“No,” I said, feeling depressed.
“This here is the smallest Marine outpost in the whole damned U.A. Empire.”
I did not flinch, but Dalmer’s use of the word “Empire” gave me a start. The commanders who ran both the orphanage and the basic training facility continually grilled us on the difference between expansion and imperialism.
“How many men?” I asked, not sure that I wanted to know. Most outposts had anywhere from three thousand to five thousand Marines. I had heard of outposts on isolated moons that only had fifteen hundred men. Judging by the size of this three-story barracks building, I guessed the population of Gobi Station to be at least one thousand.
“Including you, forty-one,” Dalmer said. “The good news is that you don’t have to share your room. The bad news is that if the locals ever decide they don’t like us, they could trample our asses out of here. Of course, they barely notice us. Even with you we’re one man shy of a full platoon. Besides, they are so busy with their own wars, they hardly notice us.”
“So there is some action out here?” I asked.
Dalmer stared at me. “Fresh out of boot and in a rush to kill, eh?”
“I would hate to think that I wasted my time in boot camp,” I said.
Dalmer laughed. “You wasted it, Harris. We have standing orders to stay out of local feuds.” He led me into the barracks, an ancient building constructed of thick sandstone blocks with rows of modern dormitory cells wedged into its bulky framework. Each cell was designed to house four people, but no one lived in the cells on this floor. The doors hung open revealing dusty quarters. Gobi might once have played an integral part in the Unified Authority’s grand expansion, but that time clearly had passed. A thin layer of sand covered the floor, and I saw twisting trails where snakes had slithered across the floor.
“You can have this entire floor to yourself if you want,” Dalmer said. “Most of us prefer the bottom floor; it’s cooler in the summer. Cooler in the winter, too.”
“I take it this is summer?” I asked.
Dalmer snickered. “Boy, this is the dead of winter. Why do you think everybody’s got their helmets off? We want to enjoy the cool air while it lasts.”
He might have been joking, but I doubted it. He might have been hazing me. Maybe a battalion of grunts was hiding in some far end of the base watching me on a monitor and giggling as Godfrey and Dalmer dressed up in faded armor and tricked the gullible newbie into believing he had been assigned to Hell. My suspicions abruptly died when Dalmer brought me to the bottom floor. An entire division would not have cluttered the barracks so convincingly if they had worked on it for an entire month.
The only light in the chamber came from windows carved in the meter-thick walls. As my eyes adjusted, I saw hundreds of particle-beam pistols piled in one corner of the floor.
Dalmer followed my gaze and figured out what had caught my attention. “Broken,” he said. “Sand gets in the housing and scratches the mirrors. Leaves ’em worthless.”
On the open market, PB pistols sold for $2,000. Around the Corps, bullets were the ammunition of choice, but you could not count on them in low gravity or thin air. Particle-beam weapons were more difficult to maintain. You had to worry about prisms and energy coils—modular components that needed to be changed on a regular basis. “Why don’t you change out the mirrors?” I asked.
Dalmer spit out a bitter laugh. “Fix them? Gobi Station used to be the outermost armory of the Cygnus Arm. We have a thousand guns for every man on this base.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “Make that two thousand. We use them for shooting lizards. It’s easier to grab a new gun than to requisition replacement parts. Hell, Harris, it’s been two years since anybody’s even been out to the firing range. This is Gobi.”
He paused and stared into my eyes, probably wondering if I grasped his meaning. When I did not ask any questions, Dalmer continued. “Of course, we can’t just throw broken weapons away, or the locals will steal them. Godfrey dumped a load once. I think we armed half the planet.”
“Are there problems with the locals?” I asked.
“Not much. Some of them consider themselves gun-slingers, but it’s all petty stuff. I doubt the Senate loses much sleep over Gobi.” Dalmer turned and headed into the barracks.
Most of the windows opened to that pond in the courtyard. Flies and a sulfurous smell wafted in on the trace of a breeze. I could barely wait to snap on my helmet and breathe filtered air, but Tron Dalmer did not seem to mind the stench. Nor was he bothered by the rest of the squalor—uniforms left hanging off furniture, plates of stale food, unmade bunks. Looking around the floor, I would have thought that spoiled children manned this outpost, not Marines.
“That was Hutchins’s cell over there,” Dalmer said.
The door swung open at my touch, and I immediately knew that someone, likely Dalmer or Godfrey, had searched through Hutchins’s belongings. His clothes were piled on the floor, his desk was swept clean, and his bed was stripped bare. Every drawer in the cell hung open from the wall.
“How long has this room been empty?” I asked. I wanted to ask Dalmer if he had found anything of value.
“Two, maybe three months,” Dalmer said. “Did Godfrey tell you about Hutchins?”
“Only that Hutchins committed suicide.”
“Put a goddamned particle-beam pistol in his mouth . . . Set his goddamned brain on fire.”
Dalmer left and I set up my quarters. Using a bloodstained sheet I found wadded in a drawer, I wrapped the late Private Hutchins’s belongings into a tight ball and stuffed them in a corner of the room. “Why am I here?” I asked myself. “Why the hell am I here?”
The only time we met as a platoon was at breakfast. Once or twice per week, Glan Godfrey briefed us about recent communiqués from fleet headquarters as we ate. Nobody listened during Godfrey’s briefings. We were as far from fleet headquarters as you could get without leaving the galaxy, and nothing command had to say seemed of any significance out here.
On most days, the platoon divided up after breakfast. Godfrey and Dalmer generally hung around the base. God knows why. The rest of the platoon piled into a couple of trucks and rode into town. They generally returned before supper. I think they wanted to stay out later, but the locals closed shop before sundown.
I spent my first month jogging around the outside wall of the base, holding target practice at the firing range, and trying to convince other men to join me. Most of the men laughed at the idea of drilling. Godfrey and Dalmer would not even discuss it. One corporal, Lars Rickman, came out and trained with me twice, but he quickly lost interest.
After six weeks I gave up on training alone and took my first trip into Morrowtown. Godfrey congratulated me on having more starch than Hutchins. The last new recruit before me, Hutchins, stopped training after less than one week. Life around the outpost became friendlier after I said I would go to Morrowtown.
Located a mere two hundred miles west of our outpost, Morrowtown had sixty thousand residents. On Gobi, it was the big league.
A word about our trucks—they were open-air transports with no armor and no guns. Beside the trucks, the only other vehicle in our motor pool was a dilapidated tank, generally referred to as “Godfrey’s Go-Cart,” that sat up to its axles in mud in the center of our courtyard. Oil trickled from the Go-Cart’s crank case and seeped into the pond; but as Dalmer often reminded us, “It all gets filtered out.”
Our trucks could have passed for farm equipment except that they had tank treads instead of tires. They were flatbeds with removable benches. Sizing up these twenty-foot-long Jurassic beasts, I could not begin to guess their age. They might have arrived with the first ship to land on Gobi.
“Shouldn’t these have guns or rockets mounted on them?” I asked Rickman, as we loaded up.
“Why?” he asked, looking mildly interested. He was the only man stationed on Gobi who even partially resembled a Marine. Not only had he at least attempted to train wit
h me, he still polished his armor and carried a sidearm. When I did not answer his question about why we might want to carry a rocket launcher on the trucks, however, he mumbled something about hating fresh recruits.
Rickman was a clone, of course. All of the other Marines on Gobi were clones. Like Godfrey, Rickman had bleached hair and a gaunt face. The only Marine that Gobi had not made thin was Taj Guttman. Guttman had grown so fat that he no longer fit into his armor. He did not bother with his leg shields or boots; and he fastened his chestplate only at the top, wearing it around his neck like a stiff poncho. I doubt he would have bothered with armor if it were not for the climate controls in the bodysuit. Godfrey referred to Guttman as “Four-Cheeks,” meaning he had enough ass for two men. The name stuck, and everybody used it.
As the new kid on base, I got to sit next to Guttman as we drove to Morrowtown. He only talked about one thing—poker. I had never played cards. No one gambled at UAO #553. We talked about gambling and how much we would enjoy it, but young clones are not much for breaking rules. As the lone human in the orphanage, I had tried my best to blend in.
We didn’t play cards in boot camp, either. Until I arrived on Gobi, I assumed that all Marines trained hard and obeyed the rules. Of course, none of these Marines knew they were clones. Straight out of the tube, combat clones had brown hair and brown eyes, but through the miracle of neural programming, they thought of themselves as natural-born people with blond hair and blue eyes. That was how they saw themselves, too. When clones looked at themselves in the mirror, they saw blond hair and blue. God knows how the scientists pulled that off, but they did. And since clones were also hardwired not to speak about cloning among themselves, orphanages managed to raise thousands of clones without one clone telling the next he was synthetic.
Growing up, I used to eat in a cafeteria with thousands of identical cadets who never mentioned that everybody around them looked and sounded precisely alike. They could eat, shower, and shave side by side and not see the similarities they shared with the men next to them because of cerebral programming in their DNA. Even though they knew everyone else was a clone, they never suspected their own synthetic creation. Around the orphanage, people used to say that clones were wired to self-destruct if they ever understood the truth of their origin.
“Have you ever played poker?” Guttman asked. “It’s a great game. Laying your cards and catching everyone flat-footed”—he grinned as if in ecstasy—“there’s no better feeling.”
“I’ve never played,” I said.
“Stick with me, you’ll make a fortune,” Guttman said, sounding elated finally to have somebody who would listen to him.
Not having much to say to Guttman, I watched the desert as we drove. All I saw was sand and rock and clear blue sky. The ride lasted two hours—two hours trapped with Guttman. I was ready to hop off the truck and walk after the first hour. By the time we finally saw the city, my head hurt from all of Guttman’s babbling.
Built almost entirely out of sandstone bricks, Morrowtown blended into its environment. I saw the shapes of the buildings long before I realized what they were.
“Here we are,” Rickman yelled as he parked in a wide alleyway. Our muffler sputtered, and the chassis trembled as the engine coughed smoke.
“I hate these trucks,” Guttman moaned.
With few words spoken, the platoon divided into groups. Some men went to a saloon where they got drunk on a daily basis. They could not afford clean water, but whiskey and beer were in the budget. Others quietly kept girlfriends in town. Not wanting a generation of half-clone children, Unified Authority scientists designed clones that were sterile, but that did not mean that they left out the sex drive. “The goal is to copulate, not populate,” a drill sergeant once told me.
Guttman waited for me beside the truck. “Come with me. I’ll get you into the best game in Morrowtown,” he said in a secretive tone. Not having heard any better offers, I went with Guttman. “Leave your helmet in the truck. It makes you look silly,” he added.
“I think I’ll keep it on just the same.” Okay, I was already absent without leave, technically speaking, but I saw no point in adding “out of uniform” to the list of charges.
“Suit yourself, but you’re going to scare the locals,” Guttman said, sounding a bit deflated. But nobody seemed scared of me. The people ignored us. Children played happily as we passed them on the street. A gang of teenagers stood on a sidewalk flipping coins against a wall. They paused to stare at us, then went on gambling.
It shouldn’t be like this,I thought to myself. They should be a little afraid of us. Guttman, bobbing his head and waving at everyone we passed, clearly did not agree with me. His juvenile excitement showed in his chubby smile as he led me into a squat building that looked more like a bunker than a bar. Perhaps he liked the idea of showing off a new friend. Maybe he just loved playing cards. He came to this game every day and never grew tired of it.
“Ah, good, Taj Guttman. Excellent,” a soft voice mumbled with an accent so thick that I could barely understand it. A short man with a round body and a head that was as bald as an egg approached us. He could not have been taller than five-foot-two. He smiled as if he was glad to see us, but something in his oily voice said otherwise.
“Kline.” The name splashed out of Guttman’s mouth.
“You are early today,” the little round man continued, as I strained to decipher his words. This was the first time I had actually heard a Gobi native speak. He stretched vowels and slurred consonants so that when he next said, “And you have brought a friend,” it sounded like, ’aaaant you heeef broood a fryent.” He flashed his smile at me as he sized me up. “We have another visitor today as well.” In Kline’s thick tongue, the word “visitor” sounded like “fiztor.”
Guttman turned to me, and said in an unnecessarily loud voice, “This ugly mutt is Kline.” Up to this point in the trip, Guttman had struck me as being slow and stupid, but he had a way with languages. He matched Kline’s accent perfectly when speaking to the locals, but had not a trace of an accent when speaking to me. Then he turned to Kline, and said, “And this is Harris. Sorry about the helmet; I told him that it makes him look silly.”
“Harris” sounded like “Haaritz.” “Silly” was “tziillie.”
“I’m just here to watch,” I said.
“Watch?” Kline asked as his smile faded. “This game is for players only.”
“He’ll play,” Guttman said.
“Perhaps I should leave then,” I said. “I’ve never played, and from everything Guttman tells me, this is no game for beginners.”
“Nonsense,” Guttman chimed in. “Of course he’ll play.”
“I wish you would,” a soft voice said in beautiful Earth English. Someone had moved in behind me as Guttman and Kline led the way to the card room where several more players milled around a table. “I’m new at the game myself, and I hate the idea of getting swindled alone.” A tall man with thinning white hair and a well-trimmed beard stepped out from the shadows along the wall.
“You must have money to burn,” I said. “Guttman here is a card shark.”
“Is he?” the man said, his eyes narrowing. His mouth was all teeth and grins, but the warm smile did not extend to his eyes.
Guttman giggled nervously. “It’s all just fun.”
“I’m living on enlisted-man wages,” I said, “and my next check does not arrive for a week. I doubt I even have enough cash to buy my way into the game.”
“You may wager your weapon,” Kline said. “Sidearms are as good as cash at this table.”
“What was that?” I asked in astonishment.
“Don’t worry,” Guttman said, giggling nervously. He stepped closer to me, and whispered, “I never come here with cash.”
“I think I’m in the wrong place,” I said, already deciding that I would report this to Godfrey the moment we got back to base. I had never imagined such insubordination.
“I have no objection to
your watching the game,” the bearded man said.
“They’ll pass information over their communications link,” another player complained, looking at my helmet. “He’ll tell Taj what we have in our hands.”
“As I understand it, that link only works if both soldiers are wearing helmets,” the bearded man said.
“What do you say?” Guttman asked Kline.
Kline considered. “Sit behind Guttman, and no walking around.”
I agreed.
“And I insist that you check your weapon,” said Kline, pointing at my pistol.
Seeing me hesitate, Guttman chimed in. “It will be safe. You cannot go anywhere in Morrowtown wearing your sidearm.”
Though I did not like the idea, I unstrapped my holster and handed it to Kline.
The seven men closed in around a large round table. I sat in a chair behind Guttman and watched as Kline dealt each player five cards—two facing up and three facing down. Guttman slipped his pudgy thumb under the corner of the three downturned cards and peered at their values.
The card room had no windows. The only light in the room was the pale glow of a lamp hanging over the table. I would not have been able to read Guttman’s cards had I removed my helmet. Our visors had lenses and filters designed for battle situations. Using optical commands, I activated a night-for-day lens that brightened my vision, then I used a magnification lens to get a better look at Guttman’s cards. When he bent the corners to have a look, I saw that he had two threes and an ace on the table. The cards that had been placed faceup were a king and a six.
Guttman slid the ace, the king and the six forward. Kline collected each man’s rejected cards and replaced them with cards from the deck. As Guttman fanned out his new cards, I saw that he had added a face card, a ten, and another three. He closed his hand and started bouncing in his seat.
The bids went around the table. When it came to Guttman, he pushed his pistol into the center of the table, and Kline handed him a tray covered with chips. I had no idea what Guttman’s new cards meant, but judging by his happy wheezing, he liked them.
The Clone Republic (Clone 1) Page 2