Armor (34 page)

“You have any idea how many exposures that would take, Soldier? At least eight. Maybe ten.”

She laughed, patted him on a cheek, and bounced jauntily away, missing his reply that it had taken, in fact, twelve.

There were no troubles with his broken bones. There never were.

He rode to debriefing in the Barrel, newly installed aboard the Terra. It was his first trip down the tubes. He hated it. It was not that he didn’t appreciate the idea behind it. It did cut down the traffic of stretchers in the corridors. But when they strapped him into his conveyer pod, it reminded him of the worst of the nightmares about the suit.

The meditech awaiting him at Intelligence Station had been feuding with the steno before he got there. Felix provided more fuel.

“This is just what I’ve been saying, dammit!” said the meditech, his hands jammed angrily onto his hips. “This man should be given a lot more rest before having to submit to your. . . whatever it is you do that you think is so damned important that you can’t even take the time to. ...”

“Ngaio, please!” the steno replied, arching her eyebrows in Felix’s direction. “Can’t we finish this at some other time?”

“Oh, sure!” snapped the meditech disgustedly, shoving the stretcher against her with a slap of his palm. “Excuse me for living!” he added and stomped away.

Felix, still strapped in, could only refuse to excuse him for now.

The steno was apologetic, profusely, offhandedly. Then she became businesslike, running through the Sole Survivor Questionnaire like a pro. Felix’s replies were equally businesslike; he was something of an expert at this particular routine.

Noting the time it had taken to get through it, the steno smiled at Felix and said: “You’re pretty good at this.” She patted Felix on the shoulder and added jokingly: “You must have done this before.”

“Twice before,” Felix replied, a response that would have astonished the steno had she heard it. But then came the angry return of the Meditech, complaining that he simply could not, “in the best interests of the patient,” allow this grilling to continue. The meditech plucked the cigarette out of Felix’s mouth and refastened the straps. Then he wheeled the stretcher to the access plate and stood there, grumbling to himself.

“Ngaio?” came whispered at them from just around the bulkhead. “If you could just give me a second to explain. . .”

It took an hour. Felix stayed strapped, out of earshot, out of mind. Out of giving a damn where he was. He slept, awaking in the Barrel.

When Felix told them he wasn’t dropping again, they sent for a fresh faced, rather handsome, young psychotech who managed to destroy his own credibility with a single, breathtaking observation. “Whew! I had no idea these Starships were so big! I damn near got lost getting here.”

Next he plopped down next to Felix’s bed, patted him on his recently dislocated shoulder, and produced a cigarette. “Mind if I have one?” he asked.

Felix not only didn’t mind, he offered to install it. The psychotech’s glamorous features registered his startled surprise for only an instant before sliding quickly and easilylike slimeinto the humor him smile reserved for only the maddest hatters. His first series of questions fitted well with the smile. Felix, stone faced and trembling, refused at first to answer. But he eventually relented. He found the man incredibly patronizing, even for an idiot. But the veteran’s need for easy trivial conversation welled up in him strongly. Clinically.

The Psychotech left after half an hour, assuring Felix he would return the next day. On his way out of the ward, he managed to catch the eye of a meditech and request Felix’s records. The meditech seemed astonished that the shrink hadn’t had them all along.

The Psychotech clapped her on the shoulder and said that he never looked at the records first. “I look at the man,” he added. “He is an individual, not simply a number.”

Felix couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes. Later that night, he awoke and laughed some more.

Three days later, the Psychotech returned to tell Felix (“It is Felix, isn’t it?”) that he had given his case a great deal of thought and had decided to have him transferred to a soft duty for the time being. Soft Banshee duty. “Like falling off a horse, you know. Got to get right back on.”

That night Felix was told to return to his squad bay. He was told that the change meant nothing other than a shortage of beds for non-restrained psyches. Felix accepted the lie for what it was.

The next morning, his screen beeped him awake from the foot of his bed to inform him that he had been transferred to auxiliary duty as part of a squad due to drop the next day with Admiralty Staff. He was further informed that failure to report would result in charges being preferred against him for dereliction of something or other.

Felix slept the rest of that day and most of the next night. He awoke only once. He lay in his bed, staring at the overhead and smoking for almost two hours. He spoke once, just before rolling over and going back to sleep.

“And do what?” he said to the shadows on all sides.

The psychotech was just outside the lockers to wish him off. He brandished a coil before Felix’s face. Felix recognized his service ID number on the casing.

“I’m going back right now and go over every word of this. We’ll talk when you get back.” He leaned forward next, almost whispering. “Don’t worry, Felix. A lot of people doubt themselves in the beginning. It’s only natural.”

Felix tried not to hate him as he tried not to hate individual ants. But, as with the ants, he failed.

In the drop bay, surrounded by aides, staff, and, to his astonishment, members of the press corps, Felix met Nathan Kent. It was to be his first drop. Kent asked Felix if he had dropped before.

Felix said that he had.

It was morning on Banshee.

The sun sat low on the horizon, shimmering sickly green through the foul atmosphere making long shadows and heat for the ant coming up the dune to kill him.

Felix stood alone atop the dune, a bluntly jagged mass of coarse and crusting sand, and regarded the lumbering monster. It was clumsy, even for an ant. Clumsy and slow and ridiculous.

It was, of course, the cold. He turned and glanced toward the

hated sun. It would be ant weather in a very short while. Less than an hour, perhaps. He returned his attention to the ant, slogging determinedly. His examination was born of an oddly surreal detachment macabrely imbued with great attention to detail.

Such as. . . . How far away, at that instant, was the ant from being close enough to kill him? He figured thirty meters. Now twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.

How fast was it coming to kill him? Not very. The cold, still. Twenty-five.

How soon would it be there to kill him? Soon. A minute, maybe. Still twenty five meters, he noted, as the ant stumbled against the slope.

How much difference was that morning sunshine making? An interesting question there, Felix decided. The staggering sluggish ghoul it was now could only kill him slowly. The skittering lunging ghoul it would become, on the other hand, could kill him. . . less slowly. He figured the ant would still be cold and slow by the time it arrived. There were only twenty or so meters left.

And how, while he was at it, would the ant go about killing him? Another interesting question. Fascinating. Would it, for example, simply stomp to the crest of the dune and hammer him to death by, say, bashing his faceplate into his forehead? Probably, Felix thought, at eighteen meters.

Or maybe it would just reach up and clamp onto his knees and drag him down where it could crush him to death by wedging the razor-sharp edges of its pincers into the seams of his suit. Might do that. Might do both. Hammer now and tongs later.

Ten meters. The ant had reached the last and steepest section and begun to heave ponderously up the pockmarked slope. It tripped. Both globular eyes rolled upward, the spinal shaft arched stiffly, the great skullhead tilled forward, and it fell. It fell straight back, in slow motion, like a huge tree. It slammed backfirst with a dull thud, sending a great sheet of sand splashing into the air.

As it hit, the ant began twirling its claws for balance.

Felix shook his head. “Dumb jerk,” he muttered. “Now you’ve got twenty-five meters to go again.” He smiled, for some reason, caught himself at it, stopped it. He sighed deeply. He knew what was wrong.

He didn’t believe.

Still. After six months and twenty drops. After uncounted injuries and countless horrors. After all the killing of the ants before him and the people around him. After all the pain, all the terror. Still, he could not fully believe it.

He looked away from the ant and scanned the horizon. Endless dunes. Some were smooth, but most were stiffly crusted, with jagged edges and harsh crumbling bluffs, victims and creations of the searing erosive winds that could pack and jam even the largest of them together in a single day before blasting them flat in the span of another. Felix never recognized any place on Banshee, however often he might be dropped in a given area. There were always new dunes, new ridges, new mesas to be found. Even the damned sand could change. The geotechs had catalogued something like two thousand different grain patterns. And with the different colors and textures and formations of each, nothing ever seemed truly familiar.

So he never knew what footing to expect. Once, fleeing wildly and alone, he had leapt from atop one firm ridge and sunk out of sight into the next. It had taken him a long time to dig his way out. They had almost had him that time. Another time fleeing again, alone again he had come upon a wall of sand as smooth and strong as plastiform. His powered armored fingers had only just barely managed to carve the toeholds he needed to scale it. They had almost had him that time, too.

A kilometer to the west was a sea glowing a rich innocent blue between two towering ridges. The beauty of it offended him. For it held no water as man knew it. It wouldn’t even freeze. Too much acid. Even the ants avoided it, the reason for dropping here.

Felix glanced down to see the ant managing, at last, to stand erect once more. It began, without hesitation, to clamber toward him once again. He watched it take a few lumbering steps. He couldn’t be sure it might be only his imagination but it seemed more agile than before. The sun had barely moved; it couldn’t be warm enough yet.

Still, it could happen very quickly and there was never any warning. More than once he had been surprised by sleepwalking ants which began needing thirty seconds to take as many steps but were suddenly, two seconds later, ten steps closer and on him and raking at his faceplate.

But this one, he decided after a moment, wasn’t ready for that yet. Not quite done. What he ought to do, he knew, was change dunes. Pick one with a shaded approach that would keep the ant cool while it climbed. The ant wouldn’t notice. Or care. It would simply come at him, directly at him, through sun or shadows or blazer fire. So Felix should move.

But he didn’t. He just stood there where he was and watched the ant.

It was this sight, this creature, that he found hardest to believe. So damn bighalf again as tall as a suited man. And incredibly strong, incredibly resolute, incredibly hard to kill. And it must be killed. There was no other way to stop it. It didn’t care about fear. It didn’t care about pain. It didn’t care about death. It didn’t care about anything but killing people.

But you really care about that, don’t you? Felix thought.

You love that.

Below him, the ant tripped again, this time on its own foot pad. It fell forward against the slope, driving its claws into the sand almost to the shoulder joints. It struggled a bit, trying to pull itself out but only shoved the mandibles deeper. For a moment it paused, staring at the holes it had made. It didn’t seem to know what to do. Then it began to rock violently back and forth.

Felix snorted disgustedly. It was about the worst thing it could have tried. “But it’ll work anyway. Won’t it. Ant?” he asked. “Because you’re so fucking strong.” Felix smiled bitterly, without pleasure. “Too dumb to get out of the shade, but oh so strong! And so eager to get me somehow.”

Anyhow. That was another thing about them. Ants didn’t care what it took to kill people. Bashing them to death, burning them with blasters, peeling them piece by frozen piece from their armor they didn’t care how. Ants would kill other ants to kill people. They would kill themselves to do it.

And they didn’t care how long it took, either. This ant would climb this slope as long as Felix stood atop it. It would climb and slide down and climb and fall down and climb and on and on, trying, trying, through this day and the next and the next. Until it had climbed the dune, or had dragged it down around it grain by grain or starved to death trying. A robot.

Less than a robot. Much less. Mindless. A windup toy.

And yet. . . .

Ants had tools. Elaborate, sophisticated tools. They made them, knew how to use them. And they had their hives and they had their blasters and. . .

“Hell!” Felix cried aloud, “you’ve got space travel! Star travel, in fact. You attacked earth.” He stared at it, shaking his head. “Damn you, anyway!” he groaned, impulsively kicking the sand at his feet. A small shower cascaded about the ant. A small patch struck one of the eyes and stuck there.

The ant had managed to work free one of its claws. It used the curved edge to scrape the sand from its eyeball. It made a harsh rasping sound. Felix shuddered and turned away.

Command Frequency sputtered. “Felix?” asked a voice he recognized as Colonel. . . what? Shoen?

“This is Felix,” he replied.

“Felix, this is Shoen. Have you still got that ant?” “Killing him now,” he replied with relief, reaching for his rifle at last.

“No, no, no! Don’t kill it!” cried the colonel. “I told you not to!”

Felix sighed, keyed the safety back on. “So you did, colonel. But I thought that, since you’re. ...”

“Don’t think, Felix. I’ll tell you when.”

Felix counted to ten.

“Felix?”

“Yes, Colonel?”

“You didn’t kill it, did you?”