War Games (14 page)

I again examined myself in the holomirror. I parted my hair to reveal a CNS stud, shining like a silver button. I had the urge to pull it out. But that wouldn’t solve anything. My addiction could only be cured by suffering through withdrawal. That was the price you paid. Sometimes you died from withdrawal—if you didn’t, you wished you would. I was going to have to go through it eventually or I’d never escape Dr. Pepper. I let my hair fall back over the stud. Sometime, but not tonight. Tonight I would still have to play Jain Maure’s games. When she held out her tongue, gleaming with blue peptide, I would bend my head to receive her kiss. I would be tossed about on a synthetic endocrine storm, I would do things I might not otherwise do, not being able to resist the passions of peptide. Was I whining? I suppose. Why not? I’ve done worse. And I did still hurt inside. That worried me a little. What if the pain was still there after I underwent withdrawal? Could I stand it without the warmth of peptide?

I knew I would have to.

AFTER I’D FINISHED
dressing
and feeling sorry for myself, I walked to the hospital. Although you could see the white buildings far below from the balcony, it was a brisk walk to get there from Jain Maure’s house. Mainly because you had to walk down the far side of the mountain, and then detour around the large estates at its base. By air it was less than a klick away. As a combrid, I’d made longer jumps with thrusters. But walking made it closer to five kilometers. I didn’t mind. I needed the exercise to help recondition reflex arcs. Besides, it was a pleasant walk.

The road made switchbacks down steep slopes of juniper and oak. Wild flowers grew among the trees, wafting their perfumes over the road to mingle with other scents: musty mushrooms, pungent spearmint, juniper oil. Tiny deer munched acorns, unafraid. Peacocks and guinea fowl strutted along the roadside. The air smelled always of spring and was always the same twenty-five degrees with fifty-percent humidity.

At the bottom were several twenty-hectare estates, with carefully pruned trees, well-trimmed hedges, and rolled lawns. Sometimes polo ponies galloped back and forth, chasing a white ball. Sometimes Morgans and thoroughbreds jumped over hedges, chasing a red fox. Sometimes I heard the sound of antique gunfire followed by the rustle of partridge wings. Always there was the sound of laughter floating up from the verandas, and the tinkle of ice in tall glasses. Water splashed in swimming pools. Racquets hit balls back and forth across grass courts.

The war seemed very far away indeed. Chronus was a colonial sanctuary preserving a life-style that no longer was, that might never have been. But the peace was illusory. At night, elf-fire still flared overhead. The siege of Chronus continued, now in its sixty-first day. We had been cut off by elven gunners for sixty-one days. Gravships could neither enter nor leave the spaceport. At night the bombardment intensified. Eventually the force-field would fail. The rural garrisons were also held siege, so their combrids could not help Chronus. A fleet was on its way from Earth, with heavy cruisers and a battalion of cyrines, to lift the siege. But until they arrived, it was business as usual. The people of Chronus carried on as if nothing had changed.

The road curved around Mt. Erubus, past more estates, and finally skirted the base of red cliffs. A thousand meters up, I could see Jain Maure’s house, perched on the cliff’s edge. A park lay at the bottom of the cliffs. I left the road there and entered the park, walking along paths and waterways. A few combrids sat about in small groups, passing mnemone sticks. They sometimes yelled at me: “Hey, Gunny... What’s happening? ... How’s it going at the hospital? ... When do you get your walkin’ papers?” Mnemone vapor swirled around their heads. I remembered well those acrid fumes. I sometimes longed for the rough camaraderie of a garrison post. But I didn’t join them, nor would I have been welcome. I was a short-timer. Those combrids had only suffered minor wounds. They would soon be sent back to the bush, to get another chance at being killed. As soon as the siege was lifted. I was through with their war, about to begin one of my own. I no longer even looked like one of them, though I would always be a combrid inside. No, I wouldn’t be welcome to join them.

The hospital was on the other side of the park.

The buildings were a collection of marble spheres of various sizes, some stacked vertically, some connected horizontally. A force-field surrounded the periphery. At the gate, a bored cyrine guard watched me pass, nodding slightly in recognition. Soon even that remnant would fade, and I would be entirely forgotten by the Corps.

In regard to that I had mixed feelings. Sometimes I even missed the combat. Nothing was more exciting than that. I had nostalgic feelings for the forced closeness that developed among combrids, knowing your life depended on your mates’ ability to fight as much as your own. And the nights had been good. Too good to believe. I wondered if sex could ever be as good as when you were wired tight with blood lust and bedding someone who had fought beside you that day, had maybe even saved your life. Probably not. It hadn’t been so far.
C’est la vie!

A little maudlin reminiscing never hurt anyone. But there was no sense getting carried away. I pushed aside my sentimental thoughts. I had more important things to worry about—like an empire to build.

I walked to the rehab dome and entered it. Inside were the various machines that had tortured my body back into shape. A sign hung just inside proclaiming: PAIN IS PROGRESS. I must have made a lot of progress.

I stripped off my fatigues and medmech zippered me into one of the rehab machines. Syntheflesh surrounded me in warmth, kneading with tiny fingers. I closed my eyes. Pins and needles started. Have you ever worn a hair shirt with nails? Probably not. The fashion passed with the old religions. But that’s kind of what the rehab machine felt like. Then, later, like going over a waterfall in a barrel. And still later, like being a guest at a blanket party—you know, where thugs tie you up in a sack and start beating the doggie out of you with baseball bats. Of course, I really wasn’t sustaining any damage—it just felt that way. I knew what was actually happening—muscles were contracting to electrical shocks, joints were being loosened, nerves were tingling to transcutaneous stimulation.

It was primitive and archaic, like all veterans’ hospitals. The same effects could have been achieved in four weeks in a hybridization tank. But those facilities were scarce and, in any case, limited to combrids who could be salvaged for more combat duty. No sense wasting restoration services on combrids permanently damaged and due to be mustered out with a pension. There was no hurry with them. They had all the time in the world. Let them spend some of it in old-fashioned rehab machines.

Lights started flashing inside my head. It felt as if an autopulsar had shot off a clip inside a mirrored sphere. Pulses of energy bounced back and forth. Electrical pinballs caromed from the walls of my skull, ringing synaptic bells. It wasn’t too bad—not if you didn’t mind watching a laser light show in your head. A little intense. But I’d gotten used to it by now.

Finally the fireworks stopped. Medmech unzippered me from my machine and carried me to the shower stall. As ultrasonic spray cleansed my skin of sour sweat, I supported myself by bracing my arms against the rails on both sides of the stall. After a few minutes, my legs stopped trembling and I could stand. I opened my mouth and let the ultrasound peel away the film from my teeth. I felt better.

After dressing in clean fatigues, I walked over to the medical officer’s desk. Major Bakr was his name. He wore mutton chop sideburns and a handlebar moustache. He was not a combrid. Commissioned officers belonged to another caste. He looked up from his console screens and scowled. But he motioned for me to sit. I sat.

A sheet of three-ply mylar flimsy lay on the desk in front of him.

I knew what it was. I’d been waiting a long time for this day to come.

“You know what I’ve got here, Detrs?” he asked.

I nodded. I knew.

“Your general discharge from the Corps,” he continued. “With medical qualifications.” He peered at me. “And with a service-connected disability.” He lifted the mylar sheets, then let them drop. “But you know all that. You’ve got some powerful friends.”

“What do you mean, sir?” His last statement surprised me. I had no friends, powerful or otherwise. All my real friends were dead.

Major Bakr smiled ruefully. “I was overruled by the Lord Surgeon General himself on your case. I don’t know why. I triaged you myself. There was no doubt you would have been able to recover full capability if you’d been sent back to the regeneration tanks. Your nerve damage was all peripheral. The other trauma hardly mattered. Four weeks in a tank and you would have been back killing elves at one-hundred-percent efficiency. That was my recommendation. I know I was right. The machines told me that today. Your nerves will recover on their own. It will take them ten times as long to regenerate outside a tank, but they will. I knew that. Any other physician should have drawn the same conclusion. But my recommendations came back rejected. Unfit for rehybridization, they said. I was ordered to rehabilitate, civilianize, and separate you from the Corps. I’ve done all that. Took us six months, didn’t it? But now it’s done. Tell me, though, why did the Lord Surgeon General bother about you? Why are you so important?”

“I really wouldn’t know, sir.” I tried to keep my voice even. I was bothered by what Bakr had said. Why would the General intervene in my case? There was no reason. Bakr just had a case of paranoia. He was just afraid he’d never make colonel and was trying to explain away his own inadequacy. But what if I did get completely better? If the lingering ataxia resolved? I decided I’d caught a case of paranoia from the Major. I didn’t need that. Not with an empire to build. A case of megalomania was enough for anyone.

So I decided it was just my good luck they’d made a mistake and discharged me.

Major Bakr signed the mylar flimsy and handed me the top sheet. Then he made me trade in my Corps I.D. ring for a disabled veteran’s one. Big deal. The perks were the same. The bennies were better. And nobody shot at you anymore. I was officially out of the Corps. A civilian at last. Big deal.

As I stood to leave, Bakr looked up. He was almost smiling. “You should have been more careful,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Moving in with Jain Maure was rather foolish, wasn’t it?”

I stared at him, saying nothing.

“Don’t think you’re the first. Or the last. She squanders men faster than money.” He saw the question in my face and laughed. “Don’t you think I know what kind of a rehab program she had you doing after your cosmetic surgery? And peptides have been showing up in your urine for months. By the level of urinary metabolites, I’d say you’ve built up quite a tolerance by now.” He smirked at me. “We all know the name the cyrines call her. Dr. Pepper.” He laughed again.

I didn’t like it at all. He’d even forgotten to shake my hand. Some send-off. Not even a marching band.

But I was out of the Corps.

I should have felt great, but for some reason I didn’t. I pushed strange feelings deep, before they could surface.

I was frogged if I was going to cry in front of that sheepdip Major.

* * *

Spring still freshened the air outside the hospital. Songbirds chattered to each other from trees. Flowers bloomed in colors too vivid to be real; fragrance wafted from their blossoms. Petals littered the sidewalk, to be crushed beneath passing feet. It was always spring beneath the dome of Chronus, and the inhabitants lived their own illusion of reality. I wished I had lived there a half-century ago, when elves were content to tend their forests of glass, and true Terran Colonials worried only about who was going to be their bed partner that night. Now they had other worries. Big worries. So did we all.

What I planned next was going to be dangerous. The life of a mindrider was risky. You could die playing the mind-game, or lose your body. But the longer I waited, the less chance I’d have of finding Nels. I’d have to take my chances, or give up my quest. I wasn’t the quitting kind.

I normally spent the afternoons at the VFW hall, swapping lies with other ex-combrids. (Yes, there were a few.) They had all been more seriously wounded than I; most had required considerable graftings of prosthetics and showed the signs of residual nerve damage. Yet I was accepted by them as their sibling.

This afternoon was no different. I let my feet take me toward the hall, while my mind wandered on its own. I passed quaint shops: jewelers, tailors, art merchants—displaying the finest wares that could be imported from the rest of the System. Shoppers peered into holo displays. Sidewalk cafes were found at each intersection—people sat at small round tables sipping wine from long-stemmed glasses, laughing at the things they told each other. Everywhere it was business as usual. Storerooms had been well stocked before the siege—as long as they held out there would be no shortages. War wasn’t evident. At least not here, on the surface. But Chronus had many strata. Old mine shafts, tunnels, and natural caverns honeycombed the bedrock underneath. An underground life dwelt there, with peptide parlors, pathic emporia, mnemone dens, chiggies and plaguies, and the infamous mindcasinos. That is where you went to forget, to push away memories that hurt too much, or to become lost yourself. That was where I must go. And soon.

The VFW hall was a simple, unpretentious penthouse atop an office tower. An external liftube took you directly to the top. Wouldn’t want a sensitive businessperson being offended by scarred and gnarled ex-combrids. The tower was in the Old Town section of Chronus—still respectable, but a little on the seamy side. Most of the veterans lived nearby in cheap apartments. A Corps pension paid enough to live on, if you weren’t extravagant. But if you needed a call-body to come by once in a while, or if you craved a toot of mnemone occasionally, you didn’t waste your credits on rent. And Old Town was close to the Underground. That was important. Sooner or later, you’d go Underground. And you wanted to be close to the VFW hall. You needed to talk to your buddies.