The Eternity Brigade (11 page)

Four days after his return, he saw a notice requesting all participants in Project Banknote to report for a special meeting at fourteen hundred the next day. His spirits rose instantly. For one thing, this would be a chance to find out whether his friends were still alive; for another, it would let him know specifically what the army expected of him now that the experiment was over. He arrived early for the meeting and took a seat near the back door of the room so he could see people as they entered.

This room was far smaller than the large auditorium where he’d first heard about Project Banknote; there was only seating for forty people, at most. Of course, that didn’t mean much; perhaps most of the sleepers were still over in China, or perhaps some of them had been shipped to other bases. But as people straggled in one or two at a time, Hawker found himself scanning their faces anyway for a sign of Green or Symington.

They showed up together, and greeted Hawker with happy shouts. In a three-way flurry of conversation, each of the friends tried to inform the others of his activities during the war. The stories were confused, at first, but Hawker learned that Symington had seen lots of action with an artillery division along the western front; Green, through some error in paperwork, had been assigned to a clerical quartermaster’s job and hadn’t seen a moment’s action the entire time. Hawker and Symington were ribbing him when the briefing officer entered the room and interrupted their reunion.

They had been expecting Major Dukakis, but the officer standing before them introduced himself as Lieutenant Dickerson and explained that he was now in charge of recruitment for the suspended-animation program. He started his speech by thanking the men once again for participating in the pilot program; it was their efforts that made Project Banknote such a resounding success. Although sleepers had sustained almost a fifty percent casualty rate, that was to be expected—after all, they’d been sent into the toughest assignments because of their previous experience. They’d all acquitted themselves admirably, however, and as a result the army had cut back on the “inexperience factor” that had plagued it in the African Wars.

Having proved that suspended animation could work on a limited scale, the army was now ready to initiate the process at large. If less than a hundred battle-tried veterans had made such a difference to the fighting, imagine how much better a thousand would be, or two thousand, or a hundred thousand. The army was prepared to put as many people in suspended animation as would volunteer for the duty. There would be an active recruiting drive among the returning China veterans and, as before, bonuses would be offered. The bonuses would not be as high as they were originally—after all, the process had now been successfully tried, and the risk was far less—but there was still the incentive of being paid while sleeping.

Naturally, Dickerson said, he would not dream of making a recruiting pitch to these, the original sleepers. They had already served their country well in two wars, and had earned their rest. Still, he added, if any of them chose to sign up for a second term of suspended animation, he would personally see that they received priority treatment.

Hawker felt a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it took him some time to work up the nerve to ask his question. “What if I wanted to go career without another term in suspended animation?” he was finally bold enough to ask.

Dickerson hesitated. “Well, that would depend, of course, on the individual case. We’d have to test you to see whether you have any of the particular skills we need. You see, one of the reasons for expanding the sleeper program is to cut back on the cost of maintaining a standing army during peacetime. We will always need specialists, men to have on hand in case of a temporary emergency—but the ordinary fighter is another matter. If we can—I hope you’ll pardon my bluntness—if we can freeze him when we don’t need him and thaw him out when we do, the savings to the taxpayers will be phenomenal.”

“Why is that?” Green asked. “It must be awfully expensive to keep those coffins maintained, and to monitor them constantly to keep the sleeper alive inside. How can you save
that
much money this way?”

“It’s the same as in business,” Dickerson said with a cold smile. “When you deal in large volume, the cost per subject goes down. Project Banknote was terribly expensive to start and maintain. We had to design the ‘coffins’ from scratch, build each one individually, work out the computer maintenance programs, provide surveillance to ensure that nothing went wrong—oh, a million different things, all for the sake of less than a hundred men. But the costs don’t go up that much if it were a thousand men instead. The only significant difference is the increased number of storage boxes. The same computers can check a thousand men as easily as they check a hundred. Building a facility to house a thousand coffins isn’t ten times as expensive as building one to hold a hundred. The more people we can encourage to sign up for this program, the cheaper the per capita cost becomes.

“Compare that with the cost of maintaining a nonsleeping army. Ordinary soldiers have to be fed; you could probably finance the entire sleeper program just on what the army spends for meat in a single year. Ordinary soldiers have to be clothed; I won’t bore you with statistics on how much the army pays for uniforms each year. Ordinary soldiers have to be housed; I know you all joke about how crude the barracks are, but they still have to be built and maintained, they still have to be heated, they still need the electric bill paid. Ordinary soldiers get sick and need medical attention, drugs, recreational facilities. Ordinary soldiers are constantly in motion, and the army has rivers of paperwork flowing to accommodate them.

“All those factors are minimized with an army in suspended animation—and, without fighters who need services, we can dispense with the vast proportion of the army that provides them. We can eliminate thousands of cooks and quartermasters, doctors and nurses—and especially clerks. The paperwork on a soldier who’s asleep is minuscule.

“One of the problems of a modern army is that, for each soldier who actually goes out and fights, it takes ten more behind the lines just to support him. It’s bad enough to put up with that in wartime, but why should we have to do it during peacetime? With the sleeper technology, we won’t have to. The more volunteers for suspended animation we get, the more effective the program will be. The army expects to save millions of dollars each year once the plan gets going.”

Dickerson paused and looked back at Hawker. “That’s why we can’t automatically promise career positions. We’ll still need specialists of various sorts—we can’t cut back on weapons development, for example—but we already have more than enough people in the general categories, and we’ll be phasing
them
out as rapidly as possible once the sleeper program is a success.”

Hawker’s heart fell. Other than fighting, he had no special skills. Unless he chose to sign up for another term of suspended animation, he’d have to go out and face the real world.

Green could tell he was depressed, and after the meeting he and Symington took Hawker out for some drinks to cheer him up. Hawker bared more of his soul to his friends that afternoon than he’d ever done before, telling them about his fears that he couldn’t compete out in the real world. Green refused to be depressed, however; he pointed out to Hawker that their salaries had been accumulating while they slept, and that among the three of them, they should have a sum in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—more than enough to invest in a business of their own. Instead of worrying about skills that would keep them going in the open market, they could become bosses and
hire
people with the necessary skills.

The three of them made a pact while sitting around the table drinking beer. They would pool their resources when they left the army, go into business together. Their plans were a little hazy after all the beers, but there had to be some opportunities somewhere. By the time they split up that evening, Hawker was feeling much more optimistic about his prospects for the future.

***

His optimism lasted three days before it began dissolving. He, Green and Symington all received their discharges at the same time—and along with the discharge came a statement of their accumulated earnings, less than a third of what they’d originally calculated. In checking the error with the paymaster, they were told merely that, because of ever spiraling inflation, the United States had finally revalued the dollar downward, and that the new money was worth more than the old, even though they had less of it. Green did his best to explain the economic theories behind the move, but it all sounded like double-talk to Hawker. It didn’t matter to him that the things he bought would also, in theory, cost much less than they used to; all he really cared about was that the government had promised him so much money, and had used some fancy footwork to pay him less.

Green refused to be dismayed. It was buying power that really counted, he assured the others; compared to the rest of the population, they should still be well off, and the opportunities for investment should still be good.

Shortly afterward, as they were being processed to leave the army, they learned of another change. Each had to pose for a photograph that would appear on his identification card. When they questioned this, they were told every U.S. citizen now had to have an ID card before he could get a job or qualify for any kind of government aid. So many illegal aliens had been entering the country that an unforgeable means of identification had become necessary, even over the cries of the civil libertarians. Normally, some proof of citizenship was required, but being veterans of two wars, the requirement was waived for them.

After giving the information, they were each handed a small plastic card with their picture on it and a thumbprint on the back. Green looked his over, and a shiver suddenly went up his spine. “What does yours say under ‘Race’?” he asked Hawker.

Hawker checked. “There’s a ‘C.’ I guess that’s for ‘Caucasian.’“

Green nodded, and frowned down again at his own card. “I’ve got a ‘J.’ Three guesses what
that
stands for.”

He turned to the corporal who’d given him the card. “Why is my card different from theirs?”

The soldier looked at the card, then back at Green. “You
are
Jewish, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“It was decided that Jews are a race as well as a religion. It’s been that way for five years now. Nobody argues about it.”

“But why do you even have to list race at all?”

“It’s mostly just for, um, what’s the word?” The corporal snapped his fingers a couple of times. “Demographics, that’s it. Besides, you should consider yourself lucky. You’re listed as a minority, and you get all sorts of breaks.”

Green stood silently for a moment, staring at the card, then turned and walked out of the room. Symington and Hawker were right behind him. “What’s the matter, Dave?” Symington asked. “It’s not that big a thing to get upset over.”

“Maybe not,” Green said. “But I can’t help remembering what I heard about Nazi Germany. One of the first things they started was the internal passport, and every Jew had a big ‘J’ stamped on his papers. You know what
that
led to.”

“Shit, that can’t happen here,” Symington said. “This is America, for God’s sake. Anybody tries to hurt you, I’ll break his arm personally. I ain’t forgetting how you helped me in that fight in the bar.” He put a long arm around Green’s shoulders and pulled the smaller man closer to him in an affectionate hug.

They got some of their money in cash, and were told the government would send them the rest as soon as they had a permanent mailing address. Symington also picked up a small box that had been held in security for him. When his friends asked about it, he opened it reluctantly to reveal a display of fourteen medals. “My God!” was all Green could say, and Hawker stood speechless. Both men had privately been wondering whether Symington’s endless tales of heroism were true; the box of medals made it quite obvious .

“You must have one of everything in there,” Green continued after a moment.

For the first time in their acquaintance, Symington looked embarrassed. “I never asked for the fucking things, they just kept giving them to me. Look, fellas, forget you ever saw them, okay?” He closed the box and struggled for a smile. “I only use them to impress the broads, anyway.”

Nevertheless, Hawker and Green came away from the incident with a new respect for their friend.

The trio packed their few belonging and left the base as civilians for the first time in fifteen years. Each of them was more nervous than he would have cared to admit. The bus that took them into town was small, light-weight, and ran on battery power rather than gasoline. Green said he’d been expecting vehicles that rode on cushions of air rather than tires, but adoption of that innovation was still apparently in the future.

The bus traveled slowly under electrical power, but the driver explained to them that the gasoline shortage had made the switch to electricity almost mandatory for public vehicles. There was little enough gasoline for private consumption, and driving was seriously curtailed.

“That’s okay,” Symington laughed. “Our driver’s licenses all expired, anyway.”

Green, however, noted the scarcity of traffic on the highway around them, and said nothing.