Finally the ladder ended in an underground tunnel with the hatch cover high above them. Barto paused for a moment to scan the surroundings, then they walked forward into dim silence. The tunnels seemed empty, barely used, abandoned for a long time. Barto realized the Enemy soldiers could not have emerged from this place. No one had walked down these access tunnels in a long, long time.
As point man, Arviq led the way. He strode forward, hands on his weapons, ready for anything. A soldier had to be flexible and determined. The small tunnel lights gave little illumination, but their helmet visors augmented the ambient photons.
Cameras in their helmets recorded everything as reconnaissance files to be downloaded back in HQ. They continued for what seemed like miles, trudging deeper and deeper into the Earth. This place was an important facility, possibly a central complex . . . but Barto couldn’t begin to understand it.
From up ahead came a faint throbbing from generators and heavy machinery. Finally, they saw brighter light, thick windows, rectangular plates that shone through to another world, a subterranean complex that seemed like a mythical land. Inside huge grottoes, pale ethereal people moved about wearing bright colors. Plants of a shockingly lush green, garish hues that Barto had never seen before drew the two of them forward like magnets.
“What is this?” Arviq asked. “Some kind of trick?”
“Paradise.”
As the soldiers approached, unable to believe what they were seeing, they crossed an unseen threshold, a booby-trap. They heard a brief hum, a crackle of power-surge. Barto reacted just in time to feel a sinking despair—but not fast enough to get out of the way.
A pressing white light engulfed both of them, swallowing them up. In an instant, Barto’s visor turned black, then so did his eyes.
#
When he awoke, the assault on his senses nearly knocked him back into protective unconsciousness. Sounds, smells, colors bombarded him like weapons fire. His armor and helmet had been stripped away, leaving him vulnerable; without it, he felt helpless, soft-skinned, like a worm.
The bed beneath him was warm and soft, disorienting. A gentle and cozy light surrounded him instead of the familiar garish white to which he was accustomed back in his own barracks. Each breath of the humid air was perfumed with a sweet, flowery scent that nauseated him.
Was this an infirmary? Barto turned his head gently, and a raging pain clamored inside his skull. The place reminded him oddly of the time he had been helpless and healing from his previous injury . . . but he saw no hairless chimpanzees, no robotic medical attendants. The sheets were soft and slick, vastly different from the other rough, sterile coverings.
Grogginess smothered his mind and body. Barto tried to return to full awareness . . . but something was wrong. His body remained sluggish and unresponsive, as if the accustomed chemical stimulants were not being released according to program. He needed adrenalin; he needed endorphins.
Arviq lay on another bed beside him, similarly prone, similarly stripped of his armor. When Barto turned his head and directed his gaze in the opposite direction, he was astonished to find another person by his shoulder. Not one of the enhanced animals bred to attend the regiment . . . but a woman, a lovely creature with short, honey-brown hair and a shimmering purple garment so brilliant and dazzling that it made his eyes ache.
Responding with combat readiness, he sat up with a lurch—but the woman rushed over and shushed him with a gentle touch. “Quiet now. Everything’s all right. You are safe here.” Her voice sounded like sweet syrup. Alien.
Arviq stirred beside him, groaning in confusion and growing rage.
Then Barto remembered a legend, a story told on the field during the quiet times between battles when some soldiers were more frightened than others. It was a hopeful myth of what happened to brave and dedicated fighters after a death in battle. Was this . . . Valhalla?
He glanced over at Arviq, his face contorted with confusion. His eyes glimmered with dark fires. “Are we dead?”
The woman laughed like tinkling crystal. “No, soldier. We are people like yourselves, human beings.”
She didn’t look like him, though, or any other person he had ever seen. Barto shook his head, refusing to acknowledge the pain left over inside. He’d had enough experience with pain. “You’re not . . . soldiers.”
The woman smiled and leaned closer to him. A warmth radiated from her scrubbed and lotioned skin. He had never noticed a person’s physical features before, never paid attention . . . and he’d never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
“Everyone is a soldier,” he said, “either for our side, or the Enemy.”
The woman continued to give him a slightly superior smile. “You are soldiers, my friends . . . but we are not. Not here.” She gave a gesture to indicate her entire underground world. “After all, it’s a war. You’re fighting and dying.” Her thin, dark eyebrows rose up in graceful arches on her forehead. “Did it never occur to you to ask exactly what you’re fighting . . . for?”
With a sudden burst of energy and an outcry of rage, Arviq lunged up from his bed, reaching out with clawlike hands, his face full of fury. Even without armor or weapons, any soldier knew how to kill with his bare hands. Somehow he found the energy to lash out, to propel himself into a combat frame of mind.
The woman staggered back from the infirmary beds, startled. Barto saw shadows, more people moving behind observation windows, automatic devices activating. There was another flash of white light, and again he lost consciousness.
#
When Barto awoke once more, he was alone in a room, clad in soft pajamas with more slick sheets wrapped around him. He found his bed too pliant, too yielding, as if it meant to be comfortable with a vengeance.
The gentle sound of running water trickled from speakers embedded in the wall. The white-noise had a soothing effect, the opposite of the perpetual, pressuring commands that had droned into his ears from helmet speakers. Now, the image of a soporific, bubbling brook made him want to lie motionless in a stupor.
He no longer even seemed alive.
This room was smaller, the walls painted pastel colors instead of clean white. The illumination was muted and warm, like sunlight through amber. It made his head fuzzy.
Stiffly, Barto rolled over and found that Arviq wasn’t with him this time. His comrade had been taken elsewhere. Was this some sort of insidious Enemy plan? Divide and conquer, separate the squad members.
Had he fallen into some new kind of warfare that went beyond violence and destruction to this personality-destroying brainwashing technique? Barto snarled and tried to find a way to escape—a captured soldier’s duty was to escape at all costs.
He didn’t hear a door open, felt no movement of the air—but suddenly the beautiful woman stood there with him, setting a platter down on a ledge formed out of the substance of the wall. She leaned over his bed, her entire body smelling of gentle flowers and perfumes. She smiled down at him, parting soft lips to reveal even white teeth. Barto started, ready to fight with hand-to-hand techniques even without his armor or his weapons—but she made no threatening move.
“My name is Juliette,” she said, then waited as if he was supposed to recognize some significance to the name.
He answered as he had been drilled. “Barto. Corporal. E21TFDN.” He rolled off the serial number in a singsong chant, “Eetoowun teeyeff deeyenn.” He had spoken it more than any other word in his lifetime. Then he formed his mouth into a grim line. That was all he had been trained to say. The Enemy rarely, if ever, took prisoners. Everyone died on the battlefield.
“I brought food for you . . . Barto.” Juliette picked up a steaming, spicy-smelling bowl from the tray on the ledge. It contained some kind of broth laced with vegetables, even a little meat.
Though he could withstand long periods of fasting, Barto realized how hungry he was. He’d been trained to shut off the hunger pangs and nerve twinges in his digestive system. But he also knew to take nourishment whenev
er possible, to maintain his strength.
She extended a spoon, and Barto raised his head to accept a mouthful. The spoon was metal with rounded edges. Even such a crude and innocuous weapon could be used in many different ways as a killing instrument. He could have snatched it from her—but he did not, taking the mouthful instead.
The flavors exploded around his tongue, and Barto nearly choked. It was too intense, too spiced, too fresh—experiences his mouth had never had. Back in the barracks all soldiers ate a common meal, a protein-rich gruel that served as sustenance and nothing else. He’d never before dined on a preparation in which someone had cared about its flavors. He didn’t find it at all pleasant.
Juliette gave him another mouthful, and he forced himself to eat it. But he did not let down his guard for an instant.
“The stun-field should have no residual effect on you, Barto,” she said. “You’ll regain your strength in no time.” Her voice sounded odd in his ears, pitched with a higher timbre, musical rather than the implacable instructions that had poured into his ears from the helmet’s speakers.
“I’m strong enough,” Barto said. “Where is my comrade?”
“He’s safe and being tended—but we thought it best to separate you.” She took the bowl away, then stood back to appraise him. “I’m curious about you, Barto, Corporal, E21TFDN. I want to be your friend—so let’s just use our first names, all right?” She brushed her hand along his arm, and he recoiled at her touch; it felt like warm feathers tickling across the skin. “Can you stand up? I’d like to take you for a walk to show you where you are.”
Barto did not argue with her. Regardless of her intentions, Juliette’s offer would allow him to continue his reconnaissance. She could show him whatever she wished, and he would gather information. Without the helmet visor and its implanted cameras, he would have to observe with his own eyes, and remember details. But it could be done.
As he swung off the bed, the loose-fitting pajamas felt strange on him, not hard enough, not safe. He walked on the balls of his bare feet, every muscle tense, searching for mysterious threats as Juliette led him out of the room. She took him down underground corridors into even richer light. They passed beautiful images of scenery, forgotten forests and lost mountains . . . waterfalls and lakes unlike anything he had ever seen on the battle-scarred combat fields.
“Who are you people?” Barto said. “What is this place?”
“We’re civilians. We went underground centuries ago to escape the fighting, while our armies defended us against the invasion.”
Barto tried to assess the information, to fit it like puzzle pieces into the sparse information in his mind. “My squad is . . . part of the defenders? We fight against the invaders?”
She looked at him with a curious, placid expression. Her pale skin, delicate bone structure, and pointed chin gave her an ethereal, elfin appearance. “No one knows which side is which anymore.”
Other people, similarly pale-skinned and soft-looking, observed the pair as they walked by. Some smiled, some drew back in fear. Many regarded him with cold, fish-like interest. Juliette seemed to enjoy the attention she received just by being with him.
Barto scanned his surroundings for a way to escape and return to his squad. But then he remembered that, except for Arviq, all of his comrades were dead, annihilated by the immense gun emplacements that protected this underground shelter. Back at his own HQ, the databases must have already recorded him and his point man as casualties of war.
Juliette talked as they continued, her voice a pleasant melange of words. She told him of their days of peace and shelter down below, how the survivors had made an entire world down here by excavating tunnel after tunnel. There, the civilians did what she called “the great work of humanity”—composing music, dabbling in art, writing poetry and literature . . . though, if they remained isolated down here without experiencing the hard edge of life, Barto didn’t know how they found any material to incorporate into their creations.
Though she turned at intersections, descended to different levels, walked in circles, Barto never lost his bearings. He imprinted a map of everything they encountered, knowing he might need to use it later. On his own.
Juliette took him to a greenhouse where the smells nearly stifled him: humid air, the odors of vegetation and mulch, flowers bursting forth like explosions from mortar-fire. Pollinating insects flitted from blossom to blossom, and brilliantly ripe vegetables and fruits made his eyes hurt.
He heard the drip of irrigation systems, saw colorful birds hopping from plant to plant, and a shiver went up his spine. Everything was so quiet here, so gentle. It made him feel too full of energy, too restless.
Barto remembered when he’d been forced to recuperate in the HQ infirmary as the hairless chimpanzees tended to him. He had been bored and frustrated . . . but with a goal—to heal, so he could go back and fight. He had managed to wait until his body returned to its optimal condition, when he could go out and serve his purpose in life.
Here, though, these people had a quiet calmness about them, an air or superiority . . . with nothing else to do. Juliette seemed to enjoy it, seemed proud of being a civilian.
Barto had never experienced such vibrant beauty, the smells, the music
. . . the sense of peace. His body rebelled at the thought, but as the hours went by in the beautiful woman’s company he began to feel his resistance crumbling. This was all new to him.
As she showed him their underground “paradise,” Barto followed her and listened. Finally, in exasperation, he turned to Juliette and asked, “So there’s no war here?” He couldn’t believe it. Such a concept had never occurred to him. “No battles?”
“Oh, we have a little.” Juliette smiled, then gestured him forward. “Here, let me show you. Maybe you’ll find it comforting.”
She led him down smooth passages where the temperature grew cooler, the smell more metallic. They walked down glass-walled hallways until they reached a control center.
Battle-plans. Tactical maps. Troop movement displays.
“This is how we maintain our edge, Barto, and our window on the outside world.” Juliette’s people sat at stations in front of the shifting screens, their fingers raised across control panels. Terrain grids spread out in front of them in bristling colors.
High-resolution panels showed other soldiers, people in familiar armor and helmets, jittery point-of-view images transmitted from visor cameras. Civilian men and women leaned over, punching in commands and speaking into microphones.
“Move left. Open fire.”
Another man with a deep voice droned, “Kill the Enemy. Kill the Enemy. Kill the Enemy.” He sounded bored. The others looked very relaxed in their positions.
Barto stared with shock as he realized that these were the voices he’d heard in his helmet all his life: directing him, helping him plan his attack. These were his ultimate commanders in the war.
Astonished, Barto looked over to see Arviq also standing inside the control room, chaperoned by a civilian man, also dressed in a loose jumpsuit. His point man’s chaperone demonstrated the workings of the controls. Arviq’s eyes were wide as he watched the battle.
Sensing the new arrivals, Arviq looked up to see Barto. Their eyes met, and hot understanding flashed between them. This was the ultimate headquarters of their army. Arviq reeled from the revelation, but Barto felt a nagging question in the back of his mind. He wondered if other civilians in this control room might be directing the Enemy troops in a similar fashion.
Safe in their protected bunkers, these isolated civilians played the deadly war like a game, an exercise. They’d lived here for so long, so comfortably, they seemed uninterested in winning the conflict or ending the crisis . . . merely in maintaining what they already had.
“So you see, Barto,” Juliette said, touching his arm again; this time he did not withdraw so quickly, “we understand what you go through. We’re familiar with the war, we’re there with you inside your head du
ring even the most terrible missions. We know how difficult it is for the soldiers.” She smiled. “That’s why I’m very glad to offer you asylum here. Stay with us.” Now she sounded coy. “I’d be . . . very interested in getting to know you better.”
Arviq glowered, out of his element. The chaperone next to him nodded toward Juliette, and she said, “You see, Gunnar is also taking good care of your comrade. Stay here. Consider it well-deserved R&R.”
Barto looked around, saw the controllers, heard the familiar command voices. He answered gruffly, “I’m a soldier. I follow orders.” Even if it meant he must stop fighting for a while.
#
Once the two prisoners had resigned themselves to their situation, they were allowed to speak with each other, though neither Barto nor Arviq had ever had much use for conversation. For a week they had made no violent gestures and learned to “behave themselves”—as Juliette described it. As a reward, Barto and Arviq were allowed to sit next to each other in the dining hall.
The room was a large chamber with plush seats and long tables. Lights sparkled from prisms overhead, and the air was redolent with the rich smells of exotic dishes. Various salads and broiled fishes and interesting soups were spread before them. The hall echoed with a murmur of voices.
In his training sessions, Barto learned about the horrors of being a POW, should such a fate ever befall him. But he was now confused, not sure which orders to follow, what was the proper course of action. Juliette had insisted he was their honored guest, not a prisoner. Should he still try to escape? These civilians had given him food and shelter, and a soft bed, though he desperately wanted his narrow basket-bunk back. He longed for the decisive voice in his ears that commanded him to do his duty—but Barto no longer knew exactly what his duty was.
Arviq looked at his plate and poked at the gaudy, frilly dishes that had been served to him. Other soft-skinned civilians walked by, staring at them, whispering to each other. One reached out to touch Arviq on the shoulder, as if on a dare; the soldier lashed out like a python, and the two observers scampered away giggling, as if titillated by the thrill they’d just received.
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