Arslan by M. J. Engh Read Free Book Online

in the green armchair. She jumped up and touched my arm. “You haven't had any supper, have you? I'll get you something right this minute.”
    The couch was back, too, and the coffee table, both of them strewn with papers. The rug was littered with cigarette butts. Two soldiers lounged on the windowseat, and two more leaned against the built-in bookcase, their elbows on the shelves among Luella's bric-a-brac, all smoking, all looking very much off duty. They broke off their chatting to eye me for a minute.
    I followed Luella into the kitchen. Another soldier was sitting at the table, also smoking, also much at his ease, dropping ashes on his dirty plate. “Just give me a glass of milk,” I said. She looked pained, but she managed to pour it without a word. “Where's Arslan?”
    “The General? He's upstairs,” she said gloomily. “And the Morgan boy,” she added. “And Betty Hanson.”
    “I know.” I took a drink of my milk and looked at the soldier. “All right; you can bring me a plate in the dining room. And you sit down and tell me everything that's happened and everything you've heard.”
    There wasn't much I didn't already know or at least expect. Betty had been brought over straight from the banquet and locked into the sewing room, and that was when the guards were posted around the house and on the stairs. Luella had been in the bedroom when Hunt was brought in; she had just got a quick sight of him in the hall, but that was enough to stop her from asking any questions. She hadn't seen Arslan come in at all, but she had heard him, sounding like a whole new invasion. “And then this morning,” she said, “Betty started screaming.”
    And that morning at ten-fifteen he had been in my office, saying, “Your people are entirely free,” with a face like a cat just wiping the feathers off of its mouth.
    Neither Hunt nor Betty had been out of the rooms since they went in, except for one guarded trip each to the bathroom. That was after the one meal Luella had been allowed to fix for them, carried up on trays a while after noon by Arslan's men. She hadn't seen them; hadn't heard any sounds out of the rooms since the screaming stopped, a little while before Arslan left that morning. He had come back around suppertime, eaten a big meal, and disappeared into the guestroom. Since then everything had been very quiet.
    She hadn't been out of the house the whole time since the Turkistanis arrived, hadn't seen anybody else or heard anything else. And she was almost at the end of her rope. By the time she had finished her story she was shaking all over, just the faint animal quivering of weariness and strained nerves. “I'm sorry, Franklin,” she said. “I've had all I can take for one day. I'll be all right tomorrow.”
    And she would, I knew that. I could rely on Luella. But unfortunately the world wasn't made of Luellas.
    If you couldn't use your anger constructively, it poisoned you; I'd found that out a long time ago. Raging and raving against Arslan would just get in the way of working against him. And I was beginning to see that I could work against him. Not that I hadn't done a beautiful job of asking all the wrong questions; but I'd learned a few things, in spite of myself, and I was going to make the most of them.
    By next morning, Arslan's version of normality was already in force. Entirely free. I made myself eat a good breakfast, ignoring all spectators, and walked out of my front door as if I still owned it; and the first civilian I met was Wallace Ford, coming to look for me. His pale face colored up with relief.
    “There you are. They wouldn't let me get into school, and I was afraid—”
    I steered him out of the crowded parking lot, and we strolled quietly toward the square. It was silly not to have any place to go, but that was the truth of it. “All right, let's hear your story,” I said.
    He looked hopefully back toward the house. “Any chance you could invite me to sit down? I walked in to