War & Space: Recent Combat

by Ken MacLeod

  I walked and walked. I kept counting out my options.

  I showed up at the Wake and Amanda Sam was not there. The bartender offered me a drink on the house. “Amanda Sam says you’re a good one. Here’s one for the road.”

  I decided that this drink was my farewell. I would never know what happened. I would never see Noriko again. Temptation is the sun drawing in a comet. Good sense is just some distant steady orbit.

  I had a second beer and sat off in a corner. Amanda Sam walked in, and she scanned the tavern as if looking for someone. When she saw me, she smiled, and sat down next to me. “Hi, gorgeous,” she said. “Buy me a brandy.”

  I told her my ship left tomorrow afternoon. She said she’d miss me. I told her about the unit being rebirthed tomorrow. I told her that I wanted to stay, to see if Noriko was among them.

  “Your soldier girl won’t be there,” she said.

  “But they’ll be able to tell me what’s happened. I’ll know my story.”

  “That story was part of your other life,” she said.

  I told her that, in the end, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have a place to stay. Staying was just wishful thinking.

  “You can stay with me,” she said.

  Someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned, and standing there was a couple. “Oh,” she said, “I was looking for you two. It’s been a while.” She turned and waved to me.

  The next morning she was at my door and walked me down to the port. “If you want to stay, you’re going to have to establish residency and profession. There are no tourists here. I created documentation that says you’re living with me and that you’re my partner.”

  “Your partner, like we’re married?”

  “No, hon. Profession, I said profession. I’m more than happy to lie about your profession.” And she stopped me here. She looked me in the eye. “Your money is going to run out. You’re not going to find the soldier girl. All you lost was a few months of another life. How badly do you need them, hon?” Her two hands wrapped themselves warmly around one of mine. Her green eyes were warm. “You have a free ticket home. Take it.”

  When we found the right office, she produced the document, and after some back and forth she got the full price of what the military had paid for the ticket. She laid down her pinky to get half; I got the other half. “We’ll say that’s rent for a month,” she said. What was left of my per diem had evaporated the moment the transaction was complete; all I had was one-sixth of the cost of passage.

  Her apartment was tiny, half the size of the guesthouse room, a double bed, drawers built into the wall, and a cubicle for what’s necessary. There was no sofa to sleep on, no place to stretch out on the floor with a blanket.

  She kissed me. “You don’t have to thank me tonight. We can wait until you’re ready. Go see if you can find your girl.”

  At midday I haunted the hospital foodstop. I listened for whispers. The nurse turned up again, this time alone, and I stepped up to the food vendor so that I’d be next to her. She punched out her meal request. I found something to say, and we ended up at the same table. I remember that she looked familiar, that suddenly I worried she was the nurse who’d birthed me. But if she was, she didn’t seem to recognize me. I was worried that she’d ask me all sorts of questions about where I lived, what I did, but she was more than happy to complain about her husband, her job, the difficulty of having so many troops coming back to life.

  I thought of the ship, how it was heading for the edge of this stellar system. I felt like there might be an alternate me on board, heading off, finding people to talk with, books to read, maybe even a lover, to ease the burden of three months of travel. But here I was, back in the hospital, listening to the nurse telling me how the war must be going badly because they’d received orders to start growing more bodies, to prepare another unit’s worth for rebirth.

  I tried to get a sense of how many of these men and women she saw. Would she recognize a picture of Noriko if I showed it to her? Every now and then, she groused about something, then swore me to silence. “I’m really not supposed to talk about that.” Could I give her Noriko’s name and combat number to input into a computer? I didn’t dare.

  In the evenings I stayed at the Wake as long as I could, only going home when I had drunk too much to stand. In bed, I pretended to be asleep while Amanda Sam cuddled up to me, one hand draped gently over my penis, her own penis erect against my backside. She whispered how much she liked me and desired me until one of us actually drifted off. More and more, she spent her evenings with me. If she disappeared, she told me which taverns she would visit. I realized how little work she’d been getting, what a relief it must have been to get one-sixth of the cost of passage. “The whole economy is drying up,” she said to me. “If they don’t give these reborns any shore leave, this place will go crazy. It happened once before, just watch.”

  Suddenly I saw it, the way locals glared at me if I looked at them too long, the clipped sentences, the constant complaint in almost every conversation. The nurse joined me with a therapist friend. It was one of my therapists. He was sure to ask what I was doing here, but no, he talked about how he preferred working with civilians and officers. When you do therapy in groups . . . He shook his head bitterly. “I hope they don’t send them back to battle before shore leave. There’s a major here who thinks shore leave is just for fun. My soldiers—” His voice became high-pitched so the major might have been a woman or castrato “—don’t need to get drunk and get laid to fight well. Their morale is just fine. Well, fuck their morale. How about their fine motor skills? How about their gross motor skills? That’s what shore leave is about. They’re brand-new bodies and they need the real world to operate in before you throw on some body armor and throw them out into free fall.”

  He kept going on, and I barely listened. He was angry enough, I thought, that maybe he would tell me anything, but the nurse was advising him to watch what he was saying, and he was nodding, his face red, his look recalcitrant, then chagrined.

  One night, Amanda Sam insisted that we go back home—I always thought of it as the apartment—before I’d drunk too much. “You’ll spend up all your money,” she said, “and then what?” Back at her place, she said she wanted me so badly that she would be Amanda for me. I soaked up her skin’s warmth like a sponge.

  It probably wasn’t the next day, but it’s the next thing I remember, how suddenly sections of Haven were flooded with stumbling reborns. Their hair was wild and shaggy. Most of them looked like they’d chosen to be in their twenties, but a few, probably officers, were in their thirties. A guy, his face dour, concentrated on every step he took. Another stumbled, fell, got up, laughing, looking to his more cautious friends. I kept walking where they walked. Every time I saw tanned skin, black hair, compact body, I’d walk to catch up, but before I even caught a glimpse of the face, I’d see that the shoulders were too wide, the hips too flat.

  And what would I say to her, if she was there? I watched for her at various lunchrooms, where I saw the newborns shake their forks at each other as if angry, but their faces showed a range of reactions to their bodies’ refusal to learn their way through the world instantly.

  The presence of all these newborns made Amanda Sam happy. “Tonight, the best brandy for me, the best beer for you,” she said, even though I think Haven only stocked one variety of each, the drinkable and the barely drinkable. I remember one night, probably the first night the newborns were around, I just sat at the Wake, drinking beer, imagining that Noriko would walk in, that she would take me off to a guesthouse room, and we’d make love. Several other nights I wandered from tavern to tavern, maybe checking in some dinner spots beforehand, looking for Noriko, knowing I wouldn’t see her, from time to time running into Amanda Sam gaily chatting with some man or woman, once a couple. Each time she waved to me, offered me that big smile that said, I’m delighted to see you, keep walking.

  I spoke with some of the newborns. I heard the stories. One gu
y told me that their goal had been to take an orbital without destroying it, which meant they had to board it without using projectile weapons. At one point they were on the skin of the world, breaking into a compartment, and the enemy had fighters flying above. It was strange how silent everything was except for the way everyone was yelling orders and those voices reverberated in your helmet, voices darting about you as if your head was stuck in a fishbowl. The enemy couldn’t risk projectiles, either. They used harpoons, a joke when you first heard it in training, but when one pierced your suit, when you watched your air drain away as you were dragged off into space, it wasn’t so funny anymore. “Actually, if it happened to you, you’d never remember it,” he said. “But when you watched it happen to your buddy, you’d go to sleep night after night imagining what it would be like happening to you. Worse, you’d relive it happening to your friend, wondering what he felt and thought as it happened. Well, then you became hardened to the whole process.”

  I tried to picture myself on the skin of a metal world, magnetic soles holding me in place, just enough of a pull to keep my balance, not enough to prevent a step, or a harpoon from pulling me away, and making a rush for an opened compartment, knowing that some of us would make it, and that some of us were there to die so others could make it, that our majors and colonels and generals felt free to overwhelm the other side with numbers because we’d all be back, the cost of our resurrection something for governors and senators and premiers at home to tally up. I felt a terrible beating in my heart just at the thought, and I was glad to have Amanda Sam wrap her arms around me, and most nights she was content and sated so there was no pressure to express my thanks for this half a bed in a tiny room.

  I worked up the courage to ask questions. I gave Noriko’s full name. No one had heard of her. I named the unit I was with. Most didn’t know it. One or two knew that my unit was dealing with orbitals circling the neighboring gas giant, which at the time was too far away in its orbit for anyone to care. One woman had gotten word that the first foray had been successful, the second was disastrous, the third could happen at any moment.

  When the newborns shipped out, I concluded I would never see Noriko, and I would never know what had happened to me. It was only then that I realized what a terrible situation I was in. Amanda Sam took me out to dinner to celebrate the great few days she’d had, and I drank brandy with her, and I told her that tonight would be the night. She kissed me passionately, and back in her apartment she was tender. She aroused me first, and the things she did to relax me actually felt good. She looked down at me and told me to hold her breasts, and entered me so slowly and carefully that it did not hurt at all. I suppose if I’d been in love with her or desiring this kind of moment, I might have felt something more than just the physical sensation, but instead I rubbed my hands up and down Amanda Sam’s back and remembered the one or two times Noriko had caressed my own back and said, “Let’s finish up, I’m ready to sleep,” and I now understood the distance Noriko must have felt (even though during the act I had been certain that because it was sex it must have felt good).

  During the days I worked on making the tiny apartment look better. I thought of the people Amanda Sam brought there. I prepared meals. When she pressed herself against me at night, I turned and kissed her and wrapped my legs around her thighs. She got me drunk the night she wanted me to reciprocate her oral ministrations. The next day I searched for some kind of work, but as I already knew, there was nothing official available. “Pinky-up,” the guy in charge of sewage said. The fingerprint produced the documentation, and he shook his head. “You don’t even have one death to your credit. I can’t hire you. If you’re going to stay on Haven, you’re gonna have to keep doing the job you registered for. My apologies. I wouldn’t want to do it.”

  When Amanda Sam took me out to dinner and then was Amanda for me in bed, I knew she was going to tell me it was time to work. “I warned you. I warned you. I warned you. And I’ll take good care of you and make sure you meet only the best of people. Some of my peers have taken new people under their wing and taken half. I’ll only take twenty percent, plus your share of rent and food.” The next morning she bought me a big breakfast, and she said how she’d loved every second in bed with me but it was time to learn how to do a few things a little differently. I asked feebly about women, and she laughed. “Young men, they can get for free.” Things were flush now, and she had found several people on Haven who would enjoy paying to break me in. And that’s how it all started.

  I’ve heard other stories, and I know now how lucky I was. No one beat me or mistreated me. Amanda Sam always met me at the Wake at the end of an evening to find out how things went, to coach me on how to handle the rude and stingy ones and how to handle the ones who wanted to fall in love with me. And maybe if I were tuned that way, I might have enjoyed myself. Instead I felt like I was living someone else’s life. When I wasn’t working and when I wasn’t with Amanda Sam, I was walking. Long walks with long elaborate dreams. Noriko would appear in the Wake. She’d say she’s seen enough battles, and she now wants to take me with her, some place far away. I knew now I would never go home. What would I say? How many lies would I tell just to be comfortable?

  She says, You always avoided the truth when it made other people uncomfortable.

  I listen for something severe in her voice, but I don’t hear it. I say, I’m telling everything the best my memory will allow.

  I know. That’s what I love about this visit. You know, she says, the subject changing with her tone of voice, I always wondered why you wouldn’t change. I did want to try out a life as a man, and I always thought you didn’t love me enough to be a woman.

  You understand now? I ask. After all those men, after their insistence on their needs . . . the only time they cared about my arousal was when they wanted to boost their own self-confidence . . . after all that, I could never sleep with a man again. You probably would have been a great man, but I couldn’t bear to sleep with another one, no matter how nice.

  I said I understood. But now I wonder this. Did you stay with me because you loved me or because you wanted a secure life?

  There’s a giant difference between why I first sought your attentions and why I’m with you now.

  It’s an awkward moment, given the way our bodies are touching, given the years of abstinence in our last life together, so I return to the story.

  When the newborns came, it was a rush. I now dreaded the sight I had once longed for. Many of the newborns had not seen enough battle to afford a guesthouse, so Amanda Sam and I traded off with the apartment. There would be an occasional woman soldier who hired my services, but mostly I listened to men lament their lives after they’d relieved themselves of their burdens. I kept an eye out for Noriko, but now my plan was to spot her first so I could avoid her.

  I started to hang out more with the nurse and the therapist, just to know people who had nothing to do with the Wake and Amanda Sam, though Haven is a small enough place that I’m sure they knew what I did.

  I’m sure when I got up from lunch, they probably said, He’s not so bad. Everyone’s got to make a living somehow.

  Some nights, I decided just to do nothing, and I stayed in the Wake and drank. Sometimes Amanda Sam would rest her hand on my shoulder and I’d turn to her and she’d tell me it was time to go home. She’d make love to me, comfort me, and I’d pretend to be comforted. “I’ll always take care of you,” she said. “I’m so glad we found each other.” And the next morning she’d take her twenty-percent cut. So I sat in the Wake and foresaw years and years of this, and sometimes in the Wake, but never on my walks, which were just for dreams, I would tally up how long it’d take to build up savings, how long it would take to get off Haven, and how much I’d need to start a new life when her hand fell on my shoulder. I turned and Noriko was looking at me.

  “I’ve been told you’ve been asking about me,” she said.

  Oh, no, she says. She doesn’t recognize you. She died b
efore she had another neuromap, and she doesn’t know you.

  I hear the sadness in her voice. For decades and decades I couldn’t mention Noriko to her; now, after all these years apart, she sympathizes. How different life would have been if so much separation wasn’t necessary to erase whatever had made us bitter.

  I stood up to face her. I thought for a second she looked older, as if the job had worn away her friendliness, but then I recalled this look, the way she’d gotten when she’d given out instructions to her companions. There was no recognition on her face, no joy at seeing me, just this military face accustomed to giving orders.

  She said, “I thought you’d be gone by now. I made sure the cost of everything was covered.”

  “I couldn’t go.”

  She stood and waited for me to say more.

  “I didn’t know what happened to you. I didn’t know what happened to me.”

  She looked around, took my hand, and led me to a table. She sat across from me and ordered herself a beer. She held the glass in both her hands, and I wanted her to hold my hand again. She said nothing for the longest time. I surveyed the entire place, the bar, the booths, to make sure Amanda Sam was nowhere to be seen.

  Noriko said, “Here’s what happened. We posted as comrades-in-arms. We were set to attack an orbital. They told us that ninety percent of our unit would die. You began to shake in your sleep. You talked about how when you died, once they’d grown you a new body, once you’d been reassigned, that we’d be apart. But the truth was you were scared to die. When it came time to suit up, you were trembling so much that the captain ordered you to your quarters. He didn’t want you to put us at risk. I told you to pack up your gear and move out while I was away.

  “The enemy was unprepared. We took the orbital with few casualties. When we got back, you’d hanged yourself.”

  I felt myself shaking my head. I wasn’t the me that would do that.