The Eternity Brigade (18 page)

But the Bimaree didn’t look hostile. She stared back at him with those large green eyes in the center of her torso, and didn’t move for several minutes. Then, slowly, she climbed down out of the loft and approached him, careful to make no sudden moves that would alarm him.

An enemy, Hawker decided, would have shot him instantly if it could, and in no case would it approach this timidly. He’d probably just stumbled across some civilian farmer tending her chores. He had no quarrel with her. Perhaps she would give him some food and help him find his way back to camp.

He pointed to his shoulder, and even the Bimaree could tell the flamer wound was not a normal part of his body. She said something and backed slowly out of the barn, to return minutes later with a container of salve. Hawker had no idea whether an alien medication would help or hurt him but, like the other resurrectees, he’d developed a philosophical attitude. He might as well try the salve in the hopes it would cure him; if it killed him instead, the worst that would happen was he’d be dubbed again without remembering this war. Life and death had ceased being matters of high concern.

He peeled off his shirt and motioned the Bimaree closer. She came to him slowly, took a handful of the salve and began rubbing it into the wound. The cream stung at first; Hawker gasped in pain, and the Bimaree pulled back, startled. Hawker beckoned her again, though, and she reluctantly continued the process. After a few minutes the stinging abated, and all he could feel was the coolness of the salve and the warmth of her furry hand caressing his skin.

Hawker had never had sex with an alien before. Some of the other dubs had, but he’d always considered them perverted. Now, tired though as he was, he couldn’t help recalling some of the obscene barracks chatter about the Bimaree. “They fuck like bunnies,” confided one man, who claimed to know. “They got some kind of sexual cycle where they get aroused real easy, and then it don’t matter whether you’re a man, a Bimaree, or a tree branch, they gotta have you in them. Go for the little slit in the back, where you think the asshole’s gonna be—it’s really the cunt. Nice and tight, too. They’re fantastic.” Hawker had been repelled by the idea then—but now, with the Bimaree’s hand sensuously caressing his wounded shoulder, he felt himself becoming strongly aroused.

He reached up tentatively to caress the Bimaree. Her down skin was velvet to his questing fingertips, a smooth, sensual warmth that seemed to welcome his touch. The Bimaree didn’t shy away, but responded to his stroking by rubbing harder against his body—not just his wounded shoulder, but across his chest and neck as well.

It’s true,
Hawker marveled.
They do arouse quickly.

He was suddenly more excited than he could bear. He reached awkwardly down to unfasten his slacks and yanked them below his knees, then pulled the alien down on top of him. She came compliantly and he was soon inside her, his only concern being not to grab her eyes accidentally The feel of her soft fur against his skin added a dimension to the experience no human female could have matched.

Afterward he felt greatly embarrassed, though she seemed to think nothing of the incident. He dressed again and she brought him into her house—where she apparently lived alone—for dinner. They made love again twice that night, and each time was unique unto itself.

The next morning, a company of soldiers came by the farm, and Hawker joined up with them. He said good-bye to the Bimaree; but he was never sure she understood him. And of course he never saw her again.

He had sex with many other alien females after losing that particular virginity, but he always treasured the memory of that one idyllic encounter. And while other soldiers joked and made obscene comments about the other races, Hawker kept his private relations very much to himself—perhaps out of respect for the “honor” of that one Bimaree who gave so much pleasure to a stranger.

***

Sex wasn’t always that easily indulged in, however. During one incarnation the resurrectees found themselves segregated by gender. This was surprising after so many centuries of sexual equality, but they learned that the culture they were defending was a particularly puritanical one. Sex between a man and a woman before marriage was a capital crime—and even during marriage, it was only permitted during specified religious celebrations.

There was nothing sinful, however, about homosexual relations at any time. The army offered a wide selection of men for Hawker and his comrades to utilize (and Hawker assumed there were women available for the female dubs). Somehow, though—despite his experiences with women of other races—the line of homosexuality was one Hawker could not bring himself to cross. He and most of his fellows decided to abstain during this particular war.

Perhaps because of that, or because its defenders lacked the essential enthusiasm, this religious culture lost its war. The society was smashed, its principles crushed, its people scattered to planets all across galaxy. The resurrectees never had to face anything quite that strict again.

***

Through good times and bad, Hawker fought on. He lived hundreds of lives, died hundreds of deaths. He dwelt among the stars and trod on soils that had never before felt the foot of man. He walked side by side with creatures out of a surrealist’s imagination, and called them “friend.” He killed with the efficiency of his namesake, the hawk, and laughed but seldom. He was orphan to the universe, slave to Chaos and Destruction. He was the ultimate soldier, obeying his orders, marching into unimaginable battles, fighting for causes he could not comprehend.

His soul—if, indeed, he’d ever possessed one—had been lost long ago in the mists of antiquity, when Mankind was still confined to one tiny rock. He pursued his destiny emotionlessly, as though in a dream. He was drained. Nothing in the universe could matter to him ever again—or at least, that was what he thought, when he bothered to think of such things.

Until he came to a world called Cellina.

The awakening occurred as it always did, with barely the slightest pause between his last thought and the present; he found later there had been fifteen years in between. The resurrection machinery was by now quite sophisticated, able to reconstruct the entire army of recorded soldiers at one time in one place.

Hawker was standing in a large blue auditorium with more than a thousand other resurrectees. From the information the training probe had placed in his brain, he knew he was on the planet Cellina, third world out from a G-type star. The inhabitants were all of human descent, although by this time there’d been so much genetic engineering done that “humans” could be as bizarre as any alien. Hawker had been given a knowledge of the native language, since the army would do liaison work with the locals. The dispute was with an alien race who claimed a prior right to colonize the planet, having visited it a thousand years before humans came and left some esoteric mark to note their presence.

This was all standard stuff, not even worth thinking about. Straightforward, no problem. The only question, deep in the back of his mind, was whether he’d survive the experience and carry the memory forward with him into the future.

Then a woman screamed off to his right, and Hawker—along with the rest of the group—turned quickly to see what the matter was.

At first glance there was an alien in their midst. There was no reason why aliens couldn’t be dubbed too, and Hawker was sure there were other computers doing just that—but normally each group of resurrectees was of the same race. Still, the mere sight of an alien should not have caused one of their number, battle-hardened as she must be, to scream.

Then Hawker looked more closely at the being, and felt a chill run up his spine. It wasn’t an alien, it was a human being—but a human being so twisted and deformed it was barely recognizable as such. Its face was a putty mask left out in the sun and then attacked by a hyperactive child; the right half of the face was a runny, flesh-colored blank, with both eyes on the left side of the nose and an eyebrow arching crazily upward. The neck was twisted halfway around, so the man was constantly looking over his left shoulder. His spine was bent into an S-curve, and the limbs on his left side were perceptibly longer than those on his right. The fingers on the man’s right hand were barely warts growing out of a club-like fist.

Hawker turned away quickly again in disgust. No wonder the woman had screamed. Something had obviously gone wrong with the
dubbing
process, creating a monster instead of the person who was supposed to be there. But Hawker guessed the real reason behind the woman’s scream was the horrifying thought was that this mistake could just as easily have happened to any of
them
.

Officers in crisp green uniforms pushed their way through the mob of resurrectees to the side of the creature, and Hawker took a second look at the mistake. It was then that he got the second shock in as many minutes. In trying to visualize what that person might have looked like before the accident, he rearranged the facial features—and felt a chill shoot up his spine.

That pitiful, deformed monstrosity was David Green.

***

The officers hustled Green out of the room before anyone could really see what happened. No mention was officially made of the incident, and the army behaved as though nothing had occurred. But Hawker resolved not to leave this incarnation without finding some answer to his friend’s horrible transformation.

The war was mostly being fought in space, as the aliens launched wave after wave of attack ships against Cellina’s defenses. Hawker served on the crew of a fighter ship, occasionally seeing action by boarding enemy vessels. Everything was routine; he’d seen such action a dozen times before. After two months, he received a pass to go on leave back to the planet’s surface—where, he hoped, some answers would await him.

As it turned out, Symington was on a pass at the same time. Hawker found him in a bar, drinking with Belilo and two other resurrectees,
men named Singh and Ibañez
.
Hawker knew the men only vaguely. He joined Symington’s party—something he would normally have avoided unless specifically asked—and forced himself to join in the usual bitch. After a decent interval of meaningless chatter, Hawker brought the conversation around to the subject of the “accident” at their resurrection.

“Yeah, that was weird,” Ibañez said with a shiver.

“Do you have any idea who it was, Lucky?” Hawker asked.

Symington scratched his head. “I’m not sure….”

“It was Dave,” Hawker said flatly. “He looked pretty horrible, but I recognized him anyway.”

“Poor bastard,” Symington said.

“You mean Green?” asked Singh. “He seemed like a nice guy. I served with him a couple of times.”

“We all did,” said Belilo. There was a moment’s silence as she took a sip of her drink, and then added, “It’s a damn shame. He sure as hell didn’t deserve all this.”

“All what?” Hawker asked. “Have you heard anything about him?”

“Well, I spent a part of my time on the base, and I managed to get plugged into the pipeline. A few rumors were leaking around. Nothing much. They just say that something went wrong with whatever they record our patterns on. It’s a total loss, and the guy—Green—can’t ever be remade properly. From what I hear, they’re holding him for tests somewhere on the base. They’re studying him like some sort of freak.”

“Thanks.” Hawker stood up from the table.

“Where are you going?” Symington asked.

“I’m going to see if I can get some answers from the people in charge.”

The others were surprised. This was not the Hawker they knew. “They don’t want to talk about it,” Belilo said.

“They will when I get through with them.” Hawker turned angrily to leave.

Singh grabbed his arm. “You think you’re going to go in there like that and scare them? They won’t take any shit from you.”

“You got any better ideas?” Hawker tried to pull his arm away, but Singh’s grip was too strong.

“I do,” Symington said. “We all go in together. Green was our friend too, right?” He looked around the table as though daring the others to deny the fact. But there was no disagreement. The thought of finally shaking up the army bureaucracy was stimulating.

“They’ll think twice about crossing us if there’s five of us,” Ibañez said.

“We’d better be ready for trouble, though,” Belilo warned. “If we give them too much hassle they can just shoot us down and dub us again—and the new dubs won’t know anything’s wrong.”

“I can break into the arms locker, no problem,” Symington said.

“Hey, wait,” Ibañez objected. “Facing them down is one thing; armed mutiny is another.”

Belilo stared into his face. “Oh yeah? What can they do to us they haven’t already done? Come on, Chico, make up your mind—are you in or not?”

Ibañez looked at the four determined faces around him. “In,” he said with little hesitation. “I just wanted to make sure we all knew what we’re doing.”

“We know,” Hawker said grimly.

By implied consent, Symington took charge of the group. They first “liberated” a floatcar and drove it back to the base, where, as Lucky had promised, they had no trouble raiding the armory. In addition to two beampistols apiece, which they tucked, hidden, into their trousers, they took a small supply of grenades and rifles. “If we’re going to look for trouble,” Lucky explained, “we’d better be ready to find it.” The grenades were small enough to store in their pockets; the rifles would be left in the floatcar until they met bigger trouble.

Thus armed, they began making their inquiries. They were polite at first, but their tempers grew shorter as they were bounced from office to office, being told at each step along the way that someone else had the information they wanted. Finally, though, they reached a point where the clerks began looking more guilty, and the denials were much too emphatic.

It was Hawker who tired of the runaround first. The clerk behind the desk was a woman with feathered eyebrows and a smooth, downy head of hair. Grabbing her by the front of her tunic, Hawker informed her he wanted to speak to the officer in charge immediately. The woman looked at him, and then at the determined faces of his friends. The fighters were usually so apathetic she didn’t know how to deal with them in this aroused state. She decided to pass the problem along to her superior. She coded the door open and told them they could go in—but Singh insisted she be brought along, too, so she couldn’t give any alarm.

Beyond the door was a spacious office. A computer display, just symbols in empty air, floated horizontally like a desktop. Behind it sat a man who was obviously used to being in charge. He was fat and totally bald, clad in a one-piece gray uniform, and his skin was a mottled green and blue. His breast plate identified him only as “Philaskut.”

Rank as Hawker had originally known it had long ago vanished in the army, replaced by a sideways tiered system of authority so complicated he’d never fully understood it. Under normal circumstances this caused little problem. Anyone not a resurrectee or a civilian was in principle his superior, and he just obeyed orders. Hawker and his friends had no way of knowing how important this Philaskut was in the chain of command—but at the moment, they didn’t care.

“What do you people want?” Philaskut asked. He was neither angry nor indignant at this invasion of his office; if anything, Hawker would have judged him bemused.

Hawker became the group’s unofficial spokesman. “We want to know what happened to the man who was malformed when we were dubbed two months ago.”

Philaskut steepled his fingers in front of him. “The army would prefer not to dwell on that. In view of the process’s overwhelming success for centuries, one failure is hardly worth—”

Symington leaned forward. While there was nothing physical there, the computer display supported his clenched fist, holding his weight. His large bulk was satisfactorily intimidating. “He’s a friend of ours.”

“I see. That is a pity. However, as I said, there’s nothing I can—”

“A very special friend.” Singh enunciated each word clearly and moved around to Philaskut’s other side, providing a counterpoint to Symington’s looming.

“We want to know everything about the problem,” Belilo added, taking a menacing stance beside Hawker in front of the symbolic computer display.

Philaskut was no longer quite so bemused. “I assure you, there’s nothing you could do about the matter, anyway.”

“Why don’t you just let us see that for ourselves?” Hawker allowed his tone to be more reasonable.

Philaskut leaped at the bait. “It was an accident, well beyond anyone’s ability to either predict or control. Do you know how dubbing works?”

“I used to, a long time ago,” Belilo said with a tight smile. “I’ll bet the principles are the same. Why don’t you bring us up to date?”

“Well, an object’s pattern is stored in crystal molecular lattices. A crystal large enough to describe an entire human is only slightly bigger than a grain of salt. The fact that we’ve kept perfect track of everyone for so long indicates how accurate and efficient our system is.”

“Everyone but Norquist’s Rangers,” Singh muttered.

“Shh,” Symington shushed him. “I bet the army would prefer not to dwell on
that
, either.”

“But not this time,” Hawker persisted, returning to the matter of Green.

Philaskut took a deep breath. “No, not this time. Something went wrong in the subject’s crystal—”

“Green,” Hawker said.

The officer’s train of thought was interrupted. “What?”

“He’s not just ‘the subject.’ He’s a real person, probably smarter than you and me put together. His name’s Green. David Green. Keep that in mind.”

“Uh, yes. The... the soldier Green had something go wrong with his crystal. The information in it was distorted.”

“What went wrong?” Singh asked.

Philaskut turned to answer the question from this new direction. “We don’t know precisely. That’s why we’ve been conducting our investigation. We think it may have been caused by a cosmic ray collision. We
thought
we’d built sufficient shields against them. What we think happened is that two or more cosmic rays may have hit the same spot almost simultaneously, penetrating the defenses. The high energy rays struck this one crystal and knocked it slightly out of proportion.”

He shook his head. “Believe me, such an occurrence is so rare it couldn’t happen again in a million years.”

“Can you fix it?” Hawker asked. “Can David Green be restored?”

Philaskut cleared his throat. “You have to remember, it wasn’t the
person
who was damaged, but the complete
record
of him. If it were something in the dubbing device itself, or something that happened to the sub... to Green
after
he’d been dubbed—”

“In other words,” Belilo said, “there nothing you can do.”

“No. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” The officer spread his hands to indicate how hopeless the situation was.

“You must keep backups,” Singh said. “Everybody keeps backups. I can’t believe even the
army
is stupid enough not to.”