Chapter Thirty-two - Danielewski
McQueen realized that he had backed Kylen into a corner. That had been his intention, but he also perceived that unless she had some room in the conversation to move - to breathe - he would get nothing but crap platitudes for a response. McQueen knew only that he was not comfortable with Kylen working for The Big Boys in Intel. For whatever reason, it set off a buzzer in his brain. Kylen would now have to answer McQueen's question, but he wanted a meaningful answer. He would give her room while she gathered her thoughts.
"Take your time, Kylen. Don't answer until you are ready. I want a straight answer. Maybe not tonight, but before you go home. Don't expect my help with Dale or Amy until you answer me," he said, guessing that she hadn't told them yet and would want his support in that quarter. People were not likely to be pleased with her latest maneuver.
"As for Nathan and your family - you are on your own there."
Kylen gave him a weak smile. This was very important to her. "I should have known he would want more information - that he would demand answers." She sat in silence and toyed with her food. She took the occasional bite and avoided looking at Colonel McQueen. Above all, Kylen didn't want the man to think she was just a Corps Groupie. She had heard about civilians, both men and women, who just liked to be around Marines for several different reasons, - a number of which she was sure McQueen found distasteful - but with one constant: The Mystique.
"They want me," she said in a tiny, pitiful voice that McQueen had never heard before and didn't much care for. Kylen hoped that he could recognize the importance of the statement - what it meant to her. His face remained impassive. It wasn't his 'blank' face; it was his 'waiting' face. Kylen saw no glimmer of understanding in his eyes - not that that necessarily meant a whole lot. She felt forced to go on and continued in a stronger voice.
"Howard and Radford want me for who I am - who I am today. They want my brains enough to hire me as a civilian. They acknowledge my life, and they don't try to ignore the obvious. They don't want me for the person that I used to be. She doesn't interest them a whole lot. They want my experience - my new experiences. Some people try and pretend that this past year never happened, but I can't. It's too massive. Radford ... Howard ... They accept it like they accept the fact that I'm right handed."
The Colonel nodded. As much as he didn't want to agree with her, McQueen was forced to admit a certain logic to her statement.
"Kylen, don't you think you need to take more time? Time for yourself and for your family? You should take time to sort all this out; to regroup and rebuild. Make sure that working for Howard is what you really want ... really need to do." McQueen still saw a problem. The Big Brass had been giving Kylen the red carpet treatment. The Corps, while rightfully proud of taking care of its own, was not well known for altruistic gestures.
Kylen smiled inwardly. McQueen had just offered her a piece of advice he wouldn't follow if his life depended on it. Kylen wished that he would take time during this leave to go on a vacation or some kind of personal retreat. Given the state of the war, he probably didn't even conceive of taking an interval for himself - of this, she was sure. Kylen looked into his face, wanting very deeply to tell him: 'Heal thyself.' Now was not the time. The fight was still too fresh, and McQueen was not in the mood. Kylen didn't want to be sent to Coventry again - she was far too lonely, so she returned to his question about the job offer.
"It is a worthwhile and important job," she said. "It's something 'outside' of myself. It's something bigger than just me."
"Colonizing a new world was something pretty big, Kylen. It's not like you haven't tried to be part of important things - tried to do big things with your life," McQueen said.
"That's it. I tried to do big things with MY life," Kylen said. "Yea, sure, there was and is the need to expand our boundaries - natural resources, food, energy, fuel, and water. We all know the drill, but the Colonies were going to be agro or industrial outposts for generations. We weren't out there paving the way for a mass emigration. Yes, it was an important thing, but I was going - Nathan and I were going for ourselves - because we had a dream to go into space. It all seems a bit selfish to me now."
"I don't think it was selfish. Your dream coincided with larger events. You were luckier than most people," McQueen said, and then recognized the foolishness of his response. He had been thinking of her life up to the point of being separated from Nathan. "Up to a point," he quickly amended.
"Up to a point," Kylen repeated sardonically. McQueen gave an anemic 'sorry about that' gesture. Kylen dismissed the gaffe with a wave of her hand and continued. "Working so closely with the Corps... It is for me, as well, I suppose... I can't lie about that ... But it is working for something much more significant. It is for something outside of myself. It is a service that I can render. And now, this is where you tell me that there are other ways that I can support The War Effort."
"No," he said softly. McQueen had been thinking about telling her just that, but he wasn't going to say it - not now. Therefore, it wasn't a lie. He had promised never to lie to her.
"You know me well enough by now," Kylen moved her case forward. "I had the juice to leave my home and family to travel to Tellus - to do it even without Nathan. I would have been gone for at least twelve years. I'm not the classic 'Jody Back Home' of Marine Corps legends - either the good stories or the bad ones. Seriously, can you see me sitting around keeping the homefires burning, wrapping bandages? I wasn't that person - ever. Not even on a good day ... Not in college and not during my training for Tellus."
McQueen wondered for a split second just how many of the 'Jody Back Home' stories Kylen had heard by now. The fables were notoriously hard on the symbolic 'girl you left at home.' He was distracted for only a split second, that was a topic for a different conversation. He wasn't going to be thrown off the scent. McQueen had to admit that he didn't see Kylen sitting around waiting for news from the front. The Colonel tried to imagine her living her life like that - riding out the war at the farm ... waiting for mail ... waiting for news. He couldn't see it, as much as he wished to. It was a forced and false image. Kylen had spent the last few years of her life on the bleeding edge of science and technology. She had prepared herself to do something remarkable. Kylen had not only sat in the front of the bus; she expected to know who was doing the driving.
Kylen spoke again: "I'm smart and I'm not without skills. Could I find something else to do? I suppose I could if I had the energy to look for it, but no one is beating down my door. This appeals to me. I feel like I can really help and I will feel closer to Nathan ... We've been apart for so long already. Who knows how much longer...."
"You have to realize, though, Kylen, that most of intelligence work is mundane. You will probably be doing the most mind-numbing jobs imaginable. Believe me, a lot of it is stultifying," McQueen interjected. He had decided to try a different tack. He would appeal to her innate sense of honor, of propriety. "Do you really want to sit in a basement office somewhere reading other people's mail? Intelligence covers that little gem of a job. That is what censors do, you know."
Kylen hadn't even considered that possibility. She looked away from McQueen and into her scotch. Kylen knew that all communications were censored. She remembered a security guard sitting next to her when she called home from the Nightingale, but Kylen had never really thought about the fact that somewhere a person was actually doing the censoring. It was not a comfortable prospect.
"They didn't tell you that, I see," McQueen pressed the advantage. "Everything is screened electronically for 'hot' words and phrases, numbers and names. But guess what, Kylen. Either before or after, it gets the once-over by a pair of human eyes. The system acts as a double check. The censors flag questionable information and write up their little reports about gossip, rumors and morale. They keep lists about people and events, Kylen - it's necessary. I know you can understand that fact, but I have trouble picturing you doing it - paddling around in the backwaters of people's private thoughts."
Kylen squirmed a little in her chair. "What a way to make a living," she thought. It made absolute sense, unfortunately. She had heard the AI's repeating television shows that had aired after the mission had left for Tellus. The enemy was getting current information from somewhere.
"Who watches the Watchers, I wonder?" she asked McQueen. "And who watches the Watchers who watch the Watchers?"
"Irony is a Maginot line drawn by the already condemned, Kylen," he thought. McQueen didn't want her to slip out of his grasp. She wouldn't fall for his censorship ruse for too long. "If Howard wanted to keep an eye on her he didn't really have to offer her a job. It would be easier to have her under his direct control, but I don't think that's the idea. And if it isn't, then it isn't going to take Kylen long to figure out that Howard didn't ask her to come aboard to snoop through people's mail. She will figure that out soon enough." McQueen decided to put on a bit more pressure.
"Kylen, you understand the term 'need to know,' but do you know the military definition of something being classified 'Compartmentalized?'" McQueen asked. "If she cracks a joke about compartments or doors, I'll wring her neck," he thought.
"It's another way the military classifies Top Secret," she answered seriously.
"Good girl. The letter says 'analysis.' You will probably only see information about a small piece of any operation. You may never get the whole picture. Let's suppose information crosses your desk that concerns Nathan's group. Suppose our MEU...." McQueen stopped and looked for her understanding.
"Marine Expeditionary Unit," she recited. He nodded and continued.
"....our MEU is going to be put into harm's way. You could conceivably know this even before I would ... or whoever is in command would," he corrected. McQueen remembered that he was no longer part of the 5th MEU. What the unit did wasn't his business any longer. "And you could certainly know before West. Could you still analyze the information in a dispassionate fashion? Could you give an honest opinion? People aren't going to want to hear 'I don't think I can do this.' And they aren't going to have the luxury or the time to think 'Is this something Kylen shouldn't see?' They want good, honest, reliable information. There are two hundred thousand Marines out there. They all have families - people who are waiting for them to come home." He paused. "Could you keep yourself in check and your head screwed on straight? Could you not try to warn Nathan?"
"Yes, I think that I could," she said calmly, with surprising maturity. She had already considered this possibility.
"Oh, you think so? And how do you know this?" he asked doubtfully. How could she grasp the concept of command decisions - the weight of making choices about the fates of men and women that you are responsible for? Could he spare her the choices of Demios?
Kylen gave a tiny smile. "Satori," she whispered to him.
McQueen narrowed his gaze. He read in her face that she understood the term and was, without a doubt, using it correctly. This, he had to hear. He gestured for her to continue.
Kylen had reviewed the pros and cons in the middle of the night and in the early morning hours; pacing around the keeping room and then walking out over the fields at the farm. The ever-curious Holsteins had surrounded her. Their breath had created jets of steam - fog in the predawn cold. Kylen had drawn comfort and strength from their nearness and heat - their calm but guarded demeanor. The soft, striking, black-and-white pelts and the placid stares were part of her internal landscape. She knew these things inside of herself. Kylen had rested, leaning against a particularly friendly 'Mama,' her arms around the powerful neck. Underneath the scent of earth and sweat there was a distinctive sweetness in the smell of the dairy cattle. Kylen looked back toward the barns and the house - the place where she had spent most of her life. She had left it once before, but it had always been her home. Life seemed so different back then. Life was different now. The farm would always be a place she could come to; a place to rest in - an anchor and a safe harbor. But it wasn't her future - it was her past. With more finality than when she had left the Earth on a spacecraft, this was her past. Kylen had followed the cattle down from the high ground toward the milking parlor. She had been able to hear her father starting his morning serenade. Frank had switched to selections from My Fair Lady, and Kylen loved him fiercely.
Kylen didn't think that she could adequately describe the experience to McQueen. She thought: "How do you really explain Satori? It is by definition a personal insight. One man's Satori is another man's walk in the fields avoiding cow pies. McQueen, Mr. Eastern Philosophy, knows that better than I do. He knows that the manner and moment surrounding Satori doesn't really matter - It's the thought that counts." She was momentarily distracted by her pun. She looked up to share the joke with him. Now was not the time. McQueen would not allow her to change the subject, and her attempt to do so might change his opinion of her. He expected and deserved her answer. "Dignity. Don't whine." Kylen sipped her scotch. ".... And don't go around half-cocked." She swallowed and spoke in her reasonable way.
"Nathan ... all of you ... are going to go into harm's way no matter what I do. My pretending it isn't so won't make it go away. I can sit at home and wish and hope and block out as much as I can, but it will never change the facts. And, you see, I know it. I'm convinced that trying to pretend would be a slow way to make myself crazy. It's like the maxim about the elephant in the living room. The uncomfortable reality that people walk around, pretending that it doesn't exist - as if you couldn't catch the smell. Eighteen months ago I probably could have done it, I suppose, but not any more." Kylen sipped her drink again, paused and continued.
"You told me that not all news is bad news. Not everything I may hear about the 5th MEU - if I hear anything - will be bad. I'll be able to truly sleep some nights, rather than being afraid every single night. I thought I had learned early, at ten, that death will come. Mama died - It changed our lives but we still lived. My family thought I was dead - blown to smithereens. I've seen death up close and personal, and I can't stand at the gates like a wolf with K-bar in my teeth fighting it off. "
McQueen could see, however, that, in her own way, Kylen was trying to fight off death. He had seen Kylen in her 'mother wolf' mode and, in fact, got an impressive visual of her standing in front of the Gates of Hell yelling: 'You gotta come through me, you bastard." His vision was interrupted when she spoke again.
"If I do put together information that Nathan was going into danger - like he isn't in danger everyday," Kylen interjected, giving McQueen a meaningful eye. "If I knew that he was going into danger, don't you think that I would be even more meticulous? Good intelligence, good analysis could mean his survival. My silence could mean his survival, probably even more than my trying to tell him. He has become one of you - a soldier - a Marine. He knows his job, and now I'm beginning to understand it too." Kylen felt like her explanation was dissolving into babble with no clear direction.
"Colonel McQueen, I've spent too much time in the dark. Don't expect or ask me to stay there. I'll be able to do my job."
McQueen understood Satori. He did not argue the point.
End Chapter Thirty-two
Literary Giants M.Wheels
