Mercenary (9 page)

We had, by use of this shortcut, reduced our travel distance by almost fifty percent. It had taken time to prepare the paddleboards, but we were still a good half hour ahead of any ordinary schedule, and not as tired as we would have been had we spent that time plodding on foot.

We had to cut through a section of palmetto, and at one point heard a rattle; whether it was a real rattlesnake or a planted sound we could not know, but we gave it a wide berth and renewed our dosage of reptile repellent. The headhunters could smell this, too, but according to the map there were none of them in this region, and this coincided with my judgment.

Then we came to higher ground, and moved faster. But it was hot in our netting, and Juana was tiring; it is a fact that the type of flesh that makes a woman a delight to view is not as useful as plain muscle, in such a trek. We had to slow. I carried all our extra equipment, her pack and mine, but still we lost time.

Yet she had done very well so far, and was striving hard now; I would not have traded her for a man.

Breathless, we hastened to the finish zone. We were numbers five and six, and Juana was the first woman here. So she would have qualified for the bonus even if she hadn't made the first nine. We had made it!

One day later, when the official tabulations were posted, Sergeant Smith's well-prepared platoon was shown as the leader. A cheer went up, and the troops bustled out on their three-day pass. Juana and I sewed on the single stripes of Privates First Class and moved into a room together, with the blessing of the Navy. Never again would we have to endure the rigors of the Tail.

We received a note from one Commander Dunsted, whose name neither of us recognized. It said,

“Congratulations.” When I checked the Base listing of officers, I discovered that this was the gracious woman who had put us together in the Tail.

My life as a PFC in the Jupiter Navy was full, but again it would be tedious to detail it. I continued my training, for though I now had some slight rank, about six months before I would ordinarily have had it, I still had much to learn. I was studying how to raid a ship; that is, how to perform as a member of a specialized crew who would board and take over an enemy spaceship. This was considered to be one of the most dangerous and challenging specialties, with a brief life expectancy. Few soldiers either wanted it or could keep its pace; therefore, promotions within it were prompt. I had jumped to E3 while most of my cycle-mates remained El; after completing four months of training as a raider with top scores, I made E4, corporal.

Juana, not being driven as I was, pursued a more normal course and trained as a computer clerk and secretary. This was a good, secure specialty, but beneath her potential. It became apparent that she and I were not at all similar in personality, but we related well as roommates. Maybe opposites do attract. She was not keen on sex, and my preoccupation was elsewhere, but we performed our weekly stint because the Navy expected it of us, and it was said the Navy had ways of knowing.

Having said that, I must also say it was not an onerous duty, and as I came to understand Juana's nature better, I believe she came to appreciate it as I did. Indeed, though we both agreed that love was no part of this relationship, there were times when a third party might have thought otherwise. Our sex was always gentle and often fulfilling, as Helse had taught me, and I'm sure Juana gradually lost her fear of it.

She did not have any strong drive to participate, but she liked to please me, and sometimes we even exceeded the minimum frequency quota. Certainly she valued the closeness of it, if not the mechanics.

In due course I was contacted by the anonymous officer Sergeant Smith had promised: the one who had the list of pirate ships doing business with Chip Off the Old Block. He was Lieutenant Repro, a psychologist attached to the Public Relations staff of the training battalion, and he was a drug addict. I quickly realized that while Sergeant Smith had been relegated to the lowly training unit as an extension of his scapegoat punishment, Lieutenant Repro had been relegated here as an act of mercy. A training battalion had little need of publicity; it did not deal very much with the outside world. Especially not when most of the soldiers were refugee orphans. So this was a sinecure, where Lieutenant Repro could drift out his enlistment in obscurity without doing much harm. No wonder he had not been eager to reveal himself; his shame was best kept private. No wonder, too, that he kept track of pirate vessels: They supplied the drug he had to have.

Why, then, had he agreed to contact me? I realized that he could not have much interest in my need to locate my sister. There had to be something in it for him. I needed to ascertain what this was, to be sure I could trust him.

Repro was a friend of Sergeant Smith's, and I learned later that Smith had pointed out that I might be a suitable pawn in a kind of game they were playing. It was a game that was to have amazing impact on my life, and this contact was perhaps the major break of my military career. But, of course, I did not know this then. Let me render this more directly.

I met Lieutenant Repro in his office in the S-5 section. I should clarify that a battalion has five special sections, each headed by an officer and designated S-l through S-5. They are, respectively, Adjutant, Intelligence, Operations, Logistics, and Public Relations, otherwise known as Propaganda. As an enlisted man, I was hardly aware these existed; later in my career, that was to change.

Lieutenant Repro was a tall, thin, unhealthy-looking man in his late thirties or early forties—perhaps he looked older than he was because of the ravages of his addiction—with thinning brown hair and deepening lines on his face. He was at the moment in command of his faculties, but I could see he wasn't enjoying it. He must have straightened out temporarily, for this occasion. His Class A uniform was slightly rumpled, and his brass slightly tarnished. He was about as unimpressive an officer as I had seen.

On his desk was a little stand, from which five steel balls were suspended by angled threads, barely touching each other. He showed me how it operated. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction,” he said, lifting an end-ball to the side and letting it go. It swung in its arc down to strike the stationary four, and the ball on the far side swung out, leaving the other four unmoved. The force of the first had been neatly transferred to the last, without moving the intervening masses. Then the end-ball swung back, and the first one rebounded. The principle was simple enough, but I was fascinated to see it in action.

Repro stilled the motion by touching the center balls with his hand. Then he lifted two balls from the end.

“If I drop this pair, what will happen?” he asked.

I started to answer, then hesitated, realizing that I wasn't sure. Would two balls beget two balls—or one ball with twice the force?

He let go, and two balls reacted. I had my answer; a ball for a ball, two for two.

Then he lifted three. “Now?”

Three balls. That suggested three to react, but only two remained. What would happen?

He let the three go, and three balls rebounded. Rather, two did, and the third carried through without pause. Fascinating!

“Action-reaction,” Lieutenant Repro said. “Inevitable.”

I wondered what the point was but remained too intrigued by the balls to inquire. Such a simple yet effective way to demonstrate a principle of physics. “May I try it sir?”

He nodded acquiescence. I lifted one ball, let it go, and watched the far one fling out with similar force. I let the progression continue, noting that the size of the swinging arcs gradually diminished, and that the row of steel balls began to get moving, until finally all five were gently swinging in unison. Friction, I realized. No process was perfect in atmosphere. In a vacuum it would work better, though there would still be some power siphoned away by the inefficiency of the supporting strings.

I tried two balls, then three, then four, then five—and smiled, for, of course, the five merely swung without collisions. Then I started a ball on each side, watching them rebound outward simultaneously.

Then I started two balls on one side and one on the other, and saw the reaction proceed without hitch.

The two proceeded back on the one side, the one on the other. This device could handle opposite impulses without confusing them.

Then I swung a single ball down with a double force. The opposite ball flung out with similar force.

I looked up. “How does it know the difference between two balls with normal force, and one with double force?”

“It knows,” Repro said gravely.

I played with it some more. “The double-force ball is traveling faster,” I decided. “That speed is transmitted.”

Then I tried two balls at normal force, and then three. Two, then three rebounded. “The velocity is constant,” I said, bemused. “But somehow it knows how many there are.”

“It knows,” he agreed again. “Action and reaction are constant, anywhere in the universe, and in any form in the universe. One has but to read the forces correctly.”

“Even in human events?” I asked, beginning to catch on.

“If we read correctly.”

“Then psychology reduces to elementary physics?”

“If.”

I nodded. “It must be so.”

He looked at me, his wasted body strangely animated. “Show me your power,” he said, using a Navy idiom.

“Yes, sir.” I took a breath, studying him with more than my eyes and ears. “You are intelligent—about one point three on the human scale—and have a civilian university education. You are honest but lack physical courage, so you become compromised. You see reality too clearly, but it is painful, so you dull your sensitivity with a drug—and have done so increasingly for the past decade. You had and lost a woman; that contributed. When your Navy enlistment expires, and they deny you reenlistment, you will retire without protest, step off into space, float free toward the sun, and open your suit.”

He was unimpressed. “You could have gotten most of that from Personnel records.”

“Had I known your identity, sir,” I agreed.

He nodded, acknowledging my point. I had been summoned suddenly to an office; I could not have known. “And why did Sergeant Scapegoat connect us?”

“I have a private mission. You—” I concentrated, seeking to fathom this specific aspect of his nature.

My talent is normally a general thing, a perception of fundamental biases, rather than a detailed itemization of traits. It did take time for me to understand a person properly, and this was sudden.

Mostly, in the Navy, I had not bothered to use my talent on the soldiers around me; it really wasn't worth it. I had used it on Juana, and on Sergeant Smith, once he caught my attention, but there was no more point in using it on everyone than in studying the complete Personnel files on everyone. It requires an effort to form an informed opinion, and the Navy does not leave a trainee much surplus energy. For routine life and work, it is often best simply to accept people at face value—particularly in a regimented system where deviance from the norm is not encouraged. “You need contact with someone who can apply instinctively the principles you have studied professionally. Such a contact would—would provide some meaning for your life, and you value meaning more than life.”

“Purpose,” he said. “Purpose more than meaning, though the two may overlap.”

“Purpose, sir,” I agreed.

“I have measured out my life in chicken shit.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Shall we deal?”

“Help me recover my sister, sir, and I'll do anything you want, within reason and legality.”

“What I want is reasonable and legal but too complex for you to fathom at the moment.”

I concentrated on him again. There is nothing supernatural about my talent; I merely read people quite well. I can, to a large extent, discover their moods and natures from peripheral signals, but I cannot read minds. Intelligent interpretation, not telepathy, is my secret. Now I saw in this man the signals of an enormous ambition but not one to be expressed in simple things such as promotion or riches or romance.

He craved power but not any ordinary or competitive type. Rather it was a kind of vindication he sought—vindication in his own eyes, by his own complex code. He sought, perhaps, to change the course of Man, in a devious fashion that only he himself could properly understand. This was a fascinating man! “Yes, sir,” I agreed. “But I will cooperate to the extent feasible.”

“Your destiny may change,” he warned me.

I was aware that he believed he was understating the case. I began to believe it myself. “I have not determined my destiny,” I said. “I only want to recover my sister. Then I must become an officer, to fulfill my commitment to Sergeant Smith, so I suppose that means a career in the Navy. I'm satisfied with that.”

He lifted a ball. “Perhaps you are now,” he said. “This is me.” He indicated the ball he held. “This is you.”

He indicated the far ball.

“Yes, sir,” I said noncommittally.

He released his ball. It swung down and struck the group, and my ball rebounded. The implication was clear enough. He intended to apply force to move me, according to his complex will, and I would have to react predictably. He was a strange yet well-meaning man, and his effort would have power, but as I watched the return swing of my ball and the thrust it imparted back to his ball, I knew that once he started me going, he would be subject to my force as much as I was now subject to his.

“Yes, sir,” I repeated.

The balls swung back and forth, acting and reacting and re-reacting and slowly declining, until at last the entire group was gently swinging. “And there is the Navy,” Lieutenant Repro said.

What we did would have a subtle but definite effect on the entire system. That was a grandiose ambition of his, yet it seemed a credible one.

“I think of these balls as a physical representation of honor,” he said.

“Honor, sir?” I asked, surprised.

“Do you know what honor is, Hubris?”

“Integrity,” I said.

He smiled. “I will educate you about honor. It is not integrity or truth. It is larger, a less straightforward concept. Honor has aspects of personal esteem, respect, dignity, and reputation, but it is more than these. Honor is an intangible concept, based more on appearance than reality, but its fundament is based on reality, and to a considerable extent it fashions its own reality. Civilization is a function of the honor of the human species. You must master the nuances of honor, to know personally what input will bring about what output.” He started the balls rebounding in a complex clicking pattern by releasing them sequentially.

“What do I have to do with honor?” I asked. “It's hard enough just getting through training.”

He shook his head ruefully. “I can see my work is cut out for me.” But he was not upset by the challenge. “How can I help you recover your sister?”

I explained about the need to check the list of pirate ships doing business with Chip Off the Old Block, especially the one that handled EMPTY HAND chips.

“Yes, I have access to that list,” he agreed. “It is considered part of Publicity, because no other department wants to touch the touchy matter of Navy trade with pirate vessels. We do keep track, but we don't advertise it, because then the question might arise why we don't stamp out that trade.”

“Why don't we?” I asked.

“That is an excellent question, to which I can proffer no adequate answer. Do you wish to stamp out piracy?”

“Yes!” I said fervently.

Abruptly he stood up, and I saw just how tall he was. “Private First Class Hubris, I have a temporary detail for you. Come with me.” This interview occurred before I was promoted to corporal; it is difficult to maintain a perfectly chronological narration when separate threads come together.

I realized that he did not feel free to talk frankly with me here in the office. “Yes, sir.”