Earth

Any recruit who took that kind of talk personally was a fool. Roland just took advantage of the pause to catch his breath. “No weapons,” Takka groused as they stacked their rifles amid trampled marigolds. “What we supposed to use, our hands?”

Roland shrugged. The casual postures of the officers told him this was no terrorist site. “Prob’ly,” he guessed. “Them and our backs.”

“This way, weenies,” Wu said, with no malice and only a little carefully tailored contempt. “Come on. It’s time to save the world again.”

Through the bright windows Roland glimpsed rich men, rich women, dressed in shimmering fabrics. Nearly all looked like Han-Formosans. For the first time since arriving at Camp P6rez de Cuellar, Roland really felt he was in Taiwan, almost China, thousands of miles from Indiana.

Servants still carried trays of refreshments, their darker Bengali or Tamil complexions contrasting with the pale Taiwanese. Unlike the agitated party guests, the attendants seemed undisturbed to have in their midst all these soldiers and green-clad marshals from UNEPA. In fact, Roland saw one waiter smile when she thought no one was looking, and help herself to a glass of champagne.

UNEPA… Roland thought on spying the green uniforms. That means eco-crimes.

Wu hustled the squad past where some real soldiers stood guard in blurry combat camouflage, their eyes hooded by multisensor goggles which seemed to dart and flash as their pulse-rifles glittered darkly. The guards dismissed the recruits with barely a flicker of attention, which irked Roland far worse than the insults of Wu and Kleinerman.

I’ll make them notice me, he vowed. Though he knew better than to expect it soon. You didn’t get to be like those guys overnight.

Behind the mansion a ramp dropped steeply into the earth. Smoke rose from a blasted steel door that now lay curled and twisted to one side. A woman marshal met them by the opening. Even darker than her chocolate skin was the cast of her features — as if they were carved from basalt. “This way,” she said tersely and led them down the ramp — a trip of more than fifty meters — into a reinforced concrete bunker. When they reached the bottom, however, it wasn’t at all what Roland had expected — some squat armored slab.

Instead, he found himself in a place straight out of the Arabian Nights.

The recruits gasped. “Shee-it!” Takka commented concisely, showing how well he’d picked up the essentials of Military English. Kanakoa, the Hawaiian, expressed amazement even more eloquently. “Welcome to the elephant’s graveyard, Tarzan.”

Roland only stared. Tiny, multicolored spotlights illuminated the arched chamber, subtly emphasizing the shine of ivory and fur and crystal. From wall to wall, the spoils of five continents were piled high. More illicit wealth than Roland had ever seen. More than he could ever have imagined.

From racks in all directions hung spotted leopard pelts, shimmering beaver skins, white winter fox stoles. And shoes! Endless stacks of them, made from dead reptiles, obviously, though Roland couldn’t begin to conceive which species had given its all for which pair.

“Hey, Senterius.” Takka nudged him in the ribs and Roland looked down where the Japanese recruit pointed.

Near his left foot lay a luxurious white carpet… the splayed form of a flayed polar bear whose snarling expression looked really angry. Roland jerked away from those glittering teeth, backing up until something pointy and hard rammed his spine. He whirled, only to goggle in amazement at a stack of elephant tusks, each bearing a golden tip guard.

“Gaia!” he breathed.

“You said it,” Kanakoa commented. “Boy, I’ll bet Her Holy Nibs is completely pissed off over this.”

Roland wished he hadn’t spoken the Earth Mother’s name aloud. Hers wasn’t a soldierly faith, after all. But Kanakoa and Takka seemed as stu

Roland shrugged. “Used to be, rich folks liked to wear gnomish crap like this.”

Takka sneered. “I knew that. But why now? It is not just illegal. It’s… it’s—”

“Sick? Is that what you were going to say, Private?”

They turned to see the UNEPA marshal standing close by, looking past them at the piled ivory. She couldn’t be over forty years old, but right now the tendons in her neck were taut as bowstrings and she looked quite ancient.

“Come with me, I want to show you soldiers something.”

They followed her past cases filled with pi

Roland saw veins pulse on the backs of her hands. The recruits fell mute, awed by such hatred as she radiated now. Nothing down here impressed them half as much.

Roland found the courage to ask, “What’s in the jars, ma’am?”

Watching her face, he realized what an effort it took for her to speak right now, and found himself wondering if he’d ever be able to exert such mastery over his own body.

“Rhinoceros… horn,” she said hoarsely. “Powdered narwhal tusk… whale semen…”

Roland nodded. He’d heard of such things. Ancient legends held they could prolong life, or heighten sexual prowess, or drive women into writhing heat. And neither morality nor law nor scientific disproof deterred some men from chasing hope.

“So much. There must be a hundred kilos in there!” Takka commented. But he stepped back when the UNEPA official whirled to glare at him, her expression one of bleak despair.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I hoped we’d find so much more.”

Roland soon discovered just what use recruits were on a mission like this.

Sure enough, he thought, resigned that he had only begun plumbing the depths of exhaustion the peacekeeping forces had in store for him. Hauling sixty-kilo tusks up the steep ramp, he and Private Schmidt knew they were important pieces in a well-tuned, highly efficient, rapid-deployment force whose worldwide duties stretched from pole to pole. Their part was less glamorous than the on-site inspectors prowling Siberia and Sinkiang and Wyoming, enforcing arms-control pacts. Or the brave few keeping angry militias in Brazil and Argentina from each other’s throats. Or even the officers tagging and inventorying tonight’s booty. But after all, as Corporal Wu told them repeatedly, they also serve who only grunt and sweat.

Roland tried not to show any discomfort working with Schmidt. After all, the tall, ski

One thing, Schmidt sure spoke English well. Better, in fact, than most of Roland’s old gang back in Bloomington. “Where are they hauling this stuff?” his partner asked the pilot of one of the minizeps as they took a two-minute breather outside.

“They’ve got warehouses all over the world,” the Swedish noncom said. “If I told you about them, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try us,” Roland prompted.

The flier’s blue eyes seemed to look far away. “Take what you found in that tomb and multiply it a thousandfold.”

“Shee-it,” Schmidt sighed. “But…”

“Oh, some of this stuff here won’t go into storage. The ivory, for instance. They’ll implant label isotopes so each piece is chemically unique, then they’ll sell it. The zoo arks harvest elephant tusks nowadays anyway, as do the African parks, so the beasts won’t tear up trees or attract poachers. That policy came too late to save this fellow.” He patted the tusk beside him. “Alas.”