Chapter 6. Fireflies

Since, during the months camped in the sixty mile valley of Annex Agonies, we lost about a hundred men to desertions, it was hardly a wonder to me that over the weeks camped on the Cold Sea, a few dozen foreign-borns - mostly leprechauns from Phobos (the Green Moon that suffered so under the tyranny of Great Deimos, who had knocked a big crater in the northern end of the former), seen fit to swim the river toward the hot-blooded hospitality of Moonish womanhood. (Several of those deserters drowned and washed back to our side, and, in fact, two culprits swimming south were shot by our sentries back in April:Henry Lamb and Carl Gross.) It grieved me sorely. It also grieved me that the lunaritas were now nowhere to be seen. They sure were cute, them funny lunaritas, with their dark braids and their sweet round faces, so soft and gentle, and quite kissable. Oh, but I was married now. Gone were the days of spyglass-oggling them bathing in the Frigoris! Gone were the most friendly exchange of bows and curtsies! Gone were their shy smiles and long, dark braids! Then it was I started to realize exactly how hard and how lonely was this juggernaut chariot called - marriage.

I stood sentinel on the rampart of Fort Slow-Polk, wondering where they went to. Were they hiding in convents? Were they hiding in the mountains? "Ah, Sarah dear," I told myself, "you have married a sinner." Right next to me, our electromagnetics hung over the parapet, all hooked up to the Galvanic caissons, poised and ready to manufacture the most democratic, progressive ball-lightning to pound the church plaza and promenade wall of Plato's Crater, once a lunarita favorite constitutional, now the fortifications for the same cannons that lost Waterloo. And I asked myself, am I really married? is there really going to be a war? and if either question were true, why? Were we justified in calling this Lunar crescent a mere peninsula of Texas? Was I not a hypocrite, calling myself a husband without reforming my sinful ways?

Kelly paused near melancholy-me. So stout and strong was he in his shiny lieutenant's uniform, (not too shabby because he paid for it himself.) And to melancholy-me he said, "Look at all those fireflies we need to swat, Jack!" tapping his Ivanhoe against his palm.

A few lights glowed in Plato's Crater; but thousands upon thousands glowed in the fields of dust of the Lunar beyond.

Major Jacob Brown stood on high bastion, scouting the enemy with his spyglass, and, overhearing my brother, nodded sadly. He ambled two steps toward us and stopped, murmuring softly, "Fireflies...Youth is ever full of the bluster of Immortality; and for that I thank our Maker. It is our hard lot to roll our Republican wagon through the graveyards of kings, savages, and despots... For my generation, youth seemed but an admixture of strife, hard life, and hope for future recompense. But I am getting on now, (he smiled softly and ran his head over his bald head), "I've been a soldier thirty years...thirty years! Can it be so long since I left Massachusetts? Yes. I am almost an old man, then, and I fear that Man's lot is Vanity...Vanity. You and your generation, Lieutenant, shall learn that war is not a Walter Scott affair; and I fear that knowledge will come all too quickly. ...To me, our purpose here is to see to it that you and your children inherit the full promise of the work begun by our Founding Fathers, with such sacrifice..."

We stood in silence a moment. I felt solemn and resolved, come what may. I saw my brother's shining eyes, and knew that he, too, was strangely stirred. That sad, proud, sublime moment passed. Dust devils corkscrewed out of the dust yard of the fort, and clawed at our resolute faces, until we winced. Major Brown screwed his eyes tight shut and with his fingers pinched his nostrils. When the dust devil passed, he straightened, cautiously sniffed, and cheerfully recommended, "We'd best get on with digging that bomb-proof."

That long, fateful night, a stranger arrived.

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