A voice came over the loudspeaker and said something in Spanish, then followed in accented English.
“La Jonquera; last stop before France. Prepare for passport and visa inspection.”
I got mine ready and waited, expecting armed Guardia Civil to burst in through one of the compartment doors, but nothing happened. The minutes slid into half an hour. I risked opening the shades to peek out and what I saw made me grab my duffel to lift it from the floor and slam it onto the empty seat beside me; the Guardia was there. Six APCs and about a company of soldiers had arranged themselves on my side of the train, and I knew without looking that it would be the same on the other side, that something had brought them in force, and as far as I knew, I was the one thing that could attract so much attention. My fléchette pistol, when disassembled, looked just like things one would take on travel—a flexi-tablet that wrapped to form the barrel’s electromagnetic coil, a pen that was the barrel, batteries, and several other things. I had started to gather them when it hit me: What was I doing? A pistol? I dropped the gear back into the bag, fished out the bourbon I had bought at Atocha, and decided to hell with it; now was as good a time as any to get drunk. The first swallow stung on the way down, and my already tender eyes watered more than they should have, but that wasn’t any reason to stop drinking. It would be my last one. When the Guardia came for me, I’d make sure that they took me smiling, and the second hit was a prolonged chug, where I swallowed a quarter of the bottle, coughing uncontrollably. Once the fit passed, the third pull went in smoothly.
Phillip isn’t really my son. I saw him now, just as clearly as before, and still there was nothing except the warmth that had begun to spread throughout my chest from the alcohol. He will be fine, I decided. I couldn’t invent love any more than I could assemble my pistol and hold off a company of armed men with APCs, no matter how much training I had, no matter how long I tried. Phillip was left with the lot he’d drawn, same as I’d been, because it was a Resnick family tradition, and maybe someday we’d get together at a reunion and compare notes on how difficult we’d all had it and get drunk together so that once the fists flew none of it would hurt too much, but—
The door in front of me flew open, interrupting my thoughts, and two men in combat suits entered, heading past the older couple and moving in my direction. I stood. I raised both hands in the air and saw that behind the two soldiers, an officer in normal uniform followed, staring at me with a confused look.
The armored men passed, pushing through the car’s rear door, and the officer drew even with my seat. I still had my hands up.
“I’ll go quietly,” I said.
The man looked even more confused. “Sit down. You’re American?”
I nodded.
“And you thought we had come for you?”
I nodded again. The man broke into laughter then, which he tried to control and keep quiet but couldn’t.
“Why?” he asked, smiling broadly.
I realized that the officer was doing his best to keep his eye on the door through which his men had gone, and it came to me: they hadn’t been looking for me at all. What the fuck answer could I give now?
I held up my half-empty bottle and tried to smile back at him. “I’ve had a little to drink.”
“Well, we’re not here for that. There’s a drug gang on board, two cars down, so have another for me,” he said. Once he had disappeared, I collapsed back into my seat, shaking, and finished the bottle.
An hour later, and after an abbreviated firefight, it was over. Compared to that, the standard passport and ID scan was anticlimactic, and although we were so far behind schedule it could have presented a problem for me in catching my flight from Paris, it didn’t matter. The train sped through the tunnel and across the French border, leaving Spain behind. I didn’t care if I never saw Madrid again. Madrid was where something terrible had happened, an awakening in my soul that I’d always suspected would come but which I’d always prayed would somehow be delayed until later: a self-doubt born from aging. Young men knew everything and never questioned an order, but not me, not anymore. Even the aches in my muscles stayed with me a little longer than normal, and in more lucid moments I noticed the face in the mirror had picked up thousands of lines that hadn’t been there the day before. Madrid had been the birthplace of questions and a fear of death, and now that it was receding behind me, now that I was well on my way to getting drunk, I swore that I’d never go back. From here it was Paris, then on to the States, where I’d detour to fulfill an obligation—one that I dreaded—and then Bangkok.
Sunshine, I had already decided, would be my last operation. I’d never take another.
THREE
Binge
Athens, Georgia, was one of those miracle towns that had avoided change during the war years and had even escaped the gristmill of progress for most of its existence so that the summer heat gave its million trees a buzz, the sounds of countless cicadas, their whine and hum ebbing and flowing. There used to be a civilian university there. In its place the walls of a state academy had been erected, and at each entry Marines stood in dress blues with loaded Maxwells, Athens’s streets now drained of cadets who would be away for vacation. A few lingered, though. Their heads had been shaved, and white plastic interfaces jutted from just above their left ear, a port where the kids could plug in, tune up, and dial through to the latest military tactics or von Clausewitz in simulation. They looked like the walking dead. The technique had been perfected on the satos, and it made me shiver with gratitude that I had learned the old-fashioned way, in a classroom and on obstacle courses. Our military had used these boys’ minds as a dumping ground, and the subjects shuffled down the sidewalk drained of energy, oblivious to anything except the need to salute any officer they passed. Things were gearing up. It was in the air. No news holo needed to report it to me, and none of the press would have noticed anyway because the smell of prewar was something I had learned to identify through decades of having wrapped myself in its sticky blanket. We’d just gotten out of the Subterrene War; would the military try it again this soon?
Wheezer’s wife, Michelle, lived in a centuries-old house on Boulevard and a sign marked it as historic, having belonged to someone named Cobb. Now it was for bereaved families—a halfway house, in which wives of the dead were given three years to adjust and remarry, find a job, or take the ultimate path of the state: breeding. I’d walked up and down outside the place all morning, smoking, drinking from a flask, just trying to find enough courage to approach the door and ignore the cameras attached to every lightpost in the area. But I didn’t have to go in; Michelle saw me and came out to the sidewalk, smiling.
“I was wondering if you’d ever show.”
“Nice place,” I said.
She took a cigarette and waited for me to light it, drawing in a deep breath. “They told me you got discharged. Medical. I figured they booted you because you finally did something wrong.”
“Yeah. I’m out. I have a plane to catch tomorrow from Atlanta, so I thought I’d stop by.”
“Were you discharged because of Wheezer?” she asked. “Or did you fuck up and get him killed?”
She was cold now, and her stare felt like twin ice picks jabbed into my throat, rendering me voiceless. What had the military claimed? I didn’t know how to convince her that it had nothing to do with me and decided it would have required me to tell her how he bought it—through his own stupidity by not listening.
“I didn’t get him killed, Michelle.”
“So it was just another training accident and you stick to the bullshit, just like he used to. You’re still in the Army, Bug; it’s all over your face and you and Wheezer were the worst liars ever.”
She was crying but with no noise. Tears streamed, and I wanted to rip the cameras from their brackets, stomp on them for preventing me from telling the truth.
“Yeah. Training accident.”
“Fuck you, Bug. And him too. Both of you, with your code of s
ilence and dreams of being supersoldiers while we stay behind and make babies. They used to have women in the service, you know. Soldiers. But I’ve spent the last months trying to figure out what kind of woman would want that duty, and I can’t come up with anything because none of this makes sense; we go to war, win or get our asses kicked, grab as much metal from the ground as possible, regroup and repopulate, then do it again. We were going to have a kid, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah, he told me.”
Michelle sighed and took another drag, then kicked a pebble from the sidewalk. “It’s too hot here. Ninety-seven in the shade, no breeze, and a hundred percent humidity. It’s like Thailand.”
“You ever been to Thailand?” I asked. Her observation stuck the jitters to me, like it had been some kind of portent; what reason did she even have to mention the place?
“No. Why would I go there when I’ve been here?”
“No reason. But this place isn’t so bad, Michelle, compared to some I’ve seen.”
She looked at me and smiled. “Wheezer said the same kind of thing—when we lived in Buffalo. The snow used to bury us, and we lived in one of those underground apartment complexes, ten feet under rock, under forty feet of snow. Winters were so long that I don’t know how we never had a kid.”
“You’re better off that way, without kids. Trust me.”
“Yeah.” Michelle nodded and blew smoke so it hovered, then sank, cooled to the point where it was heavier than the humid air, giving me the chance to change the subject.
“You know Bea accepted a housing post in one of the reclamation districts out west?” I asked. “She’s about forty klicks from the Phoenix hot zone. On days when wind blows from the west, they have to stay indoors from fear of radiation, and they didn’t even bother with new housing. She lives in one of those ancient, tiny units from when population was a problem.”
Michelle went silent for a second, staring at the sidewalk before looking at me. “Bea called last week. She left you, Bug.”
The words stunned me. It wasn’t that they hurt as much as it wasn’t a possibility that I’d considered. “What’d she say?”
“Phillip got tapped for an academy; Bea didn’t want to live down there in the desert, alone, so she asked for a state-sanctioned divorce and went into the breeding program.”
“The kid?” I asked, disinterested in Bea completely. “Which academy took Phillip?” But it wasn’t me asking, at least it didn’t feel like it, because the news had shattered everything. This is what it took to make me feel something—learning that Phillip would be one of them, the walking dead—but I tried to console myself with the knowledge that those who made it through recovered quickly, maybe in a matter of a few months because I’d seen the first ones here and there in the field, and the scientists figured nobody could hold that much information in their brains anyway. It left an imprint more than actual memories. The military data pushed into neurons until they made new connections and networks, which, when it was over, relaxed and dumped as much as they could—kind of like taking a final exam after cramming for three days; you forgot everything the next week. The difference was that with this system, the neural networks had been reformed and shaped to an optimal pattern for strategic and tactical thinking in combat, and those new networks lasted a lifetime. They liked them young because it was easier to shape the brain as it grew, and anyone who showed promise in early testing was snatched up and sent to an academy based on their scores; Annapolis was at the top, with West Point next, then Colorado, and downward from there.
“Annapolis,” she said.
Some parents would have been proud. Phillip isn’t my son. But I heard the whir of a camera as it panned above us and everything snapped, my mind flying into a place uncharted.
“What are you doing?” asked Michelle, and the camera’s voice came to life as soon as I started to scale the lightpost.
“You have been identified as Lieutenant Stanley Resnick. Attempts to tamper with the Assurance surveillance systems is a federal offense. Please get down; I’ve notified the proper authorities.”
But I didn’t listen. The speaker was the first to go, cutting off the thing’s voice in midsentence, and I grinned because I thought that it would at least be silent for a few minutes. But its voice came from a speaker down the street, booming until people started coming from their homes to see what was going on.
“Stanley Resnick. You are in violation of federal statute thirteen-U.S.C.-thirteen-sixty-one, destruction of government property. Desist now and wait for the authorities.”
“Fuck you!”
The camera had been fastened to the post more securely than its speaker, and I hung my entire body from the thing before its mounting cracked and the wires snapped, sending me to the sidewalk for a hard landing. It knocked the wind out of me. In the distance the sirens came, making me laugh, and I smashed what was left of the camera against the concrete, then jumped on pieces with my boots, grinding the plastic into tinier chunks.
I laughed again and saw people staring. “This is what we should all be doing,” I said, “getting them out of our brains. What right do they have to our neurons? I’m the only sane person on this street, and when I’m done here, I’m coming for the rest of you!”
Michelle grabbed my arm. “Stop it, Bug. Please stop. Now.”
“They’re all nutjobs, Michelle. Everyone except Wheezer, and they never gave Phillip the chance to be sane because now they’ll just force everything on him. He’ll wind up like Wheezer or worse. Nobody needs to know how to murder using a tab stylus; do you know what that does to your head after twenty years, especially if you’ve killed someone with one?”
“Well, then quit!”
Michelle’s words silenced everything, sending me into a spin. Now I saw the cop cars, screaming down Boulevard from both directions, but didn’t hear them because she had gotten me thinking, sent me into a trance where I had to examine an idea that had never occurred to me before.
A few seconds later the first cop tackled me, pushing me facedown into the Cobb house’s dirt yard. “You’re under arrest,” he said.
“I quit.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” He forced my hands back, snapping on plastic ties, and another officer ran up to stand over me.
“This guy’s crazy,” the first one said.
The second one squatted next to my head. “Son, are you on drugs? Have you been drinking? Have any needles or weapons in your pockets, anything we should know about?”
“I quit,” I repeated, wondering why they didn’t understand. “I quit because I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m finished.”
The second one stood and pulled off his cap, scratching his head and looking at the damaged camera. “Lock him up. We’ll wait for the Feds and see what they want to do.”
Michelle yelled good-bye as they dragged me to the closest car, but I was too amped up to respond, too busy grinning and feeling happy—so happy that I screamed it at her.
“I QUIT!”
Once they saw my war record, the Feds went easy and didn’t press charges but made me promise never to do it again. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. Part of me thought that jail was the right place for someone in my state, someone who was thinking of hopping a ride to Annapolis and greasing every son of a bitch who tried standing between me and Phillip, but who didn’t understand why he cared so much about a stupid kid. A chasm had opened. On either side were two versions of Stan Resnick: one the operator, the man whose marketable skill had been an ability to kill and sleep soundly; the other was a version within whom a dormant consciousness had awakened, someone who I despised because he had failed to materialize in time to save his family and whose regret for having failed was a liability. Had the Feds grasped this, they would have kept me in lockup. But now, on the streets, nobody could have predicted what I’d do, not even me, and once I remembered where I’d parked my rental the next decision would be difficult. There was still time for my fligh
t, and the old me screamed to just push on and complete the op, get to Bangkok and start killing again. The new me had other plans.
My car was still where I left it, near the Cobb house, and my gear was still in the trunk. But where to? I needed time to think, and Atlanta was the best place for it because from there I could hop a plane anywhere, and so I turned onto the bypass toward the highway, knowing that within three hours I’d be drunk. I started out west but after a few pulls on a bottle decided to hell with it and turned around for the backroads north, toward Annapolis, because whether he was my son or not, leaving Phillip to those bastards wasn’t going to work, and I didn’t want to deal with an airport or its security.
Small towns flew by in a haze of abandoned gas stations or restaurants run out of people’s homes, and my car was the most modern one that some of these places had seen in years. The rental had air-conditioning, but the hum sounded odd over the engine, a strange rattle that hadn’t been there the day before, and soon I began wondering if the vehicle itself was being monitored, transmitting my location and anything I said to one of the semis whose quantum core would parse the data and decide whether it was worth forwarding to one of Ji’s friends. It took a second to pull over. A few minutes later I had ripped apart a portion of the dashboard, not satisfied that the system was clean until the sharp plastic cut into both hands, sending my blood to puddle in the air-conditioning ductwork. From there it wasn’t hard to imagine a listening device was hidden in the radio or navigation systems. By the time I had finished convincing myself that those were also clean, along with the rest of the car, the entire dashboard had been removed, I’d ripped the seat cushions out, and covered myself in clay from slithering underneath to check the frame and undercarriage. When I crawled out, a group of three boys sat on bicycles about thirty feet away, each of them with one foot on the ground.
Subterrene War 03: Chimera Page 7