Chapter Five
In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
—Herodotus
Cochea, 12/7/459 AC
Hennessey had first laid eyes upon his future wife at a national festival. She had been seventeen then, one of the dancers garbed in the national costume the Balboans had brought with them from Earth, the pollera. Linda's hair had been done up in an intricate array of gold and silver. There was no word adequate to describe her. Perhaps "stunning" came close.
As he had first laid eyes on her, so had she—without at the time knowing—laid hands upon his heart. In a phrase, he had fallen, abjectly and completely. And he didn't even know her name.
In his dream, Hennessey again watched the dance, again pushed his way through the crowd, again steeled himself for a very informal self- introduction.
The dream Linda, as she had so many years before, smiled warmly . . . friendly . . . confident as only beautiful young women are confident. The brash gringo had a certain something. She admitted as much to herself.
They walked as in a dream and the walk was a dream. "I am going to marry you someday," Hennessey said. "You and only you."
Linda had scoffed. "You just met me. We haven't even been properly introduced."
"No matter," he answered. "You and only you."
"You are so sure? What makes you think I would marry you? Besides, I am only seventeen."
"No matter. The girl is mother to the woman. I will wait." He seemed very certain.
She laughed, white teeth flashing in the sun. "How long will you wait, brash gringo?"
"Forever . . . if I must," he answered seriously.
"Forever is a very long time," she countered.
"For you, and only you, I would wait 'forever.'"
Young Linda inclined her head to one side. Her eyes narrowed, judging, studying. "Hmm . . . perhaps you would at that."
A face rapt with amusement turned suddenly serious. "Do you smell something?"
Hennessey's nose wrinkled. He sniffed. "Smoke. From where?"
He and Linda looked downward at the same time. "Oh," she said in surprise.
The hem of Linda's green-embroidered pollera was on fire, the fire racing up and out. Hennessey knelt to try to beat the flames out with his hands. The fire raced on, ignoring his efforts. She began to scream as the flames reached her skin. "Please help me," she cried. "Please."
For all Hennessey's thrashing hands, the personal inferno spread. His hands turned red, then began to blister. The blisters broke. His hands began to char. All the time he never stopped trying to put out the flames.
Linda screamed with agony, her cries cutting through Hennessey's heart like a knife.
Hennessey looked up. The girl was a mass of flame. Fire leapt from her hands to her head. Hair crackled. Gold and silver ran like water. The flames began to consume her face.
Ignoring the fire and the pain, Hennessey wrapped his arms around the girl, hands still beating frantically to put out the fire that was eating her alive. The fire must have eaten its way inside her as well, for her eyes—once brown and warm—turned red, hot and then burst like overripe grapes.
Still screaming, Hennessey sat bolt upright in his bed. He wept for a little while, as quietly as he was able. Then, to the sound of antaniae outside the house calling "mnnbt . . . mnnbt . . . mnnbt," he walked to the liquor cabinet and grabbed a bottle. He didn't bother taking a glass.
Ciudad Balboa, 13/7/459 AC
Linda's family had volunteered en masse to drive him to the airport outside Ciudad Balboa so that he could catch the first plane— airships made the run, as well, but were just too slow—to First Landing and, perhaps, push the authorities to find the bodies. Though he'd appreciated the offers, he'd declined. The sympathy of both parents, all twenty-two aunts and uncles—not including those by marriage—and one hundred and four legitimate first cousins had quickly gone from warming to oppressive. They'd meant well, he knew, but seeing every face around him in perpetual tears had come to make things worse, if that were possible.
It had been good to drive, to have to concentrate on something besides his murdered family. Even the mind-diverting task of ducking the larger potholes was welcome. Through the little towns along the highway that led from the San Jose frontier in the east to the Yaviza Gap to the northwest, he drove slowly and carefully. At the larger towns he would stop sometimes, gas here, lunch there. Once he stopped to take in a view of the Mar Furioso that he and Linda had once enjoyed together. That had been painful. Finally he came to the great bridge that led over the bay to the city. He almost smiled at a particular memory of the bridge. Almost, not quite.
The city had changed since he had first seen it. It was still clean, remarkably so for a large metropolis in Colombia Central. But the buildings had grown to the sky over the last fifteen years. He looked up at them briefly, then turned his eyes back to the road as unwelcome thoughts invaded his mind.
Though much had changed, much was the same. Driving through Ciudad Balboa's streets he was cut off, tailgated, honked at and cursed with friendly abandon. Pretty girls walked the sidewalks and the parks. Young men looked, watched, pursued. Food and flowers wafted on the breeze, competing with the sea.
Emerging along the coastal road, Avenida del Norte, Hennessey almost managed to enjoy the fresh sea breeze off the high tide- covered beach and mud flats. To his left he passed the Restaurante Bella Mar, where Linda had taught him to appreciate sea food for the first time in his life. To his right he smelled the flowers of Parque Prado. He came at length to the Hotel Julio Caesare, arguably the best hotel of any real size in Ciudad Balboa, almost certainly the most ornate.
After a bellhop had unloaded the bags, a red uniformed valet took his car and parked it in the patrolled garage. Hennessey took a receipt in return and, followed the bellhop through marble and gilt and gracefully hanging palm fronds to the front desk to register.
He planned to spend a few days at the hotel, using it as a base while he waited for flights to the Federated States to recommence. Nothing was allowed to fly anywhere near the FSC at the moment and none could say when air traffic would resume. It was possible that airship service would begin before fixed wing did, though most thought this unlikely under the circumstances.
As it turned out, it would be several days.
He spent his evenings, and evening came early this close to the equator, drinking in the bar cum disco on the ground floor of the hotel. A wretched dancer—Hennessey described himself as the worst dancer in the entire history of human motion—he still enjoyed looking at pretty girls on the dance floor. He enjoyed it, that is, so long as none of them reminded him too much of his wife. This wasn't a problem, generally, since most of the women in the disco were light skinned. Though of a quite prosperous family, Linda had been very mixed-race and rather dark. Since the Julio Caesare was expensive enough to be only for either the well to do (or less moneyed cosmopolitan progressives, or Kosmos, who slurped lavishly at the public and donative troughs), there were few women of plainly mestiza backgrounds. None of these had been quite pretty enough to bring forth painful memories.
His first night at the hotel a few women, either too insensitive to pick up on Hennessey's pain or kind hearted and sympathetic enough to wish to relieve the pain if possible, approached him. It wasn't difficult for Hennessey to tell the difference. The former he sent packing with few words. The latter he spoke to as much as they might care to speak, or as much as he could stand to.
The second night in the city a pair of women, a tall and light one and a slightly shorter dark one, sat down not quite beside him. It was the darker one who broke the ice. She said her name was Edielise. Hennessey didn't catch the last name and didn't really much care to. He answered her questions, asking only enough of his own for politeness' sake. He covered his reticence by taking another drink whenever the girl seemed about to say something that might call for a thoughtful response.
The other girl, who remained silent throughout the conversation, thought, What a typically arrogant gringo. Here Edi is trying her best to be polite and all he can do is nod and grunt. He's hardly even responding at all. Hennessey and the darker girl had been speaking English the whole time. Pushing her own drink away, the lighter of the two said, in Spanish, although she too spoke excellent English, "Come on Edi, this gringo is too dull and stupid to waste time on."
Hennessey, who also spoke quite good Spanish, answered quickly, "Maybe you're right. I might be dull and I'm probably stupid too. Mostly, though, I'm just tired, drunk, and sad."
A little angry at her comment, and a little drunk as well, Hennessey told her why he was as he was. "You see, my wife and three little children were killed two days ago, in First Landing in the Federated States."
He delivered the words with the kind of apologetic tone that sounds like "it's all my fault" but makes the hearer feel that it is entirely their fault. Then, while the two girls sat dumbfounded, Hennessey excused himself and left for his room. He didn't feel any better. It was cruel, pointlessly so, and worse, he knew it.
When Hennessey reached his room he was already cursing himself for being a boor. It wasn't their fault, he thought. They were just trying to be civil. Tomorrow maybe I'll go to Cristobal. I'm not fit for civilized company right now.
After Hennessey left, the taller, lighter girl—her name was Lourdes Nuñez-Cordoba—stayed in the disco for a long time feeling very small, very dark, and very ashamed.
Lourdes was only twenty-four, slender and pretty enough, too. She looked even younger; she had lived a somewhat sheltered life. She'd never known anyone who had so much real hurt in his voice as that gringo had. What a bitch I am, what a pure bitch. That poor man's lost everything and I had to insult him. I didn't even have a chance to apologize. Damn. Turning to her friend she asked what the gringo's name was.
"I don't know his last name. It was a funny one. His first name was Pat, he said."
Gesturing at the door with her head, Lourdes said to her friend, "Let's go home. I'll come back myself tomorrow, early, and see if I can catch him before he leaves. I hope he'll accept an apology. I feel so terrible."
When Hennessey awoke the next morning, hung-over and needing a shave, he cursed to see the time. "Dammit, almost eleven. I wanted to get out of here no later than nine."
He went to the shower to scrape off the previous day's accumulations. Normally he liked to sing in the shower, old ballads of war, revenge, and rebellion that he had learned at his grandfather's knee. This morning, the idea of singing was enough to make him want to puke. Instead, as he soaped off, Hennessey's mind wandered to the events of the night before. He felt genuinely guilty at having lashed out at the poor girl who'd called him dull. He didn't blame her a bit; he had been pretty dull. Realistically, he did not blame himself too much, either. He resolved to try to be a little kinder in the future. Wrapped in a towel, he left the shower and picked out the clothes he would wear for the day; a short-sleeved green shirt, blue jeans and running shoes. The rest he began to stuff into suitcases in no particular order.
By noon Hennessey had finished packing. He rang for a bellhop, "el butones," to come and carry his bags to the lobby of the hotel. At the front desk he tried, and generally succeeded, in being pleasant to the obligatorily polite receptionist. He was about to turn to leave when he heard a very sweet voice behind him hesitantly ask, "Pat?" He turned then to see who belonged to the voice he didn't recognize.
"Oh, it's the girl from last night." Hennessey forced a welcoming tone into his voice. He took one of her hands in both of his. "Look, I'm really sorry for having left the way I did. I really haven't been quite right for a few days now."
However, as soon as she had recognized him, Lourdes had immediately begun a lengthy and heartfelt apology of her own. Talking at cross purposes, and simultaneously, the two continued for half a minute before the realization that neither had heard a word the other had spoken stopped them both completely. Twice more they began to speak at the same time only to stop cold again. Finally Hennessey decided to be a gentleman and let Lourdes speak first.
Almost taken aback by being allowed to speak after three false starts, Lourdes said, in English, "I'm so sorry for saying those terrible things about you last night. I feel like such a horrible person. No wonder you didn't want to talk after losing your family like that. Will you please, please forgive me?" Her enormous brown eyes were eloquent with sincerity.
Hennessey shook his head as if he didn't understand why she should feel repentant. "There's nothing to forgive. Your friend was doing her best to cheer me up. I wasn't in the mood to be cheered, I guess. You were perfectly right to call me stupid. But I don't know any other way to be right now. I should be apologizing to you. As a matter of fact," he added with a sad but ironic grin, "I was apologizing to you."
A sudden rumbling in his stomach told Hennessey that it had been almost a full day since he'd taken any sustenance beyond a heavy dose of alcohol. He asked the girl at the front desk if he could leave his bags there over lunch. Of course an establishment as thoroughly accommodating as the Julio Caesare would have no problem guarding a few bags. On an impulse Hennessey asked Lourdes if she would care to join him.
"Are you sure you want company?" she asked.
"Please. I promise to be civil. And I've never cared to eat alone."
Nodding assent, Lourdes joined Hennessey on the way to one of the Hotel's four restaurants. Before leaving the lobby Hennessey tipped the bellhop who had moved his bags. Despite the receptionist's assurances that they would be safe it couldn't hurt to keep the help on his side.
The young woman was fine company, perhaps because she was trying her best to cheer the sad man accompanying her. Over a meal of prawns on rice, her conversation kept up a light mood. Hennessey was surprised to find himself sometimes honestly smiling.
Objectively—and without lust, it was far too soon for that—Hennessey found himself appraising the girl. Looks twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. Nice hair, light brown shading to blond. Good facial structure, high cheekbones. Nose a little prominent but overall a good shape. Slender and tall, her breasts would look better on a shorter woman. Nice posterior. Very beautiful eyes, large and liquid brown. Also a good heart or she wouldn't be here with a broken down, miserable old fart like me.
As the meal neared its close, Lourdes asked the question she had wanted to ask since Hennessey had left the disco the night before. "How did your wife die?"
Hennessey paused before answering. It wasn't easy for him to think about. He returned his fork to the plate and sat back against the chair. "Lourdes, that's some of my problem. I don't know, not exactly anyway. All I do know is that she and the kids were caught in my uncle's office building when the airship hit. That, and that they were not killed right away." Hennessey paused to rub away the beginnings of a tear.
Lourdes likewise didn't respond immediately. After a brief pause of her own she simply said, "Poor man."
The mood chilled, the meal was finished mainly in silence. Assuming that the loss of his family was too painful for him to talk about any more, Lourdes went along. Soon the lunch was ended. Before the two left the restaurant, Lourdes—feeling quite forward and even daring— wrote her home and business phone numbers on a napkin, and pressed it on him. "Pat, when you come back to Balboa, and if I can help you in any way, please call me."
Hennessey nodded as he paid the bill. Then he escorted the woman to his car and drove her to her work. When he returned to his hotel he was informed that he would be able to fly to the Federated States the following morning.
First Landing, 17/7/459 AC
"I won't stand for it. I just won't stand for it. That money's mine. I'll sue, I swear I will. I've made promises. There are 'causes' . . ."
Annie, seated in a typical lawyer's client's leather chair turned to her cousin, Eugene Montgomery Schmied, and said, "Oh, shut up, you mincing little fairy."
I hate squabbling families, thought the attorney and executor, John Walter Tweed. Steepling his fingers in front of his receding chin, he cast his eyes on Eugene and said, "That would be a very grave mistake, Mr. Schmied. Your uncle arranged his will quite carefully. Should you—or anyone—in person or by proxy attempt to contest his will or its codicil you will be utterly cut off from everything. This state will honor such an 'in terrorem' clause, I assure you. And First Landing is so chilly this time of year." The lawyer smiled nastily.
The reading of Uncle Bob's will and its last minute video codicil had started with a rash of crocodile tears, all but for Annie—whose tears were sincere, and Patrick—who felt nothing. Indeed, so still and detached was he that he might as well have been the chair he sat upon, that, or a corpse himself.
Tweed cleared and throat and asked, "Now if I may continue without further interruptions? Good. Colonel Hennessey . . ."
Deadpan, he said, "I'm not a colonel anymore."
"Nonetheless, your uncle referred to you as such in his codicil. His so referring also indicated a true change of heart as concerned his feelings toward you. So, unless you object strenuously, I will continue to so address you."
Hennessey shrugged his indifference.
"Very good then. To continue, you are, in the main, your uncle's primary beneficiary. What this means, as a practical matter, is fourfold. You have inherited the chair of Chatham, Hennessey and Schmied. You have also the control of your grandfather's trust, the William Hennessey Fund. You are the inheritor of his personal and real property upon the demise of your aunt, Denise—Robert's wife— who retains a life estate. . . ."
1050 5th Avenue,
First Landing, 17/7/459 AC
Annie shivered slightly as her cousin tossed a switchblade knife onto the kitchen counter before removing his suit jacket. "Where did you get that thing?" she asked.
Hennessey pointed to a place over a cabinet. "Right there, where I stashed it the last time I visited."
"You really haven't changed since you were little have you? Everything is violence. Why?"
He quoted, "'Force rules the world still, has ruled it, shall rule it. Meekness is weakness and strength is triumphant.'"
"You can say that? After everything that's happened?"
"After everything that's happened, Cuz, how could I say anything else?"
Annie didn't like knives. She didn't like guns. She, quite reasonably, didn't like violence. But cousin Pat would not be found dead without a weapon; he'd always been that way. She changed the subject.
"What are you going to do now, Pat?"
He shrugged. "Go home . . . back to Balboa, I mean, not Botulph. Bury what I have of my family . . . first haircuts and things . . . then . . . hurt a lot. Drink a lot. Eventually die."
Annie grasped at straws. She did not want her cousin to die, nor even to hurt. She did not want to mention, or even let his mind dwell on, what the fireman had told them near the wreck of the TNTO earlier in the day, namely that it was unlikely that much in the way of remains would ever be recovered. She asked, instead, "What about the company? The trust?"
Again, he shrugged. "What do I care? The only good thing about Bob changing the will is that Eugene won't have the money to send to 'Save The Whales,' 'Meat is Murder,' "Fur is Forbidden,' or the World League. For the rest? Eh? Who cares?"
"Actually," Annie said, "he seems to have acquired a taste for swarthy men, of late. I'd expect a lot of the money to go the People's Front for the Liberation of Filistia. And, Pat? It's a lot of money."
He just looked at her, so much as to say "can't buy me love."
Herrera International Airport,
Ciudad Balboa, 18/7/459 AC
David Carrera, Linda's brother, was waiting at the Aduana, the airport customs office. Although a lieutenant in Balboa's "Civil Force," the successor—such as it was—to the Balboa Defense Corps, itself a successor to the old "Guardia Nacional," still David wore civilian clothes.
Eyes scanning the thickening line at the Aduana, David finally caught sight of his brother-in-law. Sallow skin and bags under his eyes; Jesus, Patricio looks like crap!
Moving forward to the officer in charge of Customs, David flashed a badge, pointed and spoke a few sentences. Rank had its privileges. The customs man smiled assent, then gestured for Hennessey to come forward.
Waved through after a very cursory inspection, Hennessey passed Customs then stretched out a hand to David.
David smelled alcohol, a lot of alcohol, on Hennessey's breath. He decided to ignore it, asking only, "How was your flight, Cuñado?"
"It was all right." He shrugged. "Right up to where I nodded off to sleep and awoke screaming. The stewardesses were upset with me; bad for passenger morale I suppose, especially these days. On the plus side they fed me booze until I fell asleep again, that time without dreaming."
The two walked without further words to where Hennessey's car waited. At his mother's insistence David had taken a police flight down to the airport to drive Hennessey home. Before turning the keys over to David, Hennessey removed his jacket, opened the trunk, and put on a shoulder holster bearing a high end, compact forty-five caliber pistol in brushed stainless. Then he put his light jacket back on.
Trees, rivers, bridges, towns; all flashed by without comment or conversation. Only once on the long drive eastward did Hennessey make a sound. That was when he inadvertently drifted off to sleep and awakened, as usual, screaming. He did not say of what he dreamed. He didn't need to; David knew already, at least in broad terms.
At length the car passed into Valle de las Lunas, then up the highway toward Ciudad Cervantes, the provincial capital.
Just before reaching the city, Linda's brother flicked the turn signal to head down the gravel road that led ultimately to Cochea, the Carrera family ranch, and the house Hennessey had shared with Linda.
"No," said Hennessey. "Take me into town please. I need to go to the liquor store."
David sighed, nodded, flicked off the turn signal and continued straight ahead into the city.
Hennessey heard it as a warbling cry, coming from hundreds of throats. He recognized it immediately; he had heard it in the very recent past.
As little emotion as he had shown, now his face became a cold stone mask. "Drive towards that sound, please, David," he requested.
Again with a sigh, David turned the wheel of the car to bring it in the direction of Parque Cervantes, the practical center of the city. The park was square, with a bandstand in the center, surrounded by broad, paved streets. Stores fronted the streets, facing the bandstand.
Traffic slowed as they neared the park. Reaching the southeast corner, David merged into the traffic and did one complete loop around the square.
IV.
While David watched traffic, Hennessey watched people. There, in the middle of the park, around the bandstand, stood a fair mob, certainly several hundred, perhaps even a thousand. Though as swarthy as Balboans, they were not Balboans. Hennessey would have known this from their signs—"Death to the Federated States," "Allah smiles upon the Ikhwan," "Long live the Salafi Jihad," and such—the women's tongues flicking back and forth in a Yithrabi victory cry; and the happy faces of people celebrating as though it had been themselves who had struck against a great and infinitely evil enemy.
"There are a lot of damned wogs here now," David commented. "They call themselves Salafis and are nothing but trouble."
"Salafi means those who follow Islam's oldest ways . . . or think they do," Hennessey explained.
"What's the difference?" David asked.
"Well . . . for one thing, I think Mohammad probably had a pretty fair sense of humor. The Salafis don't." To himself he whispered, "Then again, neither do I now . . . and I follow the old ways, too."
His finger pointed, "Pull over and park, please, David . . . in behind the car with the green bumper sticker."
Tanned from years in the Balboan sun, with hair naturally dark where it wasn't tinged with gray, only Hennessey's gleaming blue eyes might have given him away for the gringo he was. No matter; he kept his eyes narrowly slitted as he emerged from the car, leaned against its side and watched the local Salafis at their victory celebration. No flicker of emotion betrayed what he was feeling over people celebrating the murder of his wife and children.
Even as the celebration began to break up he did not move from the car on which he leaned, arms folded nonchalantly.
He smiled broadly as a group of six men walked toward the car just ahead of his own; the one with the green bumper sticker that said, in Arabic, "There is no God but God."
The Salafis joked and played amiably among themselves as they came closer. Hennessey's smile broadened even more.
CLICK.
He said, loudly and in adequate, if badly accented, Arabic, "Your Prophet was a sodomite and a liar. Your mothers were whores. Your fathers were their pimps. Your wives specialize in fellating barnyard animals and all your sisters came from sex change operations. You are fools if you think your children are yours."
David looked questioningly at Hennessey; the Balboan had not a word of Arabic. He needed none, however, to understand the import of what was said. This was as plain as the wide-eyed rage and hate on the faces of the men who now ran toward them waving signs like clubs and shouting their fury. One young man, in particular, outdistanced the rest.
For a moment David knew fear. He need not have. Lightning-fast, Hennessey's left hand pulled back his light jacket even as his right sought to draw the pistol.
Hennessey's right on the pistol, his left swept up to block and deflect the sign that the nearest of the Salafis sought to brain him with. Whispering, "Bastard," at the same time, he drew the pistol and smashed its muzzle once, twice, three times into the area of his enemy's solar plexus. Every blow felt like the lifting of a burden. The Salafi's breath left his body in an agonized whoosh.
One down, five to go. Before gravity could pull the first one to the ground, Hennessey had brought his focus to the main body of his assailants.
The gang attacking Hennessey could see in his eyes that this one was not going to run. They could also read that their intended victim intended to kill or maim as many as he could before he went down. They could see from the gun that he had the means to do so. Like any street gang, anywhere, these were no heroes. While they all would have advanced confidently on someone who showed the slightest fear, when faced with a target like Hennessey they stopped cold.
Had they run, some might have lived.
A quick but delicate squeeze of the trigger and the pistol recoiled in Hennessey's hands. His mind provided details his eyes could not possibly have seen; a burst of flame, the spinning half-ounce lump of bronze-jacketed lead, the bursting of shirt and flesh and blood and bone. The first target's back arched as he was impelled to the ground.
A chorus of screams arose from bystanders, Christian and Salafi both, as the crowd ran and sought cover.
The four still standing didn't have time to close on their victim before the next of them went down with a slug that ripped through his arm and one lung. Again, Hennessey smiled slightly at the satisfying recoil. His victim, now fallen to the street, wheezed faint screams, blood bumbling from his mouth and the hole in his chest.
The other three, torn between fight and flight, made the worst possible decision; they did nothing, frozen in fear. Quickly but carefully aligning the barrel, Hennessey shot one through a head that burst under the impact like an overripe melon dropped from a height. Recovering the pistol from its heavy recoil, his smile grew broad now as he squeezed the trigger yet again to ruin the left side of another assailant's chest. Hennessey didn't need X-ray vision to know that he had exploded the man's heart.
The last Salafi standing was like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi-tractor, frozen, helpless . . . already dead.
He did not shoot that last one standing; not immediately. Instead he walked forward calmly, spit in the frozen man's face, and then kicked him in the crotch. The Salafi bent over and melted to the ground.
"Attack MY family will you? Celebrate their murder?" He took a short step forward, bent over at the waist, then calmly placed the hot muzzle against the man's head. Again, he shrieked, "Attack MY family will you?" The Salafi barely registered the pressure and the smell of crisping hair as his brain went scampering like a frightened rabbit. With such a helpless target, Hennessey had leisure to rise and walk around to a better firing position. He didn't want an innocent bystander to take a bullet that passed through his intended target.
Carefully gauging angles, he knelt down and pulled the thug's head up by the hair, jammed the pistol—hard, hard enough to break the skin and the bone beneath—into the man's face. Then he grinned even more widely, withdrew the pistol slightly, and fired. David, standing nearby, was spattered with blood and brain.
Hennessey stood again and turned his attention to the first man, the one who had tried to brain him with a sign. The Salafi began to beg for his life in mixed Spanish and Arabic. Hennessey said, "Fuck you," then shot him through the stomach, savoring the resulting scream.
Hmmm . . . one bullet left. He looked over the bodies. One, the one he had lung-shot, was still breathing. Hennessey shot him again, in the head. The slide locked back and Hennessey pushed a button to let it fall forward. Then, from habit, he flicked on the positive safety and turned the pistol in his grip, his index finger passing through the trigger guard. The pistol was now a hammer, not a firearm.
He walked forward, face lit by a glowing smile. Speaking with unnatural calm to the former celebrant, Hennessey explained that shooting was really too good for swine like him.
The pistol swung almost too quickly for the eye to follow. There was a crunch of bone, a spray of crimson, and another scream. Again and small chunks of hair attached to flesh joined the crimson spray. Again and teeth flew.
Again . . . again . . . again . . . again . . .
"Patricio? Patricio, stop. He's dead. Please stop."
Hennessey became conscious of a hand gripping his shoulder. "What?"
"He's dead, Patricio. You don't need to hit him anymore." David shook his brother-in-law's shoulder to pull him back to the present.
Dully, Hennessey asked, "Dead?" He looked down. "Yes, dead. Good."
"We need to get away from here, Cuñado. You know, before the police come. Christ! I am the police. Shit!"
"No," Hennessey answered. "Better to take care of it now."
He calmly wiped the blood- and brain-stained pistol on the shirt of his victim. Then he laid the pistol on the ground, stood, and turned to lean again against his automobile. In the distance a siren shrieked.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, Hennessey realized that he actually felt good for the first time in just over a week. He pulled out and lit a cigarette, enjoying the first puff as he had not enjoyed anything since his family was murdered.
"So you see," Lieutenant David Carrera explained to the investigating police corporal, "my brother-in-law here was minding his own business, watching the demonstration, when these foreigners simply attacked him with their signs. I don't know why, though. They were speaking their foreign gibberish. Perhaps they thought to kill another harmless and innocent gringo to add to the tally of those they murdered in First Landing."
The corporal looked skeptical. Hennessey, seeing the skepticism, suggested, "Why don't you call Major Jimenez, Cabo? I'm sure he can set this all straight."
The call was unnecessary, as it turned out. As soon as Jimenez, the local Civil Force commander, had heard the words on the radio, "gringo . . . shooting . . . Salafis" he had put two and two together, come up with the name "Hennessey," and set out for the scene.
Jimenez didn't ask Hennessey anything. He is just too likely to tell me the truth. And I think I don't want the truth. Instead, he asked David, who repeated the story he had told the corporal.
Jimenez looked at the six dead Salafis and the spreading pools of blood. He looked at Hennessey's blood-spattered and bone- and brain-flecked pistol. He looked at the corpse nearest the car and noted that his head was more a misshapen lump of mangled flesh and crushed bone than a human being's. Then he pronounced his learned judgment.
"An obvious case of self-defense, Corporal. Let the gringo go."
Cochea, 25/7/459 AC
Hennessey looked better than he had, thought Linda's mother. He had even told her that the nightmares had, if not quite stopped, at least lessened since he had shot those demonstrators. May they go away and never come back. Poor man.
Around a small hillock overlooking the Carrera family ranch and the stream Linda had swum in as a girl, Hennessey, the remaining members of Linda's immediate family, a dozen and a half aunts and uncles, her last surviving grandparent, and about seventy of her one hundred and four legitimate first cousins (and a half dozen or so illegitimate but recognized ones) stood in the rain for a funeral service. A five-foot tall marble obelisk rose above a shorter plinth placed on the hill. It was blank for now but would soon bear a bronze plaque inscribed with the names of Linda and her three children, plus a gender neutral name for the unborn. As the priest went through the funeral service, Hennessey wept.
I will never see her again. Never hold her in my arms again. All my dreams for the two of us, all my—our—dreams for the children are gone; dead. What's left? Nothing.
Oh, Linda, you were . . . are . . . my life and my love. I wish I were with you, wherever you are. I wish I were wherever I could bask in your approval. I wish I were wherever I could be warmed by your glow. I wish . . . I wish . . . I wish.
At least you are there with the children. Someday, maybe soon, I will join you. There is nothing for me here anymore. Nothing.
Linda's mother had arranged for the funeral. Hennessey himself had the monument cut, polished, and set in place. He hadn't been able to think of anything else positive to do.
Hennessey's mind wandered back to the thought of being with Linda. However, the one place he would not permit the thought of was the precise place, wherever it might be, where Linda's and the children's bodies rested. He could not bear the idea of the unknown, unmarked grave. He could not bear the thought of them rotting unprotected, of being eaten by worms and insects. No! screamed his mind, whenever his thoughts ventured anywhere near that subject. Too far, too awful. Do not trespass.
When the priest was finished, and the relatives had said their condolences and left, Hennessey continued standing alone in the rain while Linda's four brothers and her father filled in the grave containing a sample of her hair, a few personal belongings, jewelry and such, hair clippings from the children, a toy for each of them, plus another for the probable unborn.
Never very religious, nonetheless Hennessey prayed to God to take care of the souls of his wife and children. As he prayed, his tears mixed with the rain and fell to the ground at his feet. After a long while, he left.
Interlude
There was a planet teeming with life and able to support more life. There was another planet; old, worn out, depleted and allegedly groaning with overpopulation. What could be more sensible than to colonize, to relieve Earth's burden by transferring man to the new world?
Not that it was simple, by any means. No large numbers could be sent off world without some means of either reducing the trip's duration to a few months or putting passengers in suspended animation. For that matter, even with a much faster ship, the number of people that could be carried went up geometrically if they didn't need to be fed and used no oxygen during the trip.
Still . . . great oaks from little acorns and all. Cryogenic suspended animation seemed possible, but needed work. In the interim, a ship could be built to take at least a token number of colonists off world. This would be expensive, to be sure, but perhaps not so expensive as not sending people off-world.
Design took years. Development of materials to meet the design took more years. Actually building the thing—as important, building the shipyard in space that would build the thing—and its external laser auxiliary propulsion and putting those stations in place took decades.
She was to be called the Cheng Ho, after the great Chinese eunuch explorer. In design, externally, she was similar to the Cristobal Colon, but much larger with a diameter of just at one hundred and seventy meters.
Gravity was a problem, there being serious adverse medical ramifications to extended periods in null g. This was especially bad for a ship intended to carry people to a planet, where they were expected to live, that had gravity almost indistinguishable from that of Earth. No one had yet come up with a true artificial gravity and perhaps no one ever would. Continuous acceleration was deemed impractical. Magnetism was right out. All that was available, known and practical was that an acceptable artificial gravity could be produced through spinning the ship.
Internally, Cheng Ho's decks were to be cylinders within cylinders, with the exterior living deck providing just under .4 g's when in full spin. The machinery needed to run the ship was set within the innermost of the cylinders. Storage took up the intervening spaces, together with a modest investment in agriculture, this last being partially a supplement to food storage but equally a means of recycling air.
The Cheng Ho was never expected or intended to land anywhere. It would be built in space, travel in space, and live out its useful life in space, shuttling its cargo up and down. Surface planetary gravity would have crumpled the ship in an instant.
Yet it had to be built somewhere and by something. That something was a toroidal station, put together just inside of the asteroid belt. The station itself spun and that would provide the initial spin to the Cheng Ho. Gravity on the exterior ring of the shipyard was on the order of .76, a very comfortable load.
Within the toroidal ring of the shipyard the Cheng Ho was built from the inside out, the central cylinder serving in place of the keel of a sea-bound vessel. A series of mining and refining outposts on the moon and in the asteroid belts provided the limited metal needed. Sections that would have been far too heavy if metallic were made of composites, both in space and on Earth, and lifted to the construction site.
Construction of this first true interstellar colonization ship took decades.
Passengers were selected six years prior to launch and subjected to a three-year training program before being allowed to board.