…
The uniformed man was walking faster and angrier than one would think possible among the lush trees, rolling lawns and cheery brooks of the recreation commons at Gaia's Landing. He got more hurried, but also happier, when he saw the striking woman waiting for him under a huge birch tree. She made a mock salute and shouted "Welcome, officer, sir!".
"Oh, quit it, Annika", Dieter answered and embraced her, politician's outfit meeting that of a military man.
"Seriously, look what they make me wear", Dieter said. "But that's beside the point. The thing that bothers me is that I suddenly need a military rank to read 'highly classified documents'. I need permission from the military people to read my own reports!"
"You're so handsome in a uniform", Annika laughed. "Just seeing you makes me want to volunteer."
Dieter laughed too.
"It's good to see you, mad woman", he said warmly. "We're lucky to be able to see each other as professionals."
"Of course", Annika said, suddenly looking very serious.
"Mix work with pleasure, so to speak."
"You're not fooling anyone, you know."
"I know. I told some people at the complex that I was going to see you to brief you today and they have been making crude jokes about it ever since. 'Hey, Jack, come to my office and I'll brief you.' 'Sorry, John, I'm straight.' That sort of thing. Anyway, one thing I've actually been wanting to ask you as a professional is if you know what the Lady really thinks of all this."
"The war?", Annika asked. "Well, the original orders came straight from her. Nobody was consulted."
"Really?"
"Yes, really. I remember her message word by word: 'The Spartans are obviously terrified. Conquer their bases southeast of Freshwater Sea. That should scare them into submission. The governor has free hands as to how it's done. Lady Deirdre Skye.'"
"That's... short."
"Very short, indeed, and very unlike Deirdre. And it arrived almost immediately after that brood trainer had been reported dead."
"That Lindly person? Do you think this could be personal? Would the Lady let her feelings influence the decision to go to war."
"To be honest, I don't know. It doesn't fit her usual behavior, but it's always hard to tell with her. She's very... distant."
"Distant, that's exactly the word for it! She called me in the other day. Wanted to know if her generals are lying to her to keep her calm."
"She did?! Has she given them reason not to trust her?"
"Not that I know of. But if this war is personal, she might have. Was she close to Lindly?"
"I know that Lindly worked closely to Deirdre, what with the brood training and all."
A thought struck Dieter.
"Were they lovers?"
"No. Not that I know of. In fact, if they were, it's the best kept secret in all Gaia. People like you would have known, for example."
"Probably. But Deirdre is the one person who might be able to keep a secret like that from me. Anyway, I've been thinking that both me and Michel have been focusing too much on the peripheral parts of Gaia, neglecting the centre."
"That's a shame. I know how fond you are of palace conspiracies..."
"Yeah", Dieter mumbled, lost in thought. Then he shrugged and said "Look at us! We've hardly seen each other since the war began and here we are talking about work!"
"That's who we are. What do normal people talk about these days?"
"Well, mostly the war."
"We're perfectly normal, then."
"I am normal, you are perfect."
"Oooh, that's smooth talk, Mr. Propagandist."
"I mean it", Dieter smiled.
And he did. He remembered when he was a young, promising executive arriving at Gaia's Landing for the first time and meeting the slightly older Talent who'd been given the task of showing him around and teaching him some of the workings of Gaian administration. Since the Talent Location Program was still new, Annika was the first confirmed Talent Dieter had ever spoken to, that he knew of. He was overwhelmed with the impact she made on him and had started to think that Talents really might be the next step in human evolution. She always seemed to be able to stay in tune with his thoughts (and a little ahead of them), getting positive feedback from her made him feel high with pride - and just spending time with her made him feel as if some unknown god had performed a miracle just for him. It wasn't until she met him at a social gathering and, somewhat nervously, confessed that she had similar feelings towards him that he understood that it wasn't a matter of Talents or non-Talents, but a different miracle altogether: Love.
His memories mingled with his feelings in the present and made him look at the Rec Commons with fresh eyes: at the students helping each other out with their work, the children playing, the loving couples and all this taking place among the trees, in a small bubble of perfectly tuned Earth, with state of the art technology invisibly maintaining an environment that the human race had been tuned to by tens of thousands of years of evolution.
"This is what we are for", Dieter said, extending his arm to take in the surroundings. "We always talk about what we are against, but this is what we are for. We are not at war with nature, but we bend it slightly to fit us, to make us happy, to give the monkey what it needs to be happy through nature and the angel what it needs to be stimulated by technology and in between we find ourselves being humans. That's what being Gaian is all about, not being against pollution, but being for humanity, including the environment human beings need to stay happy! We should be telling this to the other factions! They would have to listen to that!"
"They would listen, but what would they hear?", Annika said. "The Morganites poison yet another river to be able to drown themselves in useless gadgets and they call this 'creativity', even 'freedom'. In the Hive people dressed in coveralls work their hands bloody for the sake of their leader, and they call this 'equality'. And the Welcoming Ceremony is both the most dignified and the most well-documented ritual on Planet and still the other factions call it 'dancing naked through the trees'."
"I guess you're right. The Morganites only come to the ceremony because they want to sell pictures of naked skin, the Peacekeepers just want a chance to say 'look at the Gaians, they are just like us only stark crazy' and I don't want to know what the Believers make of it."
"I didn't mean to be cynical, love. When the war is over perhaps we should shift the focus of our communication. Somewhat less threats, somewhat more promises, maybe."
Dieter sighed. "If the war ever ends."
"The war is going well. The eastern governor is doing a great job. It will end in victory for us. I'm more worried about what the war will have done to us by then. Have you noticed people getting more aggressive? Not just towards Spartans, I mean, but towards each other."
"I have seen signs of it. Theoretically, though, being hateful of our enemies should be almost as bad to a Good Gaian."
"Yes, of course." It was Annika's time to sigh. "We know so little about war. To the Spartans it's a fact of life, something their society is always preparing for. We, on the other hand, are constantly trying to avoid it, to suppress anything that we feel resemble it, and that's why we are moving in the dark now. What is war to a society? What does it do to it? What is war, really? We don't know. Do you think we'll ever really learn what war is?"
"Well, it's been my job to make us stay Gaian through the war. Frankly, I'm more worried that it will never end. And have you thought about what will happen to those Spartan bases? Once the war is over we'll have what amounts to a huge ethnic minority in Gaian territory."
"They will love their freedom! They will learn to be Gaians."
"Yes, and guess who'll be enrolled as their teacher? No time for us, just more work, even after the war's ended."
Annika smiled again. "Oh, quit your whining, soldier. You know you love your job. And there will be time. We don't have to rush through short lives like our ancestors on Earth. There is plenty of time, Dieter."
Dieter smiled back, but it was her smile, not her words, that convinced him.
"And now", Annika continued, taking his hand and leading towards one of the privacy areas, "I don't think I've been adequately briefed lately."
For a while they managed to forget the war.
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