"...On our foreheads the feathered hat; looking to the mirage of Rome in the distance. Soldiers, Bersaglieri of Italy, she sings the hymn of your fierce valour! She sings the hymn of your regiment that is precious to the Madonna, a history so proud that men cheer it from the grave! Oh Italy, in peace or war, should the Nation call to us, we sing proud and true sacred names of heroic virtue…"
Avise burbled the song happily to himself, humming and murmuring a tune as he queued in the refectory for dinner. He was radiating good humour, and a few people in the queue around him even started bobbing their heads to their own personal theme tunes as he passed.
Once he had collected his meal Avise scanned the refectory tables. Not being antisocial but appreciating his personal space – something that you didn't get all that much of in the Army – he steered towards the table with the fewest occupants, the only other diners being Alessandro (his meal finished and his head invisible behind a broadsheet edition of La Repubblica) and his cyborg Petrushka, who was still eating and working through her plate quietly and sedulously.
"Bit late in the day for the news, isn't it?" Avise wondered as he sat down.
"Always read the paper cover to cover," Petrushka said knowledgeably, lifting up her fork to enunciate a point "you may as well get your money's worth."
"No arguments there." Avise agreed, although privately he wondered whether he was agreeing with Petrushka or Alessandro.
"Nice night, last night?" Alessandro murmured from behind the newspaper.
"Yeah, went pretty well, thanks." Avise began tucking into his meal, not thinking Alessandro's interest as anything more than a conversational token of politeness.
"How was she, any good?"
Avise choked on a half-swallowed bite and collapsed into a hacking fit to dislodge it, attracting a few curious and concerned glances from other tables. Alessandro's expression was unreadable behind the newspaper, but the corners of the pages rustled in what may have been a sly chuckle. Petrushka hid a smile behind a sip of her drink.
"I, uh, I, er, I, ah, only went out for the air…"
With a crackle of newsprint Alessandro flapped down the upper fold of his newspaper to reveal his face. He tipped his head to one side and stared at Avise pityingly. "Please, Mancini, have some dignity. That's 'dog ate my homework' level. You didn't even roll in until gone noon, and you've been swanking about the compound all afternoon like the cat that's got the cream. If you were out visiting your sick mother, I'm the Emperor of China."
Drawing back in horror from Alessandro's uninhibited frankness, Avise threw an imploring gesture to Petrushka, hoping that feminine sensibility would rescue the table from tawdriness.
Petrushka did adopt a sensible manner, although Avise was dismayed when it went against the direction that he'd have hoped. "Oh dear oh dear, Mr. Mancini… what would Agapita think, I wonder?" She tutted and shook her head with slow solemnity, although her voice had a teasing tone.
That gave Avise pause, so much so that he forgot the really insubordinate attitude that the cyborg was exhibiting. What would Agapita think?
"…she's not my wife." Avise mumbled lamely as he slumped down into his seat, trying to convince himself as much as answer the other two. He glanced over to Alessandro and Petrushka to see them both matching each other with eager, sly grins.
"Damn your impudence, you damned conspirators!" Avise snapped, heat flooding to his face as he felt acutely that he'd been made a fool of. He tried to disdain the other two by attacking his dinner plate and ripping up some mouthfuls, chewing each bite noisily. Despite his deliberate focus on his meal, though, he still glanced across to see what new snare that the two trappers were laying. They had their heads together in close, whispered confidence, as thick as thieves. Alessandro was some fifteen years younger than Avise, a whole generation apart, and he knew that he and his cyborg had positioned themselves for that little rendezvous precisely so that they could mock the older man for his private approach to... personal matters: but as he watched them talk he couldn't help but feel beguiled by their easy, familiar relations. Over the months he had seen that every fratello, young or old (and indeed his own, a warm sense of pride blooming briefly in his breast), had a definite sense of hierarchy, but Alessandro and Petrushka were different, tangibly partners. It was with some wonderment that he took in their fluid, smooth interaction, marvelling their clarity as one coherent unit…
…Avise stopped himself. The fact that he was boning her might have had something to do with it.
Petrushka finished her meal and laid down her cutlery neatly on the plate. As she did so, Alessandro laid a hand on her arm. "Petra, head back to the office and take the Bubastis file down to the wardrobe for us to have a look over, will you? We still need to sort out costumes for that job."
"Sure, 'Sandro." Petrushka smiled easily. She knocked back the last of her drink in one swig, and as she tipped her head her eyes settled on Avise. At her angle her gaze looked like thin predatory slits. After she gathered up her tray, she sashayed over to Avise's seat. "Hey, soldier-boy." She said in a sultry tone.
"Uh?" Avise grunted, not expecting the attention.
Petrushka smiled and leaned towards Avise, who was momentarily at a loss, not quite sure of what to make of her interest. It allowed the cyborg to come in close, and she began to whisper quietly, gently, softly, soothingly into the curve of Avise's earlobe. The handler was still for a moment. Then his eyes widened. Then the colour blanched out of his face. Then he convulsed as though someone had run a charge up his seat.
Pleased with her adept handiwork, Petrushka straightened up, and giving Alessandro one final smile, she walked off to put away her tray and crockery while Avise loosened his collar and sweated a little.
"Poetry. Sheer poetry." Alessandro laughed. "She can play you like a Stradivarius."
"She has a very good teacher, I'm sure." Avise harrumphed, trying to gather himself and restore his dignity.
"True, that." Alessandro nodded lightly, passing over anything that might have been implicit in Avise's remark. "Anyway, seriously, how did last night go?" Alessandro persisted.
"Not while I'm eating my dinner, Ricci." Avise sighed wearily. "You're putting me off my food."
For the first time Alessandro frowned. "Look, Mancini, I've tried to be delicate—"
"Huh!" Avise snorted contemptuously.
"-and I wanted to avoid mentioning this detail now," Alessandro carried on patiently, as though he was condescending to solve a difficult problem for a child, "but the fact is, I was told to check up on you."
Avise looked at Alessandro strangely. "So, what, you're the Section Two snitch, then?"
"That was uncalled for, Mancini." Alessandro's face suddenly snapped into pinched fury and he rasped in a savage whisper that carried no further than Avise and the table edge, but only made its force even more concentrated in a single pair of ears.
Indeed it was, far overreaching, Avise thought guiltily, immediately chagrined. "Yeah. Sorry." He mumbled, chastened.
"That's okay, I know people say things without thinking sometimes, we'll say no more of it." Alessandro allowed magnanimously. "And I'm sorry too, Mancini, I can appreciate that it's a private subject, but I wouldn't insist if I didn't have to."
Avise looked around for a moment. He could hardly refuse Alessandro's request now, but he still found the conversation absurd and distasteful and needed time to muster the will to speak. "How it goes for most people, I imagine." He began, trying not to make a big deal of things. "I drove down to Ostia, booked into my hotel, went to a bar on the waterfront. Bought a drink, looked around for a while, caught a pretty girl's eye, offered her one."
"How old was she?" Alessandro interrupted.
Avise started, unsure whether Alessandro was implying something. Seeing no guile in his expression, he answered. "Twenty-seven, she said. Looked it as well." He added hurriedly.
Alessandro grunted. "Not quite too old for bar pick-ups... never mind me, carry on."
Avise continued. "We shared a few rounds, and talked most of the evening. She had a few friends with her who were going on somewhere else, she waved them on."
Alessandro tapped his teeth with a fingernail thoughtfully. "Talking. Did any politics come up?"
Avise had to think hard. It had been an enjoyable time, everything sinking gently into a warm, muggy fug of happiness like a yielding feather bed, and that dulled recollection. "Not really. She said she lived in Rome city, and I mentioned that it must be difficult getting about with all the traffic blockades nowadays, and she said she didn't want to dwell on dreadful details, or something like that."
"Alright. Next." Alessandro tapped his teeth again, as if he was scratching shorthand on the enamel.
"Well, after a while, particularly after she let her friends go on, I felt that we were warming up to each other, so I asked her if she wanted to spend the night with me. She said yes, we went to the hotel and" – Avise swallowed, still not comfortable with mentioning private matters aloud, and he had to allude to it obliquely – "did the sorts of things that couples do." Avise paused for a moment, expecting Alessandro to make some smart-alec wisecrack about picking out drapes for the kitchen, and was surprised when the younger man remained quiet and attentive. Avise gathered his momentum back and carried on.
"In the morning, we had a bit of a kiss and a cuddle, so I think that she was happy." Despite his stern reticence over the subject matter a hint of Avise's boastful nature peeked up momentarily over the wall of propriety and decorum he'd built around himself. "We then went down for a late breakfast together in the hotel restaurant. We didn't exchange numbers – I think that she was expecting me to take the lead, and when I didn't, for obvious reasons" – Avise gestured to the refectory and Agency surrounding him – "she didn't bring it up. We said our goodbyes, she headed off back to her friends' hotel, I drove back to the Agency well in time for the afternoon training session."
Alessandro searched Avise's face for a few seconds. Seeing no recognition or realisation of fault there, Alessandro's own face fell and he put his hand to his brow. "Oh, Mancini, what have you gone and done?"
"I don't understand."
Alessandro leaned back in his chair and remonstrated with the ceiling. "Time after time I tell them to put this in the orientation package, but they just don't get it. I can only say that the Chief must be as uptight as youare, Mancini, or else that he's taking the feud with Chief Draghi so far that he has to ignore what was Elementary 101 back in Section One, just to be contrary."
Alessandro leaned forward again and fixed Avise with a stern, admonishing gaze. "Mancini, what you indulged in last night may have been a genial understanding between mature adults seeking mutual emotional support... or, more likely, you were picked over by a Padanian reconnaissance operative seeking intelligence on Agency, or at least Government, activities." Alessandro shook his head sadly. "'Caught your eye'? She may have just as easily made herself available."
Avise's mouth was agape. He didn't quite know what to make of Alessandro's interpretation of events, not least because he imagined that he was attractive enough on his own merits.
"But I wasn't carrying anything compromising." Avise protested. "I booked the hotel in advance so I only had cash. I checked out a blank phone with the quartermaster and my I.D. card was one of the gate-cleared fakes, too." Avise fished it out of a pocket to show to Alessandro. It told the younger man that Avise was a regional manager for 'Associated Aggregates Inc.'
Jesus, it might as well have read 'International Export'. Alessandro winced. "Well, that helps damage control, and your mentioning that she went for a second round rather than just banging it out and being done with it having achieved her objective" – Avise blushed at Alessandro's crudely direct manner – "is a little encouraging, too. You just might have dodged a bullet, this time. But don't take it for granted. You were lucky you weren't targeted by a Black Widow unit. Trust me, being smothered at four A.M. is not kinky."
"That sort of stuff actually happens?" Avise was incredulous.
"It happens more often than laser satellites and tables of gold, at any rate. Or cyborg kill-bots, for that matter." Alessandro laughed mirthlessly, and rubbed his neck unconsciously.
"Well, what do I do to minimise the risk of, uh, exposure then?" Avise asked in consternation.
"I suggest a brisk jog, a cold shower, and a lie down in a dark room." Alessandro shrugged. "You have to exercise some restraint."
Easy for you to say, the thought skulked sullenly in the corner of Avise's mind, although after his earlier chastisement he didn't give voice to it.
As Avise was silent for a few seconds, Alessandro took it to mean that frustration was stopping him up, and so he continued. "Mancini, I'm sorry if you find it limiting, but this sort of gig doesn't really lend itself to intimacy. That is a matter of personal relations, and we live by deception in all things. Closeness and distance – it's an inherent contradiction, and it just can't be sustained." Alessandro glanced to one side, distracted, his brow furrowing. Noticing that Avise was beginning to show interest in his suddenly troubled expression, Alessandro coughed and hurriedly fielded the ball back across the table. "And really, prioritising getting your end away is really unprofessional." It was a clumsy, messy backswipe of a return stroke, but it had the desired effect.
"Look," Avise said a little hotly, smarting under the criticism, "I don't like this implication that I'm some layabout. Between Iraq, and Agency training straight after that, I haven't had an opportunity to… to go out for fully a year. Is it that unreasonable for me to have a bit of leisure?"
"Hey, you don't have to apologise to me." Alessandro said coolly, his confidence returning as he regained control of the conversation. His tone only infuriated Avise further; the older man was becoming hopelessly entangled in the embarrassment of getting so thoroughly bemired in such an impolite subject. Alessandro administered the coup de grace. "But if you absolutely can't douse the heat... just use a prostitute."
Avise went as white – his blood drained from his face as though he'd been transfixed by a lance and it was spurting from the wound. "What?" He croaked.
"Oh yes, it's very secure," Alessandro shrugged nonchalantly, as though all the minutiae was really very boring and tiresome, "we can monitor their activities a lot easier – someone only taking on government clients for dance and conversation naturally sets the alarm bells ringing. Better yet," Alessandro drawled, "it's best to shop around to avoid establishing obvious patterns. It's like a kid at a pick'n'mix stall, go nuts."
"That..." Avise splashed, floundered, bubbled, drowned, sunk. "...doesn't sound right."
"What are you being so prudish for?" Alessandro wondered. "Jesus hung out with prostitutes all the time. Look at Mary Magdelene, and isn't she the 'apostle of apostles'?"
"I don't think that He slept with them, though." Avise grunted.
God, that's so adorable! Alessandro smiled inwardly.
Something was preying on Avise's mind. Alessandro kept quiet, letting Avise come in his own time.
"Do you, uh..." Avise leaned close in to Alessandro. "Do you know any?"
Alessandro nodded, and with a level expression began scratching some phone numbers onto a notepad from his pocket. It gave him a few seconds to reflect on the character of the man that he's just interrogated. A curious and contradictory fellow, this Avise Mancini. Elio Alboreto had let slip once, when he was a little spaced-out (Alessandro meanwhile had only sipped lightly at the joint, enough to make people think that he was game and drop their guard but not enough to make the attention-clouding fog impermeable), that Avise had once waxed lyrical to him about his earliest conquests, and certainly had had no inhibition about politeness or decorum. Today, however, was a complete contrast, and he'd stammered through most of the conversation like a nun scandalised by an exposed ankle. It seemed that Avise preferred to open up to people only on his own terms – assaulting from a position of strength when all proper logistics had been marshalled – and was ill-equipped to cope with someone approaching him instead, before he'd properly manned the ramparts.
As Avise guiltily snuck away Alessandro's paper into a pocket, Alessandro nodded to himself. He was getting to like Avise – the man was interesting.
The lengthening summer allowed people to enjoy the caress of daylight – it also made evening training after dinnertime viable. Agapita was tempted to be annoyed when Avise said that he arranged a mortar practise – she had been working all morning already, after all – but on seeing her handler the resentment died and was replaced by concern. She could tell that he felt distracted and put out himself, and hoped that some time out would help him sort out his feelings.
With her mortar on her back and two cases of training bombs in her arms (carried as easily as a stack of books from the library), she had mounted a Fiat van with Avise and the support agents Amadeo and Giorgio. As they were loading up, Priscilla had jogged up and asked to tag along – she mentioned that she had missed a recent exercise session and that helping to retrieve and carry fired bombs would make up for it, although from her glances Avise could surmise that she was really more interested in getting to know the new arrival in the cyborg dorms. Avise was happy to have her along in any case.
The group thusly gathered had driven out to an unused sector of the training area, Priscilla offering Agapita fashion tips along the way and chiding Avise for his lack of sartorial sense, while Giorgio and Amadeo argued about some lower-league soccer, which signalled them as true fans rather than fair-weather groupies who just followed the big teams. There was an Air Force detachment practising field camp construction in the training area as well, but they were keeping to their own sectors and there was no danger of them straying into the fratello's location. Avise, Agapita and their cargo were deposited at the edge of some open ground. As Amadeo, Giorgio and Priscilla carried on in the van to their own positions for the exercise, and Agapita unpacked and set up her mortar, Avise surveyed the ground over which she was to fire. It was a field of long, ripe grass, walled at its far boundary by the treeline of a dense covert. Scattered across the field were a number of simple, boxy wooden huts with plain unadorned walls and flat roofs – targets that Allison had been required to build as a menial punishment when she'd loosened her handler Brian's car's suspension to the point that he'd banged his head on the ceiling half a dozen times when driving down a street with sleeping policemen. As if to deliberately ram home the punitive pointlessness of the exercise to Allison, Agapita was now going to bash holes in them.
"Ready, Agapita?" Avise reached down and gave his cyborg's shoulder a squeeze.
Agapita had been ready pretty much immediately, having set down the mortar so instinctively it was like putting down a box, pulling the tag and it springing out pre-assembled. While Avise had been considering the lay of the land, she'd been occupying herself by building her bombs into little pyramids. At Avise's contact, Agapita tipped her head to one side so that her cheek rested on her handler's knuckles – although it went upright again when Avise, not expecting the touch, instinctively jolted.
"Yes, sir!" Agapita cried out brightly, apparently unfazed by the jerking separation. She squinted briefly at the field and its peppering of plywood pillboxes, then plucked a bomb off of the highest peak of her little Giza with one hand while she adjusted the mortar's settings with the other.
DHOO!
A second's bated expectation, and then a small black hole flicked open on the roof of the nearest hut. Avise made a check mark on his clipboard, Agapita smiled in satisfaction at a correct delivery – and then they both almost jumped out of their skins when with a whiplash crack, the roof slats of the hut burst upwards. Planks of wood snapped into the air, wobbled almost gracefully at the crests of their arcs, like ballerinas with fluttering hands and feet, and then thudded down into the grass around the hut, in a broad circle, while floating splinters span in the air like a lingering cloud of chaff.
Avise and Agapita turned to look at each other questioningly.
"Oh...kay, move on to the next one."
DHOO!
Agapita plumbed another neatly geometric vertical strike through the roof of the next-nearest hut. They both waited for a moment – feeling vaguely stupid for expecting anything – and so were taken aback again when all four walls of the hut thrust themselves apart, while the holed roof sprung up into the air a good eight feet.
Avise arched his eyebrows, while Agapita surveyed the mortar critically, trying to find evidence of tampering.
"Well then... let's see what's behind door number three." Avise mused, directing Agapita to the third and final hut.
DHOO!
This time they were prepared for it. Agapita gave a tight, fierce smile, shaking her fist a little when she scored another direct hit. Whatever superficial show someone had set to strut their stuff with, she was sure that her own skill had not been swayed. The show, when it came, proved to be a fairly substantial one, though. The walls of this particular hut were formed from narrow vertical planks and, one by one, they all fell outwards, balanced to do so at regular intervals of steady progression, absorbing the fratello's attention for a good minute. This left the roof supported on four thin legs – the corners of the hut – which, after a moment's trembling, kinked in half and then folded outwards, like some bandy-legged quadruped settling down – with the hole in the roof lowering down neatly over Agapita's mortar-bomb, stuck upright in the earth – so turning even her action into part of the show.
Avise smiled indulgently at the sight. He could see what had happened now. It hadn't been an effect of Agapita's weapon – precision, rather than effect, was the objective of the exercise and so she was firing dud rounds to note their landing points rather than their blast areas. He could guess that Allison, having decided to enliven a dreary punishment detail with her own inimitable brand of over-engineering, had placed some roof supports under stress to shatter with that impressive elastic effect when damaged by the mortar in the first hut, and had designed similarly staged destruction for the other two. He glanced down at Agapita, who had evidently come to the same conclusion that he had done, but saw it in a different light. Indeed, she was actually scowling fiercely, a complete opposite of Avise's own mood, resenting the intrusion of another cyborg into her private time with her handler.
Avise felt a surge of compassion rise up through him when he saw Agapita's sour look. He was surprised to see that Agapita could actually exhibit such ill-feeling, and somewhat disappointed that her character was not so unblemished that it did so; he also felt that Allison's work was impressive and warranted appreciation for the ability even if not the intent – to reject it felt petty. Stronger than all those sentiments, however, was the affection that came from seeing her honest, unguarded and unvarnished thought, Agapita as she was without being muzzled by politeness or protocol, and the pleasure at seeing her genuinely feeling – and the warm sense of worth and belonging when that feeling included him.
"Calling unit Cernaia and unit Fagare, calling Cernaia and Fagare. This is unit Andreani. Prepare your grounds for phase two firing. Respond when ready. Out." Avise spoke into his walkie-talkie. Agapita breathed a sigh of relief, and so did Avise on hearing it – he didn't want Agapita to sink into a glum attitude and so had abandoned a second round of shooting at the huts to move up to the longer ranges. He passed the walkie-talkie over to Agapita so that she could communicate with her 'spotters' Giorgio and Amadeo, who were laying out targets in two separate fields beyond the trees (with jobs like these, the fractious pair could still be reported to be happily working together even if they stayed physically apart). He felt a quick tremble run through Agapita's fingers as they brushed his hand, although it didn't seem to interrupt her actions in any way as she began rattling through the various battle-codes with "unit Cernaia". Avise flexed his fingers distractedly, only half-listening to his cyborg. The great dossier had said that Mimi Machiavelli had been a very touchy-feely character. Just how much of Agapita's sensitivity was the residue clinging to the bottom of her washed-out head, and how much was Agapita's new self establishing itself and putting down roots in the world around her? And what did Avise think of himself when he had the hope that Agapita was being animated and enthused by him?
DHOO!
The concussive report of the mortar jerked Avise out of his reverie. As Agapita reopened fire, what remained of her ill-temper from Allison's demonstration seeped away as she slipped back into routine, and an opportunity to demonstrate her own skill without distraction. It was impressive to see the oiled efficiency with which she worked – indeed, the pattern was almost hypnotic. While Avise had seen mortar crews squabbling over calculation tables in the past, Agapita worked with ambidextrous skill and computational speed, simultaneously adjusting bearings, glancing at her map, and selecting another bomb to load as soon as the walkie-talkie read out co-ordinates to her without a second's hesitation. Avise had been told that this ability had been deliberately engineered into her during conditioning to fill out a fire-support gap in the cyborgs' formation fighting, but even so he could not help but admire it as though it was a prodigal talent.
After Agapita had exhausted her ammunition, Avise took back the walkie-talkie for the two support agents' reports on her performance. The calculation of the conditioned cyborg mind was readily apparent – here accuracy was extremely high, with only a handful of straying shots betraying that maybe Agapita could maybe wait a second or two to let the equations settle in her head. Still, it was little to complain about and Agapita positively glowed when Avise remarked favourably about her strong performance. That itself pleased Avise – Agapita may have aimed like a computer, but it would have been dispiriting if she thought like one as well.
The support agents must have rolled up their fields as they worked, taking up targets and bombs as they reported the hits in, because it didn't take much time for the Fiat to arrive back at the fratello's looked into the back seats of the van while Agapita deposited her own kit in it, but with a decision stepped back from it. "It's alright, you two go on. It's a nice evening, we'll walk home."
Priscilla seemed a little disappointed, while Giorgio looked over to Amadeo – Amadeo shrugged. "Okay, see you back at the ranch." He said in farewell, and drove off.
It was about a mile and half back to the compound: a pleasant amble to round off the evening. The metalled road was in decline, crumbling away at the edges, but that allowed shoots to push through. The verges were dense, choked, entangled with weeds and nettles – but that also meant that they were heady with scent, rich with colour, and buzzing with life. The sun felt warm on his face, but the evening air itself was mild and did not prickle him.
It was one of those truths which lifted the soldier above the herd. Whenever you saw war on the television or on the bookstand it was always fixating on gutted-out buildings or the bombs dropping from aircraft when the ground was no more than an indistinct splurge of muted tones a mile below. In all his time with the Army, though all his crawling through snow, bivouacking under rain, clambering up mountains boiling up coffee on the undergrowth, wading in rivers, kicking over sand - and walking down a road in the evening summer with a bright, eager girl beside him - he had been immersed in nature more than the most enthusiastic rambler could ever dream of.
As if to affirm that he was here and that all this was his, Avise struck up a cigarette and took a possessive breath into himself. Who could ever give this up? Who could ever pass it up? He'd seen anti-war protestors before – even been harangued by a few, once Iraq had started up. He'd seen although their twisted anger, their split, screaming faces, their stamping, wound-up, knotted, clenching rage, their tantrum roars, their fleckspittle scratching at his own face like gravel... and on the other hand he felt that he had to come here, breathe in, and sigh out. This was a good life, a better life than their limited minds could ever conceive.
Avise turned his head to Agapita, and gave her a smile. Agapita didn't see it immediately, as her head was roving about her, taking in all that she could see. Agapita knew about plants, trees, insects and seasons, but it sat in her head as dry information, close-packed lines of text without illustration, something to quote but not understand. She could perceive everything – her young cyborg mind had not yet quite perfected the art of tuning and concentration, and her heightened senses flooded her with information surging from sensitive ears, high-resolution eyes and alert hairs, from the crisp edge of grass blades to the thrumming wing-beat of bees and the texture of the tarmac through the sole of her shoe. Despite the rush of information, though, Agapita was not overwhelmed by or drowned in it – it all sunk into her, replenishing a mental groundwater parched by the remoulding fires of conversion and conditioning, enriching knowledge with experience. There was a deep reservoir to fill, and Agapita drank it all eagerly.
Her gaze took her over to her handler, and once she saw him she immediately smiled herself, and held her head there. There was the flood, and then there was the surge beyond that – Avise loomed large, filling every part of her head, a wonder of detail pooling as it flowed faster than the hungry folds in her brain could be filled. She was absorbed. The burrs on his jacket (no wasting on a futile enterprise – what he was involved in was worthwhile), the regular and even comb of his hair (neat, not showy), the veins and bones of his hand (strength and industry), the amber bead of his glowing cigarette (a scintillating jewel) - and the warmth in his eyes, and the curve in his smile.
On a sudden impulse, Avise threw am arm out and wrapped it around Agapita, pulling her close in to him. They stumbled forward together a few steps, and Agapita breathed deeply, melting Avise's jacket into herself. She loved the smell of Avise's cigarettes. The acrid tang, sharp and alert, sparked across her nostrils, making them twitch – stimulated with vigour and energy. The smell fused with Avise's own musk, to become a reactive mix, charged with chemical potential – it felt... electric.
"Can I have one?" She murmured absently, as the two drifted back apart again.
"What, a cigarette? You should never smoke!" Avise said suddenly, and a little sharply. "It's a filthy and disgusting habit, and nothing good comes from it."
Agapita blinked, surprised by her handler's vehemence and shaken out of her dreamy fug. "But, sir," she protested, a little confused, "you smoke. You're smoking now."
Avise was silent for a few seconds. He took another couple of puffs. "Privileges of rank." He said eventually.
They continued on in silence for a short time while Avise finished his cigarette. Once he had pressed the stub into his little lozenge-tin ashtray he seemed keen to move on to another topic. "Speaking of mouths and the things we put in them: have you put any thought to playing an instrument?"
Agapita shook her head. "It's not really entered my head, sir, I've been too busy for it."
"Well, that's because you're new, and we need to drill the basics in you to get you up to readiness. Things will settle down before too long, and I think that you ought to – lots of the other girls play music of some sort, it's useful socialising. Do you have any idea what you might like?"
Agapita shrugged. "I'm happy to try, sir."
"What about, say, the trumpet?" Avise suggested. "I don't think that anyone else has one. Would you like to give that a try?"
Agapita inhaled to give an affirmative. And then caught her breath. Her mouth remained open, although it was now an aghast expression of horror. She had just processed the hopeful rising note in Avise's voice. He would be having her up on the dormitory roof, sounding out the reveille, every morning. Then there would be Piera. Then there would be the other cyborgs. Then there would be smiles. Bright, shining, animated eyes. Then there would be knives. Blood, death, lie-ins.
Agapita still wasn't sure about this whole God thing. She didn't question the principle any more than she questioned why the sky was blue and the day twenty-four hours long, and Avise had confidence in it, which was proof and security enough – still, though, the two Sunday masses that she'd been to felt like a lot of standing and scraping and sitting. She was beginning to see the rhyme in the movements, though, and when mercy such as the non-order of "would you like" was handed down to her she could see that those movements were responded to.
"I'm sorry, sir, but I don't think that a trumpet's quite the thing for me." Agapita bowed her head meekly.
"Oh, okay. Never mind then." Avise sounded a little disappointed as Sousa marches and sprinting bands faded into the distance.
"Can you play an instrument, sir?" Agapita said hastily, trying to change the subject before Avise gave her a formal and irresistible order to be conductor for a Second Generation marching band.
"Well, I can tinkle the ivories." Avise mimed pressing some keys in the air in front of him.
"Elephants make music?" Agapita wrinkled her nose in confusion.
"I mean, play the piano." Her handler explained. On many occasions he'd provided the accompaniment to a group of merry comrades belting out old songs and shanties with enthusiasm during a late evening in the mess. He'd also substituted as an organist for regimental services from time to time.
"That sounds nice." Agapita cooed, although she was imagining more a grand piano providing a gentle and artful undertone in an upmarket restaurant.
"I'm alright with the guitar as well," Avise continued, "I kept it up, in fact. I've had plenty of empty evenings to fill over the years, although what with everything lately" – Avise patted Agapita on the head endearingly – "I'm out of practice. I was even in a band, when I was younger."
"Oh, really?" Agapita said with genuine interest. While the more austere temperaments of those that had formed the initial wave of handlers meant that the first generation of cyborgs kept to largely classical genres, the tastes of the second generation were less prescribed. The girls chattered eagerly about bands and groups and acts and hunky dreamboats, and taste was viciously contested like alley-cats hissing and clawing over territory - the cyborg's face split into an eager grin when she realised that she didn't have to stick up a poster on her wall, she could boast the real thing.
"Me and some of my friends from my year's intake at the Modena officer college. We called ourselves the 'One-Pippers'," Avise smiled thoughtfully as nostalgia mixed with the mild evening air, "and as we were all assigned to the Garibaldi Brigade we were able to stay together after passing-out. Performed a few gigs in service clubs – all amateur stuff, really, but it was good for a laugh. It's how I met Calandra in the first place."
"Who's that?"
"...old friend of mine, I'll tell you about her another time. Anyway," Avise moved swiftly on, "we bashed stuff out for eighteen months or so. Apparently some sergeant's brother's wife's cousin's uncle's stepson was in the recording business and was thinking of offering us a small contract – 'Voices From the Front', that sort of thing. We broke up before anything came of it, though."
"Oh, that's a shame." Agapita was sympathetic. "Why did you turn it down?"
"Our Brigadier was retiring – he came into the mess one day when we were doing a spot, and I think that we touched a nerve. He took exception to the brigade being contaminated by devil music and I think that he despaired that his decades of service were all for naught if that was what he was leaving behind. It was his last day after fifty years, he was a bit emotional. So he came up on the stage and slung a guitar." Not quite an Exciting War Story, but at least an Amusing Service Anecdote.
Agapita brightened at the mention of that. When Avise had first mentioned the brigadier her heart had fell, expecting some dreadful tale of her poor handler's abuse by some unfeeling evil, made all the more heart-wrenching because she could do nothing to protect him from the past. However, the detail was encouraging – Agapita remembered, although she couldn't for the life of her think where, that breaking guitars was the sort of thing that famous and popular musicians did. "He liked your music?" She said excitedly.
Avise looked at Agapita strangely. "Uh, Agapita – he broke it over my head. I needed stitches."
"Oh, no!" Agapita stopped in the road and threw her hands up to her mouth in dismay. She was quiet for a moment, imagining the awful sensations of her handler's pain, and then her expression hardened in decision. "We should kill him!"
"Good grief, Agapita, you can't do that!" Avise cried in alarm.
"Why not?" Agapita stung at the rebuff, disliking that her very good idea was dismissed so out-of-hand. "You said yourself that the brigadier was retired – so he is of no more use, and the government would not care if he is dead. Besides, he did not only upset you, he hurt you. He hurt you," she repeated, a tremulous note entering her voice before it straightened out into decisiveness, "and enemies should know that no-one can do that to you, regardless of the position or circumstances."
With that sort of logic Avise worried if Agapita would rip up a forest whenever he got a paper cut. "Agapita, dear," Avise tried to soothe his charge, "the man was seventy-two when he retired. He's been dead for a decade. Hell, I expect just cranking his arms up for the swing took five years off of his life then and there. God got there well before you did."
"Oh." Agapita considered this new piece of intelligence for a moment. "...I am glad to see that God has the good sense to agree with me." She eventually concluded.
Which would have led to a fascinating meditation on the implications that divine omniscience held for cosmic causality and the philosophy of predestination, had they not been approaching the gate of the compound perimeter – and then felt the tension quivering through the taut air.
The Fiat van was plain in sight, just inside the gate – instead of being driven to the armoury to deposit the exercise equipment, or properly parked up at all. They could both sea that one door had been left open as the vehicle had been vacated in a hurry. The guardpost by the gate was empty, and while it was not a practical problem – Avise had a key to open the gate – nonetheless it should have been manned, even if only by a bored Carabiniere with nothing to do. Something was definitely up.
As Avise turned back to lock the gate shut behind them, Agapita saw a Section One analyst making his way across the lawn in front of the fire station. It wasn't a leisurely stroll, or even an interested jog, but an outright run. "Op. Jeunesse's been a balls-up," the agent called out to Agapita's hallo, throwing an arm towards the technology building as he ran, "and they're bringing in wounded!"
The fratello shared a concerned look, and then both took off in the same direction.
They were still a couple of hundred yards away when they saw two ambulances pulled up outside the hospital wing of the technology building, a large and urgent crowd around them. One advantage of the Social Welfare Agency's cover as a medical quango was that no-one saw anything amiss in casualties arriving – people didn't have to be hurried in under blankets; however, it didn't make what those vehicles actually carried any more palatable.
A trolley rolled out of the first ambulance, carrying an adult strapped firmly to the bed, his face heavily masked by bandages. Avise squinted, trying to get a clearer view of the body on the trolley as it was wheeled into the building. "Is Croce hurt?" He wondered.
"No, that's not Mr. Croce," Agapita clarified with her better eyesight, "I saw some blond hair."
Croce was indeed hurt, however – as the fratello neared the scene Avise could make him out stepping down from the second ambulance. Half of his face was puffy underneath a dressing, and his left arm was in a sling. He turned around, and helped down Henrietta from the step of the vehicle – her legs quivered unsteadily, almost as insecure as a newborn foal, and she looked oddly pathetic and vulnerable with her own head swathed in bandages.
Behind them, the paramedics lifted out a bodybag, that was not the shape of a body.
(Continued)