A Separate War and Other Stories (17 page)

We spent a couple of weeks as close as two people can be. I was her lover and also her nurse, as she slowly strengthened. When she was able to spend most of her day in normal pursuits, free of the wheelchair or “intelligent” bed (with which we had made a threesome, at times uneasy), she urged me to go back outside and finish up. She was ready to concentrate on her own project, too. Impatient to do art again, a good sign.

I would not have left so soon if I had known what her project involved. But that might not have changed anything.

As soon as I stepped outside, I knew it was going to take longer than planned. I had known from the inside monitors how cold it was going to be, and how many ceemetras of ice had accumulated, but I didn't really
know
how bad it was until I was standing there, looking at my piles of materials locked in opaque glaze. A good thing I'd left the robots inside the shelter, and a good thing I had left a few hand tools outside. The door was buried under two metras of snow and ice. I sculpted myself a passageway, an application of artistic skills I'd never foreseen.

I debated calling White Hill and telling her that I would be longer than expected. We had agreed not to interrupt each other, though, and it was likely she'd started working as soon as I left.

The robots were like a bad comedy team, but I could only be amused by them for an hour or so at a time. It was so cold that the water vapor from my breath froze into an icy sheath on my beard and moustache. Breathing was painful; deep breathing probably dangerous.

So most of the time, I monitored them from inside the shelter. I had the place to myself; everyone else long since gone into the dome. When I wasn't working I drank too much, something I had not done regularly in centuries.

It was obvious that I wasn't going to make a working model. Delicate balance was impossible in the shifting gale. But the robots and I had our hands full, and other grasping appendages engaged, just dismantling the various pieces and moving them through the lock. It was unexciting but painstaking work. We did all the laser cuts inside the shelter, allowing the rock to come up to room temperature so it didn't spall or shatter. The air-conditioning wasn't quite equal to the challenge, and neither were the cleaning robots, so after a while it was like living in a foundry: everywhere a kind of greasy slickness of rock dust, the air dry and metallic.

So it was with no regret that I followed the last slice into the airlock myself, even looking forward to the scourging if White Hill was on the other side.

She wasn't. A number of other people were missing, too. She left this note behind:

The last sentence is a palindrome in her language, not mine, that I believe has some significance beyond the obvious.

I did think about it for some time. Weighing a quick death, or even a slow one, against spending centuries locked frozen in a tiny room with Norita and her ilk. Chattering on at the speed of synapse, and me unable to not listen.

I have always valued quiet, and the eternity of it that I face is no more dreadful than the eternity of quiet that preceded my birth.

If White Hill were to be at the other end of those centuries of torture, I know I could tolerate the excruciation. But she was dead now, at least in the sense that I would never see her again.

Another woman might have tried to give me a false hope, the possibility that in some remote future the process of
jaturnary
would be advanced to the point where her personality could be recovered. But she knew how unlikely that would be even if teams of scientists could be found to work on it, and years could be found for them to work in. It would be like unscrambling an egg.

Maybe I would even do it, though, if there were just some chance that, when I was released from that din of garrulous bondage, there would be something like a real world, a world where I could function as an artist. But I don't think there will even be a world where I can function as a man.

There probably won't be any humanity at all, soon enough. What they did to the Sun they could do to all of our stars, one assumes. They win the war, the Extermination, as my parent called it. Wrong side exterminated.

Of course the Fwndyri might not find White Hill and her charges. Even if they do find them, they might leave them preserved as an object of study.

The prospect of living on eternally under those circumstances, even if there were some growth to compensate for the immobility and the company, holds no appeal.

What I did in the time remaining before mid-Deciembre was write this account. Then I had it translated by a xenolinguist into a form that she said could be decoded by any creature sufficiently similar to humanity to make any sense of the story. Even the Fwndyri, perhaps. They're human enough to want to wipe out a competing species.

I'm looking at the preliminary sheets now, English down the left side and a jumble of dots, squares, and triangles down the right. Both sides would have looked equally strange to me a few years ago.

White Hill's story will be conjoined to a standard book that starts out with basic mathematical principles, in dots and squares and triangles, and moves from that into physics, chemistry, biology. Can you go from biology to the human heart? I have to hope so. If this is read by alien eyes, long after the last human breath is stilled, I hope it's not utter gibberish.

So I will take this final sheet down to the translator and then deliver the whole thing to the woman who is going to transfer it to permanent sheets of platinum, which will be put in a prominent place aboard the transport. They could last a million years, or ten million, or more. After the Sun is a cinder, and the ship is a frozen block enclosing a thousand bits of frozen flesh, she will live on in this small way.

So now my work is done. I'm going outside, to the quiet.

(1995)

I used to love this part of the city. Jain and I had looked at a loft looking over the park toward Charles Street and the river, dreaming of escaping Roxbury. Not much here now.

My partner, Mark, pointed to the left. “Movement.” I jammed the joystick left and up, and the tracks clattered over the curb into dirt, the dry baked ruin that used to be Boston Common.

It was a boy, trying to hide behind the base of a fallen equestrian statue.

I touched my throat mike. “Halt! Put your hands over your head.” He took off like a squirrel, and I gunned it forward. There was no way he could outrun us.

“Taze or tangle?” Mason said.

“Taze.” When we got within range, he scoped the kid and fired. A wire darted out, and the jolt knocked him flat. I braked with both feet, and we lurched forward into our harnesses.

We both stayed inside, looking around. “This stinks,” he said, and I nodded. How did the boy get here without being seen, in the glare of the nightlights? Had to be a rabbit-hole nearby.

We waited a couple of minutes, watching. Jain and I used to walk through the Common when it was an island of calm in the middle of the Boston din. Flowers everywhere in the spring and summer, leaves in the fall. But I'd liked the winters best, at least when it snowed. The flakes sifting down in the dark, in the muffled quiet.

Never dark now, but always quiet. With occasional gunfire and explosions.

“The shock might have killed him,” I said, “if he's in bad enough shape.”

“Skin looks like—” Mason started, when there was a “thud” sound, and we were suddenly enveloped in flame. “Fire at will,” I said, unnecessarily. Mason had the gatling on top screaming as it rotated, traversing blindly. It would probably get the kid.

My rear monitor was clear, so I jammed it into full reverse with the left track locked. We spun around twice in two seconds, harness jamming my cheek. No sign of whoever bombed us.

“Swan Pond?” Mason said.

“That's probably what they want us to do. Not that much fire; I can blow it out.” Steering with the monitor, I stomped it in reverse. Braked once as we bumped off the curb, and then backed uphill at howling redline. The windshield cleared except for a smear of soot, and I stopped at the top of the hill, by the ruins of the Capitol.

A female voice from the radio: “Unit Seven, what was that all about? Did you engage the enemy?”

“After a fashion, Lillian,” I said. “We were down in the Common, near the parking lot entrance. Kid came up, a decoy, and we tazed him.”

“What, a child?” They were rare; the survivors were all sterile.

“Yeah, a boy about ten or twelve. While we were waiting for him to wake up, they popped us with a Molotov.”

“I'd say flamer,” Mason said. He was scanning the area down there with binoculars.

“Maybe a flamer. Couldn't see forward, so we laid down some covering fire and backed out. Wasn't enough to hurt the track; we're okay now.”

“Kid's not there,” Mason said. “Somebody retrieved him.”

“Got a fire team zeroed on the coordinates where you started backing up,” the radio said. “What do you want?”

I want to go home, I thought. “Sure he's gone?” I whispered to Mason.

He handed me the binoculars. “See for yourself.” No kid, no blood trail.

“No one there now, at least on the surface,” I said to Lillian. “Drill round, H.E., maybe.”

“Roger.” I could hear her keyboard. A few seconds later, the round came in with a sound like cloth tearing. It made a puff of dust where we'd been standing, and then a grey cloud of high-explosive smoke billowed out of the entrance to the underground lot, a couple of hundred yards away, the same time we heard the muffled explosion.

“On target,” I said. Of course they'd be idiots to stick around right under where they'd hit us. That parking lot had tunnels going everywhere.

“Need more?” she asked.

“No, negative.”

“Hold on.” She paused. “Command wants you to go take a look. Down below, in the lot.”

“Why don't
they
come and take a look?” That was really asking for it. They could pop us from any direction and scuttle back down their tunnels.

“So do you want more arty?”

“Yeah, affirmative. Two drill rounds with gas.”

Wipers squeaked, cleaning the soot off the front as we rolled slowly down the hill. “What flavor? We got CS, VA, fog, big H and little H.”

I looked at Mason. “Little H?”

He nodded. “Fog, too.” I relayed that to Lillian. Little H was happy gas; it induced euphoria and listlessness. Fog was a persistent but breathable particulate suspension. Not that we'd be breathing it, with little H in the air.

(Big H was horror gas. It brought on such profound depression that the enemy usually suicided. But sometimes they wanted to take you with them.)

The two rounds thumped in while we were fitting the gas masks on. Track's airtight and self-contained, but you never know.

I tuned to infrared, and the ruins around us became even greyer. Spun to the left, and then left again, into the lot's down ramp. “Hold on.” I gunned it forward and turned on glare lights all around.

“Jesus!” Mason flinched.

“Go IR,” I said. To him it must have looked like I was speeding straight into an opaque wall. I slowed a little as we slid inside, sideways.

If you were looking in visible light, you wouldn't see anything
but
light, from our glare, in the swirling fog. In IR, it was just a thin mist.

A few derelict cars amid debris. The crater from her first round was still smoking. There were dozens of holes punched through the ceiling from previous drill rounds. I switched off the IR for a moment and saw nothing but blinding white. Clicked it back on and looked for movement.

“What do you see, Seven?”

“What am I looking for?” I said. “No obvious bodies where your H.E. came in. Nobody walking around in hysterics. No flamers.”

“Power down, turn off your lights, and listen.” I did. Turned up the ears and heard nothing but creaks and pops from our engine, cooling.

In infrared there was enough light to see in, just barely. Faint beams shone down through the arty holes, from the nightlights suspended over the city.

Someone laughed.

“We might have one,” I whispered. Little H disperses fast, and it can penetrate deep into a tunnel if the air's moving in that direction.

The laugh continued, not crazy, just like responding to a joke. Except that it went on and on. A husky female voice, echoing.

It sounded like Jain's laugh.

“Sounds like she's in a tunnel,” Mark said. “Over there.” He pointed ahead and to the right.

“Yeah, good, a tunnel.” This was probably the actual trap they'd used the boy as bait for.

Or maybe that
is
Jain, and she's bait. For me. I shook the notion off. How could they know I was in this track?

“Seven, you have backup coming in. Hold your position.”

Hold our position against what, a laugh? “Keep an eye out, Mark. I'm gonna armor up.” One of us was going to leave the track, for sure.

“Guess we both better.” The armor was restricting and hot, but with it you could survive a flaming or a point-blank hit from a .65 machine gun. That would break a bone or two and knock you down, but you'd live.

Not much room in the track; no room for modesty. I had to stay half in the seat while I stripped down. Mark was watching my reflection. I didn't say anything. If I liked men, he'd be near the top of the list. Enjoy the flash.

The bottom half of the armor wasn't bad, heavy plastic mail, but the top was a bitch for women, if they had any breasts at all. Clamshell snaps along the right rib cage. I grunted at the last one.

“Hurts,” Mark said.

“Join the army and have a walking mammogram. Go ahead.” He stripped down quickly. I glanced, and was obscurely disappointed that he didn't have an erection. What am I, a toad? No, his partner and immediate superior.

While Mark was armoring up, our reinforcements came down the ramp, subtle as a rolling garbage can. An APC, armored personnel carrier. Here this soon, it must have been the one stationed up by the T entrance at Park.

“That you, Petroski?” I said on the combat scramble freek.

“No, it's Snow White and her fuckin' dwarfs,” he said. “Mental dwarfs. They said you got movement down here?”

“Just someone laughing after the arty came in.” I turned on the green spotting laser and cranked it around to where we'd heard the voice. It looked like an open freight-elevator door.

I told him about the boy and the flamer; he'd seen the smoke. “You see the green pointer? The elevator there?” It wasn't bright in IR.

“Yeah, but hang for a second. Got some boys and girls still fuckin' with their breathers.”

“What?” APCs are open. “You got guys breathin' this stuff? Didn't they tell you—”

“Yeah, Little H. They've got 'em on, just checking the buddy valves. Command said get right down here, no time for the regular drill.”

“Hope it's not that serious,” I said. “So far we have the Disappearing Boy and the Laughing Woman. Don't think we have to call in the nukes yet.”

The laugh again, and a chill down my spine. I clicked away from the scramble freek. “Mark, I could swear I know that voice.”

“Anyone I know?”

“No, from before. Here in Boston.”

“That's real likely.” Only a fraction of one percent had survived the fever bomb. They were all carriers.

This time the laugh ended in something like a sob. “We lived together more than two years, inseparable. People called her my shadow. She was black.”

“Lovers.”

“Yeah, don't be shocked.” Mark was straight as a ruler, but I thought he knew I wasn't, and didn't seem to care.

“Probably just wishful thinking,” he said. “Projecting.”

“I don't know. You learn someone's—”

“Ready to ride,” Petroski said. “This is a kill, right?”

“No,” I said hastily. “Play it by ear. We might want a capture.”

“What the fuck for?” The quarantine camp in Newton was full to overflowing. And overflow was obviously what it mustn't do.

“Let's just triangulate on the sound. You go over left about a hundred yards and turn off your engine.”

“I've gotta get authorization, not to kill.”

“No, you don't,” I said, improvising. “I'll go in with the nonlethals. You just back me up with a regular squad.”

“In the dark with nonlethals?” Mark said. “You
are
fuckin' nuts.”

“I'm not asking you to come along. Hand me that tangler.” It was the size of a pistol but, instead of bullets, it fired a tightly wound ball of sticky monofilament that blossomed out to become a net. I started to take the Glock 11-mm. out of its holster.

“Christ, don't leave your
gun
behind!”

“I've got a squad backing me up.”

“So they can kill whoever gets you, afterwards,” he said roughly. “I don't want to break in a new partner. Take the fuckin' gun.”

Well, that was touching. I left the pistol in place and tucked the tangler inside my web belt. “Satisfied?”

“Yeah, but you're still nuts. Those sickos just as soon kill you as look at you.”

“Yeah, and we'd
rather
kill them than look at them.” I opened the door and swung out into the fog.

The fever virus bomb had sprayed Boston Christmas morning. I was visiting my folks in Washington, or I would have joined the million who were dead before New Year's, bulldozed into mass graves. Or become one of the few who survived to be sickos, carriers.

I'd talked to Jain on Christmas and the next day. She'd gotten the cough a few hours after the bomb, and by the next day her lungs were so full she could hardly talk other than to say good-bye. On the third day, all the phones in Boston were dead.

I couldn't have gone to her. Every American city had been locked down Christmas Eve, when they learned what the bomb was, but not where. “A big city in the East.” Soldiers and police running everywhere, in Washington. Our family had piled in a car and tried to get out, but every exit was blocked and guarded. Seemed like typical government nonsense at the time. But they must have known how infectious it was, and how fast it would spread.

Boston was dead by dawn of the third day. Of course when I “joined” the military, I was sent here. Supposedly I knew the city, but without the T, the subway, I was lost. And everything underground belonged to the sickos now.