THE STARS DO NOT CARE

 

Major Richard Blaine discovers a bit more about himself and two of his Spartans 

and discovers the hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident that everyone has decided not to see.

THE STARS DO NOT CARE

“There was an indifference about war, a lack of interest in you and your little life. It changed the way everything looked and felt. You had to struggle to make things matter, to make you matter.”

– Nurse Rachel Reynolds

 

Cloverfield frowned, “That performance. What is up with you, mate?”

I shrugged. “Something I learned in New Orleans. A furious enemy makes more mistakes than a calm one. It gave me an edge sometimes.”

Nurse Reynolds studied me. “No, that is not it. It suddenly hit me as I was watching you. You simply enjoy playacting.”

Her head abruptly cocked, her luxurious raven hair slipping out a bit from her Spartan helmet. “I wonder ….”

“Cloverfield, how old does our major appear to you?”

His frown deepened. “Are you implying our mysterious major is even more mysterious than we thought?”

“James, I do. How old, would you say?”

He shrugged. 

“I dunno. His face appears to be the age of Robert Donat in the film, THE GHOST GOES WEST. I rather liked that one better than his THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO.”

He made a face. “Of course, that could be because the pretty Gestapo agent sitting beside me tried slipping a knife between my ribs mid-film.”

“Almost thirty, then.”

“Yes. Your point?”

“To me, his face is my little brother’s as I said farewell at the docks be … before he ….”

Cloverfield kindly finished for her. “Before he died at Dunkirk. Barely nineteen, was he not?”

She managed to get out one word. “Yes.”

Rachel glared at me. “How old are you, mister?”

This was getting precariously close to finding out I was maybe twenty. “Old enough to know better; too young to resist.”

She snapped, “That is no answer.”

“It’s the only one you will get from me … except I have no control over how my face appears to others.”

Rachel growled very unladylike, “I know that! You were mostly dead when first I saw you. Damn that Sentient!”

Cloverfield’s face became somber. “It may not be Sentient’s doing at all, Luv.”

“What are you blathering on about?”

“Our major, here, may unconsciously be the next step in evolution, a theory of which, up until now, I have been greatly dubious.”

“You have a theory about a theory?” mocked the nurse.

“Yes. Appalling, is it not? But MI6 forces its agents to keep abreast … no terrible pun on your anatomy ….”

I shook my head. “You want to commit suicide by sergeant-major?”

“Get on with it!” snapped Rachel.

“Oh, yes. MI6 wants its agents to know about advancements in science. 

But if you ask me, all their woolgathering seems more like breakdowns in logic rather than breakthroughs.”

“James!”

“Bother. Well, evolution would have us believe all of nature has been climbing from lesser to greater. But the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics tells us that nature left to itself degrades not upgrades.”

“You came up with this loony thought just when?” scoffed Nurse Reynolds.

Cloverfield smiled wide like a New Orleans mayor campaigning for reelection.

“Why, during the third S of the Three S’s of Espionage, of course.”

He counted them off on the fingers of his left hand. “Sex ….”

Rachel groaned aloud.

“Shoot-outs and … stake-outs.”

She sneered, “You think during stake-outs?”

“It hurts, but … yes.”

I was enjoying their banter, but I had to ask her. “What does this have to do with my age?”

She wheeled on me. “Your immaturity you exhibited just now might get us all killed one day!”

All amusement dropped from Cloverfield’s face like a stone.

“Like it got you killed when, dying on his feet, he took on two trained OSS killers to buy you a chance to escape?”

His face screwed up so that it scared me.

“Like it got us all killed aboard the Rocinante when he kept firing that damnable gun though it cost him his hands?”

His gray eyes flashed hot.

“Like it got us all killed as we raced across the death-trap of Omaha Beach?”

He stepped slowly towards her.

“Like his immaturity got us all killed when he kept our heads together in that ‘Tunnel/Not-Tunnel,’ watching over us as we slept?”

Rachel grew as pale as the promises of politicians up for a lame-duck office. 

But she didn’t back up.

I cleared my throat. “James. James Herbert Cloverfield!”

I knew from Sentient that he hated his middle name.

He turned to me, his eyes clearing as if coming out of a trance.

I smiled drily. “You kill her, and you’ll be denying yourself the pleasure of seeing our unflappable nurse truly, deeply flapped.”

Rachel cleared her own thick throat. “I don’t do ‘flapped,’ Richard.”

Richard? So, she did realize how close she had been to fighting for her life.

I almost smiled for real.

“When earlier I grew concerned about our nurse being the only female in a group of rowdy males, Sentient said she would handle it.”

Rachel started to look more concerned than when Cloverfield had been advancing on her.

“Did she say how?” They both asked as one.

I shook my head. “No. But I caught quick flashes of two faces.”

Again, they spoke as one, “Whose?”

“Helen Mayfair and the contract assassin turned nun, Sister Ameal.”

“Oh, bloody hell!” They both groaned.

 

“If Light is in your heart, you will always find your way back home.”

– Rabbi Amos Stein