GWOT VII - Wifely Duties

The last few weeks of turmoil, and ironically enough the Ambassador's repeated attempts to get rid of me, have cemented something I did not expect.

I'm in charge of the Embassy.

I'm not the Collections station chief, but he is free to do his job without distractions.

I'm not the Ambassador, but only the host government will talk to her any more. No one else bothers.

I'm not the administrative commander, nor am I the senior military attache ... that would be Captain Morrissey of the Naval Militia, and he has strict orders to let me do whatever the fuck I want.

How much food storage do we need? Ten days, I decide.

When do we open the visa section? We don't. Videoconference only. And the call center for that is in sunny California.

Repatriation policy? Of course. California encourages immigration and if the Chinese slip in any ringers, we can catch them on the back side where we can easily execute them for treason.

I don't compromise on the physical security of the Embassy. Can't.

The crew of five 'laborers' taking turns standing over my locked and booby trapped hard case are quite bored with it. That was a primary selection criteria for them, when they were recruited for the Strategic Defense Force. Bored to tears but still doing the job.

All but the smallest embassies have a doctor on staff. This is because people are human, fallible and fragile, and some of us have secrets in our heads.

We are blessed with a Doctor and a Psyche.

I must explain the latter. The Surgeon General of the Republic has created a parallel profession to medicine. A Psyche is a licensed health professional. They are not, however, required to go through all the training of say, a pre-War psychologist or mental health worker. They have to do clinicals that make them roughly the equivalent of a pre-War paramedic, which is non trivial - but one year, not four. They can and do prescribe drugs; but they mostly work on improving the mental health of everyone they are responsible for.

Midnight basketball? Gym? Therapy dogs? Yoga? You bet.

Crisis counseling? Spiritual referrals? Ritual observances for any need, looking up the details in the California Comprehensive Manual of World Faiths? From spaghetti collanders on heads to crucifi on altars, cloth on heads to wafers on tongues ... a Psyche has got you covered.

Straightjackets? Thorazine? Wet packs? Electroconvulsive therapy with the convenient field kit? All of that too.

And one more. Practical Sexuality referrals.

What I'd had to arrange on an ad hoc basis at the Border, and what had been arranged for me among our own troops in Iowa, was in fact national policy. As happens on deployments,. people were pairing off - and when the new Embassy had been planned, a salted mix of genders and preferences, and two bodyworkers, had been assigned.

I hadn't been part of that planning.

So the Psyche was only doing his job when he called me in for a routine check, and handed me a questionnaire.

I handed it back. I felt I was showing great restraint by not tearing it up and throwing it in his smug face.

He picked up his phone, said he was in consultation, and closed and locked the door.

I again showed great restraint.

I stood, faced him, stared him down, unlocked the door, then returned to my seat.

He returned to his own, slowly - to buy time to think.

"I don't have access to your file," he began.

"Nor will you."

"How can I help you?"

"You can't."

He leaned back in his seat, as if casually.

In our brief, unspoken contest of wills over the locking of the door, if he had any ability to read body language at all, he would know how close he had come to sudden violent death.

All Psyche are trained not merely in arrest and control tactics, but as martial arts instructors. That didn't matter against a killer - a murderer - a proven genocidaire.

I was armed, of course. But I would have used the edge of my palm, and then likely my teeth.

"I am certain you appreciate my dilemma."

Yes, in fact I did.

Unstable, in charge, untouchable ... and now the rumor was proven to be true. Also psychotic.

In any normal Embassy assignment, I would be given a choice between medical evacuation lightly drugged, or heavily drugged.

That wasn't going to happen either.

"So what do I do if you truly do go mad?"

I shrugged.

"Put me down. After my replacement arrives, and not one moment before."

His eyebrows rose.

"That important?"

"They said in training that a Psyche is a master of all the forms of love. If you love the Golden State, you give me - and if necessary my successor - free rein."

He frowned darkly.

"We're not secure."

I nodded. I hoped we were secure but likely we weren't. And by doctrine the Psyche would only go into the SCIF to minister to a psychological casualty restrained there for babbling secrets.

And also, if the Doctor and the Ambassador agreed, to help carry out the final remedy for a casualty too unstable to evacuate safely.

So he was responsible for the lives of over a hundred of us, far from home.

I was responsible for rather more than that.

"Psyche, if I need your support to carry out my duties, I will ask for it. Until then, I do not."

He shook his head.

"What little I know about you is that you are an Army officer. And of course, that you were in the Resistance."

I hadn't been, actually. But my ruined left hand continued to tell its tale.

"Would you wait for a vehicle to become disabled before you maintained or repaired it? I believe you that your duties are of pivotal importance to the Republic. That makes it even more important that I give you what help I can, now. So I can tighten a bolt, or supply a missing screw ... before you blow a gasket."

His request was only reasonable.

"Psyche, we are both men under authority. I will cooperate with you now briefly, under strong compulsion, and against my preferences and what little is left of my personal ethics.

"I am a stoic. I believe that it is my duty to suffer and die for the Republic, and I have been trying for some years now - ever since I died, first on a helipad at Stanford on Day 2 of the Firecracker War, later strapped to a gurney in a furnace - to carry out my duties.

"I was specially selected for this assignment by the Governor's Office." I gave slight emphasis to the G word, implying correctly that I'd been actually selected by Pat - and sent to die, as someone who'd been sent to die before.

"I eat and work out so that I remain fit for duty. When I have privacy to do so, generally on waking, I weep. Then I wipe my eyes and gear up, as I have for years. The last time I fucked was in a brothel in Campos Nation three years ago. I got it out of my system. I don't have friends. I don't masturbate. I neither drink nor use drugs. I especially despise the psychiatric profession and organized religion, and one of the most disgusting things I have ever done was at Alviso Prison. Not the trials, nor the executions, nor disposing of the bodies ... The hiring of priests, to keep the doomed in order until I could lawfully and justifiably - not justly! - murder them.

"You may correctly infer that I received as much psychological preparation for this assignment as was possible in ten days. That detail, as with everything else I just told you, is both MHOSD protected and classified.

"If you have any suggestions, remembering that this patient has neither given you a clinical history nor is cooperative for any reason other than military discipline, please make them now."

He took a long, deep breath.

Stopped.

Took out a notepad, wrote briefly on it. Folded it and handed it to me.

"Colonel, your next appointment with me is in one week. You will carry out the prescription indicated, as a lawful order. At that appointment, you and I will briefly discuss how you felt about it.

"Our future appointments will be five minutes a week. I will prescribe for you, as needed, and I will request redacted copies of your records, if they are available.

"I am going to add this. In supporting you in carrying out your duties, I am in turn carrying out _my_ duties. And I am not going to tell the Governor of California that I failed in that duty."

A long pause.

He got up and left, leaving the door open behind him. Probably to go have the shakes and gulp a few stiff drinks.

I opened the note. It was on a prescription pad.

"Colonel Echo 18 is prescribed one full body massage, not less than one hour in duration, method and nature at his discretion, NLT next Tuesday 1300 local. This massage may be provided on or off site by anyone. Security concerns at his discretion."

I was not about to hire a local.

The professional bodyworkers would give their boss a detailed clinical report even if I didn't speak a word - and what tiny little bit was left of my privacy squirmed at the thought. The same objection, squared and cubed, to letting the Psyche do it. He hadn't missed the three flashbacks I'd had while talking to him - an hour would probably finish cracking me up.

Any of the non professionals would think I was making a pass at them, even if I showed them the note. And I did not need that complication.

There were only two real possibilities - someone in the Embassy of equal rank, or ...

I checked my appearance briefly.

I walked out to the front gate.

The courtesy constable I expected to see was there. Ever since failing in the hotel assignment, and being saved by my honorable mention, she'd been at the gate - poorly fitted uniform and all - against the tiny chance that I'd speak to her again.

I'd seen the sharpening lines on her face and that she was losing weight. Yet she always greeted me as I left and whenever I returned.

"Lin," I greeted her by name.

"Yes, sir?"

There was something desperate and pathetic about the emphasis she put into those two words.

Somewhere between 'Notice me senpai!' and 'Please, I have a family.'

"Ask your sergeant if I can borrow you for an hour and a half."

She almost said yes before she realized it would be another tear in her frail cover.

Minutes later she returned.

"Sir?"

"I'd like company while I eat."

The Marine on duty blinked once when I signed her into the Embassy. As we walked away I could sense him picking up the duty phone.

We went directly to the cafeteria. Two meals were brought to us. She alternated desperately trying to make small talk - which
I ignored - with eating and keeping down her food.

As she finished, I unfolded the note and handed it to her.

She handed it back.

"Do you want me to find ... Do you want me to?"

I nodded.

"You are the only true volunteer available. And only the massage, if you please."

I could probably skin her alive and give what was left of her to the host nation medics, and it would only be a datum in the psych file they were working up on me. And we both knew it.

This was a window into California's internal practices. She'd memorized the note at a glance, of course, and would be carefully debriefed.

I ruthlessly interrupted someone else's massage and threw both bodyworker and patron out. I was bemused to see that the Ambassador had to wear a girdle for her pride, and that she had chosen the male bodyworker.

I set a timer for sixty minutes and two seconds.

Lin had no idea how to give a massage. That was OK.

She was terrified to make a mistake. That was more OK with me than I was comfortable with. So I told her bluntly to do her best and not worry.

A few minutes later, I stopped the timer and borrowed her arm.

"With the grain of the muscle, like this, not too hard. A little oil. And take your time. That is why the timer."

I laid back and started it again.

She'd taken off the uniform blouse to not get oil on it.

I'd kept my pants on, literally.

I realized that she'd taken off the too-small bra and was rubbing her chest against my back.

I ignored it, as I'd been expecting it.

Then I rolled over.

Made eye contact.

"Lin, just the massage."

She continued, unclothed rather than naked.

Expectation set, I took off my pants and covered myself with a towel. So that the Psyche's prescription would be honored.

I turned over twice more before the timer went off.

We both dressed.

"Lin, I am thinking you'd prefer a properly fitting uniform. And that you be on a regular schedule, say twelves, and that you get regular meals and sleep."

She looked like she wanted to burst into tears.

"Please tell your bosses that I asked about and expressed my preferences in such things. Now return to your duties, with my thanks."

She left, hands and arms aching and on the edge of rationality. Kindness can be worse than cruelty.

I turned to find the Psyche and the bodyworker whose studio I'd appropriated watching me.

"Sir, never interrupt when I am giving a ..."

"Pack. You're repatriated."

"What?"

"You return to California on the next flight."

"Why?!!"

"Insubordination."

Wisely, the Psyche did not say a word, and therefore kept his job.

I returned to my duties, which included a quick Email giving the order for dismissal for cause from State Department work. The Embassy program didn't need idiots, and the Ambassador a reminder of who the bitch was in our relationship.

I saw that the Psyche requested another bodyworker to replace the one I'd ejected. I upped the request from one to six, and specified that at least two of them be Level IV custody technicians, qualified to work secure psychiatric.

If I did go nuts, he would need the help.