“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said. That was a lie. I had also tried to convince myself that I did not want to be recalled, but I knew it was a lie as well. I was designed for military use. I had recently chosen suicide over a quiet peaceful life on a farming planet.
“I asked around. If you came back, you might not be able to reenter as a colonel,” Brocius said, pretending I had told him that I could not wait to reup. “That was never official, you know. Admiral Huang sort of muscled that last promotion of yours through for security purposes.
“We might be able to preserve your officer status.”
“I’m happy as a civilian, sir,” I said. I did not want to make this too easy for him.
Brocius ignored this comment. “How do you see the war going?” He asked this with a relaxed but interested air. He sounded like a man asking a salesman for advice about cars. “What do we need to win this war?”
The first time I had seen Alden Brocius, he had black hair, brown eyes, and the typical officer’s disdain for enlisted men and clones. He was tall and slender back then. That was four years ago.
Over the last four years he had put on a few pounds and grown a beard. The hair on his head and in his beard had turned gray. He looked like a man struggling to hold on to his fifties. The wrinkles around the corners of his eyes blended into his cheeks. He looked tired.
“What can we do to win this one, Harris?” he repeated.
“The Mogats won’t engage in a surface war, they’re not that dumb, so you’re going to need a self- broadcasting fleet if you want to engage them,” I said. No brilliant observations there, but I did not have anything brilliant to add on the spur of the moment.
“Do you think we have time to build another self-broadcasting fleet?” Brocius asked.
“That depends how long it would take to build it,” I said. Then, realizing just what an asinine statement I had just made, I added, “I’ve been out of the loop, sir. I only know what you and the Japanese have told me.
“From what I hear, time might be short. I don’t see the Mogats waiting around forever. I mean three years…”
“Three years?” Brocius asked.
“We built the Galactic Central Fleet in three years,” I said.
“Ah, yes we did. But we had the Network up and running back then. Without the Network, we can’t send unfinished ships between dry docks. We’ll have to start and complete each ship in the same facility.
“We’re not looking at three years this time, we’re looking at ten if we get lucky. Maybe twelve if things don’t fall into place.”
We drove out of town and through a wooded countryside. Finally, we ended up in a residential area. To me, the mansions along the street looked as big as hotels. They had manicured lawns and acre-long driveways. We pulled up to a three-story home with a redbrick facade and brown tile roof.
“Nice place,” I said. “Your home?”
“Not very often,” Brocius said. “My home is the fleet. I guess that makes this more my vacation house. When I’m in town on business, I generally stay in the barracks. It’s much more convenient.”
The car stopped in front of a redbrick walkway that led to the door. Our chauffeur came around and opened the admiral’s door. Not sure if I should wait for the man to open mine as well, I let myself out.
“The place has been in the family for generations. I make it out here two, maybe three times a year,” Brocius said, still continuing the same conversation.
We went inside. Whoever had decorated Admiral Brocius’s home could not decide whether to go modern or antique. The entry had bright lights and shiny smooth walls made out of a modern stone-and-glass hybrid. The builders had made curved corners and pleated the walls. The look was chic, I suppose. Beyond the entryway, the glass/stone material gave way to cherrywood walls, leather furniture, and lots of bookcases. The house had a musty feeling.
We entered a parlor decorated with antique brass instruments. The room had a telescope on a large hutch and a compass the size of a coffee table in the center of the floor. Brocius had an ancient map of some Earth ocean framed on the wall.
We moved on to Brocius’s private study. In this room he had an antique rolltop desk. A painting of an old-time sailing ship cutting through a stormy sea hung on the wall. In one corner of the room stood a cutaway model of an early orbital space station. Like the rooms we entered before it, the office had carpets in the center of the floor with a wide hardwood border.
“What do you think?” Brocius asked.
“It’s comfortable,” I said. In truth, I found the furnishings so dull and dark that they made me sleepy.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Brocius said. “I hate this room. As an admiral, I’m obligated to have at least one room like that in my house. We’re all supposed to love the sea. We’re supposed to be fascinated by the history of navigation. That’s our public image. We have to decorate our houses to look like monuments to naval history.”
“Bryce Klyber had a room like this in his house, too. I think he actually liked his.” Bryce Klyber, my mentor, had been the highest-ranking officer in the U.A. Navy until his untimely death. I was sure that he did have a room like this one in his house, and I was just as sure that he often retired there to meditate.
Brocius led me upstairs. The staircase ended in an enormous parlor. When he turned on the lights, I saw mirrored walls, old-fashioned neon signs, and bulbs that blinked on and off. He had two rows of antique slot machines, the oldest of which took coins instead of credits. Some even had mechanical wheels with symbols instead of computer screens.
In one corner of the room was a twenty-foot display that looked like a track for horse racing. It had six tin horses on a mural that depicted a straightaway. There was a betting counter beside the game with six stools. It was impressive.
“What do you think?” Brocius asked.
“I like it,” I said. It beat the hell out of the naval museum downstairs.
“It all works. Even the horse-racing game,” Brocius said.
That was not an invitation to come back and play. He probably held enormous parties for his fellow alumni from Annapolis—officers, natural-borns. Clones and enlisted men need not apply.
“Some of these machines are over five hundred years old,” Brocius said. He pointed to three pinball machines against a far wall. “Those machines are American twentieth century.”
They looked shiny and new, with flashing lights hidden behind gaudy glass marquees. There was a kind of practical whimsy about these old toys. Many of them captured the way their ancient owners envisioned the future—all chrome and flashing lights. The people who designed them had it all wrong, of course, but I liked the look of the future as they saw it.
We had “Budge” pinball machines in the game room at our orphanage, holographic machines that let you use a pre-designed course or create your own table. Everything from the ball to the bumpers looked solid and real, but it was all laser projection. One of Brocius’s pinball tables had a volcano made of plastic and winking lights to simulate lava. With Budge machines, you could have an erupting volcano that spit molten lava, or, if you wanted to play like the ancients, a holographic version of a toy volcano made of plastic and lights.
Growing up, I never saw anyone select antique-looking elements. We all wanted volcanoes and roller coasters that looked real, and monsters that breathed air and spit fire. If ever I got my hands on one of those machines again, I decided I would go with all antique elements.
“This room is a gambling man’s dream,” I said. “You must be quite a player.”
“You’ve got me all wrong, Harris. I don’t gamble, I win,” Brocius said.
“The gamblers are the people who put money in my machines. Once in a while they walk off with more than they brought, usually they leave empty-handed. Me, I always walk away with more than I started with. I’m the house.” He leaned toward me as if to confide a secret. “I get better odds.”
He shut off the lights and led me back down the stairs, back to his stodgy museum of maritime history.
We ate in a large dining room on a hardwood table that could have served twenty people. A petty officer in a dress uniform served us our meal. The man looked so serious as he handed us our plates, you would have thought Brocius had threatened him with a court-martial.
“Did you know that the Mogats routed one of the fleets in the Perseus Arm?” Brocius asked. This was the first time he’d spoken since we sat at the table. It was one hell of a conversation starter, especially as I had been laboring under the impression that the Mogat ships could not stand up to the modern U.A. Navy.
