The Eyre Affair_ A Novel - Jasper Fforde [30]
“How have you been, Next?” he asked, our past association dictating the way in which we spoke to one another.
“I’ve been well, sir. Yourself?”
“Can’t complain.” He laughed. “Well, I could, but it wouldn’t do any good. The damn fools made me a colonel, dontcha know it.”
“Congratulations,” I said, slightly uneasily.
The steward asked us to fasten our seat belts and Phelps sat down next to me and snapped on the buckle. He carried on talking in a slightly lower voice.
“I’m a bit concerned about the Crimea.”
“Who isn’t?” I countered, wondering if Phelps had changed his politics since the last time we had met.
“Quite. It’s these UN johnnies poking their noses where they’re not welcome. Makes all those lives seem wasted if we give it back now.”
I sighed. His politics hadn’t changed and I didn’t want an argument. I had wanted the war finished almost as soon as I got out there. It didn’t fit into my idea of what a just war should be. Pushing Nazis out of Europe had been just. The fight over the Crimean Peninsula was nothing but xenophobic pride and misguided patriotism.
“How’s the hand?” I asked.
Phelps showed me a lifelike left hand. He rotated the wrist and then wiggled the fingers. I was impressed.
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” he said. “They take the impulses from a sensor thingummy strapped to the muscles in the upper arm. If I’d lost the blasted thing above the elbow I’d have looked a proper Charlie.”
He paused for a moment and returned to his first subject.
“I’m a bit concerned that public pressure might have the government pulling the plug before the offensive.”
“Offensive?”
Colonel Phelps smiled.
“Of course. I have friends higher up who tell me it’s only a matter of days before the first shipment of the new plasma rifles arrives. Do you think the Russians will be able to defend themselves against Stonk?”
“Frankly, no; that is unless they have their own version.”
“Not a chance. Goliath is the most advanced weapons company in the world. Believe me, I’m hoping as much as the next man that we never have to use it, but Stonk is the high ground this conflict has been waiting for.”
He rummaged in his briefcase and pulled out a leaflet.
“I’m touring England giving pro-Crimea talks. I’d like you to come along.”
“I don’t really think—” I began, taking the leaflet anyway.
“Nonsense!” replied Colonel Phelps. “As a healthy and successful veteran of the campaign it is your duty to give voice to those that made the ultimate sacrifice. If we give the peninsula back, every single one of those lives will have been lost in vain.”
“I think, sir, that those lives have already been lost and no decision we can make in any direction can change that.”
He pretended not to hear and I lapsed into silence. Colonel Phelps’s rabid support of the conflict had been his way of dealing with the disaster. The order was given to charge against what we were told would be a “token resistance” but turned out to be massed Russian field artillery. Phelps had ridden the APC on the outside until the Russians opened up with everything they had; a shell-burst had taken his lower arm off and peppered his back with shrapnel. We had loaded him up with as many other soldiers as we could, driving back to the English lines with the carrier a mound of groaning humanity. I had gone back into the carnage against orders, driving among the shattered armor looking for survivors. Of the seventy-six APCs and light tanks that advanced into the Russian guns, only two vehicles returned. Out of the 534 soldiers involved, 51 survived, only 8 of them completely uninjured. One of the dead had been Anton Next, my brother. Disaster doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Fortunately for me the airship docked soon after and I was able to avoid Colonel Phelps in the airfield lounge. I picked up my case from baggage retrieval and stayed locked in the ladies’ until I thought he had gone. I tore his leaflet into tiny pieces and flushed them down the toilet. The airfield lounge was empty when I came out. It was bigger than was required for the amount of traffic