by Tim Sullivan
"I didn't realize that."
"I have a hard time understanding antisocial behavior. I was that way even before I applied for P.A."
"You were a P.A.?"
"Yeah."
Frankie smiled. "You don't seem the type, Alderdice."
"I suppose there's a good reason for that." Alderdice smiled a little, too. "I'm just not cut out to snoop and follow people around, even if they are in violation of Conglom law."
"Funny how people get into trouble," Frankie said. "I never believed that I'd done anything wrong, but they drafted me anyway."
"What happened?"
"I joined a group of freeps, and, even though I quit when the World Court ruled it illegal, I lost my job."
"You were a freep?" Alderdice had never paid much attention to the 'gram stories about the free-enterprise revivalists who had tried to start their own small businesses. He had assumed that they were all anticap, antisocial types, but Frankie Lee Wisbar certainly didn't fit the pattern.
"You're looking at a former neo-capitalist," Frankie said.
"Well, those kind of ideas are dangerous to the multinational way of life," Alderdice said, aware of the fact that he was spouting conventional wisdom, but unable to help himself. "The Conglom way is real capitalism. The freeps were revealed as anticap extremists."
"So they say," Frankie shrugged again. "So they say."
Alderdice turned toward his bunk. "Well, I guess it's time to get some rest."
"I guess so." Frankie wanted to give him some comfort, but she remembered that he wasn't interested in women. "Good night, Alderdice."
"Good night." He rolled over in his bunk, leaving Frankie alone with her secret knowledge.
Tomorrow they would go to war.
THIRTEEN
"GET ABOARD," SERGEANT Daiv ordered as the floating personnel carriers lined up outside the compound. Torquemada stood next to him, marking down the names and serial numbers of the reluctant soldiers on his ever present clipboard. It was a curiously, uncharacteristically, still morning, the tiny sun rising over the red desert as a flawless, golden disc.
Johnsmith climbed into the third carrier, along with Alderdice and Frankie Lee Wisbar. He sat near a transparent slash in the carrier's wall, so that he could look out as they crossed the desert. The first thing he saw was Felicia, who stood in the connecting tube between the barracks and the mess hall, watching for him.
He waved, but she didn't see him. There were too many people, and there wasn't enough time for her to pick him out before the carrier started to move forward.
"Here we go," Alderdice said from the seat next to him. He sounded as though he were dead already, Johnsmith thought. Well, maybe he was. Maybe they all were.
Torquemada was standing at the front of the carrier, facing the seated passengers.
"We're going to travel several hundred kilometers," he said, "almost due west. By the time we arrive at our destination, the sun will be high overhead—Martian noon."
So they were going to attack in broad daylight, thought Johnsmith. That should greatly increase his chances of being gunned down by a particle beam cannon.
"We're going to box the enemy in and make him either surrender or fight it out. Since our weapons and tactics are considerably more sophisticated than his, we expect him to surrender."
Johnsmith was quite a bit more than a little dubious, but he kept his opinions to himself. He didn't want to alienate Angel Torquemada—just on the off chance that he survived this insane adventure, he didn't want to be punished for contributing to a decline in morale.
"Where exactly is the enemy?" a guy asked from the back of the carrier.
"He is hiding in a network of lava tubes under the rupes at the base of Olympus Mons," Torquemada said with a self-satisfied smirk. "Geological surveys have shown only one place with a complex enough tube structure to house his subversive operation. It's less than two kilometers wide and there are a limited number of openings on the mountain side. If we cover them all, we can flush them out."
God, it was worse than Johnsmith had imagined. They were going to march blindly into a bunch of tunnels against armed insurgents, and there could only be one result. They were going to die like rats in a trap.
"We're going to provide a great service for the nations of the Earth," Torquemada went on. "Your loved ones back home will be proud of you if you fight bravely."
Oh, joy, Johnsmith thought. Oh, rapture.
"Are there any questions?" Torquemada said. Of course, his manner made it clear that he didn't expect that there would be any questions. It was just a matter of form.
"I have one," Alderdice said.
"Lumumba," acknowledged Angel Torquemada.
"Why are the Arkies such a threat to the Earth? I mean, we've used their onees over and over again, and we're okay, aren't we?"
"Are you?" Angel Torquemada said, pursuing the Socratic method of answering a question with another question. "Can any of you say that you are the same person you were before you touched an onee? Any one of you?"
Nobody spoke.
"It's one thing to have people on Mars or other system colonies using onees, but think of these dangerous electronic opiates flooding our dear home planet."
It occurred to Johnsmith that Torquemada was evading, rather than answering, Alderdice's question. He could think of several holes in this line of logic. For example, he happened to know that onees already flooded a good part of the Earth, and they were manufactured by the Conglom in the first place, contrary to the wording and the spirit of its own Interplanetary Charter. No, these particular onees were the problem.
"Could you be a little more specific?" Alderdice said, as if he could read Johnsmith's mind. "It seems that the imprinting of a certain set of archecoded images is the problem, not onees in general."
Torquemada's face darkened. "They're escaped prisoners, and they're subversives. That's all you need to know, Mr. Lumumba. Period."
Alderdice paled, realizing that he had gone too far. Now, if he lived through the imminent slaughter, his ass was grass when they got back to Elysium.
There was little dialogue between Torquemada and his troops after that. The desert sped by, and the shapes of distant mountains seemed to mutate as the perspective changed. Frost lay over the desert in the morning, and they either left the frozen water vapor behind the temperature went up enough to sublimate it; it vanished without turning to water.
After an hour or more of silence, Johnsmith turned to Alderdice and cleared his throat. "I think I'm in love with Felicia," he said.
"Good." Alderdice nodded. "I hope you make it back to be with her, even if you have to stay on Mars the rest of your lives."
"She doesn't have to stay."
"No, but she'll never recant if you tell her you love her."
"Think so?"
"Yes."
Johnsmith had never known love that strong before. He had begun to feel more strongly about Felicia since they had been sleeping together. Her jealousy over Frankie Lee Wisbar, while misguided, had touched him. But they had made love last night, in spite of the complaints of those they had kept awake. After all, it might be their last time together . . .her last time with him, and his last time with anybody, like as not.
As the shadows shortened on the Marscape, Johnsmith began to notice a gradual sloping several kilometers ahead, creeping up the rilles on both sides of the carrier. It was only after some time that he realized this might be the first sight of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system.
"Look at the size of that thing," he said to no one in particular.
Alderdice, perhaps believing Johnsmith's comment to be sexual in nature, was roused from dozing.
"I think that must be our destination ahead," Johnsmith explained.
Since he was not sitting near the transparency, Alderdice couldn't see what Johnsmith was talking about. He sighed. "I should have stayed awake the entire time," he said. "It seems to me as if we just left Elysium. N
ow my life is hours closer to the end, chances are."
"Don't be so negative," Frankie Lee Wisbar said, leaning across the aisle. "You'll come out of this all right, Alderdice. Take my word for it."
Johnsmith noticed that Alderdice wore a dubious expression, but neither of them argued with Frankie. Alderdice was fatalistic enough to be certain that nothing he said or did at this point could matter, there was no question about that. Johnsmith wasn't sure if his friend had a healthy attitude, but it seemed a bit late to try to change Alderdice's habits.
The carrier slowed, its high-pitched whine turning into a groan. It banked, and Johnsmith got a look at the other two carriers. One of them was turning northwest, and the other was still heading due west. The one they were riding in went southwest. They were fanning out, positioning their passengers to act as shock troops, about to pour into the lava tube mouths and through the Arkie den. Now the mountain was clearly visible. Its immensity was staggering—its summit was so high that the caldera seemed as far away as Earth, and its width could not be taken in with the human eye.
The carrier groaned to a halt. They were instructed to get into their pressure suits, which was rather awkward in the crowded, enclosed space. As soon as they were suited up, the carrier's back end popped open, forming a ramp.
"Get the lead out," Sergeant Daiv shouted.
The prisoners, soldiers now, got to their feet. Nobody spoke as they began to disembark. One woman ducked her head to avoid banging it against the low top of the gangway door, as Sergeant Daiv barked at those behind her to do the same.
And yet, when it was his turn, Alderdice managed to bump his head. His helmet absorbed the shock, and Alderdice kept moving. Johnsmith followed him, running down the ramp into the Martian daylight.
Torquemada was inside Johnsmith's helmet, shouting: "Go! Go! Go!"
Johnsmith didn't really know where he was going, but he kept running. He quickly caught up to Alderdice, who seemed to stumble along like a drunk. Frankie Lee Wisbar was up ahead, and Johnsmith thought it might be smart to stay close to her. She was a veteran of this kind of thing, after all.
Crouching, Johnsmith waited for the enemy to fire. Nothing happened, though. Other than the orders coming from Torquemada, the only sound he heard was his own heavy breathing.
The mountain loomed ahead, so vast as to be almost incredible. It seemed to stretch all the way to heaven, to rise forever from the surface of Mars. The prisoners scurried like ants in its foothills, advancing towards a snaking lava tube whose mouth seemed to open wide to swallow them.
"Inside! Get inside!" Torquemada bellowed.
Johnsmith followed Frankie, hopping over a rock and into the darkness of the lava tube's enclosure.
A light flicked on in the blackness. And then a second light. Photosensitive cells on their helmets were activated by the sublight radiation. Within seconds, the smooth tunnel walls were illuminated by dozens of circles of bobbing light.
A red beam swept across the narrow lava tube interior. Everything turned crimson, and Johnsmith flung himself to the tunnel floor. The enemy was firing on them.
"Down!" somebody shouted. "Everybody get down!"
But it was too late for one guy. Johnsmith couldn't tell who he was, but the beam seared his midsection, lancing out through his pressure suit's pristine white back amid a torrent of illuminated red smoke. His scream was deafening.
"Sandke!" somebody cried.
But Sandke didn't answer. He emitted a liquid gurgling, and then nothing more. He was dead.
"Let's get those sons of a bitches!" shrieked an unidentifiable, androgynous voice, distorted with rage.
"Yeah!" Somebody up ahead rose and fired a shot in the direction of the red beam. Somebody else rose and squeezed off a shot, too. Then everybody was up.
But not for long. More screams sounded as two prisoners fell. Johnsmith hit the dirt again, and three bodies fell on top of him. He heard the moans of the wounded through his helmet communicator, but he was powerless to move under the weight of the very people who needed his help.
More beam fire probed through the tunnel. He felt the movements of the injured people on top of him, muffled by their pressure suits, but nonetheless heart-breaking for that.
"Retreat!" Sergeant Daiv bellowed. The prisoners didn't need to be told twice. Johnsmith could see thick, white-clad legs moving back the way they had come just a few seconds before.
He struggled to get up, but to no avail. One of the bodies covering him cried and twitched for a few seconds, and then was still. Johnsmith knew that she was dead. Was it Frankie Lee Wisbar? Or Prudy? Or somebody else that he had spoken to in the months he had been at Elysium? Or was it one of the endless stream of prisoners who had ignored him every day? It didn't seem to matter much anymore. Whoever it was, she was gone now.
Somewhere in the midst of this morbid reverie, Johnsmith realized that the shadows deeper in the lava tube were moving. Somebody was coming.
He drew his .45, and waited.
Now they were coming into sight, two people in ragged pressure suits, a man and a woman painted in harlequin colors. One of them—a man, judging from his size and the way he walked—held an ancient AK47, and the other, a smaller figure, had a laser pistol in her gloved hand. The man's helmet had two horns protruding from the sides.
Johnsmith waited. They came closer, two cautious but ludicrous figures who stopped and prodded the bodies of their enemies.
When they were twenty feet away, he ran his thumb over the .45's safety, just to make sure it was off. He hadn't fired a shot yet, and the last thing he wanted was to be caught struggling with the safety in the moment before his death.
He wasn't going to blow this one. If he was going to die here, he was at least going to go down fighting.
The two Arkies came closer.
Bracing his elbow on the stone floor, Johnsmith took careful aim and squeezed the trigger.
A ragged hole opened in the man's pressure suit front, slightly to the left of center in the chest. A white tatter flew off from the back, red spraying the tunnel walls an instant later. His splayed fingers released the AK47. the impact lifted him off his feet and slammed him down hard onto the stone.
The woman turned from one side to the other frantically. She hadn't seen where the shot came from, since Johnsmith was hiding under the bodies. She must have assumed that he was dead, if she had seen him at all.
Terrified, she backed away, firing wild bursts from the laser pistol.
It was an easy shot. Johnsmith hardly knew that he had fired the .45 again. But she tumbled awkwardly backward, the laser firing. Its scarlet beam was deflected by the gleaming face mask of a corpse's helmet. A fiery L burned into the ceiling until her finger relaxed on the trigger.
Johnsmith didn't move. He knew that more Arkies might be nearby, and he didn't want to take any chances. With his elbow still resting on the floor, he pointed the .45 toward the back of the lava tube. The weight of the dead bodies and his pressure suit prevented him from trembling so much that he would be out of control.
He was alone for what seemed a very long time.
Then he heard the crackle of a helmet communicator approaching. A pair of columnar legs passed him from behind and approached the bodies. Whoever it was, unidentifiable from the back, had a pistol in hand. It seemed to be a man, but Johnsmith couldn't be sure. A gunshot cracked, and the fallen Arkie woman's body jumped, convulsed, and was still. Johnsmith had thought she was dead, but apparently not. The companion he shot was next, but the woman's killer must have believed him already dead. He didn't waste a shot. Instead, he turned toward the pile of bodies covering Johnsmith.
"Here," Johnsmith said. "On the ground."
"Biberkopf." Johnsmith recognized Sergeant Daiv's voice. "Biberkopf, are you okay?"
"Yes." His own voice sounded oddly thick and foreign. "Yes, I'm okay."
He felt the bodies being moved, and he could see Daiv's gloved hands. A moment later, he was being helped to his u
nsteady feet.
"Good going, Biberkopf," Sergeant Daiv said. "You got two of 'em."
"Yeah." Johnsmith didn't feel as if this were really happening, but he knew that it was. He had just shot two people without giving it a second thought.
Sergeant Daiv slapped Johnsmith's helmet, not maliciously as he had done so often in training, but rather in camaraderie.
Johnsmith reeled, nearly stumbling over one of the bodies.
"You're blooded now, kiddo," Sergeant Daiv said, and his hard face crinkled in a grin through the polarized plastic of his face mask.
Johnsmith had never seen Daiv smile before. He wasn't sure he liked it. There was something wolfish and dangerous about the man, and his savage grin made him seem even more unsavory than did his usual grim manner. Daiv was just too damn happy about seeing a lot of people get killed.
"Move in," Torquemada's electronic voice said from inside Johnsmith's helmet. "You've got the initiative now, so keep advancing on the enemy stronghold."
Johnsmith wondered briefly where Torquemada was. Probably back in the carrier, watching the whole thing on a 'gram monitor. Most likely the camera was in Daiv's helmet, maybe even implanted in one of his eyes.
Johnsmith was stalking the lava tube alongside Sergeant Daiv now. The tunnel curved gently to the left, and they came to a place where a second lava tube bisected it. One tube had lain over the top of the other as the igneous rock cooled millions of years ago, but the Arkies had chipped away the rock to connect the two tubes. As a result, Johnsmith and Daiv now faced three tunnels instead of one.
"Get your asses up here," Sergeant Daiv commanded the others.
Johnsmith turned to see the prisoners reluctantly approaching from behind. He was relieved to see Alderdice's sweating face through a face mask.
But where was Frankie Lee Wisbar? Was she one of the bodies littering the lava tube floor? Maybe she had been one of those who had fallen on him while the prisoners were trying to retreat. He hoped not. She was one of the few people at Elysium who had treated him like a human being.
But this was no time for sentimentality. The battle was just beginning, and it seemed that he had been thrust into a leadership role as a result of killing those two people. He reminded himself that he had only actually killed one of them. Sergeant Daiv had gleefully done in the woman.