The Eternity Brigade (12 page)

They checked into a hotel in town, and were amazed at the prices. Each of them could have his own room for just six dollars a night. A good steak dinner in the hotel restaurant was under ten dollars. Most other prices were similarly reduced—the ominous exception being that gasoline was advertised at a whopping five dollars a liter...where it could be found at all.

“At these prices, we can live like kings!” Symington exclaimed happily.

“I hope so,” Green said, “‘cause we can’t afford to leave the castle.”

They argued over dinner about what they should do next. Green took over as the brains of their outfit, and insisted they go to New York. “That’s where all the money is, that’s where the best deals are made,” he told them. “If we want to make something of ourselves, that’s where we have to go. Besides, I’ve got an uncle who’s an investment counselor—if he’s still in the business. He’ll help us get the best deal for our money.”

They logged onto the Internet from the computer in their room, but were shocked to learn  they couldn’t buy tickets online; all long-distance travel had to be coordinated through a licensed travel agent. “Controlling terrorists, I guess,” Green said with a shrug.

They tried phoning, but were told they must apply for their tickets in person. Fortunately there was a licensed agent just four blocks from their hotel. One of her first questions was whether they had the proper travel passes, a question that stumped all three of them. When Green told the woman that they were all sleepers just released from the army, she gave them a broad smile and said she’d do anything she could to help them.

Travel passes were necessary for anyone entering the bigger cities these days, she explained. Ever since the Energy Riots, the government had to make sure terrorists and troublemakers were kept out of the major metropolitan centers; city life was too fragile to entrust to chance. Anyone visiting New York had to have a valid reason for going, and a government certified pass before he could enter—otherwise he was forced to stay outside. The fact that Green had relatives in New York was deemed reason enough for going, and his friends were allowed to accompany him. The travel agent copied down the numbers of their ID cards—which turned out to be their old Social Security numbers with three added letters, except that Social Security had been abolished several years ago in favor of something called National Assistance—and promised to expedite their travel passes. They didn’t have enough money to fly to New York, since they wouldn’t get their back pay until they had permanent mailing addresses, so she arranged bus tickets for them, to be effective as soon as their papers came through. She estimated it would take two days—four, at the most—and told them to check back with her.

The three friends returned to their hotel slightly stunned. So far they’d barely gone twenty kilometers from the base, and already they’d encountered monetary devaluation, national ID cards, and travel restrictions. They could hardly help but wonder how many more surprises this modern world held in store for them.

***

It took them eight days to reach New York. Three of those were spent waiting for their travel papers to clear the government offices, and the other five were spent on the road. The electric buses were slow and cumbersome, and stopped at each state line for inspection. They got used to taking out their ID cards and travel permits at border crossings to flash at inquisitive state troopers. At the Pennsylvania border, there was one passenger who’d boarded the bus just recently, and whose ID card failed to satisfy the border patrol. He and his luggage were removed, and the bus drove on without him. No one else aboard the bus thought to make any fuss about it, but the incident shook Hawker, Green and Symington.

Again, there was little traffic on the road around them. The nights were dark and quiet, and sleep was easy as the bus drove through the darkness—until Green realized they were passing through a densely populated part of the country and that there should have been
some
lights of civilization around them. The energy shortage must really be bad if cities turned off their lights at night. That thought made it harder for him to sleep.

Their arrival in New York reassured them temporarily. The city looked hardly changed from when last Green had seen it. Traffic still clogged the streets, gasoline-powered traffic; there was so much congestion that it seemed to belie the energy crisis that had such an impact elsewhere in the nation. New Yorkers bustled about with the same callous unconcern they’d always shown. Clothing styles had changed a little, but not to excess; women wore much more austere, harshly cut business suits, and more men wore turtlenecks rather than ties.

Green set about the arduous business of tracking down his family after such an extended absence. His parents were no longer listed in the directory, and a call to the synagogue yielded the information that Rabbi Green had retired seven years ago and moved to Miami. His
Uncle Sid, the investment counselor he’d been counting on to help them, had died three years ago,
and the people currently at that telephone number knew nothing of where his widow had gone. Of his brothers and sisters, only one—Benjamin, the doctor—still lived in New York, but the nurse at his office explained he was on vacation for the entire month, and wouldn’t be back for two  more weeks.

In desperation, Green took his friends down to his old neighborhood to look for some acquaintances. There were still a few boyhood friends and neighbors, and even a cousin he’d almost forgotten about; people gathered around him and marveled at how young he looked but other than learning some more details about how his family had dispersed, he accomplished little that day.

Dismayed, the men checked into a cheap hotel in Greenwich Village while they decided what to do next.
They surfed the Web for job openings, but the energy shortage had apparently caused massive layoffs and people were scrambling for any kind of work. The only jobs listed with any consistency were those requiring previous experience, some technical proficiency, or an advanced degree none of them had.

The search for business opportunities was barely more encouraging. There were plenty of businesses available for sale—including an astonishing number of gas stations, garages, sales routes, and delivery services—but most of them were businesses none of the three knew the faintest thing about. They were starting with a disadvantage of ignorance on several levels, and deathly afraid of throwing away the one advantage they had—their accumulated savings—through their inexperience and lack of knowledge. Even Symington didn’t feel
that
lucky.

Green checked through what little there was of the straight news, and became even more depressed. Not that there was any one item that was particularly bad—and that, in fact, was what disturbed him the most. The reports were filled with generalities, with scarcely a hard fact anywhere in them. Although he could not have said for certain, Green grew suspicious that the news was being censored in subtle ways to downplay the seriousness of any particular bad tidings. The travel agent had, after all, mentioned Energy Riots; perhaps the government didn’t want people being stirred up that much any more by bad news, and so smoothed out the rougher spots in the day’s reporting. It was an ominous thought, but one he couldn’t push from his mind once it had entered.

Early the next morning, before they had a chance to decide what to do, they received a call from a reporter who’d tracked them down. She wanted to do a story about them, she explained—three latter-day Rip Van Winkles, and what their particular problems were in adjusting to the modern world.
Hawker was, as usual, shy about talking about himself,
but the other two talked him into it. A little free publicity would never hurt them, they said. Perhaps someone would see the story and offer them some help. It was worth a try. They told the reporter to come over and, while waiting for her to arrive, they phoned several business consultants and investment firms; lining up consultations for that afternoon.

The reporter seemed eager to help them, and in fact was happy to concentrate on all the problems they faced in current-day America. Her questions emphasized how they intended to cope with situations such as the energy crisis and unemployment, and what they intended to make of themselves. It wasn’t until after she left that Green realized why she’d done that; by making these three sleepers seem miserable in her story, the reporter was helping make her average reader feel his
own
problems were comparatively minor. “There’s nothing like someone else’s suffering to make you feel better,” he remarked cynically.

The consultations that afternoon were uniformly disappointing. The counselors were unanimous in advising the trio against going into business without knowing present-day economic conditions and how to compete effectively. Their best suggestions were to put the money into real estate or stock investments, but Green wasn’t sure how good that was for them. The investments might be sound, but that kind of strategy was more of a long-term deal, and the ex-soldiers wanted something that could keep them going
now
.

On a hunch, they stopped in at a library to get information about GI loans for college—but those prospects were negative here, too. Many of the smaller colleges had been forced to close down when the crunch came—and those that were open had raised their admission standards as well as their tuitions. The trio’s high school educations were more than a dozen years out-of-date; they’d have to go to night school for a year before they could make up enough of the difference to even think about applying.

The three of them drank heavily that night to relieve the oppression they felt growing in their souls, and they awoke early the next morning to the sound of the telephone ringing. The story of their plight had appeared in that morning’s Internet news report, and almost instantly they were deluged with offers of all sorts: offers of a spare room in someone’s house, expressions of sympathy, even offers of marriage. There was one man who kept calling to insist: a) that suspended animation was anti-Christian, and b) that it was all a hoax, anyway. Hanging up on him did little good; he kept calling back, more strident each time than the last.

By far the most numerous types of calls, though, were the ones offering them business deals. Some people were eager to loan them ready cash now, using their accumulated back pay as collateral—probably, Green assumed, at frighteningly high rates of interest. There were many people who began by expressing their condolences, and quickly turned the conversation into a spiel to buy land in Alaska (guaranteed rich in oil) or to invest in some crazy fly-by-night company that seemed totally unsound, even to men who’d spent the last dozen years asleep.

“We’ve gotten on every sucker list in America,” Green said bitterly after the third hour of uninterrupted telephone conversation. “We have no idea what’s going on in the world, so everyone and his brother think they can take advantage of our ignorance.” He threw the phone against the wall. “Well, I’m fucking well sick of it.”

He stalked out the door before the other two could do more than stare at him. They found him a few hours later at a bar two blocks away, drunk enough to numb his pain and disillusionment. They put him to bed, and he slept until the next morning, right through the continuous barrage of phone calls that lasted until Symington finally had enough and unplugged the phone.

Green was quiet and thoughtful through breakfast the next morning. His eyes looked slightly sunken, and they had lost the bright luster of optimism. Symington tried to ignore the other’s somber mood by keeping up a lighthearted banter about which of the waitresses would be best in the sack.

Finally Green interrupted with the quiet declaration, “I don’t like this world very much.”

Symington paused and looked at him. “Oh, come on, we’ve hardly even seen it. Just ‘cause things are bad here doesn’t mean they’re bad everywhere.”

“They are,” Green insisted. “You don’t have to drink a whole liter to know the milk’s sour—just taste a few drops. If anything, things are probably better here than anywhere else. New York’s like a dinosaur—you can kill it and the message still takes a year to reach the brain.

“There’s a sickness in the country, or at least a difference. It would have been one thing if we’d lived through it, gotten used to the changes gradually, as they happened. But getting hit with them all at once like this....” He shook his head.

“Even if you don’t like it here, where’re you gonna go?” Symington said with a nervous laugh. “Australia? They’ve got an energy shortage there too, probably.”

Green ignored him and turned to Hawker. “What about you, Hawk?”

Hawker scarcely had to think. “I’m with you, Dave. You know that.”

“Hey, you two aren’t thinking of going through all that
again
, are you?”

Green blinked and looked back at Symington. “Why not? It’s the easy way out of here, isn’t it?”

“We’ve hardly even seen what the world has to offer—”

“I have, and I’m not buying. There’s no place for us here, Lucky. We’re souls out of time, floating where we don’t belong and unable to settle because we clash with the furniture.”

“You think it’ll be any better next time? Look how much trouble we’re in after just twelve years.”

“Why are you so against it? You were all for it, last time.”

“Sure. Last time it was an adventure, something nobody’d ever done before, an easy way to pick up some big money. But we’ve proved our point. We don’t have to do it again. Sure, things look bad now, but they’re not hopeless. It’s not like we’re beggars or something. We’ve got enough money to stake us if we play the cards right.”