All My Sins Remembered (26 page)

“Hold it.” Otto tried to concentrate. His arms were ting-ling; must have inhaled a little of the gas. “You didn’t do this with a call. It’s been set up for a long time.”

“Years.”

“We’re going to kidnap every human being on this planet, as well as about a hundred S’kang—a tenth of the population—and take them to a planet that’s just as miserable as this one. Why?”

“The root reason is to keep Energia General from coming in with a billion credits and cracking the secret before the Confederación. We’ve kept them tied up in court for a long time, but it’s just a delaying action. Harassment. E.G. will win eventually; they’re using our own Charter arguments against us. They’ve got resources and talent, and they’ll be fighting for their corporate life—”

“So they’ll come here and find out that we’ve—”

“No, they
won’t
. Not after the plague.”

“Ah.”

“Everyone on this world killed within a day. Confirmed by a Public Health Commission automated probe. Absolute quarantine; not even E.G. will be able to break it.

“This is where the TBII comes in—otherwise, it’s a BERD project.”

“Hear that, Henry?” Applegate was lying on his back, eyes open. “I told you we were on the same side.”

“TBII is loaning them the specialists and equipment for memory and personality modification. The ones they don’t need for continuing research, we’ll repattern and—”

“Brainwipe, you mean.”

“That’s an ugly word, Colonel. We’ll be more delicate than that.”

“Sure.” Otto tried to gesture but couldn’t raise his arms. “Oh, hell. The tube.”

“Is that thing putting air into your lung?”

“I don’ know. I just work here.” His legs were frozen, too.

“Well, they’ve got the antidote aboard the ship.”

“Along with everything else, seems like. What did you need me for?”

“We had to substitute someone for Joshua. Sooner or later, he would have gotten in touch with E.G.”

Scuffling sound: Balaam’s lurched through the door. “Joshua? What’s wrong with the air? I can’t see.” His eyestalks were swinging, hanging loose.

“It won’t last, Prescott,” Jakobbson said.

The paralysis was spreading to Otto’s jaw and tongue. “Izzat true?” he whispered.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’m not a…”

Balaam’s made a faint sound like a faraway siren, and settled to the floor.

After a silence, Jakobbson said, “Well, I have to go get things in order. Find their records and such. Where do they keep that computer?”

Otto tried to talk but could only make a hissing noise.

He nodded. “Guess I can find it.”

For a long time Otto listened to him walking in the halls, opening and closing doors. When the sound stopped, time passed very slowly.

He watched a puddle of thin blue fluid growing from under the Slang’s shell. After a while it stopped growing.

What is genocide, McGavin? You could kill ten billion humans and in a couple of generations you’d have more than you started with. Kill one S’kang and you’ve made a real dent.

What happens after they’ve used up the hundred? They come back and get another hundred. Then another hundred. Since they’re immortal and can’t reproduce, it isn’t really genocide, not as long as one is alive. If you subtract two numbers and come up with the wrong answer, what per cent genocide is that?

Just how long, McGavin, have you known that the Charter’s main function is to protect the Confederación? Not the members of the Confederación, but the organism itself. Well, the first responsibility of any organism is self-preservation. But when did you stop believing?

In a practical sense, you never did stop. You can posit and argue and posit and argue, but if the Confederación asked you to unplug yourself from that machine and die, you would unplug yourself and die, if you could move your arms. Might as well breathe through your mouth, jerk, if you get enough of it you might fall asleep.

He woke up when they loaded him and the doctor machine aboard the shuttle.

He woke up on the ship, twice, to eat.

He woke up when they were unloading the ship, dozens of big insulated containers rolled down the aisle, dormant S’kang; humans carried out on stretchers, but they didn’t carry him out, and he couldn’t stay awake.

He woke up for a short time moving from the big ship to a little ship, and he woke up on Earth.

You understand why you have to answer these questions, don’t you?

Yes, I understand, it’s part of retiring

Very good. Now tell me: who was the fourteenth person you killed?

Stuart Fitz-Jones

That you remember them by number is singular. The twenty-first—who, where, and why?

That was Ajuji D’ajuji, on the planet Ojubwa, circumstantially implicated in an Article Seven violation (cybernetic penetration of international credit matrix on sister planet Fulgor), he may or may not have been guilty but he threatened me with a knife
And you killed him how?
Penlaser

Very sporting. Who was the one after him?
Benoni Jakob, same assignment, about a month later, muffed the first try and he locked himself up in a castle, I got a job in his favorite restaurant and doctored his food with an asymptomatic cumulative nerve poison, he didn’t know what was happening to him, finally jumped a hundred meters onto a brick courtyard
The twenty-fifth?

Ramos Guajana, on the planet Selva, clear-cut accessory to Article

List the rest of them in order, please, just names
. Noel Duvic, Dan Foxx, Becker Conway, Beresford Sackville-West, Luanda Donner, two whose names I don’t know, Yonina Dav’stern, Radomil Czerny, Reed Hitchcock, Antonio Salazar, one whose name I don’t know, “Speed” Larsen, Birendra Bir Bikram, Juan Navarro, Bari: First-son-of-Marcuse, Hamani Ojukwu, two natives of Corbus (they don’t use names), and Joshua Immanuel in the false identity of Elizene Marietta
That’s forty-five people in less than twenty years, Otto; not a record, but very high. We established yesterday that the guilt you feel for these eliminations manifests itself consciously as hostility toward the TBII and, by extension, the Confederación itself You won’t be able to adjust to retirement until you accept a more realistic view of the situation
. You
killed those people and you must forgive yourself not merely shift the blame
.

I understand, but you don’t understand, which “me” are you talking about?

Biographical check, please, go
:

I was born Otto Jules McGavin on 24 Avril AC 198, on Earth, with jus sanguinus citizenship to Karuna
That one
.

That “me” died in AC 220, when he signed up for Foreign Service and you preempted him for TBII

You’re evading moral responsibility by transference again
.

Not true, Otto McGavin died and was replaced by what I am now, when I’m not someone else

Which is?

Something that walks and talks like Otto McGavin, and looks just like him (for what that’s worth), but is mainly a construct of skills and attitudes installed by continuous hypnotic reinforcement by the TBII, between the years AC 220 and 222
That’s nonsense; it’s not as if you were brainwiped
.

True, but there are degrees of control, the real Otto McGavin went to temple every evening and tried to follow the Eightfold Path, the construct you call Otto McGavin cheats and steals and kills for a living

But not for his own gain! He has traded the selfish pursuit of internal peace and harmony to
bring
peace to sentient beings

throughout the Confederatión
.

I did believe that was true, once, but now I see how foolish, how blind I was, not seeing that the Charter is a fraud the Confederación uses to

Biographical check, please, go
:

I was born Otto

Skip to age 35, please, go
:

TBII liaison was a double agent, whispered the mnemonic to me just as I sat down to dinner with Patrice Becket and his bodyguards, spilled identity, had to kick table over and come up shooting, they used human shields, women and children, shooting back, I had no choice, didn’t even think, really, nine dead, Christ and Buddha, the little girl’s face so resigned, confused, O God, blood, spouting, all her guts sliding out in one

Skip to age 40, please, go
:

Right action is abstaining from killing, stealing, and sexual
Skip to age 40, please, go
:

Right livelihood is earning a living in a way not harmful to any living

Skip to age 40, please, go
:

Right thought is free from lust, ill will, cruelty, and
Biographical check, please, go
:

I was born, right effort is to avoid evil thoughts and overcome them

Biographical check, please, go
:

Right EFfort is to aVOID evil THOUGHTS and overCOME

Biographical! Check! Please! Go!

RIGHT ACTION IS ABSTAINING FROM KILLING

Shit
.

“Shit.” The therapist wiggled the induction helmet off his head and tossed it clattering on the desk.

The machine operator looked up from his readout. “He looping again?”

“Yeah.” He watched Otto McGavin writhing, naked and hairless, inside the tank of pale blue fluid, chin jerking as he screamed soundlessly, blind eyes staring past the wires that pierced through to the optic nerve. “Poor cob.”

He patted his face and hair with a towel and removed his outer tunic from a hook on the door. “Well, that’s seven days.”

“Don’t you want to go the maximum?”

“No. He just gets worse.”

“But he’s a colonel, sir.”

“That’s all right: I’ll take the responsibility.” He started out the door.

“Wipe or waste, sir?”

“Well… doesn’t really make much difference. I guess we’ve used up enough time and power. Unplug him; I’ll leave a note for the clean-up crew.”

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Forever War

1.
The Forever War
(1974)

2.
Forever Peace
(1997)

3.
Forever Free
(1999)

Worlds

1.
Worlds: A Novel of the Near Future
(1981)

2.
Worlds Apart
(1983)

3.
Worlds Enough and Time
(1992)

Marsbound

1.
Marsbound
(2008)

2.
Starbound
(2010)

3.
Earthbound
(forthcoming)

Novels

Mindbridge
(1976)

Tool of the Trade
(1987)

The Long Habit of Living
(1989) (aka
Buying Time
)

The Hemingway Hoax
(1990)

The Coming
(2000)

Guardian
(2002)

Camouflage
(2004)

Old Twentieth
(2005)

The Accidental Time Machine
(2007)

Collections

All My Sins Remembered
(1977)

Infinite Dreams
(1978)

Dealing in Futures
(1985)

    For Gordy Dickson:

          Sculptor,

               Weaver,

                     Jolly tinker.

Joe Haldeman (1943 – )

Joe William Haldeman was born in Oklahoma City in 1943. He holds degrees in physics and astronomy, and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam, where he was severely wounded and earned a Purple Heart. This experience informed his best known work, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning
The Forever War
. He is one of SF’s most decorated authors, boasting 5 Hugos, 5 Nebulas, the World Fantasy Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial and James Tiptree, Jr Awards and the SFWA Grand Master Award amongst many others. In addition to continuing to produce top quality SF, Joe Haldeman teaches writing at MIT.

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