The Eternity Brigade Part 6

"f.u.c.king great way to show it," Hawker said through clenched teeth.

Nevertheless he lowered his rifle and relaxed on the ground. The two men leaped out of their vehicle and ran over to him.

"Sorry, buddy," said the corporal who'd shot him. "I thought you were Ruc.h.i.n.k. The area's crawling with them, and we were told to look out for ambushes."

Hawker looked into the corporal's anxious face. The kid was barely older than he was. How'd he get to be a corporal? Hawker mused, despite the pain. He swallowed back the first two retorts that came to mind, and said merely, "My friend over there's hurt pretty bad. We were in the supply convoy they overran a few days ago. Been trying to get back to base."

The two men ran over and checked Connors, confirming that he was still alive but in bad shape. They called in men from another jeep in the convoy, and Hawker and Connors were both loaded into the back of one vehicle and dispatched to the base.

Hawker remembered little of the four-hour ride. His leg was throbbing, despite the painkiller they gave him; all the pill did was make him woozy.The fatigue from his arduous trek and the lack of food for the past few days also contributed to his condition. He merely stared up at the sky, fading in and out of consciousness at irregular intervals.

Back at the base he was put in the hospital, where they removed the bullet from his leg and kept him in bed for a week. After that, he was permitted to walk around with a crutch for another couple of weeks while the doctors argued at what point he would be fit to return to light duty.

He was informed that Connors had pulled through, thanks to his efforts, and one of the nurses told him privately that he'd been nominated for a medal for his heroic actions. Hawker wondered, a bit cynically, whether he'd also be eligible for the Purple Heart for being wounded in action. The war ended the day before he was scheduled to be released from the hospital.

As the fighting ended, the rebel militants were left in control of the northern portions of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, which the official Chinese government ended up ceding to them as an independent state, much as Outer Mongolia had been for decades. While there was still much bitterness between the two factions, the Chinese government felt the price they'd paid had secured something of value: a hostile, but still independent country to act as a buffer between themselves and the U.S.S.R. The Russians were pleased to have whittled away part of their major antagonist in the Communist world, but the cost in Russian lives and arms had been astronomical. The United States, at comparatively small cost to itself, had regained a certain uneasy stability in Asia.

In short, while no one was happy with what had been done, all parties were at least satisfied with the results-for now.

Hawker, meantime, was out of a job, and viewed the peace with mixed feelings. He had never liked war, had never enjoyed the prospect that someone he didn't even know was out there eager to rip his guts apart with a shrapnel grenade; but the thought of facing civilian life was almost as terrifying. He was right back where he'd started at the beginning of this experiment, facing a hostile world without sufficient resources or knowledge. The situation was even worse, in fact; the world was now twelve years older, and at the rate it had been changing who could tell how different the outside world would be?

A week after the war ended he was shipped back to the States in an enormous plane-larger than any he'd ever seen-with more than athousand other servicemen. Everyone was tired of the fighting and glad to have survived. There was singing and swapping of stories; cigarettes and marijuana were pa.s.sed around freely. But Hawker, as was his wont, kept apart from the rest. He wasn't one of them; he was a stranger out of time.

He'd hoped to see Symington and Green, but neither man was on this flight. Hawker had no way of knowing whether either was still alive.

Back in the United States, the troops were housed in temporary quarters while their paperwork was processed. Hawker was in no hurry.

He hoped that now, with all this experience behind him, the army would strongly consider letting him go career. They'd find some position for him-after all, there was always something that needed doing in the army.

Four days after his return, he saw a notice requesting all partic.i.p.ants in Project Banknote to report for a special meeting the next day after lunch.

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 in which he'd first heard about Project Banknote; there was only seating for forty people at most. Of course, that did not 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, on the other hand, had been a.s.signed to a clerical quartermaster's job through some error in paperwork, 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 d.i.c.kerson 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 forpartic.i.p.ating 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 a.s.signments because of their previous experience. They had 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, d.i.c.kerson 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.

d.i.c.kerson 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 thosecoffins 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," d.i.c.kerson said with a cold smile. "When you deal in large volume, the cost 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 three or four 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 armyexpects to save millions of dollars each year once the plan gets going."

d.i.c.kerson 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 well 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 that would make him useful to the army. 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 because of his lack of skills. Green refused to be depressed, however; he pointed out to Hawker that their salaries had been acc.u.mulating while they slept, and that they were all rich men. Among the three of them, they should have well over $100,000-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 and form their own company. They drank several rounds of toasts to their mutual success, and 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 acc.u.mulated earnings, less than a third of what they had 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-at least in theory-cost muchless than he was 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.

The three friends found that their combined fortunes under the new monetary system came to slightly less than $40,000. Still, Green refused to be dismayed. It was buying power that really counted, he a.s.sured 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 was asked to pose for a photograph that would appear on his identification card. When they questioned this, they were told that 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 a necessity, 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 in their case.

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. n.o.body 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 n.a.z.i Germany. One of the first things they started was the internal pa.s.sport, and every Jew had a big 'J' stamped on his papers. You know what that led to."

"s.h.i.t, that can't happen here," Symington said. "This is America, for G.o.d'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 G.o.d!" 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 they were.

"You must have one of everything in there," Green continued for a moment.

For the first time in their acquaintance, Symington looked embarra.s.sed. "I never asked for the f.u.c.king 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 belongings, and left the base as civilians for the first time in nearly fifteen years. Each of them was more nervous than he would have cared to admit; none of them knew what they'd encounter once they'd left the sheltered confines of the army.

The bus that took them into town was small, lightweight, 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 have all expired, anyway."

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

They checked into a hotel in town, and were amazed at the prices. Each of them could have his own room for just four dollars a night. A good steak dinner in the hotel restaurant was under two dollars. Most other prices were similarly reduced-the ominous exception being that gasoline was advertised at thirty cents a liter, where it could be found at all.

"At these prices, we can live like kings!" Symington exclaimed happily.

Green cheered up a bit for the first time since getting his ID card. "I told you it's all relative. Even though we seem to have less money, we have the same buying power we'd have had if there hadn't been any money conversion. We can still buy our own business." That news made them all feel better.

They argued over dinner as to what they should do next. Green took over as the brains of their outfit, and insisted they go to New York. "That's where all the money is, that's where the best deals are made," he told them. "If we want to make something of ourselves, that's where we have to go. Besides, I've got an uncle who's an investment counselor-if he's still in the business. He'll help us get the best deal for our money."

They went to a travel agent the next day to arrange theirtransportation. One of her first questions was whether they had the proper travel pa.s.ses, a question that stumped all three of them. They had never heard of such a thing, but when Green told the woman that they were all sleepers just released from the army she gave them a broad smile and said she'd do anything she could to help them.

Travel pa.s.ses were necessary for anyone entering the bigger cities these days, she explained. Ever since the Energy Riots, the government had to make sure that terrorists and troublemakers were kept out of the major metropolitan centers; city life was too fragile a thing to entrust to chance.

Anyone visiting New York had to have a valid reason for going, and a government-certified pa.s.s before he could enter-otherwise he was forced to stay outside.

The fact that Green had relatives in New York was deemed reason enough for going, and his friends were allowed to accompany him. The travel agent copied down the numbers of their ID cards-which turned out to be their old Social Security numbers, except that Social Security had been abolished several years ago in favor of something called National a.s.sistance- and promised to expedite their travel pa.s.ses. They didn't have enough money to fly to New York, since they wouldn't get their back pay until they had permanent mailing addresses, so she arranged bus tickets for them, to be effective as soon as their papers came through. She estimated it would take two days-four, at the most-and told them to check back with her.

The three friends returned to their hotel slightly stunned. So far they'd barely gone twenty kilometers from the base, and already they'd encountered monetary devaluation, national ID cards and travel restrictions. They could hardly help but wonder how many more surprises this modern world held in store for them.

It took them eight days to reach New York. Three of those were spent waiting for their travel papers to clear the government offices, and the other five were spent on the road. The electric buses they rode were slow and c.u.mbersome, and stopped at each state line for inspection. They got used to taking out their ID cards and travel permits at border crossings to flash at inquisitive state troopers. At the Pennsylvania border, there was one pa.s.senger who'd boarded the bus just recently, and whose ID card failed to satisfy the border patrol. He and his luggage were removed, and the bus drove on without him. No one else aboard the bus thought tomake any fuss about it, but the incident shook Hawker, Green and Symington a little bit.

Again, there was little traffic on the road around them. The nights were dark and quiet, and sleep was easy as the bus drove through the darkness-until Green realized that they were pa.s.sing through a densely populated part of the country and that there should have been some lights of civilization around them. The energy shortage must really be bad if cities turned off their lights at night. That thought made it harder for him to sleep.

Their arrival in New York rea.s.sured them temporarily. The city looked hardly changed from when last Green had seen it. Traffic still clogged the streets, gasoline-powered traffic; there was so much congestion that it seemed to belie the energy crisis that had such an impact elsewhere in the nation. New Yorkers bustled about with the same callous unconcern they'd always shown. Clothing styles had changed a little, but not to excess: women wore much more austere, harshly cut business suits, and more men wore turtle-necks rather than ties.

Green set about the arduous business of tracking down his family after such an extended absence. His parents were no longer listed in the phone book, and a call to the synagogue yielded the information that Rabbi Green had retired seven years ago and moved to Miami. His Uncle Sid, the investment counselor he'd been counting on to help them, had died three years ago, and the people currently at that telephone number knew nothing of where his widow had gone. Of his brothers and sisters, only one-Benjamin, the doctor-still lived in New York, but the nurse at his office explained he was on vacation for the entire month, and wouldn't be back for two weeks.

In desperation, Green took his friends down to his old neighborhood to look for some acquaintances. There were still a few boyhood friends and neighbors, and even a cousin he'd almost forgotten about; people gathered around him and marveled at how young he looked but other than learning some more details about how his family had dispersed, he accomplished little that day.

Dismayed, the men checked into a cheap hotel in Greenwich Village while they decided what to do next. Green went to buy a newspaper, and was shocked to see how drastically the Times had shrunk in size, down to a mere thirty-six pages-and most of those were want ads. He called thepublic library, explained his situation, and asked why the paper was so thin. The librarian explained that the newspaper industry had run afoul of the energy crisis; it simply required too much energy to pulp the paper, print up copies and then distribute them to homes and newsstands. Most people these days received their news over special channels built into the cables that serviced their TVs- a much more energy-efficient method of information dispersal.

The three friends read through the abbreviated paper during dinner, checking the cla.s.sifieds thoroughly. The "Employment Opportunities"

section was abysmally small; the energy shortage had apparently caused ma.s.sive job layoffs throughout the economy, and people were scrambling for any kind of work at all. The only jobs listed with any consistency were those requiring some technical proficiency or advanced degree that none of them had.

The "Business Opportunities" section was barely more encouraging.

There were plenty of businesses available to be bought-including an astonishing number of gas stations, garages, sales routes and delivery services-but most of them were businesses that none of the three knew the faintest thing about. How could they expect to run a restaurant or a laundromat against cutthroat compet.i.tion in these harsh modern times?

They were starting with a disadvantage of ignorance on several levels, and they were all deathly afraid of throwing away the one advantage they had-their acc.u.mulated savings-through their inexperience and lack of knowledge. Even Symington's normal cheerfulness was muted; he didn't feel that lucky to risk a business venture that could only end in disaster.

Green read through what little there was of the straight news, and became even more depressed. Not that there was any one item that was particularly bad-and that, in fact, was what disturbed him the most. The reports were filled with generalities, with scarcely a hard fact anywhere in them. Although he could not have said for certain, Green grew suspicious that the news was being censored in subtle ways to downplay the seriousness of any particular bad tidings. The travel agent had, after all, mentioned Energy Riots; perhaps the government didn't want people being stirred up that much any more by bad news, and so smoothed out the rougher spots in the day's reporting. It was an ominous thought, but one he couldn't push from his mind once it had entered.

Early the next morning, before they had a chance to decide what to do,they received a call from a news reporter who had tracked them down. She wanted to do a story about them, she explained-three latter-day Rip Van Winkles, and what their particular problems were in adjusting to the modern world. Hawker was skeptical about the idea, but the other two talked him into it. A little free publicity would never hurt them, they said.

Perhaps someone would see the story and offer them some help. It was worth a try. They told the reporter to come over and, while waiting for her to arrive, they phoned several business consultants and investment firms, lining up consultations for that afternoon.

The reporter seemed eager to help them, and in fact was happy to concentrate on all the problems they'd faced in current-day America. Her questions emphasized how they intended to cope with situations such as the energy crisis and unemployment, and what they intended to make of themselves. It wasn't until after she left that Green realized why she'd done that; by making these three sleepers seem miserable in her story, the reporter was helping make her average reader feel that his own problems were comparatively minor. "There's nothing like someone else's suffering to make you feel better," he remarked cynically.

The interviews that afternoon were uniformly disappointing. The counselors were unanimous in advising the trio against going into business without knowing present-day economic conditions and how to compete effectively. Their best suggestions were to put the money into real estate or stock investments, but Green wasn't sure how good that was for them. The investments would be sound, but that kind of investment was more of a long-term deal, and the ex-soldiers wanted something that would keep them going now.

On a hunch, they stopped in at a library to get information about going to college on some GI loan and possibly furthering themselves that way-but the prospects were negative here, too. Many of the smaller colleges had been forced to close down when the crunch came-and those that were open had raised their admission standards. The trio's high school educations were more than a dozen years out-of-date; they'd have to go to night school for a year before they could make up enough of the difference to even think about applying.

The three of them drank heavily that night to relieve the oppression they felt growing in their souls, and they awoke early the next morning to the sound of the telephone ringing. The story of their plight had appearedin that morning's telenews report, and almost instantly they were deluged with offers of all sorts: offers of a spare room in someone's house, expressions of sympathy, even offers of marriage. There was one man who kept calling to insist: a) that suspended animation was anti-Christian, and b) that it was all a hoax, anyway. Hanging up on him did little good; he kept calling back, more strident each time than the last.

By far the most numerous types of calls, though, were the ones offering them business deals. Some people were eager to loan them ready cash now, using their acc.u.mulated back pay as collateral-probably, Green a.s.sumed, at frighteningly high rates of interest. There were many people who began by expressing their condolences, and quickly turned the conversation into a spiel to buy land in Alaska (guaranteed to be rich in oil) or to invest in some crazy fly-by-night company that seemed totally unsound, even to men who'd spent the last dozen years asleep.

"We've gotten on every sucker list in America," Green said bitterly after the third hour of uninterrupted telephone conversation. "We have no idea what's going on in the world, so everyone and his brother think they can take advantage of our ignorance." He threw the phone against the wall.

"Well, I'm f.u.c.king well sick of it."

He stalked out the door before the other two could do more than stare at him. They found him a few hours later at a bar two blocks away, drunk enough to numb his pain and disillusionment. They put him to bed, and he slept until the next morning, right through the continuous barrage of phone calls that lasted until Symington finally had enough, and called down to the desk to tell them not to send up any more calls.

Green was quiet and thoughtful through breakfast the next morning.

His eyes looked slightly sunken, and they had lost the bright l.u.s.ter of optimism. Symington tried to ignore the other's somber mood by keeping up a lighthearted banter about which of the waitresses would be best in the sack.

Finally Green interrupted with the quiet declaration, "I don't like this world very much."

Symington paused and looked at him. "Oh, come on, we've hardly even seen it. Just 'cause things are bad here doesn't mean they're bad everywhere.""They are," Green insisted. "You don't have to drink a whole liter to know the milk's sour-just taste a few drops. If anything, things are probably better here than anywhere else. New York is like a dinosaur-you can kill it and the message still takes a year to reach the brain.

"There's a sickness in the country, or at least a difference. It would have been one thing if we'd lived through it, gotten used to the changes gradually, as they happened. But getting hit with them all at once like this..." He shook his head.

"Even if you don't like it here, where're you gonna go?" Symington said with a nervous laugh. "Australia? They've got an energy shortage there too, probably."

Green ignored him and turned to Hawker. "What do you think, Hawk?"

Hawker scarcely had to think. "I'm with you, Dave. You know that."

"Hey, you two aren't thinking of going through all that again, are you?"