Cyberpunk (30 page)

up my back, and I drove myself so nuts trying to find the little bastards

that I finally started diddling with the computer, just to keep from

thinking about the bugs getting fat on my blood.

I word-processed some changes for the survival handbook. I

crunched some numbers to estimate how many mosquitoes I’d swat

before ComSurEx was over (132,775). I wrote a little assembly program

that did nothing in particular. Truth to tell, two years of only using the

computer in secret had left my cyberskills a lot rustier than I liked. It

started to annoy me that I couldn’t think of anything fun to do with the

Starfire, until I saw the charge indicator tick down to 85% and realized

that even boring stuff would be impossible when the batteries croaked.

So I shut if off and lay there in the dark, wondering again why I’d

brought it along.

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It had something to do with defiance. After a couple years of Sunday

morning assembly, I’d flag that one of Colonel Ernst Von Schlager’s

favorite rags was
technology
. He could stand up there for hours tirading

on some new weapon the Pentagon was buying and why it wouldn’t

work. (For reference, the only time I ever saw the Colonel look happy

was when he was teaching hoplite shield-and-spear drill. In a dream

once I saw him standing before Philip of Macedon saying, “Look, these

iron swords rust, they’re brittle, and on top of that we’ll have a serious

window of vulnerability while we retrain our troops. I say, stick with

bronze.”)

After one of the colonel’s recent rants, some poor Grade Five

ballsed up enough to pop the question I’d been muttering ever since I

arrived at the Academy. “Sir? The Real Army uses portable computers

for tactical decision assist, sir,” he’d said. “How come we aren’t training

on TactiComps, sir?”

The answer he got was classic Von Schlager. The colonel said—

bellowed, actually—”Computers?
Soldiers
don’t need computers?

Soldiers need
guns
that don’t jam at thirty below! Soldiers need

bayonets
that stay sharp when they hit bone! You want
computers?

Those damn boxes aren’t half as useful as a good dry pair of
socks
!”

Then he knocked the cadet down a full grade for asking questions.

A sad case. Five years at the academy and the kid still hadn’t learned

the true meaning of Keep Your Head Down.

Anyway, that’s when I decided to pack the Starfire, I guess.

Between it and my basic personal smarts, I got this idea that I’d cobble

up something during ComSurEx that’d prove computers
are
useful in

the field, win me campwide undying respect, and maybe even get me a

grunt of admiration from the colonel. I mean, I was gonna stand him on

his fritzin’ ear!

As soon as I came up with a good idea.

Meantime...meantime...I fell asleep.

#

I thought it was a nightmare, but the voice stayed with me after I

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woke up. A cloudy dawn was just breaking, and I was cold, damp,

stiff—and listening to the S.I. “Had enough yet, Harris?” he whispered,

sibilant and close to my ear. “Ready to wimp out?” I blinked the sleep

out of my eyes and looked around. How had that mofo found me?

“We both know you won’t make it,” he said, smug, “so why not

yank the switch now? Just think of your dick; I’m sure it’ll seem

familiar.”

It was the damned collar! Not only did it have telemetry, it had a

voice channel, too!

“Well, Harris? Aren’t you man enough to even answer?”

Two-way voice?
There had to be some way I could use that. But

first, I worked up my most gutteral and said, “Listen, scrotum-face. I’m

gonna beat this damn game, and then I’m gonna come back and stick

this collar right up your—” The faint hiss of the carrier faded out. He’d

had his jolly little torment; he wasn’t listening anymore.

Still, he’d given me new data to chew on. The collar supported twoway

voice and did it without an antenna, so it must bounce signal off

NavSat. I already knew about the telemetry uplink; suppose it had a

downlink they weren’t using? Was this my answer? Was it time to open

a new high frontier in cyberhacking?

I started feeling around my neck. The academy never bought

electronics that weren’t Military Specification. If the collar was simple

enough for MilSpec, I could probably override the wimp switch and take

it off without trouble. Then I’d get into the wiring and use the Starfire to

tap NavSat for a precise locational on Luger.

Yeah, I could try it. But why bother? When Luger was close enough

to be a threat, I’d be able to see him, hear him,
smell
him. If he was

across the marsh, I didn’t need to locate him any more precise than that.

The colonel’s Number Two Rule was, “Never call a napalm strike for a

one-bullet job.” I stopped futzing with the collar, slithered out of my

fern patch, and set off to do a brief morning scout.

#

By nightfall I was starting to feel safe. Except for two quick scouts

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that didn’t turn up any sign of headhunters, I’d spent the whole day lying

low and letting the deerflies teach me stoicism. The gamethink was

going pretty good, I figured; by my reckoning Luger and Kao Vang were

now klicks away and getting tired and hungry. I pictured the looks on

their faces when they realized my trail was circling all over the place,

and started to giggle.

Aw, hell. Truth to hell, I was feeling
smug
!

The only fly in my thick ‘n’ creamy gloat was I still couldn’t get the

good ideas to stop skulking around in the back of my mind and step into

the light where I could see them. Best thought I’d had all day was a

vague regret that it wasn’t Luger who had the Starfire. Given the chips

inside it, even with Class-B shielding it’d radiate noise on the 32-

megahertz band when it was working. If Luger had the computer and I

had a truly decent radio direction finder...

Like I said, no really
good
ideas.

Still, my unaugmented brain wasn’t doing too bad. Shutting off the

Starfire—it was down to 70% charge now—I crawled out of my ferns

and hiked down to the marsh to refill my canteen. Pushing through a

clump of scrubby oak, I walked straight into Luger and Kao Vang.

For a few stretchy Salvador Dali clock ticks I froze, staring at those

two standing there twenty yards away and half-covered with mud, not

believing they’d actually been
stupid
enough to cross the marsh. Then

they reacted, yelled, charged. And Luger, crazy Luger, drew his knife!

It worked! His fear program was still in my system; I broke, I ran.

Heart pounding, blood clanging in my ears, I ran. Dark was falling; I

picked up a cloud of hungry gnats. Beating at the gnats, waving my arms

like a spastic, I ran. What stopped me, finally, was catching my foot on

something and skidding my face into the dry dirt and pine needles.

Blackout.

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Chapter 15

Metal taste of blood strong in my mouth.

Breath coming back in short, ragged gasps.

At first I was afraid to know, then I felt out the cut lip with my

tongue and realized it wasn’t critical. I had scrapes on my palms and

face and a cluster of aches that’d be major bruises soon, but the bloody

nose was slowing up and nothing else felt dangerous. I opened my eyes.

Correction: My eyes
were
open. My eyes were open in a dense forest

under an overcast night sky, dark as the inside of a cow.

When eyes are useless, ears get big. Swallowing hard, I held my

breath and listened to the blood pounding in my ears, to the pop and

crunch of dry needles settling underneath me, to the scuttle of things in

the dark.

Nothing that sounded like cadets’ boots, though. I started breathing

again.
Think, dammit, think! The gameplan is totally down the tubes!

Thinking went nowhere because my head was seriously garbaged with

unanswerables: Had I given Luger and Kao Vang the shake-off? Should

I keep moving? Or stay put?
What is that scratching sound off to my

left?
Should I head east? Did Luger think I’d try another misdirecter, or

would he think I’d think he thought—

“ARGH!” I screamed pure frustration and tried to jump up, but the

knife-sharp pain in my ankle knocked me right back down again. When

the searing white subsided, I realized sudden I’d hacked into a whole

new level of trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that

stands for “Boy, you are in
trouble
!” Gingerly, I crawled off a ways until

I found a big tree, then dragged myself around to sit with my back

against it. If they were nuts enough to be hunting me in the dark—and

they’d already proven they were nuts—at least maybe they wouldn’t trip

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over me. My ankle was starting to swell up bad, so I tore open the velcro

and loosened my boot.

By and by the pain receded, and feeling too rotten even to swat bugs,

I dozed off. Along about 3 a.m., it started to drizzle.

#

I thought a lot about my wimp switch that night, and on into the next

morning. No matter how I stacked the variables, it was the path that

made sense. I was wet, cold, and miserable; my gamethink hadn’t

worked; Luger and Kao Vang were now somewhere
real
close by (I

figured half a klick), and I’d given them a good trail to follow; and my

ankle, while not broken, was so sprained I could barely walk. I had done

my last runaway. The question no longer was whether I could take them

out, but whether I could cheat them of the fun of taking
me
out.

Anybody with smarts would have agreed it was situation hopeless and

opted for the bailout.

I could even see the look on the S.I.’s face. He’d smirk down at me

and say, “See, Harris? I
knew
you wouldn’t make it. You’ll never get out

of the academy. You’ll never even pass my class.”

And that’s when something clicked. Deep inside me, some little

partition of my thinkspace that I hadn’t used in three years suddenly

went real gritty.
No, dammit! You are not out of this until
you
say so!

You’re so balled up with what
could
happen you’re not thinking about

what you
can
do!

I could still move. I could still set an ambush. When it got bright, I

got to my feet, hobbled along slowly until I found a fallen branch I could

use for a crutch, then hobbled along a little faster.

#

I’d only gone half a klick or so when I heard Kao Vang coming up

behind me, crashing through the undergrowth like an impatient elephant

and swearing at the top of his lungs. Okay, they were trying to drive me.