“Did you know that Harris is going to Washington?” Lee asked.
“We heard all about the medal,” a sailor said. “Everybody knows it. You’re the pride of the ship.”
“A medal?” I asked.
“You know more about it than we do,” Lee said.
“Harris,” the man said, putting down his drink and staring me right in the eye, “why else would you appear before Congress?”
Lee’s shuttle left at 0900 the next morning. I went down to the hangar and saw him and the other survivors off. On my way back to the barracks, I paused beside the storage closet that had once served as an office for Captain Gaylan McKay. Moving on, I passed the mess hall, which sat dark and empty. Not much farther along, I saw the sea-soldier bar. As I neared the barracks, I heard people talking up ahead.
“They mostly use light arms,” one of the men said, “automatic rifles, grenades, explosives. That’s about it. We can probably reduce the floor space in the shooting range.”
“They’re not going to blow shit up on board ship, are they?”
“I don’t know. They have to practice somewhere.”
Four engineers stood in the open door of the training ground. They paused to look at me as I turned the corner. I had seen one of them in the crewmen’s bar on several occasions. He smiled. “Sergeant Harris, I thought you were flying to Washington, DC.”
“I leave in two days,” I said. “You’re reconfiguring the training area?”
“Getting it ready for the SEALs. Huang ordered the entire deck redesigned. It will take months to finish everything.” The engineer I knew stepped away from the others and lowered his tone before speaking again. “I’ve never seen SEALs before, but I hear they’re practically midgets. That’s the rumor.”
As a guest of the House of Representatives, I expected to travel in style. When I reached the hangar, I found the standard-issue military transport—huge, noisy, and built to carry sixty highly uncomfortable passengers. The Kamehameha was still orbiting Little Man; we were nine miserable days from the nearest broadcast discs.
Feeling dejected, I trudged up the ramp to the transport. I remembered that Admiral Klyber had modified the cabin of one of the ships to look like a living room with couches and a bar. All I found on my flight were sixty high-backed chairs. After stowing my bags in a locker, I settled into the seat that would be my home for the next nine days. As I waited for takeoff, someone slid into the seat next to mine.
“Sergeant Harris, I presume,” a man with a high and officious voice said.
“I am,” I said, without turning to look. I knew that a voice like that could only belong to a bureaucrat, the kind of person who would turn the coming trip from misery to torture.
“I am Nester Smart, Sergeant,” the man said in his high-pitched snappy voice. “I have been assigned to accompany you to Washington.”
“All the way to Washington?” I asked.
“They’re not going to jettison me in space, Harris,” he said.
Nester Smart? Nester Smart? I had heard that name before. I turned and recognized the face. “Aren’t you the governor of Ezer Kri?”
“I was the interim governor,” he said. “A new governor has been elected. I was just there as a troubleshooter.”
“I see,” I said, thinking to myself that I knew a little something about shooting trouble.
“We have ten days, Sergeant,” Smart said. “It isn’t nearly enough time, but we will have to make do. You’ve got a lot to learn before we can present you to the House.”
Hearing Smart, I felt exhaustion sweep across my brain. He planned to snipe and lecture me the entire trip, spitting information at me as if giving orders.
The shuttle lifted off the launchpad. Watching the Kamehameha shrink into space, I knew Smart was right. I was an enlisted Marine. What did I know about politics? I took a long look at the various ships flying between the Kamehameha and Little Man, then sat back and turned to Smart. Now that I had become resigned to him, I took a real look at the man and realized that he was several inches taller than I. An athletic-looking man with squared shoulders and a rugged jaw, he looked more like a soldier than a pencil pusher.
“Now that I have your attention, perhaps we can discuss your visit to the capital,” he said, a smirk on his lips. “You may not be aware of it, but several congressmen protested our actions on Little Man. There’s been a lot of infighting between the House and the Senate lately.”
“Do you mean things like Congress passing a bill to cut military spending?”
“You’ve heard about that?”
“And the Senate calling for more orphanages?”
“Bravo,” Smart said, clapping his hands in nearly silent applause. “A soldier who reads the news. What will they come up with next?”
“I’m a Marine,” I said.
“Yes, I know that,” said Smart.
“I’m not a soldier. Do you call Navy personnel soldiers?”
“They’re sailors,” said Smart.
“And I am a Marine.”
Smart smiled, but his eyes narrowed, and he looked me over carefully. “A Marine who follows the news,” he said, the muscles in his jaw visibly clenched.
“Yes, well, unfortunately, we Marines can’t spend our entire lives shooting people and breaking things.” I looked back out the window and saw nothing but stars.
“You’ll find that I do not have much of a sense of humor, Sergeant. I don’t make jokes during the best of times, and this is not my idea of the best of times. To be honest with you, I don’t approve of Marines speaking on Capitol Hill.”
“Whose idea was it?” I asked.
“You’re considered a hero, Sergeant Harris. Everybody loves a hero, especially in politics, but not everybody loves you. There are congressmen who will try to twist your testimony to further their own political agendas.”
“The congressman from Ezer Kri?” I asked.
“James Smith? He’s the least of your worries. The last representative from Ezer Kri disappeared with Yamashiro. Smith is an appointee,” Smart said. “If you run into trouble, it’s going to come from somebody like Gordon Hughes.”
“From Olympus Kri?” I asked.
“Very good,” Smart said. “The representative from Olympus Kri. He will not take you head-on. You’re one of the Little Man 7. Picking a fight with you would not be politic. He might try to make the invasion look like the first hostile action in an undeclared war. The question is how he can make Little Man look illegal without openly attacking you.”
So I’m still a pawn? I said to myself. A hero who would shortly be among the first clones ever made an officer, and I was still a pawn . . . story of my life. I felt trapped. “Will you be there when I go before the House?”
“Harris, I’m not letting you out of my sight until you leave Washington. That is a promise.”
Suddenly traveling with Smart did not seem so bad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Do you know your way around Washington, DC?” Nester Smart asked. The way I pressed my face against the window to see every last detail should have answered his question. The capital of the Unified Authority lay spread under a clear afternoon sky. With its rows of gleaming white marble buildings, the city simply looked perfect. This was the city I saw in the news and read about in books. “I’ve never been here before.”
Our transport began its approach, flying low over a row of skyscrapers. I saw people standing on balconies.
Off in the distance, I saw the Capitol, an immense marble building with a three-hundred-foot dome of white marble. Two miles wide and nearly three miles deep, the Capitol was the largest building on the face of the Earth. It rose twenty stories into the air, and I had no idea how deep its basements ran.
“The Capitol,” I said.
“Good, Harris. You know your landmarks,” Smart said, with a smirk.
The architect who designed the Capitol had had an eye for symbolism. If you stretched its corridors into one lon
g line, that line would have been twenty-four thousand miles long, the circumference of the Earth. The building had 192 entrances—one for each of the Earth nations that became part of the Unified Authority. The building had 768 elevators, one for every signer of the original U.A. constitution. There were dozens of subtle touches like that. When I was growing up, every schoolboy learned the Capitol’s numerology.
I also saw the White House, a historic museum that once housed the presidents of the United States. The scholars who framed the Unified Authority replaced the executive branch with the Linear Committee. If the rumors were true, the Linear Committee sometimes conducted business in an oval-shaped office inside the White House.
A highly manicured mall with gleaming walkways and marble fountains stretched between the White House and the Capitol. Thousands of people—tourists, bureaucrats, and politicians—walked that mall. From our transport, they looked like dust mites swirling in a shaft of light.
“I can barely wait to get out and explore the city,” I said, both anxious to see the capital of the known universe and to get away from Nester Smart.
“You are going to spend a quiet evening locked away in Navy housing,” Smart said. “We cannot afford for you to show up tomorrow with a hangover.”
Our transport began its vertical descent to a landing pad. Smart slipped out of his chair and pulled his jacket off a hanger. He smoothed it with a sharp tug on the lapels. Reaching for the inside breast pocket of the coat, he pulled a business card out and wrote a note on the back of it. After giving it a quick read, he handed it to me.
“There is a driver waiting outside. He will take you to the Navy base. Show this card to the guard at the gate. Also, your promotion is now official. Befitting your war-hero status, you are now a lieutenant in the Unified Authority Marines.
“You will find your new wardrobe in the apartment. I suppose congratulations are in order, Lieutenant Harris.”
The White House had guest rooms, but I was not invited to stay in those hallowed halls. Those rooms were reserved for visiting politicians and power brokers, the kinds of people who made their living by sending clones to war. Spending the night in the barracks suited me fine. The guards outside the Navy base were not clones. The one who inspected my identification had blond hair and green eyes. He looked over my ID, then read Smart’s note. “You’re one of the Little Man 7, right?” he asked. “I hear that you’re speaking in the House of Representatives tomorrow. Congress doesn’t usually send visitors out here.”
“Yeah, lucky me.”
“Officers’ country is straight ahead,” the guard said. “You can’t miss it.
“Captain Baxter, our base commander, left a message for you. He wants to meet with you. You’ll want to shower and change your uniform before presenting yourself. Baxter’s a stickler on uniforms.”
My driver dropped me at the barracks door. Carrying my rucksack over my shoulder, I found my room. The lock was programmed to recognize my ID card. I swiped my card through a slot, and the door slid open. It was the first time I had ever stayed in a room with a locking door. I considered that for a moment.
I had spent my life sharing barracks with dozens of other men. I heard them snore, and they heard me. We dressed in front of each other, showered together, stowed our belongings in lockers. With the exception of my two weeks of leave in Hawaii, the “squad bay” life was the only life I knew. Now I stepped into a room with a single bed. The room had a closet, a dresser, and a bathroom. Smiling and feeling slightly ashamed, I placed my ruck down, walked around the room turning on a lamp here, dragging my finger across the desk there, and allowing water to run from a faucet. I took a shower and shaved. Nine days of travel had left my blouse badly wrinkled; but it was an enlisted man’s blouse. In the closet, I found a uniform with the small gold bar of a second lieutenant on the shoulder. I dressed as an officer and left to meet the base commander.
“May I help you?” a civilian secretary asked.
I told her that I was a guest.
“Lieutenant Harris, of course,” she said. “Please wait here.” Watching me as she stepped away from her desk, she almost tripped over one of the legs of her chair. She turned and sped into a small doorway, emerging a moment later with several officers. That kind of reception would have made me nervous except that the officers seemed so happy to meet me.
“Lieutenant Harris?” a captain in dress whites asked.
“Sir,” I said, saluting.
The entire company broke into huge, toothy smiles. “A pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant,” the captain said, saluting first, then reaching across the counter and shaking my hand. “I’m Geoffrey Baxter.” The other officers also reached across and shook my hand.
“Do you have a moment? Are you meeting with anyone this evening?”
“No,” I said.
“What?” gasped another captain. “No reception? They’re not putting you up in a stateroom?
Outrageous! These politicians treat the military like dogs.”
Baxter led me into a large office, and we sat in a row of chairs. As the receptionist brought us drinks, the officers crowded around me, and more officers strayed into the room. “I’m not sure that I understand. Were you expecting me?”
“Expecting you? We’ve been waiting for you,” Baxter said. “Harris, you’re famous around here.” He looked to the other officers, who all nodded in agreement. “Your photograph is all over the mediaLink.”
“My photograph?” I asked. “How about my men?”
“They’re clones, aren’t they? Everybody knows what they look like,” an officer with a thick red mustache commented.
“Have you had dinner yet?” Baxter asked.
“I was going to ask for directions to the officers’ mess,” I said.
“No mess hall food for you. Not tonight,” another officer said. “Not for you.”
“I know you’ve just arrived, but are you up to a night out?” Baxter asked. I smiled.
“I know a good sports bar,” the officer with the mustache said. The idea of a place with loads of booze and marginal food appealed to all of us.
Fourteen of us piled into three cars and headed toward the heart of DC. The Capitol, an imposing sight during the day, was even more impressive at night. Bright lights illuminated its massive white walls, casting long and dramatic shadows onto its towering dome. Just behind the Capitol, the white cube of the Pentagon glowed. The Pentagon, which had been rebuilt into a perfect cube, retained its traditional name in a nod to history. Seeing the buildings from the freeway, I could not appreciate their grand size.
So many buildings and streetlights burned through the night that the sky over Washington, DC, glimmered a pale blue-white. The glow of the city could be seen from miles away. I could not see stars when I looked up, but I saw radiant neon in every direction, spinning signs, video-display billboards, bars and restaurants with facades so bright that I could shut my eyes and see the luminance through closed eyelids. I had never imagined such a place. Dance clubs, restaurants, bars, casinos, sports dens, theaters—the attractions never endled.
And the city itself seemed alive. The sidewalks were filled. Late-night crowds bustled across breezeways between buildings. We arrived at the sports bar at 1930 hours and found it so crowded that we could not get seated before 2030, did not start dinner until nearly 2130, and chased down dinner with several rounds of drinks.
The officers I was with held up at the bar better than the clones from my late platoon. Most clones got drunk on beer and avoided harder liquor, but Baxter and his band of natural-borns kept downing shots long after their speech slurred. One major drank until his legs became numb. We had to carry him to his car.
We did not get home until long after midnight. I did not get to bed until well after 0200. I’m not making excuses, but I am explaining why I did not arrive at the House of Representatives in satisfactory condition. Sleep-addled and mildly buzzed from a long night of drinking, I found myself leaning against the wall of
the elevator for support as I rode up to meet Nester Smart. The doors slid open, and the angry former interim governor of Ezer Kri snarled, “What the hell happened to you?” Dressed for bureaucratic battle, Smart wore a dark blue suit and a bright red necktie. With his massive shoulders and square frame, Smart looked elegant. But there was nothing elegant about the twisted expression on his face.
“I’m just a little tired,” I said. “I had a late night out with some officers from the base.”
“Imbecile,” he said, with chilling enunciation. “You are supposed to appear before the House in two hours, and you look like you just fell out of bed.”
“You mind keeping your voice down?” I asked as I stepped off the lift. Rubbing my forehead, I reminded myself that I was in Smart’s arena. He knew the traps and the pitfalls here. Smart led me down “Liberty Boulevard,” a wide hallway with royal blue carpeting and a mural of seventeenth-century battle scenes painted onto a rounded ceiling. Shafts of sunlight lanced down from those windows. The air was cool, but the sunlight pouring in through the windows was warm.
“This is an amazing city,” I said. “It must be old hat for you.”
“You never get used to it, Harris,” Smart said. “That’s the intoxicating thing about life in Washington, you never get used to it.”
As we turned off to a less spectacular corridor, Smart pointed to a two-paneled door. “Do you know what that is?” Smart asked.
I shook my head.
“That, Harris, is the lion’s den. That is the chamber. Behind those doors are one thousand twenty-six congressmen. Some of them want to make you a hero. Some of them will use you to attack the military. None of them, Lieutenant, are your friends. The first rule of survival in Washington, DC, is that you have no friends. You may have allies, but you do not have friends.”
“That’s bleak,” I said. “I think I prefer military combat.”
“This is the only battlefield that matters, Lieutenant,” Smart said. “Nothing you do out there matters. Everything permanent is done in this building.”
The Clone Republic Page 33