“My brother,” she said flatly.
“Killed in action,” Catherine Alana said. “Revenge?” she went on, keeping half an eye on the Voice Stress Analysis readouts. There was plenty of data to be authorized in more detail later.
“I told George not to enlist,” she said. “Look, sir . . . ma’am. We both came from Columbia Welfare Island, you know?”
Jesus nodded. He did know; he’d heard that something like half the population of the US lived in places like that now. Of course the intentions had been good. Make the cities safe, get the festering legions of the underclass out of the downtown ghettoes, put them where they can be educated, learn to be somebody, leave the underclass. And, incidentally, put them in controlled areas. Let them riot, they couldn’t get at the wealthy.
Now the Citizens—some bureaucrat seventy-five years ago had a sickly sense of humor to name them that—sat and rotted, and the Taxpayers paid for it, and paid more for the police who guarded them from the Citizens. Borloi from the convict-worked plantations of Tanith kept the Welfare inhabitants pacified, that and cheap booze and the Tri-V. But some escaped. It was possible, barely.
“Yet you managed an education,” Catherine said. “How? Or perhaps better, why?”
“Sister Mary Margaret cared. After a while, I did too.”
Catherine smiled reassurance. “Not unlike me, then.”
“You’re from Welfare? Ma’am?”
“The Legion cares no more where you came from than Sparta does,” Jesus said. “Nor do either of us usually care why you joined, but in this case we must know more.” He touched the personnel forms on the table. “Edison Technical School in Pittsburgh. No record of drug use. Minor crimes—I assume you were intelligent enough to avoid being caught at anything major. You and your brother did well on Earth. With your education you should have been welcomed into the—normal society.”
“As trained seals,” Margreta said. “Our sosh worker was proud of us. Offered us a shot at civil service.”
“Which is the dream of half those in the Islands,” Catherine said. “So why are you on Sparta? It says you were voluntary emigrants.”
“Didn’t seem like a lot of future on Earth. What’s the use of reading books if you don’t think? Clear to us, United States wasn’t like what the history books said. We wanted—” She stopped. “Damn if I know, ma’am. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Your intentions here?”
“Start a business. Own our own life. Make Citizen. That was why George enlisted—I told him it was better I do it, less dangerous. George and I always looked out for each other. There was nobody else but the two of us, but I couldn’t in the Army. He thought the stats looked good, but somebody has to be unlucky.”
The Alanas nodded. Private George Talkins had been in the field one week, as a communications tech, when the truck he was riding in went over a land mine.
“Anyway,” Margreta said, “George and I . . . George made it sort of personal. I was always for the Royalist side—I like the way this place is run—but George, that makes it personal.”
Talkins looked up, and the Alanas both felt a slight cold chill at the intensity. “Sir, what is it exactly you want me to do?”
“Infiltrate,” Jesus Alana said. “Both sides have been trying that, of course. And we’ve combed out a lot of people from the Royalist organization with this.” He reached out a finger and tapped the Voice Stress Analyzer.
“The problem is, the enemy evidently have something like this too. They also have better computer equipment and more and better technicians than we do; the Meijians are expensive but they have the best there is, a slight edge even on Fleet Intelligence standards. They’ve been running rampant through the local computer nets, and only the fact Legion equipment is ROM-programmed has saved ours from penetration—we hope. Per Dios, every time we compare hard copy with government or Royal Army computer files, we find discrepancies! Any operation we really want to keep secret is to be word-of-mouth only.”
Talkins blinked. “How can I help you beat their screening, if they have that, sir?” she said, nodding to the equipment.
“Well,” Catherine said, “it is possible to beat voice-stress detection. Not without elaborate hypnoconditioning and biofeedback training, and even then only a very small minority can hope to get through more than a superficial scan. Then, only a small minority of that minority is qualified for the job in other respects.”
Talkins closed her eyes in thought for nearly half a minute. “And I fit? Must be. And the Legion is handling this because of security. Does this count for Citizenship?”
“Assuredly,” Jesus Alana said.
“It’s dangerous, Margreta,” Catherine said. “If you want to walk out of here, no one but us will ever know we talked.”
“How long?”
“A year. Perhaps two. No more than that. But understand, it will not be easy. For one thing, the Helots are certain to require your participation in an atrocity. To prove your loyalty to their cause.”
“You mean like—”
“Like shooting prisoners,” Catherine said. “Perhaps not so clean as shooting.”
“Jesus. Like back in William Penn Island.” She was quiet for a moment. “I can really make a difference?”
“Yes.”
“And Citizenship when it’s over.”
“Yes.”
“Okay I’ll do it. What happens next?”
“You’ll be sworn in to the Legion—that’s plausible, we need people with your sort of educational background, and we’ve started recruiting locally for a lot of positions. You have been through the Royal non-com school. Assuming you can get past our OCS, you will become a Cornet, a very junior officer in training.”
“That counts for Citizenship?”
“In your case, certainly. Whatever your Legion rank on discharge, you will have been a commissioned officer in the Royal Army.”
Margreta nodded thoughtfully.
“It will all appear to be entirely natural. We train you, then send you on temporary duty to the University. It is certain that the Helots will try to recruit you once you are there.”
“You’ve tried this before.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to—my predecessors?”
Catherine grinned. “Not what you think. She married an exchange student, and went to Friedland with him.”
“You let her go without finishing her hitch?”
“Special circumstances,” Catherine Alana said.
“I don’t see that happening to me. Not that I wouldn’t do it if the right guy asked. Or was that last one really special?”
Jesus shrugged. “We will cross that bridge when the chickens are hatched. For now, you will be transferred to the Legion and sent to officer candidate school. Understand, you must do well there, your instructors will have no hint that you have any special status. When you are commissioned, Catherine or I will speak with you again. No one else will know of your assignment, not now and not later.”
“No records?”
“When next we meet we will tell you how to prove your status in the event that both Catherine and I are unavailable. Otherwise, no, no records. Now, we meet again in six weeks’ time.”
* * *
Good tradecraft, Cornet Margreta Talkins thought, as the waiter brought her lunch, with a sideways glance for her blue and gold Legion walking-out uniform. Nobody’s going to suspect this as a Helot dropshop.
She very much doubted the owners knew that the underground arranged rendezvous here. Half the patrons in the courtyard tavern were in Royal Army uniform, mostly recruits out on their first post-basic furlough, sitting with their buddies or girlfriends or both; there was a sign outside offering them a discount. Many of the rest were machinists or fitters from the Works, in grease-stained overalls. Von Alderheim was running three shifts now, with the war effort.
The Cock and Grill was on Burke Avenue just off the Sacred Way, not far from the CoDo enclave at the northern end of Sparta City’s main avenue. West of here and stretching to the edge of the Minetown slums was working-class housing, two or three-story buildings divided into modest apartments; within easy walking or bicycle distance of the docks, the big von Alderheim plant to the south, and the tangle of small factories that had grown up around it. Many of the buildings had shops or service industry trades on the ground floors, like this one. A brick-paved courtyard facing the sidewalk across a low wall, set with wrought-iron tables and wooden chairs under umbrellas; even on an early spring day like this, Sparta City’s climate was comfortable enough, so long as the rains held off. The traffic in the sidestreet beyond was light, an occasional van or horse-drawn dray, bicycles and electrocars.
“Here you are, Miss,” the waiter said. “One garden salad—” a heaping bowl of greens and vegetables, colorful and neatly arranged “—one mixed grill—” a wooden platter of spiced steak strips, pork loin and lumps of rockcrawler claw with mushrooms and fried onions “—and a wine seltzer.”