Authors: Francis Porretto
"Stiff problem, eh?" He concentrated on the coffee fixings.
"Yup." She wriggled slightly to force the immobile muscles at the base of her spine to distribute the fluids that had collected in them.
"It wasn't easy for the men who actually faced it, either."
"This is a historical?"
"Yup."
She grinned. "That's my line."
"I know. You must have driven Louis insane with it. He was a stickler for good language."
"Yeah." The familiar lump formed in her chest once more, settled around her heart, and squeezed. "I miss him, Malcolm."
"Of course you do. I miss him too." He set the pot on the stove and lit the burner, then turned to face her. "He'd be proud of you, though. He was proud of you. Take what comfort you can from that."
She nodded. "How did he do on this stuff?"
"How was he as a fighter, Christine?"
She shrugged. "What do I have to compare him to?"
"You and me."
"Well, then," she said, "better than you and not quite as good as me."
He already knew that. Did he ask just to see if I was willing to say so?
Loughlin did not bat an eyelash. "And that's how he was at this, too."
"I thought you said his planning skills were natural."
He nodded. "And naturally very good. As I would have expected you to realize."
No argument there. He built a life for me out of parts he found around his house.
"Malcolm, why is it so important for me to learn all this? I'm not a soldier. I'm never going to lead troops into battle."
Loughlin folded his arms across his chest and stared at her for a long moment.
"Are you quite sure of that?"
"Well...?"
"Louis was sure, too." Loughlin snorted in derision and affectionate remembrance. "He was right, but the training came in handy eventually anyway, didn't it? As for you, do you really know what your future holds? I've never been able to predict mine."
"Come on, Malcolm, you must have some reason for all this. There's a hell of a lot of effort involved."
"Do you begrudge it, suddenly?" There was a hint of frost on the words. "I was under the impression that you were enjoying yourself."
"I am, I am! But what are you getting out of it?"
The sag of his shoulders spoke of a weariness that defied description in mere words. "Always they come back to the same question. Tell, me, child, if I were to offer you a wheelbarrow full of gold, or diamonds, would you insist on knowing why I was being so generous as a condition of acceptance?"
"Malcolm," she said, and was surprised to hear the note of warning that hummed in her own voice. "First, I've asked you to call me Christine. Second, whoever's child I am, I'm almost certainly not yours. And third, you bet your Goddamned ass I would! Very few gifts have no strings attached."
Loughlin's eyes grew hard again. "Well, you're no fool, at any rate. But first, Miss D'Alessandro, compared to me, you
are
a child. Second, our lack of a biological relationship notwithstanding, by your late mentor's explicit request, I stand in a parental guardian's relationship to you, just as he did. And third, if there are any strings on a gift of mine, it would be I who put them there, so why should I undercut my own purposes, whatever they might be, by telling you about them?"
The rebuke left her confused. She had to admit to herself that he was right on all three counts, and that she wasn't angry about it.
"So I should consider you just one more adversary whose motives I have to ferret out?"
"Think of me as you like." The flinty hardness had not mitigated. "I do what I do for reasons of my own. One of them you know about. The others I choose to keep to myself. Your options are what they've always been."
Oh yeah, right. I get to choose between letting you stuff me full of large-scale mayhem for reasons you won't discuss, and disregarding my dead lover's last request. Nice options.
"How do you usually come by your students?"
"I have a selection process."
"Would I have passed," she asked, "if Louis hadn't sent me to you?"
"Would you have passed?" His voice became farcically bright. "Or would I have selected you?"
"Both." She braced herself for whatever scorn he was about to dispense.
Loughlin ground his teeth together hard enough to be audible. Boomer's head rose again and swiveled toward him.
"I would never have considered you under normal circumstances," he forced out. "Despite that, I'll tell you freely that you're the best I've ever had. Now will you have done and concentrate on the work, as Louis would have wanted you to do with so precious an opportunity?"
Her adrenaline was rising. "What makes it so precious?"
"How did Louis describe me to you?"
"He said you were the greatest warrior that ever lived."
"And under whom," he intoned, "would you prefer to study the art of war?"
"How many others have there been, Malcolm?"
"Trainees of mine? A great many. Too many to remember them all. Nor have I kept count."
"You selected them all personally?"
He turned away.
Don't pursue it any further, Christine.
Why not, Nag?
Can't you see the state he's in? Do you want him to order you out of his home and forbid you to return?
Why Nag, I think this is the first time you've ever counseled me to be cautious. But sauce for the goose and all that. He says he respects self-control. Let's see how much of it he has on tap.
"Well, Malcolm?"
"Yes, I selected them all personally." There was a faint tremor running through his frame.
"It's considered polite to face the person you're speaking to, you know."
He did not respond.
"Have your other pupils made you proud of them?"
He turned at that, and she drew back. His normally unreadable face was a mask of fury and shame. His hands had balled into fists, and he was struggling to keep them at his sides.
"I have done," he said in a low monotone at odds with his visage, "everything I could do. I researched each of them until I could finish his sentences for him. I tested and prodded them in every way I could imagine. I shadowed their steps, and the steps of their wives and friends and children. Sometimes I watched them as they slept. Even so, there have been very few I didn't eventually have to hunt down and kill."
Christine was stricken speechless.
"There is a disease of the mind," he continued in a lecturer's manner, "that seems to afflict nearly every man who has the ability to use what I teach. Perhaps the work itself brings on the condition. I've never really been sure. One way or another, it makes them believe that they know what's best for you. If you're smart, you'll bend the knee and let them guide you. If not, you're either a benighted fool who has to be led on a chain for your own welfare, or an enemy of the good who plans to corrupt and destroy those around you.
"I told them all, Christine. I told them just as I'm telling you now. The very idea filled them with revulsion, that anyone would act in that way, and outrage, that I could believe them capable of such infamies. Then they went forth into the world, and eventually I heard of them adding to its quotient of horror and tyranny, and I had to go to them, and put them out of the world's misery."
He raised his hands before him, palms up, and studied them as if they were implements of torture.
"Before Louis, it had been a very long time since my last pupil. I sought him out and expunged him, but his legacy to the world has not yet ceased to torment it. I had decided to give up, but stumbling upon Louis brought me out of retirement. Yet who can say? Had Louis lived, I might have had to end his life as well."
"NO!" The word hurled itself from her lips, impossible to restrain. Boomer surged to his feet, tail erect, scanning the trailer for some threat to his mistress. "I've told you to keep your filthy mouth off him!"
Loughlin smiled sadly. "Why are you so sure, Christine? Because he was good to you? Do you think it wise to generalize from that?"
"I saw him risk his life for me," she screamed. "He went out to confront three murderers all alone, to protect a worthless, carved-up slut he'd raised out of the gutter!"
"As you wish. I loved him too. I would not have relished the necessity of killing him." He gestured at the map on the table. "It would be best if you got back to work."
"Why, O Detached One?" A hurricane of confusion and pain had built up inside her. "What makes the work important? Why should I study your arts, if all it'll come to in the end is my trying to rule the world and you seeking my throat?"
"Because you might be an exception. You might be the one to set the world free instead of forging it a new set of manacles. And because Louis Redmond sent you to me. So get to work or get out." He turned back to the stove and quenched the burner. "The coffee's ready."
"How long?"
He turned back to her. "What?"
"How long have you been doing this, Malcolm? How long have you been training generals, setting them loose, waiting to see what they're really out for, and then punching their tickets when they turn out to be villains?"
He said nothing. He appeared to be waiting for her to retract the question.
"Well?"
"Two thousand years."
She barked a laugh. "You could have just said you didn't want to tell me."
He shook his head minutely. For some reason, she became afraid.
"But I did."
She groped for her chair and half-sat, half-fell into it. Boomer came to her and rested his head in her lap, and she stroked it.
Just what the hell is he claiming to be? He can't expect me to take that seriously, but I'd swear to God that he means it.
Just how do you get to be the greatest warrior that ever lived? And know it? And be able to convince Louis Redmond of it? How long does it take? How many rivals do you have to conquer?
Loughlin set a filled mug before her and sat across from her. She raised the mug to her lips and sipped from it. He looked down at the map between them, holding his silence.
I've got to know who he is. What he meant to Louis. I'll never find out this way. He holds me at bay too easily here.
It took her a while to work up the courage.
"Malcolm."
"Yes?"
"They say the snow is going to be getting a lot worse soon."
"So?"
"So how hard is it to winterize this place?"
He looked up. "And why would I need to do that?"
She drew a deep breath. "Because you'd be coming to live with me."
Disbelief blossomed on his face. "I don't need to worry about you. You're out of your mind already."
"Maybe. I mean it, though. There's lots of room at my place, and it would save us both a lot of hassles. I can't think of a reason you couldn't. I mean, you don't have all that much to move, and Boomer likes you."
At the sound of his name, the Newfoundland raised his head from her lap and looked up. She scratched him under the chin, and he stretched in pleased response.
Loughlin stared at her as if she'd sprouted a second head. "Has it occurred to you that I might need my privacy too much for that?"
She nodded. "Yeah, it has. But you'll have the place to yourself most of the day, five days a week. I just thought you might like some regular company, especially if it came with room and board and the run of Louis's books."
"And what about you? Don't you have a boyfriend or something? Someone who might object to your having another man around the house?"
"Malcolm-m-m-m!" she growled. But the question made her think of Rolf.
Whatever Rolf was, he wasn't a
boyfriend
. They'd been out for a half-dozen after-work dinners and a single movie. He'd never been to the house. He was attentive and charming. He was probably sweet on her, in a melancholy, faintly hopeless way. Yet all they ever talked about was work. He'd deflected her more personal inquiries without quite acknowledging that she'd made them, and had yet to make any of her. Whatever they were doing was still in its earliest stages, and might never go any further.
Loughlin sat up straight and stared over her head, lips compressed.
I can't make it any more attractive than that, Malcolm. I don't know what I'll gain if you agree to this, but I want it a lot. Please say yes.
"Would you be willing to bring me back here now and then? I don't have a car, and it's a long walk."
She nodded. "Sure."
"Then I'll try it." He grinned reluctantly. "That's some library he put together, isn't it?"
"Ask me again when I've gotten all the way through it. When do you want to move in?"
He rose from the table and went to the trailer's tiny bathroom. When he came back, she saw that he'd stuck his toothbrush into his shirt pocket.