She sighed, relaxed, and put the documents away in her attaché case, spinning the combination lock. Then she poured some banana gin from the carafe into her water, and a dollop into his lemonade. “Now I’m officially off-duty.”
He sipped; the oily-sweet kick of the distillate seemed to match the surroundings, somehow. And one wouldn’t affect his judgement noticeably.
“So, I hear you’ve adopted a child,” Gerta said.
“Yes. See, I am practicing Chosen custom, as far as I can.” They both laughed. “How’s your youngest?’
“A shapeless lump of protoplasm, the way they all are at that age,” Gerta said.
She pulled a picture from her uniform tunic. A baby looked out, with one chubby hand stuffed in its mouth; the fuzzy background was probably a Protégé wetnurse, from the linen bodice.
“Young Sigvard. That’s four, now; I think I’ve done my duty by the Chosen, don’t you? It’s an interesting experience, pregnancy, but I wouldn’t want to overindulge.”
“And the adoptees?”
“Good children, every one,” Gerta said. “The one good thing about desk duty is that I get to see more of them; they’ve been practically living in Father’s house most of the time, the last two years, what with the war.”
John produced a snapshot of Pia and Maurice junior; Gerta looked at it critically. “Sound enough stock,” she said . . . which was a high compliment, by the standards of the Land.
“I hear Heinrich made brigadier?”
“Ya, same dispatch-and-notice list that bumped me to full colonel,” Gerta said, leaning back and stretching. “They added another six divisions to the regular roster, lots of new hats to go around. Especially with all the demotions and such after the Campaign Study.”
John nodded. The General Staff had high standards; there had been a lot of shaking up after the campaign in the Empire. Mere success wasn’t good enough . . .
Mark of a good army, lad, Raj said. Anyone can learn from his mistakes. It takes sound doctrine to be able to learn from winning.
“Enough other compensations to go around, I suppose,” he said aloud.
Gerta chuckled. “Well, the Council has been handing out estates fairly liberally. Mostly in the west, around Corona, to start with. Too much unrest for it to be safe for us to scatter ourselves around widely, just yet.” A shrug. “We’ll deal with that in due course.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Christ, how do I git myself inta these things?” one of the Marines behind him in the longboat muttered.
John smiled in the darkness. That was Barrjen. The stocky Marine had managed to volunteer—unofficially, the whole mission was highly off the record—despite his loud relief at making it home last time. In fact, the ones who’d been with him from Ciano to Salini had all volunteered, even Smith with his gimp foot. Some of them had been pretty shamefaced about it, as if they were mentally kicking themselves, but they’d all done it.
It was a moonless night and overcast, typical weather for winter in the Gut. The whaleboat glided silently over the dark water; they might as well have been rowing in a closet, for all that he could see. Water purled under the muffled oars, breath smoked. Only the radium dial of his compass guided them, that and . . .
“Down!” he hissed quietly.
The dozen men in the boat shipped oars and turned their cork-blackened faces downward in the same motion. A few seconds later the quiet thumping of a marine steam engine came over the water. A searchlight stabbed out into the darkness, blinding bright, the arc light flicking over the waves. Behind it was a gaggle of other boats. Fishing boats; the Chosen couldn’t shut down the Gut fishery, it was too important to the economy, and too many of the important pelagic species were best caught in darkness. They did send out a gunboat to make sure nobody tried to make a break for the Santander or Union shores, and probably kept the families of the fishermen hostage, too.
The light flicked past them. Weaker lights were breaking out among the fishing boats, lure lanterns strung out over bows and sides. John waited tensely until they were surrounded by the other boats, several dozen of them spread out widely.