Cyberpunk (32 page)

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

gonna roll over and die? This is where you
pay
, Luger!” I put a little

weight behind the spear.

“Harris?” The bluster failed, so he tried reasonable. “This isn’t like

you; you don’t wanna do this. You know what’ll happen to you if you

really hurt me?” His eyes were flickering like a pinball between

bumpers, from me, to the knife, to the spear, to me.

“Yeah,” I hissed, low and guttural. “They’ll send me back to the

States for trial. Oh, I’d
hate
that!” I licked my lips and tensed my arms,

readying a thrust. “C’mon, try the blade! Give me an excuse, Luger!”

Luger might be a skinhead, but he’s not completely stupid. With a

careful sidehand, he threw the blade away. “What are your surrender

terms?” he whispered.

#

Using shroud cord from the parachute, I trussed him up like a

roasting pig. Tied his hands behind his back so he couldn’t get hold of

his wimp switch; tied his feet together so he couldn’t run; tied a leash on

his collar so I could keep him near by. Yeah, I fed him, too. I wanted

him alive and healthy.

I just wish I coulda seen the look on the S.I.’s face the next morning,

when he radioed to ask why Luger hadn’t pulled my switch yet and

found out what’d really happened. It must have totally ruined his

voyeuristic little fun, ‘cause he sent a helo that very afternoon to extract

us.

Two days early. I’d set a new record for passing ComSurEx.

Not that it was a big graduating class. Murphy’d tried to go

walkaway and run into a bunch of Grade Fives; they buggered him up so

bad that his parents pulled him out of the academy and filed suit.

Buchovsky lost track of time and refused to come out on Day Seven; the

staffers had to send in a pshrink team to talk him out. Kao Vang had to

repeat that summer, of course, but Luger, because he was gutless enough

to get taken alive, went on the
winter
ComSurEx.

Me? Since I’d gone over two days without treatment, they couldn’t

foam a walking cast around my ankle. Instead, I got an Inquisition
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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

surplus leg brace, a heroic-looking limp, and two months’ excuse from

Phys Ed. Even better, I heard the colonel took what was left of my

Starfire, stuck it in a block of Lucite which he used for a doorstop, and

pronounced it the most useful computer he’d ever seen.

What I
know
is that the next Sunday, up in front of the entire

assembly, the Colonel gave me a handshake, a working compass, and the

knife I’d used on ComSurEx with my initials, MAH, engraved on the

blade in big Gothic letters. He also gave me a little bit of braid to stitch

on my greens.

I tried not to lord it over my ex-bunkies too much, though. We

Grade Threes were above that sort of thing.

Most of the time.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Chapter 16

I was feeling good,
real
good, when I handed in my Physics final. It

was the kind of good comes from knowing you’ve just put in three bunbuster

weeks, covered a whole semester’s worth of study, and done the

ace on one serious bitch of a test. I’d shown those mofos; I didn’t win

ComSurEx on dumb luck! This kid Harris could be truly
sharp
, if he

wanted.

‘Sides, it would’ve been a major embarasser to be the only Cadet

Grade Three still taking Academic Two classes.

So I’d taken the point; I’d done the long march. An ace on my

Physics final—I was sure it was an ace—sitting alongside another ace in

Algebra, a pyrrhic B in Military Science, a salvage job on History and a

C with honor in Geography, and I damn near needed depleted uranium

boots to keep my feet on the ground!

Long as I didn’t think about my English final. Hey, grammar and

spelling’re what word crunchers are for, right? I’d done a badass job on

my
important
classes, and I was walking tall when I handed in my blue

book, saluted the instructor, and marched outa that lecture hall.

Some Grade One gopher with a complexion problem and a stick up

his butt was waiting for me in the corridor. “Cadet Harris?” he yelped.

Why he had to ask I don’t know; the nametape on every shirt I own

shouts my name in letters two inches high. (Sometimes I fantasize

getting all the cadets to swap shirts, just to see what’d happen. I suspect

the whole system’d come crashing down like a glacier into the sea.)

“You Mike Harris?” the gopher shrilled again.

“Yo,” I answered, feeling too good to give him crap about his

protocol slip. I’d spent two years as a Grade One under Roid Rogers; I

thought maybe the kid’d appreciate the break.

He handed me a speedmemo. “Cadet Harris, you are hereby ordered

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to report to Colonel Von Schlager’s office on the double, sir!” He

whipped off a salute that nearly put out his eye, spun around in a perfect

180
o
pivot, and went marching off heels clicking crisp and precise on the

floor tiles. I changed my mind, and swore silent. What an opportunity

I’d missed! Some people, I decided, thrive on protocol and
deserve
crap

when they botch it.

Then I realized what he’d said, and
I
started to do the slow glacial

crash. Omigod. I was being called into the Colonel’s office. I’d been at

the Academy long enough to know that old Von Schlager meagered out

praise in assembly and shoveled out punishment in private. I couldn’t

think of anything bad I’d done in the last three weeks, but something

smelly must have hit the fan in a truly big way.

Well, nothing to do but hope he’d make it quick and relative

painless. I spent just a moment considering rolling some other cadet to

steal his shirt and name, then switched on the most pitiful limp I could

manage and hobbled over to the Admin Building.

#

Colonel Ernst Von Schlager was a living myth, about on par with the

Chimaera. You know, a fire-breathing brass-balled thing, and watch out

for fangs. My handshake after ConSurEx was a real singularity; most

times we low- and mid-grade cadets didn’t see him at all, excepting his

weekly rants on the quad and the occasional times he felt like doing

pugil stick training. (Getting your brainpan bashed in by an old grizzle is

in some respects very educational, but it doesn’t tell you much about the

guy on the other end of the stick.) The camp had been talking about my

handshake for weeks now; seems right up to the second he let go some

Grade Fours were betting he was just setting me up for a
koshijutsu

throw.

‘Course, there were rumors about what the Colonel was like in

private. One said he had a Grade Five political science class you got into

only if he picked you, personal, and once you took it you understood

everything
. A variant of that said he believed the wrong side had won

World War Two, and by the time you finished his class you’d believe it,

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

too.

Then again, another rumor said he had his office decorated in chains

and leathers, with his own private pillory in there and soundproof walls

so you couldn’t hear the screaming. And a third theory held he was

really a closet case, and if you went into his office for a private session

you’d sleep on your stomach for the rest of your life.

No, there was only one thing I knew for sure: I’d been called into the

Colonel’s office, and you didn’t get called in unless you were in it
deep
.

Stopping outside the door, I did the shoulder squaring and teeth gritting

bit, then opened it and limped in.

Chomsky, the Colonel’s adjutant, sent me right on into the inner

office. Another bad sign; it meant I was the most important problem on

Von Schlager’s job stack. Whatever’d hit the fan was both smelly and

huge
. I advanced into the holy of holies, cap in hand, trying to keep open

a line of retreat ...

The Colonel sat at his desk, toying with the Lucite block that held

the remains of my Starfire. He didn’t seem to notice me, so I took a

moment to survey the terrain.

The office was barer than I expected. A plain dark walnut bookcase

in the corner, a green blotter and a plastic photocube on the dark wood

desk, a few plaques and a red velvet thing holding a bunch of medals on

the wall. I tried to lean closer and cop a look at the brass.

“Aren’t we forgetting something?” Von Schlager rumbled without

looking up. Hasty, I snapped to attention and saluted.

“Sir! Cadet Harris reporting as ordered, sir!”

“That’s better. At ease.” He set down the Lucite block, opened a

drawer and pulled out a manila folder, then looked up at me with a sour

expression on his face. “I’ve been going over your file,” he said, at last.

“You were an Involuntary Admit. You flunked and repeated Grade One.

All your instructors say you’ve got a severe attitude problem.” His

eyebrows went up as he read something in the folder, then he looked at

me with an odd expression on his face. “It says here that you’re a

complete asshole.”

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He tapped the paper and read out loud, “‘Cadet Harris is

smartmouthed, insolent, and in short, a complete asshole.’” He looked

up at me, wonder in his eyes. “I’ve never
seen
that in someone’s

permanent record before.” He closed the folder, dropped it on his desk,

and looked up at me again. “Yet in the past month you’ve won a

ComSurEx—in the process beating the S.I.’s favorite, I might add—and

turned a midterm disaster into a solid B average. Can you explain this,

Harris?”

“Sir, I—”

“That was a rhetorical question. You don’t need to explain; I know

your type.” He looked at the photocube and got a kind of faraway look.

“Oh, do I know your type.”

He snapped back to the Here & Now.

“Harris, you might be surprised to learn that I did not found this

Academy just to inflict wanton pain on young men.” To himself he

added, “Lord knows, some of the
staff
would be surprised to learn that.”

Gentle, he touched one face of the photocube, then turned it around so I

could see. The picture was of a slimey-looking 40-ish guy in a white

polyester suit, smiling and leaning against a big white Cadillac, his

pinky rings glittering in the sun.

“This is my son, Gary,” Von Schlager said. “I founded the Academy

to make up for all the mistakes I made raising
him
.” The Colonel picked

up the photocube and looked at it again.

“You’re a lot like him, Harris. Smart, probably too smart for your

own good. You get bored, and that’s what gets you started into trouble.

You don’t think through to consequences, and that’s what gets you in

really deep.