The Eternity Brigade (25 page)

When she regained her breath, she said, “Very well, you’ve got my belt. It won’t do you any good—you don’t know how to use it, and it wouldn’t work for you even if you did. Are you trying to frighten me?” A sudden thought brightened her face. “Or are you going to tie me up and do some primitive things with me? That might be something different.”

“You’d enjoy that too much,” Hawker said, still holding her arms tightly.

“Do you like real prolonged pain?” Symington asked her. “I know some of your kinky friends do, but I don’t think that’s your particular fetish.” The look on her face confirmed his suspicion. “Good. I think we understand each other, little lady. I know you can dub yourself later from before all of this happened—but that’s in the future, and I swear to you it’s not going to be any fun in the meantime. Hawk and me, we’ve lived through hundreds of wars, we’ve been captured and tortured by the best in the business, we learned a lot of useful tricks. Why don’t you give her a little demonstration, Hawk?”

Hawker took the woman’s right arm up suddenly behind her wing until the wrist was almost even with her neck. Amassa screamed, and Hawker heard a satisfying snap at the shoulder.

“Oh, that’s such a simple one,” Symington said with mock disappointment. “What
will
she think of your expertise? Why not start by plucking out her wing feathers one by one?

Amassa was sobbing with pain now, and her voice was barely coherent. “What do you want of me?”

Hawker considered asking for her help in getting Belilo away from Nya, but discarded the idea. Much as he wanted to help his friend, it was too risky dealing with these strange people. He had one of them at a disadvantage, but he couldn’t handle any more.

“Can you display a picture of Rez Central?”

“Not ... not without the belt,” Amassa gasped.

This was a crucial point, and Hawker knew it. They’d never get anywhere unless they could control this bubble, which meant they’d have to let Amassa use her belt. But if she had too much control, she’d destroy them. He’d have to maintain a delicate balance.

“All right,” he told her. “You can move one finger at a time, push one control at a time, nice and slow. If anything happens that I don’t like, your arm comes the rest of the way out of its socket.”

Symington brought the belt within reach, prepared to yank it away again the instant Amassa got out of line. The woman extended one long finger and pressed a series of jewels around the belt, slowly and cautiously like a child playing a toy piano. When she’d finished, an image appeared in the air: a mountain looking very much as she’d described it to Hawker before.

Hawker and Symington asked her for other scenes, studying the mountain from all possible angles, close up and far away. They even saw images of the entranceway and the admittance hall. They viewed each scene critically, with a professional eye for troublesome details.

“What do you think?” Hawker finally asked in English.

“I don’t see anything dangerous there,” Symington admitted. “It
looks
like a piece of cake—but I’ve been wrong before.”

“We’ve got to risk it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He changed back to contemporary language. “All right, Amassa, you’ve been a good girl so far. We’ve got a few more things we have to do. Can this home-sphere fly to that mountain?”

“Of course.”

“How long will it take us to get there, at top speed?”

Amassa considered. “About three, maybe four hours.”

“Good. Then start us on the way.”

Amassa pressed a few more controls. “There.”

Hawker blinked. “It doesn’t feel like we’re moving.”

“Well, we are. What’s it supposed to feel like?”

“Never mind. What’s their filing system there? How could we find the file being recorded off one particular transmitter?”

“Each transmitter has its own number. The first thing anybody learns is his own number.”

“But if you die, you can’t tell them what your number is,” Symington said.

“When you die, your transmitter automatically stops broadcasting. That signals Rez Central to resurrect that pattern number.”

“What if someone wasn’t told his number?” Hawker asked. “Like our friend David, for instance.”

“The number must be recorded somewhere—probably on his medical file.”

“That doesn’t help us much,” Symington said.

Amassa paused. “I think the number’s also inscribed on the transmitter. At least, that’s what they tell us. I never had to look. I know my number.”

“I’ve got your number too,” Hawker said. He looked over at Green’s unconscious body. “Is the transmitter attached to any nerves or anything?”

“No, it’s just a passive scanning system. It’s normally buried just below the skin surface of the neck.”

Hawker looked to Symington. “Feel like doing some surgery?”

“If I have to. I’ll need a knife, though.” He looked down at his naked body, and then at Hawker’s. “Come to think of it, we’ll need our uniforms back, too. I don’t relish the thought of running naked through that mountain.”

At the soldiers’ insistence, Amassa dubbed their old uniforms and the weapons they’d brought with them. Each of the men now had the knives in their belts, plus a beampistol, a rifle and half a dozen grenades. Thus armed, they felt much better.

While Amassa and Hawker looked on, Symington dug carefully at the skin around Green’s transmitter button, prying the small device out with the point of his knife. It was a tiny flat disc, barely larger than the battery for an electronic watch in Hawker’s day.

As Amassa had said, there was a sequence of letters and numbers etched into the plastic disc. Hawker had to squint to make out the writing, but it was readable. When he reached Rez Central, he’d know which file was Green’s.

He turned his attention back to Amassa. “How will we know when this sphere reaches the mountain?”

“An alarm bell will ring.”

“Good. You’re learning.” And to Symington, in English, he said, “I don’t think we need her any more. It’s too much trouble looking after her all the time.”

“What do you suggest?”

“You might try knocking her out. A good blow to the head with your rifle butt might do it.”

“Okay.”

“Be careful not to kill her, though. We need this bubble to take us to the mountain.”

Symington walked casually up to the unsuspecting Amassa and suddenly lifted his rifle, bringing its butt down hard against the side of her head. The woman went limp and slumped forward in Hawker’s grasp. Hawker let her fall to the floor, where she lay in an untidy heap.

“Now all we can do,” Hawker said, “is wait.”

They settled down in Amassa’s comfortable furniture. Both men were quiet, contemplating the task still ahead of them. Neither had any expectations of living beyond this attack, but if they could at least help their friend they knew the effort would be worthwhile.

After half an hour, Symington spoke up. “Hawk?”

“Yeah?”

“I lied to you back there.”

“About what?”

“About Belilo. Tesaak did show me what was happening to her.”

Hawker didn’t say anything. He could tell the other man was having trouble making this confession; let him make it at his own pace.

“Nya and about a dozen of her friends were using her as some sort of cult sacrifice. They tied her up and gang-banged her all day, tortured her all night, and killed her in the morning. Then they’d dub her and start the whole thing over again.” His breathing was coming in short, quick pants. “I... I didn’t want to think about it.”

“That’s all right,” Hawker said, quietly. “We all knew the risks we were taking when we started out on this job. Besides, there wasn’t anything we could have done to help her.”

They lapsed into awkward silence again. Another half hour passed before Hawker spoke again. “Lucky?”

“Yeah?”

“What pushed you into all this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dave had a theory that some force in our backgrounds pushed us into signing up for Project Banknote. He told me  about his own insecurities, but what about you? What pushed you into this mess?”

Symington was quiet for several minutes, and Hawker began to think his friend had decided to ignore the question. Then the other man spoke—so quietly that Hawker had to strain to hear him.

“Cowardice, I guess.”

“Huh? You? You’ve got every medal ever made, and a few I think they invented just for you.”

“Yeah. Funny how these things go, ain’t it?” He shifted his weight in the chair, and then reshifted, trying to find what was obviously an impossible position of comfort. “But there’s all sorts of cowards, and the best ones never let you know it.

“I grew up in the oil fields of Oklahoma. The kids were pretty tough there. I was always big for my age, and I got teased about it. When I was five, a seven year-old bully picked on me in the playground. I knocked him down and he hit his head on the side of the swings, gashed open a big cut. I heard he needed eleven stitches. I never told anyone about it, and I guess he never told anyone who did it, either—maybe he was embarrassed to be beat up by a kid two years younger than him. But I remembered what he looked like lying there with his head cut open and bleeding, and I knew I didn’t ever want to do that to anybody again.

“All through school, growing up, I avoided fights—and in my neighborhood that took some doing. I learned to be easygoing and I smiled a lot. The kids called me all kinds of names—they thought I was some kind of sissy or queer. That hurt a lot. They tried to provoke me into doing something, but I usually ran away. I got pretty good at running, believe me.

“Then, about two weeks before my high school graduation, a bunch of guys caught me and my kid sister in an alley on our way home from school. They started beating her up and tearing off her dress to rape her.” He closed his eyes and looked deliberately away. “I tried to defend her, but I was what you might call out of practice. They raped her and left her in a coma and beat the living shit out of me. I couldn’t stop ‘em.

“My sister got taken to the hospital. I came out of it with both eyes blacked, my nose broken and bleeding, a rib cracked and bruises over most of my body. I was crying as I told my dad what happened. He took me out in the back and whaled on me for not protecting my sister. He’d put up for all those years with hearing stories about my being a sissy, and I guess this was the last straw. He was mad ‘cause I was a failure. I was his only son, and he was ashamed of me ‘cause I couldn’t save my sister from a gang of hoodlums.

“I waited that night until everyone in the house was asleep, and I ran away from home. I hitchhiked into Tulsa, got an emergency hospital to patch me up, lied about my age and joined the army. They weren’t being fussy—they needed everyone they could get for Africa. I always volunteered for the toughest jobs they could give me.” He shrugged. “I guess I’ve been trying to prove I’m not a coward.”

“Your father’s been dead a long time now,” Hawker said quietly.

“I know. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to prove it to the bastard.” He paused. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Why are you in the Army?”

Hawker shrugged. “I never thought about it much. I guess it was easier than not being in the army.”

Symington gave a polite cough. “You’re gonna have to explain that one to me.”

“My mom was always on my case. She told me how stupid I was ‘cause I always did everything wrong. If I colored something purple, it should have been green. If I went left, I should’ve gone right. If I did A, I should’ve done B. Over and over and over again. No matter what I did, it was never right, never good enough. I got scared to do anything at all. In the army there’s no decisions. If you do exactly what they tell you, you’re okay.” He shook his head. “In a weird sort of way, I guess that’s freedom—freedom from having to choose.”

Hawker and Symington settled back in their respective chairs, waiting for the bell to tell them they’d reached their destination. Neither man said another word until they arrived.

***

Hawker had almost dozed off when the bell chimed their arrival outside Rez Central. He shook himself to full alertness and stood up. Across the room, Symington was stretching and doing a few quick calisthenics to get himself in shape for the fight ahead.

Hawker looked around and realized his oversight almost at once. There was no door in this bubble. Amassa was still out cold, and they didn’t know how to work the belt themselves. They would have to move quickly, though; if the bubble just sat here too long, it would arouse suspicion.

Symington, too, saw the problem. He tried firing his rifle at the wall, but the powerful beam deflected harmlessly off the material, bouncing almost straight back and barely missing him on the ricochet.

“We’ve got to get out of here somehow,” Hawker said.

“I know a quick way,” Symington answered. “Get Dave and stand him over here with us. See if he can walk on his own now.”

Hawker took Green off his couch and stood him on his feet. The crippled soldier was semiconscious, but not very cooperative. Hawker took Green’s right arm and placed it around his shoulder, with his own left arm around Green’s waist. “Ready,” he said.