I came to hate nations. We are deformed by nation-states. I wanted to erase my name and the place I had come from,…not to belong to anyone, to any nation.
—Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
Mesolimeris, New Utah
The Masters’ dais, warmed by geothermal swells, glowed faintly in the crisp air of The Keep. Sargon lounged, the smooth curves of the seat cupping the lines of his hips to provide effortless repose. Stragglers were still arriving, some with finesse; some grandstanding, using the gripping hand to lever themselves, with one brute-force jerk, over the final ascension step into the cave. Only old Lagash had been too weak to complete the climb.
A pity, thought Sargon. Old Lagash had been a good ally. He had tended to his ar, Kept three counties, and in a pinch could lend a Master’s Hand for planting. A pity. Now redistribution of his ar and cattle would be decided, for Lagash had no offspring. It would make for a long, dull Meeting.
Sargon was tempted by this, but only briefly. A mess, indeed. No doubt, most of the ar would be wasted settling fictitious land debts. A better tactic: watch for the Landholder most eager to grasp the least of the ar. That Landholder would be the one to court. That’s how he’d come by Farmer John, and look how well that had turned out. Started with a Field, turned it to a Grasp, and that very nearly to a Hand. Not that John admitted to it all, but all you had to do was count his cattle. Cattle, anyone could come by—foolish ones by selling ar. Sell the bowls; sell the cattle; but never, ever part with ar. And of all your cattle, treat your Farmers best. Buy the best; raise the best—and they will deliver you a post for a span.
The dais was filling—nearly full. Head to head, feet to feet, only Lagash’s place empty. The sun had climbed enough to send liquid rays slanting up into the ceiling. They reflected off that glassy dome and suffused the chamber with warm light. As senior Keeper, Gilgamesh began the round, and each joined in response:
By the light cast from
beneath the waters
By the light cast from
the rim of the world
By the light cast from
within the mountain
By the light cast from
the vault above
By the light cast on the fields of
Uruk
By the light cast on the fields of
Ur
By the light cast on the fields of
Eridu
By the light cast on the fields of
Umma
By the light cast on the fields of
Shurrupak
By the light cast on the fields of
Mesolimeris
By the light cast on the fields of
—
But of course, Lagash did not answer.
“Does no light shine on the fields of Lagash?”
“The light of Lagash has not risen.”
By the water cast on the fields of
Uruk
By the water cast on the fields of
Ur
By the water cast on the fields of
Eridu
By the water cast on the fields of
Umma
By the water cast on the fields of
Shurrupak
By the water cast on the fields of
Mesolimeris
By the water cast on the fields of
—
“Does no water flow on the fields of Lagash?”
“The fields of Lagash lie barren.”
This went on for rather a lot of formulaic time, in Sargon’s estimation. Long enough, presumably, for the dead to rise, hand-over-hand up the mountain. But Lagash’s days of rock-climbing were over. Old Lagash had left it too long to induce a successor; had nearly died giving birth to a stillborn rat, and the mourning howls had been heard all the way to Mesolimeris. Rumor had it that all but the bedside Warriors had already been put down, and it was only a matter of time.
Finally, the ritual invocation was done. “Let us rise and deal justly with the ar of Lagash.”
At which point the accountants really got into it. Sargon ignored most of this juridical clamor: depositions from wailing dependants of every stripe; reputed creditors; their antagonists. Of more interest was the Farmer’s Council. Farmers didn’t talk much; when they did, it was generally worth listening to. Interesting was a green, weedy stalk of a lad, more like a planter than a Farmer, who was quietly but furiously clacking the fingers of all three hands. Finally, at a lull in accountancy, the stripling chirped. All heads turned.
“Lagash Post 3,” he said. “Eighty ar. Two planters.”
Most of the Farmer’s Council rumbled amusement. Umma and Shurrupak flipped back their hands: no sale. Interesting, thought Sargon. Lagash Post three was a useless bit of scrubland abutting the northeastern periphery of Mesolimeris. The stripling was offering to hold it, to the value of eighty ar, and to throw a payment of two planters into the bargain.
Sargon looked over at Farmer John. Farmer John was very, very carefully staring at the floor, and sitting on his hands.
“Assessment?” barked Sargon.
The estate Accountant looked shocked. It was a worthless scrap of land, but heavily indebted. Sargon would be mad to settle the ledger. “Two post, five span, five hand small cattle. Freehold”
Had his face been capable of such an expression, Sargon would have smiled. Instead, he flipped his gripping hand.
“Well, my young Farmer. Let’s see if you can earn some get.”
A low murmur circled the room. All attention was on Sargon. Which had rather been the point.
“On the subject of Lagash Post 3,” he flipped the gripping hand again, “that is, Mesolimeris Post 27” —accountants scribbled furiously— “may we move on to new business?”
There was no dissent.
Sargon stood. He used The Voice. The Voice rumbled and screeched in registers above and below the human range of hearing.
“Anathema has come. Their vermin have arrived at my western Posts! John, inform them!”
A moment of chaos, and then a hush, as John tipped back his head and trilled an amazing, sophisticated, detailed data stream, most of which was lost on the Masters present. But they gathered the critical points. For two side less two hand years, Post Watchers had observed these creatures. At first they would arrive by ones and twos, then, every two hand years, their numbers would swell. Hands, Sides, Grips—half of a Master’s Hand—would trek from the wastes by various paths, through the badlands, into the realms of the mountain light. They passed respectfully, carried their bowls, left their beasts to graze the wilds, and returned whence they came again. They never crossed into Council lands: by the wastes they came, by the wilds they went. The Council had discussed options; made contingency plans, but in the end agreed that they had done no harm, and posed no threat, and therefore were not worth wasting an ar of regard.
But Sargon, with Lagash as his ally, had never been quite content with that. He’d had them followed. Had them followed, at incredible expense, by relays of Runners, and Porters carrying a Farmer, the last of whom had reported on their deathbeds, collapsed from starvation. And what they had reported! These creatures—these anathema—had laid waste to their own lands! Clearly, they bred Engineers. Monstrous machines had crushed entire mountains. They planted without regard to ar. They kept cattle in such abundance that soil was laid bare. They flooded their fields, then despaired when the inevitable salty crusts caked in drifts across the furrows. Then they wept, and watered the ground with their salty tears.
The Council was horrified; the Farmers nearly berserk. So they had agreed: the day anathema threatened the western ar, they would act as one. Every Master would breed Cavalry. Every Keeper would open a storehouse. Every Farmer would tithe provisions. And the Counsel would appoint from among them a Commander.
Sargon flipped his hand again. Sargon, Procurator of the Northern Protectorate, Master of all wilds and wastes between the mountains; Master of all lands not accounted to any city’s ar, now had a Master’s Grip. He had begun with wasteland, and created plenty. The Keepers still held the storehouses. The Masters still commanded the city walls. But by the end of the Meeting, Sargon commanded the Army that protected all.
They disbanded the Meeting. They climbed down the cliff-face. They marshaled their trains and continued to the levees, where many piled into pole-boats. Some set out for their island cities in the delta: Shurrupak, Umma, Uruk, Ur, and Eridu. Sargon’s delegation zigged and zagged through a mesh of reed-choked byways, until they abandoned the waterways completely for the dust-cloaked hinterlands of Mesolimeris. Everywhere, as far as they went, exhausted pannes bloomed anew, the checkerboard aquamarine shimmer a living testament to the miracle of Sargon’s ar. In Sargon’s train, the saying went, there was no waste. Ar blossomed where Sargon stepped.
Or shat, more like, snorted Farmer John. It’s the Farmers do all the steppin’. Good call, though, on that young one. Young’un’ll be an ar-buster, and no mistake.
The Barrens, New Utah
Collie shook his head emphatically. “Young missy, I really think you’d better let me—”
“Uncle Collie, it is the duty of every island to give aid and support to the Seers, that they may be of aid to all pilgrims. My mother gave her life to make me a Seer. I think they will—”
“Missy, your mother didn’t ‘give’ anything. She was just a venomous old cow who refused to listen to reason. She insisted on Gathering even though—”
“You can’t talk about my mother—”
“No, missy, but I can talk about my own sister. I loved her like my own eye. But she had no business trying to conceive a Seer at her age. There’s plenty of younger women more fit to trek. She’d already seen one Gathering, and she was a late-comer to that. She’d no business trying to schedule your birth at her age, let alone schedule it to happen on top of a mountain!”
“How can you say that! How can you talk like that about The Gathering!”
“Because I am trying to make you see reason.”
“But it is your duty too! Your duty to support the Seers—”
“Missy, let me remind you, that in His Gaze, we are all pilgrims, we are all Seers, and all islands are One. It is also the duty of every pilgrim to honor the wisdom of the pilgrims of Gatherings past, who have gazed into his earthly Eye and believed. I have done so. You have not, yet. That’s just how people are. You need all the support you can get right now—not just the support of the third and fourth Gatherings.”
“But I’ve Seen—”
“—the path to the gathering place. Which none but Seers are allowed. You’ve Seen the Waking of His Eye. Which none but Seers are allowed. And now, you’ve seen the Revelation of angels! Praise Him! In His Gaze, I do believe! But you have not yet seen His earthly Eye awake! How will gathered pilgrims believe? How can an ungathered Seer prophesy?”
“Well, why do you? Believe, I mean?”
“Because He was revealed in my hour of grievous need. I lifted my hands from my face, and saw His face in your Gaze.”
But at this moment, Laurel’s face was set, hard and grim. “Well, it is the duty of every Seer to maintain the Watch for the Waking of His Eye. It is my duty to announce the Waking. “
“Missy, I can’t change your mind for you. You are our island’s Seer, and you are my own blood. I trust you with my life. I trust you to guide all pilgrims in safety and secrecy to the Gathering. But please, trust me in this one thing. Tell them. Tell them that He Wakes. Tell them to assemble. Tell them to begin the march. Lead them. But do not announce Revelation now. It will only awaken jealousy. Either leave it to later, or leave it to me.”
“But when will we tell them?”
He smiled at the “we.”
“Laurel, let it be Revealed on the mountain. You won’t be alone. You will have led them in safety. They will be drunk in His Gaze. You will be thronged with His angels. And then, when you return, Gathered and Seen in Glory, you can leave the old codgers to me.”
Collie winked. Finally, Laurel smiled. “Well, Agamemnon knows, too,” she said. “Agamemnon believes.”
“Sweet Pie, Agamemnon would believe if you told him fire was water.”
Captain Legrange’s mood became even grimmer as she approached the small knot of people at the edge of the trees. The girl was seated on a log to the left of the bridge entrance, hunched over, head between her knees, shoulders shaking. Yellow sweat jackets were piled on her back like so many remnants at a jumble sale, leaving the concerned-looking troops clumped around her like half-peeled bananas, puckered and shivering in their singlets. Sheila Thompson, the medic, was crouched down beside her, rather pointlessly waving a crushed ampoule beside the girl’s running nose with one hand, and patting her shoulder with the other. Under the jackets, Legrange saw a hint of shadow-khaki, and realized that the girl’s right arm was supported and tied to her body by a field sling. It never ceased to amaze her what Thompson could pull from her pockets, even on a morning training run.
One of the bananas looked up, then jogged up the path to meet her, dropping to a walk as he saluted, already blurting, “He’s still up in the tree, Ma’am.” He did not direct his gaze above Legrange’s own height. “We was worried that people would start walking and shit, you know, over the bridge and shit, and it’s pretty awful, but we thought we shouldn’t touch him, I mean…” He trailed off, with a furtive glance at the grim reality above him.
Legrange looked stolidly up at the horrible, waxy, crimson-washed face; at the bulging, staring eyes, and then down at the girl.
“You did right, Sergeant.”
He nodded once, then turned to rejoin the milling gaggle.
Legrange looked back down at the slip of a girl, and felt a sudden burst of anger. “Sergeant, why the hell haven’t you gotten her out of here?”
She regretted snapping even as she did it, but Thompson just took it in stride. “I know, Ma’am, I know, but she won’t leave. I tried to have a detail walk her home, but she just starts yelling and crying and finally I said fuck it, ‘scuze me Ma’am, goddam it, leave her be until the police get here.”
She said it the same way Swanson did: p’leece.
Legrange’s nostrils narrowed as she surveyed the scene. Bloody footprints were spread everywhere, the result of the first ranks splashing through the blood puddle, then being allowed to mill around aimlessly, and then being allowed to leave without wiping their feet. Worse, she could see a wet trail scuffled through the leaves leading into the woods off to the right along the Philosopher’s way. Somehow, she did not think it had been made by the killer.
“Sergeant, who passed through here?’
“That would have been the detail, Ma’am.”
“The detail?”
“The XO, Ma’am. He said we should make sure nobody came through from the back gate. He led the fallouts down there to block the way.”
And in the process, though Legrange, obliterate the tracks of anyone else that might have gone the same way.
“Sergeant, who the hell is going to come from post to Moorstown on foot at this hour of the morning?”
She shrugged. “Ma’am, I didn’t say it was my idea. I didn’t say it was a good idea. I just said that’s what the XO did.”
Legrange said nothing, but everyone there knew what she was thinking. They were probably thinking the same thing. Major Trippe was that hopeless combination of dull and keen; uninspired and ambitious, most dreaded by every soldier. He never seemed to grasp the important in anything, but could be relied upon to pursue the unimportant with vigor, annoying everyone involved with pointless supervision, overtime, and cheer-leading even as major problems crashed and burned around them.
“Let me guess,” she said tersely, “he also released everyone to quarters.”
“Oh, yes Ma’am. He said he ‘wasn’t going to hold up the duty day over some A-rab getting his throat cut in a blood feud.”
With that, the girl jumped to her feet, shaking her head, scattering yellow sweat suit jackets as she ranted.
“No! That’s not true! Hugo’s a good boy! He’s never, never, fighting!” Her eyes burned bright, deep within the shadow of her bonnet.
The group started, stupefied. It had not occurred to them that she spoke any Anglic, despite the fact that they had been speaking it to her, unremittingly, for half an hour. The MPs shifted from one foot to another, looking at her, then at each other, then at her again, wondering if they should do something. Or secure something. Or something. Caught off balance by Marul’s sudden movement, Sergeant Thompson stopped waving the ammonia capsule and thrashed to her own feet. The shivering banana cluster took a step back in unison, then remembering the grim artifact in the tree above them, lurched forward again. Even Swanson, at the far end of the path, turned to see what was going on.
The girl switched to Tok Pisin and continued ranting.
“See, Ma’am? She just goes off!”
Legrange looked down at the child, dwarfed by this forest of strangers, and made several snap decisions.
“Sergeant,” she barked, pointing to the banana bunch, “why are these people here?”
“They—uh—live in unofficial barracks? I mean, you know, in Moorstown? They was gunna take her home, only she won’t go.”
“Were any of you first on the scene?”
“Ma’am?”
“In that gaggle of 150 heroes chasing each others’ afterburners through the road apples, were any of you up at the front of the formation?”
“No, Ma’am.”
“OK, Sergeant, get these people out of here, and get the first rank back here, ASAP.”
“But Ma’am, it was a Brigade Fun Run.”
The implication of this was not lost on Legrange. Fun Runs were not in the least fun. Fun Runs were an opportunity for officers twice their age to demonstrate the tortoise principle to eighteen-year-old hares. Said tortoises comprised the primary headquarters staff. The Personnel, Security, Operations, and Supply Officers would have formed the first rank, led by The Hoop himself or, in his absence, his Executive Officer—the selfsame Major Trippe. And, since Legrange had herself been absent, by virtue of the previous night’s Duty, the Communications Officer would have run in her stead. Sending a buck sergeant medic to entreat the entire headquarters senior staff to abandon their desks and return to Moorstown was not only impolitic; it was extremely unlikely to succeed.
Legrange looked at her watch. It was 7:30. “OK. Take Swanson and the FLIVR. Tell ‘em the DO says Command Call, Staff Conference Room, oh-eight hundred. I’ll bring the civil liaison officer to them to take their statements.”
The cluster shifted a bit uneasily. One spoke up, looking rather horrified at his sweat suit jacket, now half-trampled under Marul’s bloody feet. “Uh, Ma’am, I mean, it don’t really matter, but what about our gear?”
Legrange just nodded, and unzipped her field jacket. “Leave straight up the middle of the path. Do not under any circumstances cut across that field!”
They grappled with their clothing while Legrange directed one of the MPs.
“You. Go straight to the far side of the bridge and stop anyone from crossing. Watch your feet every step of the way. If you see footprints, do not step in ‘em. If you see blood, do not step on it. You are the Last of the Mohicans in those woods. You disturb nothing. You hop like silent fleas.”
“Yes Ma’am,” he said, eyes already darting over the ground, obviously comprehending nothing of what he saw.
She sighed. “Footprints.”
“Ma’am?”
“They’ll be sort of like scuff marks. Places where the leaves have been squashed or kicked off the gravel.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
She called after him as he moved off. “And politely. Tell people ‘Tasol Polis’ politely!”
The second MP was now panting for a mission of his own.
“You. Same thing, only go about a hundred meters down the Philosopher’s Way away from post. To the left. Follow your buddy’s tracks exactly until you turn off, then same instructions.”
He looked disappointed. He kept looking up at the body and fingering his utility belt. He clearly did not see much of anything heroic about standing around on the Philosopher’s Way in case some fresh air nut came blundering onto the scene. He wanted to log evidence, or arrest somebody, or just plain knock heads.
Legrange eyed him as he turned, somewhat sullenly, and threw him a bone. “And watch yourself, Poole. That killer’s still out there somewhere.”
She smiled slightly as his shoulders squared and he stalked off, shadowing his partner’s footsteps to the millimeter.
The banana bunch had finally finished sorting out their jackets—a pointless exercise, it seemed to Legrange, for they all looked to be the same shapeless size and well-ripened color. They filed past. Legrange softly, tenderly, lowered her field jacket onto Marul’s shoulders. She then unwound the field scarf from around her own neck and handed it to Sergeant Thompson, who had begun to shiver, teeth chattering.
Legrange looked at her watch again, impatiently. It was now 7:35, and there was still no sign of either the civil police or the Civil Liaison Officer. Sirens or no, they were obviously stuck in the crush of morning traffic. She was tired, she was cold, she was hungry, she hoped to God her troops would handle any confrontation with civilians appropriately, and she did not look forward to the tongue-lashing she would no doubt receive for the absolute bollocks the troops had made of the murder scene.
Legrange squatted, facing the girl, and spoke softly, bilingually.
“Are you sad?” She thought the girl nodded, but Marul was rocking, still shivering and sobbing, and it was hard to tell.
“Are you afraid?” This time, Marul definitely nodded, but slowly.
“I can imagine. It’s horrible.” The girl continued rocking.
Legrange glanced upward. “Is that what you’re afraid of?” Nothing.
“What are you afraid of?” Still nothing.
“Of him?” Marul shook her head, slowly.
“Of me?” Again, a slow shake of the head.
“Of somebody else?” The rocking stopped, and the girl gave one short nod.
“Of whom?”
Marul did not answer, but she made one quick, involuntary glance in the direction of the bridge, and then another up the path across the meadows. There, her glance froze, then relaxed. She actually smiled slightly, tears still welling.
With gritty eyes, Legrange followed Marul’s look, then muttered “Damn!” under her breath. She’d sent the trooper off with Swanson and the FLIVR, but had posted no-one in Swanson’s place to block access. A lone, wiry, slight figure was approaching.
Every third Friday at six a.m., Linda Libiziewsky parked her oxide green skater, named Kermit the Magnificent, at the far end of the leased housing block and began a systematic trek from stairwell to stairwell, toting a touchscreen, cross-checking and verifying repair reports, fire extinguisher inspection tags, work orders, grounds maintenance, and anything else that caught her meticulous eye.
Her powers were broad. Nominally, she was the post housing coordinator, responsible for ensuring that each and every soldier, civilian employee, school teacher, and attached family member obtained and moved into safe, approved, adequate quarters, preferably within seven days of arrival in the TCM security zone.
But that mandate gave her secondary, sweeping authority to inspect housing conditions in general, in order to assess availability and adequacy. She chose to interpret “conditions” fairly liberally, and was on the lookout constantly and especially for signs of strain; stress; community breakdown. By the time soldiers earn several stripes and several children, their habits are well-entrenched. They come to prefer ordered lives. Too many shaggy lawns; too many toys and appliances left rusting alongside walkways; too many stairwells littered with unclaimed junk; too many bloody noses and black eyes were signs, not so much of bad upbringing, but of families stretched by grueling duty hours; short tempers; fatigue. Absent these factors, the few bad apples were quickly polished by the orchard police.
This morning, as she wound her way down the inevitable Brigham Young Way intersection with John Smith Lane, Linda stopped to ponder the inordinate number of cracked window panes, missing insect screens, unsealed fire extinguishers, and untrimmed hedges. Dirt, leaves, and graffiti marked an imperceptible but inexorable transition into Moorstown. Where once had stood a demarcation line, like foursquare farmland abutting a wilderness, was now more like the brackish pooling of an anastomosing river into a saline estuary—impossible to tell, through mangrove roots or cypress knees, where river left off and sea began. If anything, although drearier, simple lack of possessions made for neater exteriors outside the Moorstown buildings.
Linda’s teeth set. This change was not the result of some long decline. She could date it, and document it. It was very recent indeed. In another era, she would have been housekeeper to a great estate on New Washington or Sparta, aware at any moment of the location and condition of each and every piece of crockery. This state of affairs offended her sense of order.
It had taken about an hour-and-a-half to complete her peregrination, and she set out briskly to reach her office, a temporary partition in a temporary building erected in haste forty years before, by eight o’clock sharp. She could, of course, have simply gone back to retrieve Kermit the Magnificent, but a brisk constitutional along the banks of the river was part of her routine, for she made several more checks and paperwork stops at the various warehouses that intervened.
As she turned toward the meadows, she could barely make out several figures at the forest’s edge. Clearly, something was amiss. At this point, she should be hearing the Doppler mumble of Jodie calls carrying over the bright morning air, and preparing to dodge a couple of hundred running feet bearing down in banana-yellow glory. She squinted, and as she drew close enough to make out faces she broke into a run.
“Marul! Jeri! Sheila! What’s wrong!”
Legrange stood abruptly; frantically waved her back; alternately stabbing toward the ground with one finger, then pointing up into the tree. “Lindy, stay back!”
But with Legrange’s attention occupied, Marul, too, jumped to her feet, and in one motion bolted into Linda’s arms, as Linda’s touch screen bounced across the path into the grass. Linda’s feet froze in place as the girl’s arms enveloped her; gripped her, and her own body shook with the force of Marul’s sobs.
“He kill me! He kill me! He say it is stain on his honor! Lindy!, Lindy! You have to help! Please, you have to help! Please, help me get to Uncle Ollie!”
“Jeri?”
Legrange hesitated only a fraction. Two hundred troops had already seen what happened. “The run came down through here, and plowed into this poor kid just as she slipped and fell in the—” she looked down at Marul, “in his—” and looked again, “as she slipped and fell. There.” Legrange pointed to the skid marks in Hugo’s blood. “She says his name is Hugo? I got the call, and came around. The XO had already released the troops.”
Linda nodded. “Can I—can we—it’s hard shouting like this.”
Legrange nodded and pointed to a safe path around, through the trampled mess made by the troops, where any clue was well-buried now. Linda gently peeled Marul’s arms apart and tried to take her hand, but the girl clung to her side like a toddler as they made their way to Legrange.
“So she was alone here, with about a million soldiers. Male soldiers?”
“Well, yes. I mean, not all male. You know, it’s about sixty-forty on a Brigade run.”
“And the front rank was?”
“Command staff, of course.”
“Then why weren’t you—”
“DO. I was duty officer. So Sergeant….” She trailed off, as Linda groaned.
“Did anyone touch her?”
Legrange turned. “Sergeant Thompson?”
Sheila was staring at the ground. “Yes Ma’am. Me.” But she did not look up.
“Anyone else?”
“Not really.”
“What do you mean, not really? Did they, or didn’t they?”
“Ma’am. It happened pretty fast. I mean, the guys just wanted to help, you know? They didn’t do nuthin.’ Just put their jackets on her, helped her sit down.”
But Linda was already shaking her head. “Oh, Sheila.”
“I know ma’am. I know. I’m so sorry. It happened so fast. I was at the back and it took me a minute to get up there. And we was kind of—well, even me. You know.”
Linda followed her eyes up into the tree, nodded, sighed.
“She’s right. He’ll kill her.”
“Who?”
“Her father.”
“Oh, surely that’s ridiculous.”
Gently, Linda cupped Marul’s chin and turned her face toward Legrange. The sun was higher now, reaching beneath the bonnet’s cowl. One eye was black; the cheek below mottled purple and green. “He did this to her because she waved when they ran past. She wasn’t even on the path. She wasn’t within thirty paces of them. Imagine what he’ll do if he finds out that she was manhandled by a bunch of unrelated, healthy, young men, without a chaperone.”
“But it’s ridiculous! I mean, it’s utterly irrational. Nothing happened. Nothing could have happened. There’s a hundred witnesses.”
Linda sighed. “Jeri, you are missing the point. This isn’t rational. It’s not about whether or not ‘anything’ happened. In his twisted view, something did happen. An honor violation, plain and simple. So somebody has to pay. And since he’s an MP TCM fundy himself, it’ll be the girl who pays, not his troopy buddies.”
“But how does it ‘defend his honor’ to kill his own child?”
“If it makes you feel any better, he’ll probably cry when he does it. But he’ll do it. They talk a lot about defending church and family, but in the end, it’s really all about themselves.”
“But that’s—illegal. He’ll get himself court-martialed.”
“Nevertheless.” She smiled thinly. “And maybe he won’t do it himself. Or maybe he’ll do it, but somebody who owes his family a favor will confess to it and serve the time. In any case, it’ll get done.”
The police sirens, wailing in the distance, suddenly lurched closer. The morning traffic was breaking up.
“So what do we do? We need to do it fast. The civvies will be here any minute.”
“I’ll take her to her Uncle.”
“Her Uncle? But won’t he just hand her over to her father?”
Linda was already shaking her head, but Legrange suddenly blanched and interrupted whatever she might have said. “Oh God. The MPs. I brought two with me.”
“Did they see her with anyone?”
“Yes. No. Wait.” Legrange struggled with fatigue, trying to remember who had seen exactly what, exactly when. “Sheila?”
“No, ma’am. When you got here, I was sittin’ with her on that log. And the jackets was already on. And her face was all hid anyway. She was lookin’ down at the groun’.”
“What about the rest of the troops?”
“Ma’am, I bin sittin’ here thinkin’ on it. It happened so fast, but see, when she fell, she got up lookin’ away from anyone. An she’s wearin’ that big ole’ bonnet. An’ then I was with her on that log, an she was mostly lookin’ down. An’ those boys with the jackets, they was our boys. They weren’t none of that MP shit. Sorry ma’am. I jus’ don’t like them boys. They make me a lot of trouble over nuthin.’”
Legrange merely nodded. Thompson went on. “So, I don’t think anybody could say for certain it was her. I mean, some of ‘em might know there’s a girl walks this way every mornin,’ but mos’ of the regulars, like me, was way at the back and didn’t see nuthin.’”
“Are you sure? She told you her name, didn’t she? Didn’t they hear that?”
“No ma’am. I don’t think so. Even Major Trippe was all, like, do this, do that, come here, go there. He ran off with that detail, and sent Theo to get you, but nobody really talked to her ‘cept me, an,’ an’—Honey, did you even tell me your name?”
Sharply, emphatically, Marul shook her head no.
Legrange thought a moment. “Did you tell anyone your cousin’s name? Before I got here, I mean?”
No, again.
Legrange turned to Thompson. “So the banana boys with the jackets know that she recognized the body, but that’s all?”
“Ma’am I think that’s pretty much it. I mean, I think a bunch of people might know that she recognized him, but only those boys with the jackets, and me, and you even heard his name. And nobody knows her name but us.”
But Marul started shivering again, uncontrollably, and new tears welled. “Wayan! Wayan knows!”
Linda was already in motion, grabbing Marul’s hand, towing the girl behind her. “That’s it. That sniveling little shit will tell. He’s a typical, pampered, spoiled brat of an eldest son, and he’ll delight in telling. Her Uncle’s her only chance.”
Legrange jogged after her, shouting, “But how can he help?”
Linda stopped abruptly, incredulous. “Jeri, haven’t you put this together? That’s Hugo Azhad in that tree. Ollie Azhad’s son. Marul’s cousin.” And when the penny still did not drop, “Jeri, Ollie Azhad. Chief of TCM Contract Security. His youngest sister married the piece of crap that did this to her. You see how that boy was murdered. It’s nothing to do with Marul. This isn’t personal. It’s professional.”
“But they’ll want a witness statement!”
“I’m getting this girl out of here. They don’t need her. She witnessed nothing. You could get anybody in Saint George to identify that boy. Anybody local.” And with that, they sprinted for the bridge.
Legrange jogged to a stop, turned, walked back to Sheila Thompson. Thompson’s face was stone. “Ma’am, that girl was jus’ walkin’ by. Didn’t see nuthin’, didn’t know nuthin’. I will swear that to a Magistrate.”
Legrange smiled wanly. “What girl was that, Sergeant Thompson?”