“Will you sit down, Private McQueen?” the colonel asks him.
“No offence, sir,” McQueen says, “but I didn’t come here to kick back and talk about old times. I just need a yes or a no.”
“Then it’s no.”
The colonel’s tone is flat, emotionless. McQueen feels that recoil again, this time in the form of a cold fizz of static through his nerves. He thinks he must have misheard. Considering the magnitude of the climb-down he has just made, the Fireman’s answer makes no sense.
“Sir, I don’t think one error of judgement—”
“Mr. McQueen.” The colonel drops the words like a baulk of timber, cuts him off dead. “If the flamethrower were the only issue, I would agree with you. But it’s not.”
The colonel stands, wincing as he momentarily shifts some of his weight onto his injured leg. Clearly it’s important to him that they be on the same level for this, one way or the other. “Your whole attitude,” he says heavily, carefully, like a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis, “is at odds with military discipline and the outlook required of a soldier. To serve in an army, in a militia of any kind, is to subordinate your own wishes and instincts to the orders of your commander. A soldier may have his doubts, but he does what he is ordered to do. Whereas you, Mr. McQueen, seem to regard orders of any kind as an insult to your professionalism.”
McQueen can’t believe he’s hearing this, or who he’s hearing it from. And maybe he should keep his mouth shut until the sermon is over, but there are serious arguments to be made and he already has permission to speak. “I know all about following orders, sir,” he says. “I also know where it can lead to.”
“Thank you,” Carlisle says gravely. “That is exactly the point I’m trying to make. It seems to me that you obey where it’s absolutely required, but that you do so in a spirit of reluctant compromise. Knowing that your own instincts are more reliable and that you could achieve more if you were left to your own devices.”
“That’s not true,” McQueen says.
“Really? Standing orders dictate—”
“Shit, I already admitted I got it wrong! Once! I got it wrong once!”
They’re matching point-blank stares, practically stepping on each other’s toes. The cockpit’s narrow confines are pushing them towards confrontation whether they want it or not. “Standing orders,” Carlisle repeats heavily, “dictate that if the situation on the ground materially changes, you notify your commanding officer.”
“I did that.”
“When you found Lutes’ body, yes. You should have done it the moment you saw the dead dogs.”
“I made a judgement call.”
“Of course.” The colonel nods. “You always do, Mr. McQueen. One judgement call after another. Most of them have been good, I have to admit. But it was only a matter of time.”
“Why?” McQueen demands, contempt thickening his voice. “Because your judgement is so much better than mine?”
“No,” the colonel says, with the same infuriating calm. “Because armies work by simple algorithms. Procedure, however pointless it seems, is there to lessen the chance of error. It filters all the decisions you make through a bed of cross-checks and failsafes. But only if you use it. You could be a fine soldier, Mr. McQueen, if only you weren’t in an army of one.”
McQueen shakes his head, bitter but also—now that the first rush of anger and surprise has passed—coldly amused. This has a symmetry to it. Carlisle is describing him exactly as he sees himself, but upside down so that all his virtues are vices, and presumably all the colonel’s own failings are strengths.
“I have to ask,” he says. “Were you following the algorithms when you bombed Cambridge and Stansted? When you did the burn runs, and fried all those people in their beds? Did that decision filter through okay?”
Carlisle’s mouth tugs down as though he’s got a hook in his lower lip. That one hurt. “Yes,” he says, “and no, respectively. I did what I could within the system to stop the burn runs from happening. But it didn’t work. The wrong decision was made. I offer no excuses for that.”
“No,” McQueen agrees, his face inches from the other man’s. “And you got no reprimands for it, either, did you? I put a dozen men and women in danger but they all lived. You killed thousands and walked away with a medal.”
“You’re mistaken. Nobody gave me a medal.”
“I’m sure they’ll get around to it, sir. Just a matter of time, if you don’t mind me saying.”
The colonel is silent for a moment or two. “Is there anything else?” he asks at last.
“Only what I already said. I’ve got more experience with the field pounder than anyone. The flamethrower, too. Let me do my job.”
“If I thought you could do your job, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Words are bubbling up in McQueen’s throat. Saying them won’t do any good. He leaves the way he came, runs the same gauntlet of resentment and solidarity. He has no use for either, but in Rosie there’s only ever one route from A to B.
25
Sunrise finds the crew up and at it. Kat Foss, as ranking officer (and how crazy is that?), leads the charge.
Not that there’s much need for leadership, as far as she can see. Everyone does what has to be done without being told. The motion sensors and immobiliser traps were a sacred mystery once, but seven months have made their operation tediously familiar. So the whitecoats dismantle the perimeter while Foss leads a detail down to the loch with the ten-gallon water drums. Rosie has integral tanks that fill with rainwater run-off, but Colonel Carlisle is a belt-and-braces man.
When they get back from the loch, the roles rotate. The whitecoats add purification tablets to the water drums and stow them in the galley; Foss puts the soldiers on to the maintenance allocation checks. The MAC routine is prescribed by Rosie’s operational manual, which Foss keeps in her hand the whole time and cribs from about ten times a minute. There’s a long and exhaustive list of checks covering the treads, the engine and the environmental controls. Some of them are just diagnostic; others involve getting down and dirty with oilcans, spanners and wrenches. Lutes knew the book by heart, and gave everyone else the reassurance of a safety net—a better pair of eyes verifying everything they did. Lutes being unavoidably dead, Foss does the best she can. She stands over Phillips and Sixsmith the whole time, watching them with a nervous, critical eye. Then when they’re done, she makes them go through the entire list again, out of a general sense that cock-ups are hovering over them and waiting to descend.