Dealing in Futures Part 23

Clicked it back to log zero, set the magnification at ten, rea.s.sembled it.

"Marygay didn't want to try it out. Said she'd had her fill of that. I didn't press her, but a person's got to have confidence in their tools."

I clicked off the safety and found a clod of dirt that the rangefinder said was between 100 and 120 meters away. Set it at 110, rested the barrel of the rifle on the sandbags, centered the clod in the crosshairs, and squeezed. The round hissed out and kicked up dirt about five centimeters low.

"Fine." I reset it for night use and safetied it and handed it back. "What happened a year ago?"

He wrapped it up carefully, keeping the rags away from the eyepiece. "Had some jumpers come in. Fired a few rounds and scared 'em away."

"All right, what's a jumper?"

"Yeah, you wouldn't know." He shook out a tobacco cigarette and pa.s.sed me the box. "I don't know why they don't just call 'em thieves, that's what they are.

Murderers, too, sometimes.

"They know that a lot of the commune members are pretty well off. If you raise cash crops you get to keep half the cash; besides, a lot of our members were prosperous when they joined.

"Anyhow, the jumpers take advantage of our relative isolation. They come out from the city and try to sneak in, usually hit one place, and run. Most of the time, they don't get this far in, but the farms closer to the road . . . we hear gunfire every couple of weeks. Usually just scaring off kids. If it keeps up, a siren goes off and the commune goes on alert."

"Doesn't sound fair to the people living close to the road."

"There're compensations. They only have to donate half as much of their crop as the rest of us do. And they're issued heavier weapons."

Marygay and I took the family's two bicycles and pedaled down to the recreation center. I only fell off twice, negotiating the b.u.mpy road in the dark.

It was a little livelier than Richard had described it. A young nude girl was dancing sensuously to an a.s.sortment of homemade drums near the far side of the dome.

Turned out she was still in school; it was a project for a "cultural relativity" cla.s.s.

Most of the people there, in fact, were young and therefore still in school. They considered it a joke, though. After you had learned to read and write and could pa.s.s the Cla.s.s I literacy test, you only had to take one course per year, and some of those you could pa.s.s just by signing up. So much for the "eighteen years' compulsory education" they had startled us with at Stargate.

Other people were playing board games, reading, watching the girl gyrate, or just talking. There was a bar that served soya, coffee, or thin homemade beer. Not a ration ticket to be seen; all made by the commune or purchased outside with commune tickets.

We got into a discussion about the war, with a bunch of people who knew Marygay and I were veterans. It's hard to describe their att.i.tude, which was pretty uniform. They were angry in an abstract way that it took so much tax money to support; they were convinced that the Taurans would never be any danger to Earth; but they all knew that nearly half the jobs in the world were a.s.sociated with the war, and if it stopped, everything would fall apart.

I thought everything was in shambles already, but then I hadn't grown up in this world. And they had never known "peacetime."

We went home about midnight and Marygay and I each stood two hours' guard. By the middle of the next morning, I was wis.h.i.+ng I had gotten a little more sleep.

The plow was a big blade on wheels with two handles for steering, atomic powered. Not very much power, though; enough to move it forward at a slow crawl if the blade was in soft earth. Needless to say, there was little soft earth in the unused five acres. The plow would go a few centimeters, get stuck, freewheel until I put some back into it, then move a few more centimeters. I finished a tenth of an acre the first day and eventually got it up to a fifth of an acre a day.

It was hard, hardening work, but pleasant. I had an earclip that piped music to me, old tapes from Richard's collection, and the sun browned me all over. I was beginning to think I could live that way forever, when suddenly it was finished.

Marygay and I were reading up at the recreation center one evening when we heard faint gunfire down by the road. We decided it'd be smart to get back to the house. We were less than halfway there when firing broke out all along our left, on a line that seemed to extend from the road to far past the recreation center: a coordinated attack.

We had to abandon the bikes and crawl on hands and knees in the drainage ditch by the side of the road, bullets hissing over our heads. A heavy vehicle rumbled by, shooting left and right. It took a good twenty minutes to crawl home. We pa.s.sed two farmhouses that were burning brightly. I was glad ours didn't have any wood.

I noticed there was no return fire coming from our tower, but didn't say anything.

There were two dead strangers in front of the house as we rushed inside.

April was lying on the floor, still alive but bleeding from a hundred tiny fragment wounds. The living room was rubble and dust; someone must have thrown a bomb through a door or window. I left Marygay with her mother and ran out back to the tower. The ladder was pulled up, so I had to s.h.i.+nny up one of the stilts.

Richard was sitting slumped over the rifle. In the pale green glow from the scope I could see a perfectly round hole above his left eye. A little blood had trickled down the bridge of his nose and dried.

I laid his body on the floor and covered his head with my s.h.i.+rt. I filled my pockets with clips and took the rifle back to the house.

Marygay had tried to make her mother comfortable. They were talking quietly. She was holding my shotgun-pistol and had another gun on the floor beside her. When I came in she looked up and nodded soberly, not crying.

April whispered something and Marygay asked, "Mother wants to know whether ...

Daddy had a hard time of it. She knows he's dead."

"No. I'm sure he didn't feel anything."

"That's good."

"It's something." I should keep my mouth shut. "It is good, yes."

I checked the doors and windows for an effective vantage point. I couldn't find anyplace that wouldn't allow a whole platoon to sneak up behind me.

"I'm going to go outside and get on top of the house." Couldn't go back to the tower. "Don't you shoot unless somebody gets inside . . . maybe they'll think the place is deserted."

By the time I had clambered up to the sod roof, the heavy truck was coming back down the road. Through the scope I could see that there were five men on it, four in the cab and one who was on the open bed, cradling a machine gun, surrounded by loot.

He was crouched between two refrigerators, but I had a clear shot at him. Held my fire, not wanting to draw attention. The truck stopped in front of the house, sat for a minute, and turned in. The window was probably bulletproof, but I sighted on the driver's face and squeezed off a round. He jumped as it ricocheted, whining, leaving an opaque star on the plastic, and the man in back opened up. A steady stream of bullets hummed over my head; I could hear them thumping into the sandbags of the tower. He didn't see me.

The truck wasn't ten meters away when the shooting stopped. He was evidently reloading, hidden behind the refrigerator. I took careful aim and when he popped up to fire I shot him in the throat. The bullet being a tumbler, it exited through the top of his skull.

The driver pulled the truck around in a long arc so that, when it stopped, the door to the cab was flush with the door of the house. This protected them from the tower and also from me, though I doubted they yet knew where I was; a T-16 makes no flash and very little noise. I kicked off my shoes and stepped cautiously onto the top of the cab, hoping the driver would get out on his side. Once the door opened I could fill the cab with ricocheting bullets.

No good. The far door, hidden from me by the roof's overhang, opened first. I waited for the driver and hoped that Marygay was well hidden. I shouldn't have worried.

There was a deafening roar, then another and another. The heavy truck rocked with the impact of thousands of tiny flechettes. One short scream that the second shot ended.

I jumped from the truck and ran around to the back door. Marygay had her mother's head on her lap, and someone was crying softly. I went to them and Marygay's cheeks were dry under my palms.

"Good work, dear."

She didn't say anything. There was a steady heavy dripping sound from the door and the air was acrid with smoke and the smell of fresh meat. We huddled together until dawn.

I had thought April was sleeping, but in the dim light her eyes were wide open and filmed. Her breath came in shallow rasps. Her skin was gray parchment and dried blood. She didn't answer when we talked to her.

A vehicle was coming up the road, so I took the rifle and went outside. It was a dump truck with a white sheet draped over one side and a man standing in the back with a megaphone repeating, "Wounded . . . wounded." I waved and the truck came in. They took April out on a makes.h.i.+ft litter and told us which hospital they were going to. We wanted to go along but there was simply no room; the bed of the truck was covered with people in various stages of disrepair.

Marygay didn't want to go back inside because it was getting light enough to see the men she had killed so completely. I went back in to get some cigarettes and forced myself to look. It was messy enough, but just didn't disturb me that much.

That bothered me, to be confronted with a pile of human hamburger and mainly notice the flies and ants and smell. Death is so much neater in s.p.a.ce.

We buried her father behind the house, and when the truck came back with April's small body wrapped in a shroud, we buried her beside him. The commune's sanitation truck came by a little later, and gas-masked men took care of the jumpers' bodies.

We sat in the baking sun, and finally Marygay wept, for a long time, silently.

11.

We spent that night in a hotel room in Sioux Falls, talking more than sleeping. It went like this: Earth was not a fit place to live, and by all signs it was getting worse rather than better. And there was nothing to hold us here.

But the only people allowed in s.p.a.ce were members of UNEF.

Therefore we had to either join up again or try to learn to live with the crime and crowding and filth and so on.

We had been promised training positions if we reenlisted. We could be a.s.signed to the moon if we asked, and would have commissions. All these things would make army life a lot more tolerable than it had been.

And except for the combat, we had been happier in the army than during most of our stay on Earth.

We took the morning flight to Miami and monorailed to the Cape.

"In case you're interested, you aren't the first combat veterans to come back." The recruiting officer was a muscular lieutenant of indeterminate s.e.x. I flipped a coin mentally and it came up tails.

"Last I heard, there had been nine others," she said in her husky tenor. "All of them opted for the moon . . . maybe you'll find some of your friends there." She slid two simple forms across the desk. "Sign these and you're in again. Second lieutenants."

The form was a simple request to be a.s.signed to active duty; we had never really gotten out of the Force, since they extended the draft law, but had just been on inactive status. I scrutinized the paper.

"There's nothing on this about the guarantees we were given at Stargate."

"That won't be necessary. The Force will-"

"I think it is necessary, Lieutenant." I handed back the form. So did Marygay.

"Let me check." She left the desk and disappeared into an office. After a while we heard a printer rattle.

She brought back the same two sheets, with an addition typed under our names: GUARANTEED LOCATION OF CHOICE [LUNA] AND a.s.sIGNMENT OF.

CHOICE [COMBAT TRAINING SPECIALIST].

We got a thorough physical checkup and were fitted for new fighting suits, made our financial arrangements, and caught the next morning's shuttle. We laid over at Earthport, enjoying zero gravity for a few hours, and then caught a ride to Luna, setting down at the Grimaldi base.

On the door to the Transient Officers' Billet, some wag had sc.r.a.ped "abandon hope all ye who enter." We found our two-man cubicle and began changing for chow.

Two raps on the door. "Mail call, sirs."

I opened the door and the sergeant standing there saluted. I just looked at him for a second and then remembered I was an officer and returned the salute. He handed me two identical 'faxes. I gave one to Marygay and we both gasped at the same time: * *ORDERS * *ORDERS * *ORDERS.

THE FOLLOWING NAMED PERSONNEL: Mandella, William 2LT [11 575 278] COCOMM D CO GRITRABN AND.

Potter, Marygay 2LT [17 386 907] COCOMM B CO GRITRABN ARE HEREBY REa.s.sIGNED TO:.

LT Mandella: PLcomm 2 PL STFTHETA STARGATE LT Potter: PLCOMM 3 PL STFTHETA STARGATE.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES:.

Command infantry platoon in Tet-2 Campaign.

THE ABOVE NAMED PERSONNEL WILL REPORT IMMEDIATELY TO.

GRIMALDI TRANSPORTATION BATTALION TO BE MANIFESTED TO.

STARGATE.

ISSUED STARGATE TACSD/129886841450/20 Aug 2019 SG: BY AUTHO STFCOM Commander.

* *ORDERS * *ORDERS * *ORDER S.

"They didn't waste any time, did they?" Marygay said bitterly.

"Must be a standing order. Strike Force Command's light-weeks away; they can't even know we've re-upped yet." "What about our . . ." She let it trail off.

"The guarantee. Well, we were given our a.s.signment of choice. n.o.body guaranteed we'd have the a.s.signment for more than an hour."

"It's so dirty."

I shrugged. "It's so army."

But I couldn't shake the feeling that we were going home.

As may be too obvious, that was a story I felt I had to write, trying to deal with the hangover of pain and confusion that haunted most of us when we came back from Vietnam. I've met writers who can only write about themes that come from these dark levels, and they have my admiration and pity in about equal parts. I am not one of them. Give me a stack of paper and something that will make marks on it, and I'll come up with a story. Most of the people I know who write for a living share this small talent, this considerable obsession.

Yet the question we're asked most frequently is "where do you get your (crazy) ideas?" To me this question sounds like the old story about the person who asks the salesman in a showroom how much the yacht costs: If you have to ask, the salesman says, you can't afford it. If you have to ask the "ideas" question, you likely won't understand the answer. Or you won't believe it. They come out of thin air. The ideas are just there. The only trick is to make yourself receptive to them.

This is the basis for the first a.s.signment I made to my science fiction writing students at MIT. When I took roll the first day, I asked each student to pick a number between 8 and 188. These corresponded to page numbers in the excellent source book The Science in Science Fiction (by Peter Nicholls and David Langford, Knopf, 1983).

I told them to take the topic that's discussed on that page and begin a story about it.

Then I further restricted them by asking that they look through the Science Fiction Hall of Fame collection (Robert Silverberg and Ben Bova, editors; Avon, 1971 and 1974), reading the first page of every story, and find a beginning that seemed attractive-then write a pastiche of that beginning, applying its structure to the random topic.

Part of the lesson taught by this seemingly capricious a.s.signment is that art thrives on restrictions. A larger part is to generate in the students the sudden Ah-ha! feeling: A minute ago there was nothing. Now there's a story. Where the h.e.l.l did it come from?

The where it came from (he says, dusting the chalk from his vest) is named by different cultures and eras according to whatever symbology is comfortable to them: the Muses, the collective unconscious, the tension between left- and right-brain activity. Naming it isn't important. It's the same place whether you're a blind poet mumbling immortal lines on the Aegean sh.o.r.e or a chain-smoking hack writer facing a deadline and the baleful screen of a word processor. Before, there was nothing.

Now there's a story.

Out of curiosity and a sense of fairness, I made myself do all the a.s.signments I gave to the students. My random number was 142, which came up "cyborg," and the beginning I chose to emulate was from Daniel Keyes's marvelous tale Flowers for Algernon. This is what happened.