The Eternity Brigade Part 16

He pulled a grenade from his belt, set the control for "contact" and stood up, holding the grenade high off the floor. "h.e.l.lo," he yelled to empty air. "I bet you can hear me. I know you're coming for me, but you'd better wait for a few minutes and listen to what I have to say."

Silence.

"I've got a grenade here, all set to go off if it hits anything. If you shoot me, it drops to the floor and explodes. It's got a pretty good kill radius; I'll bet it could take out ten, maybe twenty of these pillars. How many people's files is that? A couple hundred, maybe? That's several hundred people whose files will be totally ruined; you'll never be able to get them back.

Think about it before anyone takes a shot at me."

More silence for nearly a minute. Then a voice materialized out of the air just above his head, a voice similar to that of the silver globe Symington had shot in the entrance hall. "What do you want?"

It was a deceptively simple question. Hawker opened his mouth and then realized he didn't have an answer. What did he want? What in all the Universe could be worthwhile to a man like him? The phrase, "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" climbed out of his childhood memory, but what good were they? He'd had enough life to satisfy ten men. Liberty was illusive; how could he be free when the army could always make another copy of him, a Hawker still shackled to his slavery? The final freedom Green had found was not a path open to him. And as for pursuit of happiness-well, that was what Ama.s.sa and her friends were busily engaged in, and it was as hollow as everything else.

Moreover, while he'd made them stop and listen, he was in no position to force them to do anything. He could ask some price-but if they didn't like it, if they thought it too outrageous, they could come in here and wipe him out despite the consequences. Whatever he asked for, it had to be realistic-it had to be within boundaries they might accept.The one thing he wanted most was to fulfill Green's final request: to remember him. And to do that, he had to live. Even if it made him sound cowardly now, even if it was a betrayal of everything he'd fought for, something deep in the back of his mind told him it was vitally important that he live and remember what had happened here today.

He drew a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "I want to make a deal with you that I don't think is too unreasonable." He stopped and waited for a reply.

"Go on," said the voice. "You haven't said anything yet."

"I've accomplished what I wanted. I never wanted to disobey the army, I never wanted to desert or commit mutiny. I'm not a troublemaker, I've got a good service record."

"Until now."

"All I wanted to do was help my friend. He was being tortured for something that wasn't his fault, and I thought it was unfair. That's over now; you can't get to him any more. I'm prepared to go back and continue being a good soldier for you."

"You have no choice in that. We could always duple another of you anyway, no matter what happens here."

Sweat broke out on Hawker's upper lip. He could feel his position slipping. What could he say to rebut that argument? What did he have to offer them that they couldn't get from a duple?

Green had said it, many times, ever since the men first realized the full implications of the resurrection process. Memory is the key. "It won't be me, though," Hawker answered. "My memories of the experiences I've undergone during my flight are valuable. Every single one of them goes into making me a better fighter. As bad as this has been for you, it might come in handy sometime in the future. You can never tell."

"If you wish to surrender, we will take it under advis.e.m.e.nt."

"That's not all," Hawker said, pressing forward a little to gain the ground he'd lost in the bargaining process. "I'll rejoin you voluntarily and go back to being a model soldier-but there's something I want in return."The voice did not answer.

"I want out," Hawker continued, after a suitable pause. "I want to be free of this life, free of all the fighting. I want to be able to live like an ordinary person, away from the army, and not have to worry about being resurrected into futures I have no say in."

"That would seem to contradict what you've just offered," the voice said, without a trace of irony.

Hawker shook his head. "No, it's a very simple process. Just duple me the way I am right now. One of me is free to go off and pursue his destiny any way he can; the other goes back to the army."

"We can't go around making deals like that, or every soldier would want the same treatment."

"I won't tell anyone about it. It will be our secret. It's a small enough price for you to pay-duples are made all the time, anyway. And if you cooperate with me instead of fighting me, you get a bonus-Green's body.

You can probably still learn a lot from it even though he's dead; I think he's past caring now. If this grenade goes off, you won't salvage even that much."

The voice was silent for several minutes, which Hawker considered a positive sign. They must at least be thinking about his deal-which is more than he would ever have expected a few hours ago. When no answer was immediately forthcoming, he prodded them further. "Well, I'm waiting. I'm getting awfully tired after my exertions today; I don't think I can hold this grenade up much longer."

"Stay as you are," the voice answered. "A mobile scanner is on its way to you, and will be there within two minutes."

A mobile scanner! Hawker smiled in triumph. He'd won. It was a small enough victory, after all he'd been through, but he'd faced down the army and gotten concessions from them. He would be dupled, giving him two chances to keep Green's memory alive. It meant a return to slavery for one of him-but that would have been true in any case.

He looked down at Green's still-bleeding corpse. "We know one thing at least, Dave," he said. "They're not invincible."Interludes Hawker was dupled right there in the aisle standing beside Green's body. There were some very tricky arrangements that had to be developed to make sure the army kept its word. The "original" Hawker stayed in Resurrection Central holding his grenade while the duple was allowed to go free. Only after several hours, when the duple radioed in that he was safely away from the vicinity, did Hawker finally surrender to army authorities.

He half expected them to kill him anyway, as a retaliation for all the trouble he'd caused them-but, to his surprise, they didn't. The conquest of death had made retribution like that a meaningless exercise, and the army was too pragmatic. Green had been right on that score; his memories, even rebellious ones, were too valuable a commodity to be squandered on anything as petty as revenge.

At the same time, the army wanted to make an example of him to prevent future desertions. He was given a showy trial and made to serve a ten-month sentence at hard labor in the stockade-a development that may actually have been in his favor. Had he merely been returned to duty, there was a good chance he might have died in action and his memories been lost anyway; as it was, the war was over by the time he'd finished his sentence. He was simply recorded once more and pa.s.sed down to the wars of some future generation.

Costanza, Singh, Belilo and Symington were all around at his next resurrection-and of course, none of them had the faintest idea of what had occurred on Cellina. Hawker did his best to avoid them all- particularly Belilo. He still felt guilty about deserting her-and the thought lurked in the back of his mind that one version of her could still be suffering the daily pain and humiliation that Nya and her acolytes loved to inflict. Belilo was puzzled by Hawker's reticence-but the resurrectees had long since learned not to pry into anything related to former lives, and she accepted his behavior without comment.

Hawker learned that twenty-five years had pa.s.sed since the war on Cellina, and he was naturally curious as to how his duple, anch.o.r.ed in time, had fared during that period. This current fighting, though, was on a world half the Galaxy away from Cellina, and information was impossible to come by. As far as the army was concerned, the other Hawker simply did not exist, and no amount of long-distanceinvestigating could gain him any results.

When the war was over, Hawker was copied once again, his curiosity unabated.

Two more resurrections came and went. Symington was baffled that Green no longer seemed to be with them. He mentioned it once, but Hawker volunteered no information. He could see no point to stirring Symington up again over the matter. Green was gone, that was all there was to it; simply another of the mysteries the soldiers had to face in their centuries of existence. Why tell anyone about the grotesque, twisted monstrosity that had been their comrade? Let Symington remember Green as what he'd really been, not as what some perverse Fate had made him at the end. Hawker, too, remembered Green as he was. True to his friend's last wish, he would not let that memory die.

On his fourth resurrection after Cellina, the fighting was conducted on a planet near enough for Hawker to hope for information on his duple's fate. It was nearly a century and a half since the events on Cellina, but with modern technology that meant very little. Anything was possible these days-or so it seemed to a man born in the far-off twentieth century.

Anything, that is, except hope.

The army still refused him its cooperation, insisting even in private that no such duple had ever been created. Hawker exhausted every legitimate method at his disposal to find out more about his other "free"

self, and banged into blank walls at every turn. Finally, with no other recourse left, he went AWOL in his search to find himself.

Alone and undercover, he traveled as a common s.p.a.cehand to Cellina, only to find that his duple had left the planet less than a year after being created. Thinking to perhaps right an old wrong, he tried to find Nya and Belilo-but there was no trace of either, and he gave up that quest.

Doggedly, Hawker kept in pursuit of his older self. The trail blew hot and cold and hot again, leading him through three different planets in the next seven months. At last, on an insignificant world called Dos, he found what he was looking for-sort of.

Dos was a world founded and populated mostly by religious fanatics who rejected many of the benefits of modern civilization and technology.

Its inhabitants lived a simple life, reached an average age of one hundredor so, and then died natural deaths without recourse to artificial resurrections. Dos was considered a backwater where nothing ever happened, a quiet world with little to recommend it.

Hawker's duple had learned about Dos, and was instantly attracted to it-not from any strong religious convictions, but because it was one of the few planets in the civilized Galaxy that remained close to the world of his childhood. He'd had his fill of artificially extended life; one more death would be enough for him. Within five years of Green's death, the Hawker-duple settled on Dos, never to leave it again.

He dwelled there for sixty-eight years, married and had two sons. One of the sons had left the planet for greener pastures, never to return; the other son lived his whole life on Dos, producing one son of his own. That son in turn had a son before his own premature death in an accident-so at present there was only one direct descendant of the original Hawker-duple alive on the planet.

Hawker tracked the man down and found him working as a master potter, teaching his handicraft to a handful of young apprentices. His great-grandson looked to be in his late twenties, but without much family resemblance. Hawker a.s.sumed that was due to the various female influences in his genetic background.

Their brief meeting was extremely awkward. Hawker came into his descendant's shop and watched him work for a few minutes. The man stared at him, as though wondering where he'd seen that face before.

When his great-grandson finally came out and asked him what he wanted in the shop, Hawker stammered around and finally walked out of the shop without ordering anything. He never bothered to identify himself to the young man who bore, at least in part, his genes. What would have been the point? The two came from different worlds; they had nothing whatsoever in common.

Disillusioned, now, with the whole of life, Hawker returned to the army.

He had now gotten a second mark against his record as a troublemaker, and the army seriously debated whether to copy this current version or return to his previous pattern already on file. The convincing factor was Hawker's contention that the previous him, not knowing the fate of his descendants, would probably go AWOL all over again to find them-whereas he now knew there was nothing to find in that direction.

That, and the fact that Hawker did have an outstanding combat record,convinced the board of inquiry that he was to be recopied again as is.

And so it went-war after war, planet after planet, century after century. Hawker held on to the memory of Green, but very little else. He became a brutally efficient machine, living without hope of redemption from this eternal slavery. He obeyed orders and did his job, never caring what the fight was about or why he was called on to kill beings he'd never met. Reality for him became a gray blur of fighting, punctuated by the occasional battlefield lulls.

Until he came, at last, to a civil war on a nameless world, to a hopeless siege, to a Spardian woman who spoke to him only in broken Vandik, and to bright blue fireb.a.l.l.s that rained death and destruction from the skies...

PART THREE.

ETERNITY.

Hawker lay still in the stairwell as the building collapsed around him after the hit from the blue fireball. He covered his head with his hands and closed his eyes to keep out the dust. The ground shook as great chunks of masonry came tumbling down, some missing him by scant millimeters; he was buried instead beneath a pile of fine dust and rubble. His only thought was to keep a breathing pa.s.sage open, and his chief fear was of suffocating like a miner in a cave-in. A bullet through the brain or an energy beam through the heart were quick ways to go, but a painful death was not his choice.

After a few minutes the dust stopped settling on top of him. He waited a little longer to be sure, then slowly began to dig himself out of the debris, up toward the light and air. He broke through and breathed deeply, taking in great lungfuls of fresh oxygen.

When at last he'd regained his breath, he looked around him at the damage the enemy a.s.sault had caused. Almost this entire block had been leveled; not a building remained intact, with just an occasional wall standing here and there. The smoky atmosphere was filled with even more choking fumes than before. There was no sign of his partner, the Spardian woman; the place across the street where he'd last seen her was now buried beneath a small mountain of rubble. He had to a.s.sume he was onhis own-and the red armband on his uniform might be a definite disadvantage if this area was soon overrun by the side in blue, as seemed likely.

Behind him, his rifle had been shattered by a large piece of falling building, leaving him armed with four grenades, two throwing knives and his wide-dispersion laser pistol. Not much with which to fight off an invading army.

Why bother? he asked himself. n.o.body expects miracles from you any more. Just go through the motions and hope for better luck next time.

But when the shooting started around him, his instincts took over. He could no more ignore his training than a fish could fly.

No one was aiming precisely at him; the shooting instead seemed to be part of a general barrage intended to keep any survivors in this area under cover. Hawker inched forward, taking advantage of whatever cover he could find, to reach a safer vantage point from which to a.s.sess his situation.

He came to a wall that was still standing, with a c.h.i.n.k that may have been part of a window to act as a peephole. The wall was at the top of a slight rise, and offered him the best view from a bad neighborhood. From this spot he could look out and see the advancing lines of invading troops, all with their blue armbands neatly in place. They were not far away.

There was a slight noise behind him, and Hawker turned quickly. A figure rose over a pile of rubble, silhouetted against the sky. The blue armband was quite apparent, though the facial features were hidden by the glare from one of the fireb.a.l.l.s pa.s.sing through the sky behind the man.

The enemy soldier had him dead to rights, and yet he didn't fire. Maybe he was under orders to take prisoners, but Hawker was under no such compunction. He raised his laser and fired, hitting the man squarely in the chest. The enemy soldier fell, and as he did so his face became visible for the first time. It was Symington, not quite so lucky this time.

Hawker pounded his fist against the wall. Is this what it all came down to, killing his only real friend in the last few hundred years? What kind of insanity was this, where such things could happen? He did not feel guilt for murdering his friend; how could there be guilt when Symington wouldbe resurrected again next time with no memory of what had occurred here? But Hawker nonetheless felt so frustrated by the lunacy around him that he wanted to scream.

He stood up and walked away from the wall, in full view of anyone who might want to take a shot at him. What did it matter whether he lived or died? He'd only be resurrected again, anyway, to fight some other senseless war on some other world in some further future.

Perhaps because he was so uncaring, no one fired at him as he walked across the street, moving without direction or purpose. His feet trod across the uneven surface of the broken paving and twice he stumbled but did not lose his balance completely. He was heading on an approximate diagonal in the direction of enemy lines, but that didn't matter to him.

Nothing mattered very much, it seemed.

He made it almost to the sh.e.l.l of a burned-out building when he saw a movement to his right. Reflex, more than any conscious desire for survival, made him spin that way, gun drawn. He would have shot instantly, but something made him halt in midaction. He stood frozen, staring at the man across from him.

It was Jerry Hawker, wearing a blue armband.

It was a strange sensation, seeing himself like this. A mirror image was something he was used to, but this was an independent ent.i.ty, someone capable of movement on his own. Left and right seemed curiously interchanged, and Hawker felt dizzily disoriented. Somewhere offstage was the ghoulish laughter of Fate.

The two men stood, suspended in time, no more than five meters apart.

Eternity existed in that instant, as volumes of unspoken thoughts flashed through each man's mind. Then the Hawker in blue gave a wan smile and spread his arms apart in a gesture of resignation and friendship. He could not kill himself.

The Hawker in red, because of his experiences here, was more cynical.

Looking across at the other him, centuries of rage and frustration exploded in his brain. This was the man who'd been stupid enough to let the army make a toy of him. This was the man who accepted what happened to him and never thought of fighting back. This was the man who'd brought him all the miseries of an eternal d.a.m.nation in a livingh.e.l.l.

Self-hatred tightened his finger on the trigger. His laser fired at his double's face, and he kept up the fire long after the other Hawker had fallen dead to the ground.

At length the rage pa.s.sed. Hawker stopped firing and bent down to examine his own corpse. There was nothing left of the face or head, but at least it had been a quick, painless death-there was no point to making himself suffer. He looked over the still body and, after a moment's consideration, ripped the blue armband off the other Hawker's sleeve.

Stuffing it into his pocket, he continued along the way he'd started, into the burned-out building.

In this place of comparative shelter, he sat on the floor with his back to one wall and started laughing. He couldn't help himself. This whole war had gone beyond the bounds of insanity; it was now a farce, and he was one of the comedians. This final confrontation had been too crazy for anyone to take seriously, and Hawker's body was shaking hysterically as he collapsed on the floor, tears streaming from his eyes.

After a while the laughter eased, and he sat up again. He thought of David Green, and wondered what his friend would have said about this lunacy. He probably would have been resigned to it, saying something to the effect that their merry-go-round might be pa.s.sing through the funhouse every once in a while, and they were seeing each other and themselves through those crazy distorting mirrors. But, he would have added, there was no way off the merry-go-round, so they had to accept it and try to deal with it as best they could.

Maybe it should have been Dave with the nickname Lucky, he thought. He at least managed to break the circuit.

Hawker suddenly tensed. There was a way out; Green had found it.

Hawker thought back to his friend's last words as he lay b.l.o.o.d.y and dying in Hawker's arms. He didn't say, "Remember me." He just said, "Remember."

"He didn't care about himself," Hawker whispered to the empty room.

"He was telling me to remember how it was done, how to get off the merry-go-round. He was telling me there was a way, and that I had to remember it to help myself."His eyes were filling with tears, and he closed them tightly to stanch the flow. "Thank you, Dave," he said. "You were helping me, and I didn't even know it. I thought I was helping you. Thank you. Thank you."

He took a deep breath and wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.

This was a time for clear thinking, something he'd never been too good at.

This could be the most important day of his life, and he'd need all his wits about him to do it right.

He pulled himself slowly to his feet, left the shelter of the building and started back toward the underground bunker where he and the others had been resurrected. He moved through the torn-up streets with great caution, now. If he should be killed at this juncture, he'd merely be dupled again with memories of this lifetime gone, and he might never have this insight again. For the first time in longer than he cared to think about, he had a reason to live, a purpose to his existence.

The territory looked considerably different than when he'd first pa.s.sed through it; the enemy's blue fireb.a.l.l.s had done vast damage in their continual barrage, reducing the city to heaps of rubble. He saw very few people wandering about; many of the defenders had probably died in the bombardment, and some of the rest may have fled in despair. Hawker took great care that no one saw him; even though he was in red territory and still wearing his red armband, he didn't want to be shot mistakenly by his own side-not at this stage of the game.

There was a sentry standing at the entrance to the bunker, looking very worried. Hawker approached him slowly, his arms spread wide apart and his red armband in plain view. The guard was nervous, and might fire at anything.

. "I've got to make a report," Hawker said. "The enemy has broached the north side. I must get in to headquarters."

The guard didn't understand a word. Hawker ran through all the languages he knew, and still there was no reply. The sentry stood there, not firing at him because he had the proper armband, but at the same time not trusting him enough to let him back down inside the bunker.

Hawker resorted to pantomime. After a few minutes of frantic gesturing, the sentry nodded and stepped aside for Hawker to enter.

Hawker did not dare express the relief he felt, and instead walked brisklyinside the door and took the elevator down to the command levels.

He wandered for half an hour through the bunker, looking for the particular office he wanted. The air of panic that had been so tangible when he was first here had multiplied several times since then. Everyone knew the cause was lost, and many of the staff were going through the same feelings of apathy he himself had experienced a little while ago. He wandered through normally secured areas unmolested, able to observe things as he pleased. On the few occasions when anyone stopped him, he had the legitimate excuse that he couldn't communicate with them, and they eventually gave up trying. Hawker didn't look like a spy or saboteur, and even if he was-did it really matter at this point?

He came at last to the place he was looking for, the computer in which the soldiers' patterns were filed. The actual stored material was very small, but the machinery to house it filled an entire room. Hawker knew he'd never be able to sort through everything to find just his own pattern and destroy it; he'd have to destroy the entire works. That meant the patterns of all the resurrectees, all the soldiers he'd fought beside down through the ages. He had no authority to make this irrevocable decision for them, but he didn't think he needed it. He knew the soldiers' mood on this matter.

None of them enjoyed being slaves; all of them were looking for a way out and would welcome the chance to be free-even if the price were a final, unalterable death.