The Eternity Brigade

by Goldin, Stephen

  Unslinging his rifle, he fired at one of the doors across from him. The door was almost as tough as Amassa’s bubble, but not quite; after a few seconds of concentrated fire, it melted into a puddle of slag on the floor. Grabbing Green and, incidentally, Hawker, Symington ran forward and pulled his companions through.

  They found themselves in a brightly lit corridor—and still there was no one else in sight. Both men knew one prime rule of survival in these circumstances: keep moving. They ran down the hallway, half dragging Green between them, looking for an avenue of further possibility. There were closed doors on either side, but nothing that seemed right. Doors here couldn’t be important—they were still too close to the entrance.

  A hundred meters down the corridor they came to a cross hallway—and looking toward the left, they saw what appeared to be a row of elevator banks. They ran toward them, weapons raised, ready to strike down any opponents—but still there was only silence.

  They reached the elevators and paused for breath. “I don’t like this,” Symington said. “It’s too damn quiet.”

  “And why are there all these halls and elevators if the complex is entirely automated?” Hawker wondered.

  “Somebody had to build it,” the other man shrugged.

  The elevator doors opened unexpectedly, and out came a burst of lethal fire. If the soldiers had been standing directly in front of the door when it opened, they’d have been fried to perfection. As it was, they barely had time to fall backward out of the line of fire as the beams cut a swath through the air.

  Symington grabbed at his belt and pulled loose a grenade. With an expert flip of his wrist he tossed it through the elevator doors, then rolled over and covered Green’s body with his own. The explosion shook the floor, and the fire stopped coming.

  Symington got to his feet, then helped Hawker lift Green up once more. The men peered inside the still elevator, but all they could see was a twisted mass of wreckage. It had only been machines in there, not people.

  “I guess we take the stairs,” Symington said.

  “If there are any.”

  “Where’s your faith, Hawk? Of course there’s stairs. Even today, you always have to have emergency routes in case the machines don’t work. Come on.”

  They started off once more down the hallways, and Symington’s luck continued. At the end of the corridor was a door marked “Emergency Only”—and sure enough, there were the stairs. Inside the stairwell, a sign on the wall identified this level as “Ground Floor, Administration.”

  “I guess we go up,” Symington said. “Those records have got to be somewhere. We’ll just take the whole mountain apart piece by piece until we find ‘em.”

  They started climbing. The first five floors were all administration, and Hawker was beginning to worry they’d taken the wrong path. But the sixth floor bore a sign that said simply “AA.” “Does that mean anything to you?” Symington asked.

  Hanker checked the code number on the small disc they’d taken fromGreen’s neck. “This one starts with ‘AE.’“

  “Good. Maybe that means we’ve only got five floors to go.”

  It turned out to be far more than that, however. The next two levels were also designated “AA,” and there were four levels of “AB.” Hawker’s strength was about to give out. He was in fine physical condition, and by himself would have had no problem with all these stairs. But dragging Green’s body up with him and having to maintain constant vigilance against attack were taking their tolls. He was having a harder and harder time keeping pace with the indefatigable Symington.

  At the fourth “AB” level they met some resistance. The door to the main section opened and four robots stepped through just as the soldiers were approaching. Each of the machines was armed with a beampistol—but they were no match for the experience-honed reflexes of Hawker and Symington.

  “Maybe they’ll think twice before trying that again,” Symington said.

  Hawker leaned against the wall, his vision going blurry. He’d reacted instinctively to the threat, but was paying for it now. Symington noticed his dizziness and came over to check him out. “What’s the matter? Get hit?”

  “No, just… just a little tired. Maybe you’d better go on without me.”

  “Bullshit. We’re in this together. Here, I’ll carry Dave. You just worry about carrying yourself.” He hoisted their semiconscious friend over his shoulders and set off once more, as strong as ever. Hawker gulped, shook his head to clear it and followed after him, awe in his heart. This was a man who feared he was a coward?

  There were two “AC” levels and two “AD” levels before they finally reached “AE.” Hawker’s whole body was one huge ache, protesting this torturous treatment. His legs were made of lead. They stopped for breath on this landing. “How do we know if his file’s on this ‘AE’ landing or one further up?” Hawker panted.

  Symington took another grenade from his belt and, opening the door just a crack, tossed the grenade out and closed the door again. The blast, echoing through the enclosed space of the stairwell, rattled their teeth. “That ought to take care of any welcoming committee,” he said.

  There were indeed the shattered bodies of a few robots lying about the entrance as they emerged from the stairway, proving an ambush had indeed been planned. This gave the men some hope that they were on the right level.

  They found themselves in a forest of pillars, tall white floor-to-ceiling columns with narrow pathways in between. Embedded in each pillar were dozens of plastic triangles, lit with various colors whose significance Hawker could not have guessed. Inscribed just below each triangle was a number. These, then, were the files on which people’s patterns were continuously recorded.

  They checked the pillars randomly at first, until they established the order. Serial numbers went in descending order the farther they were from the stairway; Green’s should be perhaps three to four dozen rows away.

  Symington took the lead, as usual, carrying Green’s body slung casually over his shoulder. They ran down the aisles, checking the numbers occasionally to make sure they hadn’t overshot their goal. They were almost there, and they could feel the flow of time itself speeding up to push them along their way.

  As Symington ran across one aisle, a beampistol ray cut him down. He stumbled, dropping Green’s body, and fired his own gun even as he fell. Hawker pulled up short, looking at the motionless bodies of his friends on the ground. There was no further fire from whoever shot Symington.

  He approached that aisle carefully and turned into it with his pistol firing—but Symington had already done the job for him. The two robots that had lain in ambush there were now smoldering piles of metal. Hawker checked the numbers on the pillars and realized this was the aisle that probably contained Green’s file.

  A quick check confirmed Symington was dead, but Green was very much alive and returning slowly to his full awareness. Hawker bent and wearily lifted his friend to his feet, then staggered down the aisle until he found the pillar with the proper number.

  He set Green down with his back to the pillar while he searched out the proper triangular plastic insert. It was there, about shoulder height, glowing a bright pink. Hawker tried to pry it from its socket, but either it was embedded too firmly or Hawker had been too drained by his ordeal to remove it. Taking his beampistol, Hawker fired point blank at the triangle and was rewarded by an increasing glow as the plastic heated up, then finally melted into a useless puddle of slag.

  Hawker dropped his beampistol to the floor and, a moment later, fell to his knees beside Green. He was exhausted beyond all normal understanding of the term, but at the same time filled with a sense of elation he hadn’t felt in ages.

  His friend’s lips were moving and, by leaning close, Hawker could hear him repeating over and over again, “Memory is the key. Memory is the key….”

  “Dave.” Hawker shook his friend’s shoulder. “Dave, we did it.”

  Green looked blank for a moment, then stare
d with more comprehension into Hawker’s face. “What?”

  “We destroyed your record. I melted it.”

  Green closed his eyes and breathed a long sigh. “Thank God. It’s over at last.” He opened his eyes again and looked straight into Hawker’s face. “But there’s still one more thing you have to do for me, Hawk, and it may be harder than anything you’ve done yet.”

  Hawker blinked. “What?”

  “Kill me.”

  The words didn’t register at first, as though Green were speaking a foreign language. As the meaning penetrated, Hawker shook his head with disbelief. “I… I can’t do that. I did all this for you. I wanted to help you. That would make it all seem so pointless—”

  “You don’t understand. That would be the best thing you could do for me. It was all necessary to get to this point. Don’t you see, Hawk? My original pattern was destroyed, and now my backup’s destroyed. If I die now, there’ll be no way they can ever resurrect me again. I’ll be free, Hawk, I’ll be off the merry-go-round forever.”

  The corners of Hawker’s eyes were burning. “But… but you’re my friend.”

  “I know. That’s why I asked you. It’s not something I could trust to a stranger. Please, Hawk, I’m begging you.” He looked at Hawker with his twisted, off-center face pleading for a special kind of mercy only the two of them could understand.

  Hawker looked away. He couldn’t meet Green’s eyes. “I… I can’t let you go for good, Dave. I don’t have anyone but you and Lucky. He’ll get dubbed again, but you….”

  Green looked tired. “I understand,” he said. “But how long do you think you can drag me around before they catch us? If you don’t kill me now, they’ll take me back to the lab and probably just kill you. You won’t remember any of this; on your next go-round you won’t see me and just think I’ve joined Norquist’s Rangers.”

  The burning in the corners of Hawker’s eyes spilled over into wetness on his cheeks.

  “I once saw a guy die from a slash across the femoral artery,” Green continued. “It was a quick, easy death. Please, Hawk. Don’t think. Just do it. NOW!”

  His voice was sharp, cutting through the confusion that filled Hawker’s mind. With his right hand, he whipped out his knife and slashed a line across Green’s thigh. Blood spurted out, covering them both in a shower of red.

  Green slumped forward, his head falling against Hawker’s chest. “Thanks, Hawk,” he coughed. “It’ll only take a minute or so to bleed out. Hold on to me, please. It won’t be long. And smile. You’ve set me free.”

  He looked up into Hawker’s face abruptly, as though there were something he’d forgotten to say. He grabbed the front of Hawker’s uniform with a death grip. “Remember,” he gasped, his voice barely more than a whisper. “Remember….” And that was all.

  Hawker held onto the body for a full minute, crying for the first time in centuries. It didn’t matter at all that he was coated head to toe in his friend’s blood. “Don’t worry, Dave,” he promised in a whisper barely louder than Green’s had been. “I won’t forget you. I’ll probably live till the end of the universe, and I’ll remember you every day of that life.”

  He paused for a moment’s thought. “If they let me.” The reality of his situation hit him with a sudden frightening impact. With Green gone forever, he was now alone in enemy territory. The army knew he was here, they’d be coming for him. He had deserted, broken more regs than he could count. What reason did they have to keep him alive? Wouldn’t it be far easier for them just to shoot him, then dub another Jerry Hawker—one who knew nothing whatsoever of these events? Green had asked to be remembered—but to do that, Hawker had to live past the next few minutes, live until the next time they recorded him.

  They must be coming. They’d held off for so long, but it couldn’t last forever. And they would kill him, unless he could strike a bargain. But what could he offer them? They held all the top cards.

  A grim smile came to his face. He was a dealer in one commodity—destruction. He would deal in that.

  He pulled a pair of grenades from his belt, set their controls for “contact” and stood up, holding the grenades high off the floor. “Hello,” he yelled to empty air. “I bet you can hear me. I know you’re coming for me, but you’d better wait for a few minutes and listen to what I have to say.”

  Silence.

  “I’ve got a couple grenades here, set to go off if they hit anything. If you shoot me, they’ll drop to the floor and explode. I bet they could take out at least twenty of these pillars. How many people’s files is that? A couple hundred, maybe? That’s several hundred people whose files will be ruined. Think about that before anyone shoots at me.”

  More silence for nearly a minute. Then a voice materialized out of the air above his head. “What do you want?”

  It was a deceptively simple question. Hawker opened his mouth and then realized he didn’t have an answer. What did he want? What in all the universe could be worthwhile to a man like him? The phrase, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” climbed out of his childhood memory, but what good were they? He’d had enough life to satisfy ten men. Liberty was illusory; how could he be free when the army could always make another copy of him, a Jerry Hawker still shackled to his slavery? The final freedom Green had found wasn’t a path open to him. And as for pursuit of happiness—well, that was what Amassa and her friends were doing, and it was as hollow as everything else.

  Moreover, while he’d made them stop and listen, he was in no position to force them to do anything. He could ask some price—but if they didn’t like it, if they thought it too outrageous, they could come in here and wipe him out despite the consequences. Whatever he asked for, it had to be realistic—it had to be within boundaries they might accept.

  The one thing he wanted most was to fulfill Green’s final request: to remember him. And to do that, he had to live. Even if it made him sound cowardly now, even if it was a betrayal of everything he’d fought for, something deep in the back of his mind told him it was vitally important to live and remember what had happened here today.

  He drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “I want to make a deal with you that I don’t think is too unreasonable.” He stopped and waited for a reply.

  “Go on,” said the voice.

  “I’ve accomplished what I wanted. I never wanted to desert or commit mutiny. I’m not a troublemaker, I’ve got a good service record.”

  “Until now.”

  “All I wanted to do was help my friend. He was being tortured for something that wasn’t his fault. That’s over now. I’m prepared to go back and continue being a good soldier for you.”

  “You have no choice in that. We can always dub you again.”

  Sweat broke out on Hawker’s upper lip. He could feel his position slipping. What could he offer them they couldn’t get from a dub?

  Green had said it, many times: Memory is the key. “It won’t be me, though,” Hawker answered. “My experiences here are valuable. Every one of them makes me a better fighter. As awkward as this has been, it might come in handy sometime in the future. You can never tell.”

  “If you wish to surrender, we will take it under advisement.”

  “That’s not all,” Hawker said, pressing forward a little to gain the ground he’d lost in the bargaining process. “I’ll rejoin you voluntarily and go back to being a model soldier—but there’s something I want in return.”

  The voice did not answer.

  “I want out,” Hawker continued, after a suitable pause. “I want to be free of all the fighting. I want to live like an ordinary person, away from the army, and not have to worry about being resurrected in futures I have no say in.”

  “That contradicts what you just offered,” the voice said.

  Hawker shook his head. “No, it’s very simple. Just dub me the way I am right now. One of me goes off and lives any way he can; the other goes back to the army.”

  “We can’t make deals like th
at, or every soldier would want the same treatment.”

  “I won’t tell anyone about it. It’ll be our secret. It’s a small enough price for you to pay—you make dubs all the time, anyway. And if you cooperate with me instead of fighting me, you get a bonus—Green’s body. You can probably still learn a lot from it even though he’s dead. He’s past caring now. If these grenades go off, you won’t get even that much.”

  The voice was silent for several minutes, which Hawker considered a positive sign, They must at least be thinking about his deal—which is more than he would ever have expected a few hours ago. When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he prodded them further. “Well, I’m waiting. I’m getting awfully tired after all I did today. I don’t think I can hold these grenades up much longer.”

  “Stay as you are,” the voice answered. “A mobile scanner is on its way to you, and will be there within two minutes.”

  A mobile scanner! Hawker smiled in triumph. He’d won! It was a small enough victory, after all he’d been through, but he’d faced down the army and gotten concessions from them. He would be dubbed, giving him two chances to keep Green’s memory alive. It meant a return to slavery for one of him—but that would have been true in any case.

  He looked down at Green’s still-bleeding corpse. “We know one thing at least, Dave,” he said. “They’re not invincible.”

  INTERLUDES

  Hawker was dubbed right there in the aisle beside Green’s body. There were some very tricky arrangements that had to be developed to make sure the army kept its word. The “original” Hawker stayed in Rez Central holding his grenade while the dub was allowed to go free. Neither self said farewell to the other; the second copy just walked off without looking back. Only after several hours, when the dub radioed in that he was safely away from the vicinity, did Hawker finally surrender to army authorities.

  He half expected them to kill him anyway, as retaliation for all the trouble he’d caused them—but, to his surprise, they didn’t. The conquest of death had made retribution like that a meaningless exercise, and the army was too pragmatic. Green had been right on that score; his memories, even rebellious ones, were too valuable a commodity to be squandered on anything as petty as revenge.