A Call to Arms

  “It good to be able to do this once in a while. Can’ do it in the ranks and still maintain order.”

  “So you’re a captain.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. Not with her pressed tightly against him. She was warm, but not soft.

  “Sort of. We hav’ to make up our own ranks. They not much on rank here. Suppervis… supervisorial positions, they call ‘em. So I’m a supervisor-captain. Done pretty good for myself.”

  The corridor was busy with Hivistahm and O’o’yan and Massood. He even saw a solitary Bir’rimor, but no Humans.

  “Where’s everybody else? And please don’t call me a legend.”

  “You keedding?” She slid her arm free and lengthened her stride. “You start all of this, you give those of us who are here this chance. If not for you, none of us would be here. We’d be back on Earth, doin’ whatever we’d been doin’ when the recruiters found us.” She startled him by spitting derisively into a corner.

  “You were in the Mexican army?” he ventured, utterly overwhelmed by her ebullience.

  She laughed, a rich, knowing sound that echoed down the corridor. “Who, me? You keedding? A woman in the Mexican army? Don’ tell me you never hear of machismo, man. Where you from, anyway?”

  “New Orleans.”

  “I hear that’s a great town. Someday maybe I geet there. But I got a job to do here first. It not so bad, you know? They keep track of the gold you earn. At first everybody kind of suspicious about that, but here nobody seem to try and cheat anybody else. They not innocent, just different morals. I think, maybe better than ours.”

  “They’re willing to let you do their fighting for them. I’m not sure yet how moral that is.”

  “Yeah, well, everybody got to believe the way they want, right? Hey, don’ get me wrong. We not just fighting for the money. From everything I hear, these Amplitur are a bunch of pendejos grandes, you know? Me, I never seen one yet. None of us have. Mostly just damn Crigolit. They not so tough. They think they are, but that before they run into us. These Massood, they do pretty good, but they wouldn’t last a week where I grew up. They too careful.”

  “I mean, when you out there, and you got two bugs with guns comin’ at you, there no time to do strategic analysis. You just got to react. That not how the Massood like to fight. The Chirinaldo, those big guys are a little better, but they so big they make easy targets. So they operate a lot of the heavy stuff, like the e’ways and daggers.”

  “The Crigolit guns are good stuff, though. If Pancho Villa had got some maybe we could’ve taken back California.” She laughed again.

  Will struggled to get a word in edgewise.

  “Are you alone here?”

  “Mostly everybody is out killing bugs, but there a few of the gang around. I was ask to meet you. You goin’ to come out there? We take good care of you, man. No worries. Like I say, you responsible for us bein’ here.”

  “No!” Seeing her reaction he softened his tone. “I’m not responsible. I got involved to try and keep people from being sent here. This isn’t our business, isn’t our fight. We shouldn’t be involved. We need to get out before…”

  “Before what, man? What you talkin’? The pay she’s fine. Maybe these folk all look funny but they damn good to us. Hey, they love us. Nobody here give a damn what you be on Earth, what kind of person you were. Everybody here gettin’ a fresh start, a new life. To the Massood, to the Hivisties and the S’van, we all just Humans. We fight for them and we do good. That all they care about.” She gestured up the corridor.

  “Most of these people here, at least the ones I command, they never had much. Not in their whole lives. Either they did shit work or got trapped doin’ something they grew to hate. They came here lookin’ to find themselves as much as for the dinero.”

  “I got three lieutenants under me.” She giggled. “Not all at the same time, comprende! One sell insurance in Germany, another work for the IRS out of New York. His woman, she didn’t do nothing there. She was bored pissless. She do something now, though. You ought to see her cut those bugs down with what we call here a cassion rifle. The last guy, he was turning into an old man chopping cane on Dominica.”

  “All of ‘em are happy doin’ the work here. The Hivistahm figure how to fake some of our food pretty good. I don’ know what more anybody could want.” Black eyes bored unforgivingly into his. “So why you say we should get out of this place?”

  Her response had come hard and fast and it took him a moment to collect his thoughts and respond.

  “Maybe a few people are suited for this, but we can’t let the whole Human race get involved or…”

  “Or what?” She wouldn’t let him finish a sentence. They turned a corner. “Didn’t anybody tell you nada? These Amplitur don’ back out. You give ‘em a meter, they suck you into this crazy damn Purpose of theirs.” She illustrated by interlocking her fingers. He noted that the nails were painted bright red.

  “That might be nothing more than Weave propaganda. We don’t know that the Amplitur wouldn’t leave us alone.”

  “Well, I know, mister. Because I seen the people they got fighting for them, the Crigolit and the Molitar. The Molitar are tough but they not real bright.”

  “I don’ know how to say it in science words but it like they all got their brains scrubbed clean from the inside out. Right down to their genes. Me, I don’ want my genes washed, comprende?”

  “I’d like to see an Amplitur, though. I understand they got pretty eyes and four feet and two big tentacle things comin’ out of their faces. I’d like to see if I could squeeze one into another shape. You can’ break their necks ‘cause they ain’t got no necks to break. They’re invit… invertebrates. Hey, I can’ even say that in Spanish.” She laughed.

  “I still don’t understand why there aren’t more of our people here. Are all Humans kept out on the front lines?”

  “No, but I tell you something. Except for the Massood I think maybe we frighten these people a little bit. Or maybe they don’ like us a whole lot personally.” She shrugged. “It don’ matter. Nobody give a damn if the Hivisties or the O’o’yan or those stuck-up Wais don’ want to socialize with us. The S’van are better, but you can’ really tell what a S’van is thinking, you know?”

  “I ask about it one time an’ a S’van he tell me the other Weave peoples got ‘delicate sensibilities.’ I sort of understand. I mean, sometimes we’re kind of loud, but hell, what do they expect? This ain’t no fancy hotel lobby ball out here, it war. You can’ blame somebody if it not in their blood.”

  “It’s not in our blood, either,” Will said angrily. “The danger of all this is that it’s reinforcing a regressive tendency that mankind is just learning how to suppress.”

  “Hey, speak for yourself, man. Me, I been fighting all my life.”

  “Then you have done some soldiering.” Now maybe her misplaced passion for fighting would be explained.

  “Not what you’d call it, though I’ve spent some time with soldiers. I’m a professional puta, man. A whore, a prostitute. I leave Mexico City because my pimp was gonna kill me. All the time I hear about the rich tourists in Cancun, so I go there. One day this funny English guy come up to me and ask me some weird questions. Then he show me more gold than I ever see even in a jewelry store and he tell me I can get some for myself.”

  “For that much gold I do the stirrups from the ceiling, you know? But he say it nothing like that, and he talk a lot of crazy talk, and says why don’ I give it a try? Well it not like I got much to lose, you know? So I say, why the hell not? I want to get as far away from Mexico City and the guy who’s after me as possible, and Belize is farther than Cancun.” She chuckled. “Hombre, I had no idea how far away I was gonna get.” She slapped him on the back.

  “Hokay, that’s Maria. Now you tell me about you.”

  “I’m a musician, a composer,” he replied without enthusiasm.

  Her expression brightened. “Hey, no keedding, really? I used to sing a littl
e. I was gonna be a singer, you know? Got any idea how many poor girls there are in Mexico City? Sixteen million, man. And I think maybe half of them want to be singers. So hey, I was a lousy singer but a good whore. Now I find something better. And they make me a captain, maybe because I shoot straight, talk straight, and ain’t afraid of nothing. What you think?”

  “Ranks-wise we got ourselves one colonel and a few majors, but that all so far. Maybe when more people get here we get some higher-ups. ‘Major Echevarria.’ I like that. What you think? Hey, you want to kill some Crigolit? We get you a weapon.”

  “I don’t want to kill anything,” Will mumbled glumly. “I just wanted to see how things were going.”

  “Well they goin’ pretty good, man, pretty good.” She frowned. “Hey, you want to meet some other soldiers now? I think maybe you don’ like me.”

  “It’s not that.” He looked over at her. “It’s just that…”

  “Hokay, no problem, I understand. You just get here and this all a bit much. Tell you what. There’s a squad due in pretty quick for some R&R. Maybe they here already. I introduce you to them.”

  “How have they done?” It was a question he didn’t really want to ask anymore but couldn’t avoid. Perverse curiosity, like the prizefight spectator. “In the field, I mean?”

  “Well, I tell you. The Amplitur forces were right on the outskirts of this big local city near here when the local command dump us in alongside the Massood. Since then we’ve push them back, oh, maybe a thousand kilometers. Soon we gonna push them right off this planet. That pretty easy to do here, you know? They got no Europe, no Africa. Just all the land in one place and water everywhere else.”

  “We gonna flank their whole forces and hit their main base of supply from behind, and if they try to come back on us we’ll just slice them up into leetle pieces. Nobody thought like that before we got here. I mean, the Massood are good fighters but they too direct. They don’ see things the way we do, and they stop to talk things over too much. By the time they finished talking, our people are wavin’ back at them to hurry up and come on.”

  “I think maybe we too fast for them, you know? But they like us. Us being here and helping means not so many dead Massood. We could use a couple thousand more troops. How are things back on Earth?”

  “The same,” Will told her, not knowing what else to say.

  “Be better if we could get more real soldiers here. We got a few. Recruited from vacations. One of our majors is a Russian. When they found out about us, he and his woman and kids all jump ship in Jamaica. He’s a good guy. Speaks better Massood than I do.”

  “You speak Massood?” Will gaped at her.

  “Sure.” She rattled off a guttural stream for him. “Not so hard, though they don’ swear enough. We teaching them some.”

  Will nodded to himself. The dissemination of Human culture had begun.

  “Here’s the lounge.”

  They entered a room in the shape of a half-moon. He remarked on the incongruity of the expansive window only to have her explain that it could withstand a tactical nuclear explosion and was polarized to dissipate any type of energy weapon. The furniture was clean and flexible while the room itself took the form of a series of descending concentric levels, like an intimate theater. Massood and Hivistahm sat and chatted and sipped liquids from exotic containers.

  The lowermost level was full of chairs and couches. The Humans gathered there scrutinized flat screens the size of hand mirrors and laughed at what they saw. Echevarria led him down.

  “What kind of casualties have you suffered?” Will inquired as they descended.

  “We’ve had some people killed, some hurt. This is a war, man. You see your friend killed, it just make you want to fight harder. That something else I don’ think the Massood understand. When they lose people they want to pull back. The more of us go down, the harder the rest want to fight. So maybe we do things a little backward, you know?” She raised her voice as they approached the bottom.

  “Hey, Joh, Chang! I got somebody I want you to meet. Come all the way out from Earth.”

  For the second time Will was stunned at the reaction mention of his name produced. It seemed everyone wanted to shake his hand or kiss him. It was the last thing he could have anticipated, having come all this way expecting to encounter rampant homesickness and disillusionment. He wanted no part of their adulation.

  Nor was any of it faked for his benefit in the manner of some of the music-ignorant matrons who supported the symphony because it was the sophisticated thing to do. This jumbled assortment of Humanity gathered on a far distant world meant every word they said.

  A stockbroker named Davis had already made one recruiting trip of his own to enlist several of his friends. All had given up six-figure incomes to fight for the Weave.

  “Making money is exciting at first,” the man explained as he inhaled gas from a sealed flask, “but you reach a point in time where you realize it doesn’t have much to do with real life. It just doesn’t feel right. It becomes nothing more than dull routine to be followed mindlessly and unquestioningly.” He gestured at the window. “There’s nothing dull about what we’re doing here.”

  “So you make a lot of money, so what? You buy a fancier car, a bigger co-op, you fly first class instead of coach, you stare dumbly at a bigger TV with a few extra buttons and knobs. What does that have to do with the meaning of existence? Not a damn thing.”

  “So you run for Congress or hope for an appointment to the Federal Reserve Board so you can lose yourself among thousands of other bureaucrats who can’t accomplish anything worthwhile either. Is that a life’s work?”

  “This—I mean, this conflict is about the structure of civilization. That’s something worth devoting your life to.”

  “That’s what the aliens say,” Will responded. Some of the smiles disappeared.

  “You really don’t know what’s going on out here, do you?” the ex-broker said pityingly. “You’re the one responsible for us being here and you don’t know what’s going on.” He turned to Echevarria.

  “Maria, has Will seen any of the prisoners?”

  “No. He just get here.”

  Davis nodded understandingly. “Why don’t you see if you can get him into Interrogation?” He turned back to the visitor.

  “Everyone here believes in what they’re doing, regardless of where they come from or what they did back on Earth. We’re all respected and appreciated in a way no Human beings have been respected and appreciated before, not in the whole history of our world. Have you heard about how the Amplitur treat those who do their fighting for them?”

  “I’ve been told that they can exercise some kind of thought control.”

  “Thought control, yeah. Only it’s more subtle than that, much more subtle. You won’t meet any Crigolit zombies on the battlefield. The Amplitur aren’t that blatant. This is much scarier. You know that they alter the DNA of subject peoples, insert traits that are passed on to all their offspring?” He glanced back at Echevarria. “You need to show him some of the prisoners.”

  “Yeah, show him,” said an Oriental woman reclined on a maroon couch.

  “Show him,” suggested a dark man in the back, “those two Ashregan cavalry techs they brought in last week.”

  “Cavalry?” Will said.

  “They use something like an airborne scooter,” Davis elaborated. “Don’t ask me to explain how they work. All I know is that they shoot along about two feet off the ground and can go over anything; water, mud, rock. Each one carries a driver and weapons specialist. They’re real fast and they give us a lot of trouble, but when they take a hit everything pretty much disintegrates. On rare occasions we’ll take one out and it’ll come down soft.”

  “Usually they carry Crigolit, but sometimes something else will be aboard.” He looked at Echevarria. “Introduce him to the enemy, Maria.” The broker clasped Will’s shoulder. “Come back afterward and we’ll talk some more.” His smile returned. “You’re
something of a legend here, you know? Not just among us. The Massood, the S’van, everybody knows your story.”

  “I don’t want any part of anything like that,” Will insisted. “It’s all wrong.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You can protest all you want to, but once a myth’s emplaced it’s tough to dislodge. I think you’re stuck with what others perceive you to be.” He sucked on his flask.

  “Try and relax. Nobody’s uptight here. The food’s great and they keep inventing new kinds of entertainment for us. Got to keep the crazy Humans content.” The glass flask he’d been sucking on slipped out of his mouth. Will could see where the tip had been chewed down, therefore it couldn’t be glass… could it?

  Davis noted his stare. “Some kind of perfumed inhalant, gives a real nice buzz and it’s nonaddictive. Imagine breathing strawberry sundae.”

  “Nostril nosh,” one of the others quipped. Everyone laughed.

  Maria took Will’s arm, leading him upward. “See you later, people,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, take it easy, Maria.” Similar salutations in half a dozen languages saw them off.

  As they left the relaxation chamber behind, Will struggled to make sense of what he’d heard and seen.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty

  At a place where the corridor widened a line of oval, open-topped carts sat waiting. Inside was a control panel and two opposing flat benches. Echevarria touched several switches and the cart started down a side tunnel. Despite their speed no wind ruffled Will’s hair. They were encased in some kind of invisible protective bubble.

  “You look troubled,” she said, searching his face.

  “What gets me is that everyone looks so damn happy.”

  “They are happy, compadre. The people here, they come from all walks of life; different countries, different cultures, but here everyone is the same. We all foreigners in this place. They doing something worthwhile and meanwhile piling up gold like crazy. Who wouldn’t be happy?”