“Major Murphy.” Greig, surprised, gave him an exaggerated sideways glance, then took the pot from the holder and poured a cup. “Would you like some?”
“That’d be great.”
She reached up and opened the cabinet, taking down a cup. Stretched, her arm muscles showed strong definition.
“And how would you like it?” she asked.
“I’ll just drink it black.”
“Good choice.” She handed him the cup she had already poured. “We don’t have any milk. And the sugar supply is getting low.”
Zeus took the coffee and held it under his nose. The steam felt good on his sinuses.
“Smell good?” she asked, her tone slightly mocking.
“My nose is a little stuffed up. I think I’m getting a cold.”
“That’s too bad. How’s the storm?”
“It’s, uh… wet.”
“I see.” She glanced down at the floor. He’d trailed rain onto the rug.
“It was worse before,” said Zeus.
She poured herself a cup, then took a sip.
“Are you here for a meeting?” she asked.
“I kinda have… there’s a problem with one of the Vietnamese doctors who helped me. She’s in trouble. I was wondering if the ambassador could help.”
“Let’s discuss this in my office,” she told him.
Unofficially, Greig might be able to do something herself. She was the acting consul general, and as such, used to helping Americans deal with the Vietnamese authorities.
Still, she didn’t hold out a lot of hope. Her body language — arms furled in front of her breasts, legs crossed in a tight wedge — emphasized the point. She sat at the edge of her desk, a few feet from him in the large inner office.
“The Vietnamese government is very hierarchical,” Greig told him. “They don’t take very kindly to outside interference. They’re very touchy.”
“I’m not trying to interfere. I just want to get her out. She’s not a traitor.”
“They may see things very differently. The Chinese are massacring their people.”
“That doesn’t give them the right to kill injured prisoners of war,” said Zeus. He started to get up from the overstuffed chair. “I’m sorry to waste your time.”
“Wait, wait. Relax, Major.” Greig put her hands on the desk behind her, as if bracing herself. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t try to help. I’m just putting things into their perspective, that’s all. If you’re going to help her, you’re going to have to understand the system she lives in.”
“You don’t sound very optimistic.”
“I’m trying to be realistic. I’ll talk to some people in the government whom I know. That’s where I’ll start. But with the war, obviously, I don’t know how much help they’ll be.”
“I risked my life for them. One of my friends got killed.”
“Which friend?”
Zeus was surprised that Greig didn’t know about Christian.
“Some of the Vietnamese I met,” he told her, deciding to backtrack. “They didn’t make it.”
“Mmmm.” She didn’t seem to believe him, but she didn’t press. “Let me ask you a personal question, Zeus. What’s the nature of your relationship with Dr. Anway?”
“There is no relationship.”
“None?”
“She helped me, that’s all. And I… I saw what happened.”
“I’ll do what I can, Major. But don’t expect miracles.”
9
His cousin had recently turned over the ground of what they called the house garden behind the barn, ready to plant some of the early vegetables. The small garden was separate from the actual farming operation. It was a full acre, elaborately laid out and carefully tended by hand. In a few months’ time, it would be filled with tomatoes and cucumbers and melons, several different kinds of lettuce, and huge, long green beans that Josh remembered from his childhood as veritable swords.
The farm had been in the family for generations, through good and bad times. Mostly, they’d grown wheat and soybeans, though a good portion of the land supported dairy cows for a while, and forty acres had been devoted to corn, supposedly since the days of the Indians.
It was on the farm that Josh had first become interested in how things worked together, how different plants thrived under different conditions, and it was in the house garden that his interest was piqued. Some of the varieties they grew had been passed down for several generations. Among the prize vegetables was a particularly squat but juicy striped tomato that bore no resemblance to anything Josh had seen anywhere else.
Josh was not a farmer, for many reasons. But he did love to stand in the middle of a farm, close enough to the barn to feel its smell, or near to the machines, or out in the middle of fields that seemed to go on forever.
This was the American core, at least as he knew it. Ironically, while the rest of the world was sinking fast into depression, agriculture in America was booming. The climate pressures were helping.
Temporarily, and in select places; much of the southeast was facing a severe drought, which Josh knew would only get worse. It was a slow-motion disaster, which meant there was still some time to deal with it.
Ironically, that made people less likely to face the problem. As he’d seen in China.
Josh shook his head. The rest of the world was not his concern. War was not his problem. He was a scientist, and his job was science. The war would end. Science would not.
He kicked another clump of dirt.
Josh left the garden and walked up the little hill where they had gone sleigh-riding as a kid. He wondered if his cousins still did that.
His parents had died not far from here, in a massacre that the newspapers had compared to the much more famous
He could see it, actually, if he looked hard enough. But he didn’t.
He could see it even more clearly if he closed his eyes and thought about that day. But that he never did.
Josh headed back for the house. It would be good to go back to work soon, but where exactly would he go? He was still on a stipend from the UN Climate Catch program. He had to talk to them, see what they wanted him to do.
He smelled the strong scent of coffee a good twenty paces from the back door. He went into the kitchen, where his cousin’s wife, Debra, was just cleaning up.
“There you are, Josh. Fresh coffee’s up.”
“Thanks.” He went to the cupboard and took out a large mug. When he was little, the farm had belonged to his grandfather. With the exception of the appliances and TV sets, very little had changed. The kitchen stove, a massive eight-burner, two-oven behemoth, was so old it had to be lit by hand.
