She was already protective of Peacemaker. “You don’t have a need to know,” she said primly.
“Bullshit I don’t have a need to know! You think I’m gonna trust my work on a system where I’m closed out of part of the data stream? I might as well ask for a transfer right now.”
“Valdez!” She sat upright, turned on him. “What’s this ‘transfer’ crap?”
“I might do it.” He looked like a stubborn child. “I believe in freedom of information.”
“This is the goddam US military, and information is classified, not free!”
He rolled his head toward her. He had large eyes the color of dark chocolate. “You know what MP3 is?” he said.
“Are you changing the subject on me, Valdez?”
He shook his head. “MP3 is the way you download music and play it through your computer so you listen to what you want, when you want—no CDs, no albums, no nothing decided for you by somebody else. That’s freedom of information. You know what open source code is? Same kinda thing. I believe in those things. I also believe in the US Navy, but if the Navy gonna put me in a position where I got to knuckle under to somebody else’s idea of what comes through my computer—” He made a horizontal chopping motion. “Finito, man.”
She was angry—she recognized that she was getting on top of the job because she was beginning to get angry about it more often, caring—but she controlled herself and said, almost but not quite flirting with him, “Valdez—you wouldn’t desert me, would you?”
But he wouldn’t look at her. The movie had come on and he was watching it without headphones. “You find out what’s bein’ kept from me,” he said.
Rose sat back, arms folded. Problems, problems.
On the flight to Newport News two days later, it was as if settling into the seats and snapping the seatbelts put them back where they had left off. Nothing had been said in the interim; in fact, they had hardly seen each other. But clearly, the earlier conversation had been somewhere on her mind, because the first thing she said after they took off was, “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure, why not?” He flashed her a grin, all teeth and big brown eyes. “Maybe I won’t answer, though.”
“What’s that tattoo behind your right ear?”
“Pachuco.”
“What’s that?”
He didn’t believe it. “You don’t know pachuco?” He laughed, made the face that means, This is fucking incredible! “You know Zoot Suit.” He said it as a fact, not a question.
She was laughing now—at herself, at both of them. “What’s Zoot Suit? I’m sorry, Billie—”
“You don’ know Zoot Suit? Edward James Olmos, man! Luis Valdez!” Now, he was pleading with her to know. Then it was too much; he threw himself back in his seat and gave up. “I’ll bring you the video.” He started to take out his earphones, then turned to her again. “I saw Zoot Suit when I was a little kid. Another kid put the pachuco mark behind my ear; most guys got it on their hand, here, between the fingers so it doesn’t show. Then I did him. We weren’t gangbangers yet; we were being cool, big-time, but—It meant something to us! Zoot suits!” He shook his head. “It was a Latino thing. I kind of gave it all up when I went to Jesus, but, you know, it’s part of me, man.”
“Are you a born-again now?”
He folded his arms and stared at the seatback. “Yeah, and yeah, and finally no. I been to Jesus so many times I get frequent-flyer miles. You not laughin’? That’s one of my best lines, Commander; guys always laugh, ’cause it’s cool.” He slouched lower. He was a small man and the seat fit him. “Jesus got me out of the gangs and He got me through high school and into computers, but I couldn’t take church. Jesus, si, His people, no way, Jose. So, Jesus and me got our own church.” He looked at her, his head now lower than hers. “Okay?”
“Your mom and dad disappointed?”
“Yeah. Big-time. But after my old man died, my mom, she kind of toned it down. Maybe one day she’ll go back to the priests, I think—one of those little old ladies in a black shawl, goin’ to mass every mornin’. She believed the pentecostals because he did, I guess.”
“How did he die?” Rose asked gently.
“Fell off a scaffolding. Tired out.” That was enough of that; he wriggled upright. “Hey, did you find out what I ast you?”
“About the data stream?” She shook her head. She was a little embarrassed; the truth was, she didn’t understand the question well enough to ask it.
“Okay, I tell you how we goin’ to get the information. The Peacemaker electronics bein’ done on the cheap—off-the-shelf. That’s fine; there’s good stuff out there. But what it means is, someplace there’s a contract for all the software. You get that for me. Once I see all the software laid out, I know what’s goin’ on.” He pulled down his tray-table. “You want to keep your computer geek happy, remember, Commander.” He started to put on the earphones, then held them away for a moment. “You get me the list of software, I get you a video of Zoot Suit.”
Right. One more detail to take care of.
Washington.
At home in his rental apartment after Mikey went to bed, Alan had started “flying” a simulator on his PC. It was like a parody of the idea of going to flight school. It was a mockery of his desire to get out of his job. His old squadron friend Rafehausen had asked him to visit him at the War College at Newport, where he’d give him a real flying lesson, he said, and Alan had so far refused because he had had some dumb idea that by staying home he was being loyal to Rose. Or something.
One night, he crashed a Cessna three times in a row on the virtual ramp of his virtual aircraft carrier, and then he telephoned Rafe and said When should he come up? They made a date for it, and he told Rafe that he’d just learned that his board had deep-selected him for 0–4 for next year. It wasn’t like telling Rose, but she was on the road somewhere.
Off Hampton Roads.
The USNS ship Grace Orbis rolled in heavy swells and took enough water over the bows to splash against the bridge windows as if it had come from a monstrous bucket. Below, Rose and Valdez made their way along a narrow corridor whose steel bulkheads were studded with rivets, their path partly blocked by “knee-knockers,” those unmovable metal uprights—fire-hose connections, corners of lockers, sills of watertight doors—that put bruises on the shins of everybody before a voyage is over. The ship’s roll swayed Rose against a bulkhead and then out again, and she giggled. Ahead of her, Valdez was walking with his feet wide apart and his hands out at each side to keep himself off the bulkheads. He looked to her like a mechanical toy. She giggled again.
“Well,” she shouted over the storm, “you wanted a change!”
“Hey, man, this is too much like being a sailor!” he bellowed.
They were doing a quick familiarization cruise. She was air Navy; now she had to learn more about what the despised line officers did. The Grace Orbis was a much smaller ship than Philadelphia, the one that would launch Peacemaker, but Philadelphia was at Newport News being refitted for the launch. She figured that if she could stay upright aboard Grace Orbis, Philadelphia would be a cakewalk.
A ladder led up to a watertight hatch and the deck. To Valdez’s disgust, she wanted to see the storm close up. She gave him a shove. “Move it!”
Valdez started up. The bow rose and he swayed back and she thought he was going to come down on top of her; she put a hand in the middle of his back and pushed. The bow started down