Still in Saigon

In a future full of spacetravel, the war on Bellona ends, and a nouveau riche war correspondent returns home to Earth. Loose, personal ends remain, and a friend is incarcerated on charges of espionage; it becomes an obsession to clear his name.

I'm not abandoning my only other story. Haha. I'm working on that, very close to finishing the next chapter.

Originally conceived of as fanfiction, I got smart and realized it'd do better as an original fiction, since most of it was focused around my own character anyway. Changed the plot, too. Whee. Why is the air base named all Russian-y? I'm reading Anna Karenina. Hush.

Look, I'm not trying to be deep. But I figure it'll make for a decent story. Please do rip me a new one with constructive criticism if you see fit.

I own this story and everything about it.

“I'm going to get killed out there!”

Roger Strom, Maginot's boss, really hadn't been concerned about that very real possibility. She had been deliriously reminded of her slimy twelfth grade teacher...except he wasn't after sex, he wanted to win the ratings war.

“Do you want to go or not? It could really help your career to take off. Major points on your résumé, Clara, do you really want to pass it up?”

Why did she still remember his piggish nose and the way his jacket collar was just out of place, and the little grin on his mouth?

Miserably, she'd said she'd think about it.

Clara Maginot left the next morning, at 0700 sharp; a car waited out in front of her best friend Yuri's apartment, where she was staying, to take her to Arkadyevitch Air Base, to the base on the moon, and from there to Bellona.

To be back in this unhealthily sterile house after Bellona left Maginot feeling sick.

The faces around her were familiar and supposed to comfort, but the compound scene itself was strange: she had never held parties at this beige, conservative house or had friends over, Yuri should not be talking to her father; her friends and her family seemed like two irreconcilable worlds, one full of happy, dirty people, and the other by cleanliness and austerity—ne'er the twain should meet.

And this was a homecoming party? Proposed by her father? Of all people—!!

She burst out in shrill, staccato giggles, and the party stopped and slowly turned to look at her sitting on the couch, uniformly shocked, and a few of them began to laugh with her out of discomfort.

Maginot ignored them.

Clara wouldn't have ignored them, Clara wouldn't have behaved this way, this was what they were all thinking, but what was left after Bellona was a hybrid—in any case it wasn't Clara. And, like most cross-species hybrids, it was sterile.

“Do you need something to drink?”

It was her father's voice. She heard her own reply.

“Yes.”

He disappeared and brought her—wine?

“She needs water!” Feygl Gordon cried reproachfully, and Maginot found herself robbed of the wine, to be replaced with a big, healthy glass of water.

Not wanting to cause a scene, Maginot drank the water, muttering something about thank-you and tastes-good.

The party was ruined. Her friends and siblings with their significant others trickled out quickly after that, casting nervous glances at the quiet person on the overstuffed brown couch, who smiled bleakly and stared off into nothing with her glass of healthy, clean water.

They left her alone with her widower father (her mother died while Maginot was on Bellona).

Maginot hadn't originally been able to come home for the funeral—the grenade changed that. The funeral coincided roughly with the end of the Bellona War, and throughout this turn of events Maginot had mixed feelings: she felt resentful that she was unable to see the end on on Bellona, and at the funeral she felt angry that everything kept coming around to focus on her: thank you, Lord, that you used Your power to bring Mica Maginot's daughter home to see her off to Everlasting Heaven! Praise God that Clara is back home with us! Clara is home! Praise! Clara, Clara, Clara! Halle(fucking)lujah!

What part of Clara Maginot was buried with her mother?

“Here.”

She looked up at her father, who held out a glass of wine.

“What is it?”

Her father sat down in the chair opposite the couch.

“2165, Venusian Pinot Noir.”

Swirl, sniff, sip, swish. Blackberries, smoke, and...something else...

Sand. Sand!

She flinched, panicked, and almost slammed the Riedel glass down on the coffee table. A moment later her shoulders went rigid, at the expense of her injuries—shit, she shouldn't have done that—

But Ryan Maginot didn't snap at her. This was strange enough to make Maginot more nervous, if that were possible, and she looked up at him. He didn't even look angry, just thoughtful.

“You're right, it's not very good,” he said.

“It's...fine,” Maginot said stiffly. “It's...okay.”

“It sucks,” he countered, with some humor. “When are you going back to your job?”

Maginot nodded.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “Bellona's done.”

“Have you considered taking a break?” he asked, gently.

What was this? What sort of trick—after years of telling her she was worthless if she wasn't working—oh. She understood: this wasn't an excuse to be lazy.

“No.”

“Coming back from a war isn't like getting out of classes for the summer,” her father said. “If you want to take it easy for a while, maybe take a vacation—”

“I said I wasn't going to.”

He sat back, started, paused, and then started again.

“Your mother and I tried to put a good work ethic into you,” he said. “And we did. But...you're going to hurt yourself if you don't do something to help yourself.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Maginot muttered. She felt an uncomfortable chill dance across her skin. Her first assumption was wrong. This Ryan Maginot was alien to her, she didn't know him, he wasn't the all-powerful dictator father she knew. “I'm fine. I just need to get back to work, after I get back into the swing of things, it'll all work itself out.”

He didn't press the subject, from that angle.

“I've never worried about you, like I've worried about the twins,” he said. “We don't see eye-to-eye a lot, but what you've set your mind to doing—you do. Now, I'm proud of you for that.”

Maginot squirmed. She wanted to escape, and for some godforsaken reason was desperate for the straightforward dunes.

“But you aren't the same person who went to Bellona. If you won't take a break from work, at least consider going to somebody who can help you.”

“What would they know about helping me,” Maginot murmured. “What can they possibly know? Were they there?” A skytrain flew by, near the house, screaming on its tracks, like it always had—Maginot darted up from the couch, and froze there blinking owlishly—the trapped, lost confusion lingered in her face and she sunk back to the couch.

“What was that about,” her dad asked.

“I thought it was a...” she mumbled, and trailed off. The adrenaline was there. She could almost taste the sand, the cold, see the faces, hear the din of wind and voices and sound—and there was the blur of the sandstorm—that faint cinnamon smell of gas—

No, that was only the onset of tears and the stink of potpourri.

Funny, she hadn't cried on Bellona. If she hadn't cried on Bellona, why should she cry now? She was still crying.

“Sorry.”

“No...it's fine.”

But it wasn't—twenty-three years of only whiny people cry attacked with a vengeance.

“I think I should go,” Maginot said. She put into her voice a sound it had acquired—the command, and resolution she found when it was necessary to sack up and go over the top.

“You could even come home for a while and stay,” he said.

“I wouldn't want to stay in this house,” Maginot said tonelessly, thoughtlessly, honestly, with such plain conviction that it took her aback, terrified her, and caused her father to recoil as if she'd actually hit him. “No, I don't mean that—what I mean is—”

“You meant it,” he said.

She fell silent. Ashamed. Frightful though she couldn't understand why; her father wouldn't do anything that was done on Bellona.

Maginot could only nod her head obediently in the end, observing every twitch of her father's carriage. His slightest breath might send her into a private hysteria—it meant everything to discern what he really meant, now that they were in this territory. He frowned thoughtfully.

“I love you,” he said. “I know we haven't always seen eye-to-eye, but...”

She didn't respond to the clear want of an answer. She had no idea what to say.

“I'm here for you. Really. Call me sometime...do you promise?”

Maginot left quietly after mincing around a promise. Her father stood at the doorway and waited to see her disappear down the road, and then—what he did afterward was unknown to her.

So...tell me what you thought.

April, 28 2009: Minor edits made.