The Eternity Brigade

by Goldin, Stephen

  These questions had obviously occurred to Belilo and Symington, but Belilo maintained her glacial calm even in the midst of this confusion. “We made a mistake,” she excused. “We’re in a desperate situation and we react largely by instinct.”

  Amassa clapped her hands, the delight on her face like that of a small child. “Just as I thought. Oh, this could be very good indeed.”

  Symington’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by ‘this’?”

  “Would you like me to help you?” Amassa said, ignoring the question.

  “Help us?” Hawker asked. “How?”

  “I could take you into my bubble and hide you from the army.”

  “How can we be sure you won’t turn us in, instead?” Belilo asked.

  Amassa laughed. It was a pleasant laugh, like the tinkle of tiny bells, yet Hawker found it oddly disquieting. “I guess you can’t,” the angel replied. “But if you don’t come with me, I’ll definitely turn you in.”

  It was then that the three on the ground realized just how trapped they were. They were at the mercy of this strange winged woman, whose body and face radiated innocence, but whose eyes bespoke depths they could not understand. For a brief moment Hawker thought of killing Amassa too, but realized the futility of that. There were hundreds of other bubbles in the sky, hundreds of other potential witnesses. It only took one to give their location away to the army, and everything they’d fought for would be lost.

  No, he decided. Better to go with Amassa now and hope she might really help them. There was no sane alternative. Hawker looked at his friends and saw they had come to the same unhappy conclusion.

  Amassa, too, could read their expressions. She smiled, and the glow from her body brightened. “Come,” she said. “I’ve brought my home-sphere down just outside the woods. We can retire there.” She flew gracefully between the trees. Symington picked up the handles of Green’s travois and joined his friends as they followed Amassa out of the forest.

  The bubble looked the same as Consakannis’s from the outside, but Amassa had known to expect company, and had arranged the interior accordingly. The entrance room was large enough to throw a sizable party in. There was a comfortable padded couch on which Green could be set, and miscellaneous other furniture for the guests’ comfort. One whole wall acted as a picture window—but the scene it portrayed was not the tableau outside the bubble. Rather, it was a constantly changing diorama of views from all over the planet. The other walls glowed with subtle colors that mixed and swirled in no discernible pattern.

  “What are you going to do with us?” Symington asked after transferring Green to the couch.

  “I don’t know,” Amassa said simply. “I haven’t thought it out yet. Something interesting will come to mind, no doubt.”

  “Why are you taking so much interest in us?” asked Belilo.

  “Oh, I guess because I’m Consakannis’s nitzah.”

  The language lessons implanted in Hawker’s mind reminded him of that term’s meaning. A nitzah was somewhat less than a spouse, but considerably more than a casual friend. It was not always a sexual relationship, but the exact subtleties of the arrangement were beyond his comprehension.

  Belilo licked her lips. “Now look, if you want revenge for what we did, you have to remember he goaded us into it. If he’d explained himself at the time and cooperated with us, we wouldn’t have had to—”

  “Revenge? Oh, how delightfully primitive!” Amassa laughed again. Despite the euphony of the sound, Hawker decided he did not like this woman’s laughter.

  “No, what would be the point of revenge?” Amassa continued. “Consakannis will be rezzed again very shortly, if he hasn’t been already. If his death was at all painful, he can excise out that split second of pain; he’ll rejoin us within the next day or so, and he’ll probably laugh at the pictures of you caught in his dead sphere.”

  “If you’re not after revenge, why do you want us?” Hawker asked.

  Amassa ignored the question. “I suppose you learned a lesson with Consakannis,” she said, “but just let me repeat it a little. It’s foolish to do anything that makes me uncomfortable. I have more powers here than you do.”

  She didn’t need to touch the walls to control her globe, as Consakannis did; instead, she merely fingered one of the jewels on her belt. Instantly the gravity within the bubble grew so oppressively heavy that none of the soldiers could stand upright. They slumped to the floor, gasping for breath while Amassa, unaffected, floated over them and smiled. “If you’ll just remember this,” she said, “I’m sure we’ll get on tremendously.” Another touch of the belt, and gravity returned to normal. Hawker and his companions rose slowly to their feet.

  “You made your point,” Belilo said.

  “Good,” Amassa said with childlike enthusiasm. “Now, are any of you hungry?”

  Thoughts of food had been pushed from their minds by more urgent matters, but the mere mention was enough to spark their appetites. Two days of near starvation had taken their toll. Despite the soldiers’ apprehension over their new condition, they nodded avidly.

  Amassa touched her belt again and the air in front of her flashed images of dishes beyond number, each appearing for barely a second before being replaced by another. It was a virtual encyclopedia of foods from a multitude of different planets. “If you see anything you like,’’ Amassa said, “just let me know.”

  The three stared open-mouthed at the display, hardly knowing what to answer. “Everything looks so good, it really doesn’t matter,” Belilo said. She pointed suddenly at random. “How about that?”

  Amassa froze the image in midair. The dish appeared to be a rich kind of stew, and the brief description beside it indicated it was made from four different kinds of meat and two dozen distinct vegetables from three different worlds. The aroma also wafted through the air, making the fugitives’ mouths water.

  “All of you want that? Fine.” The angel touched her belt once more and a table rose out of the floor. On the table were three large bowls filled with the steaming stew.

  Hawker stared with amazement that a dish with so many complex ingredients could be prepared so quickly—and then he wondered why he was surprised. If people could be dubbed exactly, why not a bowl of stew?

  He stepped forward toward the table, along with Symington and Belilo, then stopped suddenly. “What about our friend?” he asked, gesturing over his shoulder at the still figure of Green.

  “What would he like?” Amassa asked.

  “I don’t know. He can’t seem to eat anything. His pattern was messed up when they dubbed him, and his body doesn’t work right. The army doctors said they had him on a special predigested diet. We tried feeding him in the woods, but he just threw up.”

  Amassa’s perfect face contorted to a thoughtful pout; she was clearly unhappy at this complication. A door opened in one wall and she walked into the next room, leaving the soldiers alone for several minutes. Finally she came back, touched her belt controls and said, “That should take care of it.”

  A transparent dome of glowing energy covered Green’s body atop the couch. “What’s happening?” Hawker asked.

  “The house is feeding proteins and digested materials directly into his bloodstream,” Amassa explained. “We bypass the eating and digesting stages altogether.”

  Hawker was still a little unsure, but the aroma of the hot stew was weakening his resistance. Unable to do anything further for Green, he tuned back to the table and ate his own meal ravenously. Amassa even gave him second helpings, which he wolfed down greedily.

  The fugitives ate without much discussion. When they finished and looked around, Amassa was gone. “Wonder where she went,” Symington said.

  “I’ve given up trying to figure her out,” Belilo said. “She’ll be back when she’s ready. In the meantime, let’s look around and see what we can find.”

  “Amassa might not like that,” Hawker said.

  “She didn’t say we couldn’t, did she? Besid
es, I don’t quite trust her.”

  “That’s for sure,” Symington agreed.

  The three soldiers prowled cautiously through Amassa’s home-sphere, alert for any further surprises, but could find nothing of interest other than a semi-enclosed toilet. The three other rooms within the globe were all small and devoid of furnishings; Amassa probably conjured up her furniture only when she needed it.

  They found that Green was awake and staring at them with his weird, off-center eyes. They crowded around him, anxious to know how he was feeling.

  “Better than I felt in the lab,” he replied. “It’s no fun living under a microscope. I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve been through for my sake.”

  “We’re not free yet,” Belilo said. “Not by a long shot.” She proceeded to tell him, with occasional asides from Hawker and Symington, the story of their escape and flight, and their current predicament.

  Green coughed harshly and settled back on his couch. “A culture of decadence….”

  His voice drifted off, and for a few moments his friends were afraid he’d drifted back into semiconsciousness. But he was only thinking; the look of intelligence never wavered in his eyes.

  “A world that’s conquered both poverty and death,” he mused aloud at last, “must be decadent beyond our ability to imagine. There’s no need to work, no challenge to living. Material goods mean nothing, so the only thing left of any value is sensation. The only thing they can do to fill their days is experience as many different things as they can.”

  Again he drifted off into thought, only to snap suddenly out of his reverie. He propped himself up awkwardly on his misshapen elbows and looked at the group—particularly at Hawker. “Be very careful, all of you,” he warned. “If these people have no limits, they probably also have no morals. They’ll have only one rule of behavior, to stay one up on the next guy. I don’t think the rules of human behavior will change that drastically. Power and control, that’s what it’s always been about. Amassa’s already shown she wants to control you. Watch out for her….”

  His voice drifted off again, but this time the luster was fading from his eyes, to be replaced by the glassy stare of incomprehension. Green had slipped out of reality once more, and Hawker clenched his fists in frustration.

  Hours passed, and still there was no sign of Amassa. Hawker and his friends talked for a while among themselves, but quickly ran out of things to say. They could make no plans for escape when they didn’t know how powerful their enemy was. There was nothing else to do inside the bubble. Eventually their boredom led them to the soldier’s ultimate recourse—they curled up in the comfortable furniture and went to sleep.

  ***

  Hawker opened his eyes to find a face staring back at him from only a few centimeters away. The face was bright orange and had three eyes, and at first Hawker thought his own eyes were out of focus from having just woken up. He blinked several times, but the image did not change. Then he felt some hands caressing his shoulders, and he sat up, startled.

  The orange face backed quickly away to a more respectful distance, and Hawker noticed with alarm that the face was attached to a body like a hairless chimpanzee. The three-eyed orange chimp smiled at him and wiggled its hips seductively. Hawker glanced down its body and saw that it was most definitely masculine. He quickly shook his head and turned away.

  The room had expanded out to its full limits, squeezing the other rooms of the bubble into nonexistence. Into this vast open space was crowded the most unusual assortment of people Hawker had ever seen. They were all derived from human stock, but they’d been so altered that no two of their bodies looked alike. Heights ranged between one and three meters; some bodies were stick thin, others quite well rounded. Hair, eyes and skin colors were of every imaginable shade. Some of the people had more than the standard number of limbs, some had less; others had outré appendages like horns, antlers, wings, or lobster claws. Some were clothed, some not, but both sexes were adequately represented—sometimes even within the same body.

  Hawker looked for his friends, and spotted them over by Green’s couch. Symington and Belilo were equally aghast at this freak assemblage, while Green was still in his coma. Hawker rose from the chair where he’d been sleeping and pushed his way through the curious crowd to his comrades’ side. “What in hell is all this?” he asked them.

  Amassa, who’d been standing just a short distance away, came over to them. “I’m glad you’re all awake now,” she said breezily. “These are a few of my friends. They were so excited to hear I was entertaining some primitives, they all wanted to come meet you. Be polite to them.”

  One short female, her face covered with peach-like fuzz, walked boldly up to the group of soldiers, who crouched together for mutual protection. She looked over each of the three in turn and stopped in front of Belilo. “I’m Nya,” she purred. “You interest me.”

  “Me?” Belilo said. “But I….”

  “Don’t be so coy. I’ve heard how savage you primitives can be.” Nya ran an exploratory finger down the front of Belilo’s uniform, between her breasts. The rest of the crowd watched with delicious anticipation. Belilo tensed and clenched her fists, prepared for a fight. She’d show Nya just how savage she could be.

  Then Amassa touched Belilo lightly on the shoulder. “Remember, you must behave yourselves. Life can be awfully unpleasant for those who don’t cooperate. Nya won’t hurt you.” She looked over to the woman whose hands were continuing their exploration of Belilo’s body. “You won’t hurt her, will you? It would be such a waste of such unique material.”

  “Nothing that can’t be fixed,” Nya said, her eyes not wavering from Belilo.

  “See?” Amassa said to comfort her frightened captive.

  But Belilo was far from comforted. She tried to break away, but two other people had sneaked up behind her. They pushed her forward, straight into Nya’s arms. Nya laughed as she embraced her prey, and Amassa joined the laughter. The general tone throughout the room was one of high amusement.

  Symington and Hawker both started forward to help their friend, and fell flat on their faces. Strong anklets had grown out of the floor, wrapped around their feet and held them securely in one spot. They could do nothing to help, and could only watch the fate of their comrade impotently.

  Belilo tried to use her combat training against her attacker. One foot lashed out a vicious swipe that caught Nya off guard. The smaller woman went flying across the room, knocking into several onlookers. Amassa clucked and shook her head, then reached down to her belt. Belilo’s left foot, still on the ground, was instantly shackled just as the men’s had been.

  Belilo stood awkwardly poised with her right foot still in the air. She tried to catch her balance and keep the foot away from the floor so it couldn’t be caught like the other one. While she was engaged in that delicate maneuver, other guests came up behind her and grabbed both her arms, while two more grabbed her free leg and held it outstretched.

  Nya got slowly to her feet and came forward to face Belilo. The smile on her lips wasn’t cruel, merely devoid of any warmth. Nya reached out to touch the struggling but helpless woman again and gently unfastened the front seam of her uniform. “Such passion, such fire,” she remarked to herself as she began to peel Belilo’s clothing methodically from her body. “Primitive, indeed.”

  Belilo spit in her face, but Nya kept stripping her undeterred. In just a few minutes, with the aid of her accomplices, she had Belilo standing naked before the crowd. Nya inspected the body, nodding approval of Belilo’s muscle tone and admiring the scars she’d acquired during her long military career. Then, as Amassa dissolved the ankle restraint, Nya and her friends carried Belilo through the crowd and out of Hawker’s sight.

  Amassa released the restraints on Hawker and Symington. “I suppose you should be commended for your primitive impetuosity, but a little of that can grow tiresome. Let’s see if you can be just a little more civilized, shall we?”

  “What was
civilized about that?” Symington asked as he stood up, but he never received an answer. He was almost immediately encircled by a group of admirers—mostly female, but some male—exploring his large, muscular frame. They began stroking him and tearing at his clothing, sexual hunger naked on their faces.

  Amassa came over to Hawker as he knelt, and spread her wings around him protectively. “This one’s mine,” she announced to the crowd at large. Then, looking into Hawker’s face, she said sweetly, “There’s nothing to fear. I won’t let anything hurt you. Here, try some outgo.”

  Before he knew what she was doing, she popped a tiny tablet into his mouth. He tried to spit it out, but she held a hand over his mouth with more strength than he would have thought she had. He refused to swallow the pill, but it made no difference; the tablet dissolved on his tongue with a fizzy sensation. The fizziness spread outward from his tongue to his cheeks, and finally upward to his eyes and his brain, where it exploded like fireworks on a summer night.

  The room did not spin, exactly, but it did go off center, and his every movement to right himself only made the situation worse. The swirling patterns of the walls, which had seemed so subtle before, suddenly shrieked at him; the red lanced at his eyes, the yellow threatened deadly flames and the blue licked his feet like an inviting ocean, tempting him to drown in its depths, The noise around him, the talking of Amassa’s guests, dopplered in and out of his range like an obscene siren. His skin itched from the feet of a million imagined ants, but his mind was bathed in honey balm and scarcely noticed. His tongue tasted of peppermint and sour apples, while his nose was filled with the musky scent of his own body, unbathed for several days.

  His mind moved, his body remained. He was floating well above the tumult, an omniscient but impotent god. Amassa’s guests danced and wheeled, just as he had seen their bubbles dancing through the sky. Gravity was no master to them; they defied it at their will, soaring and spinning through the crowded space, their bodies touching and rubbing in sensual patterns as random as they were erotic.