The medical profession had unexpectedly given her a belief in fate. Some people simply had their time. If it was not yet that time, chance or a good surgeon would save the life in question, but if the time had come, all the skilled people in the world could not change it. Caroline Ryan, MD, knew that this was a strange way for a physician to think, and she balanced the belief with the professional certainty that she was the instrument which would thwart the force that ruled the world — but she had also chosen a field in which life-and-death was rarely the issue. Only she knew that. A close friend had gone into pediatric oncology, the treatment of children stricken with cancer. It was a field that cried out for the best people in medicine, and she’d been tempted, but she knew that the effect on her humanity would be intolerable. How could she carry a child within her while she watched other children die? How could she create life while she was unable to prevent its loss? Her belief in fate could never have made that leap of imagination, and the fear of what it might have done to her psyche had turned her to a field that was demanding in a different way. It was one thing to put your life on the line — quite another to wager your soul.
Jack, she knew, had the courage to face up to that. This, too, had its price. The anguish she occasionally saw in him could only be that kind of question. She was sure that his unspoken work at CIA was aimed at finding and killing the people who had attacked her. She felt it necessary, and she would shed no tears for those who had nearly killed her little girl, but it was a task which, as a physician, she could not herself contemplate. Clearly it wasn’t easy for her man. Something had just happened a few days ago. He was struggling with whatever it was, unable to discuss it with anyone while he tried to retain the rest of his world in an undamaged state, trying to love his family while he labored . . . to bring others to their death? It could not have come easily to him. Her husband was a genuinely good man, in so many ways the ideal man — at least for me, she thought. He’d fallen in love with her at their first meeting, and she could recount every step of their courtship. She remembered his clumsy — in retrospect, hilarious — proposal of marriage, the terror in his eyes as she’d hesitated over the answer, as though he felt himself unworthy of her, the idiot. Most of all, she remembered the look on his face when Sally had been born. The man who had turned his back on the dog-eat-dog world of investments — the world that since the death of her mother had made her father into a driven, unhappy man — who had returned to teaching eager young minds, was now trapped in something he didn’t like. But she knew that he was doing his best, and she knew just how good his best was. She’d just experienced that. Cathy wished that she could share it, as he occasionally had to share with her the depression following a failed procedure. As much as she had needed him a few painful weeks past, now he needed her. She couldn’t do that — or could she?
“What’s been bothering you? Can I help?”
“I can’t really talk about it,” Jack said as he knotted his tie. “It was the right thing, but not something you can feel very good about.”
“The people who –”
“No, not them. If it was them . . . ” He turned to face his wife. “If it was them, I’d be all smiles. There’s been a break. The FBI — I shouldn’t be telling you this, and it doesn’t go any farther than this room — they found the gun. That might be important, but we don’t know for sure yet. The other thing — well, I can’t talk about that at all. Sorry. I wish I could.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong?” His face changed at that question.
“No. I’ve thought that one over the past few days. Remember the time you had to take that lady’s eye out? It was necessary, but you still felt pretty bad about it. Same thing.” He looked in the mirror. Sort of the same thing.
“Jack, I love you and I believe in you. I know that you’ll do the right thing.”
“I’m glad, babe, because sometimes I’m not so sure.” He held out his arms and she came to him. At some French military base in Chad, another young woman was experiencing something other than a loving embrace, Ryan thought. Whose fault is that? One thing for sure, she isn’t the same as my wife. She’s not like this girl of mine.
He felt her against himself, felt the baby move again, and finally he was sure. As his wife had to be protected, so did all the other wives, and all the children, and all the living people who were judged as mere abstractions by the ones who trained in those camps. Because they weren’t abstractions, they were real. It was the terrorists who had cast themselves out of the civilized community and had to be hunted down one way or another. If we can do it by civilized rules, well and good — but if not, then we have to do the best we can, and rely on our consciences to keep us from going over the edge. He thought that he could trust his conscience. He was holding it in his arms. Jack kissed his wife gently on the cheek.
“Thanks. That’s twelve.”
The seminar led to the final two weeks of classes which led in turn to final exams and Commissioning Week: yet another class of midshipmen graduated to join the fleet, and the Corps. The plebes were plebes no longer, and were finally able to smile in public once or twice per day. The campus became quiet, or nearly so, as the underclassmen went home for brief vacations before taking cruises with the fleet, and preparing for Plebe Summer, the rough initiation for a new class of mids. Ryan was incongruously trapped in his real job for a week, finishing up a mountain of paperwork. Neither the Academy’s history department nor the CIA was very happy with him now. His attempt to serve two masters had not been a total success. Both jobs, he realized, had suffered somewhat, and he knew that he’d have to choose between them. It was a decision that he consciously tried to avoid while the proof of its necessity piled up around him.
“Hey, Jack!” Robby came in wearing his undress whites.
“Grab a seat, Commander. How’s the flying business?”
“No complaints. The kid is back in the saddle,” Jackson said, sitting down. “You should have been up in the Tomcat with me last week. Oh, man, I’m finally back in the groove. I was hassling with a guy in an A-4 playing aggressor, and I ruined his day. It was so fine.” He grinned like a lion surveying a herd of crippled antelope. “I’m ready!”
“When do you leave?”
“I report for duty 5 August. I guess I’ll be heading out of here on the first.”
“Not before we have you and Sissy over for dinner.” Jack checked his calendar. “The thirtieth is a Friday. Seven o’clock. Okay?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“What’s Sissy going to do down there?”
“Well, they have a little symphony in Norfolk. She’s going to be their number-two piano soloist, plus doing her teachin’ on the side.”
“You know they have the in-vitro center down there. Maybe you guys can have a kid after all.”
“Yeah, Cathy told her about that. We’re thinking about it, but — well. Sissy’s had a lot of disappointments, you know?”
“You want Cathy to talk to her about it some more?”
Robby thought about that. “Yeah, she knows how. How’s she making out with this one?”
“She’s hitching about her figure a lot,” Jack chuckled. “Why is it that they never understand how pretty they look pregnant?”
“Yeah.” Robby grinned his agreement, wondering if Sissy would ever look the same way to him. Jack felt guilty for touching a sensitive topic, and changed the subject.
“By the way, what’s with all the boats? I saw a bunch of yardbirds parked on the waterfront this morning.”
“That’s ‘moored,’ you dumb jarhead,” Robby corrected his friend. “They’re replacing the pilings over at the naval station across the river. It’s supposed to take two months. Something went wrong with the old ones — the preservative didn’t work or some such bullcrap. Your basic government-contractor screwup. No big deal. The job’s supposed to be finished in time for the next school year — not that I care one way or another, of course. By that time, boy, I’ll be spending my mornings at twenty-five thousand feet, back where I belong. What are you going to be doing?”