Someone stepped through the door, and Voker's secretary looked up from his computer screen. The woman who'd entered was younger than he'd expected. In her early or mid-twenties, she was tall, honey blonde, and athletic looking—overall quite attractive. Her gaze was direct without being aggressive.
He stood up.
"I'm Tain Faronya," she said. "From Central News."
"Of course, Ms. Faronya. I'll tell Colonel Voker you're here." He bent, touched a key on his communicator. "Colonel, Ms. Tain Faronya is here to see you."
Voker's voice answered through his ear piece. "He'll see you now," the man said, and stepping to Voker's door, opened it. The young woman walked past him, smelling faintly of bath soap.
Tain heard the door close quietly behind her. Her gaze took in the colonel's office without conspicuously scanning. It was orderly in the military manner, but more personal than she'd expected. Shelves held books, some with bright covers, and on a small table, a fringed cloth was spread. Indigo flowers bushed out of a joma mug on his desk.
The uniformed colonel had gotten to his feet. He was a bit less than average height. His stubbly hair was gray, his face abundantly but not harshly lined. He was older, a lot older, than she'd expected, but he stood straight, his gray eyes calm and intelligent.
"Colonel Voker?" she said.
She's athletic all right, Voker thought. Somehow though, he hadn't expected her to be so good looking. "That's right. I saw you cross from the floater pad. What did you think of our reservation, flying over it?"
"If it started where the pilot told me," she said drily, "it's very big."
His use of our had offended, Voker realized, and her tone of voice suggested that the place was too big, a misuse of land. One of the new generation of journalists, he decided, that sometimes felt critical of government; sometimes even expressed that criticism. "It has to be big," he said, also drily. "It's an important field location for training officers, or was till we got it. They held major maneuvers here."
"Where are your soldiers?"
"They're out on a regimental exercise under their trainee officers, an exercise covering about thirty square miles of woods. They need experience in coordinated large-unit movements in forest, where the companies can't see each other and their regimental officers can't see any of them. Coordination is by radio and mapbooks."
"Why aren't you with them?"
"I'm a planner and administrator, Ms. Faronya. Their field training is supervised by a T'swa cadre under Colonel Dak-So. The main reason I'm here at all is that the T'swa aren't used to training young men of cultures and customs other than their own. And they're not familiar with our government and law. I am, and I'm also familiar with the T'swa; I was the army's liaison with them during the Kettle War. Beyond that, for a long time I was an advocate of this type of military unit, when almost no one else was. All of which the Crown knew. So when this job came up, they called me out of retirement and gave it to me."
He'd mentioned the Crown not only for effect, but also because the Crown was a central part of the truth behind the regiment. "Let me show you around the compound," he offered. "A barracks, a kitchen . . . These young men train extremely hard, and eat accordingly."
So he's a changer, she thought as they left his office, and realized then that her initial disapproval of him was really disapproval of his generation—a generation like hundreds before it which had refused change. She didn't, of course, know the reason for that.
She'd done an article on the army the previous summer for the Central News weekly magazine, spending two or three days at each of three army bases. Which she supposed had something to do with her getting this assignment. She'd never experienced anything more conservative than the army command there, nor had so little cooperation. Her interest in coming here had grown out of her editor's comment that this regiment was supposedly something quite different.
They talked as they walked, and her skepticism lost its edge. Voker seemed genuinely interested in her assignment, and answered her questions openly, or seemed to. These youths had been misfits, he told her, misfits in their schools and communities, in trouble for poor concentration in class, and for fighting. Here their behavior had become exemplary, their learning ability high.
"Colonel," she said, "you sound like a public relations officer. I'm afraid I'll need to observe them myself before I'll believe it."
Voker laughed. "Of course. That's why you're here, I presume. Otherwise you could have prepared your article by interviewing me over the comm."
Until evening though, the only trainees she saw were a few walking from their barracks to the Main Building. Colonel Voker said they were on their way to do psychological drills, to develop the calmness of the T'swa. She recorded his saying it, of course, but it didn't interest her. She'd been poorly impressed with the psychology courses she'd had at the university. To her, psychologists had too often been apologists for the status quo.
The messhall she looked in on did impress her. Three cheerful, well-fed cooks on loan from the army were beginning preparations for supper, helped by four flunkies also on loan. The flunkies, Voker told her, were misfits of a different kind, out here to separate them from liquor. They kept trying to make their own, but their various fermenting mashes kept getting found and confiscated.
The barracks were—barracks, orderly and clean.
She got Voker's written permission to eat with the troops, and that evening was taken to A Company's messhall. The first sergeant spoke with the mess sergeant, who set out tableware for her at the table assigned to 1st Squad, 2nd Platoon. Somewhere outside a klaxon sounded. Trainees started filing in, took sectioned trays, and were served by the kitchen crew. The mess sergeant inserted her into the line, and she went with the flow, startled at the size of the servings she was given—that all were given. The trainees looked too lean and hard to have been eating so much, and she wondered if the quantity of food was a ploy to impress her.
There was little talking at table; the trainees ate with dedication and apparent enjoyment. The one on her right was the best-looking youth she thought she'd ever seen: tall, tan, and muscular, his cropped brown hair showing the beginnings of curls. The name above his shirt pocket was Alsnor, obviously a last name, but it would have to do. "Excuse me, Alsnor," she said. "Is there a rule against talking at the table?"
He'd deliberately not been looking at her; he hadn't wanted to make her ill at ease. Now he did look. "Against talking needlessly, yes. If you want the salt though, or some joma, just ask."
She smiled. She wasn't above using her looks to get cooperation. "I'm with Central News. May I interview you after supper?"
"Me?" For just a moment he looked flustered, then grinned, showing strong white teeth. "Sure. I'll meet you outside after supper." Then he returned his attention to the food. Others at the table glanced at her now, also grinning, and suddenly she was self-conscious. Possibly even blushing; she hoped not.
She left first. Alsnor had emptied his tray before she had, but had gone for seconds. When he came out, he smiled without grinning. "Would you like to walk?" he asked.
"After a meal like that," she answered, "I need to walk."
He led off, sauntering across thick grass, through the long shade of frequent stately trees. Tain had her recorder on. "Where are you from?" she asked.
He told her, and as they talked, his troubled childhood and troublesome adolescence came out. She was surprised to learn that he was only eighteen. They passed the large swimming pool where a dozen trainees already cavorted, lean and muscular, ignoring the ancient warning to wait an hour, or two hours, after eating. The pool, she judged, was about two hundred feet long and half as wide.
"I'm surprised the army built such a nice pool here. Or was it intended for officer trainees?"
Jerym laughed. "Would you like to know how we got it?"
Eyebrows raised at his tone, she said she would, and he told her the story of 3rd Platoon, F Company: of the mugging of Pitter Mellis, the arson, the vandalism, and the hard core troublemakers of the detention section, who'd dug the pool with sledge hammers and chisels in the middle of bitter winter nights.
She stopped, looked hard at him. "You're joking."
Jerym shook his head. "See this?" he said, and pointed. His left eyebrow was bisected lengthways by a scar. "Our first night here, 2nd Platoon had a big brawl with 1st Platoon. That's where I got it." He laughed. "Anyone but the T'swa, the T'swa and Voker, would have sent us all back where we came from. Prison fodder, that's what we were. But they had faith in us, faith and patience, besides which they could whip any of us. Our 400 T'swa could have whipped all 2,000 of us at once, no problem. Colonel Voker fought the guy with the reputation of being the toughest in the regiment, Coyn Carrmak, and beat him easily."
"Colonel Voker did?!"
Jerym nodded. "That was last fall. He couldn't do it now of course, considering what we've learned."
That finished the interview; she excused herself and left. Despite the qualifications Jerym had added to his story about Voker, it seemed to Tain that he'd been lying to her all along. And she resented being made a fool of.
But afterward, alone in bed, she imaged his face, his smile, his keen friendly eyes and pleasant voice. His large strong hands . . . And decided that the rest of what he'd told her had probably been true—the part before the story about Voker. She'd get a better idea when she interviewed more of the trainees.
Jerym Alsnor had spent most of the evening at lectures: one on the use of diversions, the other on the dangers of bypassing subordinate commanders. He'd hardly thought of the woman journalist.
But that night he dreamed of her, her violet-blue eyes, her lips—her long legs. And woke up with heart thuttering, face hot . . .
Tunis but she was pretty! Even beautiful. He wondered if she'd dreamt of him. He hoped so.