"Because we have no choice!" interrupted a man in the opposite section.
Foreman whirled to look at him. "You think so? I say we do. I say that we have an incredible choice before us. This whole course is about that choice."
Foreman stepped off the dias toward him. "I assert that our survival is still a possibility. That assertion is the starting point for everything that will occur in here."
The man who had interrupted had nothing further to say. Satisfied, Foreman began circling back toward Dorothy Chin. "If we are to make it, then over the next few years, this species is going to have to make some incredible adaptations, many of which we will not like. But whether we like them or not, they will be necessary to our survival. It is clear that the very definition of humanity is going to be tested."
Foreman had returned to his place in front of Dorothy Chin. She was still standing. She was as rigid as stone. Foreman stood before her and spoke quietly and calmly, "It is this simple, Dorothy Chin. You know it. You don't need me to tell it to you. But I'm going to say it anyway so that the people in the room who don't know it can hear it too.
"The fundamental law of biology is Survive! If the organism doesn't survive, it can't do anything else.
"Now . . . we are going to see some of our fellow human beings, and very probably many of the members of this group, creating some extraordinary operating modes in order to do just that. Part of our job here will be to explore those modes-to see what they suggest for the rest of us. We need to know what is wanted and needed for human beings to survive on a Chtorraninfested planet. We need to know, what will human beings become in the process?.
"Here in this room, in this course, we will lay the groundwork for the job to be done. We will train ourselves in the unexpected. We will prepare ourselves for the impossible. In this room, we will begin the task of creating the future. In other words, we will not only test the definition of humanity-ultimately, we may have to redefine humanity. Not because we want to, but because that may very well be the ultimate price for survival.
"And I want you all to know something," Foreman interrupted himself suddenly. He stabbed the air with his forefinger. "We have always had the opportunity to redefine ourselves as a species-but we've always avoided the confrontation with that opportunity by squabbling amongst ourselves over mates and bananas instead. We don't have that luxury any more. The opportunity is no longer an opportunity. Now it is a mandate."
26DAVID GERROLD
A RAGE FOR REVENGE27
Foreman turned back to Dr. Chin and looked her square in the eye. "So, I ask you again. Is this the game you want to play? If you want to play, then sit down. If you want to leave, the door is behind you. But be clear about your choice. There are no second chances. Once you're out the door, you can't come back." He waited. "So, what's it to be?"
"You're a very impressive speaker," Dr. Chin admitted. "But I don't think so. I don't think I want to 'select' myself onto this football team, if you don't mind."
Foreman nodded. "I don't mind at all. It's a very clear choice. You've been very responsible. You listened, you chose." He started to turn away as if he were dismissing her, then abruptly turned back as if he had just remembered something else. "I just want you to know one thing before you leave." His voice became very quiet, very calm. "When you walk out that door, you not only give up your place in the game, you also give up your right to complain if you don't like how it turns out."
"I don't agree with that either," she said, and started working her way toward the aisle. "Goodbye, Dr. Foreman." She stopped and looked at him. "I'm going to fight you and your group. I'm going to organize the scientific and political communities against you. I think you're dangerous."
Foreman turned to the rest of us. "You have just seen a demonstration of what Dr. Chin does instead of committing herself. Dr. Chin doesn't act, she reacts."
She glared at him-it rolled off him like rainwater-then she turned and strode up the aisle. TWELVE opened the door for her, and she was gone.
"Anyone else?" invited Foreman.
Three more people got up and headed for the door.
Foreman waited until they were gone. "Anyone else?" he asked. "Last call. "
I thought about it. I'd survived worse. I could survive this. I remained seated.
Foreman's expression was hard to read. It looked like a challenge. He said, "This is it. There won't be any more chances to leave. If you stay, you're committing to stay to the end. . . . Nobody else got up. The room was painfully silent.
Foreman waited another moment. He returned to his podium and took another drink of water. He turned to the manual on the music stand and flipped over two or three pages. He studied them thoughtfully for a moment, then he looked up at us and said, "So
we're clear now? You're here because you want to be here. There is nobody in this room who does not want to be here?"
He smiled. "Good. Now, let's talk about what happens after you make a commitment: the opportunity to break your word. . . ."
A fellow who lived in West Perkin
was always a;jerkin' his gherkin.
Said he, "It's not fickle
to play with my pickle.
At least my gherkin's a workin'."
3
The Dome
"The game of life is always called on account of darkness."
--SOLOMON SHORT
The day had turned gray and drizzly, and the March wind was whipping coldly into our faces.
I peered at the map on the screen. Yes, this was it. I poked the kid and pointed. "Bear to the right."
He did so. We pulled off the main highway and onto a frontage road. He handled the Jeep with an easy assurance. It was obvious that the kid liked driving.
But it bothered me that he was so young.
Everywhere I went these days, I found children handling the jobs of adults. They were getting younger every day. And less well trained. I didn't like the implications of that either.
Childhood was another casualty of the war. There wasn't time to be innocent any more. As soon as you could take your place in the work force, you did. There were six million "most-urgent" jobs waiting to be filled. Age was not a consideration.
It made me feel old.
The kids I met now didn't seem to know that the world hadn't always been like this. They carried guns instead of schoolbooks; they learned to handle rocket launchers before they learned to drive. They spent as much time at work as they did at school-and maybe that was all for the good; maybe they shouldn't know what had been lost. Maybe this way would be easier for them. Certainly it was more practical.
I tightened my windbreaker against the chill. "I thought this place was supposed to be warm," I yelled.
"It is," the kid hollered back. "This is the frozen warmth that we have every winter."
"Oh."
The Jeep bumped across a pothole and I gave up the attempt at conversation. The map showed we were almost there anyway: At the end of February, the president had signed into law the Military Jurisdiction Bill.
Which effectively finished the job of dismantling the last functioning local governments in the country, and replaced them with district military governors. This was a temporary measure, the president said, only for the duration of the ecological emergency.
Which meant anywhere from ten to three hundred years. However long it took.
The president also signed the Universal Service Bill-which effectively drafted every man, woman, child, robot, and dog in the nation into the United States Armed Forces. The long-range plan was to restructure the social fabric of the country-from polyester to khaki.
"The Chtorran invasion," the president had said, "is nothing less than a concerted attack on every single one of us; therefore, it is the responsibility of every single one of us to resist."
I remembered the speech. It was the "each and every" speech. The president had begun by quoting an obscure World War I doughboy named Martin Treptow. "I will fight cheerfully a
nd do my-utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone.' That-" said the president, "-is the kind of commitment that is wanted and needed today. Each of us must act as if the issue of the whole will be decided by our individual actions.
"What is at stake here is nothing less than the future of humanity on the planet. The shape of our tomorrow will be I determined by the course of action that we undertake today. Each and every one of us will be a part of that tomorrow, and the future will answer this question: what were we-as a people, and as individuals-willing to commit to?
"I know what the answer is. If tonight, I were able to move among you and speak to you as individuals-each and every one of you-and ask just this simple question: 'What is your commitment? What are you willing to do?' I know what your answers would be. You would tell me, 'Whatever is necessary, I will do what must be done. Nothing less than that will be acceptable.' Because that is the kind of people we are. That is the kind of species we are.
"We do not shrink from this challenge-we accept it. It is a fire in which we will forge a new strength. We will do what must be done.
"And so, my fellow Americans, let tonight be the turning point in this crisis, the moment of our resolve. Tonight, let us join together, each and every one of us-not in fear, but in pride-in the commitment to this, the greatest of all human challenges.
"Tomorrow, acting in your name, and as a focus for your will, I shall go before the Congress of this great nation and ask for a total mobilization of the resources, the technology, and especially the people of the United States of America. I shall ask the Congress to quickly and efficiently enact the legislation necessary to enable us to combat and defeat this ecological infestation!
"We shall go forward! We shall unite together under a new banner! We shall have a single national purpose: unconditional and total victory over the invader. Anything less will be insufficient and unacceptable to us-not just as Americans, not just as members of the human family, but as children of God!"
The president was interrupted forty-three times by applause. It had been a powerful speech, loaded with all the right emotional cues. And it had worked. The country had accepted the Mobilization Acts:
I'd heard there were only a few protests-not very large ones-and the organizers were quickly arrested. (That was a trial I'd be interested in following.) But I'd also heard that most people were relieved that the government finally had things under control. Or at least, appeared to.
Otherwise, I didn't pay much attention to the civilian news. Within three years, there wouldn't be any civilians. That was another of the things we were giving up. For the duration.
The kid pointed. "Is that it?"
Up ahead, almost hidden, nestled between two hills, were three gray domes. I recognized the type-inflatables, hardened with shelterfoam. They were partially shaded by a cluster of tall eucalyptus trees. The place might have looked friendly if the structures hadn't already begun to decay. There were cracks and holes in the walls. We were going to need a harder foam.
The sign said:
CALIFORNIA CONTROL STATION
SAN LUIS OBISPO DISTRICT
"That's it," I said.
The site was left over from the plagues. I wasn't sure what its purpose had been. My job was to check its suitability for our current operations.
The government's latest plan was to set up a chain of fortresses, each no more than two hours travel from the next. Each "safe zone" would be totally self-sufficient and able to withstand even the heaviest of Chtorran raids. The assault on Bismarck, North Dakota, was still too recent in everybody's minds. Those pictures were worse than the ones out of Show Low, Arizona.
Right now, it all depended on the roads. We were still too vulnerable, and we had to keep the interstates open and functioning. The northern California infestations were growing again, despite almost daily flyovers by the Air Force, and we expected the worms to start expanding south again sometime this year. The highways were going to be the backbone of our resistance; but first we had to worm-proof every useful installation on the route. We needed to establish caches of supplies and weapons. It was grim work-with grimmer implications: We were digging in for the duration.
But we'd borrowed one good idea from the worms. The domes that we associated with worm nests were really only the entrances. Once the worms established themselves in an area, they tunneled in. The greater part of the nest was always underground. We didn't know how deep a worm nest could get, but it had occurred to the Science Section that we could use the same technique. Now, we were looking for locations.
We pulled up in front of the station and I reached into the back of the Jeep for my rifle. I took it everywhere. I even slept with it. "Wait here," I said.
The first dome stood open to the weather. It looked like it had been the office.
The second dome had been some kind of processing plant, but I couldn't identify the machinery. One half of the room was sealed off by a double layer of glass. There was a loading bay behind the glass and a conveyer belt leading into the next dome. On this side of the glass there were a lot of pipes. Two generators. Several control consoles. A bank of monitor screens. And, behind another glass wall, showers and decontamination chambers and a rack of isolation suits.
There were a lot of these hasty little structures left over from the plague years: emergency shelters, storage depots, distribution facilities, decontamination centers, and isolated research labsbut this wasn't any of those.
I passed into the third dome and the answer was clear.
There were ovens here.
The realization hit me like a wave. My knees turned to water, I almost collapsed. Dammit! I thought I'd buried my grief! How many more times? Dammit! Dammit!
I pushed it down-again-and continued my inspection.
The plagues had killed more than seven billion people, more than sixty-five percent of the human race. More men than women had died, more white people than black people, more yellow people than white people. There were still hundreds of thousands of mummified bodies waiting to be discovered.
One of the continuing jobs of the aftermath years had been to clean up the dead. The bodies were deadly. They still carried spores.
There were hundreds of these stations all over the country. The fabrication of them was easy. The domes could be inflated, sprayed, and hardened in a day. The equipment could be installed and functioning by the end of the week. Some of the stations had even been run entirely by robots.
If you found a body, you picked up the phone and punched DEADBODY or DISPOSAL, or any one of a half-dozen other easy-to-remember mnemonics, and reported the location. The nearest retrieval van would be notified and the body would be picked up within two to four hours. The vans delivered the bodies to the nearest control station-an installation like this one-where they were burned.
The plagues still weren't over, but most of the dying was, so most of these stations had been shut down.
I could almost feel the heat from the ovens. And the stench. And-I don't know why-but I could imagine screaming too. Women and children and men. Why was I remembering that? I hadn't been near San Francisco when they'd
Never mind.
These domes were cold and empty now.
The dust was thick on the floor and a chill wind curled it up in little puffs.
All right, so now we knew what was here. I'd recommend that we not use this site. It wasn't defendable. Hidden as it was between two hills, it was a sitting target for anything that came over either of those crests. Maybe it was a good idea to keep a crematorium hidden out of sight, but not a fortress. No, this wouldn't do. I turned around-
McCain was standing in the door, gaping. "Wow," he said softly, looking around.
I lowered my rifle and said, "I thought I told you to wait." Annoyance put an edge on my voice.
"Sorry, sir, but you were gone a long time. I got concerned."
"Uh-huh," I said. I was beginning to understand McCain's relationship with orders.
He didn't think they applied to him. Right. That's why he was assigned to me.
Now he was testing me to see if I meant what I'd said. If I let him get away with this breach, he'd test me again; and if I nailed him to a wall for disobeying an order this minor, then I was a cruel martinet and he would be justified in subverting my authority whenever he could. Great game. Either way, I lose.
He stepped past me, his mouth hanging open in awe. "I heard about these," he said. "But I never saw one before." An idea occurred to him and he turned to look at me. "Is it safe?"
I didn't answer. I was too disgusted. With him. With the operation. With myself. When we got back-
"Hi," she said from behind us.
We both whirled at the same time
She couldn't have been more than six or seven. She was a tiny thing, standing in the middle of the doorway. Her dress had been yellow or orange once. Now it was brown. She had the biggest eyes.
I lowered my rifle, but only a bit. "Don't do that. You scared the hell out of me."
She looked uncertainly from me to McCain, then back to me again.
"Hi, honey," McCain said. "What's your name?" He slung his rifle over his shoulder and took a step toward her. She edged backward. "It's all right. We're friendly. That's Unca Jim and I'm Unca Jon."
"Jon what?" she asked. "Do you live here?"
McCain looked over at me. "She's awfully thin, and probably scared to death. Can I give her some of our rations?" He didn't wait for my answer. "Are you hungry, honey?"
She nodded slowly. Her eyes flickered back and forth between us.
A Rage for Revenge watc-3 Page 4