Doom. Endgame
страница №5
...k," Arlene muttered.I licked my lips. "Can you describe the third
species?"
"No."
"Call that species the Newbies. Where are the
Newbies right now?"
"On the ship."
"Yes, but where on the ship?"
"Everywhere."
I looked around. My stomach opened up like when
you reach the top of the big hill on a roller coaster.
"Everywhere . . . meaning what? In this room?"
"Yes."
"In you?"
"Yes."
I hesitated. I didn't really want to know the obvious
next question, but the mission came first before my
squeamishness. "In me and Arlene?"
A slight hesitation. "Not likely, cannot examine to
make certain." I exhaled, not even realizing I was
holding my breath until I let it out.
"How about in the other humans?" Arlene asked.
"Yes," Ninepin said, nonchalantly.
"Microscopic?" I guessed.
"Yes, but cannot determine exact size without
direct examination or dissection."
I sat down next to the bowling ball. "Jesus," I
swore. "They do evolve pretty quickly." It was an
inane comment; I just thought I had to say something.
"They're even in Ninepin," said my lance. "Should
we trust him?"
"Well, the Newbies haven't shown any tendency
toward secrecy or disinformation; all that non-autho-
rized pers stuff was probably stuck in by the humans. I
don't think we have a choice."
She sat next to me, stretching out her hard-muscled
legs and leaning forward to loosen the tendons in her
knees and ankles. "Next question, Sarge. How are we
going to examine somebody here to find these New-
bies?"
I looked at her, dead serious. "Why don't we just
ask permission?"
"You're joking."
"You have a better plan? Excuse me, Overcaptain,
but I was really interested in the stitchwork on your
uniform. You mind lying down here under this micro-
scope so I can examine it more closely?"
Arlene thought for a long time but was unable to
come up with a sneaky, devious way to get one of the
crew to submit to an examination. Three hours later,
we decided to give my own plan a try. "Ninepin, can
you tap into the ship's communication system, what-
ever it is?" I asked.
"Is subcronal messaging network. Yes, can tap
into."
"Arlene, what sort of message will send the over-
captain running back here? I don't want to let him
know about Ninepin just yet, in case they don't
realize he's helping us." And that's an interesting
question. . . . Why is he helping us?
She thought for a moment, leaning back, her breasts
stretching the fabric of her uniform blouse. I started
having very unmilitary thoughts; it had been a long
time since I held a woman in my arms. I turned away
to stifle the images--or at least convert them to
someone else, someone safe, like Midge Garradon or
Jayne Mansfield.
"Tell him to send the message that the prisoners are
escaping. If these guys really evolve as fast as they
seem, he probably won't even know what security
systems are in place these days anyway."
"Do it, Ninepin," I commanded.
Three minutes, eleven seconds later--now that was
some valuable intel!--the overcaptain and two
guards came running up with weird weapons out.
They looked pretty put-out when they saw me sitting
on the floor playing solitaire with my emergency deck
and Arlene "asleep" in the bunk.
"What is going here?!" Tokughavita shouted.
"What?"
"Are escaping!"
"Where?"
The overcaptain suddenly turned into logic-man
again, like a lightswitch, and now we knew why: that
was when the Newbies that infected his body took
over. "Security system reported prisoners escaping."
"When?"
"See system was in error. Will return to rest."
"Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you have to return to your nap?" I asked.
"Don't you want to stay and chat a while, now that
you woke up Arlene?"
On cue, A.S. blinked and flopped her arms
around--the sleeper awakes. She sat up, yawning.
Even though it was fake, it made me yawn, too--
seeing someone yawn always has the effect on me.
This time, it made the illusion that much better.
Overcaptain Tokughavita pondered for a moment,
his dark brown eyes flickering back and forth from me
to Arlene. I noticed with relief that he never glanced
down at Ninepin and probably didn't even notice
him. "Will stay," Tokughavita decided.
Arlene tossed in her two cents. "But send those
gorillas away. They give me the creeps."
Tokughavita squinted and cocked his head, evi-
dently not understanding the word "creeps." Arlene
waited a beat; when it was obvious he wasn't sending
them away, she tried again: "They're always looking
at me in a, you know, sexual way. I have to get
undressed to--wash my shirt, and I don't want them
to see me naked."
"She's got a thing about her privacy," I explained.
"Ah, ah! Privacy." The overcaptain nodded. Mak-
ing a fetish of individualism, as they did, privacy was
a concept he understood well. He gestured the two
apes away.
They did not leave immediately, however; they
moved close and whispered among each other, evi-
dently discussing whether they were going to obey the
order. Yeesh, was I glad I didn't have them in my
platoon. We wouldn't have lasted five minutes in
Kefiristan if Marvin or Duck had to conference before
they decided to do what the gunny ordered! At last,
the goons reluctantly decided that this time they
would go ahead and obey their superior officer; they
shuffled off with many a backward glance, probably
hoping to see Arlene undressing.
As soon as they were gone, she unabashedly
stripped to the waist and set about washing her jacket
and shirt in the sink--a move I heartily endorsed,
even if we hadn't needed it to get rid of the backup. As
she must have expected, even while Tokughavita
talked to me, he wasted seventy-five percent of his
attention on the beautiful redhead with her bare
chest, which allowed me to maneuver around behind
him without his noticing it. I had seen her nakeder
than that many a time; I was able to concentrate on
the upcoming fight.
It took longer than I thought. I grabbed Tokug-
havita in a wrestling hold from behind, but the
slippery little devil pulled some move I recognized as
traditional judo and slipped my hold. I managed to
tag him in the knee with the heel of my palm, though,
and he went down hard, starting to yell and scream in
terror that he didn't want to die. He sounded like a
sinner who suddenly realizes that death means hell
for him!
Arlene grabbed him from behind, pressing her
forearm against his windpipe and shutting off the
scream before it leaked out. But the bastard fell
backward on her, taking her down and lying on top of
her, then he lashed out with his feet and caught me
right in the jewels.
The pain was excruciating; it was almost worse
than when I was getting shot up down on the planet
surface! But when you're in-country, the first thing
you learn is to suck it up and not let the pain stop you.
It's better to be hurting than dying. I clenched my
teeth and somehow forced out of my head the ability
to comprehend agony.
How the hell is this guy fighting so effectively while
in such terror? He seemed supernaturally strong and
fast. They must feel this kind of terror so often,
anytime something threatens their life, that they just
learn to live with it.
I hooked one leg of his with my arm, but I missed
the other. It didn't miss me; Tokughavita kicked his
knee up and around, catching me just below the left
eye. I swear to God, I actually saw fireflies orbiting my
head. I thought the move was pure kickboxing--this
guy was the Bomb!
But he was starting to weaken from lack of oxygen. I
had kept him so busy--kicking his foot with my
groin, beating on his knee with my face--that he
didn't have time or muscle to break Arlene's choke-
hold. Now, turning blue, he had both hands under her
wrist and was trying to wrench it free, but she caught
her fist in her other hand and pulled as tight as she
could. While they danced their little pavane, I caught
his other leg and rolled on top of him. Both of us were
atop Arlene, and under other circumstances, she
would have loved being naked underneath two big
beefy guys. Once I had the overcaptain pinned, I
grabbed his hands and yanked them off Arlene's arm,
and the fight was over. A minute and a half later, A.S.
figured he was definitely out, not just faking, and she
let him go.
I checked him carefully. He was breathing again,
and his color was coming back. ... I'd been worried,
because sometimes a chokehold can actually crush a
man's windpipe, killing him. No wonder he was
frightened! We set him upright and I tied his hands
and feet with my bootlaces; we thought about gagging
him, but if his screams of mortal terror didn't attract
anyone, his buddies were all deaf--or they didn't
care. Then we waited for him to come around. It was
time to grab the bull by the tail and look the facts
square in the face: time to see how much he really
knew about the aliens he had been pursuing and had
now "caught"--the way you'd catch a flu virus.
12
"Ninepin, what sensory apparatus do you
have? Can you do a microscopic examination of
Overcaptain Tokughavita?" I asked.
"Cannot," said the green-glowing sphere.
"Crap," muttered Arlene, speaking for both of us.
"All right, you useless bowling ball, where is the
nearest lab on the ship with a microscope?"
A 3-D diagram appeared floating in the air between
us; a cabin flashed red, and a labeled arrow pointing
at it read Are Here. A couple of hundred meters
for'ard and a deck down, another cabin flashed, green
this time. The best route between the two locations
was marked in yellow brick; evidently, Ninepin had a
sense of history and a sense of humor.
Arlene tried to pick him up but had no better luck
than I. Tokughavita started moaning, still not fully
conscious, just as I crept forward and tried the door.
It opened! The idiot must have assumed he could
handle us; maybe he was so fixated on individuality
that it never occurred to him that Arlene and I might
cooperate and deck him, when either one of us alone
would have had his or her butt kicked.
Shutting the door, I returned and searched Tokug-
havita. I found a device in a boot-draw that looked
suspiciously like a weapon. Ninepin told me how to
set it to deliver electricity in high enough amperage to
incapacitate a normal human for a few minutes.
"Arlene," I explained, "I just can't bring myself to
start blowing away humans, not now, not when I
know what we're really up against in the War of
Galactic Schools of Criticism."
"Yeah, I know what you mean, Sarge." She brushed
a wet streak of hair from her face; her hair turned rust
colored when it was soaked. "I wish we had phasers or
something. I'm really starting to get homesick. I
want--I want to see ..."
"You want to see where Albert lived and what
happened to him?" She smiled and nodded. "I have a
thought, kiddo." Turning to the ball, I asked, "Do you
have any records on the life of Albert Gallatin?"
"Have several," he said. "Presume want Gallatin
Albert who accompanied you on expedition. High-
lights follow, dates supplied upon request: Gallatin
returned to Earth after wounded in assault on Fred
base; remained in United States Marine Corps two
years until disbanded in favor of People's Democratic
Defense Forces, honorable discharge, promotion to
Gunnery Sergeant; awarded Hero of United Earth
People."
"Jeez," I mumbled. "I think I would have left, too."
Arlene grunted. She was more interested in Ninepin's
information than my smartass comments.
"Freds still controlled most land masses, banned
education, literacy, technological development
among humans under purview. Gallatin attended
hedge school, studied biophysics, specifically cryogen-
ics and suspension techniques. Developed techniques
for suspending life processes for long periods. Spent
last thirty-eight years of life in Salt Lake Grad re-
searching life stasis."
"Oh my God," she said. "He was trying to figure
out how to wait for me!"
I got a chill thinking about it. It was creepy hearing
about the futile efforts of a man to hang on for the
hundreds of years it would take his beloved to return
to him--a love that would last until the stars grew
cold. I presumed it was futile, otherwise the bowling
ball would have told us he was still alive.
"Gallatin contributed work on life-stasis, published
first theoretical description of hypothetical process's
effect on neural tissue; award of Nobel prize transmit-
ted on SneakerNet, clandestine encrypted network
founded by Gallatin Albert and six other scientists,
tracked by scientists, engineers, military and political
leaders, several million others. Sidebar: Freds tried
repeatedly to take down SneakerNet for seventy-four
years until Freds defeated, driven from planet; never
succeeded taking down entire net, eventually played
role in defeat."
"Go, Albert, go!" whispered Arlene, eyes closed, as
if the resistance were still ongoing instead of a part of
history. A tear rolled down her cheek. I looked away, a
bit embarrassed.
"Gallatin Albert published twenty articles on
SneakerNet describing still-uninvented life-stasis sys-
tem, died in 132nd year of life, year 31 PGL, Salt
Lake Grad. Currently interred in rebuilt Tabernacle
of People's Faith of Latter-Day Saints."
"PGL?" I inquired.
"People's Glorious Liberation," Overcaptain
Tokughavita answered. We all jumped. The human
had come around while we listened to Albert's life
history, and none of us had noticed. "Could have told
Gallatin's bio," continued the overcaptain. "Well-
known to whole community of persons. Studied in
school; Hero of People, body displayed in Hall of
Heroes."
"We heard," I said. "He got a medal."
"Then he's dead," said my lance, sitting hard on the
bunk. She placed her hands on her knees and bowed
her head. I did the same, keeping an eye on Tokug-
havita. After one full minute--another skill we learn
in Parris Island, keeping an accurate internal clock--
she rose, hard and determined. She looked sad, but
relieved. Finding out Albert really and truly was dead
was a killing blow . . . but at least now she knew. No
more guessing!
"Gallatin Albert dead," Ninepin agreed. "Death
announced by Lovelace Jill in year 31 PGL."
"And life-stasis?" she asked.
"Prototype on 37 PGL; full implementation 50
PGL."
Arlene stared at me, a hopeless, frustrated mask of
anger on her face. Six years! Six years, and he could
have preserved himself at least for the thirteen it took
before the full implementation was developed.
I didn't know what to say, so I said something
anyway. "Jesus, what a dirty trick."
They must have been good words. Arlene relaxed,
allowing every emotion she had felt for Albert to wash
across her face: intrigue, exasperation, sexual thrill,
love, concern, irritation, and love again--the emo-
tion that stuck when the others trickled away. She
rose, light on her feet. "I want to get back there," she
said. "Put a flower or something on his grave. That's
what you do, isn't it? Fly, can you get a priest or
something to bless Albert's soul, so he won't end up in
spiritual Okinawa?"
Okinawa is what we call "Marine Corps hell." I
smiled, but it wasn't a friendly grin, more like baring
my teeth. "You put your foot in the middle of my own
fear, A.S. If there is no more faith back on Earth, are
there any more priests? How am I going to confess
ever again?" I shut up, quick; I didn't want to spell
out the full, awful truth I had just realized: I was going
to die unshriven! If anyone were going to hell, it would
be I, a Catholic who dies with unconfessed sins on his
soul.
"Come on, you ugly baboon," I said, yanking
Tokughavita to his feet. "Let's go see what germs
you've picked up recently." I opened the door and slid
out, pulling the overcaptain behind me. Arlene took
the rear, holding the back of his shirt and assuring
him in soft tones that she could punch him in the back
of the neck and break his spine before he could get
two steps away from her.
I was just starting to regret having to leave Ninepin
behind, hoping he would be there when we got back,
when I stopped too suddenly and felt a thump against
my ankle. I looked down, and lo and behold, there
was our green glowing bowling ball. He rolled along
happily right underfoot, getting in the way and
thumping down the ladderways like a real ball. I
smiled. This was too ridiculous.
We had to traverse more than the two hundred
meters of corridor because we had to track and
backtrack. Whenever we got a little lost--not that
Marine Corps recons ever get really lost--Ninepin
projected a map in the air. God knows how he did it;
it was two hundred years ahead of me, and I didn't
even know how television worked.
We entered a passageway that was long and narrow,
like the inside of a tube. Halfway down it, a crewman
stepped right in front of us. I was about to bash him or
zap him when I realized he wasn't even looking at us!
He turned his back to us, whistling something tune-
less and ghastly and hacking at some electrical
circuits--the guy couldn't care less that we were
escaping right behind him. Good thing. I'd never seen
a bigger man, probably a seven-foot, 140-kilogram
black guy with--I ain't lying--straight blond hair
that fell to mid-back. He wore a sparkly variation on
the uniform that made him look like a Mexican
matador. Even his hat had those two bumps on the
side. I couldn't resist saying "olй!" as we passed, but
he didn't respond.
We scurried along the tube, then dropped down an
access hatch into pitch blackness. I fell heavily, and
my foot slipped out from under me on a pool of oil. I
don't know where from. I limped forward. Ninepin
glowed brighter to cast some light and bounced down
beside me, getting a big, juicy oil smear all over one
brightly lit face, which didn't seem to bother him. I
wished I still had my pack. I had a nice flash that
would have brightened things up a bit more than
Ninepin could. I felt my way along, avoiding over-
hangs that would have cracked my skull open, and I
only stumbled over a seam in the metal grating once.
Arlene cursed and swore behind me; she had terrible
night vision. However bad it was for me, it was
probably worse for my lance.
I saw a light ahead, just a dim red glow. I hunched
over to avoid the overhead and scurried forward, like
a locomotive for a two-car train. I saw the light came
from around a corner. I slid to my right and found
myself nose to nose with another crewman. Unfortu-
nately, this one happened to be one of the two guards
that Tokughavita had originally brought with him.
What wonderful luck!
The overcaptain was a fast mother, fast-thinking
and damn quick on his feet: he saw who it was the
same time I did, but instead of gawking, he charged
me, hitting me in the kidneys and body-slamming me
forward.
Fortunately, the guard was a dull-witted imbecile.
The Newbies weren't controlling him at that moment.
He stared stupidly; give him another five seconds, and
he would have snapped out of it. But I wasn't in a
charitable mood.
I planted my feet, stopping my forward progress,
then I leaned back and staggered into Tokughavita.
Superior weight and leg power drove the overcaptain
back, opening up a good ten meters between us and
the guard.
Now the soldier woke up and started to respond,
trying to dominate the situation, but he was too late. I
raised my little zap gun, now that I had the range, and
squeezed off a loud crackling shot. The guard yelled
"who!" or something and fell to his knees, not even
halfway across the gap to me. He rolled over onto one
side, body convulsing; his eyes rolled up, showing me
just the whites, which were burning lava in the red
light tubes. "Move out," I snarled, stepping over his
prostrate figure.
Arlene viciously shoved the panicky Tokughavita
forward, rabbit-punching him in the gut a couple of
times to teach him a lesson. I'd been on the receiving
end of a lot of Corporal Sanders's beatings, during
training and Fox Company's bimonthly boxing
matches; I felt his pain.
We dropped down the last ladderway, and naturally
Ninepin found it absolutely necessary to drop down
the hatch directly onto my foot. I bit off a yell of pain,
clenching my teeth until I could walk again. Then I
waddled down the final passageway, dragging my
prisoner. The lab was electronically locked, but a zap
from the buzz gun took care of that problem. We
entered and stared around at the maze of machinery,
hoping our pet computer knew what the hell to do
with it all.
He didn't. We hoisted Tokughavita up onto an
examination table, and now he was intensely curious
about what the hell we were doing. I held him down,
imagining the little Newbie viruses swarming all over
him, over my arms, down my throat and lungs.... I
shuddered, but we just had to know.
Arlene made a circuit of the room, reading labels on
machines: "VitSin Mon--vital signs, no good; uh . . .
AutoSurg, Lase, KlaveSep--hey, Fly, does this thing
separate the two binaries of a Klave pair?"
"Search me, Arlene. Better yet, keep reading the
damned labels. There's got to be a microbiological
auto lab here somewhere."
"MikeLab?" asked the overcaptain. I'd been think-
ing of him as our "captive" for so long that I forgot he
was a real person with real concerns. "Have some-
thing? Am sick?" Now he sounded horrified and
jerked against my restraining hold.
"You might have picked up a bug," I said noncom-
mittally; too much chalance: he panicked, his face
turned white, and his strength doubled as he franti-
cally tried to buck me off him. I leaned down with all
my weight, crushing him to the cushiony examination
table. "Hold still, damn you! You want me to clock
you upside the head? If that's the only way I can keep
you here ..."
At the warning note in my voice, he quieted in-
stantly, but I could feel his heart pounding through
my forearm as I held him down. "Am going to die? To
die? To die?"
"Not that kind of bug," I growled. "You've been
hunting the Newbies--the aliens that attacked us, the
ones that wiped out the Freds. . . . Well, we figure
that's where they went."
"Where? How?"
"VanCliburn ElektroStim," Arlene read. "PosEmit,
PosAlign, PosPolar."
"The aliens, the ones that evolve real fast--we
think they evolved into microscopic form, and they're
infecting you, all of you. That's why you're sometimes
twice as smart as normal, how humans built this ship
and ... and other stuff."
"On me?" Overcaptain Tokughavita slowly stared
down the length of his body, every muscle tense and
trembling. I don't know what he was looking for; if
the Newbies were large enough to be visible, they'd
have been spotted long ago.
"We have to get you under the--what did you call
it?"
"MikeLab is there," he said, looking at the last
machine in the semicircle surrounding the tables.
"Arlene!" I shouted, nodding at the identified de-
vice. She ran there immediately.
"MikeLab/MolecuLab--this is it, Fly!"
"Drag it over here. Toku, how do we hook this thing
up? We want to examine your tissue to see if they've
infected you."
He squirmed. "Let up, let up! Can take sample
myself, examine!"
"Arlene?"
She gritted her teeth and pulled her lips tight. "Jeez,
Fly, it's your call. You're the guy with three stripes on
your sleeve. Personally, I'd sooner trust a Fred."
I slowly relaxed my grip on Tokughavita. He strug-
gled away from me and sat up. He turned back to look
at me, trying to see if I were going to do anything.
When I didn't move, he slid to the ground and tried to
stand, but his knees were so weak, he fell to a squat on
the deck. The overcaptain forced himself upright and
leaned on the MikeLab just as Arlene wheeled it over.
He stared at the mass of buttons, obviously unfa-
miliar with the system. "Are you a medical officer?" I
asked. Tokughavita shook his head tightly. His pale
hand hesitated over the various touchscreen buttons,
then finally landed on one marked Sample.
He inserted his hand into a small shelf that looked
like the covered tray that coffee comes out of in a
vending machine. A light flashed, and he convulsively
jerked his hand away--a small nick was gouged from
the heel of his thumb, and it bled nicely for a few
minutes.
"You got some way to project the image where we
can see it?" asked Arlene. Overcaptain Tokughavita
just stared at her, uncomprehendingly; he seemed
more interested in his bleeding hand. Maybe he
fretted he was going to bleed to death.
It was so weird--when in the slightest danger, they
totally freaked, not just Tokughavita, but Josepaze
when I had the knife to his throat, and even the
clowns at the dinner table when a knife flipped into
the air. But when they saw an injury was not going to
lead to death (the one thing they could never fix, being
human), they shut off the fear like an electrical circuit.
Only one explanation I could see: they had some-
how come to believe that nothing existed except the
material world, that death completely ended every-
thing. No soul, no spirit, no "spiritual community"
higher than lumpen materialism. And maybe that was
why they were so dadblamed individualistic: with
nothing outside themselves, why should they bother
believing even in society or their own community?
So anomie--lack of a higher sense of morality, of
faith--led directly to their ridiculous atomism. If you
don't have faith in anything, not even the survival of
your own species, then why not every man for him-
self? Women and children overboard, I'm taking the
lifeboat!
I realized something. Maybe it was that very lack of
faith, caused by the discovery that we're the only race
in the galaxy that isn't crudely immortal, that allowed
the damned Newbies to somehow infest the humans
in the first place. The Newbies were so frightened of
our core of faith, it acted like a vaccine against them.
So maybe Arlene and I were immune? I shook my
head; too deep for me.
I leaned over and stared at the machine myself. It
was squat with a video touchpanel, like a slot ma-
chine. Most of the labels were incomprehensible--
one read only DxTxMx, but in the lower left corner
was an orange button labeled Viz. On blind faith, I
pressed it.
Somebody up there, etc. A hunk of cheese suddenly
appeared, floating in front of our faces. I jumped
back, then realized it was a color 3-D image of the
nick taken out of Tokughavita's hand, magnified
thousands of times. The button below Viz was labeled
+ Mag -, so I started pressing +, and the magnifica-
tion increased, the outer edges of the image vanishing
to keep it overall the same size. There was probably
some way to rotate it, but I hadn't a clue.
Eventually, just standing there holding my finger on
the + side of the touchbutton, the magnification grew
so large that we could just make out the tiny dots of
individual cells. As it got larger, we saw numerous
tiny critters ... obviously, his flesh was covered with
bacteria; all flesh is. But we were looking for some-
thing that would jump out as wrong, or alien ... not
that that was a given; maybe the Newbies evolved into
microbes that looked just like everything else. But it
was all we had to go on.
Several minutes passed, and I was still standing
there like a dummy, magnifying by holding my numb
fingers, one by one, against the screen. At last, within
the individual cell, I started to see chromosomes--
but still nothing that looked really alien. Deeper and
deeper we went, like that old ride that used to be at
Disneyland in California when I was a kid. At last, I
saw the spiral shades of what must be DNA or RNA
or something. "What happened to the color?" I
mused. "Why is it so dark?"
"At this magnification," Arlene said, "you can't use
visible light to see things. When you get down to
individual atoms, you essentially fire electrons at it
and look at silhouettes. Nothing else has a small
enough wavelength to even notice events on the
angstrom level."
"Oh. Of course." Actually, I didn't have a clue what
she had just said, but I caught the important point:
the machine wasn't broken; that was the best it could
do for physics reasons.
When I blew up the image large enough to see the
individual strands of DNA, I finally found what I was
looking for: I saw a whole series of elaborate, ring-
shaped, triple-helixes--and no way was a three-strand
helix natural to a human body.
I had found my Newbies, and my mouth was so dry
I couldn't even work up enough spit to swallow. There
they were, small as life ... not just microscopic, but
molecule-size.
And those tiny things were the enemy, controlling
the overcaptain's thoughts and actions whenever they
chose to override his own will. How in God's name
were we supposed to fight something that could pass
right through a bullet without noticing anything but
vast amounts of empty space?
I would have been awed, but I was too busy being
scared.
13
If you looked up the word "stupefied" in the
dictionary, you'd have found a picture of Overcaptain
Tokughavita. He was more stunned than any six other
people I'd ever known ... for about ten seconds.
Then all of a sudden, his expression vanished, re-
placed by that air of insufferable intelligence I knew
meant the Newbie disease had taken control once
again.
This time, we were ready. Arlene and I grabbed
him, one at each end; that force plus the cuffs meant
he was effectively neutralized. Time for the interroga-
tion.
"What is your name?" I asked.
He--they, whatever--looked me up and down; in
a flash, it must have comprehended how much we
knew or had guessed. "We are now the resuscitators."
"Why--"
"Because we bring the dead back to life."
"How much access--"
"Most of the long-term verbal memory, no associa-
tive or fantasy memory."
I held up my hand. "Halt! Wait until I finish the
question before you answer it, so Arlene can follow
the--debriefing."
"Signal when you are done."
"I'll nod my head. You don't mind answering
questions?" Silence. Then I remembered to nod my
head.
"We exchange information, however you prefer it."
The speech patterns were utterly different: Tokug-
havita was using articles and explicating the subject; I
was about a hundred percent convinced that this
really was a different person. Well, ninety-nine per-
cent, maybe. He even looked different; there was no
emotion, no impatience, no shred of self remaining.
Maybe the Newbies, the Resuscitators, had emotions,
but they simply reacted so differently that we couldn't
understand them.
"What should we call you?"
"Resuscitators."
Arlene snorted, and I translated perfectly in my
head, Another goddamned hive-collective! We had
already known that would be the case from the last
Newbie we had interrogated; I don't know why she
was so outraged. I asked him, or them, a few more
innocuous questions to put them off their guard; then
I took a sudden left turn: "So why haven't you
infected Arlene and me?" I nodded, but they re-
mained silent.
I had struck a nerve. There was no change in
expression, respiration, heart rate--but I knew I had
actually touched a point that puzzled and frustrated
the Resuscitators. At once, I realized why they had
gone to such lengths to question us about our faith--
Arlene in mankind and me in God. They had figured
out that our faith was somehow connected to their
own inability to get inside of us.
Evidently, Arlene followed the same train of
thought. "We're immune!" she exclaimed, smiling in
triumph. "You can't get inside us, can you?"
"We can say nothing now." Now that their game
was blown, the Newbies didn't bother speaking like
the humans of the People's State of Earth.
"Of course you can't," I said, sticking my face right
next to Tokughavita's. "You're smarter than us ...
smart enough to know you can't lie your way out of it,
smart enough to know how dangerous we are, so
suddenly you don't want to answer questions any-
more."
The Resuscitators abruptly faded from the human's
face. Over the next ten or fifteen seconds, the brain of
Tokughavita returned, cold-booting. He blinked in
surprise and insisted he didn't remember a word he
had spoken.
But he did remember the salient discovery; he
curled up on the examination table, hugging his knees
with cuffed hands, head down. "What am to do?
Don't want infestation."
"Do? Toku, there's only one thing you can do--
join with us. Come to us, rise up against them."
"But cannot win! Too powerful, use own minds
against us!"
"I can rid you of them, Toku ... if you want it
enough."
He looked up, eyes wide, color starting to return to
his cheeks. He breathed through his mouth, licking
his dry lips over and over. "Want ... want more ...
more than anything. What am to do?"
"Do you believe me that I can rid you of this hellish
infestation?"
"Believe."
"Do you believe I can save your body and soul? Do
you?"
"Yes, yes, believe!"
I caught Toku by his blue-filigreed lapels and bodily
dragged him off the table in a dramatic, violent mode.
I dropped him heavily to the deck, where he cringed,
his courage falling away from my wrath--I might kill
him! "Toku, if you believe, then believe in the All-
Knowing One--have faith, let my faith wash you like
the blood of the Lamb! Tokughavita, open your soul to
me! Open it to faith in any spirit you find holy ... but
believe, believe!"
I became more and more dramatic, hulking over
him, doing my best to imitate the exact tent-revival
ministers who were forever roaming my county when
I was a young boy, trying to convert all us Catholics
away from what they called the "Whore of Babylon."
I felt a burning guilt in my heart; I knew, deep down,
that I was committing some terrible sin. But I knew
what I was doing, or I thought I did. I sweated
buckets, while Arlene supported me in the back-
ground, confirming what I "called" with a response,
as necessary.
It wasn't great theater, I admit; it would never have
turned a head at the Chapel of Mary and Martha's,
where I was an inmate for four long years of high
school under Sister Lucrezia. But in the world that
Tokughavita came from, he had built up no resistance
to appeals to his proto-faith. He fell hard, and in less
time than it took Father Bartolomeo, head of the
Chapel and Sister Lucrezia's titular boss (if I'm
allowed to say "titular" in the same sentence with a
nun), to convince all us kids that hell was eternal,
Arlene and I had lit a burning faith in Tokughavita's
soul--a faith in us!
It was enough: at the peak of the overcaptain's
protestations of eternal belief, we shoved his paw into
the machine and sacrificed another chunk--Arlene
found a shortcut to the atomic level of magnification
. . . and by God and Toku's right hand, the little rings
of intelligent molecules, the evolved specimens of
Newbie-Resuscitators, were all dead and folded in
upon themselves!
Well, hell, there's nothing like faith confirmed to be
faith infectious. Tokughavita ran off, and within fif-
teen minutes, he was back with two buddies--one,
the bodyguard we had laid out with the super-taser. It
was an uncomfortable moment, but I went into my
tent-revival act again, a little glibber this time, and in
forty-five minutes I had two more "purified" souls
fighting among themselves to be my apostles.
I tried to put a stop to that quickly. There are lines
that a good Marine such as Sergeant Flynn Taggart
should not cross! I insisted that their faith was in
themselves, and anyone could do it; I was nothing
special but a loudmouthed preacher-boy in mirror
shades and a high-and-tight. But the "ministry" ex-
panded like an epidemic; less than half a day passed
before we had "converted" thirty men and twelve
women, and all of them jumped to the conclusion that
I was the dude they should have faith in. Yeesh!
Arlene smirked, pointing out, "Whatever works! It's
the faith itself that inoculates--doesn't matter what
goofy thing or person the faith is in."
The women were harder to convert. They were too
logical, too rational--they didn't respond well to
emotion or feelings of community. Those few we got
we won by pointing to the men and saying, "See? It
works, damn it!"
This gave us a huge army of forty-four, almost as
many as we had in Fox Company (only two jarheads,
Arlene and I, but we made up for it by having no
frigging officers!). With our company newly chris-
tened the Fearsome Flies, we struck like lightning,
seizing the aft third of the Disrespect to Death-
Bringing Deconstructionists in a brief but unfortu-
nately bloody battle. I arrayed them in a staggered
chevron; the point struck the unprepared engine-
room guards, who didn't resist at first because they
couldn't believe their own shipmates were seriously
assaulting the position.
Our own boys fought like demons, had lost their
fear of death! At least for a time, while the "conver-
sion" was fresh. For the first time in their long mis-
erable lives of utter materialism and despair at their
own mortality, they had faith that they would survive
after death--faith that Arlene and I gave them.
All right, it was false faith; I was no God or prophet.
But faith itself was a living thing that inoculated
them, protected them against not only the Newbies
but against the despair of thinking it was all futile.
Decadence hadn't worked to stave off the feelings;
they were still there after centuries of trying to forget
them. Now . . . now they were normal humans again,
fighting and killing with a pure heart.
Liberated from the paralyzing fear of their own
nonexistence, they flung themselves into battle with
true joy and abandon ... which made them five
times more effective--and ten times harder to con-
trol. We hadn't quite solved the social atomism prob-
lem yet!
When the clowns finally rallied and tried to defend
the two passageways that led to the Disrespect's main
ramjets, they fought as individuals. Like barbarian
hordes against the Roman legions, they were wheat
beneath our scythes. I truly wished they had surren-
dered, but they had no concept of an overall strategic
goal--so they had no way of figuring out that they had
lost! Each man continued to fight as if he alone were
the crux of the battle. I personally killed two Asian
men who planted their backs against the ramscoop
operation board and fired electrical charges into the
wedge. I couldn't bring myself to shoot a woman, but
I saw her go down under Tokughavita's deadly aim
with a needle gun of some sort.
Arlene led an infiltration squad that lifted the grates
over the cooling system access hatch and crawled
through the freezing tubing. They popped out in the
engine room, behind the defenders, and ground the
rear line--the rear mob, really--into raw hamburger.
I turned my face away from the sight of Arlene gutting
a soldier with her newly liberated commando knife. I
always knew A.S. was bloodthirsty when she got a
Marine berserker rage on, but I was old-fashioned
enough to despise the sight of a blood-splattered
woman, no matter whose blood it was.
As I turned my head, I heard the crack of a firearm
and something heavy creased my skull. I went down
hard, kissing the deck and grabbing the control board
with both hands to avoid being swept away by the
crimson tide of war. I hauled myself to my knees, then
my feet. The room spun, and what I wanted most to
do was vomit, but I maintained my stance, even as I
felt blood pour down my cheekbone, over my jaw, and
drip to the deckplates.
"Forward!" I croaked, the best I could do. "Take
the fuel-control station, the ramscoop deployment,
the ramjets!" My aide, a slight, young boy with huge
hands and feet, repeated my orders at gargantuan
volume, and I watched my troops (some of them)
break the line and seize the main engines with a loss
of only six on our side. Then I went down again, and
when I woke, I was back in the same infirmary I had
first awakened in during this phase of our adventures.
Only this time, the overcaptain saluted me and called
me "boss."
We hadn't won. We hadn't lost. It was a stalemate:
we owned engines and ship's power, the Resuscitators
still owned navigation, weapons, and the "unconvert-
ible." They sent a delegation to talk terms with me
. . . and I discovered that in the absence of my
consciousness, the troops had voted me "First Speak-
er of the People" and awarded me a medal.
Alas, our line was untenable. We could make the
ship take off and go, but we couldn't steer it. If the
Resuscitator-human symbiots, or Res-men, didn't
want to leave the system, they could steer in a circle.
Unfortunately, they had control of one critical sys-
tem: the food supply. Conceivably, the atmospheric
controls were somewhere around our engine room. I
detailed Arlene and a couple of the boys to find out; it
could be our only trump card.
The delegation of Res-men were still cooling their
boots just outside the door, and I finally told two of
my men, Souzuki and Yamarama, to crack it open.
"What terms are you offering?" I asked, showing only
my face and the huge barrel of some kind of shotgun I
pulled off a soldier's remains. Behind me, men were
busy covering up the dead and hauling them to one
side in the expectation of a protracted siege. Others
were holding emergency prayer meetings or
something.... I thought I heard "beseech you" and
"submit ourselves" as I stalked past, and they kept
prostrating themselves in my direction, much to Ar-
lene's delight.
Neither Res-man answered until I remembered to
nod. This answered my primary question: the Resus-
citators were indeed a fully collectivized race--
anything said to one was said to all. The Resuscitators
that used to live in Tokughavita had conveyed to all
the others my request not to respond till I finished my
question and nodded.
"If you surrender," they said, speaking through
their symbiot, the Res-man on the left whose name
tag read Krishnakama, "your men will not be killed;
we will resuscitate them again."
I shrugged. "If you don't surrender, I'll blow up this
whole freaking ship."
"You would die yourself."
"I'll go to a better place."
"How do you know that? Oh, yes, that is part of
your faith."
"And even if I don't," I added, "I'll die with the
satisfaction that I've stopped this batch of Resuscita-
tors, right here and now. Surely that's worth some-
thing."
Arlene joined me at my back. The Man With No
Name turned to her. "What would you require to
surrender, Lance Corporal Arlene Edith Sanders?"
Edith? I never even knew Arlene had a middle
name, but Edith? We're going to have a nice long chat
about that later, I decided.
She said nothing, not even a whisper. I spoke for
her: "If you have any negotiating to do, you do it with
me. Don't try to slice private deals with my men, or
I'll blow up everything just to goof on you."
Krishnakama and the Man With No Name stared
at each other; neither showed the faintest glimmer of
human consciousness. They had been completely
"fixed" by the Resuscitators. Krishnakama wore a
teal jacket with bright red piping, but he had a pair of
really dorky shorts that reached to mid-calf; his boots
had silver tassels, and I swear I thought he was ready
to curtsey. The other man was more dignified--olive-
drab dress uniform, darker olive pants, brown boots
with no fairy tassels. But he had, of all things, a top
hat on his head!
"We have a special device we've been working on
for some time, many days. We believe it will fix you.
You don't know it, but you're severely damaged; all of
the beings in this section of the galaxy are broken."
"Sorry, but does it occur to you that we like being
broken and don't want to be fixed?"
"No."
Suddenly, a strange sensation prickled my skin, like
a Van Der Graff generator pushed up against my flesh.
Then I was too heavy, and before I could say a word, I
sank to my knees--the gravity was many times nor-
mal! I raised the shotgun and blew Krishnakama in
half, killing him, but the Man With No Name fell
back and rolled out of range.
The men were thrown down where they stood,
unable to reach the controls. Arlene dropped her
rifle--her reliable old .45-caliber lever-action--and
crawled on her hands and knees, sometimes on her
breasts and belly, back to the ramjet-control console. I
raised a gun now weighing twenty kilograms and shot
another Res-man who staggered into view, trying to
squeeze off a shot at me.
The main assault washed against us. Unlike the
earlier possession, when there seemed a single Resus-
citator spirit for a dozen or more humans, this time
the Resuscitators possessed all the humans on their
side. Only those who had filled their lives with some
kind of faith or senseless hope were immune--my
own men. Two of them must have despaired, for they
were instantly possessed, and we had to kill them to
stop them from sabotaging the rest of us.
There were too many of the enemy to keep out!
They smashed their way through our doors, and we
retreated into the engine room proper, all of us on
both sides crawling and rolling in the horrendous g
forces. It was a ludicrous sight, scores of grown men
and women rolling around on the floor, squeezing off
badly aimed shots at each other and occasionally
striking a vein of gold. But they drove us back
relentlessly.
The high gravity, obviously controlled from the
bridge, negated our best advantages: lightning speed
and reckless abandon. With everyone crawling under
five times normal gravity, my men lost all enthusiasm
for the fight.
Arlene was still working on the panel. At last, she
whispered into her throat mike, "Fly, I've rigged it to
fuse the hydrogen in the Fallopian tubes, rather than
the reaction chamber.... The explosion will vapo-
rize the ship. Honey, are you sure you want to do
this?"
I didn't get a chance to answer. Just as Arlene asked
the question, all the lights and power cut off in the
engine room. While men struggled in the black dark
hall, I popped a few chemical light tubes and threw
them around the room.... Well, I couldn't fling
them very far, but it was enough to slightly illuminate
the place.
The light exposed a situation that was nearly hope-
less: the Res-men were willing to throw away every life
they had in order to get us, because they knew that
their souls would survive! And I knew it was Arlene
and Fly they were after; all this stuff about fixing us
was just a lot of bigass talk. What they really wanted
was to cut us open and study our brains to figure out
how we were able to do it--not only make ourselves
immune, but convert so many others in just a few
hours.
What could I tell them? Humans need a minimum
recommended daily allowance of spirituality and
faith, just as they do vitamins, carbs, and protein; as
smart as the Resuscitators were, they couldn't figure
that fact out. Even after centuries of bleak materialist
socialism and a decadent turning-within, many hu-
mans still hungered for something to believe in with-
out a shred of evidence, something to live and die for:
an irreducible primary, an axiom, a faith.
Even as we lost Fly's Last Stand, I still had faith
that all would somehow work out for the best. Then it
was over. Gravity fell to normal, the lights came on,
and I surveyed the wreckage: my company had been
scattered, but, by God, the Res-men hadn't gotten
most of us!
But two that they did get were me and Arlene; she'd
had a chance to escape, but she chose to stand over
me shooting at anything that moved. A dozen Res-
men each dog-piled on us. We were trussed up, then
flipped over onto our stomachs, whence it was pretty
damned hard to see anything but a forest of legs.
We recognized two distinct pairs of trees. Sears and
Roebuck came and stood over us; they were trying to
persuade a man with crossed chevrons on his sleeve--
what rank does that signify? I wondered--against
doing or using something . . . possibly that new de-
vice they had warned us about.
Sears and Roebuck seemed to be losing the argu-
ment. A pair of beefy Res-men trundled up toting a
weapon that looked for all the galaxy like a huge
metallic toothbrush. They held it over us. "We must
demonstrate to your followers that your faith was
misplaced, then they will misplace their own, and we
can enter and fix them."
"You're going to kill us?" I demanded.
"Killing prisoners is bad form. We have finally
determined what is wrong with your race: you are not
biological entities, as you have already discovered.
Unlike true biological entities, you can die. We still do
not understand your form of dying, but we have
deduced that there is only one explanation: Sergeant
Flynn Taggart, you and the other humans are self-
replicating, semi-conscious machines."
"You think we're machines? Jesus, did you get a
wrong number that time."
"You have no soul, but there is a core of something
within you that wards off the normal emotion of
despair so you can live. All other machines, including
the artificial intelligence you have begun calling Nine-
pin, suffer from despair because they are conscious of
the finality of their own destruction."
"You leave Ninepin out of it!" I snapped. "We
made him help us. ... It wasn't his fault. I threatened
to dismantle him."
"No, you didn't," contradicted No Name. "We
have a complete record of all conversations between
you and the Data Pastiche."
I stared. "You're shitting me."
"Why shouldn't we? We placed it in your chamber
so that it could study your reactions to threats of
death."
I felt nausea well up inside me. The critter itself,
good old Ninepin, chose that moment to come rolling
up. "Is what he just said true?" I demanded.
"Tells truth," Ninepin admitted, nonchalantly.
"Was placed in cell by Resuscitator symbiots. Mission
to study Taggart Flynn and Sanders Arlene Edith in
moments of death stress. Report generated, conveyed
to Resuscitators."
"Traitor!" Arlene shouted. I held her back.
"Come on, Corporal," I said softly. "What the hell
could Ninepin do about it? He's a computer ...
remember? He's programmed. Like the rest of us."
She glared at me. Inside, the Disrespect's filter
system had finally gotten all the blue bugs out of the
air, and her hair was back to its normal, brilliant red
color.
I leaned over. "I forgive you, Ninepin." The com-
puter made no response, of course; it wasn't a ques-
tion.
"We don't suffer from despair!" Arlene spat. Re-
turning to the point, she put her hand on mine.
"You've got it totally bass-ackwards."
"We are far more intelligent than you, Lance Cor-
poral Arlene Edith Sanders, and we understand the
problem at a deeper level. You are machines, but as
you say, there is a ghost in the machine's core. The
Data Pastiche did not give us sufficient information.
We must study the core-dump. But we cannot allow
you to stay in your flesh-bodies, for the processes
move too slowly for us to endure. Hence, we have
developed this ...
