The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection
Page 9
I didn’t want him to touch me, but I didn’t stop him. I didn’t stop him.
I didn’t leave the bunker for a long time. I couldn’t.
* * *
No one told me the two guys were dead. No one had to. It was the right kind of dream, just like before. But this time I’d known them. I’d met them. I’d laughed with them in the daylight and when they died I wasn’t there, it wasn’t on some gurney in a room somewhere. It was different.
It was starting up again, I told myself.
I didn’t get out of the cot until noon. I was thinking about needles, that was all.
* * *
He comes by again at about 1900 hours, just walks in and says, “Why don’t you have some dinner, Mary. You must be hungry.”
I go to the mess they’ve thrown together in one of the big bunkers. I think the guys are going to know about the screaming, but all they do is look at me like I’m the only woman in the camp, that’s all, and that’s okay.
Suddenly I see Steve. He’s sitting with three other guys and I get this feeling he doesn’t want to see me, that if he did he’d have come looking for me already, and I should turn around and leave. But one of the guys is saying something to him and Steve is turning and I know I’m wrong. He’s been waiting for me. He’s wearing cammies and they’re dirty—he hasn’t been back long—and I can tell by the way he gets up and comes toward me he wants to see me.
We go outside and stand where no one can hear us. He says, “Jesus, I’m sorry.” I’m not sure what he means.
“Are you okay?” I say, but he doesn’t answer.
He’s saying, “I wasn’t the one who told him about the dreams, Mary, I swear it. All I did was ask for a couple hours’ layover to see you, but he doesn’t like that—he doesn’t like ‘variables.’ When he gets me back to camp, he has you checked out. The hospital says something about dreams and how crazy you’re acting, and he puts it together. He’s smart, Mary. He’s real smart—”
I tell him to shut up, it isn’t his fault, and I’d rather be here than back in the States in some VA program or ward. But he’s not listening. “He’s got you here for a reason, Mary. He’s got all of us here for a reason and if I hadn’t asked for those hours he wouldn’t know you existed—”
I get mad. I tell him I don’t want to hear any more about it, it isn’t his fault.
“Okay,” he says finally. “Okay.” He gives me a smile because he knows I want it. “Want to meet the guys on the team?” he says. “We just got extracted—”
I say sure. We go back in. He gets me some food and then introduces me. They’re dirty and tired but they’re not complaining. They’re still too high off the mission to eat and won’t crash for another couple of hours yet. There’s an SF medic with the team, and two Navy SEALs because there’s a riverine aspect to the mission, and a guy named Moburg, a Marine sniper out of Quantico. Steve’s their CO and all I can think about is how young he is. They’re all so young.
It turns out Moburg’s a talent, too, but it’s “anticipatory subliminal”—it only helps him target hits and doesn’t help anyone else much. But he’s a damn good sniper because of it, they tell me.
The guys give me food from their trays and for the first time that day I’m feeling hungry. I’m eating with guys that are real and alive and I’m really hungry.
Then I notice Steve isn’t talking. He’s got that same look on his face. I turn around.
Bucannon’s in the doorway, looking at us. The other guys haven’t seen him, they’re still talking and laughing—being raunchy.
Bucannon is looking at us and he’s smiling, and I get a chill down my spine like cold water because I know—all of a sudden I know—why I’m sitting here, who wants it this way.
I get up fast. Steve doesn’t understand. He says something. I don’t answer him, I don’t even hear him. I keep going. He’s behind me and he wants to know if I’m feeling okay, but I don’t want to look back at him, I don’t want to look at any of the guys with him, because that’s what Bucannon wants.
He’s going to send them out again, I tell myself. They just got back, they’re tired, and he’s going to send them out again, so I can dream about them.
* * *
I’m not going to go to sleep, I tell myself. I walk the perimeter until they tell me I can’t do that anymore, it’s too dangerous. Steve follows me and I start screaming at him, but I’m not making any sense. He watches me for a while and then someone comes to get him, and I know he’s being told he’s got to take his team out again. I ask for some Benzedrine from the Green Beanie medic who brings me aspirin when I want it but he says he can’t, that word has come down that he can’t. I try writing a letter to my parents but it’s 0400 hours and I’m going crazy trying to stay awake because I haven’t had more than four hours’ sleep for a couple of nights and my body temperature’s dropping on the diurnal.
I ask for some beer and they get it for me. I ask for some scotch. They give it to me and I think I’ve won. I never go to sleep on booze, but Bucannon doesn’t know that. I’ll stay awake and I won’t dream.
But it knocks me out like a light, and I have a dream. One of the guys at the table, one of the two SEALs, is floating down a river. The blood is like a woman’s hair streaming out from his head. I don’t dream about Steve, just about this SEAL who’s floating down a river. It’s early in the mission. Somehow I know that.
I don’t wake up screaming, because of what they put in the booze. I remember it as soon as I wake up, when I can’t do anything about it.
Bucannon comes in at first light. He doesn’t say, “If you don’t help us, you’re going back to Saigon or back to the States with a Section Eight.” Instead he comes in and kneels down beside me like some goddamn priest and he says, “I know this is painful, Mary, but I’m sure you can understand.”
I say, “Get the hell out of here, motherfucker.”
It’s like he hasn’t heard. He says, “It would help us to know the details of any dream you had last night, Mary.”
“You’ll let him die anyway,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Mary,” he says, “but he’s already dead. We’ve received word on one confirmed KIA in Echo Team. All we’re interested in is the details of the dream and an approximate time, Mary.” He hesitates. “I think he would want you to tell us. I think he would want to feel that it was not in vain, don’t you.”
He stands up at last.
“I’m going to leave some paper and writing utensils for you. I can understand what you’re going through, more than you might imagine, Mary, and I believe that if you give it some thought—if you think about men like Steve and what your dreams could mean to them—you will write down the details of your dream last night.”
I scream something at him. When he’s gone I cry for a while. Then I go ahead and write down what he wants. I don’t know what else to do.
* * *
I don’t go to the mess. Bucannon has food brought to my bunker but I don’t eat it.
I ask the Green Beanie medic where Steve is. Is he back yet? He says he can’t tell me. I ask him to send a message to Steve for me. He says he can’t do that. I tell him he’s a straight-leg ass-kisser and ought to have his jump wings shoved, but this doesn’t faze him at all. Any other place, I say, you’d be what you were supposed to be—Special Forces and a damn good medic—but Bucannon’s got you, doesn’t he. He doesn’t say a thing.
I stay awake all that night. I ask for coffee and I get it. I bum more coffee off two sentries and drink that, too. I can’t believe he’s letting me have it. Steve’s team is going to be back soon, I tell myself—they’re a strike force, not a Lurp—and if I don’t sleep, I can’t dream.
I do it again the next night and it’s easier. I can’t believe it’s this easy. I keep moving around. I get coffee and I find this sentry who likes to play poker and we play all night. I tell him I’m a talent and will know if someone’s trying to come through the wire on us, sapper or whatever, so we
can play cards and not worry. He’s pure new-guy and he believes me.
Steve’ll be back tomorrow, I tell myself. I’m starting to see things and I’m not thinking clearly, but I’m not going to crash. I’m not going to crash until Steve is back. I’m not going to dream about Steve.
At about 0700 hours the next morning we get mortared. The slicks inside the perimeter start revving up, the Skycrane starts hooking its cats and Rome plows, and the whole camp starts to dust off. I hear radios, more slicks and Skycranes being called in. If the NVA had a battalion, they’d be overrunning us, I tell myself, so it’s got to be a lot less—company, platoon—and they’re just harassing us, but word has come down from somebody that we’re supposed to move.
Mortars are whistling in and someone to one side of me says “Incoming—fuck it!” Then I hear this other sound. It’s like flies but real loud. It’s like this weird whispering. It’s a goddamn flechette round, I realize, spraying stuff, and I don’t understand. I can hear it, but it’s like a memory, a flashback. Everybody’s running around me and I’m just standing there and someone’s screaming. It’s me screaming. I’ve got flechettes all through me—my chest, my face. I’m torn to pieces. I’m dying. But I’m running toward the slick, the one that’s right over there, ready to dust off. Someone’s calling to me, screaming at me, and I’m running, but I’m not. I’m on the ground. I’m on the jungle floor with these flechettes in me and I’ve got a name, a nickname, Kicker, and I’m thinking of a town in Wyoming, near the Montana border, where everybody rides pickup trucks with shotgun racks and waves to everybody else, I grew up there, there’s a rodeo every spring with a county fair and I’m thinking about a girl with braids, I’m thinking how I’m going to die here in the middle of this jungle, how we’re on some recondo that no one cares about, how Charlie doesn’t have flechette rounds, how Bucannon never makes mistakes.
I’m running and screaming and when I get to the slick the Green Beanie medic grabs me, two other guys grab me and haul me in. I look up. It’s Bucannon’s slick. He’s on the radio. I’m lying on a pile of files right beside him and we’re up over the jungle now, we’re taking the camp somewhere else, where it can start up all over again.
I look at Bucannon. I think he’s going to turn any minute and say, “Which ones, Mary? Which ones died from the flechette?” He doesn’t.
I look down and see he’s put some paper and three pencils beside me on the floor. I can’t stand it. I start crying.
* * *
I sleep maybe for twenty minutes and have two dreams. Two other guys died out there somewhere with flechettes in them. Two more guys on Steve’s team died and I didn’t even meet them.
I look up. Bucannon’s smiling at me.
“It happened, didn’t it, Mary?” he says gently. “It happened in the daylight this time, didn’t it?”
* * *
At the new camp I stayed awake another night, but it was hard and it didn’t make any difference. It probably made it worse. It happened three more times the next day and all sorts of guys saw me. I knew someone would tell Steve. I knew Steve’s team was still out there—Echo hadn’t come in when the rocketing started—but that he was okay. I’m lying on the ground screaming and crying with shrapnel going through me, my legs are gone, my left eyeball is hanging out on my cheek, and there are pieces of me all over the guy next to me, but I’m not Steve, and that’s what matters.
The third time, an AK round goes through my neck so I can’t even scream. I fall down and can’t get up. Someone kneels down next to me and I think it’s Bucannon and I try to hit him. I’m trying to scream even though I can’t, but it’s not Bucannon, it’s one of the guys who was sitting with Steve in the mess. They’re back, they’re back, I think to myself, but I’m trying to tell this guy that I’m dying, that there’s this medic somewhere out there under a beautiful rubber tree who’s trying to pull me through, but I’m not going to make it, I’m going to die on him, and he’s going to remember it his whole life, wake up in the night crying years later and his wife won’t understand.
I want to say, “Tell Steve I’ve got to get out of here,” but I can’t. My throat’s gone. I’m going out under some rubber tree a hundred klicks away in the middle of Laos, where we’re not supposed to be, and I can’t say a thing.
This guy who shared his ham-and-motherfuckers with me in the mess, this guy is looking down on me and I think, Oh my God, I’m going to dream about him some night, some day, I’m going to dream about him and because I do he’s going to die.
He doesn’t say a thing.
He’s the one that comes to get me in my hooch two days later when they try to bust me out.
* * *
They give me something pretty strong. By the time they come I’m getting the waking dreams, sure, but I’m not screaming anymore. I’m here but I’m not. I’m all these other places, I’m walking into an Arclight, B-52 bombers, my ears are bleeding, I’m the closest man when a big Chinese claymore goes off, my arm’s hanging by a string, I’m dying in all these other places and I don’t even know I’ve taken their pills. I’m like a doll when Steve and this guy and three others come, and the guards let them. I’m smiling like an idiot and saying, “Thank you very much,” something stupid some USO type would say, and I’ve got someone holding me up so I don’t fall on my face.
There’s this Jolly Green Giant out in front of us. It’s dawn and everything’s beautiful and this chopper is gorgeous. It’s Air Force. It’s crazy. There are these guys I’ve never seen before. They’ve got black berets and they’re neat and clean, and they’re not Army. I think, Air Commandos! I’m giggling. They’re Air Force. They’re dandies. They’re going to save the day like John Wayne at Iwo Jima. I feel a bullet go through my arm, then another through my leg, and the back of my head blows off, but I don’t scream. I just feel the feelings, the ones you feel right before you die—but I don’t scream. The Air Force is going to save me. That’s funny. I tell myself how Steve had friends in the Air Commandos and how they took him around once in-country for a whole damn week, AWOL, yeah, but maybe it isn’t true, maybe I’m dreaming it. I’m still giggling. I’m still saying, “Thank you very much.”
We’re out maybe fifty klicks and I don’t know where we’re heading. I don’t care. Even if I cared I wouldn’t know how far out “safe” was. I hear Steve’s voice in the cockpit and a bunch of guys are laughing, so I think safe. They’ve busted me out because Steve cares and now we’re safe. I’m still saying “Thank you” and some guy is saying “You’re welcome, baby,” and people are laughing and that feels good. If they’re all laughing, no one got hurt, I know. If they’re all laughing, we’re safe. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Then something starts happening in the cockpit. I can’t hear with all the wind. Someone says “Shit.” Someone says “Cobra.” Someone else says “Jesus Christ what the hell.” I look out the roaring doorway and I see two black gunships. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. No one’s laughing. I’m saying “Thank you very much” but no one’s laughing.
I find out later there was one behind us, one in front, and one above. They were beautiful. They reared up like snakes when they hit you. They had M-134 Miniguns that could put a round on every square centimeter of a football field within seconds. They had fifty-two white phosphorous rockets apiece and Martin-Marietta laser-guided Copperhead howitzer rounds. They had laser designators and Forward-Looking Infrared Sensors. They were nightblack, no insignias of any kind. They were model AH-1G-X and they didn’t belong to any regular branch of the military back then. You wouldn’t see them until the end of the war.
I remember thinking that there were only two of us with talent on that slick, why couldn’t he let us go? Why couldn’t he just let us go?
* * *
I tried to think of all the things he could do to us, but he didn’t do a thing. He didn’t have to.
I didn’t see Steve for a long time. I went ahead and tried to sleep at night because it was
better that way. If I was going to have the dreams, it was better that way. It didn’t make me so crazy. I wasn’t like a doll someone had to hold up.
I went ahead and wrote the dreams down in a little notebook Bucannon gave me, and I talked to him. I showed him I really wanted to understand, how I wanted to help, because it was easier on everybody this way. He didn’t act surprised, and I didn’t think he would. He’d always known. Maybe he hadn’t known about the guys in the black berets, but he’d known that Steve would try it. He’d known I’d stay awake. He’d known the dreams would move to daylight, from “interrupted REM-state,” if I stayed awake. And he’d known he’d get us back.
We talked about how my dreams were changing. I was having them much earlier than “events in real time,” he said. The same thing had probably been happening back in ER, he said, but I hadn’t known it. The talent was getting stronger, he said, though I couldn’t control it yet. I didn’t need the “focal stimulus,” he said, “the physical correlative.” I didn’t need to meet people to have the dreams.
“When are we going to do it?” I finally said.
He knew what I meant. He said we didn’t want to rush into it, how acting prematurely was worse than not understanding it, how the “fixity of the future” was something no one yet understood, and we didn’t want to take a chance on stopping the dreams by trying to tamper with the future.
* * *
“It won’t stop the dreams,” I said. “Even if we kept a death from happening, it wouldn’t stop the dreams.”
He never listened. He wanted them to die. He wanted to take notes on how they died and how my dreams matched their dying, and he wasn’t going to call anyone back until he was ready to.
“This isn’t war, Mary,” he told me one day. “This is a kind of science and it has its own rules. You’ll have to trust me, Mary.”
He pushed the hair out of my eyes, because I was crying. He wanted to touch me. I know that now.
* * *
I tried to get messages out. I tried to figure out who I’d dreamed about. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and try to talk to anybody I could and figure it out. I’d say, “Do you know a guy who’s got red hair and is from Alabama?” I’d say, “Do you know an RTO who’s short and can’t listen to anything except Jefferson Airplane?” Sometimes it would take too long. Sometimes I’d never find out who it was, but if I did, I’d try to get a message out to him. Sometimes he’d already gone out and I’d still try to get someone to send him a message—but that just wasn’t done.