Don Pendleton - Civil War II (4 page)

"What do you want massaged first?" she asked tauntingly.

Winston gently slapped her hip and said, "You win," :md pulled her down beside him, his hands tracing the outline of smooth flanks and flawless femininity.

The girl laughed and pulled free, reasserting her command of the situation. "You sure don't need an I'uergizer, do you," she commented.

"In my day, an exciting woman was all the energizer a guy needed."

"Here it comes," she said, sighing.

"Here what comes?"

"The lecture I get a dozen times a week. On the modern generation and chemical sex."

"I'm no lecturer," Winston told her, and showed her.

"Wait a minute!" the girl cried. She struggled to her feet and went to the service table, returning with two small plastic packets. She tore them open and shoved a wafer-thin tablet toward him. "Have a hype," she suggested.

"I'm hyped enough already," he assured her.

"You'll have to take it," she insisted. "It's a proph and a sterilizer too. Sony, rules."

Winston knew all the damn rules. He accepted the wafer and popped it in his mouth.

The girl chewed hers, gave Winston a measuring look, then popped in another. "Okay," she said, sighing. "On your back, Flame."

"I'm on top," he informed her.

She sighed again, then smiled engagingly and moved onto the recliner, twisting onto her back and raising her arms for Winston's embrace. "The customer's always right," she murmured, the lovely face suddenly taking on an entirely new and hungered expression. She lurched against
him
and caught her breath in a sharp intake. "See how fast it works?" she gasped.

Sure, Winston knew how fast it worked. Artificial vitality, another technological breakthrough for a world quickly going flat and sterile. Another artificial abundance, a hype for the masses, a joyride into biological oblivion. Hell, he didn't care. This was an animal thing beneath him, an explosive and joyous animal released from the primeval jungle by 20th century chemical magic. Snarl, baby, snarl—and he'd ride her clear to hell and back if that's what it took to subdue the beast—and he knew very well that it would.

Sluggishly she said, "Your ten minutes are up, sir."

"Drop another nickel in."

"What?"

"Go run the card through again."

"I—I'm sorry. I don't think I could go again right now."

"Haven't you ever heard of after-play? Don't you find anything rewarding about just lying here, all shot to hell and breathing on each other, listening to each other's heartbeats, enjoying the—"

"I knew I'd
get
that lecture sooner or later."

"Forget it. If you want to leave, then leave. If you want j to rest awhile between assignments, then go run the damn card through again. Suit yourself."

"Well... I could use a breather. This
is
nice."

"Sure it is."

"I'll run the card through on my way out. Okay?"

"Sure. Uh, how old are you, honey?"

"Old enough. I'll be graduating next month."

"From what?"

"From the accomodations section."

"Oh? I never knew it worked that way. What do you go to from here?"

"Flight service. You know—coffee, tea, or chemicals?"

"That's a graduation?"

"Well—the credits are better. And it's more fun—you know—you get to mingle more, move around more."

"See what you mean."

"Uh—I noticed you're an F-VIP. What bureau?"

"Urban."

"Urban what? What does that mean?"

"You've never heard of the Bureau of Urban Affairs?"

"Oh, that. Do you like blacks?"

"They're just people."

"I mean the
town
blacks."

"Yeah, I meant that too."

"I don't believe I ever saw one. Except pictures."

"Oh, sure. You've seen some, I know. You just didn't know it. They look just like the government blacks."

"But do you have to actually go
inside
those towns?"

Winston chuckled. "Yes, I do."

The girl shivered. "President Arlington says they live like animals."

He sighed, and told her in a conspiratorial whisper, "That could be because they're
treated
like animals." He pinched her thigh and added, "But no, they're just people. They get by the best they can."

"Well. . . what do they live like?"

"Are you really interested?"

"I guess so."

Winston pushed to an elbow and reached for a cigarette, lit it, and watched the girl through narrowed eyes. Presently he told her, "No, I doubt that I could ever make you understand. It's something you have to see for yourself."

The girl's eyes were speculating on him. She said, "I had a teacher once who talked like that. We used to have these rap sessions. He, uh, got fired. I always liked him. I guess he just had too many radical ideas."

"Yeah, well, don't look at mo like that," Winston told her. "We can't afford radical idealists in this society. When one pops up, we all get together and tear him apart and nail what's left to a willow tree. Hey, this isn't afterplay talk. Give me your lips. Kiss me."

She smiled and melted against him, then wriggled suggestively and said, "You guys are just different."

"What guys?"

"You older guys. You're . . . romantic, I guess. Even about sex."

"Yeah. That's pretty terrible, isn't it."

"Oh ... I don't know. Sometimes I get to thinking , , . like now. I feel funny."

"And without chemicals?"

She giggled and rooted against him. "It seems that you have enough for both of us."

Winston grinned and moved his hand onto a pulsing

breast. Odd, he thought, how public opinion shaped the bodies of every generation of women. He could remember a time when heavy bosoms and sleek legs were the focal point of a woman's sexual attractiveness. Somehow the women managed to shape themselves around those focal points. Now it was all in the curves of the rear . . . pulchritude of the posterior. He fanned his palm around, cupping a breast in a loving caress, then he pushed the girl's lep apart and. . . .

"Oh, yeah, great," she sighed. "But you're ruining me. I think I'm getting to like it better lying here looking up at you."

The overdeveloped muscles of her midsection rippled and grabbed for him as he lowered himself into moistly heated welcome. The girl gasped and rolled her eyes toward her forehead, wrapping her arms about his neck with a stifled little moan. Odd too, Winston reflected, how this undereducated and over-sexed young Amazon made him think of another girl, another place, and another long, long, time ago.

The girl ran his card through twice on her way out. She hesitated in the doorway, turned him a wan smile, and said, "See you around, Papa,"—and disappeared into the aisleway.

Winston watched the vacated doorway for a moment, then fell back to the pillows. Something was chugging around in his think chamber. He was tired, tired —exhausted was the word—and something, some deep something connected to the exhaustion was clamoring for attention.

Then it surfaced. Winston experienced the giddiness of illumination.
That's where our vitality has gone,
he realized. He lunged toward his cigarettes, lit one, inhaled deeply, then swung his feet onto the floor.
It's gone right into those overdeveloped asses\
Something bothering you, citizen? Well, hell, go get accomodated, that'll make you feel better. In plain English,
go get laidl
—get screwed!—get lost.

That's what they meanl
Don't get mad, just get screwed.

Don't get depressed, just get screwed. Don't think about those pathetic starving creatures in Asia and Africa, just get screwed. Don't think about twenty million Americans permed up in Buck Rogers ghettoes,
just get screwed.
Talk about a screwed-up society!

An almost forgotten emotion was beginning to well up inside Winston's rocking head.
Rage.
He felt
ragel
But at what? What was he enraged about? Was there something left to get mad about in this country? Wasn't everything provided?

He could live any way he wished to live, couldn't he, so long as it was compatible with the little squiggle-lined engravings on his AMS card? Need somewhere to live, Charlie? Hell, drop your card in the box and get a housing assignment. It's all paid for. Just pray to God you never get a
town
override on your card.

Want some booze, Charlie? Jam your card in the service box, old buddy. Want a woman? AMS her, Charlie. Want something to eat? Just find the right box, old buddy. And if something comes up, Lord forbid, that you
want
and there's no
box
for, then just shove something into one of those always quivering and overdeveloped asses!

The
Passport to Abundance,
they'd called those cards. Passport to Abundance. Shit!
Passport to Sterility]
That's what it was. Winston had no idea, no idea whatever, what his annual earnings were. It was all figured out for him, as a matter of credits and debits, by some monster computer in Washington. The entire domestic economy was programmed by that monster.
The Abundant Societyl
BULLSHIT!

It would seem that Winston's insights into the American society, and particularly the Automated Monetary System, were entirely valid. The plan, introduced by then Senator J. Humphrey Arlington of Alabama in 1984, was officially inaugurated on January 1, 1986, after a bitter and futile battle by the nation's banking interests to have the law declared unconstitutional. Opponents of the measure had pointed out that the end effect of AMS would be a rigid control of the national economy by the federal government, and eventual direct control of the lives and fortunes of all Americans. They hinted strongly that a major thrust of the bill was toward the control of minority groups, specifically the blacks, and that this control could easily be extended to include every American citizen. It appeared that, by the year 1999, this end had indeed been accomplished—certainly, without doubt, as regarded the black Americans.

And, with regard to the blacks, Winston's other insights were directly on target. A patient plan of years had come to an abruptly unplanned maturity, and the programmed abuse of a race covering an era of centuries was about to be run head-on into the new reality. The
Omega Project,
a plan designed to end an era, had led the way to a day beyond expectation. At least from one pale point of view.

CHAPTER 4

Birdie Howard watched the broad back of her husband as he pulled on the khaki shirt. Impulsively she stepped forward and gripped his shoulders, laying her face against the great strength there between the shoulder-blades. "I'm scared, honey," she whispered.

"Don't be scared," Bill Howard said gruffly. "This is a time for singing, not crying." He went on buttoning the shirtfront, opened the waist of his trousers, stuffed the shirt tails neatly inside. Then he turned to survey the cramped apartment, pulling his wife into his arms, squeezing her tightly to him.

"No more shadow living for these folks, Birdie," he reminded her. "No more crumbling buildings and nightmarey nights, no more eating powdered foods and fighting the rats. We're moving out into the sunshine, honey. We gonna bring our kids up in sight of God's heaven, and we gonna give 'em fields to play in, and a place to laugh and sing. Isn't that worth some risk?"

"If there's gonna be killing and bleeding, I'll stay here in town, Bill." She shivered violently. "I don't want no blood of yours trickling out on white folks' ground."

The black youth chuckled. "If my blood spills, maybe it'll look like the same color as theirs. Now look, we been

through this ten million times. Now something that ain't worth risking a little bit of blood for ain't worth wanting, is it? I'm not raising no kids in this town, Birdie. Not if all my kids wither up and die in my dead nuts. Now give me a smile and a kiss. I gotta go out there and get my weapons."

Birdie choked back a flood of tears, stretched to her toe tips, and gave her husband a soulful lass.

"Hey," he said, grinning, "that's a let's-go-to-bed kiss."

"I don't know how to give go-on-off-and-get-killed kisses," she replied.

He laughed and slapped her bottom. Then he took one last long look about the tiny "efficiency" apartment, a place where his life had centered, as though looking ait it for the last time. He gave her another quick peck, pushed her away, and Lt. Bill Howard of the Hattiesburg Town Militia went off to the wars.

Joe Johnson sat on the Hattiesburg Mayor's desk, swinging one leg idly back and forth, listening to the rapid exchange between Mayor Wayne Elliott and Intelligence Director Sam Hatfield. These two older men never failed to amuse the youthful military boss of Hattiesburg.