The Eternity Brigade Part 15

"I grew up in the oil fields of Oklahoma. The kids were pretty tough there. I was always big for my age, and I got teased about it. When I was five, a seven-year-old bully picked on me in the playground. I knocked him down and he hit his head on the side of the swings, gashed open a big cut.

I heard he needed eleven st.i.tches. I never told anyone about it, and I guess he never told anyone who did it, either-maybe he was embarra.s.sed to be beaten up by a kid two years younger than him. But I remembered what he looked like lying there with his head cut open and bleeding, and I knew I didn't ever want to do that to anybody again.

"All through school, growing up, I avoided fights- and in my neighborhood that took some doing. I learned to be easygoing and I smiled a lot. The kids called me all kinds of names-they thought I was some kind of sissy or queer. That hurt a lot. They tried to provoke me into doing something, but I usually ran away. I got pretty good at running, believe me."Then, about two weeks before my high school graduation, a bunch of guys caught me out behind the gym. I couldn't get away, I had to face them." He gave a humorless little laugh. "Naturally I was what you might call out of practice. They beat the s.h.i.+t out of me, and I barely lifted a finger against them.

"I came home with both eyes blacked, my nose bleeding, a rib cracked and bruises over most of my body. I explained to my father what had happened. Maybe I thought I'd get some sympathy. Instead, he took me out in the back and whaled on me for not fighting back. He'd had to put up for all those years with hearing stories about my being a sissy, and I guess this was the last straw. He was disappointed in me, I'd been a failure. I was his only son, and he was ashamed of me.

"I waited that night until everyone in the house was asleep, and I ran away from home. I hitchhiked into Tulsa, got an emergency hospital to patch me up, lied about my age and joined the army. They weren't being particularly fussy then-they needed everyone they could get for Africa. I always volunteered for the toughest jobs they could give me." He shrugged.

"I guess all along I've been trying to prove I'm not a coward."

"Your father's been dead a long time now," Hawker said quietly.

"I know. Maybe that's why it's so hard to prove it to the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Hawker and Symington settled back in their respective chairs, waiting for the bell to tell them they'd reached their destination. Neither man said another word until they arrived.

Hawker had almost dozed off when the bell chimed their arrival outside Resurrection Central. He started, then shook himself to full alertness and stood up. Across the room, Symington was stretching and doing a few quick calisthenics to get himself in shape for the fight ahead.

Hawker looked around, and realized his oversight almost at once. There was no door in this bubble at present, no way to get outside. Ama.s.sa was still out cold, and they didn't know how to work the belt themselves. They would have to move quickly, though; if the bubble just sat here for too long, it would arouse suspicion.

Symington too saw the problem. He tried using his rifle on the walls, but the powerful beam deflected harmlessly off the material, bouncingalmost straight back and barely missing him on the rebound.

"We've got to get out of here somehow," Hawker said.

"I know a quick way," Symington answered. "Get Dave and stand him over here with us. See if he can walk on his own now."

Hawker took Green off his couch and stood him on his feet. The crippled soldier was semiconscious, but not very cooperative. Hawker took Green's right arm and placed it around his shoulder, with his own left arm around Green's waist. "Ready," he said.

Symington took his beampistol and shot Ama.s.sa cleanly through the head. Just as happened with Consakannis, the bubble began collapsing immediately upon the death of its owner. The soldiers moved to avoid the worst of the mess, but they were still covered by the noxious goo as they waded away from the puddle that had been Ama.s.sa's home.

They found themselves facing a mountain that was much larger than they'd realized just by looking at the pictures of it in Ama.s.sa's viewscreen.

It was part of a chain that extended left and right as far as they could see, and it must easily have been 3,500 meters high. The front was of craggy rock, into which had been cut a door two stories tall. "Impressive, isn't it?"

Symington said.

"What do you think we ought to do?" Hawker asked.

"Let's just walk in and see what happens. Why start a fight if we don't have to? Maybe they'll just give us what we want."

"And maybe I'm the tooth fairy," Hawker grumbled, but accepted the need to proceed cautiously.

With Symington supporting Green from the other side, the two men walked through the entrance with their friend between them. Inside they found themselves in a large semicircular hall, with at least twenty doors before them going to other places. In the center of the hall was just a giant s.h.i.+ning silver globe, so large they had to crane their necks to see its top.

"Come forward," said the globe in reverberating tones, and the men did so reluctantly. "Now, state your names and your business here.""I'm Joe Smith," Symington said affably. 'These are my friends John Doe and Richard Roe. We'd like to see your files, if you don't mind."

"Access to the files is prohibited without specific authorization."

"We have the authorization." Only the way Symington rubbed his right thumb and forefinger together showed Hawker how nervous he was.

The globe was adamant. "Please produce ident.i.ty card."

Symington fished in his pocket and pulled out nothing. "Here you are,"

he said, offering the imaginary card.

"There is nothing there."

"Of course there is. Are your scanners functioning properly?"

There was barely a hesitation. "All components operating normally.

Furthermore, video correlation identifies you as deserted army personnel Symington, Frank, Hawker, Jerold, and Green-"

"s.h.i.+t!" Symington exclaimed. He pulled out hie beampistol and fired point-blank at the globe, which exploded into a million pieces. "Didn't want to talk to no f.u.c.king ball, anyway."

Hawker had his own gun drawn, too, and was looking around for any guards. But the hall remained ominously quiet. "Where do we go now?" he asked.

"Through there, pal." Symington pointed at the wall " Of doors.

"Which one?"

"What the f.u.c.k difference does it make? We've got to go somewhere, don't we?" Symington was not a man to consider the subtleties of a situation. When talk did not work, he believed in charging ahead and figuring it out later. The fact that his instincts were right more often than not accounted for his nickname.

This time was no exception. Unslinging his rifle, he fired at one of the doors across from him. The material was almost as tough as Ama.s.sa's bubble, but not quite; after a few seconds of concentrated fire, the door melted into a puddle of slag on the floor. Grabbing Green and,incidentally, Hawker, Symington ran forward and pulled his companions through.

They found themselves in a brightly lit corridor-and still there was no one else in sight. Both men knew one prime rule of survival in these circ.u.mstances: keep moving. A moving target was more difficult to hit, and always had more options than a stationary one. They ran down the hallway, half dragging Green between them, looking for an avenue of further possibility. There were closed doors on either side of them, but nothing that seemed right. Doors here couldn't be important-they were still too close to the entrance.

A hundred meters down the corridor they came to a cross hallway-and looking toward the left, they saw what appeared to be a row of elevator banks. They ran toward them, weapons raised, ready to strike down any opponents-but still there was only silence.

They reached the elevators and paused for breath, resting Green, their burden, against the wall for support. "I don't like this," Symington said.

"It's too d.a.m.n quiet."

"And why are there all these halls and elevators if the complex is entirely automated?" Hawker wondered.

"Somebody had to build it," the other man shrugged.

The elevator doors opened unexpectedly, and out came a burst of lethal fire. If the soldiers had been standing directly in front of the elevator when it opened, they would have been fried to perfection. As it was, they barely had time to fall backward out of the line of sight as the beams cut a swath through the air.

Symington grabbed at his belt and pulled loose a grenade. With an expert flip of his wrist he tossed it through the elevator doors, then rolled over and covered Green's body with his own. The explosion shook the floor, and the fire stopped coming from the open elevator.

Symington got to his feet, then helped Hawker lift Green up once more.

The men peered inside the still elevator, but all they could see was a twisted ma.s.s of wreckage. It had only been machines in there, not people.

"I guess we take the stairs," Symington said."If there are any."

"Where's your faith, Hawk? Of course there's stairs. Even today, you always have to have emergency routes in case the machines don't work.

Come on."

They started off once more down the hallways, and Symington's luck continued. At the end of the corridor was a door marked "Emergency Only"-and sure enough, there were the stairs. Inside the stairwell, a sign on the wall identified this level as "Ground Floor, Administration."

"I guess we go up," Symington said. "Those records have got to be somewhere. We'll just take the whole mountain apart piece by piece until we find them."

They started climbing. The first five floors were all administration, and Hawker was beginning to worry that they'd taken the wrong path. But the sixth floor bore a sign that said simply "AA."

"Does that mean anything to you?" Symington asked Hawker.

Hawker checked the code number on the small disc they'd taken out of Green's neck. This one starts with 'AE.'"

"Good. Maybe that means we've only got five floors to go."

It turned out to be far more than that, however. The next two levels were also designated "AA," and there were four levels of "AB." Hawker's strength was about to give out. He was in fine physical condition, and by himself would have had no problem with all these stairs. But dragging Green's body up with him and having to maintain constant vigilance against attack were taking their tolls. He was having a harder and harder time keeping pace with the indefatigable Symington.

At the fourth "AB" level they met some resistance. The door to the main section opened and four robots stepped through just as the soldiers were approaching. Each of the machines was armed with a beampistol- but they were no match for the reflexes of Hawker and Symington, honed fine by centuries of combat experience.

"Maybe they'll think twice before trying that again," Symington said.Hawker leaned against the wall, his vision going blurry. He'd reacted instinctively to the threat, but was paying for it now. Symington noticed his dizziness and came over to check him out. "What's the matter? Get hit?"

"No, just... just a little tired. Maybe you'd better go on without me."

"Bulls.h.i.+t. We're in this together. Here, I'll carry Dave. You just worry about carrying yourself." He hoisted their semiconscious friend over his shoulders and set off once more, as strong as ever. Hawker gulped, shook his head to clear it and followed after him, awe in his heart. This was a man who feared he was a coward?

There were two "AC" levels and two "AD" levels before they finally reached "AE." Hawker's whole body was one huge ache, protesting the torturous treatment it had received. His legs were made of lead. They stopped for breath on this landing. "How do we know if his file's on this 'AE' landing or one further up?" Hawker panted.

"We don't. We work 'em one at a time."

Symington took another grenade from his belt and, opening the door just a crack, tossed the grenade out and closed the door again. The blast, echoing through the enclosed s.p.a.ce of the stairwell, rattled their teeth.

'That ought to take care of any welcoming committee," he said.

There were indeed the shattered bodies of a few robots lying about the entrance as they emerged from the stairway, proving that an ambush had indeed been planned. This gave the men some hope that they were on the right level; the enemy had probably guessed where they were headed by now, and would have concentrated its forces on the floor that was their ultimate destination.

They found themselves in a forest of pillars, tall white columns reaching from floor to ceiling with narrow pathways in between. Embedded in each pillar were dozens of plastic triangles, lit up with various colors whose significance Hawker could not have begun to guess. Inscribed just below each triangle was a number. These, then, were the files on which people's patterns were continuously recorded and stored. All they had to do now was find Green's out of the thousands and thousands of patterns here.

They checked the pillars at random at first, until they established theorder. Serial numbers went in descending order the farther they were from the stairway; Green's should be perhaps three to four dozen rows away.

Symington took the lead, as usual, carrying Green's body slung casually over his shoulder. They ran down the aisles, checking the numbers occasionally to make sure they hadn't overshot their goal, then kept going.

They were almost there, and they could feel the flow of time itself speeding up to push them along their way.

As Symington ran across one aisle, the ray from a beampistol cut him down. He stumbled, dropping Green's body, and fired his own gun even as he fell. Hawker pulled up short, looking at the motionless bodies of his two friends on the ground. There was no further fire from whatever source had shot Symington.

He approached that aisle carefully and turned into it with his pistol firing away-but Symington had already done the job for him. The two robots that had lain in ambush there were now smoldering piles of metal.

Hawker checked the numbers on the pillars and realized that this was the aisle that would probably contain Green's file.

A quick check showed that Symington was dead, but Green was very much alive and returning slowly to his full awareness. Hawker bent and wearily lifted his friend to his feet, then staggered down the aisle until he found the pillar with the proper number.

He set Green down sitting with his back to the pillar while he searched out the proper triangular plastic insert. It was there, about shoulder height, glowing a bright pink. Hawker tried to pry it from its socket, but either it was embedded too firmly in place or else Hawker had been too drained by his ordeal to take it out; the triangle remained stubbornly in its setting. Taking his beampistol, Hawker fired point-blank at the triangle, and was rewarded by an increasing glow as the plastic heated up, and then finally melted into a useless puddle of slag.

Hawker dropped his beampistol to the floor and then, a moment later, fell to his knees beside Green. He was exhausted beyond all normal understanding of the term, but filled at the same time with a sense of elation he hadn't felt in ages. He closed his eyes, gave a silent prayer of thanks and then looked over to Green.His friend's lips were moving and, by leaning close, Hawker could hear him repeating over and over again, "Memory is the key. Memory is the key..."

"Dave." Hawker shook his friend by the shoulder, "Dave, we did it."

Green looked blank for a moment, then stared with more comprehension into Hawker's face. "What?"

"We destroyed the record of you. It's melted down into a useless mess."

Green closed his eyes and breathed a long sigh. "Thank G.o.d. It's over at last." He opened his eyes again and looked straight into Hawker's face.

"But there's still one more thing you have to do for me, Hawk, and it may be harder than anything you've done yet."

Hawker blinked. "What?"

"Kill me."

The words didn't register at first, as though Green were speaking a foreign language. As the meaning penetrated, Hawker shook his head with disbelief. "I... I can't do that. I did all this for you. I wanted to help you.

That would make it all seem so pointless..."

"You don't understand. That would be the best thing you could do for me. It was all necessary to get to this point. Don't you see, Hawk? My original pattern was destroyed, and now my files have been destroyed. If I die now, there'll be no way they can resurrect me ever again. I'll be free, Hawk, I'll be off the merry-go-round forever."

There was a burning in the corners of Hawker's eyes. "But... but you're my friend."

"I know. That's why I asked you. It's not something I could trust to a stranger. Please, Hawk, I'm begging you." He looked up at Hawker with his twisted, off-center face pleading for a special kind of mercy only the two of them could understand.

Hawker looked away. He couldn't meet Green's eyes. He remembered the incident on that jungle planet ages ago when Green had been seriously wounded and Hawker had administered the coup de grace as a routineblessing. But that was different; he knew Green would be resurrected again next time, healthy as ever. Now, though, the situation had changed radically. After all they had been through together down the centuries of battle, after all Green had meant to him, after all the unspoken warmth of their friends.h.i.+p-how could he possibly end his friend's life, knowing there would be no hope of redemption?

Green's body suddenly tensed as he realized Hawker would not be able to do it. Reaching quickly for Hawker's belt, he grabbed the knife and slashed it across his inner right thigh. The blade cut the major artery he'd been hoping to hit and a fountain of blood spurted out, covering both men with red in seconds.

The malformed soldier slipped forward, his head falling against Hawker's chest. "It's done, Hawk," he coughed. "I saw a guy die once from a leg wound like this-only takes a minute or so to bleed to death. Hold onto me, please. It won't be long. And smile. Remember, I'm free. The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds can't use me any more."

He looked up into Hawker's face abruptly, as though there were something he'd forgotten to say. He grabbed the front of Hawker's uniform with a death grip. "Remember," he gasped, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Remember..." And that was all.

Hawker held onto the body for a full minute, crying for the first time in centuries. It didn't matter at all that he was coated head to toe in his friend's blood. "Don't worry, Dave," he promised in a whisper barely louder than Green's had been. "I won't forget you. I'll probably live till the end of the Universe, and I'll remember you every day of that life."

He paused for a moment's thought. "If they let me."

The reality of his situation hit him with a sudden frightening impact.

With Green gone forever, he was now all alone in enemy territory. The army knew he was here, they would be coming for him. He had deserted, disobeyed more laws than he could count.

What reason did they have to keep him alive? Wouldn't it be far easier for them just to shoot him, then duple another Jerry Hawker, one who knew nothing whatsoever of these events? Green had asked to be remembered-but to do that, Hawker had to live past the next few minutes, live until the next time they recorded him.They must be coming. They held off for so long, but it couldn't last forever. And they would kill him, unless he could strike a bargain. But what could he offer them? They held all the top cards; what did he have to bargain with?

A grim smile came to his face. He was a dealer in one commodity-destruction. He would deal in that.