Author's Note: The setting of this story deviates from both manga and anime canon in that it places the offices of Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes in the same building while Falman is working for the former and Sheska for the latter. That never happened ... but if it had, I think this might have been the result ...
This story is for CanaryNoir, master of Amestrian office politics.
Summer had just begun its advance into Central, unfurling leaves on the cherry trees like ensigns over a Remembrance Day parade. The ancients had named this season the time when kings go out to war, Falman knew, but improvements in both military and agricultural technology had long ago rendered that definition obsolete. To him and to his colleagues, the last days of spring were simply the time when Lieutenant Hawkeye takes her annual leave.
They had survived the first week of her absence in reasonably good order. By rule, as the ranking junior officer, Havoc filled in as office manager, but in practice, everything landed on Falman's desk while the others debated where the lieutenant might have gone. Opinion currently favored a resort in the northwestern mountains. Havoc had argued lyrically for the Creatan shore (famed for its white sands and teal firths) until Breda had pointed out that their southern neighbor's recently tightened visa restrictions barred anyone in the Amestrian military from vacationing there. But the image of Riza Hawkeye in a swimsuit was too compelling to abandon, and eventually they'd agreed that she'd probably enjoy a few brisk laps around a mountain lake as much as a lazy afternoon tanning under the Creatan sun. Then Fuery brought word that she'd taken Black Hayate with her instead of boarding him at the base kennel. It was decided. A long morning swim, a leisurely afternoon hike, and dinner under the stars while the wind whispered in the aspens behind the lodge: what more could a girl and her dog ask of a holiday?
The discussion had since moved on, naturally, to the cut of the lieutenant's bathing dress. Fuery's sister was proving a fruitful source of intelligence on this topic, though they'd been unable to persuade him to invite her to the canteen to present her data firsthand. This morning Havoc had begun badgering the master-sergeant to borrow his sister's fashion magazines so they could examine the current modes themselves. Judging by the curtness of Fuery's refusals, however, Havoc had a tough campaign ahead of him.
Falman refused to let their ongoing exchange distract him. After six days without Hawkeye's expert handling, paperwork had begun to accumulate around the office like duff. Earlier in the week Colonel Mustang had signed off on a series of memos she'd ghostwritten for him before leaving -- a spasm of application which, given their superior's alchemical specialty, Falman couldn't help but think of as a controlled burn. Afterward, however, the colonel had disappeared on one of his increasingly expansive lunch hours, and Falman's IN tray was left to bear the weight of his inattention. (R.H.I.P., Breda was wont to mutter, even though everyone's breaks were much less scrupulously circumscribed with Havoc keeping the time sheets. While the cat's away, Falman mused,was surely the more appropriate proverb.)
Despite his inability to light a fire under his commanding officer, however, Falman still calculated that with the aid of some ingenious metafiling he could stave off disaster until Lieutenant Hawkeye returned. It helped that inbound message traffic had dropped precipitously: once notice of her departure had spread, most departments had reduced to a minimum their correspondence with the colonel, whose distaste for bureaucratic minutiae was as notorious as his lady-killing charm. Only Investigations had declined to cooperate -- in fact, not a watch passed now without Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes launching a barrage of eyes-only memos and classified files at Colonel Mustang. So far the colonel had avoided responding to any of them, pleading everything from inadequate security precautions to a blinding migraine, and Havoc continued to give good odds that Investigations would run out of paper before the Flame Alchemist ran out of excuses. Today, for example, he'd chosen to duck all contacts by hanging out the "Do Not Disturb" sign as soon as he'd arrived ("I'm not available, Falman: research. You know the drill. I have complete faith in your ability to screen unwanted callers"). The pattern of creases on what little paperwork Falman had received from Colonel Mustang's hands, however, suggested that his "research" was as likely to involve the Xingese art of paper folding as tactical pyrogenesis.
Lifting his blotter, Falman examined the rucked report he'd hoped to flatten beneath it and decided that it would have to be retyped so that he could file a legible set of carbons. He spent a few minutes persuading Breda to forge the colonel's signature -- a device of last resort, but neither man wanted to chance their chief's reaction to a do-over. Havoc's suggestion that they airmail the document over the transom was met with speaking silence. While the second lieutenant twitted his colleagues for their lack of humor, Falman uncovered his typewriter, ratcheted in the necessary paper-and-carbon sandwich, and began to type.
Three lines down the ink faded from black to pale gray to a near-metaphorical invisibility. Falman pried the ribbon off its spindles and chucked it into the wastebasket between his desk and Breda's; then he crossed to the supply closet and rifled it from top to bottom. Perhaps sensing Colonel Mustang's desire to create a paperless office, the box of spare ribbons had migrated to the rear of the lowest shelf and was filmed with a quarter-inch of dust. Falman blew it clear and emerged from the closet, coughing, to find himself alone in the workroom.
He blinked, then swore under his breath as a diffident knock sounded on the office door. Before he could duck back into hiding, the panel swung open and a dark-haired young woman peered into the room, her gaze shifting anxiously behind her square glasses. "Excuse me -- oh, Warrant Officer Falman!" she said, brightening. "Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes says he really must have this form signed ... is Colonel Mustang in?"
Sheska had joined the Investigations Department as a civilian contractor not long after Central Library's first branch had burned to the ground, taking with it the records of countless courts-martial. She had once been employed by that branch as a clerk; the scuttlebutt whispered that she was some sort of genius (or, less kindly, an idiot savant) who was reconstructing the incinerated case files from memory. Falman wasn't certain that even an idiot savant would be capable of that -- at the very least, it argued having spent far more time reading depositions, evidence reports and proceedings than seemed reasonable for a pretty girl. Then again, he didn't know Sheska well, and she was not the sort of person his colleagues paid much attention to, as a rule. The early-warning system Breda had arranged with the offices at either end of the hall permitted them to calibrate the level of busyness in the workroom according to the importance of an approaching visitor. A drop-dead-gorgeous secretary cleared desks faster than an impending audit, but an ordinary clerk was greeted with bent heads and scratching pencils. It was a testament to Investigations' advantage in the war of nerves, Falman reflected bitterly, that Sheska's advent had cleared the room.
Personally, he had nothing against the girl. She seemed intelligent, hard-working, loyal and conscientious -- all qualities he approved. But she was also disconcertingly earnest and, not to put too fine a point on it, gullible. She had confided shyly to Havoc (who had in turn informed everyone in the department) that she hoped her association with the military would allow her access to information about the alien spacecraft the war in Ishbal had really been fought to possess. She was the perfect proxy for Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes; Falman could only wonder why he hadn't sent her before.
"Which form, Ms. Sheska?" he asked, eliding a sarcastic now with some difficulty.
"Form AUW-6125," she answered, stepping over the threshold and removing a yellow flimsy from the manila folder she carried. "It's a request to expedite end-to-end metrics for parallel policy programming among department heads. If I could just have a moment of the colonel's time?"
End-to-end metrics? Falman took a steadying breath. "I'm afraid the colonel isn't available," he said, "but if you leave the paperwork with me, I'll see that it gets the proper endorsements." Eventually.
"Oh, no!" Sheska protested, then covered her mouth with the flimsy. "I mean, that's all right," she mumbled from behind its shield. "I can wait."
"I wouldn't want to trouble you -- " Falman began.
"It's no trouble!" Sheska tucked form AUW-6125 into the folder under her arm and glanced around the room. "I'll just borrow a chair ... "
Falman quickly interposed himself between Sheska and the workroom's lone visitor's seat, a hard, narrow steno chair specifically selected by Lieutenant Hawkeye to discourage loiterers. (Its utility was questionable: fellow-staffers had learned to perch on desks and the colonel's admirers were quite willing to sacrifice comfort for propinquity.) "The thing is, the colonel's schedule today is rather tight," he explained mendaciously. "It may be some while before he can attend to your request." Sheska's mouth opened, but the thought of what Colonel Mustang would say to anyone interrupting his morning to expedite parallel policy programming spurred Falman to override her. "There's no need for you to waste valuable time hanging about here," he went on. "In fact, I'm surprised the lieutenant-colonel didn't send this down by interoffice post."
Sheska shook her head. "He wanted it hand-delivered. We've been having some problems with the interoffice post -- important letters being delayed or lost." She lowered her voice. "Just between you and me, Mr. Falman, something very odd is going on in the mail room. When I went down the other day to speak to them about the missing items, they didn't seem concerned at all, and as I was leaving, I could swear I heard them snickering."
Falman wasn't surprised; Breda had friends in the mailroom. Still -- "I'm sure it had nothing to do with your complaint," he felt compelled to reassure her. "Just a bout of spring fever, probably."
"You'd think they'd have more pride in their work." Sheska brooded for a moment and Falman wondered whether he could twitch the folder out of her grip while she was lost in thought. He almost had his fingertips on it when she clutched it to her breast. Hastily he crossed his own arms, but she didn't appear to have noticed his ploy. "I suppose they hear a lot of complaints," she added.
"Indeed," Falman agreed. He held out a hand again, edging toward Sheska at the same time. If he could maneuver her to the door, he'd have the psychological advantage, if nothing else. "As I said, if you leave the request with me, I'll see that it's dealt with."
But Sheska stood her ground. "I know it's an imposition, Mr. Falman, but Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes said he needs this form signed by noon at the latest. He gave me the assignment himself right after the morning briefing. He said it was a matter of the utmost importance and --" her hands pinched the folder so tightly it began to bow around her thumbs -- "and that I should regard it in that light."
Falman frowned. "In what light?"
Sheska bit her lip. "In -- in light of its importance."
"Ms. Sheska -- "
"He was very emphatic!"
"Ms. Sheska," Falman repeated patiently, "exactly what did the lieutenant-colonel tell you?"
"He said ... " Sheska bent the folder into a right angle. "He said I should come back with my shield or on it."
Falman relaxed. "I'm sure that's merely a figure of speech."
"It's a quotation from Plutarch," she informed him. "But it's not just what he said, it's -- it's how he said it."
Her agitation seemed inexplicable. Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes was no martinet, but his mind doubled back on itself with the agility of a hunted fox. Perhaps Sheska, despite her nose for conspiracy, was too straightforward to follow his lead. "And how did he -- ?"
"He was holding my pay envelope," she admitted in a rush. "In his right hand. And -- and tapping it against his left palm. Rather like a riding crop," she added, using the file folder to demonstrate.
"I see." And he did, clearly, though it wasn't the lieutenant-colonel he envisioned, but a grizzled noncom in the motor pool at basic training. Private, get me a new set of spark plugs for this thing ...
He blinked to banish the image from his mind and Sheska followed suit. Only when a tear trickled down her cheek did he realize it hadn't been a contagious response. Horrified, he took an involuntary half-step backward. "Ms. Sheska?"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Falman," she said thickly. Clearing her throat, she pulled a bulky cloth rectangle from her sleeve and unfolded it into a square almost large enough to picnic on. "Please excuse me," she continued as she blotted her eyes. "I -- I know this is unprofessional."
Falman stifled an automatic and meaningless Not at all because weeping on duty was certainly unprofessional; the snickerers in the mail room would laugh themselves silly if this got out ... (Spark plugs for a diesel? Nah, the Second Cavalry cleaned us out last week and Supply says we'll get more when we get more.) But what else could he do? He couldn't pull rank on a superior officer and demand that he stop playing practical jokes on his staff. Sheska had her own handkerchief and he still didn't dare invite her to sit. If only she'd surrender the form, perhaps he could find some excuse to send her home to Investigations without it. (Tell you what, though, you ask Corporal Redman over with Two-Cav and maybe he can slip you a few. Tell him I sent you ...) "Ms. Sheska," he said, "perhaps if you -- "
"You see, I really, really need this job," she interrupted as if she hadn't heard him. "My mother -- " She broke off and blew her nose; then she crumpled the handkerchief and shoved it up her sleeve again, where it left a bulge Falman's fingers itched to smooth away. "They were right to fire me from the library for reading on duty, but here I have so much work to do that I'm not even tempted." She looked up at him, determination reddening her cheeks. "And everyone ... well, almost everyone ... that is, most people are so friendly and helpful that I truly want to do my best. It's not just about the money; it's about self-respect ... Mr. Falman?"
"Hmm?" Sergeant Hawkins sent you, eh? Well, I'd like to oblige, but I ain't got none to spare. Charlie Minkus up at the P/X might be able to put you in the way of a couple, though ...
"Mr. Falman?" Sheska fanned the form tentatively in front of his nose.
Falman started, surprised at how clearly he could picture the laugh lines around Corporal Redman's eyes now, when he hadn't noticed them at all then. "Yes, Ms. Sheska?"
She twisted the folder again; it was developing a decided crease. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to bore you with my personal ..." Her voice trailed off uncertainly.
"No, no, Ms. Sheska, my apologies," he replied with a quick bow. "I was just considering the Colonel's schedule and -- "
-- and remembering how many different offices and workshops and garages he'd visited that day, how many excuses he'd swallowed, how many straight-faced offers of help he'd accepted before it had dawned on him that he was being hazed. The noncoms never caught him off-guard again: he'd memorized the manuals and kept his head down and eventually another green one-striper had showed up to play the butt --
"-- and I realized I might have given you a mistaken impression," he said, ignoring the gooseflesh breaking out all over his body at the thought of what he was about to do. "Colonel Mustang isn't out of the office; he's just engaged in some, uh, necessary but tedious research. I wouldn't interrupt him for a minor issue, but since this is a priority request ... "
"Are you sure?"
Sheska's eyes searched his face, but Falman didn't hold his own in the department's poker games by counting cards. "Absolutely," he replied, taking her arm and steering her toward the colonel's office. A residual sense of loyalty (or possibly self-preservation) made him knock twice and pause just long enough to permit someone to pull his boots off the desk, should they happen to be resting there, before he threw open the door and announced, "Ms. Sheska to see you, sir."
Colonel Mustang glanced up with practiced acuity from the untidy assemblage of documents before him. If they had recently pillowed his heels, they betrayed no evidence of it. Avoiding his superior's gaze, Falman ushered Sheska over the threshold and retired immediately, closing the door on her Good morning, sir.
Even with the transom ajar, it was difficult to eavesdrop on conversations in the inner office. Falman made assurance double-sure by busying himself at the typewriter: between carriage returns, the staccato rattle of the keys obscured the occasional intelligible murmur leaking into the workroom. Without haste he retyped the report, paper-clipped it together with its carbons, and skimmed the whole onto Breda's chair. The muffled conference behind him continued, poppling soprano interspersed with fluent baritone like the wash of surf on a shingle. Falman sighed and spread his hands on his blotter.
After a moment, his forehead joined them.
Where the hell have you been all this time, Private Falman?
The doorjamb's snort of protest at the late spring humidity announced the end of Sheska's interview. She darted into the workroom, seeming at once flattered and flustered -- a typical feminine reaction to the colonel, Falman thought sourly as he snapped upright in his chair. "Mission accomplished, Ms. Sheska?" he inquired.
She stole a look at Mustang's door and scuttled over to Falman's desk. "I brought him the wrong copy," she whispered. "Oh, I feel so stupid!"
Falman's right hand closed around the memo spike beside the telephone. It was too late to pin his tongue to his palate, but he could still brain himself with the base -- except that suicide was a coward's expedient. "I'm sure it was an honest mistake," he said lamely.
"But I can't make mistakes like that -- not and interrupt him when, when -- oh dear." Her fingers tightened on the manila folder as a bemused half-smile bloomed and faded on her face. "And he was so gracious about it, too."
I'll bet he was, Falman thought.
"I'll just have to track down the original and make a new copy on green paper ... " Her eyes narrowed and he followed her puzzled gaze to his albinal knuckles. "Mr. Falman?"
Falman released the memo spike. Striking a superior officer was a court-martial offense. He had his career to think of. He had the colonel's goals to think of. "I beg your pardon," he apologized. "Green paper, of course, for ... "
"For signature and seal, yes. Yellow paper takes seal only." Sheska straightened, looking merely harassed once more. "There are so many procedures to remember -- it's as bad as keeping track of all the subplots in Ariosto."
"I'm sure," Falman agreed. "Don't worry, Ms. Sheska. Everyone makes mistakes now and -- "
The colonel's door ground open again. "Warrant Officer Falman," his voice lilted out, "a word, please."
Sheska grimaced sympathetically and tiptoed away. Falman rose, pulling his jacket straight, his gaze lingering briefly on the memo spike. "Coming, sir."
Colonel Mustang was standing at his window, hands clasped together in the small of his back, master of all he surveyed -- which, Falman reminded himself, was a small courtyard and the rear of facilities maintenance. As if in response to this deflating characterization, the colonel yawned, fogging the nearest pane with his breath, and then wiped it clean with his sleeve. While the glass gently squeaked, Falman scanned the room for clues. Sheska had donated nothing material to the chaos on the colonel's desk, but one stack of papers, perhaps disturbed by her precipitous exit, was in the process of collapsing. A leaf slipped to the floor as Falman watched, its margins filled with elaborate doodles, geometric shapes metamorphosing into floral designs and idealized female figures. Impressive. All alchemists were accurate draughtsmen -- their profession required it -- but the liveliness of those sketches bespoke a talent beyond draughtsmanship ...
Colonel Mustang cleared his throat and Falman corralled his wandering wits. The lines of the colonel's face were arranged in an expression of mild interest his subordinates had learned to dread, a variation on the guileless look every officer perfected at some point in his career. Its very blandness rendered innocent questions sinister -- the more innocent the question (How's the weather today, Private?), the greater the effect, dredging guilt from the depths of the cleanest conscience. Falman assumed a posture of wooden alertness usually associated with cigar-store Ishbalans and tried to breathe normally.
"Mr. Falman," the colonel began after a suitably nerve-rending pause, "your most recent physical was two months ago, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
Mustang strolled to his desk and dropped into his chair. "Passed with flying colors, as I recall," he went on, pulling a document from the nearest jumble and perusing it. (For all Falman knew, it could have been last week's memo announcing the commissary's summer hours, but he wouldn't have laid money on it. The colonel didn't hold his own in games of chance by bluffing.) "Have you developed a hearing problem since then?"
"Sir?"
"Or a neurological deficit?" The colonel's voice sharpened; Falman repressed a twitch. "I distinctly remember, Warrant Officer, informing you that I did not wish to be disturbed today."
"I remember that, too, sir," Falman admitted.
"And yet I just spent ten valuable minutes preventing Ms. Sheska from having a nervous breakdown in my private office." Colonel Mustang slapped the paper face-down onto his desk, a dramatic gesture marred only by the small avalanche of falling sheets it touched off. Disregarding their whispering flight, he demanded, "Care to explain yourself, Mr. Falman?"
No, sir, not particularly. "Ms. Sheska had a priority request from Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes, sir."
The colonel favored him with a look infused with all the condescension of which his patrician features were capable. "Mr. Falman. You've worked in Investigations. You know what Hughes is like. They're probably having a slow week upstairs." Mustang's eyes unfocused, as if contemplating a distant vision of hell; then he ran a hand through his hair and rubbed the nape of his neck. "He's pulling her chain so that she'll pull mine. He doesn't need my signature on that form."
"No, sir," Falman agreed, "but -- "
The colonel arched one brow beneath the rumpled contours of his bangs, daring his subordinate to continue. Falman hesitated, then went all in. "But she does. Sir."
The other brow rose to join its fellow; then both plummeted together. Falman held very still (pair of fours, spades and diamonds; jack and king of hearts; deuce of spades and nothing in the hole) and met the stare that weighed him for a long, long minute.
"Thank you, Warrant Officer," Colonel Mustang replied at last. "Dismissed."
"Sir." Falman pulled his heels together smartly and bowed himself out of the office.
He had no more than a few seconds to himself in the workroom before his colleagues filed in, armed with separate excuses for their common absence. Breda led the advance, hefting a cardboard box of supplies which he immediately began unloading into the closet. Havoc, in the van, tucked a half-smoked cigarette behind his ear and grinned ingratiatingly at Falman. Fuery brought up the rear, balancing a tray of coffee in one hand as he shut the door behind him with the other. Falman glowered at them out of sheer reflex -- that part of his mind not shouting I'm alive! I'm alive! in astonished accents was turning over the final moments of his conversation with the colonel like the components of a stripped engine and reassembling them into a new and more dangerous machine.
Fuery set a cup of coffee -- black, no sugar -- on Falman's blotter next to the memo spike. "Sorry, sir," he said. "We thought you'd be safe in the closet."
"Ah, come on, Fuery, lighten up," Havoc said, slapping him on the back so that the master-sergeant's glasses slipped down his nose. "The warrant officer's a big boy. He can handle one little file clerk, right?"
Ignoring Havoc, Fuery pushed his glasses up again and blinked at Falman. Falman said nothing, but he did drink the coffee, and the master-sergeant retreated, relieved, to his own desk. Breda emerged from the supply closet to pluck the typewritten papers from his chair. Drawing a deep breath through his nose (during which, Fuery always insisted, the heavy, grizzled lieutenant actually began to resemble the dapper colonel), he cracked his knuckles and dashed off an unremarkable facsimile of their commander's signature on the cover sheet. Then he laid the report with an apologetic grunt on the corner of Falman's desk.
Falman filed it silently. "With your shield or on it," eh? he thought as he closed the drawer. The ancients were correct to exclude the third option: the shame of cowardice was soul-destroying. The shame of ridicule, however, was simply irritating, a spur to self-mastery. Yes, sir; no, sir; three bags full, sir ...
He wondered if Sheska had ever learned that. Her handkerchief suggested not.
Damn it.
Half an hour later, as Falman was departing for lunch, Havoc caught his sleeve. "Hey, Falman?"
"Yes, Lieutenant?"
Havoc winked at him and dropped his voice to a Machiavellian murmur. "Take an extra fifteen minutes, okay? On the house."
Falman nodded, and the lieutenant, smirking, pinched his arm as he retired.
Falman spent ten of those extra minutes having a word with Breda's early-warning system. Though he had no wish to embroil the others in his affairs, he also felt he owed it to them to ... preserve them from dishonor. Yes. Whatever else they chose to do, his fellow-soldiers would not have the opportunity to throw down their shields so spiritlessly again today. I couldn't live with myself, otherwise. Heh. Humming the national anthem under his breath, Falman marched up the hallway to the office, where the sight of his overflowing IN tray quickly damped his mood. Field operations came and went, but the paperwork endured forever. "Has anyone seen the quarterly report on quantitative benchmarks?" he asked.
After a brief search, Breda located it leveling one of the filing cabinets. Fuery replaced it with fifty pages torn from the middle of the base phone directory and the office returned to work.
The afternoon rolled on like a heavily laden baggage train struggling toward the front. Falman attended half-heartedly to his benchmarks. Fuery wrestled with a statistical analysis of failures in the base's comm systems, consulting with Breda as the math became increasingly arcane. Havoc decamped for thirty minutes, reappeared looking complacent, and settled down at his desk to write what might have been a memo. Another round of coffee was procured and consumed, and Falman tried not to watch the clock.
Or the hall door.
Or ("Thank you, Warrant Officer ...") the colonel's door.
He was beginning to suspect that he'd left too much to chance -- relied too heavily on the human element. Mustang had taken a mere ninety-minute lunch, presaging an early departure. (He always claimed an appointment, but his cock-of-the-walk swagger as he decamped made doubters of them all.) Apart from Sheska's errand, Investigations hadn't let out a peep all day: not a call, not a delivery, nothing. Succumbing to temptation, Falman laid aside his pencil and discreetly checked his watch. 15:17. Almost four hours since his dressing-down, and the workroom remained a portrait of peaceful industry. Lieutenant Hawkeye would have been proud.
Falman ground his teeth.
Someone's knuckles tapped a hesitant tattoo on the door and the office, bar Falman, exchanged pleased glances, anticipating an unscheduled break. At this point in the day, a little time-wasting never came amiss -- and, unlike Lieutenant Hawkeye, Colonel Mustang wouldn't stoop to interrupting a staff gossip. Breda flung his arms over his head, listing back in his chair as he stretched; Fuery pushed aside his log tables; and Havoc flung the door wide with a cheerful, "C'mon in!"
Sheska stood on the threshold, a battered manila folder in her hands.
As she edged into the room, Falman carefully exhaled the breath he'd been holding. It wouldn't do to laugh, no matter how comical the dismay on his colleagues' faces. Their visitor would surely find it unsettling, and he had no wish to put her any further off her stride.
"Excuse me?" Sheska asked, sounding as if she didn't expect they would. "Mr. Falman, I hate to bother you again so soon, but -- oh, hello, Lieutenant. Lieutenants. Um, everybody."
To its credit, the office recovered its gravity almost at once. Havoc and Fuery hurried to answer Sheska's greeting with their own, while Breda waved and grunted, his chair creaking upright as he brought his elbows down on his blotter. He shot Falman a look as the others traded pleasantries, but it bounced off Falman's deadpan without leaving an impression. The warrant officer hadn't expected to conceal his perfidy; Havoc and Fuery, busy feigning politeness, would doubtless unriddle Sheska's unheralded arrival, too, as soon as they had a moment to consider it. Every soldier knew that the easiest way to take down a defensive position was from within.
"So, Ms. Sheska, what's the good word?" Havoc asked with a disarming grin. Poise recovered, he'd fallen back on Plan B: In the event that an undesirable extra-departmental agent breaches the workroom perimeter, feign compliance and ease him/her out as quickly as possible. The lieutenant leaned on his desk, casually blocking Sheska's path, and Falman frowned as she smiled. If Havoc managed to rout her before she declared her errand, Falman knew he'd never see her here again, and Breda's contacts in the mailroom would ensure that nothing further from her hand reached the colonel. Not to mention that I'll be sharing a kennel with Black Hayate for the next six months ...
But Sheska was nothing if not persistent. "I've got it," she said, proudly displaying the manila folder. "The correct version of form AUW-6125, I mean: on green paper. Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes said it would be all right if I submitted it by the end of the day, so if I could just have a minute of the colonel's time ... ?"
Her confidence dissipated as discomfort began to bleed through the office's facade of courtesy. Thanks to the early-warning system, they didn't have much practice carrying out Plan B, after all. "B-but -- " stuttered Fuery, just as Breda began uneasily, "Uh, the colonel's -- " and Havoc, suavely, "Ms. Sheska, I really think -- "
But she had given Falman his cue and he took it.
"Of course, Ms. Sheska," he said, raising his voice to cut through his colleagues' half-formed misdirections. "If you'd care to wait a moment?" He held out a hand.
Startled, Havoc twisted round to stare at him and Sheska stepped into the breach, passing the green flimsy to Falman as gingerly as if it were a live grenade. Well, he thought as he laid it sideways on his desk, this could still blow up in my face. Very deliberately, he folded the top corners to meet in the center, ironing in the creases with his ruler. Sheska let out a squeak and the office's disconcerted attention focused on Falman like sunlight through a convex lens. A second pair of inward folds, and a third -- he heard Breda hiss, Fuery gulp, and Havoc drop heavily into his chair -- and one last outward one to set the wings. Then he turned and, aiming with great care, sailed the paper airplane up and over the transom into Colonel Mustang's office.
The silence that followed was as ear-piercing as any explosion Falman had ever experienced.
He carried on annotating the first document that came to hand as the department gawked, first at him and then, when he refused to reciprocate, at Sheska, who shuffled her feet and became intensely interested in the grain of the floorboards. Nobody said a word, though Fuery's lips moved -- in unvoiced profanity, or maybe prayer.
Some little time passed. Falman began to sweat.
The tension broke with a sound from the inner office no louder than the honk of a chair leg across a linoleum floor. A warm breeze wafted out through the transom, carrying with it a green paper airplane whose design, Falman noted, was rather more aerodynamic than his own. The plane made a leisurely circuit of the room, descending on its final turn, and came to rest in the center of Falman's desk. He unfolded it, pleased with the steadiness of his fingers, and smoothed it out. "Signature and seal, as requested," he said. "Here you are, Ms. Sheska."
Sheska had grasped the crest rail of the visitor's chair for support when the colonel's missile buzzed her crown, fumbling her manila folder in the process. She bent now to retrieve it, red to the tips of her ears. Fuery pulled off his glasses and cleaned them on the corner of his jacket. Havoc's chin was down, his shoulders shaking. Breda turned a mutter of "Show-off!" into an unconvincing cough. Paying them no heed, Falman offered Sheska the form, and she promptly clapped it into her folder as if to prevent it from escaping.
"Um, well," she said, her eyes darting from the transom to Falman's impassive countenance to the variously nonplussed reactions of his colleagues and back to the transom. Falman observed with approval how she swallowed her questions; however eccentric the method, the mission had been accomplished, and that was all that mattered. "Well, thank you, Mr. Falman. I mean," she added as he raised a self-deprecating hand, "please thank the colonel for me."
"That's completely unnecessary," Falman assured her with utter sincerity.
Sheska shook her head, but retreated into the corridor without argument. Adverting to his report like a monk to his scripture, Falman began to erase his haphazard annotations. That, he promised himself, is the last time I stick my neck out for someone who isn't even in the service. Or his next physical would surely see him diagnosed with bleeding duodenal ulcers --
"Mr. Falman?'
Had he been writing, the lead would have snapped; as it was, the eraser skidded a few centimeters before Falman could lay his pencil down. "Yes, Ms. Sheska?"
To his astonishment, she beamed at him -- a cheerful, relaxed, uncomplicated expression that made her look, for a moment, drop-dead gorgeous. "Really, thank you very much!" she said.
Falman recovered his jaw and bowed slightly in his seat. "It was my pleasure," he answered.
Sheska waggled the others a triumphant farewell with her folder and withdrew.
As her heels tapped away down the hall, the transom above the colonel's door banged emphatically shut. The half-open mouths of Breda and Fuery followed suit as they hunched over their desks in neck-wrenching attitudes of diligence, while Havoc, characteristically, continued to snicker into his blotter. Falman obliterated the last of his dissimulative scribbles with a flourish and proceeded to subject the quantitative benchmarks to an appraisal so rigorous it bade fair to remodel the entire system.
Thoughtfully, he carboned Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes on the ensuing memo.
At 16:04, Colonel Mustang sallied forth from his office on a mission which, he informed his staff, would tie him up for the rest of the day. They received this news without audible comment (though Havoc's eloquent side-glance at Fuery caused the master-sergeant to blush like a schoolgirl) and wished him a courteous good-bye. As their commander quit the field without a backward glance at his subordinates, Falman braced himself for the onslaught. Beneath the office's placid bureaucratic skin, his colleagues' curiosity had been brewing like coffee in a percolator, growing stronger as it seethed. He placed the finishing touches on his memo while they exchanged significant looks. Once it had become clear that Colonel Mustang wouldn't be returning to retrieve anything he'd "forgotten," however, Havoc, Breda and Fuery advanced against Falman as one, investing his desk on three sides to bombard him with questions.
"How'd you do that, sir?"
"Why'd you do that?"
"Yeah, what were you thinking?"
Falman spindled a sheet on the memo spike, tipped his chair onto its rear legs just shy of unbalancing, and regarded his fellows as guilelessly as any of his superior officers, commissioned or not. "Oh," he said, savoring the moment, "I knew it would fly."