Dealing in Futures Part 18

"Don't get your hopes up. Depending on Lieutenant Pastori's evaluation, she may still face a court-martial. There is only one penalty for cowardice under fire."

"Yes sir." Even that couldn't blunt my relief, my happiness.

"You may go."

Halfway down the corridor I met Kamehameha. She had on a fresh tunic and even some cosmetics, G.o.d knows where she got them. I threw her a salute and a wink and whispered, "Carry on, Corporal."

6.

The only other person in the sick bay waiting room was Ensign Singhe.

"Good afternoon, Ensign."

"In a way, Sergeant. Have a seat."

I sat down. "Heard anything?"

"About Corporal Potter? No."

I crossed to the bulletin board and read a dozen different things that had nothing to do with me. Then Pastori came out. Singhe jumped up but I got him first.

"Doctor-how is Corporal Potter?"

"Who are you, that I should give you a progress report?"

"Uh . . . sir, I'm Sergeant Mandella, from her platoon."

"You'll be reporting to Lieutenant Cortez?" he said with just a faint hint of sarcasm. He knew who I was.

"No, uh, sir, my interest is personal. I'll be glad to report if you-"

"No." He waggled his head loosely. "I'll take care of the red tape. My aide needs something to keep him busy. Sit down. Who are you, Ensign?"

"Personal interest too."

"My, my. Such charms my patient must have had. Still has," he added quickly.

"Neither of you ought to worry about this too much. It's a common enough malady among soldiers; I've treated a couple of dozen cases like it since Aleph. Responds very well to hypnotherapy."

"Battle fatigue?" Singhe asked.

"That's a polite term for it. Another is 'neurasthenia.' I think the sub-major calls it cowardice."

I remembered what Cortez had said, and a ripple of fear ran up my back and crawled over my scalp.

"In Corporal Potter's case," he continued, "it's quite understandable. I got the details from her under light hypnosis.

"When the Taurans attacked, she was one of the first to see them coming out of the building. She went to ground immediately, but a couple of other people in her squad didn't. They were cut down in the first instant of the attack. They died horribly and she just couldn't handle it; she felt she was in some way responsible, both because she was their squad leader and because she hadn't said anything by way of warning.

Actually, I doubt that there was any time to warn them.

"I suppose she also feels some guilt simply because she lived and they died. At any rate, she went into a state of shock right there and just withdrew completely. In civilian life, and in layman's terms, you would say she'd had a profound nervous breakdown."

That didn't sound so good. "Then, doctor . . . what will your recommendation be?"

"Recommendation?"

"To the court-martial board. Sir."

"What, are they really talking about trying her? For cowardice?" I nodded.

"Ridiculous. A normal reaction to an insupportable situation. This is a medical condition, not a moral one."

I guess my relief was obvious.

"Now don't you go telling tales. Sub-major Stott is a good soldier, but I know he thinks discipline is getting poor and he's probably looking for a sacrificial lamb.

Nothing you say is going to help her. Just wait for my report. That goes for you too, Ensign. The word is, you didn't get to see her; you don't know anything except that she's resting comfortably."

"When will I"-he looked at me-"we get to see her?"

"Not for at least a week, maybe two. I'm going to . . ." He shook his head. "It's impossible to explain without using technical terms. In a way, it's just making her look at the incident rationally, with a full knowledge of . . . what part of her psychological makeup made her react the way she did. To do this I have to make her regress to infancy and grow up again, pointing out stops along the way that have bearing on the situation. It's a standard technique, ninety-nine percent successful."

We exchanged politenesses and left.

I could have slept the clock around, reaction from the stimtabs, but we had an announcement saying that all infantry personnel would a.s.semble after chop. I skipped chop and asked Tate to wake me up in time.

When I got to the chop hall, everybody was sitting in one corner, the empty seats crowding in on them like tombstones. It hit me with new force: we had left the training center in Missouri with one hundred people, and had picked up twenty more along the way. And now this little cl.u.s.ter of survivors.

I sat and listened to the talk without joining in. Most of it concerned going home: how much the world would have changed in the nearly twenty years we'd been gone, whether we'd have to retrain to get into the job market.

Alenandrov pointed out that we had twenty years' pay waiting for us, and it had been drawing compound interest. Plus a retirement pension. We might never have to work again. n.o.body mentioned reenlisting. n.o.body mentioned the fact that they might not let us go. It costs a lot to haul twenty-seven people from Stargate to Earth.

Stott walked in and, as we were rising, said, "Sit down."

He looked at the little group, and I could tell by his dark expression that he was thinking the same thing I had. He walked around in front of us.

"I'm not a religious man," he rasped. "If there is anyone here who would like to offer a prayer or a eulogy of some kind, let him do so now." There was a long silence.

"Very well." He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small plastic box.

"Normally of course smoking is forbidden on the Anniversary. However, I have made a special arrangement with the maintenance people." He opened the box and inside there was a stack of factory joints. He set them carefully on the table. I wondered how long he'd had them.

He walked back to the door, very stiffly and without his usual briskness, and stopped. Facing out, he said, almost to himself, "You fought well." Then he left.

After a year of abstinence, and as tired as I was, the marijuana hit me hard. I smoked half a joint and fell asleep in the chair. I didn't dream.

After a week, waiting for the a.n.a.lysts to finish up planetside, we dropped through Yod-4 and popped out of Tet-38. We had to make a quarter-light-year circle around Tet-38 to position our-selves for the jump to Sade-20 and thence to Stargate.

It was during this long loop that we were first allowed to see Marygay.

She was in bed, the only person in sick bay. She looked very drawn and appeared to have lost considerable weight. Won't be able to wear her fighting suit, I thought inanely.

I sat by her bed for half an hour, watching her sleep. Ensign Singhe came in and nodded at me and left again.

After a while she opened her eyes. She looked at me for a long moment without expression, then smiled.

"Does this mean I'm well, William?"

"Better, anyhow."

"I thought so. The therapy . . . he took me back to where I was a little baby, made me grow up again. Yesterday we finally got back to the present. I think it's the present-William, how old am I?"

"s.h.i.+p time, I think you're twenty-two."

She nodded without raising her head from the pillow. "I wonder what the year is on Earth."

"Last I heard it, it'll be 2017 when we reach Stargate." She giggled. "I'll be a middle-aged lady."

"You'll never be a lady to me, dear." I patted her bare arm.

That reminds me, ".

she said, dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I'm h.o.r.n.y."

"You mean that wasn't included in the therapy?"

"Nuh-uh."

"What do you expect me to do about it?"

"The obvious. Or maybe call up Ensign Singhe."

"Here? What if Pastori comes in?"

"He'd just take notes. You can't shock a psychiatrist."

The one good thing about these floppy tunics is that you can get out of one in half a second.

7.

Pastori's report saved Marygay from a court-martial. The next seven months were uneventful, going from Tet-38 to Sade-20 to Stargate. We still had the regular rounds of calisthenics and inspections, though even Stott must have known that none of us intended to stay in the Force; none of us would ever fight again. It worried me a little, this insistence on maintaining the military life. I thought it might mean they weren't going to let us out.

The more likely explanation was that it was the easiest way to keep order aboard the s.h.i.+p.

The Tauran prisoner had died two days after he was captured. As far as anyone could tell, it wasn't suicide; he seemed to be cooperating with the xen.o.biologists- maybe he was one himself-but they learned very little, watching him waste away.

An autopsy revealed that he had become totally dehydrated, although we had kept him well supplied with water. For some reason he just didn't a.s.similate it.

And, of course, with the Tauran dead, there went the only reason for our going planetside rather than sitting in a safe orbit and dropping missiles.

Things had s.h.i.+fted around a little bit, so it was 2019 when we arrived at Stargate.

Stargate had grown astonis.h.i.+ngly in the past twelve years. The base was one building the size of Tycho City, housing about ten thousand people. There were seventy-eight s.h.i.+ps the size of the Anniversary or larger, involved in raids on Tauran- held portal planets. Another ten guarded Stargate itself, and two were in orbit waiting for their infantry to be out-processed. One other s.h.i.+p, the Earth's Hope II, had returned from fighting while we were gone. They also had failed to bring home a live Tauran.

We went planetside in two scouts.h.i.+ps.General Botsford (who had only been a full major the first time we met him, when Stargate was two huts and twenty-four graves) received us in an elegantly appointed seminar room. He was pacing back and forth at the end of the room, in front of a huge holographic operations chart.

"You know," he said, too loud, and then, more conversationally, "you know that we could disperse you into other strike forces and send you right out again. The Elite Conscription Act has been changed now, five years' subjective in service instead of two.

"And I don't see why some of you don't want to stay in! Another couple of years and compound interest would make you independently wealthy for life. Sure, you took heavy losses-but that was inevitable, you were the first. Things are going to be easier now. The fighting suits have been improved, we know more about the Taurans'

tactics, our weapons are more effective ... there's no need to be afraid."

He sat down at the head of the table and looked at n.o.body in particular.

"My own memories of combat are over a half-century old. To me it was exhilarating, strengthening. I must be a different kind of person than all of you."

Or have a very selective memory, I thought.

"But that's neither here nor there. I have one alternative to offer you, one that doesn't involve direct combat.

"We're very short of qualified instructors. The Force will offer any one of you a lieutenancy if you will accept a training position. It can be on Earth; on the Moon at double pay; on Charon at triple pay; or here at Stargate for quadruple pay.

Furthermore, you don't have to make up your mind now. You're all getting a free trip back to Earth-I envy you, I haven't been back in fifteen years, will probably never go back-and you can get the feel of being a civilian again. If you don't like it, just walk into any UNEF installation and you'll walk out an officer. Your choice of a.s.signment.

"Some of you are smiling. I think you ought to reserve judgment. Earth is not the same place you left."

He pulled a little card out of his tunic and looked at it, smiling. "Most of you have something on the order of four hundred thousand dollars coming to you, acc.u.mulated pay and interest. But Earth is on a war footing and, of course, it is the citizens of Earth who are supporting the war. Your income puts you in a ninety-two-percent income-tax bracket: thirty-two thousand might last you about three years if you're careful.

"Eventually you're going to have to get a job, and this is one job for which you are uniquely trained. There are not that many jobs available. The population of Earth is nearly nine billion, with five or six billion unemployed.

"Also keep in mind that your friends and sweethearts of two years ago are now going to be twenty-one years older than you. Many of your relatives will have pa.s.sed away. I think you'll find it a very lonely world.

"But to tell you something about this world, I'm going to turn you over to Captain Siri, who just arrived from Earth. Captain?"