that face, narrowed. A viewer would not have been able to see the darker circles around the irises that typically gave those eyes their frighteningly penetrating quality. 'The eyes of a madman,' said some, not always jokingly.
Have to think on this one. Hennessey resumed his reading.
The satanic sounding Latin piece ended, to be replaced by:
'I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black…'
To Hennessey the music was a drug, a way of purging the unwelcome feelings and emotions, most of them dark, that otherwise might have taken possession of him. Between that, his calming scotch, cigars and cigarettes, and-most especially-his wife, he kept the surge of feelings under control or, at least, at bay.
A cigarette burned in the ashtray on the maple inlaid into the mahogany desk, smoke curling up about twelve inches before being sucked outside by a ventilation fan. The fan dispersed it to a courtyard surrounded on all sides by the house Hennessey and his wife, Linda, had had built following his departure from the FS Army.
The cigarette was interesting, or, rather, the tobacco in it was. Despite many disapproving clucks from progressives back on Old Earth, a number of the early colonists had made sure to bring tobacco seeds. Once planted on Terra Nova, the tobacco had come under attack from a virus unknown on Old Earth. Whether this virus was native to Terra Nova, or a mutation from the earlier transplanting by the Noahs, or something unmodified and native to Old Earth that had either died out or never been identified; no one knew. The subject was hotly debated.
The effect of the virus, though, was to remove nearly all of the carcinogens from the tobacco. It remained addictive and was still rather unhealthy. It remained highly profitable to sell, the more so as it was considerably safer than Old Earth tobacco.
Of course, the sale and use of tobacco had come under even more virulent attack as Terra Nova developed its own brand of 'progressive.' Couching their arguments in terms of health, what these truly objected to was the profitability of the commodity. Progressives hated profit.
They hate profit, Hennessey thought, unless it's their own.
Hennessey knew about progressives. Especially did he know about cosmopolitan progressives, or Kosmos. He should have; he'd been raised to be one. The lessons had never quite taken.
Hennessey's library was in the very back of the house and reached from inner courtyard to rear windows. By turning his chair towards the rear Hennessey could see the one hundred and twenty-five foot waterfall that had made his wife, Linda, fall in love with this particular piece of land. The waterfall had its memories, memories that brought a smile to his face. There by the swimming hole, under the screened bohio… when the kids were all asleep… Oh, my…
The smile disappeared when Hennessey looked at his hand as it picked up the cigarette. He took a satisfyingly deep drag and pulled the cigarette away. Dainty disgusting thing, he thought, holding his hand out. Sickening for a soldier to have such small, miserable, soft hands. Oh well, the rest isn't so bad. And it isn't like I'm a soldier anymore, anyway.
'Not so bad,' was it. He was never going to win any beauty contests but…
Hennessey was somewhat slight of build and regular featured, with extraordinarily intense blue eyes. A reasonably well formed chest topped slim hips, themselves atop legs unusually massive, the result of many, many miles of heavy-pack forced marching in his younger years. They were infantry legs, plain and simple. Even several years of relative idleness had not robbed them of their strength. He was developing a slight paunch, something he made some effort to combat.
Turning his attention away from his utterly unsatisfactory hands and fingers, Hennessey's eyes wandered over the bookcases containing his library. He put the cigarette down, replacing it in that hand with the iced whiskey. The cubes made a tinkling sound as he sipped while continuing to peruse the library's shelves.
Hennessey's eyes came to rest on a simple metal-framed picture of Linda, his wife, now visiting his-mostly estranged-relatives in the Federated States.
He looked at the picture and glowed with love, thinking, I am one lucky son of a bitch.
Twelve years now they had been husband and wife; twelve years and three children. And still she looked like the eighteen-year-old girl he had married. If anything, so her husband thought, she was more lovely now than when he had married her.
Next to the one portrait was another, that of Linda with their son and two daughters. We do damned good work, don't we, hon? Miss you.
Hennessey looked up from his family portraits. He thought about waterfalls, then left the library to take the short walk down to the one behind the house. There was a small bohio, or shed, there, along with some garden furniture. He sat down in one of the padded chairs, losing himself in the sight and sound of the splashing water.
God, I love this place, he thought. He didn't mean merely the waterfall, nor even the entire property. He meant Balboa, possibly the only country in which he had ever felt truly at home.
Odd thing, that. But what's not to love… outside of, maybe, the government here? The people are bright, hardworking and friendly. The men are brave; the women loyal and lovely. The land is… well, 'beautiful' hardly does it justice. He watched Linda's multicolored pet 'trixie,' Jinfeng, sail across the waterfall. It came to rest on the branch of a large mango tree and began to eat the fruit it found there.
Just beautiful.
Balboa, being largely jungle and also somewhat sparsely settled, retained more than the usual amount of pre-settlement flora and fauna. Jinfeng was one example. But mixed in with the green of the jungle around the waterfall were some other species, bluegums and tranzitrees, the latter so named because their bright green- skinned fruit was intensely appetizing to look upon, and the mouthwatering red pulp inside intensely poisonous for man to eat.
Lower animals could eat tranzitree fruit without ill effect. It was conjectured in some circles that tranzitrees had been developed and placed on Terra Nova by the Noahs-the beings who had seeded the planet with life untold eons ago-expressly to prevent the rise of intelligence. Certainly the tranzitrees had been artificially created, as had bolshiberry bushes and progressivines. The latter two were, likewise, poisonous to intelligent life but harmless to lower forms. Their complex toxins did build up in some food animals, were they allowed to eat of them, rendering those animals equally toxic. This, too, would have tended to limit the development of civilization, even had early intelligent life managed to survive the tranzitrees, bolshiberries, and progressivines, by limiting the food supply.
The tranzitrees had no real use but aesthetics. The bluegums, on the other hand, were cultivated locally for their edible nuts, high grade lumber for cabinetry and furniture, and the refinable resin-a rubberlike compound-which gave them their name. All were blue, as were the trees' leaves. The leaves were used to make a rather good dye.
Of course, there's no law in this place. It's all who you are related to, who you know, who are your friends, what bribes can you pay, and how much clout do you have. A well-connected man can get away with murder-some of my in-laws have- manslaughter, anyway.
Want to set up a new business? 'Well, my brother-in-law is at the planning commission. I am sure he could help you if you made it worth his while.' Need to buy a chunk of land? 'My cousin, the procurator, could probably help but he doesn't come cheap.' That's all fine for me; I'm connected through Linda's clan. But what about the average Joses? They're screwed, unless, that is, they know somebody.
Add a little law, a little integrity, to the government and this place could be perfection.
The maid, Lucinda, found him under the bohio, lost in thought.
' Senor?'
'Yes, Lucinda?' he asked.
The woman was older, from a poor family, and never terribly pretty. Nonetheless, her family had been in service to Linda's for generations. This explained why she had taken a job even at the wretched salary earned by a domestic in the undeveloped and unindustrialized parts of Terra Nova. Hennessey tried to treat her kindly and, had she been asked, the maid likely would have voiced no ground of complaint.
' Senor, there are two men here to see you. One is from the Fuerza Civil; a Major Jimenez. The other is General Parilla. You know, sir, the old dictator?'
