“Richard,” William said, smiling like he and the General were lifelong friends, “it is so good to see you.” He extended a hand to the General.
“And you, William,” the General said. He stood straight as he spoke, like a telegraph pole.
William smiled. It was a broad smile. “Come now Richard, after all we’ve done, can a man not get a handshake?”
The General walked stiffly over, took the extended hand and shook it. William’s skin was cold to the touch. It must be a chilly night. Not that the General would know; thick walls and excellent heating hid such things from him.
“It is good to see you,” the General said. “If not a little surprising.”
“Of course,” William replied, continuing their shake. “Forgive me, Richard, I didn’t really have time to send warning. You see, Senator Chalmers was very keen to get down here as soon as possible.”
“Senator Chalmers is here?”
William’s smile faded slightly and he released the General’s hand. “He is. The poor man is an absolute wreck. First his wife and now his daughter… I wanted to keep him north, away from the madness, but he said to me ‘William, I can’t rightly be hiding away whilst some heathens have my baby girl’. As you might imagine, I was moved as a father. He can be quite persuasive, can the Senator.”
The General nodded slowly. He supposed he would want to be near if one of his own children were captured. Not that it would do any good. “He knows there’s little influence he can have on the outcome of this situation though?”
“Probably. Deep inside,” William said. He strolled over to the General’s desk and sat before it, in the guest’s seat. “But a man has to be active in times like this. There’s nothing worse for his pride than to realise there’s nothing he can do.”
The General realised they might not be talking just about the Senator any more. “Of course. When your children are at risk, you feel like you need to do something. We’ll prepare him some quarters and-”
“There’s no need,” William said, raising his hand to halt the General. “The Senator will stay in my quarters. That young man at your desk said he’ll prepare me somewhere else to sleep. I don’t want to be a bother.”
The General frowned. “You never would be.” He rounded his desk, stood behind it and decided to reassure William. “But, going back a topic, tomorrow I will personally assure the Senator that the Solution has put their top man on the job of retrieving his daughter. There is no-one more suited to the task than Dustin Longe.”
William looked him square in the eye. “The Wanted Man.”
“We prefer to call him by his name,” the General said. “Titles can give a man an air of arrogance, make him dangerous.”
“Like ‘General’, you mean?”
The General held his gaze. Their relationship often contained such barbs. He couldn’t trust William, even if he had kindly extended the General’s career, and the General believed the lack of results from William’s investment caused most of the tension coming back at him; everyone at the Solution worked hard and the researchers were close to a number of important breakthroughs but all the Solution had really succeeded in doing was keeping the Dixie Problem at bay, which probably wasn’t enough of a return for someone like William.
Rather than call him on the comment, the General laughed it off. “You could say so. I’ve certainly met a few people who let the rank go to their head!” he said, sitting down.
“Power can do that so easily,” William said. His voice was almost wistful.
“It can,” the General confirmed, unsure as to what he should be saying.
William started stroking his beard. “There are so many rumours about the Wanted Man that, frankly, I’m not able to tell the fact from the fiction. I was hoping that you might give me some insight from your personal experiences with it.”
“It?” he asked.
William sat back in the guest’s chair. “Surely you don’t think the Wanted Man is actually a man? Not with what it can survive?”
Eleanor Naismith had always probed him about Dustin during their meetings, she had almost a fixation with the man, but William never asked about him. The General supposed that this was the time to start asking, with his daughter under Dustin’s care.
“Our tests have shown that Dustin Longe is likely a man; he bleeds, albeit with some difficulty, and he tires. He must eat, though he eats like a pig, and his excretions are as you would expect. There are limits to what he can do, though he can fight hand-to-hand with things which would rip my best soldiers apart. And his personality and views are those of a man.”
He didn’t add any of the State Secrets gleaned from their tests, or that Dustin was the most arrogant and infuriating person the General had ever met.
“Then he’s fallible?” William asked. A flicker of concern danced across his voice.
The General realised he wasn’t being very assuring. “Well, yes, but so are the cultists and creatures of the Badlands. And Dustin’s fallibility is so distant from yours or mine that he is almost something else; he takes wounds that would kill anyone else, is faster and stronger and sharper. You need not worry about his abilities or his dedication to protecting the innocent.”
“That must come from his past then. He was a Ranger, I’m given to understand? Before, I mean.”
“He was,” the General said. Eleanor had been sharing a lot with her father. “Part of President Houston’s expansion to keep the peace back in ’41. Earned himself a few commendations for bravery. He was also one of the hated Yellow Band, who collected deserters during the war with the Mexicans.”
“That was an important service though.”
The General shrugged. “I didn’t say I was the one who hated them.”
William looked down at his tie and played the fabric between his fingers. “So he’s an experienced and preternaturally tough man, then. Presumably he’s not as bloodthirsty as the legends make out?”
The General shook his head. “Not at all. I won’t say he doesn’t like a fight but only with outlaws.”
That seemed to dampen his patron’s mood. “Then he’s a moral man?”
“I suppose so,” the General said, choosing his words very carefully. “After a fashion.”
“Ah. That is his weakness then?”
The General paused at this. He’d never considered Dustin to be weak in anything but adherence to protocol. “If you put it like that then I guess so. He does have a strong sense of fairness, of what’s right and wrong.”
William leaned forward. Any joviality or camaraderie in his eyes disappeared. “Then I must sincerely hope that he is not placed in a situation where he has to choose between doing whatever his stupid corrupt mind thinks is right and saving my daughter’s life. There would be severely dire consequences if that were to be the case.”
The General coughed. “That is unlikely to happen. The Badlands is not a complex place; there are creatures and people who worship them out there and there are normal people caught in their wake. One set warrant killing, the other saving.”
William stood, flicked imagined dust from his suit. “Hopefully your Wanted Man will know which are which.”
The General had no answer for that.
“Good evening, Richard.”
“Good evening, William.”
The man walked out and left the General alone. Outside, some of his men started loudly chatting; there would be no more peace to enjoy tonight.
