by Joe Haldeman
They were six-story concrete slab constructions with crumbling brick facades. Less than fifty years old, but the work had been done with inferior concrete—too much sand in the mixture—and one building had already collapsed, killing dozens.
So it didn’t sound like a big deal to bring them down. Grenades to jar things loose at the foundation, then put a soldierboy at each corner to push and pull, putting torsion on the framework structure, and jump back as it falls—or don’t jump back; demonstrate our invulnerability by standing there unaffected by the rain of concrete and steel.
The first one went perfectly—a textbook demonstration, if there were a textbook on bizarre demolition techniques. The crowd was very quiet.
The second building was recalcitrant; the front facade fell away, but the steel frame wouldn’t twist enough to snap. So we used lasers to cut through a few exposed I-beams, and then it came down with a satisfying crash.
The next building was a disaster. It came down as easily as the first, but it rained children.
More than two hundred children had been squeezed into one room on the sixth floor, bound and gagged and drugged. It turned out that they were from a suburban private school. A guerrilla team had come in at eight in the morning, killed all the teachers, kidnapped all the children, and moved them into the condemned building in crates covered with UN markings, just an hour before we had gotten there.
None of the children survived falling sixty feet and being buried by rubble, of course. It was not the sort of political demonstration a rational mind might have conceived, since it demonstrated their brutality rather than ours—but it did speak directly to the mob, which collectively was no more rational.
When we saw all the children, of course we stopped everything and called for a massive medevac. We started clearing away rubble, numbly looking for survivors, and a local brigada de urgencia crew came in to help us.
Barboo and I organized our platoons into search parties, covering two thirds of the building’s “footprint,” and David’s platoon should have done the other third, but the shock had them badly disorganized. Most of them had never seen anyone killed. The sight of all those children mangled, pulverized—concrete dust turning blood into mud and transforming the small bodies into anonymous white lumps—it unhinged them. Two of the soldierboys stood frozen, paralyzed because their mechanics had fainted. Most of the others were wandering aimlessly, ignoring David’s orders, which were barely coherent, anyhow.
I was moving slowly, myself, stunned by the enormity of it. Dead soldiers on a battlefield are bad enough—one dead soldier is bad enough—but this was almost beyond belief. And the carnage had just started.
A big helicopter sounds aggressive no matter what its actual function is. When the medevac chopper came beating in, someone in the crowd started shooting at it. Just lead bullets that bounced off, we ascertained later, but the chopper’s defenses automatically acquired the target, a man shooting from behind a billboard, and fried him.
It was a little too impressive, a large spalling laser that made him explode like a dropped ripe fruit. The cry “Murderers! Murderers!” began, and in less than a minute the crowd broke through the police lines and attacked us.
Barboo and I had our people move quickly around the perimeter, spraying tanglefoot, curling threads of neon that quickly expanded to finger thickness, then to ropes. It was effective at first, sticky as Superglue. It immobilized the front couple of ranks of people, bringing them to their knees or flattening them. But that didn’t stop the ones behind them, who eagerly crowded over their comrades’ backs to get to us.
In seconds the mistake was apparent, as hundreds of them, immobilized, were crushed under the weight of the screaming mob that charged us. We popped VA and CS gas everywhere, but it barely slowed them down. More fell and were trampled.
A Molotov cocktail exploded on one of Barboo’s platoon, turning him into a flaming symbol of staggering helplessness—in reality, he was just blinded for a moment—and then weapons came out all over, machine guns chattering, two lasers lancing through the dust and smoke. I watched a row of men and women fall in unison, swept down by a misaimed spray of their own machine gun fire, and relayed the order from Command, “Shoot anyone with a weapon!”
The lasers were easy to spot, and went down first, but people would pick them up again and keep firing. The first man I ever killed, a boy actually, had scooped up the laser and was firing offhand, standing up. I aimed for his knees, but then somebody knocked him down from behind. The bullet struck the center of his chest and blew his heart out his back. On top of everything else, that pushed me over the edge, into paralysis.
Park went over the edge, too; the other edge, berserk. A man got to him with a knife, and tried to climb up and poke out his eyes, as if that were possible. Park grabbed an ankle and swung the man like a doll, spattering his brains on a concrete slab, and tossed his twitching body into the mob. Then he waded into the crowd like an insane mechanical monster, kicking and punching people to death. That snapped me out of my shock. When he wouldn’t respond to shouted orders, I asked Command to deactivate him. He killed more than a dozen before they complied, and his suddenly inert soldierboy went down under a pile of enraged people, pounding it with rocks.
It was a truly Dantean scene, bloody crushed bodies everywhere, thousands of people staggering or crouching, blinded, gagging and spewing as the gas swirled around them. Part of me, vertiginous with horror, wanted to leave the place by fainting, let the crowd have this machine. But my crew was in bad shape, too; I couldn’t desert them.
The tanglefoot suddenly dissipated in a cloud of colored smoke, but it didn’t make any difference. Everyone who had been immobilized by it was lying dead or crippled.
Command told us to clear out; go back to the square as quickly as possible. We could have done an extraction right there, while the crowd was subdued, but didn’t want to take the chance of more helicopters and flyboys setting them off again. So we picked up four immobilized soldierboys and rushed off in victory.
On the way, I told Command that I was going to file a recommendation that Park be given a psychological discharge, at the very least. Of course, she could read my actual feelings: “You really want him tried for murder, for war crimes. That isn’t possible.”
Well, I knew that, but said that I wouldn’t have him as part of my platoon anymore, even if my refusal meant administrative punishment. The rest of the platoon had had enough of him, too. Whatever the idea had been that prompted them to insert him into our family, today’s action proved it wrong.
Command said that every factor would be taken into consideration, including my own confused emotional state. I was ordered to go directly to Counseling when we jacked out. Confused? How are you supposed to feel, when you precipitate mass murder?
But the mass death, I could rationalize away the blame for that. We had tried everything our training had given us to minimize loss. But the single death, the one I shot myself—I couldn’t stop reliving that moment. The boy’s determined look as he pointed and fired, pointed and fired; my own aiming circle dropping from his head to his knees, and then just as I pulled the trigger, his annoyed frown at being jostled. His knees hit the pavement just as my bullet ripped his heart out, and for an instant he still had that annoyed expression. Then he pitched forward, dead before his face hit the ground.
Something in me died then, too. Even through the belated stabilizing soup of mood drugs. I knew there was only one way to get rid of the memory.
* * *
julian was wrong on that score. One of the first things the counselor told him was “You know, it is possible to erase specific memories. We can make you forget killing that boy.” Dr. Jefferson was a black man maybe twenty years older than Julian. He rubbed a fringe of gray beard. “But it’s not simple or complete. There would be emotional associations we can’t erase, because it’s impossible to track down every neuron that was affected by the experience.”
“I don’t think I want to forg
et,” Julian said. “It’s part of what I am now, for better or worse.”
“Not better, and you know it. If you were the type of person who could kill and walk away from it, the army would’ve put you in a hunter/killer platoon.”
They were in a wood-paneled office in Portobello, bright native paintings and woven rugs on the walls. Julian obeyed an obscure impulse and reached over to feel the rough wool of a rug. “Even if I forget, he stays dead. It doesn’t seem right.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I owe him my grief, my guilt. He was just a kid, caught up in the—”
“Julian, he had a gun and was firing all over the place. You probably saved lives by killing him.”
“Not our lives. We were all safe, here.”
“Civilians’ lives. You don’t do yourself any good by thinking of him as a helpless boy. He was heavily armed and out of control.”
“I was heavily armed and in control. I aimed to disable him.”
“The more reason for you not to blame yourself.”
“Have you ever killed anybody?” Jefferson shook his head, one short jerk. “Then you don’t know. It’s like not being a virgin anymore. You can erase the memory of the event, okay, but that wouldn’t make me a virgin again. Like you say, ‘emotional associations.’ Wouldn’t I be even more fucked up? Not being able to trace those feelings back to their trigger?”
“All that I can say is that it’s worked with other people.”
“Ah ha. But not with everybody.”
“No. It’s not an exact science.”
“Then I respectfully decline.”
Jefferson leafed through the file on his desk. “You may not be allowed to decline.”
“I can disobey an order. This isn’t combat. A few months in the stockade wouldn’t kill me.”
“It’s not that simple.” He counted off on his fingers. “One, a trip to the stockade might kill you. The shoe guards are selected for aggressiveness and they don’t like mechanics.
“Two, a prison term would be disastrous to your professional life. Do you think the University of Texas has ever granted tenure to a black ex-con?
“Three, you may not have any choice, literally. You have clear-cut suicidal tendencies. So I can—”
“When did I ever say anything about suicide?”
“Probably never.” The doctor took the top sheet from the file and handed it to Julian. “This is your overall personality profile. The dotted line is average for men at your age when you were drafted. Look at the line above ‘Su.’”
“This is based on some written test I took five years ago?”
“No, it integrates a number of factors. Army tests, but also various clinical observations and evaluations made since you were a child.”
“And on the basis of that, you can force me into a medical procedure, against my will?”
“No. On the basis of ‘I’m a colonel and you’re a sergeant.’”
Julian leaned forward. “You’re a colonel who took the Hippocratic oath and I’m a sergeant with a doctorate in physics. Can we talk for just a minute like two men who’ve spent most of their lives in school?”
“Sorry. Go ahead.”
“You’re asking me to accede to a medical treatment that will drastically affect my memory. Am I supposed to believe that there’s no chance that it will hurt my ability to do physics?”
Jefferson was silent for a moment. “The chance is there, but it’s very small. And you sure won’t be doing any physics if you kill yourself.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. I’m not going to kill myself.”
“Right. Now what do you think a potential suicide would say?”
Julian tried not to raise his voice. “Do you hear yourself? You mean that if I said, ‘Sure, I think I’ll do it,’ you’d pronounce me safe and let me go home?”
The psychiatrist smiled. “Okay, that’s not a bad response. But you have to see that it could be a calculated one, from a potential suicide.”
“Sure. Anything I say can be evidence of mental illness. If you’re convinced that I’m ill.”
He studied his own palm. “Look, Julian. You know I’ve jacked into the cube that recorded how you felt when you killed that boy. In a way, I’ve been there. I’ve been you.”
“I know that.”
He put Julian’s file away and brought out a small white jar of pills. “This is a mild antidepressant. Let’s try it for two weeks, a pill after breakfast and one after dinner. It won’t affect your intellectual abilities.”
“All right.”
“And I want to see you”—he checked a desk calendar—“at ten o’clock on July ninth. I want to jack with you and check your responses to this and that. It’ll be a two-way jack; I won’t hold anything back from you.”
“And if you think I’m nuts, you’ll send me to the memory eraser.”
“We’ll see. That’s all I can say.”
Julian nodded and took the white jar and left.
* * *
i would lie to Amelia; say it was just a routine checkup. I took one of the pills and it did help me fall asleep, and sleep without dreams. So maybe I would keep taking them if they didn’t affect my mental acuity.
In the morning I felt less sad and conducted an internal debate regarding suicide, perhaps in preparation for Dr. Jefferson’s invasion. I couldn’t lie to him, jacked. But maybe I could bring about a temporary “cure.” It was easy to argue against the act—not only the effect on Amelia and my parents and friends, but also the ultimate triviality of the gesture, as far as the army was concerned. They would just find somebody else my size and send the soldierboy out with a fresh brain. If I did succeed in killing a few generals with my exit, they would likewise just promote some colonels. There’s never any shortage of meat.
But I wondered whether all the logical arguments against suicide would do anything to conceal the depth of my own resolution. Even before the boy’s death I knew I was only going to live as long as I had Amelia. We’ve stayed together longer than most people do.
And when I came home, she was gone. Gone to see a friend in Washington, the note said. I called the base and found I could fly out to Edwards as a supernumerary if I could get my butt down there in ninety minutes. I was in the air over the Mississippi before I realized I hadn’t called the lab to arrange for someone else to monitor the scheduled runs. Was that the pills? Probably not. But there was no way to call from a military plane, so it was ten o’clock Texas time before I was able to phone the lab. Jean Gordie had covered for me, but that was pure luck; she’d come in to grade some papers, seen I wasn’t in, and checked the run schedule. She was more than slightly pissed off, since I couldn’t offer a really convincing excuse. Look, I had to take the first flight to Washington to decide whether or not to kill myself.
From Edwards I took the monorail into old Union Station. There was a map machine on the car that showed me I’d be only a couple of miles from her friend’s address. I was tempted to walk over and knock on the door, but decided to be civilized and call. A man answered.
“I have to talk to Blaze.”
He looked at the screen for a moment. “Oh, you’re Julian. Just a moment.”
Amelia came on, looking quizzical. “Julian? I said I’d be home tomorrow.”
“We have to talk. I’m here in Washington.”
“Come on over then. I was just about to fix lunch.”
How domestic. “I’d rather . . . we have to talk alone.”
She looked offscreen and then back, worried. “Where are you?”
“Union Station.”
The man said something I couldn’t quite overhear. “Pete says there’s a bar on the second floor called the Roundhouse. I can meet you there in thirty or forty minutes.”
“Go ahead and finish lunch,” I said. “I can—”
“No. I’ll be down as fast as I can.”
“Thanks, darling.” I thumbed off and looked into the mirror of the screen. Despit
e the night’s sleep, I still looked pretty haggard. I should’ve shaved and changed out of my uniform.
I ducked into a men’s room for a quick shave and comb and then walked down to the second floor. Union Station was a transportation hub, but also a museum of rail technology. I walked by some subways of the previous century, with their makeshift bulletproofing all pitted and dented. Then a steam-powered locomotive from the nineteenth that actually looked to be in better shape.
Amelia was waiting at the door to the bar. “I took a cab,” she explained as we embraced.
She steered me into the gloom and odd music of the bar. “So who’s this Pete? A friend, you said?”
“He’s Peter Blankenship.” I shook my head. The name was vaguely familiar. “The cosmologist.” A serving robot took our iced tea orders and said we had to spend ten dollars to take the booth. I got a glass of whiskey.
“So you’re old friends.”
“No, we just met. I wanted to keep our meeting secret.”
We took our drinks to an empty booth and sat down. She looked intense. “Let me try to—”
“I killed somebody.”
“What?”
“I killed a boy, a civilian. Shot him with my soldierboy.”
“But how could you? I thought you weren’t even supposed to kill soldiers.”
“It was an accident.”
“What, you stepped on him or something?”
“No, it was the laser—”
“You ‘accidentally’ shot him with a laser?”
“A bullet. I was aiming for his knees.”
“An unarmed civilian?”
“He was armed—it was him with the laser! It was a madhouse, a mob out of control. We were ordered to shoot anyone with a weapon.”
“But he couldn’t have hurt you. Just your machine.”
“He was shooting wildly,” I lied; half-lied. “He could have killed dozens himself.”
“You couldn’t have shot for the weapon he was using?”
“No, it was a heavy-duty Nipponex. They have Ablar, a bulletproof and antispalling coating. Look, I aimed for his knees, then somebody jostled him from behind. He pitched forward and the bullet hit him in the chest.”