Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(36)

Given the data-intensive nature of the artillery branch, it had been perhaps inevitable that Klemm had been assigned there. It had been the intent of his recruiters for him to function as a human calculator during sieges and other extended shelling scenarios. There, the ruthless laws of physics dictated results more profoundly than upon the fluid battlefields where human unpredictability, and even caprice, played a greater role in determining outcomes.

But that rear-echelon role hadn’t kept Karl Klemm from seeing the full scope of horrors on display in the Thirty Years’ War. Nor had it insulated him from the vicious attitudes of an increasing number of the Catholic troops. Not only were Tilly’s men weary with war, they had been forced to forage from (then pillage, and ultimately sack) towns, both enemy and allied, for supplies. Predictably, with its ranks swollen by amoral and brutish mercenaries whom Klemm could hardly distinguish from highwaymen, the rank-and-file of Tilly’s army was not receptive to a clever young fellow who was clearly the darling of the army’s highest, aristocratic officers. The resentment and hate that the soldiers could not express toward those officers themselves was redirected toward this younger, more vulnerable object of their approbation. And so young Karl Klemm had learned to keep his head down and his gifts hidden.

He had approached the Hibernian Mercenary Battalion without referring to his background with the enemy’s army or his unusual skills. Rather, he had heard they were looking for persons who might be handy at refurbishing broken up-time firearms. He had applied to become a mere technician. But one of the battalion’s two proprietors, Liam Donovan, had the shrewd eye of a professional recruiter and saw much more than that in young Klemm. And so had sent him on to Larry’s office.

That had been when Karl was thin, jobless, and shivering in a coat much too old to ward off the frigid fangs of the middle weeks of February. Now, three months later, in a riverside meadow, releasing Lolly Aossey’s hand as if handing off a partner in a gavotte, he seemed a different person.

“Karl,” Larry called.

“Yes, Major Quinn?”

“Has Ms. Aossey finished boring you today?”

Lolly rounded on Quinn, who was smiling mischief at her. “So I was a boring teacher, Larry?”

“Not usually, Miz Aossey, but let’s face it: a fifty-minute lesson on earth science is now a reasonable replacement for the sleeping aids we left back up-time.”

“Hmpf. Do you agree with Major Quinn, Karl?”

Klemm knelt to study the soil. “I cannot speak for anyone else, but I find geology rather fascinating.”

That’s Karl, ever the diplomat. Larry looked back at Lolly. “So why did you want to come down here from the hills?”

Lolly walked over to where Karl was strolling, now running his hands along the sheer skirts of the ridge as he studied the strata of its rocky ribs. “So that Karl could look at what surveyors and drillers would designate extremely soft ‘unconsolidated formations.’”

“And what are those?”

Lolly turned to look at Klemm with one slightly raised eyebrow. Karl, seeing that as his cue, supplied the answer promptly. “An unconsolidated rock formation takes the form of loose particles, such as sand or clay.”

“You mean, it’s not really rock.”

“No, Larry,” scolded Lolly. “That’s not what it means at all. Sand, for instance, starts out as solid rock.”

“Like gravel.”

Ms. Aossey nodded. “Exactly.”

“So how is coming here better than going to a sand pit?”

“Because, Larry, a sand pit such as you mean is not a natural occurrence. And that’s what Karl needs to see, to experience: the formations that arise naturally around such earths, and vice versa.”

Karl brushed off his hands, put them on his narrow hips, looked at the rock thoughtfully, then at the ground. “And unless I am much mistaken, Ms. Aossey wishes me to become especially familiar with the compositions particular to alluvial or coastal deposits. The other two times we have gone on a field survey, we visited similar environments.”

Lolly stared at Klemm. She said, “Very good, Karl,” and clearly meant it, but there was also a surprised, even worried tone in her voice.

Quinn kept himself from smiling. The problem with training clever people for even highly compartmentalized confidential missions was that their quick wits could often defeat the information firewalls erected by the planners. From a few key pieces, they could begin to discern the shape, or at least the key objectives, of the operation.

Karl Klemm demonstrated that propensity in his next leading comment. “In fact, I find it puzzling that we are spending so much time in areas with these formations.”