Chapter Nine
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret, et mala
perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.
(You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but she will ever
hurry back, to triumph in stealth over your foolish contempt.)
—Horace, Epistles Book I, X, 24
Estado Mayor, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa, Terra Nova
Tribune III Roberto Silva reported to Carrera’s office precisely on time. To Carrera the tribune seemed exaggeratedly masculine and, therefore, a little creepy. The tribune’s not unimpressive official file sat folded on Carrera’s desk, along with another file prepared by Fernandez’s department.
Funny, Carrera thought, we don’t usually freak out about what gays or lesbians do, because we just won’t think about it, any more than we dwell on Mom blowing Dad. It’s when the signals are crossed though, when a man borders on pretty or a woman on manly, or when they’re extreme, like this guy is, that we get uncomfortable.
“Sir, Tribune Silva reports,” said the man, rendering a smart salute while standing at rigid attention in front of Carrera’s desk.
Carrera returned the salute, casually, then said, “Have a seat, Tribune.” Carrera indicated a chair. “Some coffee, perhaps.”
“Yes, sir, Thank you, sir.” Carrera buzzed the secretary to bring in two cups of coffee.
And it gets hard to talk about when we get uncomfortable.
“Silva…I don’t want you to get the wrong idea of this. And I won’t say precisely why I thought you were the man to consult. But you have heard of the executions in Eleventh Tercio at their cuartel last week, haven’t you?”
Silva immediately tensed. He did not give an immediate answer.
Carrera quickly interjected, “Relax, Tribune. I don’t know or care what your sexual orientation is. Fernandez told me that despite his suspicions, you don’t seem to do anything one way or the other. Or, if you do, you’re very careful. I don’t, for the time being, want to know, for that matter. But let’s imagine that you are someone who might, just possibly, have some insights into the problem.”
“The problem with homosexuals in the force, you mean, sir?”
“Yes.”
Silva relaxed only slightly, but answered, “It’s the same problem as with the straight men and women. It isn’t entirely sex, so much as it’s love. And the favoritism, the de facto prostitution, and the demoralization of everybody else that go with them. González and Juarez were sloppy, true. They got caught. But for every pair you catch and shoot, sir, I’ll guarantee you that there are a thousand you won’t catch. Or at least won’t catch until they’ve had a chance to damage the discipline and morale of the force.”
“That’s about what I think, too. Any suggestions?”
“I can suggest what you can’t do. You can’t legalize it without legalizing the same conduct between men and women of different ranks. And that will make your problem ten times worse, a hundred times worse. If you try to limit the proscription to those in the same unit you’ll just make it a somewhat subtler problem: people of different ranks who fall in love will arrange to be put in different units, but they’ll still use their ranks to influence the other unit for the betterment of their beloved.
“You see, sir, the problem isn’t that all the homosexuals are bad soldiers. Oh, no, that would be easy to fix. No, sir, the problem is that some of them are very good soldiers. They rise in rank.” Silva’s eyes glanced briefly in the direction of his own collar.
Carrera took the hint. Good man. He wants it known, so he can speak with authority, but wants the knowledge unofficial so I don’t feel compelled to act. To keep this one in service and protected, all on its own, would be good enough reason for what I’m thinking of.
Message delivered, Silva continued, “But, good legionaries or not, they remain just people, as likely to fall in love…or lust, as anyone else. As likely to use their rank to favor the object of that love—or lust—as anyone else.”
Carrera thought briefly, then asked, “What if we put all the homosexuals in the same unit?”
“Sir, whatever their sexual orientation most men are about as promiscuous as rabbits. You may cut down the problem in the rest of the army by reducing the number of potential causes of problems that are spread around. But that unit will be an undisciplined rabble, everybody fucking everybody and no guard duty or fatigue detail for whoever gives the best blow job.”
Carrera grimaced slightly. “Pardon me, Tribune, but I find the idea—no pun intended—distasteful.”
Silva shrugged. He continued, “Actually, a lesbian unit might work better. They tend to be fairly faithful to their partners and lovers. Although the favoritism problem would remain in any case. Another thing, too. If you tried to keep people from showing favoritism with—oh, say—a sleeping roster, some of them would still fall into more or less permanent couples. Sex is, after all, pretty common and unimportant stuff compared to love.”
“What,” asked Carrera, “if we had a sort of married regiment?”
“You’re thinking of the Sacred Band on Old Earth?” At Carrera’s confirming nod, Silva sighed. “In battle, there would be absolutely no telling what would happen, how one member of such a pair might react if his partner were in danger. He might fight harder; he might stop in place or run away to protect his partner. Just no telling.”
“What about a sleeping roster, then? What if sex were a unit thing? Would that make for a bonded unit, Tribune?”
Silva snorted. “No way, sir. No fucking way. There’s still the love issue. A sex roster won’t stop people from falling in love. Though it’s likely to lead to any number of murders once they do. They’ll find a way around it and no threat of death will stop them. That’s the one thing more powerful than the fear of death or death itself, you know: love.”
Carrera considered the question of permanent couples silently for a few moments. Of Silva he asked, “How many homosexuals do you suppose are in the force?”
Again Silva shrugged. “I think…somewhere between five and seven thousand. Could be a few more.”
“How many of those are already in permanent pairings?”
“That I really don’t know. I’d guess…maybe five hundred or so. That’s total, not five hundred pairs.”
Carrera then sighed. “Let there be no bullshit between us, Tribune. Do you have a partner? Of about the same rank, or a civilian? Nothing will pass these walls if you do.”
Silva looked pained for a moment. Carrera knew what he was thinking. How far can I trust this straight dude? Finally, after a period of obvious pain, Silva answered, “Yes, another tribune…slightly junior, a II…in the Fourteenth Cazador Tercio.”
“Excellent!” Carrera, to Silva’s intense shock, smiled broadly and sincerely. Then he stood and perused one of his bookcases briefly. He selected a volume of ancient biographies. He opened the book, dog-eared a section, then handed it to Silva. “Tribune Silva, read the pages I have marked. Then I have a mission for you. A recruiting mission of sorts. And congratulations. You’re going to become a daddy. And your partner a mommy.”
Silva, who had never expected to be a father, snorted. He then added, “He’s not at all the maternal type.”
Carrera likewise snorted, then said, “Tough shit. He’ll have to learn. Now this is going to take a while to set up, so just keep it subtle until I give the word. But look around for other stable pairs, why don’t you?”
“Don’t know how many I’ll find,” said the tribune. “Don’t know how many will be interested.”
Leader Assessment Course, Training Area D, Academia Militar Sergento Juan Malvegui, west of Puerto Lindo, Balboa, Terra Nova
Quite probably no one on the planet really knew where the idea for a Leader Assessment Course or Leader Reaction Course originated. Centurion Cruz, himself, couldn’t have said, not for certain. Above the planet, neither Marguerite Wallenstein nor any of her officers could have said. They’d never gone through anything like it, of course, with officer selection on Old Earth being a matter more of caste and connections than capability.
In fact, the earliest known version had been developed in pre-Nazi Germany, on Old Earth, during the 1920s, by psychologists working for the German Army. The idea had been to identify officer candidates with the requisite imagination, learning ability, ability to adjust, emotional stability, and sheer force of character to lead peers through tasks that were, on their face, impossible. (Though every task actually could be accomplished, they were set up to appear impossible, at least, and were always very difficult.)
From Germany the idea had been picked up by the British Army and Royal Air Force. From the old United Kingdom it had moved, in one form or another, to the “cousins” of the United States and likely also Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It had rarely, if ever, taken hold in other states of the old Commonwealth.
In a sense, of course, the Federated States Army’s Ranger School—which, it was known, had been consciously carried from Old Earth to New—was just an elaborate and exquisitely miserable version of it, as was Balboa’s Escuela de Cazadores, itself a version of the FSA’s Ranger School. Sending twelve- and thirteen-year-olds to something as grueling and wearing as Cazador School seemed a bit much, even to Carrera. Thus, for its limited purposes, the Leader Assessment Course would serve.
(Besides, no one was commissioned out of the military academies, anyway. Those, at most, gave someone a leg up if they later decided, as most did, to enlist in the legion and buck for a commission or centurion’s stick.)
For a while, in the Federated States, the course had become something of a corporate team-building fad. Like other fads, of course, it didn’t last.
But had it been carried from Old Earth to Terra Nova? History Ph.D. candidates on Terra Nova had looked. There was no paper or digital record indicating it had been brought over from Old Earth. Whether someone had carried it in his head to the new world could never be known. Even that seemed unlikely, too, since the first recorded use of it on Terra Nova had been in Atzlan, of all places, and that not until seventy-five years after the last big load of transportees from old Earth to Atzlan had been landed, also long after Old Earth had effectively demilitarized and depoliticized, placing all power in the hands of unelected hereditary bureaucrats.
The odds were that, like other good ideas, it had simply been invented at different places and different times.
* * *
The Sergeant Juan Malvegui Academy’s Leader Assessment Course stretched along about nineteen hundred meters of a narrow, winding stream diverted from the main one, the Rio Cuango. There were twenty-two stations, separated from each other by eighty or ninety meters, with the view blocked by thick secondary jungle growth, or berms, or, in a couple of cases, walls. The problems were set up over the stream to prevent broken bones, especially broken necks, by softening the inevitable falls.
Generally speaking, a cadet training company of about a hundred and forty at this point would leave about half the stations unused at any given time, thus giving some scheduling cushion while preventing subsequent groups from learning anything about their next problem from the shouting of those who preceded them. The problems were, for the most part, engineering problems, at some level, though using engineering to accomplish the missions required leadership, the more so as every problem seemed, at first glance, impossible to most.
The current problem, for example, the one that Hamilcar Carrera’s section was about to try to negotiate, was concerned with getting a barrel of “fuel,” about a hundred pounds worth, across a destroyed bridge using materials to supplement the bridge that were, on their face, wholly inadequate for the task. In fact, those materials, a ten foot piece of rope, two wooden planks, each consisting of two lesser planks, nailed together and running just under seven feet, in one case, and precisely ten, in the other, were adequate to the task. The fuel drum that the boys had to get across the stream diverted from the main run of the Rio Cuango had no fuel in it—no sense in polluting the water, after all—but did have a filling of concrete, hollowed out by a smaller drum, to make up the weight.
Historically, rather less than a third of the groups succeeded in getting their “fuel” drum to the other side of the stream. Of those who did, about sixty percent really succeeded by planning and understanding, while about forty percent either instinctively caught the core of the problem or just blundered through.
The problem didn’t seem impossible to Ham, acting as assistant section leader. He’d figured it out instantly.
As well I should have, Ham thought, since the old man’s been grilling me and drilling me on the Twelfth Principle of War, Shape, since I was a toddler.
Explaining it to the section leader for the exercise, Vladimiro Adame, was tougher. The latter, olive-toned scion of the yearning middle class, really didn’t have a lot of use for the all too white upper class of which Hamilcar seemed to him the epitome. Getting through that was a much greater challenge than solving the bloody problem.
“The problem, Miro,” Ham said, “is that somebody has to go out on the end on one of the nailed-together planks, pass the other plank to the far side, then tie them together. To do that, someone else—more likely four or five someone elses—are going to have to stand on the end of the plank while he ties them together. Once that’s done, he can cross and then we can move people to the far side. Then he and they can stand on the end of the plank to balance the weight of one of us and the drum. Think: Leverage.”
Vladimiro looked at Ham suspiciously, obviously wondering, How far can I trust this well connected bastard?
“And I’m not technically a bastard,” Ham said, “since my mother and father managed to get to the altar first. Now what’s your excuse?”
That got Carrera’s boy a laugh and a question. “So how do we keep enough weight on the near plank?”
“You lead from in front,” Ham replied. “Get on your belly and crawl out. As you clear space on the rear of the plank, moving forward, I’ll get others to stand on it in the rear. Go slow because getting them stable might take a little effort.
“Once you’re at the end, we’ll pass you the second plank across your back, then you feed it all the way over. It has to be the short plank or you’ll lose control of it. Then you tie them together and cross over yourself. I’ll feed three more cadets over to you to stand on the far end.” Ham fluttered his fingers. “Three…maybe even four. Then we use somebody small and strong…”
“Jorge Rodrigues,” Miro decided. “He’s not the smallest but he’s strong for his weight.”
“Yes,” Ham agreed, instantly, knowing he’d won the point and also that the glory of the thing would accrue to Jorge, whom he counted a friend.
“Don’t fuck this up on me,” Miro warned.
“Don’t you.”
* * *
“Time is wasting, gentlemen,” announced Cruz, looking down at the broad and thick nylon band holding his watch to his right wrist. He pulled the protective tab over the watch’s face and glared out at the boys, struggling to get their little one plank bridge assembled. The centurion’s right boot tapped theatrically on the ground.
Hamilcar, the biggest boy in the section, stood at the very end of the longer plank, holding it down with his body weight. In front of him he had the next largest boy, likewise applying weight to balance out Miro, slithering down toward the free end. At a certain point, Miro was out too far and the leverage was not quite enough.
“Get your feet on the plank, Roger!” Ham ordered. Then, feeling the plank start to rise, he amended, “Screw that. Sit on it. Belisario, sit on his lap. Raul, crawl up on my back and hang on.”
With the weight of five boys on the friendly side, that end of the plank settled back down to the dirt. Still, Ham found it pure hell to try to balance with Raul on his back, the more so as Miro set the plank to vibrating.
Worse than learning to ride a bicycle, he thought.
“I’m as far as I can go,” Miro said, over his left shoulder. Lying flat on his belly, he had the rope draped loosely around his neck. “Send me the other plank.”
That was more trouble than anyone, including Ham, had expected. In the first place, the plank caught on Miro’s fatigue shirt. He found he had to use both hands to hold the shirt tight to his back to let the plank pass it. Since the plank was actually two, nailed together, the ridge where they were nailed likewise caught. The boy feeding the plank had to pull it back then, flip it, and start over. In that action he nearly lost the plank over the side.
Almost Ham lost control of himself and lunged for the plank. Whether he stopped from presence of mind or because the other boy managed to get control of it he wasn’t quite sure. Still, the other boy did get control of it and began once again feeding it across to Miro.
And there arose another problem. The angle was just all wrong. Miro couldn’t hold the plank with his hands behind his head feeding it forward.
“Flip over on your back,” Ham shouted. That seemed like good advice, so Miro tried it. It worked but the motion set the longer rearward plank to vibrating again. The boys clustered at that end began to sway…
“Shit!” Ham exclaimed.
“Two demerits, Cadet,” Centurion Cruz announced.
“Shit,” Ham whispered, then, “Jorge! Get over here and balance us!”
That helped.
Miro, flat on his back and feeding the plank forward—or up, depending on how one wanted to look at it—couldn’t see the far end. “Guide me, Hamilcar,” he ordered. “I can’t see shit.”
“Two demerits, Cadet.”
“Shit,” Miro likewise whispered.
Cruz, who could still hear him perfectly well, permitted himself a thin smile. Damn, I wish we’d had these schools when I was a boy. This shit—two demerits, Centurion—is too much fun.
“About two feet from the far bank,” Ham advised. “But you’ve got to lift the far end or you’ll put it in the water.”
As Miro struggled against the reverse leverage of the plank, Ham guided, “Up…up…little more…set it!”
Miro jammed the far end of the plank into the dirt on the far side, then slithered like a snake, but backwards, before easing the friendly end down to the plank on which he lay. Flipping over to his belly—which movement very nearly cost him the rope—he slithered forward again and began to tie the planks together. In the excitement, he tied them with the wrong knot, and perhaps a bit too close to the lower and longer plank, but you’ll get that on those big jobs.
“TIME IS WASTING, CADETS!”
Shit, thought Ham and Miro and just about every one of the others, all at the same time.
“Far side, Miro,” Ham reminded.
Exhausted from his struggle with the plank, Miro just nodded and began belly crawling across the shorter plank. For a moment the other plank began to teeter, but then he was past that danger point and the thing settled back down. In less than half a minute, he was standing at the edge of the far plank, saying, “Send one man over.”
“Francisco, go,” Ham ordered. “Augustino, get ready. You’re next.”
* * *
Centurion Ricardo Cruz was mildly impressed. The boys had the bridge up. They were using the weight of their bodies to keep the planks up. And they had one small but strong boy carefully rolling the “fuel drum” across.
I think they’re going to make…uh, oh…
What followed wasn’t really the fault of Jorge Rodrigues, the boy rolling the drum. Rather, it was a combination of things. In the first place, even with five boys on one plank and four on the other, the weight of drum and boy combined introduced a certain amount of vibration. That stretched the rope. Then there was the rise where one plank lay atop the other. Getting the drum over that induced more vibration to the planks, drove the short plank a little farther away, and further loosened the rope. Then the drum hit the rope, nudging it just a bit, and bouncing back.
All of that would have been survivable. But the rope was already very near the edge of the lower plank…
“Oh…SHIT!” cried a dozen cadets as the two spanning planks were disconnected, and all the weight of both boy and drum rested on the near one, which had just a little bit too little weight holding its near side down.
“MORE DEMERITS THAN YOU PEOPLE CAN COUNT TO!”
Ham felt himself and the other four boys with him lift up. Two boys fell off almost immediately. Ham and the other two picked up speed…upward.
Meanwhile, Jorge fell forward, smashing his belly on the drum and his face on the far plank. Blood burst from the boy’s mouth as hard teeth penetrated soft lip. Stunned, he rolled off to one side with the heavy drum following him.
Ham, standing at the very edge of the longer plank, had more velocity that the others. He was thrown, arms and legs splayed, forward into the stream. It was a belly flop, stunning and painful, both. Arms wrapping around his midsection, Ham began to sink. He came to his senses when his face brushed the cold, painted metal of the drum.
Jorge, he thought, then began frantically feeling around for his friend. He thought the back of his hand brushed clothing once, but before he could twist it to make a grab it had passed.
Downstream…downstream…he must be floating downstream. I can’t see shit in this crap. He began paddling furiously in the direction he thought Jorge must have be swept. Then, suddenly, Ham felt something grab the back of his shirt. He was hauled back and upward faster than he could even form the thought to break away. Just as suddenly, he was out of the water and into the light and air. Blinking the muddy water from his eyes, he saw Centurion Cruz holding Jorge above the water by the scruff of his collar. Jorge seemed disoriented, but otherwise fine. Miro was wading in, too, to take control of Jorge away from the centurion.
He must be fine, was Ham’s thought, else Cruz wouldn’t be laughing.
* * *
A soaking and muddy Ham sat with his back to a tree and his arms wrapped around his knees. Failure. Miserable failure. Everyone’s gonna hate me. Why? Why? Why? With each “why” he slammed his head back against the tree.
Unaccountably, when Miro came walking by from his after action review with the centurion, he was smiling broadly. Miro sat down beside Ham and said, “Your turn.”
“Fuck, what’s the point?” Ham asked. “We failed. My plan and I caused you to fail.”
“Oh, shut up, you snot,” Miro said, still smiling. “The centurion said the objective isn’t really getting the drum over. It’s all about planning and execution, leadership and what he called ‘troop leading procedures.’ He said I passed and that we ‘done pretty good for a bunch of runny nosed kids.’”
“No shit?” Ham asked, looking up at last from his blue funk.
“No shit,” Miro said. “Now go take your beating because, pass or not, we must have our daily beating.”
* * *
Ham reported, then took a seat as directed. He didn’t wait for Cruz to say a word, but said immediately, “You planned it that way, Centurion.”
“Not exactly,” Cruz corrected. “I—silly me—really thought your plan was going to work. Not sure why it didn’t.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Ham said. “You planned for me to make a friend by assisting someone to pass.”
The centurion smiled, slyly. “Just figuring that out, are you? And there I thought you were a bright boy. I guess…”
“Oh, come on, Centurion.”
“Okay, son. Here’s the deal. You’re going to be the assistant for a plurality of the problems your section will face. Not a majority, just a plurality. Not only will it teach you some valuable humility, but it will make your squad mates very dependent on you.
“And no, before you ask, I will not be passing anyone just to make you look good. I expect you to make them look good.
“Speaking of which, since a) I need an excuse to make you assistant so often and b) your section did, after all, fail to get the drum over the creek, you are a failure for this task Cadet Carrera. Sucks, doesn’t it?”
As a visibly shrunken Hamilcar slunk away from Cruz’s field office, the centurion thought, I didn’t tell your old man I had a trick to help you along. He needed the moral space. That, and to let someone else decide, anyway. He’s always been too close to the problem. And that’s my trick. ’Course, after that, it’s up to you, boy. They’ll need you, each in his turn, but only if you prove that you can help them.