Peace and War

  It was a light jack, but still profoundly disturbing, especially for those of us whose seconds died in pain. We were all tranked automatically before they popped our cages and rolled us to Trauma. I got a glimpse of the carnage all around, the big white machines that were trying to hammer life back into the ones whose brains were intact. The next day we found out that none of those had been successful. Their bodies were too completely shredded.

  So there was no next shift. Our soldierboys stood in frozen postures in their guard positions while shoe infantry, suddenly pressed into guard detail, swarmed around them. The natural assumption was that the attack on our seconds would be followed immediately by a ground attack on the base itself, before another platoon of soldierboys could be brought in. Maybe it would have happened if one or two of the rockets had found their mark. But all was quiet, this time, and Fox platoon, from the Zone, was in place in less than an hour.

  They let us out of Trauma after a couple of hours, and at first said we weren't to tell anyone what happened. But of course the Ngumi weren't going to keep it quiet.

  Automatic cameras had recorded the carnage and a copy of the scene fell into Ngumi hands. It was powerful propaganda, in a world that couldn't be shocked by death or violence. To the camera, Julian's ten comrades were not young men and women, naked under an unrelenting spray of lead. They were symbols of weakness, triumphant evidence of the Alliance's vulnerability in the face of Ngumi dedication.

  The Alliance called it a freakish kamikaze attack by two murderous fanatics. It was a situation that could never be duplicated. They didn't publicize the fact that all of the native staff in Portobello were fired the next week, replaced by American draftees.

  This was hard on the economy of Portobello proper, as the base was its largest single source of income. Panama was a 'most favored nation,' but not a full Alliance Member, which in practical terms meant it had limited use of American nanoforges, but there weren't any of the machines within its boundaries.

  There were about two dozen small countries in a similar unstable situation. Two nanoforges in Houston were reserved for Panama. The Panama Import/Export Board decided what they were to be used for. Houston supplied them with a 'wish book,' a list of how long it took to make something, and what raw materials had to be supplied by the Canal Zone. Houston could supply air and water and dirt. If something required an ounce of platinum or a speck of dysprosium, Panama would have to dig it up somewhere or somehow.

  The machine had limits. You could give it a bucket of coal and it could return a perfect copy of the Hope Diamond, which would make a dandy paperweight. Of course, if you wanted a fancy gold crown, you'd have to supply the gold. If you wanted an atomic bomb, you'd have to give it a couple of kilograms of plutonium. But fission bombs were not in the wish book; nor were soldierboys or any other products of advanced military technology. Planes and tanks were okay, and among the most popular items.

  This is the way things worked: the day after the Portobello base was emptied of native workers, the Panama Import/Export Board presented the Alliance with a detailed analysis of the impact of the loss of income. (It was obvious that someone had foreseen the eventuality.) After a couple of days' haggling, the Alliance agreed to increase their nanoforge allotment from forty-eight hours per day to fifty-four, along with a onetime settlement of a half-billion dollars' credit in rare materials. So if the prime minister wanted a Rolls-Royce with a solid gold chassis, he could have it. But it wouldn't be bulletproof.

  The Alliance did not officially care how client nations came up with their requests for the machines' largesse. In Panama there was at least a pretense of democracy, the Import/Export Board being advised by elected representatives, compradores, one from each province and territory. So there were occasional well-publicized imports that benefited only the poor.

  Like the United States, technically, they had a semi-socialist electrocash economy. The government supposedly took care of basic needs, and citizens worked for money for luxuries, which were paid for either by electronic credit transfer or cash.

  But in the United States, luxuries were just that: entertainments or refinements. In the Canal Zone they were things like medicine and meat, more often bought with cash than with plastic.

  There was a lot of resentment, of their own government and Tio Rico to the north, which gave rise to an ironic pattern common to most client states: incidents like the Portobello massacre ensured that Panama would not have its own nanoforges for a long time, but the unrest that led to the massacre was directly traceable to its lack of the magic box.

  We got no peace the first week after the massacre. The huge publicity machine that fueled the warboy mania, and was usually concerned with more interesting platoons, turned its energies on us; the general media wouldn't leave us alone, either. In a culture that lived on news, it was the story of the year: bases like Portobello were attacked all the time, but this was the first time the mechanics' inner sanctum had been violated. That the mechanics who were killed had not been in charge of the machines was a detail repeatedly stressed by the government and downplayed by the press.

  They even interviewed some of my UT students to see how I was 'taking it,' and of course they were quick to defend me by saying it was business as usual in the classroom. Which of course demonstrated how unfeeling I was, or how strong and resilient, or how traumatized, depending on the reporter.

  Actually, it may have demonstrated all of the above, or maybe just that a particle-physics practicum is not a place where you discuss personal feelings.

  When they tried to bring a camera into my classroom, I called a shoe and had them evicted. It was the first time in my academic career that being a sergeant meant more than being an instructor, however junior.

  Likewise, I was able to commandeer two shoes to keep the reporters at a distance when I went out. But for almost a week they did have at least one camera watching me, which kept me away from Amelia. Of course, she could just walk into my apartment building as if she were visiting someone else, but the possibility that someone would make a connection – or happen to see her walking into my own apartment – was too great to risk. There were still some people in Texas who would be unhappy about a white woman who had a black man, fifteen years younger, for a lover. There might even be some people in the university who would be unhappy about it.

  The newsies seemed to have lost interest by Friday, but Amelia and I went to the club separately, and I brought along my shoes to stand guard outside.

  We overlapped trips to the bathroom, and managed a quick embrace unobserved. Otherwise, most of my apparent attention went to Marty and Franklin.

  Marty confirmed what I had suspected. 'The autopsy showed that your second's jack was disconnected by the same blast that killed him. So there's no reason for it to have felt any different to you than just being unplugged.'

  'At first, I didn't even realize he was gone,' I said, not for the first time. 'The input from the rest of my platoon was so strong and chaotic. The ones whose seconds were hurt but still alive.'

  'But it wouldn't be as bad for them as being fully jacked to someone who died,' Franklin said. 'Most of you have gone through that.'

  'I don't know. When somebody dies in the cage, it's a heart attack or stroke. Not being ripped open by buckshot. A light jack may only feedback, say, ten percent of that sensation, but it's a lot of pain. When Carolyn died…' I had to clear my throat. 'With Carolyn it was just a sudden headache, and she was gone. Just like coming unjacked.'

  'I'm sorry,' Franklin said, and filled both our glasses. The wine was a duped Lafite Rothschild '28, the wine of the century, so far.

  'Thanks. It's years now.' I sipped the wine, good but presumably beyond my powers of discrimination. 'The bad part, a bad part, was that it didn't occur to me that she'd died. Nor to anybody else in the platoon. We were just standing on a hill, waiting for a snatch. Thought it was a comm failure.'

  'They knew at the company level,' Marty said.

 
'Of course they did. And of course they wouldn't tell us, risk our screwing up the snatch. But when we popped, her cage was empty. I found a medic and she said they'd done a brain scan and there wasn't enough to save; they'd taken her down to autopsy already. Marty, I've told you this more than once before. Sorry.'

  Marty shook his head in commiseration. 'No closure. No leave-taking.'

  'They should've popped you all, once you were in place,' Franklin said. 'They can snatch cold 'boys as easily as warm ones. Then you would've at least known, before they took her away.'

  'I don't know.' My memory of the whole thing is cloudy. They knew we were lovers, of course, and had me tranked before I was popped. A lot of the counseling was just drug therapy with conversation, and after a while I wasn't taking the drugs anymore and I had Amelia there in place of Carolyn. In some ways.

  I felt a sudden pang of frustration and longing, partly for Amelia after this stupid week of isolation, partly for the unattainable past. There would never be another Carolyn, and not just because she was dead. That part of me was dead, too.

  The talk moved on to safer areas, a movie everybody but Franklin had hated. I pretended to follow it. Meanwhile, my mind went round and round the suicide track.

  It never seems to surface while I'm jacked. Maybe the army knows all about it, and has a way of suppressing it; I know I'm suppressing it myself. Even Candi only had a hint.

  But I can't keep this up for five more years, all the killing and dying. And the war's not going to end.

  When I feel this way I don't feel sad. It's not loss, but escape – it's not whether, but when and how.

  I guess after I lose Amelia is the 'when.' The only 'how' that appeals to me is to do it while jacked. Maybe take a couple of generals with me. I can save the actual planning for the moment. But I do know where the generals live in Portobello, Building 31, and with all my years jacked it's nothing to slide a comm thread to the soldierboys who guard the building. There are ways I can divert them for a fraction of a second. Try not to kill any shoes on my way in.

  'Yoo-hoo. Julian? Anybody home?' It was Reza, from the other table.

  'Sorry. Thinking.'

  'Well, come over here and think. We have a physics question that Blaze can't answer.'

  I picked up my drink and moved over. 'Not particle, then.'

  'No, it's simpler than that. Why does water emptying out of a tub go one direction in the Northern Hemisphere and the other in the Southern?'

  I looked at Amelia and she nodded seriously. She knew the answer, and Reza probably did, too. They were rescuing me from the war talk.

  'That's easy. Water molecules are magnetized. They always point north or south.'

  'Nonsense,' Belda said, 'Even I would know it if water were magnetized.'

  'The truth is that it's an old wives' tale. You'll excuse the expression.' 'I'm an old widow,' Belda said.

  'Water goes one way or the other depending on the size and shape of the tub, and peculiarities of the surface near the outlet. People go through life believing the hemisphere thing without noticing that some of the basins in their own house go the wrong way.'

  'I must go home and check,' Belda said. She drained her glass and unfolded slowly out of the chair. 'You children be good.' She went to say good-bye to the others.

  Reza smiled at her back. 'She thought you looked lonely there.'

  'Sad,' Amelia said. 'I did, too. Such a horrible experience, and here we are bringing it up all over.'

  'It's not something they covered in training. I mean, in a way they do. You get jacked to strings recorded while people died, first in a light jack and then deeper.'

  'Some jackfreaks do it for fun,' Reza said.

  'Yeah, well, they can have my job.'

  'I've seen that billboard.' Amelia hugged herself.

  'Strings of people dying in racing accidents. Executions.'

  'The under-the-counter ones are worse.' Ralph had tried a couple, so I'd felt them secondhand. 'Our backups who died, their strings are probably on the market by now.'

  'The government can't–'

  'Oh, the government loves it,' Reza broke in. 'They probably have some recruitment division that makes sure the stores are full of snuff strings.'

  'I don't know,' I said. 'Army's not wild about people who are already jacked.'

  'Ralph was,' Amelia said.

  'He had other virtues. They'd rather have you associate the specialness of being jacked with being in the army.'

  'Sounds really special,' Reza said. 'Somebody dies and you feel his pain? I'd rather–'

  'You don't understand, Rez. You get larger in a way, when somebody dies. You share it and' – the memory of Carolyn suddenly hit me hard – 'well, it makes your own death less earthshaking. Someday you'll buy it. Big deal.'

  'You live on? I mean, they live on, in you?'

  'Some do, some don't. You've met people you'd never want to carry around in your head. Those guys die the day they die.'

  'But you'll have Carolyn forever,' Amelia said.

  I paused a little too long. 'Of course. And after I die, the people who've been jacked to me will remember her too, and pass her down.'

  'I wish you wouldn't talk like that,' Amelia said. Rez, who had known for years that we were together, nodded. 'It's like a boil you keep picking at, like you were getting ready to die all the time.'

  I almost lost it. I literally counted to ten. Rez opened his mouth but I interrupted. 'Would you rather I just watched people die, felt them die, and came home asking "What's for dinner?"' I dropped to a whisper. 'How would you feel about me if that didn't hurt me?'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Don't. I'm sorry you lost a baby. But that's not what you are. We go through these things, and then we more or less absorb them, and we become whatever we are becoming.'

  'Julian,' Reza said in a warning tone, 'perhaps you ought to save this for later?'

  'That's a good idea,' Amelia said, rising. 'I have to go on home anyhow.' She signaled the wheelie and it went for her coat and bag. 'Share a cab?' I asked.

  'It's not necessary,' she said in a neutral tone. 'End of the month.' She could use leftover entertainment points for a cab ride.

  Other people didn't have points left over, so I bought a lot of wine and beer and whiskey, and drank more than my share. Reza did, too; his car wouldn't let him drive. He came along with me and my two bodyguard shoes.

  I had them drop me at the campus gate, and walked the two kilometers to Amelia's through a cool mist of rain. No sign of any newsies.

  All the lights were out; it was almost two. I let myself in through the back and belatedly thought I should have buzzed. What if she wasn't alone?

  I turned on the kitchen light and harvested cheese and grape juice from the refrigerator. She heard me moving around and shuffled in, rubbing her eyes, 'No reporters?' I asked.

  'They're all under the bed.'

  She stood behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. 'Give them something to write about?' I turned around in the chair and buried my face between her breasts. Her skin had a warm, sleepy smell.

  'I'm sorry about earlier.'

  'You've been through too much. Come on.' I let her lead me into the bedroom and she undressed me like a child. I was still a little drunk, but she had ways of getting around that, mostly patience, but other things, too.

  I slept like a creature stunned and woke to an empty house. She'd left a note on the microwave that she had a sequence scheduled at 8:45 and would see me at the lunch group meeting. It was after ten.

  A Saturday meeting; science never sleeps. I found some clean clothes in 'my' drawer and took a quick shower.

  The day before I went back to Portobello, I had an appointment with the Luxury Allocation Board in Dallas, the people who handle special requests for the nanoforge. I took the Triangle monorail, and so got a glimpse of Fort Worth streaming by. I'd never gotten off there.

  It was a half hour to Dallas, but then another hour crawling through tr
affic out to the LAB, which took up a huge piece of land outside the city limits. They had sixteen nanoforges, and hundreds of tanks and vats and bins that held the raw materials and the various nanos that put them together in millions of ways. I didn't have time to walk around, but had taken a guided tour of the place with Reza and his friend, the year before. That's when I got the idea to get something special for Amelia. We didn't do birthdays or religious holidays, but next week was the second anniversary of the first time we were intimate. (I don't keep a diary, but could trace the date down through lab reports; we both missed the next day's sequence.)

  The evaluator assigned to my request was a sour-faced man, about fifty. He read the form with a fixed glum expression. 'You don't want this piece of jewelry for yourself. This is for some woman, some lover?'

  'Yes, of course.'

  'I'll have to have her name, then.'

  I hesitated. 'She's not exactly my–'

  'I don't care about your relationship. I just have to know who will eventually own this object. If I should approve it.'

  I wasn't enthusiastic about having our relationship officially documented. Of course anyone who tapped me with a deep jack would know about it, so it was only as secret as anything in my life was secret.

  It's for Amelia Blaze Harding,' I said. 'A coworker.'

  He wrote that down. 'She also lives at the university?'

  'That's right.'

  'Same address?'

  'No. I'm not sure what her address is.'

  'We'll find it.' He smiled like a man who had sucked on a lemon and tried to smile. 'I see no reason to disapprove your request.' A printer in his desk hissed and a piece of paper flipped up in front of me.

  'That will be fifty-three utility credits,' he said. 'If you sign here, the finished piece should be available at Unit Six within half an hour.'