Logan and Jess edged into the pack of excited tourists and Virginia citizenry crowding the view areas.
“Duty,” a loudspeaker blared above the din. “That’s what you’ll see here today, citizens. Loyalty. Courage. The willingness to die for one’s country in order to preserve it. The Civil War was fought by seventeen—and eighteen-year-olds, men willing to die for their cause. They did not question their duty or flinch from the face of death. They sacrificed themselves willingly, gloriously. Now—watch them charge, citizens, in this heroic battle, shown to you as it happened 254 years ago. And remember, there were no runners at Fredericksburg!”
Jess looked at the terrain facing them. Artificially created fog cloaked the ground. Cannon added a bass rumble to the sharp snap of musketry. The ground rose up in gouts as shot and ball plowed it.
Silently Logan guided Jess toward the river. A deep drainage ditch led to the tents of Burnside’s camp, and they began to crawl along this, away from the view area.
The ditch angled around to the rear of the encampment. Logan knew they didn’t have to worry about any of the androids giving out an alarm. Each robot soldier was programmed to play its assigned part in the battle.
They clambered up the drainage bank and ducked under the canvas flap of a Union tent. Two perfectly formed androids were standing motionless inside, ready to step from the tent when their circuits commanded them. Their blank sixteen-year-old faces were frozen.
Logan struck them to the ground and began to strip off their clothing. “Put this on,” he said, tossing Jess a Federal uniform.
Logan buttoned the blue tunic, stuffing the Gun into it. He looped a canteen around his shoulder, picked up a long musket. Jess also took a musket. In the soiled uniform, with a Union cap pulled over her hair, she could pass as a soldier so long as they stayed well back from the view areas.
“Now stick close to me,” he said, “and do what I do.”
A bugle sounded the call to arms.
Logan and Jess joined the Grand Army of the Potomac. They climbed into one of the slab-sided boats, sharing the craft with a dozen other Bluecoats during its passage across the shallow river.
They scrambled up the mud bank into Fredericksburg and moved cautiously through the gutted town. Broken-backed buildings smoked in ruin. The crackle of musketry filled the air. Metal bees hummed. Hill cannon belched bronze thunder. As they walked, the churned mud of the street sucked at their boots.
More bugles. The rattle of drums. Burnside was paring his assault. On the far right, blue ranks were altering under the guns of Stonewall Jackson.
They faced Marye’s Heights, rising up in a steepening incline from a wide plain spattered with artificial snow. The Heights were manned by the crack Washington Artillery of New Orleans, pride of the South. Robert E. Lee was up there with the Grays, giving them his strength, and the entrenched Confederates had mounted some 250 field pieces to rake the slopes below.
To the left the holiday concourse was jammed with spectators: bright tunics, flags and the ocean roar of happy people. A darkness there. A black tunic! DS! Francis! Had he seen them, guessed at their destination? Was he, even now, raising his Gun to homer them? Logan turned back to the hill, pulled his cap lower.
The girl’s face was gray. She looked at Logan helplessly. He pointed off to the right. “We have to get across the battlefield, to the other side.”
“They’ll see us.”
“Not if we move up the slope with Burnside’s men. Once past the wall over Marye’s Heights we’ll be all right. There’s a maze tunnel I used to play in as a boy. They don’t use it much since they built New Fredericksburg and reconverted the area.”
“C’mon, lads!” yelled an android officer near Logan. “Let’s show the Rebs our steel!”
In a wash of fife and drum and bugle and bright regimental flags, the boys in blue marched out in columns-of-four, muskets forward, a tide of bayonets moving up.
“Keep your head lowered,” he told less. “And stay out of the depressions. That’s where the cannons are programmed to hit.”
They were a third of the way up, in ordered rank, and the hill guns were quiet. Getting the range. Letting the sheep march close enough to slaughter. “Burnside’s blunder” they called it for two centuries after. Burnside, the fool, the pompous clown with his mutton-chop whiskers, sending his troops to certain death in a vain bid for personal glory. Little wonder that Lincoln replaced him after Fredericksburg.
A pulsing silence.
The cannons emptied their iron throats. Inferno!
Jess pressed close to Logan, inching up the snowed slope as the withering storm of canister exploded around them. Androids screamed, dropped muskets, pitched forward. Robot horses pawed air, gushed crimson. Bugles ceased in midcry.
Marye’s Hill was a tumult of shrieking metal death.
“Don’t falter now, lads!” cried a hatless lieutenant behind them. “Forward—for Lincoln and the Union! Hurrah, hurrah!”
A cannon ball cut him in half.
Just ahead of them, concealed behind a stretch of uneven stone wall fronting Sunken Road, a contingent of sharpshooting Georgians and North Carolinians rose up to pour a hot hail of musket fire into the still-advancing Federals.
The lines were falling back.
As Logan reached the base of the wall at Sunken Road a musket shot dropped him to his knees. He was momentarily breathless, but alive; the canteen across his chest had absorbed the ball.
Artillery crashed through oak woods. Fleeced smoke from hill cannon lazed the sky, mingling with the curtain of ground fog.
Where was Jess? Logan scanned the slope for sign of her.
Near him, a gray-clad figure was shaking a fist and shouting in mock triumph, “Skeedaddle, you Bluebellies! Back to yer holes. EEEEeeee-yow!”
Several Confederates had fallen behind the wall, but other robots had filled in along the barrier. Logan was ignored as he stripped off his uniform, discarding it along with his musket.
The gallop of an advancing horse. A stern-faced man on a white stallion, saber in hand. Bearded, uniformed in splendor. “Fine, boys, fine,” boomed Robert E. Lee. “There’ll be extra rations for all when this day’s done.” His voice was considerably amplified in order to reach the crowd in the view areas. He galloped back down the line.
The attack has been completely broken now, and the Blues were in full rout.
Then, clearly, Logan saw Jess—far down the slope. The girl was struggling against a tide of moving androids. Caught up in the knot of retreating figures, she was swept back down the long hill toward the viewing stands.
Back toward Francis.
* * *
Chapter 3
He knows they are both in his grasp.
The crowds block him, frustrate him.
His anticipation is mounting.
He savors this, as the hunting cat savors the kill.
Close.
Very close.
LATE AFTERNOON…
FACES. Thousands of faces. But none of them Jessica’s.
Logan was jostled and pushed in the holiday man-sprawl along the concourse. Tourist laughter, shouts.
“Hey, citizen.”
Logan looked down at an eight-year-old. Redhead, with freckles and serious blue eyes. The boy was selling souvenirs. He held up a small brass cannon. “Fires a real ball, citizen. Put an eye out with it, if you’ve a mind to try. Genuine treasured memento of the Annual Civil War Gala, imported from Monte Carlo.”
“No…no, I don’t want one.”
The boy did not argue; he dipped away into the mob flow.
Logan paused at a doorway, letting the throng eddy past. He drew back. A black tunic, coming toward him. Francis!
Logan pressed into the doorway. It proved to be the entrance to a Re-Live parlor. He craned his neck to see over the bobbing heads of the crowd. The black figure was still advancing, appearing and disappearing in the press. Closer with each step.
A robot touched hi
s arm. “Citizen Wentworth 10,” said the robot, looking with steel sympathy at Logan’s blinking hand “We’ve been expecting you. This way, please.”
He had no choice. Francis was outside, back to the door, studying the crowd.
The robot slid out a life drawer from the metal wall.
“Just lie down here. This is our latest model. You may switch years as desired.”
Logan settled into the steel foam seat, grateful to be shielded from the open doorway. The robot dabbed his temples with saline solution, connected the rubber-cradled terminals to his neck and forehead.
“Listen, I don’t really need to be.” Logan was stalling for time, but the robot was programmed to deal smoothly with nervous citizens on Lastday.
“Any year as desired,” he repeated, flipping a switch. The life drawer slid silently into the wall. Darkness.
I can’t stay here. I have to find Jess. I—
He was sixteen, and the Nevada desert was a brown heat shimmer before his eyes. Logan sat in the sparse shade of a saguaro cactus, utterly motionless except for his eyes. One hundred miles of desert to cover without food, water or weapons to graduate from DS school. Now, in the second day, he was dehydrated and feeling the enervating fatigue of the trek. At dawn he had squeezed the pulp of a barrel cactus through the cloth of his shirt and obtained half a pint of sour-tasting fluid. It had almost gagged him.
Logan was watching the small cleft in the yellow shale which swelled from the desert hardpan at his feet. A rattler oiled into view, tongue licking the baked air.
Logan waited, and when the snake was free of its lair, he killed it with a boot heel. Using his belt clasp, he scored the ridged skin along the back of the jaw and across the top of the broad flat head. He worked the skin loose with his teeth and pulled. It peeled smoothly back from the long body. Logan ate the pink flesh, carefully chewing the smaller bones before swallowing. The rattler joined a field mouse, three butterflies and several grasshoppers in his stomach.
He rose into the heat of the desert and went on. In theory there was a runner ahead of him who would pause to sleep. Who would falter and fall. Who would despair at the size of the desert. Because Logan did none of these he would overhaul the runner and kill him.
His tissues were pleading for water. The scant moisture provided by the snake had reawakened his water need, and the pebble in his mouth didn’t help, much. He remembered the class he had taken dealing with life in the desert. In the training room none of it seemed particularly difficult. The desert teemed with life, with ground owls and bats, jackrabbits and bobcats. There were gophers and mice and squirrels, foxes, badgers—and a thousand other forms crawling and slithering and inching the desert floor. But they were damned hard to trap. There was water here too, but it took luck and knowledge and instinct to find it.
His feet puffed dust in a trail that would hang in the motionless air until dusk. Then the winds would come, freezing and scouring the hardy mesquite, whipping tumbleweeds like bramble wheels on a thousand-mile journey through the and wastes. At night the deaths would begin. Cat would stalk fox who stalked mouse who stalked insect—down through the levels of kill-to-live.
Logan stumbled and caught himself. He was tiring fast. No. A hunter does not tire. It is the quarry who tires, gives up, dies. The need for survival in a hunter must be stronger than the need of a runner, and the need of a runner is a fever in the blood.
He had to go on. He could not rest. He had to live so that runners would die.
and…
He was seven, and his flower had changed color and it was time to leave the nursery and go out into the world and Logan was afraid. He wanted to take Albert 6, his favorite talk puppet, with him—but they wouldn’t allow it.
“Why, why, why?” he sobbed.
“Not permitted,” said his Autogoverness, and reached for Albert.
The puppet ran after Logan, tiny feet pattering across the nursery floor. “Loge, Loge! I’ll never forget you, Loge. Never forget you.”
They caught Albert and put him away in a box. And Logan screamed and screamed and screamed.
and…
He was nine, and the red flower smashed against the side of his face. He was ringed by four men. The leader scowled at him. “Lick my boot,” he said.
Logan shook his head. The man slapped him again.
“Go ahead,” said the man. “Do it”
He tried to back away, was shoved from behind and almost fell.
He’d been on his way to Yellowstone to meet Iron Jack who rode real horses, when they’d stopped him for no reason on the maze platform.
“Lick my boot,” said the leader. “Then we’ll let you go”
Logan looked at the four men. He could see they ached to hurt somebody.
He bent and licked the dust from the toe of the leader’s boot
The men registered disappointment. “Let’s go,” said the leader. “We’ll find somebody with guts.” Then they were gone, into the maze.
I’m not going to cry, Logan told himself as his eyes blinked rapidly and the hot tears came…
and…
He was one.
He was warm.
He was clean.
He was full.
and…
He was thirteen, and riding the devilstick in Venice above the Piazza San Marco and the wind rushed at him and he opened his mouth to gulp the wild wine wind, and he felt the great tidal immensity of the Earth below and he was free. His palmflower was the blue of this Italian sky and it would never change and he would never grow old and it would always be clear Venice blue, Mediterranean blue and always and forever blue.
and…
I must wake. Must find Jess. Must get up.
Logan stirred in his dark metal womb. The Re-Live wall hummed.
and…
He was three, and the hypnotape was telling him that A+B=C—and of sines and cosines…
and…
He was fifteen, and the instructor bowed to him.
Logan wore the foam—padded mittens which were necessary in an Omnite class and the short white traditional shirt. He tried to do as he’d been taught, tried to clear his mind of all images except this squat, hard man before him.
“Again,” said the man.
Logan fell into the proper stance and began to circle. His hands were moist and clammy, and he fought back a desire to retreat. He must never retreat. If he wished to become a top DS operative he had to learn everything this man could teach him.
The man feinted a blow. Logan countered with a savage kick. The instructor took the impact in the belly like a stone image, without flinching, caught Logan’s leg, dumped him and struck his throat, temple and solar plexus with a single continuous blow. Logan slammed the mat and was sick on the mat and the instructor said, “There is no single blow in Omnite. Only combinations. Learn them.”
Each culture had evolved a method of personal combat. From Japan: jujitsu. From China: kempo and karate. From France: savate. From Greece: boxing and wrestling. The finest points of each art were combined in Omnite.
They circled one another. Logan struck, but was once more dumped hard to the mat. He picked himself up, wiping a thread of blood from his nose. He was stiff with pain.
“Again,” said the instructor, smiling thinly. And again and again and again.
and…
He was six, and it was a play period, and Rob was scampering across the asphalt ahead of him. “I’m a Sandman,” cried Logan. “Here I come after ya. I see ya, Rob! You’re hiding, but I see ya. I’m gonna shoot ya now!”
Logan raised the wooden Gun. Rob was behind one of the teeter-swings, pretending to be a runner. “Bam!” yelled Logan. ‘ “Homer! AAAAAzzpow!”
Rob didn’t fall. “Missed me!” he shouted.
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not. A homer never misses anybody. Ya can’t get away from a homer.”
…ahomer.
homer….
homer
!
Up! Run! Escape!
The life drawer continued to vibrate. Logan tensed in its metal embrace.
and…
He was nineteen, and the haunting voice sang in two-tone scale. “Oh, Black, Black, BLACK!”
He was on leave in New Alaska with a glassdancer, whose body was coated in shining scales. Outside, the forcegrown palm trees flagged the sky.
And they listened to the Cantata for Bongo in A Minor with all eighty-eight tones clear and deep from the clava drum that only Deutcher 4 could play. And there was “Single Sung Tingle Tongue Pidge” and “Milkbelly” and “Angerman,” the saga of DS with its 103 choruses:
Angerman was filled with fury,
He the judge and he the jury,
Gunning runner, Gunning, Gunning,
With the quarry from him running.
Homer in the Gun!
Angerman pursuing faster,
Angerman, the angry master,
Gunning runner, Gunning, Gunning,
With the coward from him running,
Fleeing from the Gun.
Logan felt proud to be here among his friends, in his handsome black tunic, with the glossy serpent woman caressing him in secret ways to set his blood coursing.
and…
He was fourteen, and his hand was suddenly blue. Now he had to take on the duties of adulthood to earn his way. Yesterday all had been free for the asking be cause he’d been a boy, but now he was a man. But that was all right, because now he could be what he had always wanted to be.
Always…
and…
He was twenty and on the hunt. The girl had been clever, crossing the river to shake him, but now she was trapped, her back to a high board fence.
Logan walked toward her.
She clawed at the boards, breaking her nails on the rough wood, then fell, huddling at the base of the fence. He raised the Gun, fired, and the homer sang in.
Logan: A Trilogy Page 10