NOVEL NEXT Chapter 35: Important People Have Their ways
Their guide left them at the portal of wood-patterned plastic, his task completed, and upon their depressing the doorbell the double-doors swung open inward to reveal a plump, rather zaftig maid dressed in gray pleated wide-pants and a navy-colored blouse that was full to bursting. Pedicured toe-nails peeked out from beneath her hems, the vibrant crimsons contrasting like drops of blood against the bleached-white of her faux-fur-bottomed slippers.
The interior hallway was awash in earthy, daylight colors that enhanced the aptness of the blonde-streaked hair bunned up neatly behind the maid's head, and her wide, not unattractive features retained that upper-class somnolence Marja knew too well. She scrutinized Marja, the maid, passing her eyes from Marja's messy, dark-brown strands down across her bulbous chest-piece and homing in on Marja's boots with quite apparent distaste.
"I… um… came from work," Marja volunteered sheepishly, then berated herself internally for her stammer. Would it be taken for a show of timidity? 'I'm a Mentzer. I'm the fuckin' Deputy Marshal goddamit,' she thought angrily to herself.
"Please remove your… whatever that is," the maid pointed, her words seasoned with a lightly accented Common, her eyelids drooping halfway across her pupils. She wrinkled her upturned nose as if she were looking at a bumpkin; then, placing her dark-skinned palm face-down upon an adjacent door fashioned of coal-black thermoplastic, she added: "you can use this here closet. No stripping in the hallways."
Jirani laughed loudly and pushed past Marja, removing his shoes with his heels and making his way down the slatted hardwood floor of the hallway without waiting for the maid's invitation, his footsteps so light they made nary a sound upon those rectangular tessellations.
Marja responded with what she hoped would be interpreted as a stern nod, her cheeks burning (With embarrassment? Anger? Indignation? Who knew anymore?) for the umpteenth time that day.
Now secreted into the closet it took her several minutes to wrangle herself out of her exosuit, and once it became clear to her that the smell wafting off of her body would only serve to make whatever meeting she had been invited to attend unbearably awkward, she peeked out the cramped space to request of the maid, if she would be so kind, a fresh set of clothes.
What she received from the haughty Saltillan was a raincoat splash-painted with vibrant yellow hues. It was the only thing they had available at the moment, it was explained, because the entire wardrobe had been sent for the weekly efficiency-drive consolidated laundering. Somehow Marja didn't find it very likely that a household as wealthy as this depended for their laundry on the city's public laundry service, nor was it very likely that such a household would be beholden to the same resource-rationing constraints all other Saltillans were obliged to follow.
She took the raincoat, if only because it was not her place to make a scene, and closed the door. Then she retrieved Hobbes, her gleaming Incunabulum, from her exosuit's front-pouch. She opened Hobbes and scanned her Increment and first Etching:
Because Marja Mentzer desires to travel beyond the limits of what can be grasped, she may perceive interstitial shifts in dimensionality.
Marja Mentzer's multi-dimensional perception permits the connection of disparate points in spacetime.
Good. She was still Marja Mentzer. Her heartbeat slowed and an anger she had anyway not clearly felt dissipated with the onset of calm. It was what her mother had taught her to do whenever she felt anxious: when caught up in doubt, look in your Incunabulum. The confirmation is there—you're still you.
She closed Hobbes, gave it a kiss (this, her mother had never taught her to do), then secreted it into her inner-suit's front-pouch. She pulled the yellow-and-white raincoat over her body, hoping that it would mask most of the odor.
She exited the closet feeling ridiculous and deliberately refrained from glancing at the maid. She brushed past the plump woman and went on down the hallway; the hardwood flooring thumped against her green-socked soles, and she rounded the bend and found herself in a place that was capacious, airy and homely at the same time.
Ostentatious armchairs, sun-colored and backed with soft cushions, were arranged around a rectangular low-table made of glass, and upon that table were four teacups sporting varying levels of black liquid. Jirani was backlit by a tall, transomed window that caught the light of late-afternoon and gleamed bright enough that Marja's eyes were forced into squints.
There were six men there, including Jirani, and her eyes widened in recognition of two familiar faces sitting adjacent to Jirani: gaunt-cheeked Marshal Phyllis Grimmersby and the gray-haired Mayor of Saltilla himself, Richard Grimmersby. The participants of that meeting were dressed in dark and collarless button-up silk shirts, and they had the air of people just coming off a good laughter's high; when Marja made her presence known by awkwardly standing at the mouth of that place, all of them save Jirani turned and gaped and got to their feet.
The man beside Jirani stepped around to the right of that convocation and made toward Marja, a golden chest-pin gleaming upon his chest. As he came closer she could see that the pin was fashioned into a circle within which was embossed a thick-trunked tree denuded of leaves, its empty branches splaying out upward and its dendritic roots reaching downwards.
She observed that man's face and, for some reason, thought that he was at least as old as Mayor Grimmersby, despite the jet-black hair and in spite of his youthful countenance—superficial and shallow and slightly narcissistic, smiling at her.
"You make quite an entrance," he said, offering a hand whose skin was soft and vibrant.
"Your… helper informed me that this was the only thing available," Marja sniffed, accepting the handshake and committing the faces around her to memory.
"Ha! Well, you look good in it anyway," Jirani said, smacking his knees and laughing raucously. Marja wondered what the old man was playing at.
"I'll have a word with her later," the man sighed. "I am Alan Grimmersby—please call me Alan," he said, and he turned to indicate the other Grimmersbys: "I think you've already met my relatives."
"... I have," Marja said, nodding at the Marshal and the Mayor and receiving from them polite nods in return.
"We also have Mr. Hughes and Mr. Jorges-Ross over there," Alan said, smiling so wide his teeth showed.
"Alan's just being a fruit," the man Alan had called 'Hughes' said, his wide forehead gouged with lines that split his skin into bunched rolls. "First-name-basis here only, Marja, I hope you will forgive our informality. You can call me Sen. Short for 'Cenian'. And Mr. Jorges-Ross here goes by Tenton, short for... 'Tenton'."
Tenton raised his hand but otherwise did not speak. His face was thin and it tapered to a pointed chin, making a papaya of his face's side profile. His eyes were sharp and intelligent and when he stared at Marja it felt to her like he was parsing every one of her pores for information.
"Please, take a seat. Any will do," Alan gestured to the seats behind him.
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Then, he called out: "Marsha," and the maid's snobbish face appeared around the bend of the hallway, "another two cups for our guests."
Our names sound similar.
"Yes, sir," the woman's head bobbed and quickly retracted, but not before she shot Marja a dirty look which felt more than merely classist. Marja couldn't put her finger on what exactly it was meant to express, the look.
Forcing that trivial thing out of her mind, Marja took her seat beside Tenton, diagonally across from Marshal Phyllis Grimmersby. She sank into the cushion—it was very comfortable indeed.
"I do apologize for requesting your attendance on such short notice—" Alan began.
"You got us immediately as we came in, Alan," Jirani interjected, chortling in his deep baritone voice and causing Alan to grin sheepishly. "Maybe you could've given us time to shower, at least."
"—I really do apologize, but we had to have the meeting ASAP. I should mention that War Apparatchik Saul Goggins," Alan glanced at Jirani, "Saul was just here earlier and would have wanted to speak with you, but was called away to Jegorich to attend an Emergency Council respecting the recent Chimerae retreat from Arroyo."
"... So, the Major-General Goggins who will submit the Allied Forces' status report tomorrow, he's related," Marja said. By now it was clear to her that government positions in the Protectorate tended to be family affairs.
"Naturally," Mayor Richard Grimmersby said, smiling avuncularly.
"Anyway you should look out for his ceiver-message, I'm sure he'll contact you as soon as he can. So that leaves us," Alan said, pressing the tip of his thumb into the tip of his forefinger and using this strange arrangement of his hand to reference the others. "Let me introduce what we do. You are already familiar with Dick and Phyllis. Tenton is Home Affairs Underapparatchik, and Sen there assists me as Intelligence Underapparatchik—he runs the Saltillan Department of Intelligence. As for myself, I serve the Protectorate in the role of Intelligence Apparatchik and I head the Intelligence Bureau based in Jegorich."
The Intelligence Apparatchik. This man probably knows more about the Democracy than any other Desertian. He must have been the one to call us here.
Jirani… he's looking at me. Is he intending that I should take the lead in this meeting? This old man…
"... Alan, if I may," Marja began. "There is a Jegorichian Department of Intelligence, then, and as you are the Intelligence Apparatchik, technically Sen's counterpart in Jegorich—the Jegorich Intelligence Underapparatchik—reports to you?"
Marja observed the corner of Jirani's eye twitch, and she knew he was thinking something. 'What the hell is it now?' she thought. Alan fingered his clean-shaven chin for several seconds, glancing at Jirani and then returning his gaze to Marja, his fine brows furrowing deep troughs, and all of a sudden his youthful features seemed to exude wisdom and age.
Then his expression brightened, and all trace of senescence disappeared: "Technically. Technically. The Jegorich Intelligence Underapparatchik is, obviously, Jegorichian, while I am Saltillan—oh, what I would give to be able to explain clearly... But first, I think we must take a bird's eye view of the situation before we can get to our discussion. You are familiar with the divide between Saltilla and Jegorich?"
"I was not properly advised on the finer details beyond the fact that Jegorich is the capital and Saltilla is the Protectorate's economic hub," Marja met the Marshal's gaze, and she saw that thin lower-lip curl inward so that the tubercle was hidden, "but after all that we have witnessed between the officers of the Jegorichian and Saltillan Divisions… I can say for sure that there is hostility bounded along ethnic lines."
"That's an understatement," Jirani interjected, his eyes never leaving Marja's. All attention shifted to him, but he would not continue speaking.
Catching onto the hint, Marja continued: "The hostility was quite marked, and it was a primary factor which contributed to the complete decimation of the Jegorich First Brigade, as well as a significant proportion of the TAF First. If I may explain?"
"Go ahead," Alan said, leaning forward.
"You see, earlier, there had been threats of violence exchanged between Colonel Paulson of the Saltilla Fifth and that one from Jegorich First, LTC Brexar. After some cursory investigation I believe the nub of that dispute originally related to a formal complaint LTC Brexar intended to put in regarding the abuse of the compulsion matrix by one of his own officers—you can see how I was initially confused as to why Colonel Paulson would take issue. That was until I saw that LTC Brexar had itemized, within the complaint, multiple instances of compulsion matrix abuses by Colonel Paulson himself."
A silence, semi-awkward, suffused the room. Marja wondered if they were looking at her raincoat. The maid, Marsha, made her entrance and, keeping her eyes lowered, placed two steaming mugs onto the glass surface of the low-table. The space was filled with the faint and calming scent of bergamot. The silence was still persisting when Marsha disappeared beyond the bend in the hallway.
"But it wasn't just a little bit of career politics, was it?" Jirani prodded.
Marja blinked several times in quick succession, then continued, suddenly realizing she hadn't yet gotten to the point: "... as had already been conveyed by our runner to the Marshal… Phyllis," she corrected herself when she saw the Marshal force a painful smile, "this culminated in a public argument between Brexar and Paulson, which occurred in the command line tent during a routine pow-wow, on or about hour thirty-four of the LR operation. This was before Captain Crowley's unauthorized op. Long story short, during the course of the argument Colonel Bincollan of Jegorich First started calling for Paulson's court-martial, which, in turn, dragged the other Saltillan colonels into the dispute. Colonel Brown of Saltilla Third went so far as to threaten firing the Schwerers upon the Jegorichians, and Colonel Bincollan responded by saying that he would bomb the shit out of the Saltillans."
"The point," Jirani said, meeting Phyllis' gaze, "is that you guys do not have any practicable working relationship with the Jegorichians. Forgive me for not thinking it an accident that Captain Crowley somehow managed to muster the Jegorich First for his rogue 'chasedown op'."
The Mayor, Richard, cleared his throat loudly, blunting the force of Jirani's implication. "It is probably better that you discuss the finer details with Saul. You appreciate most of us here don't have all the details of your operation… but of course, listening to your recount, I can't say that's anything less usual than what we have experienced," Richard said, nodding sagely to himself. "Our relationship with the Jegorichians tends to be inflammatory."
"… You can see why we did not dispatch a general to assist you with command line functions. The presence of a Saltillan general would invariably be seen as inherently prejudiced toward the Jegorichians," Phyllis added.
"Oh, come on. It was blindingly obvious that that Pilix-Crowley op was planned. Planned by someone here, or maybe all of you together, planned in part or as a whole" Jirani scoffed. "I can't say Crowley's motivations are a mystery—he's money-minded and willing to be corrupt for it. What I don't know is how you got to that Jegorichian, LTC Pilix, and got him to fuck over his own fellows for Crowley's unauthorized Continue Mission."
"Look here, Jirani," Phyllis stressed the syllables of Jirani's name, the forced smile taut and uncomfortable on his face, "are you implying we disrupted an ongoing operation? It's pretty convenient for you to suddenly label whatever happened with Captain Crowley of the Tellus Armed Forces 'unauthorized', isn't it? You're throwing around a serious charge without the evidence to—"
"Hold on a moment, Phyllis, I think we might be getting ahead of ourselves here," Sen interjected. By his soft and conciliatory tone Marja knew he was playing the mediator, although she could not be sure how much of it was real and how much of it was affected. "I don't understand Jirani to be making any accusations. He simply wants to understand," Sen asserted. "Jirani, I stress that none of us—none of us here—have breached any law or rule of conduct."
'So, it was the War Apparatchik then,' thought Marja, carefully parsing the Saltillan Intelligence Underapparatchik's words.
Sen continued: "As for LTC Pilix, I am sure he must have cut a deal that was beneficial to him, personally, and that this must have informed his decision to join Captain Crowley's unauthorized operation. We cannot rule out the possibility that Captain Crowley agreed to share with LTC Pilix a portion of the merits that would accrue from the operation, had it been successful."