a grin.
“I am sorry, sir,” said Meilin stiffly, doing her best Vat-butler imitation. “Mr. Van Klomp is not home. He’s at military headquarters. He is due back this afternoon, if you would like to call again?”
“He’s not got that parachute regiment formed yet?”
Meilin sniffed. “He believes that it may be happening today, sir. That’s what Mr. Van Klomp believed yesterday, and the day and the week before too, sir.” Meilin spoke with an urbanity that betrayed how Van Klomp must have been making the walls shake for the last while. “If I might have your name, sir? I will tell him that you called.”
Fitz shook his head. “Don’t you know who the hell I am, Meilin? Conrad Fitzhugh.”
The factotum—who did everything from packing parachutes, repairing electronic cameras and writing invoices for Van Klomp—blinked. Her mouth fell open, and she hauled Fitz into the apartment, neatly kicking the door closed. “Good Lord, Mr. Fitz! The boss has been trying to track you down, discreetly. I’d never have recognized you in a month of Sundays. You’ve changed.”
“I’ve had a haircut.”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “It’s your posture. Well, you’re tanned, and your face is thinner. And the uniform and the haircut, I suppose. But you don’t look like . . . well, the youngster you used to be.”