Within three days of arriving at the base, Hawker and Green were back in their coffins, resting coldly and quietly until the army needed them once again.
***
Waking up was less traumatic this next time. Hawker remembered how weak he’d felt on his first emergence from suspended animation, and concluded this must have been a shorter sleep. He was to find out just the reverse; he and the other men had slept for nearly fourteen years. The army had learned from its previous experiment; while thawing the men out, their bodies were put through traction exercises to get the muscles back in shape, and they were given hormone injections to improve muscle tone. As a result, Hawker merely felt tired, as though recuperating from a bad cold. The recovery period was shortened from two weeks to six days, and even that probably erred on the conservative side.
The thought of another fourteen years stolen out from under him was more than a little frightening, but it was balanced by the comforting thought of the trust fund, and how it would have built up over the interval. Even with all the devaluations the government chose to throw at him, he would still end up with a sizable chunk of money to call his own.
On the third day after awakening, Hawker was reunited with Green, and the two friends greeted one another with unrestrained abandon. They agreed that they didn’t look too bad for middle-aged men, and chortled to think that they were nearing the end of the twenty-first century and still young enough to enjoy it—providing, of course, they survived the war.
The next day brought them another surprise. They ran into another sleeper, and almost walked right past him before they noticed it was Symington. They hadn’t expected to see him here under these conditions, and bombarded him with questions. Symington was sheepish at first, but under their persistent interrogation he admitted they’d been right—the world of fourteen years ago had not been suitable for people from their original time. He had gone to Alaska and found that out the hard way, squandering most of his money in the process. Bitter, broke, and a year older, Symington had come wearily back to the army, which accepted him like the prodigal son.
There was one man on the base, though, who didn’t find his friends. After the third day of awakening, he wandered around the camp, stopping everyone he could and asking if they’d seen Norquist. Hawker, Green, and Symington had never met Norquist and wouldn’t recognize him if they saw him. Apparently, Norquist had been this man’s buddy and they’d been frozen at the same time; now there was no trace of him, and the army refused to release any information.
The soldier became increasingly distraught, and went AWOL two days later. Hawker never learned what happened to him. No trace of Norquist was ever found, either; he’d joined the other missing sleepers, from then on known as Norquist’s Rangers. The name stuck as a ghostly memorial to all that was left of them.
Hawker and Green tried to call their bank to find out how well their trust fund had done, but were told outside calls were forbidden; this was an army camp in wartime, and security was tight. Mail service and email were sporadic and unreliable. They accepted the news philosophically: there was a war to be fought before they could use their money, anyway.
While walking to the exercise yard, Hawker also spotted Thaddeus Connors. Apparently, the man was still on the run, whether from the Aryan Legion or from himself, Hawker would never know. He shook his head and walked slightly faster, hoping Connors wouldn’t spot him.
***
This war was completely different from anything the sleepers had expected. China, Russia, and the European Union were now allies of the United States, and the enemy was a conglomerate of emerging nations from South America and Africa. The prize of contention was Antarctica—and, in particular, the wealth of resources recently discovered there once ice-melt made them accessible. The old-time superpowers desperately needed the resources to maintain their economic dominance, while the smaller nations saw this as their last chance to break the hegemony of the industrialized countries. This was a battle to the death for one side or the other.
The nature of this war’s terrain forced some mental adjustments. His first war had been fought in the jungles of Africa, and his second on the plains and mountains of China. The battlefield this time was a land of frigid wastes. Even after global warming it was a world of bitter cold and blustery winds that chilled him through his heavily furred parka. The only luxuries were a ski mask and the pair of battery-heated gloves to keep his fingers warm.
He suffered for three weeks as his unit advanced over icy terrain that looked no different from the area all around them, yet which the brass insisted was vitally important. There were occasional skirmishes, but in general the enemy seemed to be falling back in front of them. They made great advances, but Hawker grew worried. This was a little too easy, and he suspected a trap. None of the officers asked his opinion, though, and Hawker would never think of volunteering it.
The big attack came shortly before sunset. The enemy’s forward lines, which had been routinely falling back, suddenly stiffened. At the same time, Hawker’s unit found itself under attack from the flanks, too. They’d been drawn into a classic box, which was rapidly closing around them, cutting off all retreat. The ground rocked with explosions, and the constant flare of gunfire provided an eerie, if intermittent, illumination.
Early on during the attack, Hawker was hit by pieces of a fragmentation shell, making wounds in his right leg and the left side of his torso. He fell to the ground, unable to move. The pain was excruciating, and he found himself wishing he would die and end the torment. He drifted in and out of consciousness to the lullaby of death and destruction.
The shooting eventually stopped, and Hawker lay quietly, thankful the two sides were willing to let him die in peace. Then a squad came walking by. One of them kicked him in the ribs. At first, Hawker thought he was so deep in pain he couldn’t make sense out of their gibberish; then he realized belatedly they were speaking Spanish. He’d been picked up by the enemy.
After some small discussion, two of the men lifted him and carried him awkwardly to a waiting vehicle. He was tossed in with other soldiers, some wounded, some dead. More bodies were tossed in around him. Then there was a long, jostling ride that only aggravated his injuries. He felt feverish despite the cold. The edges of reality wavered at the corners of his vision. He was positive death would come at any moment to relieve his suffering. His only regret was he’d never spend all the money he’d earned while sleeping the past fourteen years.
The enemy doctors, though, had other ideas. This was still early in the war, before shortages of medical supplies became acute. The Sammie staffs were honestly trying to be humane. After more than a week of wavering between life and death, Hawker finally landed on the positive side. Eventually he recovered without the loss of limbs or organs.
The Sammies treated prisoners much more fairly than prisoners were treated during the wars in either Africa or China. The Freeks, on the other hand, were rumored to still have a few primitive notions about the treatment of captured enemies.
Not that his life as a Sammie prisoner was easy. Food and supplies were always minimal, and the Red Cross packages were always too little and too late. As the war dragged on, food became even scarcer. He sometimes went for days at a time without eating. The prison camp guards were no less sadistic than others of that profession since the beginning of time; Hawker was beaten occasionally, but never so badly that it would show when a Red Cross inspection team came for a visit. There were three attempted escapes during his term in the prison camp, of which he was involved in two. None of them was successful and all of them brought prompt and stern punishment.
The accommodations were large, chilly tents, since more solid structures used up resources that were scarce in this environment. Even though the tents had been new when the war started, the harsh winds and low temperatures quickly caused even the strongest fabric to deteriorate, and the prisoners were left with little protection against the howling gusts. Patches ripped open within days of
being applied, and were seldom effective for long.
Many prisoners simply fell ill and died under these conditions. There was no way to bury them in the permafrost ground. In the earliest days the corpses were simply wrapped in sheets and left out in the open, with no worry about their decaying. Then the Sammie officers became more practical and fed the scraps to the guard dogs, who were glad for the extra protein.
Hawker lived through two years of this particular hell. Then one afternoon Col. Suarez assembled the prisoners in the open ground that served as the exercise yard. “My unit is being reassigned to combat duty,” he told them through his interpreter. As of today, this camp will be under the command of Col. Itaga and his men.” He indicated a tall black man standing behind him.
The prisoners looked from one to another. They’d all heard stories about what went on in the Freek prison camps.
The ensuing riot left five prisoners and one guard dead, and more than a dozen others on both sides nursing serious injuries.
Conditions got worse. Rations were cut still further, the guards were more brutal, and there were no more Red Cross visits. Prisoners who gathered in suspicious groups were beaten. Morale, never high to begin with, plummeted.
About two weeks after the Freeks took over, more prisoners were brought in. All of them were gaunt and haggard, but one in particular looked familiar. Hawker came over to him and saw it was David Green. His face was cut and bruised, his eyes were sunken. But it was definitely him.
Hawker didn’t know whether to be happy he was reunited with his old friend or sad that Green was in the same horrible predicament he was. But at least he was alive. That had to count for something.
Hawker went over to say hello, and the two men embraced in a joyless hug. Green was too weak for anything more, and Hawker appointed himself Green’s personal protector as long as both were in the camp.
About a week later, more prisoners were added to the camp, including a woman officer. She wore the uniform of an EU major, and at some point in the not-too-distant past she might have been a reasonably attractive woman. But now her face looked pale and dead, her blond hair scraggly and her eyes unfocused. Col. Itaga took her personally into his tent. A day later, when he was done with her, he handed her over to his men.
After a couple of days, the guards devised a new method of entertainment. They picked prisoners at random and, at gunpoint, forced them to rape the woman while they watched and laughed. The men were sickened, but after one was shot for refusing to participate, the others reluctantly complied. None of them would talk about it afterward.
Then one of the guards came over and pointed his gun at Green to go take his turn.. Green’s face, already pale, turned sheet-white. “I…I can’t,” he said, his voice shaking.
The guards, unmoved, yanked him over to her motionless body. “Rape,” one of them said.
Green’s whole body was trembling so badly he couldn’t even force his hands to pull down his zipper. “Please, no,” he said quietly, almost as though he was the one about to be raped.
Hawker had to do something. “No,” he yelled fiercely. “She’s mine!” He raced over to Green’s side and shoved his friend roughly to the ground, then unzipped his own pants and knelt beside the woman.
The major’s eyes looked up at him uncomprehendingly. Hawker had seen that look once before, in the eyes of his old dog, sick and in pain, not knowing what was happening. He’d held the dog, petting it, while the vet injected the final shot. He’d then gone home and cried for hours.
“Come on, bitch!” he shouted at her, then quickly reached down, grabbed her head and snapped her neck.
A guard hit him angrily on the side of his head with a rifle butt, upset that he’d spoiled their fun. He thought the guards might kill him, but they left it at that one blow. They dragged the carcass away like a lump of spoiled meet, but took no further action.
Hawker went over to Green and put an arm around him. Green was almost catatonic, and said nothing for over an hour. Finally he came out of it enough to say thank you, but didn’t talk much beyond that.
***
Three weeks later the war was officially declared over. Partitions drawn all over the Antarctic continent. Then there was a round of negotiations before the prisoners could be released back to their own sides. Green’s transfer came through immediately, but there was another three weeks of waiting in Antarctica before Hawker’s came through.
While waiting to be shipped home, he attended a briefing that turned out to be a recruitment pitch for another indefinite period in limbo. But this time, the process would be much different. Instead of being placed in suspended animation, the soldiers’ “life patterns” would be recorded and stored until they were needed.
“I know that probably doesn’t make sense to you right now,” the briefing officer said, “so let me try to explain. This is something on the very forefront of modern science—but it does work. I think you all know basically how television works. A camera takes a picture, and the image is broken down into a series of pixels, which can either be stored or broadcast and eventually reconstructed into an exact duplicate of the original picture.
“In a similar manner, we’ve learned how to break down physical objects and reconstruct them perfectly from the stored pattern. A special scanning device takes a three-dimensional ‘picture’ of every atom in the object, and its relation to every other atom. The scan is done so quickly that it’s practically instantaneous. The pattern is then recorded inside a computer. When we want to bring the object back, the computer simply tells us how much of each kind of atom we need. We adjust the mix in a chemical vat, and the computer impresses the electromagnetic pattern on the chemical mixture. In a matter of minutes, the original object is reconstituted exactly as when it was recorded. It hasn’t aged a day, it hasn’t suffered any deterioration—it is, as far as anyone has been able to tell, exactly the same as before it was recorded.”
There was a buzz of conversation throughout the room, and the officer held up his hands for silence. “I know this all sounds like the wildest science fiction to you right now, but just let me show you some holos of the process in action. I think you’ll be amazed.”
Hawker and the other soldiers watched as the holos demonstrated a series of experiments. At first, inanimate objects were placed in the scanners and dissolved into nothingness, only to be recreated moments later, looking the same as before. Then came a succession of test animals from mice to chimpanzees. The animals appeared to be unhurt by the process and, to test their memories, creatures with special training in mazes were recorded and resurrected, with no loss of their memory. Finally, the tests were conducted on human subjects—most of whom were black, and Hawker surmised that this was one fate of Freek POWs during the recent war. It was frightening—and not a little sickening—to watch a man being reduced to a puddle of ooze on the floor of the scanner, only to be reconstructed later apparently undamaged. The man could not recall anything from the moment the scanner was turned on until the moment he was re-create, and he insisted he was the same person and that nothing had been done to him.
“You can imagine how excited we are about the new process,” the officer said after the holos concluded. “The benefits over the old hibernation process are obvious. There’s no expensive maintenance program, no coffins to watch, no vital functions to be constantly checked. The patterns are stored neatly and safely inside the computer until we need them. The new system is much more mobile, because the reconstruction equipment is far easier to transport than delicate hibernation chambers. And best of all, from your point of view, there aren’t any elaborate preparations to go through at either end of the process.
“You don’t need physical exams, shots or enemas beforehand, and you don’t need a week or two of physical therapy and calisthenics after you come out of it. As far as this subject is concerned, the process is completely painless and takes place between one thought and the next.
“So, if you’re feeling adventur
ous, if you really want to see what tomorrow is like, if you want to serve your country in the best possible way, there’ll always be a place for you in the army. Think of us before you commit yourself to anything else.”
To Hawker, the concept seemed ludicrous. The idea of being frozen at least had some semblance of reality. But this new system was just too bizarre for words. He was glad he and Green had set aside their trust fund. He would be independently wealthy by now.
The plane flight back to the States took a bare three hours, even from Antarctica, and yet still seemed like an eternity. On arrival he was sent to the Orientation office, where a clerk helped him get adjusted to his new environment.
“I see you’ve been in a prison camp for three years,” the clerk said. “Your email box must be stuffed.”
“I don’t have an email box.”
“Sure you do. It’s basic for all soldiers.” And he gave Hawker instructions for accessing the system from his assigned barracks.
When Hawker was installed in his barracks and found a private moment, he checked the email. The box was indeed overflowing, but all the messages were pure spam—except for one dated about two weeks ago. When Hawker saw the sender’s name, he ignored all the others and just played that one.
The screen flickered to life with a sharp, clear picture. There was David Green, looking straight at him and smiling.
“Hi, Hawk,” the image said. “I asked around about you and heard you hadn’t gotten home yet but I figured you’d eventually get this message. I tried waiting for you as long as I could—I wanted to tell you all this in person—but… well, you’ll understand when I’m finished.
The Eternity Brigade Page 11