Armor (27 page)

So I knew better. Life was tough enough. Climbing down into that hole with Holly and his tubes wasn’t the same as the rushing chemical thrill. And maybe well, probably, if Holly felt sothere was something of great scientific value to be found. But it was that same hole, no matter how I got there, the hole where the creature lives, the monster, the fiend who comes terrifyingly quick, slipping up at you out of the muck, grinding his teeth, popping his jaws eagerly, clawing at your clean flesh with gnarled hands sporting gritty black talons and . . . using your face to know where it hurts the most.

Bullshit! And for somebody else to boot. A risk for another means sacrifice for another. And even if I wanted to which I sure did not where was I gonna fit it in? Too many risks already, wedged tight. And the jamming of it all still coming up.

Madness!

Cortez was nowhere in sight when I reached the suite. By now I knew what that meant. From the bedroom I could hear the faint hum of the ‘fresher. Her clothing. Crew jumpsuit, boots and things, were piled in the comer of one of four chairs surrounding a small table. On the table itself sat her viewscreen. I wandered over to it, idly wondering what she read. A bit fretful, too, of finding something else I might have to live up to. The screen was off but the tab was on, the reference sequence glowing softly and efficiently in red.

I cringed. Fleet ID’S are fifteen digit numbers. And I had only seen this one once before. . . I hesitated, then pushed restart, and found myself staring at the official Fleet dossier of one John Jacob (Jack) Crow. I blinked, stared, stood there trembling. I felt. . . invaded.

I hadn’t heard the humming of the ‘fresher stop. Her voice from the bathroom door whirled me around.

“I had to know,” she said in a small apologetic voice. She leaned against the seal jam as if for support, idly wiping at the remaining flakes with a towel.

“Had to know what?” I growled, my voice hoarse.

“I had to be sure!” she whispered intently. Pleading.

“Sure of what!”

“That you. . . that you’d go through with it.”

“Through with wha. . .” I began and then, of course I knew what she meant as I remembered what we both remembered. I knew as I saw the tear swell and sink and slide down that horrible purple bruise beneath her eye.

I ordered food for two to be delivered to the outer room. We waited in silence until we heard it arrive. I went out to fetch it, blazing down Cortez’s questioning look with a glance. I brought it back into the bedroom, wheeling the trolley up to the edge of the bed where she sat still wrapped in the towel. I pulled up a chair for me.

And we ate. For close to three hours, we ate. Usually there was far too much food brought to me. But not that night. I stuffed myself; Karen stuffed herself. We stopped. I smoked. She drank wine or simply toyed with the stem of the goblet.

Then we ate some more. Ravenously. Almost desperately. Until we could not take another bite. Then we stopped until we could.

And always in silence. “Music?” she asked once and I nodded, stood up, and keyed something neutral. It was the only word spoken between us the entire time. The music was a good idea. It gave us something to almost do while we sat between feasts.

Sometimes we looked at each other. Not often.

Over two and one half hours later, it was gone. Choked and still hungry; drunk and still thirsty. I stood up slowly, my head reeling with the wine, and went into the bathroom. There was nothing else to do. The feast was over.

I stayed in there a long time. Too long, really, to be healthy. I felt skinned when I came out. But that wasn’t so bad either.

I didn’t know if she would still be there or not. Didn’t know what it meant either way.

She was there, under the covers. Her hair was spread like dawn across the pillows. I noticed the music was gone and the lights were dim. My cigarettes had been placed on the bedside console. I got in beside her. She slid toward me, tucking in.

After a while, perplexed by my inability to feel where my skin left off and hers began, I became a louse. Said something idiotic and provocative about seeing her dossier. Her answer was to lift her head and rest her chin on my chest and peer at me until I was forced to meet her gaze.

Then she said: “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” It was not a qualification. It was not defensive or evasive or in any way devious. I knew that. I knew it. But. . . .

“All right, goddammit, tell me about it,” I dared, lighting a cigarette.

And so she did tell me about it. All about it. I lay looking at the ceiling and seeing the pictures formed by her words and by the way the small of her back shuddered beneath my palm. Her voice was invariably gentle. Timid sometimes. Sometimes matter of fact. There was bitterness too, of course. And sadness and regret and wicked touches of irony. But never laughter. Not once that. . . a rich kid, happy little girl wearing pinks and blues and whites because those were the favorite colors of her Daddy. She wore black for the first time at twelve, at his funeral.

. . . the vacuum time. No brothers or sisters. Only Mother, who cried and drank in rooms with the lights out.

. . . hope and a stepfather at thirteen. Raped at fourteen. No trial. Divorce instead. They moved. Moved again. A short remarriage. A long second divorce. . . . spectacularly beautiful at sixteen. A first fiance. Another. Two more. At seventeen and one half, a husband. “Mentally unbalanced” an exceptionally generous description. Long separation burdened by guilt but tinged throughout as well by brief flashes of genuine terror. Divorce, at last, followed on cue and as advertised, by the tragedy, sick and loathsome and out of her hands but still. . . His funeral left to her by his family who begged and pleaded and then used her symbolic resumption of the role as an excuse to blame and accuse.

. . . finishing school near the top of her class never any trouble there at any time for she is bright and curious and somehow inherently hopeful.

. . . joining Fleet a month later. A month after that, still in boot camp, raped a second time. Trial serves to both exonerate him and brand her as angel haired slut, a blatant lie but a common fantasy in the courtroom.

. . . powerful military types crossing wires to get her transferred their way. When the last string is pulled, the last favor cashed, she finds herself on Capital Earth where she is promoted, pampered, and eventually raped again. There is no second trial. More promotions instead. And a transfer to Militar, itself, hub of Fleet. Corridors of power.

. . . picking and choosing, now. Not rape. Not love. Not enough.

. . . her second military rapist, the general who spouted promotions, has died in the Antwar. He dies rich. Dies guilty too, his will mentioning her a Fleet scandal. Karen laughs at hushed whispers and gestures just out of the comers of her eyes she had planned to kill him some day but this does nicely. Tense negotiations in conference room surrounded by leather-bound precedents. The children sitting on either side of their bewildered, wooden mother, their eyes blazing hatred and envy for the lustre of her blonde hair and for what they assume to be the comparative richness of Karen’s relationship with their cold, calculating, career minded Father. They want to kill her but they sit still (as per lawyer’s orders) for the money.

. . . another transfer. More promotions, often due to her considerable merits. She rises always. Higher and higher. Feeling like two people but the promotions are something after all, aren’t they.

. . . tries a couple of times and nothing. Never knowing which of the two cared or could care. And if she doesn’t know, the poor men. . . Transfers away from it twice, once too soon, once far too late. But, either way, gone from it.

. . . a year before trying again. Too little to matter. Another promotion, though. Rising Is.

. . . to her mother’s deathbed. Terminal prognosis she is told. “No hope for me,” says Mother, adding macabrely that she had been “born again.” She urges baby to repent.

. . . but this sanctimonious bastard Padre, who never misses a chance to touch her, however chastely, during her devotions makes her ill. And she tells him so. Stung, he informs Mother that Baby’s penance is as insincere as the scarlet paint of the harlot she is.

. . . dies Mother, slowly and badly, refusing to admit her sinful daughter to the end, on the advice of her priest.

. . . over a year later, pinched with the hardness of despair, she tries again and it. . . almost. . . works!

His name was Leslie and he was a lovely man who loved her dearly. In return she felt a genuine. . . affection. She felt a true. . . warmth. And safe. She felt safe. At the crucial moment, she told Leslie all.

He ached with the jolt of her life. He wept.

Also, he questioned, over and over. Then he accused.

Then he raged, then denounced, then beat her. Then he went.

Soon after came another, most important, promotion. Along with it came an offer to be number two on a Fleet Project. A three-year stretch on an unknown but earthlike place. Dr. Hollis Ware. The offer is an honor at her age, but no less than she deserved, one way or another. Still, she didn’t want to go, to strand herself three years where she could not rise. She put off the decision for weeks, caught between the allure of being, for once, legit and with the tantalizing momentum of Rising Is. Without being aware of it, she dreamt of another choice.

Then Leslie returned, providing just that. He was tearful and contrite and ashamed, but filled with protestations of hope. She knew his love for her, his heartbreaking devotion to her, was genuine.

The next day, in secret, she signed with Holly. The next month, without warning, she went aloft to Sanction. It was, she felt, doing the best thing for the lovely man. He was so sensitive, so easily hurt.

He had brought his parents along with him, to meet her.

She slept at last on my soaked shoulder. I smoked. Sometime in the middle of it she had said: “I know it was all my fault. I guess I’m just no good, like Mother said.”

I smoked and heard that still, still expecting to bleed to

death from the grinding rasp of those words. I felt numbed by the Vice.

And then she did an amazing thing. She stirred in her sleep and laughed. Giggled, really, like a little girl. A sweet safe beautiful little girl who knew only the blue of the sky and green grasses and party dresses of pink and blue and white. I reached over carefully and keyed off the last of the light. I doused my cigarette. I lay there. For hours, it seemed, I lay there, my eyes burning in the dark.

The next morning, bright and early, I went down and saw Holly and did the one thing I had been so certain I would never do: I volunteered me.

So bizarre. . . .

XV

Holly and I sat facing one another on twin loungers. Lya sat at a console between our feet. The suit sat propped at the other. Feeding circuits sprouted everywhere, linking the suit to a couple of other consoles which were keyed through a massive coiltape, Lya’s board, and us. Today was the day.

“A couple of things,” began Holly, all businesslike. “Firstly, the raw data.” He reached over behind him and keyed something. A small screen lit up with light green letters against a dark green background. “Name: Felix, G. Age: 26. Current assignment and rank: Warrior Scout aboard the starship Terra in deep elliptical around A9.”

A9? A distant bell rang somewhere. Something I’d seen on the vid? Lya helped me out with: “Banshee.”

Oh. Yeah.

Holly cleared his throat. “More. This takes place or rather, took place almost exactly four standard years ago. Earthdate: July 4,2077.”

That did ring a bell. Holly noticed my expression and nodded. “Yes. This is the Independence Day Drop, the very first invasion of Ant soil. Quite literally, mankind’s first step into the Antwar.”

Holly continued in that efficient way he had, briefly recapping the events surrounding that day. It was hardly necessary. True, I had gone to some trouble in past years to avoid having news of that insanity intruding into my life. But I knew about that day!

I remembered it clearly, remembered sitting fixated before the vid like probably every other human in the known worlds. There had been something so spectacular about the events of those first weeks. About the idea of it. Interstellar war! Ants eight feet tall! Of course it was madness. But in a race where most children grew up playing war breathtaking fun. It was a good two to three months before I stopped beginning each day by tuning in news of the Antwar. And it wasn’t until the end of that first year, that horrible first year which saw over two million people wasted, that I turned away, refusing to even listen to Antwar conversation.

That had been four years before. The Antwar raged still. I snapped back just in time to hear Holly’s historical windup. He ended with a short explanation about why we . . . about why they. Fleet, had been unable to guide missiles in the Banshee atmosphere of poison and inscrutable magnetic fields. It was stuff I knew. Along with the fact that it, Operation Knuckle, the part involving our scout, was considered a brilliant military victory. Next came a brief recap of stuff I had missed in the few minutes Holly had already played from the record. Then he gave me the same predrop briefing Felix had received. Word for word.

When he saw my puzzled expression over his perfect recall, he merely shrugged his shoulders and said: “You’ll understand in a minute.”

I clamped down hard on a sudden impulse to shudder. “Now,” said Holly, “how do I know all this? The name G. Felix I got from Fleet records using his Fleet ID number. The number itself I got by reading it off the inside of his helmet. It’s inscribed right between his twin holos. You’ll see it.”

That scared me. “I’ll be able to see through his eyes?” I demanded, appalled.

“Not at first,” said Holly quickly. “Never, really.” He looked uncomfortable. His eyes stared past me at something within. He frowned, resumed. “The data is neither recorded nor delivered that way. It’s not even vaguely photographic, Jack. But, after a few minutes. . . I can’t explain exactly.” He shrugged again. “You’ll see.”