by Ed Greenwood
“Where, Gomez?”
Silence for a moment. 15-Thorne could almost hear the thoughts completing in Gomez’s head. None of the grunts had the same level of GPS info that he did, but they had enough. If the lieutenant wasn’t seeing them…
“Uh, about sixty meters ahead. They’re in the brush, about ten meters east of our position. I can’t see what they’re doing, but if someone were to set up a textbook ambush on this road, these folks would have to scoot over.”
“Gomez, take Werner and loop east. See how close you can get and give me a better idea who it is. They may just be throwing a tea party.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be sure to ask.”
“Be polite now.”
“Like the Corps taught me, sir. Out.” Two blips went into standby on 15-Thorne’s display and he forced himself to keep breathing regularly. Command decisions in combat may result in fatalities, the training had told him. He recalled those words whenever he sent troops out into potentially dangerous situations. Thin comfort, every time.
The subvocal clicked on. Move up behind point, sir?
15-Thorne almost chuckled. 4T, always in a hurry.
His chin switch moved. Hold position until point calls in.
Affirmative. He imagined the look on her face and held in a laugh. His youngest sister used to look like that when—
Damn it, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head. Not my memories. Never were mine. This is all the family I have. All I’ll ever have.
The panic light went off in his eyes, glaring terminal red through his eyelids. GPS info flowered into multiple layers of light, and the vocal channel blasted into life a heartbeat before the sound of older chemical weapons chattered from the position ahead. “Sir, it’s a fucking bullet party here. We’re pinned by two squads with retrofitted mini-guns, and it looks like they’ve got some mortars too. We need immediate backup.”
“Got it, Gomez. Do what you can.” He chinned the panic signal and hit the all-talk circuit. “Light ’em up, troops. 4T, take Li and Johnson and head around west. Everybody else, move forward. Gomez, give me some more info.”
No reply. On his readout, the blip for Gomez began to blink yellow.
Shit. Now Werner’s blip was blinking too.
“Move up. 11-Gomez!”
“Sir?”
“Pull out your sweeper. You and I are going in first.”
“Yes, sir.” The whine of a microfusion engine seeped onto the circuit and to Thorne’s surprise, the overall display wavered slightly before the hard circuits kicked in.
“11-Gomez, have you modified your weapon?”
The hesitation in the private’s voice said it all. “Wasn’t getting the proper action, sir. Thought I could get it fixed myself; you know how the quartermaster is with these guns.”
“I do, Private. If the EM readings are right, I might be grateful.” They took the lead position and crept forward carefully, the sounds of bullets flying growing to a roar just ahead. Over a small rise in the path, Thorne could see the light of an EM round in the late afternoon sky. Except for the occasional sniper, the Vestibule militia didn’t have EM weapons yet, but lead was lead—good for killing, and had been for centuries at any speed.
“Ready, Private?”
Bass rumble from the pulse rifle as a cloud of metal shards slipped into the chamber. “Ready, sir.”
Lieutenant 15-Thorne raised his EM rifle to his shoulder, slipped the catch to full automatic, and offered a brief prayer to a god whose name he couldn’t remember. “Fire.”
The pulse rifle made a coughing sound to Thorne’s right, and the closest militiaman to their position disappeared in a cloud of red mist that billowed over the ambushers’ positions like a poison fog. Thorne had heard about the pulse rifle’s effect on people, but had never seen it up close. Jesus Christ, he thought.
A young woman, dressed in militia colors and wearing a Pan-Humana flak jacket, turned toward the cloud and saw them crouched behind the rise. Her weapon was almost in position when Thorne shot her, a poisoned stream flowing from his weapon’s muzzle. Behind her, the mortars were turning their way, but too slowly. Like watering a lawn, he sprayed their position with relativistic fire as the pulse rifle coughed again and again. From the west, a lancing of fire erupted as 4T and her fellows opened up. Behind them, the rest of Blue Squad spread out along the perimeter, looking for stragglers and reinforcements.
Out of habit, the digital readout was counting off in the upper corner of Thorne’s eye from the time he and 11-Gomez first opened fire. As the last shuddering from the militiamen ceased and the EM guns wound down, Thorne looked to see the count reach 00:15. A textbook attack, if a little slow.
Tempus fugit, Thorne thought as his squad began tending their wounded and checking for enemy survivors. The wounded were limited to 13-Gomez and 7-Werner, but both were seriously hurt. Werner had been shot twice, Gomez three times.
“Give me the news, Private,” Thorne said, examining Werner’s shattered leg. Blood oozed slowly from the pressure splint, but he could see clotting around the edge of the bandage. He figured Werner would live, at least for a while.
“Werner’s got a busted leg and probably a cracked rib, but he’s stable for now. Gomez isn’t going to make it, though. He took two to the chest and it sounds like one nicked his lung. Maybe twenty minutes, and he’ll drown.” 5-Li finished wrapping a cut on Werner’s forearm and stood up, not meeting Thorne’s eyes. “He’s not hurting. That’s all I got, sir.”
“It’ll have to do, Private. Thanks.” Thorne chinned the all-talk line and gave the order to fall in and keep moving. Bivouac was at least an hour ahead, and only idiots or loonies wanted to be alone on an enemy world at night. The column formed up, Werner propping himself up on a salvaged Vestibule rifle as he hobbled along behind 4T. No one watched as Thorne crouched beside 13-Gomez, his hands clenching as he spoke.
“Private, you’re prepped for evac, but we both know that the wagon won’t be along for a couple of hours. You’ve got a choice here. I’ll help you if you want it.” He held up a silver capsule, breakaway leaves along the side marking it as a field syringe. “Know what this is?”
13-Gomez nodded, his eyes calm. “Some kind of bio-refrigerant, right?”
“That’s it. Five minutes after injected, it spreads through your brain and freezes your neurons tight. Preserves the brain better for recovery. It’ll stop a thought in mid-sentence, they tell me. It’s got to go in before brain death, though, or it’s pointless. I’d have used it on Ole if I’d had the chance; it’s a shame to have to go all the way back to baseline copy.”
“Yeah.” 13-Gomez closed his eyes. “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you borrow 11-Gomez’s pulse rifle for a moment, put the muzzle under my chin, and erase me?”
15-Thorne sat back on his heels. His face turned red.
“Come on, sir. You’re a 15th generation copy. How many years are you carting around in your head? How many combat drops, how many weeks of drills? And most of them aren’t yours.” 13-Gomez gasped, clenched his teeth, and relaxed. “I counted mine up once. I figure I’ve got roughly 112 years of military life in here,” he tapped the side of his head, “only three of which are mine.”
15-Thorne nodded. “Mine is 141, five and a half this generation.”
“You see? You’re a five-year-old body dragging around nearly a century and a half of someone else’s thoughts. Your memories, your instincts—none of that is yours. The person they belonged to died decades ago. Same as me, same as all of us.” He coughed, pink froth spraying from his lips. “I don’t want to be that anymore, sir.”
“Gomez, you know they’ll just keep cloning you. There’ll be a fresh one force-grown and out of the tanks in a couple of weeks, if there isn’t one in waiting now.”
“Yeah. Hell, you’ve already got a spare, don’t you? But all the ones after me will start from baseline unless 11-Gomez there survives
long enough to make a new one, and I doubt he will. Pulsers tend to go out as vapor.” He spat a bright red globule onto the ground. “I remember.”
“What good will it do to make them start from zero?”
“I don’t know, sir. Maybe they’ll be all right with it for a while; maybe it’ll never bother them. Hell, it wasn’t ’til about six months ago it started to bug me.”
Thorne sighed, his body suddenly heavy in the dying afternoon light. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard this request. It was illegal to do, illegal to consider—hell, it was illegal just to ask. Lots of laws broken in one sentence, and not one of them meant a damn. Maybe the originals never thought about it, the purgatory they were condemning themselves to over and over again. Or maybe they did, and thought it was just.
“Sir?”
“Private, you know that Pan-Humana military law forbids such a request. Under the circumstances, however, a report need not be made; you’re obviously in extreme circumstances.”
13-Gomez sighed. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
15-Thorne continued as if Gomez hadn’t spoken. “Per regulations, I have tagged you for casualty retrieval, which makes you exempt from further combatant status. Our status on this mission calls your chances for peaceful retrieval into question, however.” The lieutenant spoke clearly and formally, like a witness testifying before the court. “Private Alvario 13-Gomez, are you carrying a sidearm?”
The private frowned. Surely, the lieutenant knew that he wasn’t—sidearms weren’t considered standard issue for ground infantry. “No, sir.”
“Ah. Then in light of our present status, I am assigning you the use of mine until evacuation.” In one smooth motion, Lieutenant 15-Thorne pulled the .50 Peacemaker Rex handgun from its hip holster and handed it, grip first, to 13-Gomez. “I will expect the return of this weapon at the earliest opportunity, Private.”
Through the gathering of foam on his lips, 13-Gomez smiled.
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent, Private.” Thorne saluted, his eyes unreadable under the sudden shade. “Until the next drop, Private.”
“Next drop, sir.”
15-Thorne stood there, holding the salute for just a second longer than protocol demanded, saying goodbye. He turned on his heel and marched toward bivouac double-time to catch his squad. When the shot came, he pretended not to hear it and kept marching.
To Titan on the Daily
By George Walker
“ALCHEMY ENGINEERING”, said the sign above the door, and beneath it in neat gold script, “We do biologicals, too.” A state nanotechnology license floated holographically through the mirror-surfaced doorway.
The door winked open as Marszalek approached. There was a whisper of chimes and the Indian proprietor jerked awake, blinking in the sunlight streaming in through the portal. An interface fiber hung behind his left ear like a misplaced earring. Behind her, the door shrank. Incense tickled her nose.
“I’m looking for someone,” Marszalek said. “I was told he came here, perhaps a month ago.”
She laid a card on the ornately carved desk and when the proprietor touched it with his dark fingers, its image writhed to life and showed Howard, the missing man. For perhaps the fiftieth time since she’d seen it, Howard’s plump face delivered birthday greetings to his younger sister, Ginny.
The proprietor smiled in recognition. “Brain man,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“Man who won the Daily,” he said. “You know, the Daily Wish in the North California lottery. The man wished for brains.”
“He wanted to be smarter? Why didn’t he dope up on neuro-enhancers or get a computer implant?”
“I suggested.” The owner stared at the sealed portal, remembering. “The drugs cease to be effective after repeated use–even he knew that. And a computer...he said he’d thought about that. He didn’t want just an adviser in his skull. ‘I want to always know without asking,’ he said.”
“Know what?”
“What is happening. Why. How. He wanted everything he did to be smarter, even something like combing his hair.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I could make him the smartest man in the world.”
“What?!”
“It is possible, but not without risks. Not without side effects. Some people, they come in here, they think I am a magician. You saw my sign?”
Marszalek nodded.
“They want to turn water into gold. Or read minds, levitate, foretell the future. No comprehension of basic physics, the laws of thermodynamics. Nanotech design is a science, not a black art.”
“But how could you make him smarter?”
“The fundamentals are established. We know how neuro-enhancers work, how to generate differentiated nerve tissue and grow interconnections. We have the results of the super-chimp experiments. The problem is not increasing mental capacity, but keeping the original identity.”
“And you promised him that.”
He looked defensive. “My contract with a client is not a public record, Ms....?”
“Marszalek. And you are Mr. Chitare?”
He nodded, but didn’t offer his hand.
“It isn’t a public record, Mr. Chitare, but when murder is involved, the court can subpoena your database.”
Mr. Chitare’s jaw dropped.
Marszalek produced one of her cards. “I’m a private investigator. My client is Ginny Setelman, Howard’s younger sister. We haven’t been able to locate Howard.”
Mr. Chitare swallowed. “Surely you do not think I killed this man.”
“If I could locate him, it would eliminate that possibility, wouldn’t it? Was it a standard contract, Mr. Chitare?”
“A standard contract does not exist in my business.” He avoided her eyes. “And in the case of a Wish, the North California government overlooks many regulations to satisfy the winner’s request.”
“Was Howard satisfied? Did you verify the results?”
“Ms. Marszalek, I am not a neurologist. For a project this complex, this expensive, I subcontract much work to the Minsky machine in Berkeley.”
“But you performed the biochip injection.”
Chitare nodded uncomfortably. “Mr. Setelman knew the risks. I believe the experiment went well. He came back twice for tests; he was entitled to more evaluation, but broke contact with Berkeley. When he left, he was still changing.”
“Do you know where he went?”
The shopkeeper connected a fiber to the one behind his ear and letters formed on a sheet of paper on his desk. He handed it to her without a word. On the sheet were two physical and two electronic addresses.
“Mr. Chitare, is he really the smartest man in the world?”
“I believe so.” He paused. “Perhaps he is no longer Howard.”
Tremors had caused a safety shutdown of the Underground, and by the time she drove into Ukiah, it was past 10 P.M. She’d promised Ginny she would stop by on her way home, though, so she parked her electric in front of the house. The Setelman home was a restored turn-of-the-century split-level, complete with three-car garage and antique satellite dish. There were no vehicles in the garage anymore. Old Mr. Setelman was an invalid, and it took the combined incomes of the three children to retain the family home. Without Howard, they’d probably have to move to a condo in the desert.
Sheila, the eldest, answered the door.
“Oh, it’s you.” She called up the stairs, “Ginny! The leech is back.”
Sheila stalked off, and Ginny was down in a moment.
“Don’t mind her,” whispered Ginny. “Come and sit down.”
Marszalek followed her into the living room and sat beside her on the couch. She laid her holoslate on the coffee table. “I got a lead from the Lottery Commission in Sacramento and tracked Howard as far as Santa Rosa. He went in here.” Marszalek recalled a holo of Mr. Chitare’s shop. “Apparently, he spent his prize trying to get himself turned into a genius.�
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“Ohhh...”
“Yes?” prompted Marszalek.
“Before he disappeared, he seemed smarter.”
“In what way?”
“I guess it was his smile.” Ginny bit her lip. “Sheila always used to make fun of him. Howard wasn’t very smart, which is why he’s a janitor. And lots of times, Sheila would say something to him that was over his head to make fun of him. He’d just smile, not really understanding. But those last couple days, it wasn’t a blank, polite smile. It was like he knew, really knew, more than she did. But he didn’t say anything.”
“Just like he never told you he won the Wish.”
Ginny nodded. Something clopped down the stairs: a little servant machine fetching something for old Mr. Setelman.
Marszalek unfolded the paper that the shopkeeper had given her. “Do you recognize these addresses?”
Ginny shook her head.
“The electronic ones are dead with no forwarding. I tried this street address in Santa Rosa, but it’s just a hotel and no one remembered Howard. This last one is a houseboat on Shasta Lake. Have you or Howard ever been there?”
Her eyes widened. “We could never afford that.”
“I’ll drive up tomorrow and ask around. Oh, and I’ll need more money for expenses.” She called up the figures on her holoslate.
Ginny winced. “I’ll make the credit transfer. Sheila doesn’t like me doing this. She thinks I’m stupid, just like Howard.”
“You can terminate any time you wish.”
Ginny sighed. “I have to know, Ms. Marszalek.”
Outside the docking area, a hydrogen-electric turbine screamed to life and the water taxi rose onto its hover skirts. Marszalek leaned forward as the boat sped toward the middle of Shasta Lake. Another expense for Ginny.
The houseboat Howard used had been re-rented two days ago to a family from Oregon. But a clerk remembered that on at least one of the days that Howard had the boat, it had been moored above Captain Nemo’s, an underwater bar and restaurant in the middle of the lake.
The robot taxi altered course to avoid a pleasure sub in its path. The sub sank to port, its bright orange video stalk vanishing beneath the air-smoothed wake of the taxi. Haze hid the mountains in the distance. Ahead she saw a knot of boats on the silver surface. There was no sign she could make out, but it must have been the entrance to Captain Nemo’s because the taxi was heading straight for it.