A Darkness In My Soul Part 10

He was smiling the first genuine, friendly, uncomplicated smile I had seen since I had awakened in Child's body. He hugged me, living up to the image of the father figure, and he had tears in his eyes which he could not manage to conceal.

I was not concealing my own tears at all. I dearly loved this clumsy, pudgy, sloppily dressed Irishman, though most of my life had been spent in playing down that love. Maybe it was because I had learned early to hate and despise as self-protection. When Harry separated me from that world inside the AC complex and showed me what actual love was, I never lost my suspicion. And it is easier to act less involved so that if you're hurt later, the anguish doesn't show so much and give your adversary satisfaction. Now unchecked, evidence of that love flowed.

We hurried across the lobby to the second elevator bank and went down to the underground garage, where the attendant brought Harry's hovercar, accepted a tip, and stepped back as we drove out of that great, sparkling building. In the street, we both sighed, as if some weight had been lifted from us, and we began to talk for the first time, out of the range of those microphones which infest any government building.

"You'll tell me about it now," he said, his eyes flicking from the s.h.i.+fting layers of new snow on the street to where I sat against the far door. "They wouldn't let me up to see you but once a week, you know."

"You'd only have been looking at flesh and blood," I said. "All this time, I've been inside of Child, locked down there in his mind."

"As I figured," he said. "But those"-he jerked his thumb behind us, twisting his face up to look disgusted"those pretty boys in their uniforms, I just don't trust."

"They didn't exercise my body properly. And they didn't take any precautions against stomach shrinkage.

Otherwise, I'm fine."

He snorted. "So tell me,"

"You first. I've spent a month in that place, and I don't have the foggiest notion what has happened out here.

When I went in, war had all but been declared. The Chinese and the j.a.panese had crossed the Soviet border, maybe nuked a town*"

He looked grim, stared at the street unfolding before us for a long time before he said anything. It was dark, and the crisp blue arc lights sent fantastic shadows wriggling between the heavy fall of snowflakes. The streets seemed almost empty of traffic.

"War was declared two days later," he said.

"And we won?"

"Partly."

I looked around at the streets, all undamaged, all occupied by our own troops, our own police. Indeed, I saw now that the amount of occupation of our territory spelled some sort of trouble. Every other street corner contained coppers parked in squad-carrying howlers, surveying the dark boulevard. They watched us go by with quick, dark glances, though they offered no pursuit.

"Partly?" I asked.

As we flitted across the city, he summed up the developments of the month-long war: The Chinese had indeed nuked Zavitaya, for there was nothing there any longer but powdered stone, splintered wood, and the ruins of a very few outlying structures. Of the moderately large population, there were six hundred survivors.

Belogorsk was taken, its laboratories seized and impressed into the service of the People's Army of China-a euphemism for the military strong-arm of the Peking dictators.h.i.+p and its j.a.panese allies. Within a day, hover-trucks had taxied Chinese troops into Svobodnyy and s.h.i.+manovsk, thereby effectively isolating one small sector of the Soviet Union.

In this time, the Western Alliance had been making preparations and issuing stern warnings to the Chinese, who had ignored them imperiously, sparing no effort to make it apparent that they considered the West with scorn. The United Nations was pet.i.tioned by every Western Alliance nation, and the world organization replied by trade sanctions against China. These too were laughed off. The land of the dragon was feeling its muscle for the first time in many centuries, and its egotism threatened to carry it to the brink of world destruction and beyond. Yet the Alliance held off, well aware that the electronic s.h.i.+eld envisioned by Child and later torn from Ms mind by my own extrasensory powers was reaching midpoint in its hasty construction. There was no sense, the strategists agreed, in helping to escalate a mini-war into a major conflagration until our side was immune to attack behind its s.h.i.+eld generators and victory was a.s.sured the West.

Two weeks after the start of the war, the Chinese were still consolidating territorial gains, moving more troops into the captured Russian territory. All the while, they pointed to their Dragonfly and made lightly veiled threats.

They made false promises that this was all the land they Wanted. And they followed such worthless a.s.surances with warnings that they could easily survive a nuclear-bacteriological war, for their population was so much greater than ours that it could not help but outlast us.

The Alliance, furious, bided time.

Then, unexpectedly, j.a.panese forces had landed on Formosa, coming in from the sea with destroyers and landing craft. While the guns and the forces were aimed at China, the back door was entered and the house secured by the enemy. The Alliance forces quartered on that strategic airbase were systematically slaughtered. Both the Chinese and the j.a.panese denied having anything to do with it.

But reconnaissance planes reported j.a.panese s.h.i.+ps, sans the rising sun, harbored in the islands.

The following day, with even the peace criers united behind the government, the crash force working to erect electronic s.h.i.+elds over all the strategic areas of the Western Alliance, the last of the invisible sh.e.l.ls of stretched molecules in place and the generators backed with a second set to prevent disaster, the Alliance declared war on China and j.a.pan.

We struck out with nuclear stockpiles at the major industrial centers of both enemy nations. In hours, billions in property and hundreds of thousands of lives were wiped out in gushes of mile-high flame. The enemy was prepared for this, and it retaliated with its own nuclear weaponry.

But the s.h.i.+elds worked, the Alliance cities remained intact. Again and again, the People's Army rained missiles upon points in Russia, Europe, and North America. Not one of them did damage. Since all sides had long ago, for obvious strategic reasons concerned with occupying captured territory, gone to the construction of "clean" bombs, even the spill radiation did not kill people living in the countryside beyond the shelter of the unseen domes of molecules which had been stretched to stunningly large dimensions, their surface tension curiously increased and not decreased by that expansion.

In desperation, plague drops were made on the cities of the Alliance, but even these did not penetrate. In the countryside, people died, but even many of these were saved by immunization teams from the cities. Property damage, at this point, was zero.

The Chinese nuked the small, unprotected towns in a final spasm of fury, but they had little firepower left.

The j.a.panese had already surrendered in order to protect what little unmolested lands the home islands still contained.

The Chinese command center was discovered at last, destroyed with a vengeance, and the war brought to and end. Or so everyone thought*

"Thought?" I asked.

"We have ambitious men for our military leaders,"

Harry explained. His tone was none too pleasant.

"Go on."

"We made a mistake with the voluntary, reformed military service laws," he said.

"How so?"

"Try to envision these men, Sim. They're well-paid professionals. There hasn't been a draft within the Alliance for twenty-four years. They enlist because they like to be a part of a protective Big Brother sort of organization -and because combat and planning for combat excites them. We turned ourselves over to those who enjoy war, and we gave them the machines to wage it. Now, with all this hardware and all this education in the ways of dealing death, they had had to sit through fourteen years of cold war where guns were never fired. And before that, there were two decades of total peace, where nations hardly even exchanged angry words. They've never had the chance to prove themselves, and since they are basically the sort of men who need to prove themselves for their own benefit, they've been driven up the wall by brinksmans.h.i.+p and peace."

I felt ill, without exactly understanding why. The night seemed darker and colder, and I had a sudden and furious need for Melinda, for the touch of her and the warmth, the seeking together and the final closeness. It was such an intense desire that I grew dizzy with it.

"So?" I managed to ask.

"So, they didn't want to stop. They were moving, living their dreams, and loving it. They were on the edge of the thing they'd all fantasized about-conquering the world.

They could incorporate every nation into the Alliance, and then it would be over. All the plans and subplans, plots and counterplots and counter-counterplots came together in a marvelous mosaic, and they just couldn't resist. China was occupied, but the artillery was turned, next, on South America."

"They're neutral!"

"Mostly," he agreed. "But the Alliance generals were bothered by South America's autonomy, especially sines Brazil had been making that s.p.a.ce effort of theirs pay or! with the mineral s.h.i.+ps from t.i.tan. The continent fell in slightly less than a week-yesterday, to be exact. They were either badly prepared militarily, or had oriented their armies toward the exploration of s.p.a.ce. They've come under the banner of the Alliance-angrily, reluctantly, but under it."

"And all the countries already in the Alliance-they all went along with this?"

"Not all. But in Russia, the military had taken control of the government years before. France and Italy knuckled under to the popular sentiment of their people, of the common man. Spain is a military nation to start with-no problem there."

"But Britain and the U.S. wouldn't stand for it!" It sounded false.

"Britain did refuse, said she wouldn't supply her own men for the Alliance endeavor. But she gave tacit approval by continuing trade and diplomatic relations.h.i.+ps with all her allies. She's too small to really buck them, and she could only maintain her military's integrity, nothing more.

Canada did the same, though Quebec declared independence and won it-or at least had the last time I heardand joined the militant ranks of the other Alliance nations. As for us, the U.S., we were in it from the moment the Soviet generals made the suggestion. The peace criers were right all along: a volunteer army can become a secondary government and can threaten the elected one if the time is ripe. The coup came two mornings after the Soviet proposal when it became obvious that the elected government was not going to agree to a world-wide campaign. We are now ruled by a police-army coalition, by a council of eighteen generals and admirals, and the warmeantime-goes on."

"Who now?"

"Australia," he said. "She has become self-sufficient, which the Alliance military advisors never have appreciated. Sydney was obliterated this afternoon and an ultimatum was delivered to the Australian government shortly thereafter."

Neither of us spoke for a while.

The snow continued to fall, faster than ever.

"Dictators.h.i.+p then?" I asked.

"They won't call it that."

"n.a.z.ism?"

"It's a mistake to apply the terms of other eras. The same sense of chauvinism is there, and a roiling muck of nationalistic fantasies. You can bet the Alliance factions will break down in a monumental squabble once this war is over. The Russians against us, a real Armageddon. They have the taste of blood, and the old hates have been resurrected on all sides."

"And nothing can be done?"

He didn't answer me, aware that it was an unanswerable question. He just drove and looked morose and contributed to my flagging spirits.

This was the age of instant history. More could happen in a week than happened in a year in the previous century. Everything moved, relentlessly, determinedly, and we were all caught up by it, swept along, either to be drowned in the swell or carried to a foreign sh.o.r.e on the wave crests.

I had a feeling I was going to be one of those to drown.

I was valuable to the war machinery. And even when the war was over, I could serve the junta with my esp, help to oppress those at home who would not appreciate the beauty of a military nation. And I didn't know whether I could do that, for I might be one of those rebelling myself. All my life I had been floundering from one emotional disaster to another, drawing in and in and in upon myself. And then I had met Melinda, had been treated by my Porter-Rainey Solid-State headshrinker, and had opened myself to the world for the first time, had tasted pure freedom and enjoyed it. The loss of my sanity within Child's mind and the long attempt to get free of him had interrupted my enjoyment of that new-found peace. And now that I was back, now that Melinda and a pleasant future lay within my grasp, the world was in the hands of the madmen who threatened to tear it apart.

But I couldn't drown. I had to ride those wave crests, had to survive to keep Melinda surviving. d.a.m.n them and their bombs and their war l.u.s.ts!

As we drove, I felt my rage grow, swell, encompa.s.s my entire mind. And I realized that it would not be good enough to ride those crests. At most, the two of us would come out alive, washed ash.o.r.e after the apocalypse, with each other. But our world would be destroyed and useless, and we would have no freedom, then, at all. Life would be a constant battle for survival in a society thrown back to barbarism. No, what I was going to have to do was forget about riding the crests of the waves-and find some way to direct the tides of the entire d.a.m.n ocean of our future!

"Not that I don't find your company perfectly marvelous," I told Harry, "but could you take me to Melinda's place instead of yours?"

He hesitated before he said it, but he said it just the same. "She isn't at her place, Sim. She's been arrested.

She's a political prisoner."

It took long seconds for the words to sink in. When they did, my rage became G.o.dly wrath, and I began to seek someone upon whom to vent it. I was not afraid for her safety. I basked in the certainty of my power. I still did not see that I was bound up in the same flawed philosophy that had brought me to ruin so many times before*

III.

I stood by the window of Harry's den, holding a gla.s.s of brandy which I had not yet tasted. Beyond the window: a copse of trees, snow-covered gra.s.s, white-bearded hedgerows. The stark, wintry vista matched my thoughts, as I considered what Harry had told me on the way over.

Melinda had become engaged in writing pamphlets for some revolutionary group and had been under surveillance. Upon the magazine publication of the first part of her biography of my life-the childhood years in the AC complex-she had been arrested for questioning in connection with the death of a copper and the destruction of a howler some two weeks before. Whether there had been any questioning or not, no one would know; she was still under arrest.

The magazine article had not merely been a biography, but had contained scorchingly anti-military, anti-AC anecdotes which neither of us had decided, before my entombment in Child's mind, whether we should risk using or not. She had risked it.

"When is the trial?" I asked him now. We had postponed further discussion until we were warm and comfortable in his den-at his insistence.

"A date has been docketed before the Military Court of Emergency. Next September."

"Seven and a half months!" I turned from the window, furious, slopping brandy over my wrist.

"When the act is labeled treason, there are laws that permit it."

"What's her bail?" I asked.

"There is none."

"Is none?"

"What I said."

"But the law allows-"

He held up his pudgy hand to stop me. He looked terrible, as if telling me this was worse on him than on me. "This is no longer a republic, remember. It is a military state where men like the junta councilmen decide what laws there shall be. For sedition, they now say, there is no bail, and the rule of preventive detention has been extended indefinitely."

"Fight them!" I bellowed. "You fought them for me when-"

"It's different now," he interrupted. "You still don't grasp the situation. I worked the law on them before to get you free. But now they are the law and they can change it to counter one. It's like dancing on quicksand."

I took a chair, and again I was afraid, just a little, down deep where it hardly showed. This was beginning to feel like the inner world of Child's mind, where everything was solid and tangible, but where nothing could be trusted, where solidity could disappear, where liquid could become solid ground beneath the feet.

"She's not the only one," he said, as if ma.s.s suffering made her individual plight less important. It only made it more important.

"Let me have the phone," I said, reaching for it.

"Who?"

"Morsf.a.gen."

"This might be a mistake."

"If the sonofab.i.t.c.h wants my esp, wants my work, then he is just going to have to see that she gets out of the Tombs!"

I found the number in Harry's private directory of unlisted phones, dialed it, and waited while a soldier called a noncom to the phone-while the noncom went and got a major who stuttered-and while the major finally went and summoned Morsf.a.gen.

"What is it?" he asked. Cold. Deadly. Forceful. The sound of the well-trained bill collector.

"There's a girl being kept in the Tombs, charged with sedition, for G.o.d knows what reason. She-"

"Melinda Thauser," he said, cutting me short. He seemed to enjoy that. Like putting thumbscrews on me.

"I see you're up on things all around. Well, catch this, then. I want her released, and I want all charges dropped against her."

"That's beyond my control," he said-he did.