by Joe Haldeman
“We have more than eight thousand of your people in prison, awaiting repatriation after the war. It would be easier to kill them, wouldn’t it?”
“Concentration camps.” She stood and pulled up her trousers, and sat back down.
“A loaded term. There are camps where the Costa Rican prisoners of war are concentrated. With UN and Red Cross observers, making sure they’re not mistreated. As you’ll see with your own eyes.” I don’t often defend Alliance policies. But it was interesting to watch a fanatic at work.
“I should live that long.”
“If you want to, you will. I don’t know how many more pills you have.” I linked through the flyboy to Command and brought a speech analyzer on line.
“That was the only one,” she said, as I’d expected, and the analyzer said she was telling the truth. I relaxed slightly. “So I’ll be one of your prisoners of war.”
“Presumably. Unless this has all been a case of mistaken identity.”
“I’ve never fired a weapon. I’ve never killed anybody.”
“Neither has my commander. She has degrees in military theory and cybernetic communication, but she’s never been a soldier.”
“But she has actually killed people. Lots of us.”
“And you helped plan the assault on Portobello. By that logic, you killed friends of mine.”
“No I didn’t,” she said. Quick, intense, lying.
“You killed them while I was intimately connected to their minds. Some of them died very horribly.”
“No. No.”
“Don’t bother to lie to me. I can bring people back from the dead, remember? I could have destroyed your village with one thought. And I can tell when you’re lying.”
She was silent for a moment, considering that. She must have known about voice analyzers. “I am the mayor of San Ignacio. There will be repercussions.”
“Not legal ones. We have a warrant for your detention, signed by the governor of your province.”
She made a spitting sound. “Pepe Ano.” His name was Pellipianocio, Italian, but her Spanish converted it to “Joe Asshole.”
“I take it he’s not popular with the rebels. But he was one of you.”
“He inherited a coffee plantation from his uncle and was such a bad farmer he couldn’t make a radish grow. You bought his land, you bought him.”
She thought that was the truth, and it probably was. “We didn’t coerce him,” I said, guessing. I didn’t know much about the town’s or province’s history. “Didn’t he come to us? Declare himself—”
“Oh, really. Like a hungry dog would come to anybody who put out food. You can’t pretend to think that he represents us.”
“As a matter of fact, Señora, we were not consulted. Are your soldiers consulted before being given orders?”
“We . . . I don’t know anything about such matters.” That one set the bells off. As she knew, their soldiers were in on the decision-making process. That cut down on their efficiency but did give some logic to calling themselves the Democratic Army of the People.
The helicopter suddenly lurched left and right, accelerating up. I put out a hand and kept her from falling.
“Missile,” I said, in touch with the flyboy.
“A pity it missed.”
“You’re the only living creature aboard this craft, Señora. The rest of us are safe in Portobello.”
At that she smiled. “Not so safe, I think. Wasn’t that the point of this little kidnapping?”
* * *
the woman was one of the lucky ninety percent who survived jacking intact, and she did give Alliance questioners the names of three other tenientes who had been in on the Portobello massacre. For her own part in it she was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. She was sent to the large POW camp in the Canal Zone, the jack in the back of her skull guaranteeing that she wouldn’t be part of any conspiracy there.
Unsurprisingly, during the four hours it had taken to get her to Portobello and install the jack, the three other tenientes and their families had dissolved into the bush, driven underground—perhaps to return. Their fingerprints and retinal patterns tagged them as rebels, but there was no real guarantee that the ones on file were authentic. They had had years to effect substitution. Any one of them might show up at the entrance to the camp at Portobello with a job application.
Of course, the Alliance had fired every Hispanic employee at the Portobello camp, and could do the same everywhere else in the city, even the country. But that might be counterproductive in the long run. The Alliance provided one out of three jobs in Panama. Putting those people out of work would probably add one more country to the Ngumi ranks.
Marx and others thought and taught that war was fundamentally economic in nature. No one in the nineteenth century, though, could have foreseen the world of the twenty-first, where half the world had to work for its rice or bread and the other half just lined up in front of generous machines.
* * *
the platoon returned to the town just before dawn, with warrants for the three rebel leaders. They entered the houses in groups of three, simultaneously crashing inside in clouds of smoke and vile gas, lowering real estate values but finding no one. There was no effective resistance, and they sped away in ten separate directions.
They rendezvoused at a place about twenty kilometers downhill, a feed store and cantina. The cantina had been closed for hours, but one customer remained, collapsed under one of the outside tables, snoring. They didn’t wake him up.
The rest of the mission was an exercise in malice dreamed up by some half-awake genius who was annoyed at not taking any more prisoners that night. They were to go back up the hill and systematically destroy the crops that belonged to the three escaped rebels.
Two of them were coffee planters, so Julian ordered his people to uproot the bushes and leave them in place; presumably they could be replanted the next day.
The third man’s “crop” was the town’s only hardware store. If Julian had asked, they probably would have been ordered to torch it. So he didn’t ask; he and three others just broke down the doors and threw all of the merchandise out on the street. Let the town decide whether they would respect the man’s belongings.
Most of the town was tired of dealing with the soldierboys by now, and had gotten the message that the machines weren’t going to kill anyone unless provoked. Still, two ambitious snipers came in with lasers and had to be shot, but the soldierboys were able to use tranquilizing darts.
Park, the platoon’s new homicidal addition, gave Julian some trouble there. He argued against using the darts—which technically was insubordination under fire, a court-martial offense—and then when he did take aim with the dart, he aimed for the sniper’s eye, which would have been fatal. Julian monitored that just in time to send a mental shout, “Cease fire!” and reassign the sniper to Claude, who tranked him in the shoulder.
So as a show of force, the mission was reasonably successful, though Julian wondered what the sense of it was. The townspeople would probably see it as bullying vandalism. Maybe he should have torched the store and sterilized the two farmers’ lands. But he hoped the restrained approach would work better: with his laser he wrote a scorched message on the whitewashed wall of the hardware store, translated by Psychops into formal Spanish: “—By rights, twelve of you should perish for the twelve of us you killed. Let there not be a next time.”
* * *
when i came home Tuesday night there was a note under my door:
Darling,
The gift is beautiful. I went to a concert last night just so I could dress up and show it off. Two people asked who it was from, and I was enigmatic: a friend.
Well, friend, I’ve made a big decision, I suppose in part a present to you. I’ve gone down to Guadalajara to have a jack installed.
I didn’t want to wait and discuss it with you because I don’t want you to share the responsibility, if something should go wr
ong. My mind was actually made up by a news item, which I’ve put on your queue as “law.jack.”
Basically, a man in Austin got jacked and fired from his administrative job, then challenged the antijack clause under Texas job discrimination laws. The court ruled in his favor, so at least for the time being, it’s professionally safe for me to go ahead and do it.
I know all about the physical danger, and I also know how unseemly it is for a woman of my years and position to take that risk because of what amounts to jealousy: I can’t compete with your memory of Carolyn and I can’t share your life the way Candi and the others do—the women you swear you don’t love.
No arguments this way. I’ll be back on Monday or Tuesday. Do we have a date?
Love,
Amelia
I read it over twice and then ran for the phone. There was no answer at her place. So I played back the other messages, and got the one I most feared:
“Señor Class, your name and number were given to us by Amelia Harding as a person to be reached in case of emergency. We are also contacting a Professor Hayes.
“Profesora Harding came here to the Clínica de cirugía restorativa y aumentativa de Guadalajara to have a puente mental, what you call a jack, installed. The operation did not go well, and she is completely paralyzed. She can breathe without help, and responds to visual and auditory stimuli, but cannot speak.
“We want to discuss various options with you. Señora Harding listed your name in lieu of next of kin. My name is Rodrigo Spencer, chief of la división quirúrgica para instalación y extracción de implantas craniales—Surgical Unit for Installation and Removal of Cranial Implants.” He gave his number and the address.
That message was Sunday night. The next was from Hayes, Monday, saying he’d checked my schedule and wouldn’t do anything until I got home. I took time for a quick shave and called him at home.
It was only ten, but he answered no-face. When he heard it was me, he turned on the screen, rubbing his face. I’d obviously gotten him out of bed.
“Julian. Sorry . . . I’ve been on an odd schedule because we’re testing for the big jump. The engineers had me up till three last night.
“Okay, look, about Blaze. It’s no secret that you two are keeping company. I understand why she wants to be discreet, and appreciate it, but that’s not a factor between you and me.” His smile had real pain in it. “Okay?”
“Sure. I figured . . .”
“So what about Guadalajara?”
“I, I’m still a little in shock. I’ll go downtown and get the first train; two hours, four, depending on connections . . . no, I’ll call the base first and see if I can get a flight.”
“Once you get down there?”
“I’ll have to talk to people. I have a jack but don’t know much about the installation—I mean, I was drafted; nobody gave me a choice. See whether I can talk to her.”
“Son, they said she can’t talk. She’s paralyzed.”
“I know, I know. But that’s just motor function. If we can jack, we can talk. Find out what she wants.”
“Okay.” He shook his head. “Okay. But tell her what I want. I want her back in the shop today. Yesterday. Macro is going to have her head on a platter.” He was trying to sound angry. “Damn fool stunt, just like Blaze. You call me from Mexico.”
“Will do.” He nodded and cut off.
I called the base and there weren’t any direct flights scheduled. I could go back to Portobello and hitch up to Mexico City in the morning. Gracias, pero no gracias. I punched up the train schedule and called a cab.
It was only three hours to Guadalajara, but a bad three hours. I got to the hospital about one-thirty but of course couldn’t get past the front desk. Not until seven; even then, I wouldn’t be able to see Amelia until Dr. Spencer came in, maybe eight, maybe nine.
I got a mediocuarto—half-room—at a motel across the street, just a futon and a lamp. Couldn’t sleep, so I found an all-night place and got a bottle of tequila almendrada and a news magazine. I sipped about half the bottle, laboriously picking my way through the magazine article by article. My everyday Spanish is all right but it’s hard for me to follow a complicated written argument, since I never studied the language in school. There was a long article about the pros and cons of a euthanasia lottery for the elderly, which was scary enough even when you only got half the words.
In the war news there was a paragraph about our kidnapping venture, which was described as a peacekeeping police action ambushed by rebels. I don’t guess they sell too many copies in Costa Rica. Or they probably just print a different version.
It was an amusing magazine, with ads that would have been illegal pornography in some of the United States. Six-image manifolds that move with stroboscopic jerkiness if you shake the page. Like most male readers, I suppose, I came up with an interesting way to shake the page, which finally helped me get to sleep.
I went over to the waiting room at seven and read less interesting magazines for an hour and a half, when Dr. Spencer finally showed up. He was tall and blond and spoke English with a Mexican accent thick as guacamole.
“Into my office, first, come.” He took me by the arm and steered me down the hall. His office was a plain windowless room with a desk and two chairs; one of the chairs was occupied.
“Marty!”
He nodded. “Hayes called me, after he talked to you. Blaze had said something about me.”
“An honor to have you here, Dr. Larrin.” Spencer sat down behind the desk.
I sat on the other hard chair. “So what are our options?”
“Directed nanosurgery,” Spencer said. “There are no other options.”
“But there is,” Marty said, “technically.”
“Not legally.”
“We could get around that.”
“Would somebody tell me what you’re talking about?”
“Mexican law is less liberal than American,” Marty said, “in matters of self-determination.”
“In your country,” Spencer said, “she would have the option of remaining a vegetable.”
“Well put, Dr. Spencer. Another way of putting it is that she would have the option of not risking her life and sanity.”
“I’m missing something,” I said.
“You shouldn’t be. She’s jacked, Julian! She can live a very full life without moving a muscle.”
“Which is obscene.”
“It’s an option. The nanosurgery is risky.”
“Not so. Not so risky. Más o menos the same as the jack. We have ninety-two percent recovery.”
“You mean ninety-two percent survival,” Marty said. “What percent total recovery?”
He shrugged, twice. “These numbers. They don’t mean anything. She’s healthy and relatively young. The operation will not kill her.”
“She’s a brilliant physicist. If she comes out with brain damage, that’s the same as no recovery.”
“Which is explained to her before the installation of the jack.” He held up a document five or six pages long. “Before she signs the release.”
“Why don’t you jack her and ask her?” I said.
“It is not simple,” Spencer said. “The first moment she is jacked, is new, new neural pathways are formed. The network grows . . .” He gestured with one hand. “It grows more than fast.”
“It grows at an exponential rate,” Marty said. “The longer she’s jacked, the more experiences she has, the harder it is to undo.”
“And so this is why we do not ask her.”
“In America you’d have to,” Marty said. “Right of full disclosure.”
“America is a very strange country. You don’t mind my saying?”
“If I jacked with her,” I said, “I could be in and out muy pronto. Dr. Larrin’s had a jack longer, but it’s not an everyday tool, the way it is with a mechanic.” Spencer frowned at that. “A soldier.”
“Yes . . . I suppose that’s true.” He leaned back and paused. �
��Still, it is against the law.”
Marty gave him a look. “This law is never broken.”
“I think you would say ‘bent.’ The law is bent, for foreigners.” Marty made an unambiguous gesture with thumb and two fingers. “Well . . . not a bribe, as such. Some bureaucracy, and a tax. Do either of you have a . . .” He opened a desk drawer and said, “Poder.”
The drawer answered, “Power of attorney.”
“Do you have one of those with her?”
We looked at each other and shook our heads. “This was a surprise to both of us.”
“She was not well advised. This is something she should have done. Is either of you her fiancé?”
“You could say that,” I said.
“Bueno, okay.” He picked a card out of a drawer and passed it over. “Go to this office after nine o’clock and this woman will issue you a temporary designación de responsabilidad.” He repeated it into the drawer. “State of Jalisco Temporary Assignment of Legal Responsibility,” it translated.
“Wait,” I said. “This allows a person’s fiancé to authorize a life-threatening surgical procedure?”
He shrugged. “Brother, sister, too. Uncle, aunt, nephew. Only when the person cannot decide for himself, herself. People wind up in Profesora Harding’s situation every day. Several people every day, counting Mexico City and Acapulco.”
It made sense; elective surgery must be one of the biggest sources of foreign income for Guadalajara, maybe for all of Mexico. I turned the card over; the English side said, “Accommodations to the Mexican Legal System.”
“How much is this going to cost?”
“Maybe ten thousand pesos.” Five hundred dollars.
“I can pay for it,” Marty said.
“No, let me do it. I’m the fiancé.” I also make three times his salary.
“Whoever,” Spencer said. “You come back with the piece of paper and me, I set up the jack. But have your mind ready. Find the answer and then unplug. That will be safer and easier all around.”
But what would I do if she asked me to stay?
It took almost as long to find the lawyer as it had to get to Guadalajara from Texas. They had moved.