Peace and War - Omnibus (80 page)

But the classified part is that more than half of the deaths are draftees who were slated to be mechanics, killed by the complexity of the soldierboy interface. Many of the others are due to undertrained surgeons and bad operating conditions in Mexico and Central America. On the large scale Marty was talking about, you wouldn't use human surgeons at all, except for oversight. Automated brain surgery, Jesus. But Marty claimed it was a couple of orders of magnitude simpler when you didn't have to wire into a soldierboy.

And even if it were ten percent death, the alternative is one hundred percent, chasing life all the way out to Hubble's Wall.

Still, how do you get normal people to do it? Civilians who do it fit pretty narrow profiles: empaths, thrill-seekers; the chronically lonely and the sexually ambiguous. A lot of people who are in Amelia's position: someone they love is jacked, and they want to be there.

The basic strategy is, first, you don't give it away. One thing we've learned from the Universal Welfare State is that people devalue things they don't pay for. It would cost a month of entertainment credits – but as a matter of fact, you'd be spending most of that month unconscious, anyhow.

And the empowerment factor will become compelling after a very few years: people who aren't humanized will be less successful in the world. Maybe less happy, too, though that's harder to demonstrate.

Another little problem was what to do with people like Amelia? They couldn't be jacked, and so they couldn't be humanized. They would be handicapped and angry – and able to do violence. Two percent of six billion is 120 million people. One wolf for every forty-nine sheep is another way of looking at it. Marty suggested that initially we relocate all of them onto islands, asking all the humanized islanders to emigrate.

Anybody could live comfortably anywhere, once we use the nano-forges to make other nanoforges and give them out freely to everyone, Ngumi or Alliance.

But the first order of business was to humanize the soldierboys and their leaders. That meant infiltrating Building 31 and isolating the high command for a couple of weeks. Marty had a plan for that, the War College in Washington ordering a simulation exercise that required isolation.

I was to be a 'mole.' Marty had had my records modified, so that I'd just had an understandable episode of nervous exhaustion. 'Sergeant Class is fit for duty, but it is recommended that Portobello take advantage of his education and experience, and transfer him to the command cadre.' Prior to that, he would do some selective memory transfer and storage: I would temporarily forget the suicide attempt, the takeover plot, and the apocalyptic results of the Jupiter Project. I would just go in and be myself.

My old platoon, as part of another 'experiment,' would stay jacked long enough to become humanized, and I could be inside Building 31 to open the door for them when they came in to replace the security platoon.

The generals would be treated well. Marty would have temporary attachment orders cut for a neurosurgeon and her anesthesiologist from a base in Panama; together they have a phenomenal success rate of ninety-eight percent in jack installation.

Today, Building 31; tomorrow, the world. We could work outward from Portobello, and downward from Marty's Pentagon contact, and quickly have all of the armed forces humanized. The war would end, incidentally. But the larger battle would just be beginning.

I stared out at the campus through the blurring sheets of water while I ate the sweet crab-apple roll. Then I leaned back against the glass and surveyed the coffee shop, coming back down to earth.

Most of these people were only ten or twelve years younger than me. It seemed impossible, an unbridgeable chasm. But maybe I was never quite in that world – chatter, giggle, flirt – even when I
was
their age. I had my head in a book or a console all the time. The girls I had sex with back then were in the same voluntarily cloistered minority, glad to share quick relief and get back to the books. I'd had terrible earthshaking loves before college, like everybody, but after I was eighteen or nineteen I settled for sex, and in that era there was plenty of it. Now the pendulum was swinging back to the conservatism of Amelia's generation.

Would that all change, if Marty had his way – if
we
had our way? There's no intimacy like being jacked, and a lot of the intensity of teenaged sex was fueled by a curiosity that jacking would satisfy in the first minute. It remains interesting to share experiences and thoughts with the opposite sex, but the overall gestalt of being male or female is just there, and is familiar a few minutes after you make contact. I have physical memories of childbirth and miscarriage, menstruation and breasts getting in the way. It bothers Amelia that I share cramps and PMS with my platoon; that all the women have been embarrassed by involuntary erections, have ejaculated, know how the scrotum limits the ways you sit and walk and cross your legs.

Amelia got a taste of that, a whisper, in the two minutes or less we had in Mexico. Maybe part of our problem now was rooted in her frustration at having had just a glimpse. We'd only had sex a couple of times since the abortive attempt the night after I saw her with Peter. The night after I jackfucked with Zoë, to be fair. And there was so much happening, the end of the universe and all, that we hadn't had time or inclination to work on our own problems.

The place smelled kind of like a gym crossed with a wet dog, with an overlay of coffee, but the boys and girls didn't seem to notice. Searching, preening, displaying – a lot more outright primate behavior than they revealed in a physics class.

Watching all that casual mating ritual simmering, I felt a little sad and old, and wondered whether Amelia and I would ever completely reconcile. It was partly that I couldn't get the picture of her and Peter out of my mind. But I had to admit that part of it was Zoë, and all her tribe. We'd all felt kind of sorry for Ralph, his endless harrying after jills. But we'd also felt his ecstasy, which had never diminished.

I shocked myself by wondering whether I could live like that, and in the same instant shocked myself again by admitting I could. Relationships emotionally limited, temporarily passionate. And then back to real life for awhile, until the next one.

The undeniable lure of that extra dimension – feeling her feeling you, thoughts and sensations twining together – in my heart I'd built a wall around that, labeled it 'Carolyn,' and shut the door. But now I had to admit that it had been pretty impressive just with a stranger; however skilled and sympathetic, still a stranger, with no pretending about love.

No pretending: that was true in more than one way. Marty was right. Something like love was there automatically. Sex aside, for several minutes she and I had been closer, in terms of knowing, than some normal couple who'd been together fifty years. It does start to fade as soon as you unjack, and a few days later, it's the memory of a memory. Until you jack again, and it slams back. So if you kept it going for two weeks, it would change you forever? I could believe that.

I left Marty without discussing a timetable, which was literally an unspoken agreement. We wanted time to sort through each other's thoughts.

I also didn't discuss how he was able to have military medical records altered and have pretty high-ranking officers shuffled around at will. We hadn't been jacked deeply enough for that information to come through. There was an image of one man, a longtime friend. I wished I didn't even know that much.

I wanted to postpone any action, anyhow, until I had jacked with the humanized people in North Dakota. I didn't really doubt Marty's veracity, but I wondered about his judgment. When you're jacked with someone, 'wishful thinking' has a whole new meaning. Wish hard enough and you can drag other people along with you.

J
ulian watched the rain for about twenty minutes and decided it was not going to let up, so he splashed on home through it. Of course, it stopped when he was half a block from the apartment.

He locked the bike up in the basement and sprayed the chain and gears with oil. Amelia's bike was there, but that didn't mean she was home.

She was sound asleep. Julian made enough noise getting his suitcase to wake her.

'Julian?' She sat up and rubbed her eyes. 'How did it go with–' She saw the suitcase. 'Going somewhere?'

'North Dakota, for a couple of days.'

She shook her head. 'Why on earth … oh, Marty's freaks.'

'I want to jack with them and check for myself. They may be freaks, but we may all be joining them.'

'Not all,' she said quietly.

He opened his mouth and shut it, and picked out three pairs of socks in the dim light. 'I'll be back in plenty of time for the Tuesday class.'

'Be getting a lot of calls Monday. The
Journal
doesn't come out till Wednesday, but they'll be calling everybody.'

'Just stack 'em up. I'll tap in from North Dakota.'

Getting to that state was going to be harder then he thought. He found three military flights that would zigzag him to the water-filled crater Seaside, but when he tried to reserve space he was informed by the computer that he no longer had a 'combat' flag, and so would have to fly standby. It predicted that he had about a fifteen percent chance of making all three flights. Getting back on Tuesday would be even more difficult.

He called Marty, who told him he'd see what could be done, and called back one minute later. 'Give it another try.'

This time he got all six flights booked with no comment. The 'C' for combat had been restored to his serial number.

Julian carried his armload and the suitcase into the living room to pack. Amelia followed him, shrugging into a nightgown.

'I might be going to Washington,' she said. 'Peter's coming back from the Caribbean so that he can do a press conference tomorrow.'

'That's a change of heart. I thought he'd gone down there to avoid publicity.' He looked up at her. 'Or is he coming back mainly to see you?'

'He didn't exactly say.'

'But he
is
paying for the ticket, right? You don't have enough credit left this month.'

'Of course he is.' She folded her arms on her chest. 'I'm his coresearcher. You'd be welcome there, too.'

'I'm sure. Better that I investigate this aspect of the problem, though.' He finished packing the small suitcase and looked around the room. He stepped over to an end table and picked up two magazines. 'If I asked you not to go, would you stay here?'

'You would never ask me that.'

'That's not much of an answer.'

She sat down on the sofa. 'All right. If you asked me not to go, we would fight. And I would win.'

'So is that why I don't ask you?'

'I don't know, Julian.' She raised her voice a little. 'Unlike some people, I can't
read minds
!'

He set the magazines inside the suitcase and carefully sealed it shut, thumbprinting the lock. 'I really don't mind if you go,' he said quietly. 'This is something we have to get through, one way or another.' He sat down next to her, not touching.

'One way or another,' she repeated.

'Just promise me that you won't stay permanently.'

'What?'

'Those of us who can read minds can also tell the future,' he said. 'By next week, half the people involved in the Jupiter Project will be sending out resumé's. I'm only asking that if he offers you a position, don't just say yes.'

'All right. I'll tell him I have to discuss it with you. Fair enough?'

'That's all I ask.' He took her hand and brushed his lips across her fingers. 'Don't rush into anything.'

'How about … I don't rush and you don't rush.'

'What?'

'Pick up the phone. Get a later flight to North Dakota.' She rubbed the top of his thigh. 'You're not going out that door until I convince you that you're the only one I love.'

He hesitated and then picked up the phone. She knelt on the floor and started unbuckling his belt. 'Talk fast.'

T
he last leg of my flight was from Chicago, but it overshot Seaside by a few miles so we could get a glimpse of the Inland Sea. 'Sea' is a little grandiose; it's only half again as big as the Great Salt Lake. But it's impressive, a perfect blue circle sketched inside with white lines of wakes from pleasure craft.

The place I was headed was only six miles from the airport. Taxis cost entertainment credits but bikes were free, so I checked one out and pedaled there. It was hot and dusty, but the exercise was welcome after being stuck in airplanes and airports all morning.

It was a fifty-year-old building style, all mirror glass and steel frame. A sign on the frizzled lawn said
ST BARTHOLOMEW'S HOME
.

A man in his sixties, wearing a priest's collar with everyday clothes, answered the door and let me in.

The foyer was a white box devoid of ornament, except for a crucifix on one wall facing a holo of Jesus on the other. Uninviting institutional couch and chairs with inspirational literature on the table between them. We went through double doors into an equally plain hall.

Father Mendez was Hispanic, his hair still black, his lined dark face scored with two long old scars. He looked frightful, but his calm voice and easy smile dispelled that.

'Forgive us for not coming out to greet you. We don't have a car and we don't go out much. It helps maintain our image of being harmless old loonies.'

'Dr Larrin said your cover story contained a grain of truth.'

'Yes, we're poor addled survivors of the first experiments with the soldierboy. People tend to shy away from us when we do go out.'

'You're not an actual priest, then.'

'In fact I am, or rather, was. I was defrocked after being convicted of murder.' He stopped at a plain door that had a card with my name on it, and pushed it open. 'Rape and murder. This is your room. Come on down to the atrium at the end of the hall when you've freshened up.'

The room itself wasn't too monkish, an oriental carpet on the floor, modern suspension bed contrasting with an antique rolltop desk and chair. There was a small refrigerator with soft drinks and beer, and bottles of wine and water on a sideboard with glasses. I had a glass of water and then one of wine while I took off my uniform and carefully smoothed and folded it for the return trip. Then a quick shower and more comfortable clothes, and I went off in search of the atrium.