“When you told me to go away I should have gone farther. Instinct is powerful, though; that’s the place I normally stop for winter.”
“I’m just sorry for you. I’ll be all right, and your friends should be safe. How long do you think you have?”
“I don’t know. This has never happened before. Years, probably. Ten, twenty, fifty… what’s the difference? What can you do in fifty years?”
“Well… for one thing, you could help the other S’kang. Would you come back to Earth with me?”
“Is there anything to eat there? I don’t think Earth insects would nourish me.”
“They’d have to arrange something. It’s no problem, though.”
“All right. It might be interesting; besides, I won’t have anyone to talk to here. Unless they wake up more.”
“They won’t do that. The S’kang are protected by the Charter.”
“As we always were.” The door opened quietly and Theo slipped in. “Prescott?” he whispered.
“Ay-firmative.”
“Leave us alone for a minute, please.” The S’kang went out and Theo eased the door shut. He sat down next to Otto’s bed, and sighed.
“Almost over, Colonel. Your identity’s spilled, but I don’t think there’s any harm done.”
“Applegate.”
“Of course. He called his supervisor on Indii. I monitored it and called our own people there. It’s taken care of… the only people who know who you are are in this building.”
“Applegate just got a call from Epsilon Indii.”
“Good. They’re on the job.”
“You had the supervisor killed?”
“Killed or held. I left it to their discretion.”
“‘Their discretion.’” Otto absorbed this, and added it to a nagging feeling. “Wait. You aren’t really a Class 2 operator; you aren’t Meade Johanssen.”
Theo laughed. “That’s right, Colonel… Otto. I’m Ozwald Jakobbson.”
“I’ve heard of you. You’ve been a prime, what, seven or eight years?”
“Eight. Most of them here. ”
“No way to get rank.”
“I don’t know. I’m an acting colonel.”
Otto shook his head. “This whole planet gives me an Alice-in-Wonderland feeling. Did they make you acting colonel so you could override me?”
“Well, I do have time-on-assignment.”
“Which takes precedence over time-in-grade; I’m aware of that—”
Applegate wandered in through the door, studying a sheet of paper. He looked up suddenly. “Who are you?”
Jakobbson’s hand was in his pocket. “Friend of Father Joshua’s. I didn’t know he was sick.”
Can’t tell the players without a program, Otto thought. “Theo Kutcher, Father Applegate. Theo’s a Skinner Baptist from the archeologists. We’ve had some enjoyable arguments.”
A small noise, a click, came from Jakobbson’s pocket. Applegate didn’t seem to hear it.
“Did he tell you what happened?” Applegate said slowly.
“Yes. Terrible accident.” Jakobbson stepped to where he stood between Applegate and McGavin, at the edge of Otto’s bed. He reached behind himself, as if to scratch his back, and dropped two nose filters on Otto’s pillow.
Faint whiff of new-mown hay and rubber: pyrazine tetrachloride. Otto stuffed the filters in his nose.
“What was that?” Applegate leaned to look around Jakobbson. “What are you doing, Joshua?”
“Thought I had to sneeze.”
“Something’s going on here.” Applegate drew his pocket laser and trained it on Jakobbson. “How did you get in here?”
“Walked in.”
“That… smell…” Otto couldn’t see, but he heard the pistol hit the floor. Then the soft thump of Applegate’s heavy body. Jakobbson smiled and pulled out a remote detonator.
Otto was careful to breathe through his nose. “You put it in the central heating system?”
He nodded. “Main duct. I already took care of the archeologists. Everybody on the planet’s out for at least a day.”
“Paralyzed.”
“Yeah, the pyrazine was all I had. I’d rather they were unconscious.”
“What happens when they recover?”
“They’ll be light years away. So will we. And as many S’kang as we can cart onto the ship.”
“I’m a little behind. What ship?”
“It’s a passenger liner, two hundred places.” He checked his watch. “Be here in another two hours.”
“A commercial liner?”
“Yes, just out of drydock. Supposedly, it’s on a shakedown systems check. It’ll take us to an uninhabited rock that’s similar to this one. Drop us off and go back to Indii.”
“Hold it.” Otto tried to concentrate. His arms were ting-ling; must have inhaled a little of the gas. “You didn’t do this with a call. It’s been set up for a long time.”
“Years.”
“We’re going to kidnap every human being on this planet, as well as about a hundred S’kang—a tenth of the population—and take them to a planet that’s just as miserable as this one. Why?”
“The root reason is to keep Energia General from coming in with a billion credits and cracking the secret before the Confederación. We’ve kept them tied up in court for a long time, but it’s just a delaying action. Harassment. E.G. will win eventually; they’re using our own Charter arguments against us. They’ve got resources and talent, and they’ll be fighting for their corporate life—”
“So they’ll come here and find out that we’ve—”
“No, they won’t. Not after the plague.”
“Ah.”
“Everyone on this world killed within a day. Confirmed by a Public Health Commission automated probe. Absolute quarantine; not even E.G. will be able to break it.
“This is where the TBII comes in—otherwise, it’s a BERD project.”
“Hear that, Henry?” Applegate was lying on his back, eyes open. “I told you we were on the same side.”
“TBII is loaning them the specialists and equipment for memory and personality modification. The ones they don’t need for continuing research, we’ll repattern and—”
“Brainwipe, you mean.”
“That’s an ugly word, Colonel. We’ll be more delicate than that.”
“Sure.” Otto tried to gesture but couldn’t raise his arms. “Oh, hell. The tube.”
“Is that thing putting air into your lung?”
“I don’ know. I just work here.” His legs were frozen, too.
“Well, they’ve got the antidote aboard the ship.”
“Along with everything else, seems like. What did you need me for?”
“We had to substitute someone for Joshua. Sooner or later, he would have gotten in touch with E.G.”
Scuffling sound: Balaam’s lurched through the door. “Joshua? What’s wrong with the air? I can’t see.” His eyestalks were swinging, hanging loose.
“It won’t last, Prescott,” Jakobbson said.
The paralysis was spreading to Otto’s jaw and tongue. “Izzat true?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’m not a…”
Balaam’s made a faint sound like a faraway siren, and settled to the floor.
After a silence, Jakobbson said, “Well, I have to go get things in order. Find their records and such. Where do they keep that computer?”
Otto tried to talk but could only make a hissing noise.
He nodded. “Guess I can find it.”
For a long time Otto listened to him walking in the halls, opening and closing doors. When the sound stopped, time passed very slowly.
He watched a puddle of thin blue fluid growing from under the Slang’s shell. After a while it stopped growing.
What is genocide, McGavin? You could kill ten billion humans and in a couple of generations you’d have more than you started with. Kill one S’kang and you’ve made a real dent.
r /> What happens after they’ve used up the hundred? They come back and get another hundred. Then another hundred. Since they’re immortal and can’t reproduce, it isn’t really genocide, not as long as one is alive. If you subtract two numbers and come up with the wrong answer, what per cent genocide is that?
Just how long, McGavin, have you known that the Charter’s main function is to protect the Confederación? Not the members of the Confederación, but the organism itself. Well, the first responsibility of any organism is self-preservation. But when did you stop believing?
In a practical sense, you never did stop. You can posit and argue and posit and argue, but if the Confederación asked you to unplug yourself from that machine and die, you would unplug yourself and die, if you could move your arms. Might as well breathe through your mouth, jerk, if you get enough of it you might fall asleep.
He woke up when they loaded him and the doctor machine aboard the shuttle.
He woke up on the ship, twice, to eat.
He woke up when they were unloading the ship, dozens of big insulated containers rolled down the aisle, dormant S’kang; humans carried out on stretchers, but they didn’t carry him out, and he couldn’t stay awake.
He woke up for a short time moving from the big ship to a little ship, and he woke up on Earth.
INTERVIEW:
AGE 45
You understand why you have to answer these questions, don’t you?
Yes, I understand, it’s part of retiring
Very good. Now tell me: who was the fourteenth person you killed?
Stuart Fitz-Jones
That you remember them by number is singular. The twenty-first—who, where, and why?
That was Ajuji D’ajuji, on the planet Ojubwa, circumstantially implicated in an Article Seven violation (cybernetic penetration of international credit matrix on sister planet Fulgor), he may or may not have been guilty but he threatened me with a knife And you killed him how? Penlaser
Very sporting. Who was the one after him? Benoni Jakob, same assignment, about a month later, muffed the first try and he locked himself up in a castle, I got a job in his favorite restaurant and doctored his food with an asymptomatic cumulative nerve poison, he didn’t know what was happening to him, finally jumped a hundred meters onto a brick courtyard The twenty-fifth?
Ramos Guajana, on the planet Selva, clear-cut accessory to Article
List the rest of them in order, please, just names. Noel Duvic, Dan Foxx, Becker Conway, Beresford Sackville-West, Luanda Donner, two whose names I don’t know, Yonina Dav’stern, Radomil Czerny, Reed Hitchcock, Antonio Salazar, one whose name I don’t know, “Speed” Larsen, Birendra Bir Bikram, Juan Navarro, Bari: First-son-of-Marcuse, Hamani Ojukwu, two natives of Corbus (they don’t use names), and Joshua Immanuel in the false identity of Elizene Marietta That’s forty-five people in less than twenty years, Otto; not a record, but very high. We established yesterday that the guilt you feel for these eliminations manifests itself consciously as hostility toward the TBII and, by extension, the Confederación itself You won’t be able to adjust to retirement until you accept a more realistic view of the situation. You killed those people and you must forgive yourself not merely shift the blame.
I understand, but you don’t understand, which “me” are you talking about?
Biographical check, please, go:
I was born Otto Jules McGavin on 24 Avril AC 198, on Earth, with jus sanguinus citizenship to Karuna That one.
That “me” died in AC 220, when he signed up for Foreign Service and you preempted him for TBII
You’re evading moral responsibility by transference again.
Not true, Otto McGavin died and was replaced by what I am now, when I’m not someone else
Which is?
Something that walks and talks like Otto McGavin, and looks just like him (for what that’s worth), but is mainly a construct of skills and attitudes installed by continuous hypnotic reinforcement by the TBII, between the years AC 220 and 222 That’s nonsense; it’s not as if you were brainwiped.
True, but there are degrees of control, the real Otto McGavin went to temple every evening and tried to follow the Eightfold Path, the construct you call Otto McGavin cheats and steals and kills for a living
But not for his own gain! He has traded the selfish pursuit of internal peace and harmony to bring peace to sentient beings
throughout the Confederatión.
I did believe that was true, once, but now I see how foolish, how blind I was, not seeing that the Charter is a fraud the Confederación uses to
Biographical check, please, go:
I was born Otto
Skip to age 35, please, go:
TBII liaison was a double agent, whispered the mnemonic to me just as I sat down to dinner with Patrice Becket and his bodyguards, spilled identity, had to kick table over and come up shooting, they used human shields, women and children, shooting back, I had no choice, didn’t even think, really, nine dead, Christ and Buddha, the little girl’s face so resigned, confused, O God, blood, spouting, all her guts sliding out in one
Skip to age 40, please, go:
Right action is abstaining from killing, stealing, and sexual Skip to age 40, please, go:
Right livelihood is earning a living in a way not harmful to any living
Skip to age 40, please, go:
Right thought is free from lust, ill will, cruelty, and Biographical check, please, go:
I was born, right effort is to avoid evil thoughts and overcome them
Biographical check, please, go:
Right EFfort is to aVOID evil THOUGHTS and overCOME
Biographical! Check! Please! Go!
RIGHT ACTION IS ABSTAINING FROM KILLING
Shit.
“Shit.” The therapist wiggled the induction helmet off his head and tossed it clattering on the desk.
The machine operator looked up from his readout. “He looping again?”
“Yeah.” He watched Otto McGavin writhing, naked and hairless, inside the tank of pale blue fluid, chin jerking as he screamed soundlessly, blind eyes staring past the wires that pierced through to the optic nerve. “Poor cob.”
He patted his face and hair with a towel and removed his outer tunic from a hook on the door. “Well, that’s seven days.”
“Don’t you want to go the maximum?”
“No. He just gets worse.”
“But he’s a colonel, sir.”
“That’s all right: I’ll take the responsibility.” He started out the door.
“Wipe or waste, sir?”
“Well… doesn’t really make much difference. I guess we’ve used up enough time and power. Unplug him; I’ll leave a note for the clean-up crew.”
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Also by Joe Haldeman
Forever War
1. The Forever War (1974)
2. Forever Peace (1997)
3. Forever Free (1999)
Worlds
1. Worlds: A Novel of the Near Future (1981)
2. Worlds Apart (1983)
3. Worlds Enough and Time (1992)
Marsbound
1. Marsbound (2008)
2. Starbound (2010)
3. Earthbound (forthcoming)
Novels
Mindbridge (1976)
Tool of the Trade (1987)
The Long Habit of Living (1989) (aka Buying Time)
The Hemingway Hoax (1990)
The Coming (2000)
Guardian (2002)
Camouflage (2004)
Old Twentieth (2005)
The Accidental Time Machine (2007)
Collections
/>
All My Sins Remembered (1977)
Infinite Dreams (1978)
Dealing in Futures (1985)
Dedication
For Gordy Dickson:
Sculptor,
Weaver,
Jolly tinker.
Joe Haldeman (1943 – )
Joe William Haldeman was born in Oklahoma City in 1943. He holds degrees in physics and astronomy, and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam, where he was severely wounded and earned a Purple Heart. This experience informed his best known work, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning The Forever War. He is one of SF’s most decorated authors, boasting 5 Hugos, 5 Nebulas, the World Fantasy Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial and James Tiptree, Jr Awards and the SFWA Grand Master Award amongst many others. In addition to continuing to produce top quality SF, Joe Haldeman teaches writing at MIT.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Joe Haldeman 1977
All rights reserved.
The right of Joe Haldeman to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11165 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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