The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  Kusu did not defer to Kristal's elderly legs; he knew His Lordship better than that. Instead of the elevator, they climbed the curving main stairs to the second floor and walked to Kusu's lab. The equipment there was meaningless to Kristal. In his school days there'd been no science, no such thing as research, and hadn't been for a very long time. The Sacrament had seen to that, as it had seen to other things, and they'd lived off the genius of ages long past.9

  To Kristal, the most nearly familiar thing in the lab was a cage containing five pale olive sorlex, the Iryalan mouse. They looked up at him with eyes like tiny black beads, their noses twitching.

  "How are the others?" Kristal asked. "Did any survive?"

  "The last two died while I was talking with you on the comm," Kusu answered. "This morning I tried it with three meadow soneys I live-trapped; something with substantially more body mass. They only lived about an hour. And a feral cat I caught last night. It was worse than the rodents; by that time I'd attached this microwave emitter"—he touched a black apparatus on the side of the box—"so I could put it out of its frenzy. That's what I'll do with these, too, assuming they respond like the earlier sets."

  "And sedation doesn't help, you said."

  "Depending on its strength, it eliminates or reduces the intensity of the frenzy, but so does exhaustion, and they die just as quickly. Even when I put them to sleep before teleporting them."

  "Are you having post mortems done?"

  "On the sorlex and the soneys; they weren't microwaved. I've gotten the results, and they're not very informative."

  Kristal nodded. "Well, let's see it operate."

  Kusu raised the cage lid and reached in. The sorlex investigated his hands. He took two of them out on one palm and stroked them reflectively for a moment with a finger. Then, kneeling, he put them in a glass box that sat on a waist-high platform, part of a much larger apparatus, set a timer, closed a switch, and took Kristal to a vacant table at the other end of the room. There was nothing on the table except an electrical cord plugged into a receptacle.

  "It'll be a few seconds yet," Kusu said. Suddenly, after a moment, the glass box was there, and inside it a virtual blur of movement, the two sorlex racing frenziedly about. They caromed off the sides, off each other, launched themselves upward with remarkable leaps to bounce off the top. After ten seconds, Kusu plugged the electric cord into the microwave emitter on the side of the glass box, flicked a switch, and the sorlex stopped at once, to lie unmoving.

  For a moment the two men stood looking silently at them, then Kusu spoke again. "The cultures I teleported—bacteria and yeast—are still growing normally, as if nothing had happened." He gestured at several potted plants on a window sill. "So did the saragol. And the horn worms. And finally the sand lizards. The lizards acted a little strangely afterwards, for a few minutes—scurried around enough more than usual to notice—but they gave us no reason to expect anything like this.

  "If teleportation had killed the other life forms, too, I'd set this work aside and go back to theoretical studies. Maybe I will anyway. But . . ." He gestured. "Only the mammals."

  "Hmh!" Nothing stirred in Kristal's mind, and obviously not in Kusu's either. "I suppose the box couldn't have anything to do with it?"

  "It didn't harm the lizards. Besides, I didn't use the box when I teleported a set of heavily sedated sorlex. They were asleep when I sent them across, and they died anyway.

  "And I can't teleport things into a box, because the nexus won't form on the other side of a solid wall. I couldn't teleport them into the next room, for example, except through line of sight, say through the open door."

  Kristal's brows raised a millimeter. "I hadn't realized there was that limitation."

  "I hadn't either, till I tried it. The teleport didn't grow out of well worked out physical theory. The possibility occurred to me in an intuitive leap while I was studying some topological ideas the ancients apparently had played with but not done much with. So the research has been heavy on intuition and trial. And without adequate theory, a result like this can be a major block."

  "Hmm. So what's your next step?"

  "I don't know yet. I had Wellem up here for this morning's tests. He's much more at Wisdom and much less at Knowledge than I am, which can be useful when you hit a barrier like this. But he had no cognitions either; not yet anyway."

  Kristal looked again at the sorlex, then back at Kusu. "Well," he said, "this feels like a good time to look in on him. It's been some two years. And his work is invariably interesting. Even when there isn't language to describe it."

  8

  Newly turned fifteen, Lotta Alsnor was becoming a rather pretty young woman, her once-carroty hair now auburn red, her old freckles mostly gone, her complexion faintly tanned, with pink highlights. Small, fine-boned, she would have been slight, had it not been for ballet and gymnastics and the strong-slender muscles they'd given her.

  She stepped into the mail room after lunch. She seldom received mail, seldom went in to look. When there was something for her, she usually knew it. Almost invariably it was a letter from her mother.

  Today it wasn't. She looked at the return address and headed for the veranda to read it. At Lake Loreen, autumn was considerably less advanced than in the Blue Forest, and today was almost summery. Slim strong fingers tore the end of the envelope, withdrew and unfolded the paper inside. She read:

  Dear Little Sister,

  I hope that getting a letter from me doesn't give you heart failure. I wish you were here. I'd show you around and we could talk a lot. In fact, I'd send you a cube instead of this letter, but I put all my bonus in the bank, and I don't want to wait till we get paid. I've never sent you a letter before, unless you count the three-line notes at Winter Solstice that were all Mom could get me to write. But I never felt like I had anything to write about before. It's as if all my life I've been waiting for something to happen. Now it has, and you're the one I want to tell it to.

  It's funny how you've been my favorite person in the family, considering that since we were little kids, I only got to see you once or twice a year for a few days, and we never spent much time together even then. But I always thought of us as being more alike than most brothers and sisters. Even when you were still at home, when we were really little, I could tell you stuff and you didn't go and tell Mom or Dad. You were different. And when you'd been away and came back, even that first time, you were more different than ever. You were still you, but you'd changed, and I was impressed. It was as if you'd outgrown the family somehow, but you were easier than ever to be around.

  Now I've left home too, not for the reformatory like Mom and Dad worried I would, but for the mercenaries. Has Mom written and told you about that? It isn't the army, although the government is doing it. It's under something called the Office of Special Projects. I'm at a place in the Blue Forest, getting trained. And our cadre, the guys training us, are T'swa! Real genuine T'swa!

  I got put out of school right after you were home last, and got in trouble on the job I got, which I didn't like anyway, because this guy gave me a hard time and I knocked three of his teeth out. I had to pay to get them fixed and had to borrow part of it from Dad. But I only got charged damages, no amends, because the judge said the guy had provoked it. Then a guy came to my apartment one evening and talked to me about joining the mercenaries. He told me I'd been selected because my school personality profile said I'd make a good one. The pay isn't too bad—it's the same as the army—and I get my meals and a place to live, and he offered me a signing bonus of DR300. When I agreed, he offered Dad 300 for his signature of approval because I'm not eighteen yet.

  As far as I know, all the guys here, all the recruits that is, are pretty much like me. They always got in trouble at school and things like that. There's even a few guys who came here from reformatory.

  So here I am. I've been here two weeks now, and you're not the only person that changed a lot being away from home. This isn't a bad place. It's way ou
t in the country, in the forest. At first I thought I wasn't going to like it. You wouldn't believe all the stuff they make us do. Sometimes I can hardly crawl from the shower to my bunk at night. But most of the time I like it, and most of the time I like the T'swa. And sometimes I hate it all, for a few minutes, but when I'm hating it, I know I'll like it again pretty soon. Strange, huh?

  They make us do stretching exercises for twenty minutes in the morning, right after our run. Next week they're going to give us rifles; so far we haven't even seen any, but in a few weeks we'll learn how to shoot them. My intestines get excited thinking about it! So far all they've given us to carry are packsacks with sand in them. To build our strength. We hike with them and do pushups with them on our backs. When we get stronger, we'll do our chinups with them too. A few guys do already. You start doing them with sand after you can do twenty without any. I'm up to twelve.

  The T'swa say they're going to make White T'swa out of us. There was a guy named Varlik Lormagen that they called the White T'swi back in the Kettle War. But we'll be the first regiment of White T'swa.

  I hope you'll answer this letter, Little Sister who's not little anymore. Actually, you're the only person outside the regiment I really want much to be connected with. Not that I don't appreciate all that Mom and Dad did, and put up with, but the guys here feel like my real family to me, except I don't have any sister here. You're my sister, and you're too far away to suit me.

  I'll probably send you a cube when I've been paid. There's hardly anything around here to spend money on, and talking is faster than writing.

  With love,

  your brother

  Jerym

  9

  Company A formed up its ranks wearing raincoats. Ponchos weren't needed: The rain was light, a thin cold drizzle with sporadic, half-hearted showers, and they'd already had their morning run with sandbag packs.

  Jerym felt a beginning of wetness down the middle of his back, spreading. He suspected what was wrong, and who'd done it.

  "Attention! Riiight face! Forwaaard march!"

  They marched down the broad grassy gap between company areas and across their battalion drill field. There the platoons separated, 2nd Platoon going to the A Company gymnastics shed. The shed consisted of four walls, a stanchioned ceiling, and a wooden floor, with simple heating by matric converter panels in the side walls below the ceiling. Sets of parallel bars in rows alternated with rows of horizontal bars. The trainees hung their raincoats on hooks by files and positions, and stood at ease by them.

  Jerym took the opportunity to look at his as he hung it up. A blade had slit the back beside the center seam for about eight inches. He was satisfied he knew who'd done it, and decided to be open in his revenge.

  "First and third squads to parallel bars," called Sergeant Dao. "Second and fourth to horizontal bars."

  The youths dispersed to their equipment, and under the eyes of their cadre, did several minutes of stretching exercises. They'd been there for more than four weeks; the general routine was familiar. Then, after drying and chalking their hands, they began their training routines on one apparatus or the other, boots and all, swinging at first, then doing kips; muscle-ups; kidney swings; planches if they could; handstands with help as needed. . . . Changing apparatus halfway through. They spent nearly an hour at it. Near the end, a number of them, with cadre permission, returned to handstands, working on stability, a few even doing handstand pushups. Two did them on the parallel bars.

  They'd already done several sets of ordinary pushups beside the road, wearing the sandbags, during "breaks" on their morning run. Almost all of them exercised with zest, with an eagerness to move on to new and more difficult things, impatient with their own failures, and with T'swa restraints that actually were quite permissive.

  Then Dao whistled piercing blasts in a now familiar signal. The trainees hurried to their raincoats and put them on. Another set of blasts sent them outdoors, where the rain had stopped for the time being, although the eaves still dripped. They formed ranks, and at Dao's command marched to the next shed, where they stretched some more, then practiced tumbling, again for nearly an hour. And again there was no complaining or timidity, no malingering, no holding back. By now their bodies all were very flexible, though not as flexible as they would be. But for reasons of size, coordination, and strength, some made slower progress than others on the exercise routines. Still, they all progressed more rapidly than typical Iryalan youths would have, for they'd been born on the stage of life to be warriors.

  * * *

  Because of the weather, mail call was in the messhall at noon, just before dinner. There was a letter for Jerym; he glanced at the return address, then tucked it in his shirt and got in the chow line. After eating, they had half an hour to lay around. Many of the trainees catnapped.

  The rain seemed to be over. The clouds had thinned, and vague sunshine brightened the day a little. Jerym, in his field jacket, sat on one of the benches at the end of the barracks. With a finger he opened his letter, and read it grinning, shaking his head, chuckling.

  "Your ma?" Romlar asked. He was standing on the stoop looking down at Jerym, had been waiting for him to finish. Jerym looked up and shook his head. Though scarcely taller than Jerym, and still the heaviest youth in the platoon, Romlar was no longer "fat boy."

  "My sister," Jerym said.

  "Huh. You got a letter before."

  "Twice before. One from my ma, and one from my sister earlier."

  Romlar didn't leave, but said nothing more for a moment. Then: "I'll never get a letter. Everyone in my family is mad at me. Ma used to be all right till I got sent to tronk—reformatory. She gave up on me then. Said I'd never be worth nothin'. Then the guy come to see me there, and told me I could come here, and I did."

  "You like this better than reformatory?" Jerym asked. Romlar never looked happy.

  "Yeah. No comparison. Reformatory wasn't much worse than school, for me, but this—ain't bad." He went quiet again, but still didn't leave. Jerym got up to go inside.

  "What did your sister write about?"

  Jerym took both of them by surprise with his reply: He held the letter out to Romlar. "Here. Read it if you want."

  Romlar stared for a moment, then hesitantly took it and read, lips moving, commenting only once. "She talks about Varlik Lormagen, the White T'swi." He looked up at Jerym. "And his wife. How'd she get to know them?"

  "Lotta goes to a special school. Mrs. Lormagen teaches dancing there."

  "Special school. Your folks got money then."

  "No. She got to go there kind of like we came here. Some guy came around when she was a little kid—six years old. He said her tests showed she was eligible. It doesn't cost my folks anything."

  "Huh." Romlar stared at nothing. "If I wrote to your sister, do you think she'd write back to me?"

  The question seemed strange to Jerym, and he almost said no. What he did say was, "The only way to find out is write to her. You want her address?"

  "Not now. This evening maybe. I'll get a tablet and pen, and an envelope."

  The big trainee turned and went back into the barracks. Jerym followed, wondering if Romlar really would write to Lotta. He also wondered if she'd be mad that he gave Romlar her address, then decided she wouldn't. Whether she'd write back was something else.

  10

  It was an evening without any kind of training, an evening off. In the 2nd Platoon barracks, several trainees were involved in a contest to see who could do the most handstand pushups. Two others were practicing stability by walking on their hands.

  Jerym came in with a new raincoat under his arm, unfolded it and hung it in his "wardrobe"—his half of a fifty-inch rod by the head of his bunk. Then he walked to the middle of the long low building and spoke loudly. "Listen up, guys," he said. "We've got an asshole in the platoon. I just went and got a new raincoat because someone cut a slit in the back of my old one."

  The place went quiet, a quiet no one broke for a few sec
onds. Guys lowered themselves from handstands to watch expectantly.

  "Maybe the seam just split," Markooris said.

  That was Markooris for you: Don't think anything bad till you get shivved. "Nope," Jerym answered. "It was cut. Right next to the seam. I showed it to the supply sergeant, and he agreed."

  "Who do you think did it?" Esenrok asked, looking brightly interested.

  "Well, you're the leading troublemaker, but it was too sneaky for you." Jerym looked around. "Who's the sneakiest guy in the platoon?"

  Several of the trainees turned their eyes toward Mellis's bunk. He'd shown a penchant for practical jokes, till he'd put feces in Romlar's boots one morning just before reveille. He'd made the mistake of telling people in advance what he planned, and after it happened, someone told Romlar, who'd beaten him up for it. Badly. No one, not even Mellis, had told the T'swa who'd worked him over.

  "Hey, Mellis," Jerym called, "why do you suppose everyone's looking at you?"

  "I didn't cut your fucking raincoat!"

  "What you mean is, you've gotten smart enough not to talk about the shit you do."

  Mellis dropped from his bunk and confronted Jerym. "You can't prove I did it, because I didn't. So stop talking about me like that!"

  Mellis's indignation seemed too convincing to be feigned. "Okay," Jerym said, mildly now, "maybe you didn't. But considering the stuff you have done, you shouldn't be surprised if people jump to conclusions."

  Mellis glared. He was the youngest in the platoon, but nearly as tall as Jerym, though slimmer. "You're all mouth, Alsnor," he said. "You think you . . ."

  That was all he got out. Jerym punched him in the face and knocked him down. Mellis rolled to his feet, and Carrmak and Bressnik got between them. "Back off, both of you! Remember the rules!"