Old Men And Infidels Books

Prologue “Outland Exile: Book One of Old Men and Infidels”

2014-10-30

Prologue

The message impeded upon the gray man’s notice unbidden. With the faintest suggestion of an interface, it rose up before him through his O-A. In an earlier age, it might have appeared as:

To: ComOutOps

From: ComOutSig

113303z_11_10_AU76

RE: Unity Sensor Station 43.11.0/97_89.13.56/41 (SUNPRAIRIE)

Signal ceased SUNPRAIRIE 112103z_11_10_AU76

The gray man smiled; he signed the memorandum with his characteristic mental gesture and began preparations for the destruction of Malila Chiu.

Excerpt From Outland Exile: Chapter Two

2016-09-02

Nyork, the Unity

11.01.35.local_11_10_AU76 .

Could the Unity not do something to make reincorporation less disconcerting?

It was always the same when she reincorporated; her disembodied flesh sensed the trials her mind had endured … and suffered in her absence. It hardly seemed fair.

“Fathering muckers!”

Edie clucked at her as Malila groaned and sat up.

Don’t be vulgar, squilch! You brought this on yourself, you know.

Fecking frak!

The obscenity was meant to shock, and, on cue, Edie grew silent. Growing up in the crèche and then the Democratic Unity Forces for Security (DUFS) barracks, Malila possessed a flamboyant repertoire of profanity, vulgarities, and obscenities. Her metaphract, of late, had taken a dim view of this proficiency.

Lieutenant Chiu donned the light robe she had laid aside hours before and, shivering, waited for her heart rate to glissade from the heights of conquest. A trickle of sweat worked its way through her short, military-style haircut and down her neck as she took a large breath to steady herself.

You’re going to be late, squilch.

Give me a break, Edie. I just fought a battle … two battles … to the death.

That’s nice. Your appointment is in two hours and twenty minutes. You smell bad.

Malila rolled her eyes. No one was a hero to her frak.

[1] Tell me when the comm’nets announce my whale hunt.

Of course, Lieutenant Chiu. On an unrelated topic, we are getting full of ourselves—are we not, squilch?

Don’t call me a squilch, frak.

Don’t call me a frak, Second Lieutenant.

Malila thrust a gesture, equivalent to a small child with a wetly extended tongue, in the mental direction of her tormentor.

All right, metaphract, have it your own way.

Any messages?

You have received a number of offers on methods to improve pleasure-sex, another dozen offering to contact your spirit guide in the multiverse of your choice, one from a foundation requesting funds to combat the heartbreak of facial hair, and a message from Command Outland Signals.

I’m not going to deal with that now. Show me some music.

The Femtosense Grunge Philharmonic selection that Edie chose swelled within her. Malila experienced it in all her senses, feeling a breeze and receiving the sharp taste of spring rain. The music played upon her emotions, and she abandoned her will to its wanderings. Perceptions, which Malila interpreted as being “outside,” slid over the input of her eyes, ears, and other senses. These were a level “above” what she detected with her corporal body.

Metaphracts like Edie originated as interpreters of the interface for those receiving the O-A brain implants as children. Most of the boys taught their metaphracts to play tricks on one another and discarded them with puberty. Most of the girls decorated them with childish fashions, retaining them after puberty but keeping them unused in their mental closets. Malila had been unusual in embellishing hers with wit, a face, and a personality … or at least as much as a Turing Metaphract could imitate. Edie was, for Malila, a convenient construct of the CORE interface, coming when she called and doing the scut work of daily life.

In contrast to the metaphract, her O-A was a constant presence … with the constant potential danger of slipping across and becoming lost to reality. Malila had been taught to fear this fate. Those who ignored the warning suffered a living perdition. The first few victims had been immediately prohibited an interface with the CORE and had erupted in bloody rage. Thereafter the COREd-out had been left to dwindle away, lost both to the Unity and to their own shriveling personalities.

Perhaps it was just a tale, but some truth was embedded in it. The CORE interface was seductive. Once, when Malila had gotten too close, warning lights, a vile shade of green, had strobed across her inner eye. Now she only looked in that direction from the corner of her mind when she felt secure. Most feared to look at all.

A claxon sounded inside her head.

You are going to be late for your lunch appointment unless you—

Fleckafather!

Malila scampered across her room, shedding the robe as she went, knowing the chamber would retrieve it and sort it into the appropriate category: bureau drawer, closet hangers, or laundry chute. Malila stepped into her bathroom and , or accessed the CORE, with a few taps with her O-A. The room warmed and misted to her specifications.

Within the hour, Lieutenant Chiu was dressed in the uniform of the DUFS: form-fitting black Produra cloth with the subdued holographic markings of her rank on her shoulders. This sleek envelope, surmounted by a black helmet covering most of her features, made her anonymous in the crowded streets of the Unity. Malila was ready to meet her friends for lunch.

Once on the street, Malila stepped onto the descending beltway and after a few minutes navigated to the express belt “For S24 and Above Only!” Malila’s specialist level, her rank within the Unity, was just high enough for her to use the belt.

Detecting Malila’s presence, the beltway comm’nets blossomed with a weltering array of advertisements, PSAs, and lepto-mercials of numerous flavors. Malila ignored them as much as she could, seldom finding the enthusiasm for anything other than a few sporting spectacles, like her beloved kirshing; the daily melodrama of politics; and especially the news.

At that moment the news was showing two people, a man and a woman, both handcuffed, being led to a waiting DUFS skimmer.

This fascination with news borders upon the macabre, Malila.

Nonsense, I’m being a good citizen. Does it occur to you that they brought it on themselves?

You think they brought that on themselves?

Bruises marked the prisoners’ thin bodies. The woman’s dress fell around her waist as she walked. The assembled crowd laughed at her attempt to cover herself.

They must have tried to resist arrest, frak. They were running an illegal phantom shop, after all.

One you have used yourself!

Edie, don’t be difficult! Here come the policoms,[2] I need to see these.

Major political analysts numbered about a dozen, and the long-time leader of the pack was James J. Gordon. He possessed an uncanny ability to ferret out scandal, hypocrisy, and political disloyalty in its many forms, using the flensing knives of parody, innuendo, and sophistry for the loyal citizenry.

Best to keep your head down around here with people like Gordon about.

That could be construed as a disloyal statement, frak.

Then it is you that should worry, isn’t it, squilch? I am but your humble servant, nothing more than your own program, am I not?

So when does the humble thing kick in?

I’m assertive only in your best interests, Lieutenant. Allow me to mention again that your messages await your attention.

Not now, frak!

Malila took an ascender and emerged immediately in front of the People’s Museum of Natural History. A huge banner proclaiming “Triumph of the Will” emblazoned the entrance in the state colors of red, white, and black.

As she entered, Malila looked up, as she did on most visits, to the three pale-blond stony depressions, surrounded by darker stone, far over her head.

I wonder why they chiseled them out in the first place, Malila. What could have been so obscene or seditious that they had to deface the whole building?

There you go again, getting us into trouble, frak.

No, I’m not! It was an honest question. For all I know it was done by the Sisis.

The possibility that senile senior citizens, those who no longer contributed, had once more conspired to injure her homeland was distressing.

The wisdom of the Unity in retiring the elderly had been proven out time and again. Once removed from society, the role of the aged in past mistakes became evident. Even now, the practice of compassionate retirement ensured new ideas and new vigor came daily to the forefront of national life. Young and vital citizens had nothing to hinder them in their rise to greatness. In the past, it had taken decades of public service before younger leaders could ascend to their rightful level of responsibility. But now, citizens could assure their ascendancy if they were able to arouse the ardor of the citizens and were able to formulate most adroitly the aspirations of the state.

Malila brushed past the guards and into the lobby.

[1] “The proper way to give a command to your new Turing Metaphract (ED v3.94) is always to begin on a new line. Announce to the ED that this is a command by the use of ‘,’ and then give the desired command. Lines that do not begin this way will not be taken as commands, although, in time, your ED may act on them once it gets used to you. You can guess the effect of your comments and commands by the ‘verbals’ you get from your ED, a new and exciting feature of Turing Metaphracts. Your ED will gradually learn how you speak mentally and will pick up your personal habits. This comes with time and practice. Don’t be disappointed if your ED finds it too hard at first.” Concepts of Reality Engineering Inc., Beginner’s Guide for the Turing Metaphract (Education Device [ED] v3.94) (Passaic: COREprint, AU 64), 4.

[2] Entertainment personalities masquerading as political commentators

Excerpt Outland Exile: Chapter Three “lunch With the Girls”

2016-09-03

Malila had first met her friends while they had all been crèchies. They each knew more embarrassing details about the others’ lives than bore consideration.

Stealing a glance at the model of a blue whale suspended in the lobby, Malila avoided the packs of ululating children, E3 couples looking for secluded spots, and the state nannies.

One child, who had to be less than six years old, had unfastened himself from the harness and made a break for the worn marble steps. A nanny, brightly painted in a cheerful abstract, wheels smoking, cut him off before he gained the tactical advantage of the first step. The young malefactor was gripped, none too gently, and brought stumbling back to his place.

As they neared, Malila heard the nanny above the noise.

“Janes Brigham Cherbourg, you have violated field trip rule number three. You have brought shame on Créche Alinsky 188 … and you have made me very … disenchanted … with your behavior.” The rest of the machine’s remonstrations were lost in the bustle, but Janes Cherbourg did, indeed, appear penitent.

Malila entered the restaurant, and the gabbling of the children subsided.

The table Hecate had reserved for them was delightful. Delicate gilt chairs surrounded expanses of white linen and shining silver. Nearby a string quartet played some Dutilleux. Exuberant vines wound around lattices along several of the walls, burdened with pale trumpet-shaped flowers that perfumed the whole room. Malila was the first to arrive, but she did not have to wait long.

Two of her friends appeared together: blonde Alexandra in her well-tailored academia-blue suit and Hecate in her government gray. Only after they had been seated did Lucy sweep in with a dramatic dark-red cloak, arriving with her glad exclamations and pointed accusations of neglect.

Lucy was still holding forth when their final component arrived; Tiffany, trotting with her head down, her long white coat fluttering behind her, always came last.

“Now we can all breathe. All present and accounted for! It has been so very long … six months? I was worried you all had forgotten me!” said Lucy, throwing back the red cloak and making as credible an imitation of neglected virtue as the small stage allowed.

“You don’t fool us, Luscena! You have been the one that always has to sleep to noon and uses the ‘I have a matinee’ excuse, aren’t you?” said Alexandra, smiling.

Before Lucy could respond, Tiffany cut in. “Alex, don’t! That is just going to get you the ‘I am merely a pawn of my craft … a victim of my artistic genius’ soliloquy, you know.”

Luscena opened her mouth briefly and closed it to peals of laughter.

Attentive waiters arrived and passed them elegant menus. Having already decided on the filet de sole au citron vert herself, Malila listened with plagiarized interest to her friends’ choices and indecisions.

“Everything looks so good! I love the fettuccine here … but I’ll just have the garden salad,” said Tiffany Collins, to Malila’s right.

Malila suppressed a smile, thinking her friend was on yet one more diet. Tiffany had auburn hair and was dressed in a pale shade of her league’s green. She seemed even more professionally preoccupied than usual. As children, while Malila and Luscena had been egging each other on, Tiffany had been the one to mollify juvenile rage at imagined insults.

In contrast to Tiffany’s soft and melodious voice, Lucy’s projected to the corners of the room. Lucy used her talents well. Malila was pleased for her. As Luscena Kristòf, a rising star of the legitimate theater, she had just won accolades in the revival of Memoir of a Protégé.

Lucy, who was on Tiffany’s right, ordered an herb omelet and a glass of wine without consulting the menu and immediately started her own interrogations.

“Alexandra, my love, I understand you are on the Art Task Force for this year? Are you going to fund the New-Artist Grants better? Phillipa—you know, Phillipa Dvorak—actually had to wait tables last year to make ends meet while she was staging her new thing. What’s it called, Malila? I know you remember.”

Before Malila could answer that she did not remember, the quicksilver of Luscena’s interrogations had moved on to complaining about the woeful delays in the scheduling of aesthetic surgical procedures.

“It’s not like this is vanity, Tiffany. I need my breast augmentation, you know. It is a necessity for my craft. After all, our bodies are our …” said Luscena, unwisely pausing for dramatic effect, which allowed her companions to say in unison, and with choreographed dramatic poses.

“… instruments. They are the brushes we use to paint art on the canvas of the stage!”

The women, absent Luscena, dissolved into peals of laughter.

Tiffany, a health-care provider, hurried on. “But, Lucy, the boob jobs are handled in turn. I have nothing to do with scheduling, honest.” Tiffany, compassionate and hardworking, even if not the most astute, served her profession well, a young and vital population needing little medical care other than obligatory immunizations, euthanasia for the chronically ill, and plastic surgery. Tiffany was always authentically distressed at Lucy’s dilemmas.

The waiter took the rest of the orders while Luscena pouted. By the time the food arrived, she apparently had forgiven everyone for their plebian attitudes and was delivering a convoluted tale that appeared to be merely an occasion for the flinging forth of Names.

Finally reaching a stopping point, Luscena paused to attack her omelet. “Fathercock! It’s cold.”

“Don’t be crude, dear Lucy. It’s only cold because you talk so much … and we all want to hear every word you have to say, my love,” responded Alexandra at Malila’s left.

Malila laughed with the rest. Alexandra O’Brian had her own ways of grabbing attention. While very young, the other four children had adopted her when they’d fathomed the vicious wit she could deploy for the general welfare. Then cripplingly shy, Alexandra had been too timid to bend a breakable rule. She’d found her remedy in academia. After gaining a BA, MA, and two PhDs (theology and political science) at Yal-Vard, she had assumed the Sharpton Chair of Practical Democracy at Nyork City University in 73.

“You should talk, Alex. I see you on the ’nets more than I see Gordon,” Malila inserted.

Alexandra smiled her trademark smile and patted Malila’s hand. “Just trying to do my little part for the Unity when I’m asked.” Malila always wondered who did the asking but admired the liberties it brought Alexandra. Malila self-consciously ran a hand through her short, straight black hair.

With her blonde shoulder-length hair, smooth brow, and large blue eyes, Alexandra always radiated a sincerity politicians lusted to emulate. More than once, she had turned down an offer to join the government, saying she could never make the hard choices that governing required. The solemn woman to her left understood.

Hecate Hester Jones was in government. She was medium: average height, medium-brown hair, and medium build. She and Malila had arrived at Unity Crèche Maddow #213 within days of each other, both “illegals,” children raised by private citizens before being discovered.

Usually finding it difficult to break into the torrents of words issuing forth from Luscena and Alexandra, Hecate was satisfied to dabble in the back eddies of their conversations. Today she was even more withdrawn, Malila noted, but while arranging the luncheon yesterday, Hecate had been animated, even excited. The contrast disturbed her.

Malila’s O-A, usually quiescent during meetings, came to life.

A hunt, concluding with the harvesting of two large male Movasi whales has been announced. The successful hunter has been identified as Second Lieutenant Malila E. Chiu, of the DUFS Battalion Thirty-Two, hunting in a sea avatar designed and built by the Unity forces with consultation with CORE Inc.

Very good, Edie.

Send the CORE address to everyone at the table.

The combination of sights, sounds, and gustatory sensations rose up to overwhelm each of the others. Faces became fixed, eyes dilated, and hands carrying glasses of wine froze before returning to the table. No one spoke. After a moment, Malila played it for herself as well.

Once more breaking through the plume of blood to surprise the huge Movasi, her sea avatar attacked. She luxuriated again in the sharp metallic smell-taste of the blood as she passed through it. She sensed the juddering thrill as her beak sliced along the smooth green flank.

Mesmerized by what their inner senses were witnessing, all the young women paused. Luscena was the first to react.

“Father me, Mally! You are a fecking celebrity! How marvelous! Isn’t that exciting?”

“And what a thrill to be able to use the best equipment the Unity has to offer,” added Alexandra.

Tiffany turned a little pale but said, “Excellent hunting, Mally! That is going to fill a lot of dinner plates. You are so brave!”

“How could you be so courageous, Mally? Those monsters were three times bigger than you, at the very least, and there were two of them!” said Luscena.

“So much blood, Mally. I had no idea they were so big,” murmured Hecate at the last.

“That is going to get you a birth certificate for sure, my love!” continued Luscena.

“Do you think so?” Malila said.

“Absolutely. I got a birth certificate last month just for appearing at the Equinox rallies. You’re a shoo-in, without a doubt,” said Alexandra.

The comment took Malila by surprise. Birth certificates entitled the holder to the use of a state-owned breeder. She had never met one, nor did she wish to. They were gross, slow-moving puddles of flesh, Sapped—drugged in a way that eliminated higher brain functions—and maintained for reproduction alone.

Another citizen with another birth certificate typically provided the other half of the genome. After that, all the messy business of selection, implantation, gestation, and birthing would be the duty of the Department of Reproductive Services. After its birth, caring for the child until it was E4 would be a crèche responsibility. Malila could put “certified parent of a child” on her résumé, and others would notice. The Unity was serious about its assertion that all production, even reproduction, belonged to the state.

“Who is going to be the father, Malila?” asked Tiffany.

“Don’t be crude and sexist, Tiff. She hasn’t even got the thing yet,” Alexandra said.

“I’m not being sexist. She wants to have the chance of having a boy or a girl, doesn’t she? You need sperm for that.”

“They can always substitute a stock Y chrome. It’s in the contract,” Alexandra said.

“Believe me, you don’t want any of the stock Ys out there. Get a Y from someone who is actually using his!” replied Tiffany.

“So who is it going to be, Mally?” asked Luscena.

“Oh, you know …” said Malila, waving her hand in the air equivocally. In truth, she had hardly thought about it. None of her current patrons had ever expressed an interest in breeding. As a career move, the “mother” designation was desirable, but the idea of meeting a person in the future who had somehow been part of your own body was repulsive.

“Whatever you do, don’t you go and use Oui-Donors. It’s just too crass,” added Luscena.

“I promise I’ll have your approval before the dirty deed is done. Satisfied?”

The conversation drifted to Luscena’s new project, her first as a director, for the revival of The Cadre’s Triumph.

“That one has been out of production for maybe eight years, Luscena, dear. What makes you think you can resuscitate that old story?” asked Alexandra.

“Well, the censors might let you change some of the text—you know, make it more modern,” said Hecate. Conversation stopped as all eyes went to Hecate. She usually did not have much to say about the theater.

“I didn’t know you had this self-destructive streak. Bibberty James tried that in ’66, and see where it got him,” Alexandra replied and then smiled.

“Bibberty is so yesterday, my dear. He had no patrons deserving of his talent. This is going to be bold, new, untried. All I need are patrons and donors,” said Luscena.

“I just read the original script of Triumph. What we think is the canon has already changed a lot compared to the original. I think you’ve a shot at getting it through, Lucy,” Hecate said quietly. “I mean, they can’t say that changes have never been done before,” she added quickly, looking down at her mostly untouched fettuccine.

In the silence that descended, Tiffany asked quietly, “How did you know it was the original?”

“It was in a paper book, an old book.”

“When did you start dealing in contraband, love?” Alexandra smiled.

Smiling back, Hecate said, “Nothing so exotic, Alex. You know Victor; he likes it when I tell him stories while we are in bed. He got me special permission to go to an old book warehouse. Lots of old data dumps but also books on actual paper. This one was published in 2060 CE; that’s AU 8!”

“Father me, Heccy. It seems you have a real conquest there.” Tiffany smiled quickly. It was an old joke among them. Victor and Hecate had been together for ages. This time Hecate took the comment at face value.

“You think? I just think Victor’s a lonely man who will retire in eighteen months. Everyone he grew up with has already been denounced or retired,” returned Hecate.

There was an uncomfortable silence until the waiters circulated some very good khat tea.

After everyone had finished, on cue Luscena rose, shrieking as she looked at her watch. Her personal skimmer was announced a second later. She swept out in a characteristic welter of air-kisses, insincere promises, and dubious threats.

The magic broken, Alexandra and Tiffany left, heads together, discussing some interprofessional controversy. Hecate lingered.

Malila was pleased; Hecate deserved her undivided attention. The two women walked arm in arm into the lobby, stopping under the model of the blue whale. Malila took Hecate’s hand to stop her, turning her around and looking into her solemn face.

“Heccy, you haven’t said three words to me today. Tell me what’s wrong?”

“Oh, Mally, it’s work. Talk about a fathering screwup.”

Malila’s heart sank. “It’s always work with you, Heccy.”

Hecate gave a wan smile. “This is my first S22 posting, and I want to do everything perfectly!”

Malila took both her hands in her own. Hecate’s hands were moist and cold. “Tell me what is wrong. You hardly ate anything. What has happened?”

Hecate looked down, away from the eyes of her friend, before looking back into her face.

“The numbers don’t add up, and no one seems to care! A storm wiped out the maize harvest in Lankster in June, and we lost the krill farms off Negzed when the nets let loose. Fatherfecking workers! They let the nets rot in the water. It will be years before we build up the effusion again.”

“Oh Heccy, you must be terribly disappointed!”

“On top of that, the algae plantation at Rawlee has been contaminated somehow, and the whole facility has to be shut down, flushed, and restarted. Even without that, our production has gone down the last three years, and no one knows why. We are going to have eight million tonnes less food this winter.”

“Oh my. How do you think they will make it up?”

“They can’t make up the difference this year. If they slaughtered all the animals, we’d still have a shortfall. Fathering feckers …”

Malila let Hecate run on, though most of it was lost on her. Malila had no idea what an effusion was. What she did know was that her friend was in pain. Hecate had always felt things more than Malila. It had been one of Malila’s unspoken delights as a child to hold a crying Hecate and feel the other child’s sobs dissolve in her arms.

This time Hecate looked up, her eyes bright but tearless. “I asked my supervisor, Undersecretary Rice, what the Unity was going to do, but she just smiled and said not to worry, that they’d make up the difference in the wheat harvest … But that’s crazy. It’s already in! The protein profile is all wrong …”

“Heccy, Heccy, it’s not your fault! No one can blame you. You are just doing your job. Someone will fix it once they know about it. Besides, I just added two whales to the larder, now didn’t I?” Malila laughed.

Malila sensed Hecate stiffen in her embrace and step away.

“You don’t understand, Mally! Whales are gone! People are going to die this winter, and the government knows it already. They aren’t going to do anything!” Hecate stepped back, her stricken eyes seeming to hold Malila in their crosshairs.

“I’m sure the Solons know their business,” Malila started in her most consoling voice, but she stopped at Hecate’s scathing look at mention of the Solons, the ultimate rulers of the Unity.

Pity swept briefly across Hecate’s face just before her professional mask clicked into place.

“Yes, of course, the Solons … I’m sure all will be well.” Hecate faded into the distance even as Malila held her hands.

Hecate disengaged herself and pantomimed looking at her watch, continuing without hesitation, “Oh … look at the time! I should have been back at the department ages ago. Bye-bye, Malila. This was fun. We should do this more often. Bye for now.”

Hecate turned, pushed through the doors, and almost ran down the stone steps under the scarred lintel and out into the street.

Malila looked up into the serene gaze of the blue whale as the gray light of the city filtered down from the high windows above.

Free Read of Outland Exile Chapter Four: the Message

2016-09-05

Troubled, Malila threaded her way back along the maze of beltways and returned to her quarters. The Unity was everything that she knew. She prided herself in how her daily labors furthered the goals and the welfare of her country. Hecate and the Unity were almost coequals in Malila’s universe. It was inconceivable they would not coincide.

What did Hecate mean by saying the whales were gone?

How should I know, frak? I don’t understand it. Do you?

Um, there are those messages, Lieutenant.

I’m not going to deal with that in the middle of a beltway, frak. Don’t talk until I get home.

Malila exited the beltway at the Bedsty Plaza. She half-listened to the street argot she heard in passing. She was finding it an incessant trial to incorporate each day’s new words that came and went in a deluge of inside jokes, comm’net comedian catchphrases, and hand gestures. It was like riding a tiger.

She had seen a tiger once—malevolent, solitary, and huge—at the People’s Biodominium. The huge dome in Bronkz had once been a venue for sporting events but was now filled with all the improbable animals the Unity had been wise enough to exterminate since its rise. Those remaining specimens were maintained as a cautionary tale about the chaos of the outlands. As an additional mission, they demonstrated useful Unity animals: dogs, cats, horses, cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. It was important, her teachers told her, to know the animals in the food chain, whatever that meant.

After her first visit to the Biodominium, while still an E2, the animals had terrorized her dreams for weeks thereafter. Huge bears with scythe-like talons and slavering jaws had awoken her night after night. Wolves’ eyes had gleamed out of the darkness of her nightmares. Massive bison had trampled her in her sleep. She no longer went to the Biodominium.

Actually, she was professionally familiar with the dogs and horses. DUFS patrols used dogs. Nothing on foot escaped those beasts, all drool and teeth. Malila did not like them; the feeling was mutual.

DUFS used horses for crowd control. Last year Malila had done her six-month stint in a mounted troop. Her thighs ached at the memory.

Finally back to her apartment building, Malila took the ascender, stepped through the portal into her quarters, and then reconnected her O-A to the CORE.

Disconnection had not been an option with her first implant; it had always been there to monitor her health and well-being. As an E1, when she had gotten her first implant, she finally had been allowed to buy ThiZ, the finest drug of all thoe available. ThiZ was the hallmark of a good society.

Malila had only received the second implant, her O-A, when she’d started cadet training for the DUFS as an E4, ten years old. A slight flick of her eyes and a touching by her mind to a place in her thoughts was all it took to reconnect. It had taken her weeks to learn how to do that the first time.

Learn was an inadequate word. The implant had learned her as much as she’d learned it. They called it questing. It was like looking at the surface of a pond. She could see life reflected from the surface, but also she could see through it, move her mind through it, to another reality refracted on the other side. Her O-A was as much a part of her as her own skin. In a way, it was her skin, she thought. Questing now was second nature, and she barely noticed the differences between reality and the interface except in the subliminal way one sorts out reflections in a world of glass and mirrors.

Okay, Edie, I can deal with the messages now.

Dump the advertisements. Keep all personal notes sorted into those from patrons, superior officers, and inferior officers. Show me the important message now.

“… damage was presumed to have occurred due to nonfunctionality in electrical-signal distant-sensing devices (ESDSD/25.1-D through 37.7-A), which appears to some observers, due to the stereotypical repetition of the event, to be nonaccidental in nature …”

“Fathermuckers!”

Sunprairie was down—again.

She had been a young cadet when the Unity had voted to stop patrolling the outlands. The area was, properly speaking, a part of the territory inherited from the old republic, but it was unprofitable, undeveloped, and barren.

In place of armed patrols, the Unity had established a network of listening posts hundreds of kilometers within the outlands to detect any challenge to the rule of order. At her posting, earlier in the year, Malila had accepted the common wisdom that the job of maintaining the station was a nuisance assignment.

It was supposed to require little of her attention. It was supposed to be merely scheduling maintenance rounds by warrant officers as avatars (OAAs)—officers whose personalities have been transmitted into real-world mechanisms called avatars—and a certified recycled neuroablated (CRNA) squad, made up of criminals who had been Sapp-treated and rendered loyal troopers. It was supposed to be a foolproof, unglamorous, but risk-free job for a newly minted second lieutenant. It was supposed to be fair.

Sunprairie had been anything but fair. Twice before, she had sent repair teams. Each time the OAA had found the pulse cannon depleted, the door blown, and random sabotage disabling the sensors. When retaken, the stations had been deserted. CRNAs had scoured the area within twenty klicks with no results.

If the ’net commentators singled her out for criticism, her short list of patrons would fade away. Demotion and denunciation would follow. Unless she wanted to commit professional suicide, she could not even suggest that the Unity’s strategy was faulty, the station design flawed, or the technology defective.

“Fathering bizzles!”

Malila shook herself. It was too early for her ThiZ. The feeling of elation and self-actualization she got from ThiZ was enough to make her … not dependent … not that. ThiZ enlarged life.

She popped the little yellow pill unconsciously, without looking for a glass of water.

What’s the matter with these knuckle-dragging savages? They hadn’t challenged the listening posts like Sunprairie for a generation. Sunprairie was the most distant station, farther west even than Lake Mishygun. What did they want?

Find strategic motives for attacking a fortified location.

“Attacks on fortified sites are for the following motives: (1) the site is valuable or contains value that will be obtained or destroyed by occupation, (2) the site itself will become valuable after occupation or because of its occupation, or (3) occupation of the site will cause others to value it or bring value to it.” Analects of Admiral Wescon.

Edie, do you know how silly that sounds? The savages just cut some wires and threw some paint around, like a bunch of crèchies!

following orders, squilch. Do you want more examples? Sergeant Hallux has some sayings about assaulting ladies’ citadels of virtue …

Not the same, frak. Let me think.

Edie, nonsentient, bordering on silly, was still a good mental grindstone for Malila.

The Unity wasn’t getting very much from Sunprairie, but neither were the savages. In the prior two raids, they had not stolen as much as a length of cable. The stations had no value, contained no value, offered no value. Sunprairie hadn’t detected any outlander occupation since it had been built.

Sunprairie had failed in its mission and was now consuming Unity resources.

And when she thought of it, there was her answer! Malila almost looked around to see if her thoughts had been overheard.

The solution was simplicity itself.

Outland Exile: Chapter 5&6

2016-09-07

The Four Rules

With a tingle of excitement, Malila realized Sunprairie could be converted into a decisive stroke against the outlanders.

Like most decisive strokes, if she promoted this up the hierarchy, it would fail. One faction or another would get wind of it and find it easier to denounce her than join the effort. If she tried it solo, then again she would fail. She needed help from officers of her own level who would betray her in an instant if they thought it would gain them an advantage. If she were successful, all of them would appear to be part of a conspiracy. The comm’nets loved the idea of conspiracies.

“Small conspiracies fail, and large conspiracies are betrayed.” Analects of Juan Fugit.

Really, Edie? I am busy here. Shush!

And her help needed to be just the right size.

Malila started a list and collected six, with herself making seven. She reread the list and struck off the second-to-last name.

Better to leave him out of it entirely.

Miramundo Morales had shown, of recent days, a little too much undeserved confidence. Not brilliant and with no notable accomplishments, he displayed too much arrogance for a young lieutenant. It smacked of a concealed liaison with a senior officer, and Malila was not going to share the fate of those who exposed delicate secrets of the top brass. Six was sufficient for her purposes.

Edie started sending the summons for the meeting.

Moving down the sinuous, shining mental corridors of her O-A display; passing the choke points; giving the right passwords and countersigns; bringing up data, statistics, images, maps, and video, Malila collected the elements of her story. Rule 1: The story has to be absolutely true.

Colonel Sophia Henchly, one of her first patrons, had taught her the four rules. Sophia had been a very crafty lady indeed.

In another portion of the CORE, an officer of the Democratic Unity Forces for Security sent a memorandum to his superior officer. This was all well, proper, and … invidious. He reviewed it with pleasure.

TO: Lt. Gen. V. Suarez

FROM: Lt. Col. E. Jourdaine

RE: Administrative actions in re. Unity Sensor Station 43.11.0/97_89.13.56/41 (SUNPRAIRIE)

14.17.32.local_11_10_AU76

As reported previously, failures at SUNPRAIRIE continue. Second Lt. Chiu is the officer responsible in re. SUNPRAIRIE operationality.

It has come to my attention that Lt. Chiu is contravening protocol in as:

She has inaugurated an ad hoc committee of inquiry for the failures at SUNPRAIRIE whose members include:

Herein the gray man included a list of a seven young officers of the DUFS.

Included for effect, if not for accuracy, was Second Lieutenant Miramundo Morales.

If Jourdaine’s information and his conclusions were correct, Morales’s name on the list of petty conspirators would trigger Suarez’s outrage, plummeting young Lieutenant Chiu into the depths of the command structure. Like a great and unequal lever, Chiu’s abrupt descent would elevate the slim gray man the short distance to the interior of Suarez’s staff.

Chapter 6

Conspiracy

An incessant pinging alerted Malila that all her committee members had arrived, each represented by a headshot looming in her O-A. The faces floated in and out of prominence as one or another factor played out in her thoughts. She started:

“Greetings to you all. I am pleased by your prompt response.”

Stock greetings, as expected, cascaded in, but even so, Malila detected the fleeting grimaces of several of them. They had come to get information, but they did not have to like it.

“Here is the situation as we now understand it. Station Sunprairie is down for the third time in three months.”

Malila listened to the rising babble, the faces surging in and out of prominence as one or another of her colleagues made or deflected accusations.

These people would fight each other until there was nothing left unless she gave them the setup. She rapped a mental gavel and killed all the audio outputs except her own.

Rule 2: The setup makes the story sing. A good setup arranged facts, simplified them, augmented them where needed, and gave the right facts structure and weight.

“Our best understanding about this outrage is that a dangerous new ideology has arisen among the barbarians. The natives have apparently decided that Sunprairie represents a gift from their spirit guides. They have gained ingress to Sunprairie, we have found, by sacrificing victim after victim to the pulse cannon, depleting the magazines, and using their stone weapons on the door. I cannot describe what obscene ceremonies are most likely being performed within this ‘sacred precinct’ even as we speak.”

Malila opened the audio, and the babbling among committee members accelerated right on cue. Malila smiled to herself.

“Hold your questions until the end, please.

“We believe these events represent the rise of a new and radical band of shamans among the savages, a force that, we think, must be thwarted as soon as possible.”

Rule 3: Don’t confuse people with too many choices. If she chose the right setup, told it correctly, then narrowed the options, subtly slanting her audience, they, like sheep, would come together into one box, all facing a blank wall … with but one gate. Once she opened that gate, the flock would crowd in, anxious not to be last to go through, lining up to be trimmed.

Now was the time to call in her “black capital,” the mass of missteps and misdemeanors she’d collected on everyone. A little snapping at the heels to encourage them on would be proper.

“Unfortunately, and, Jorge, you may want to take note of this for the future, munition deliveries have been slow this month. That delayed our regular maintenance trip for three days. With this last attack, we did not have full magazines in the pulse cannon.”

“Yes, but you see, Lieutenant Chiu—”

“Moving on,” she said, “we have the matter of security upgrades that needed installing. Hari? You’re taking over for Fillipa there, aren’t you? I think I talked to her about that some time ago. She may have left notes. I’d check it out if I were you.”

This time just a nod and no objections.

Malila went on from one to another, alluding to deficiencies of one or another department as she did. She would mention a name. A head would come up, looking startled, the look deepening as its owner apprehended the vulnerability, each face solidifying as the brain behind it evaluated its chances.

There were always deficiencies in the operation of these large departments. It mattered very little that the magazines were short a few rounds. The attack had emptied the entire magazine within two hours. No security upgrade would have protected the station once the savages had gotten close enough. Each of the half-dozen accusations, while true, was neither new nor outrageous.

Malila smiled to herself. At the end of her presentation, not one of her coworkers was able to meet her eyes. She could lead them where she wanted to now.

“I think if we cooperate, we can come out of this unscathed, all of us. Moreover, we can get rid of a nuisance that is no longer serving the best objectives of the Unity.”

“If this is such a good idea, why not send it up command and have them pass on it?”

“Oh, come on, Torq. You know the answer to that one. One faction or another will decide it is easier to attack any good idea than it is to cooperate,” she replied.

Torq Hagken from Signals Procurement—tall, blond, and with a ready laugh—would under other circumstances be a good candidate for Malila’s first liaison without patronage. Now he needed to be brought up a bit.

“Let’s not be foolish. We represent here maybe three or four of the strongest factions, and all of us cooperate on a daily basis. Our bosses don’t.”

There was generalized shaking of heads and wry smiles.

“Okay, saying that could be an accurate statement sometimes, maybe, what do you have in mind?” replied Torq.

Malila took a deep breath and said, “Let me see if we can sum this up. Sunprairie is the farthest station. It sits in an uninhabited, untraveled wilderness. In the long run, the DUFS will probably abandon it.

“However, the DUFS can’t be seen to retreat before the savages. Agreed?”

There was the expected bobbing of heads.

Rule 4: Don’t be greedy. Let everyone win, and you can trim them again later.

“If the outlanders are so intent on Sunprairie, let’s let them have it. Fix it up, get it running, pack in C24 until the walls bulge, then back away slowly. The savages break into it again, and while they are hooting and drooling, the C goes off, leaving a message even they can actually read.

“We kill off these shamans. The survivors think it is their own evil spirits that have jibbed them. In a stroke we get the barbarians to back off, cut the head off their leadership, and rid ourselves of a liability. Questions?”

“What about the loss of property. You are advising we blow up an entire installation to kill off a couple of hillbillies?” asked Sharon DeWhit from Logistics.

“Look at the costs we have expended so far this year on fixing the place, Sharon. The operation would pay for itself in four rotations. The truth is we cannot hold Sunprairie. We either lose it for no gain, or we get some advantage from it and stop the hemorrhaging.”

“The loss of a facility is not going to go unnoticed. What happens when our bosses start looking into this?” asked Hari.

“If”—Malila looked each of the others in the eye—“we stick together, it will be, at worse, only bad planning on Jorge’s and my part: Jorge for overfilling a request for C24 and me for leaving it at Sunprairie. The best is that we … all of us … are given commendations. I will see to it that we all get rewarded.”

“Why are you so willing to sacrifice yourself—and me—for this? What’s your angle?” asked Jorge.

That was the question, wasn’t it? Sometimes to lead is to lose, she thought.

“To tell the truth, I think your part in this is the least advantageous, Jorge. I can’t see how we can blow up the station unless we get the C from you. That will always leave a trail. If things go south, you will take a hit before anyone else. At the same time, due to considerations not herein under discussion …”

Jorge almost immediately looked as if he was going to vomit. Most of the others experienced enough of his dismay through their shared O-A connection to turn a little green themselves. Jorge’s black-capital account with Malila was reaping dividends. Malila sent an encouraging message and documentation that his debt would be reduced … in part. He subsided.

“… I believe Jorge will stand nobly by my side in this hour of need.

“But,” Malila continued, “what’s my angle? It is a legitimate question. Here goes: One, I think this will work. It will be seen as a victory, and I will get a lot of the credit. I will risk the fallout if it doesn’t work. Two, it is the best for the DUFS. Sniffer stations are a bad idea, fixed fortification and all that. We would be better off patrolling the outlands in person … and that means more combat missions for all of us. Our bosses have trouble making compromises. We need to do this. Three, if any of you rat me out, I promise you, I will rat out the rest. Do I make myself clear?”

In the end, the committee made their peace with her. They would all be extraordinarily helpful in getting Sunprairie up and running one more time. They would all take a little heat from their superiors about their actions, if discovered, but it would not be career bending. Malila had just started the self-congratulatory preadjournment phase when Edie spoke up in her little-girl voice.

Oh-oh.

One and then another of her audience looked up, spoke a few unheard words, and disappeared, the image replaced by the Unity logo, an eagle grasping a fasci[1] in one claw and lightning in the other. Just then her own O-A went blank. She felt as if she had been struck blind. The subtle noise of circulation fans in her room stopped. Behind her, the portal latch locked with a snick.

Her heart surged, pounding in her ears, as her palms greased with sweat. Malila waited. It came almost as a relief when her vision filled with the looming face of her division commander, Lieutenant Vivalagente Suarez. With steel-gray hair cut severely and pulled back into a flat braid, emphasizing a hawk nose, severe eyes, and a hard mouth, it was a harsh face and not a happy one.

“Second Lieutenant Chiu, Malila E., E11, S24, 59026169, attention!”

All her resources, of the CORE and her own person, came to taut singularity.

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Then, to her horror, slowly, Malila sensed herself pressed down, crumpled from her posture of attention, bent, submitted, and reduced, kneeling before the image.

Her denunciation had started.

Observing through his O-A, Jourdaine thought it was the most profoundly humiliating seppuku he had ever witnessed. He quickly muted the emotional inputs. The discovery of Suarez’s attachment to Miramundo Morales was reaping a richer bounty than he had hoped. Suarez viewed Malila Chiu as a dangerous but lightly armed adversary. Taking each of Chiu’s sins, other than the real one, Suarez identified and cited the appropriate regulation. On her knees, Chiu was forced to recant, to plead, as every dignity and privilege she had rightfully earned was ripped away.

Suarez, even in her rage, never mentioned Morales’s name, and Chiu would never know it had been added to her list of committee members. The real cause for her denunciation would be a lifelong mystery for Chiu.

Jourdaine had spent a great deal of time and influence uncovering Suarez’s weak spot. Current Unity policies had not helped. Sexual liaisons of any imaginable number, composition, or equipage were tolerated. The only remaining sins, it appeared, were greed, failure, and favoritism. Suarez was inconveniently ascetic and awkwardly successful. However, to Jourdaine’s surprise, Vivalagente Suarez was blessed with a younger brother.

Somehow, Suarez had been able to identify and connect with her sibling. She had arranged for his advancement well ahead of any demonstrated ability on the boy’s part.

If seeming to include Morales in a plot, any plot, made Suarez react, it would confirm his suspicions. Her reaction to this counterfeit danger was so wildly out of proportion that it simultaneously confirmed Jourdaine’s theory about Morales and ingratiated him with Suarez.

And Malila Chiu had paid for all the heavy lifting. No doubt, after rehabilitation, she would become a perpetual ensign in some outer district until retired. By then, Suarez would be a bad memory and Jourdaine himself a Solon … or better.

The immaculate poignancy of his success made Eustace Jourdaine laugh.

[1] Rods bundled around an ax; the emblem flanks the Speaker’s chair in US Congress and is the source of the word fascism

Outland Exile: Chapter Seven

2016-09-07

Salvation through Work

Suarez pronounced sentence upon her. When the portal to Malila’s quarters unlocked, a detail of CRNA guards entered, disarmed her, and took station ahead and behind as they double-quick marched her out of the building. None spoke.

Edie was gone; her O-A was now a buzzing blur of static.

All Malila could see ahead were the moving black backs of her guards. She caught glimpses of startled citizens watching her as she jogged past, their faces the odd mixture of horror and the quiet glee of the uninvolved spectator. The tramp of the soldiers’ boots surrounded her. The weight of a full bladder made her fear shaming herself before men she might have commanded. Her lungs burned.

It was nightmare hours later before the heavy metal door closed behind her at Battry Island.

Malila found herself in darkness. Throughout that fetid, damp, and dark imprisonment, a thought animated her. She searched on hands and knees, finding no bed, water, food, or shard of glass. Only in failure did she weep. With no weapon, the satisfaction of leaving her tormentors with only a corpse was beyond her.

In the middle watches of the night, Malila’s eyes adjusted, finding the cell not entirely dark. A single ray of light gleamed around the door, lighting a fingernail-sized patch of concrete floor. Malila emptied herself into watching the particle of light, small, like a faint star. Her nausea retreated. If she looked too directly, it vanished. By studious disregard, she was able to sit and watch its steady unmoving radiance. She was still crouched near it when they came to get her.

Again, there was the storm of barked orders, movement, nausea, and the clang of locking doors. She was thrust into a seat, hot light blinding her. Her O-A came alive. The face of a young ensign, an S16, loomed into her mental vision, capturing all her senses instantaneously.

“Chiu, Malila E., E11, number 59026169.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“You are hereby assigned a rank of S08 without privileges, pay, or entitlements.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“You are ordered to assume temporary command of Platoon B, Second Company, Twentieth Battalion. They are to act as your security detail.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“You are to repair station 43.11.0/97_89.13.56/41, , making it fully operational. You have rations for one week. Transport will rendezvous as convenient October 18, AU 76.”

“On completion, you will report to Correctional Facility 221c.”

“Sir!”

The O-A went dead before she could say, “Yes, sir!”

Nausea and the watery sensation of fear returned.

For long minutes, she heard only the whine of the engine and sensed herself rising, unable to withstand the sun’s glare enough to open her eyes. Almost against reason, she grasped she was not going to be Sapped. She had been given a mission.

She opened her eyes and looked into the belly of the skimmer. It was filled with an unknown platoon of helmeted CRNA troopers. The CRNAs had paid their debt to the Unity, and anonymity was a way to preserve their usefulness after Sapping. CRNAs never removed their helmets in public, and one never entered their barracks unannounced.

Last night she’d had no opportunity to end her shame. Now she had an opportunity to redeem herself. She had a command, if only for the duration of the mission. She had a job, if only a dirty and trivial job. If she failed, she expected nothing but Sapp and a mindless life as a CRNA foot soldier. If she succeeded, perhaps a return to the active service. It was possible.

Acting Second Lieutenant Malila Chiu watched from the jump seat of the skimmer as it floated over the extended city of the Unity and headed west.

Malila tried to calm herself. She had always tried to admire the design of the city. Stark-white residential buildings around neon-green community squares near black factory sections repeated as far as the eye could see. Skilled workers could walk to their jobs and return to snug apartment homes around parklike squares designed for trials, festivals, and celebrations. The pattern stretched away in every direction, accentuated by corridors left for water, sewage, power and intraurban transit. The Unity was one city, from the southern stretches of sea sand to the rocky coasts of the North. Despite herself, Acting Second Lieutenant Chiu smiled at being under way and under orders.

“Ever see the farm belt, Lieutenant?” crackled the voice of the pilot, breaking into her reverie.

“No, no. Pretty much a city girl, sir!”

“Call me Jayden. Right seat here is Sofie. Wave to our supercargo, Sofie!” A hand fluttered overhead from the right-hand seat, which was turned forward, away from her.

A brown line edged up on the horizon. The farm belt stretched several hundred kilometers wide here, Malila supposed. It looked unpromising.

“Here it comes. They just got in the maize and soybeans, so it is pretty barren right now. You should see it in the spring,” the pilot’s voice buzzed into her headphones.

Even at this height, Malila smelled the reek of open brown earth, the tang of rot, and the pungent stench of manure. She had never been airsick before.

“Where are the animals?” Malila asked.

Jayden turned in his seat, his voice coming in through her headset.

“I’ve never seen them from the air. I suspect they are penned up below ground … saves land. What ya think, Sophie?”

“I think it smells like shit, Captain. Permission to increase speed.”

Jayden shrugged at Malila and turned back to the controls.

Malila saw no people. She was watching a train with flatbeds carrying huge green machines moving north when she became aware of the band of abysmal blackness just slicing the horizon. No photograph, comm’net, or CORE sim did it justice. The power belt ran the length of the Unity. Underneath the kilometers-wide power panels lay the real heart of the Unity’s energy: the storage farms that stretched under the landscape, far larger than the panels themselves.

“Behold the power that moves us all,” intoned Jayden as the band filled the entire field of the windshield.

Sophie turned and rolled her eyes at Malila before turning back without saying a word. Malila smiled. It felt good.

With difficulty, Malila pulled her eyes away from the featureless blackness of the power farms back to the horizon. No-man’s-land, interlocking sensors and integrated projectile-fire stations sweeping the free-fire zone, came next. As they neared, Malila saw small heaps of scorched feathers littering the plowed earth.

“Fall migration,” said Sophie.

Then came the Rampart.[1] The Rampart itself was no longer made of anything so crude as concrete. It showed on the horizon as a single line, even from the skimmer’s altitude. It loomed closer, unbroken and resolute. The pulse cannon muzzles along a kilometer curve of the Rampart detected the approaching craft, moving in unison. Even at this distance, Malila saw the bottomless black stare of the weapons. She licked her lips.

“This is Charlie-Alpha-Tango-one-niner-niner. Requesting passage, two skimmers, Station one-one-Dog-Zulu-Bravo,” Jayden said.

Malila heard a distant and imprecise buzzing in her earpiece.

“Whiskey-one, Quebec-November-three, Yankee-one-seven,” Jayden said. There was another buzzing before Jayden finished with “One-niner-niner … out.”

Only when Malila saw the pulse-cannon muzzles drop away from the skimmer did she realize she had stopped breathing. She tried to cloak her too-rapid intake of air.

“Yep, it has that effect on most people the first time,” Jayden’s amused voice whistled through her headphones.

“You can’t tell, but this section is the Western Gate. Try passing anywhere else except at gates, and it doesn’t matter if you have all the codes in the world! Ka-phizzzzt!” he said before laughing.

Most pilots were ThiZed out most of the time, Malila knew; Sofie giggled.

The skimmers floated over the furrows of sundered earth and into the outlands. Something grew out of the debris to rim the destruction with venomous green-and-purple tumors.

The skimmers’ rate of climb was shallow, despite its ability to carry prodigious loads. Jayden took a circuitous route, following small waterless valleys, as they climbed and narrowed. Rank after rank of buildings, their black windows blown out, looking like gigantic stacks of dice in some unknown game of chance, passed underneath. Tall hollow towers, broken into thirds and lying amid the rubble of a mill, looked like ancient ruins. Despite all the simulations, the immediacy of the devastation troubled her. She fancied she could smell the stench of cold, wet embers and decay.

The skimmers reached the last curve of a valley and started a spiraling climb to pass over a series of ridges. Dark shadows of pines and hardwoods replaced the sere slopes and their relics. Before the Commendable Victory, when the People’s Republic (now the Unity) had accepted the submission of the enemy after being forced to blanket much of the wilderness with herbicide, the outlands had supported a generous population. It was impossible for Malila to imagine anything but primordial chaos, thrilling herself to a dose of domesticated horror.

Once free of the mountains, the landscape flattened. Crossing silver threads of rivers laced between dark forests, the skimmers pushed west. Malila made out faint rectangular traces among the trees. The land had memory, even if she did not.

By late afternoon, the skimmers approached their LZ. Despite the blaze of gold, scarlet, and orange leaves, the forest looked less exotic here. The bunker, at the center of a wide free-fire zone, was low and brooding, its four sides windowless and sloping to a flat roof spiked with antennae and weapons. It was an ugly edifice, an unvarnished statement of Unity power.

The skimmers landed. CRNA squads jogged out to secure the tree line. Three-quarters of an hour later, Malila left the skimmer to take possession of Sunprairie.

She was barely on the ground as she heard the ramp door closing behind her and the Skimmerhorn drives accelerating. Willing herself not to watch, Malila heard the skimmers lift free and speed away. It was a policy of the Unity that aircraft minimize their time at low altitude, ensuring that the barbarians never captured advanced technology. Apparently, acting second lieutenants were not a commodity the Unity felt compelled to conserve.

[1] “The Rampart was built just after the Scorching (October AU 8 to February AU 12). Thousands of savages from the final defeat of the outlands (AU 5) attempted to escape disaster by entering the Unity. Wave after wave died under our guns, but not without horrendous losses. It was then that the Solons proposed building the Rampart, and the people heroically responded. Over the years, the Rampart has grown, remaining the boundary marker between chaos and order, famine and plenty, dark and light. The Rampart itself has changed from a few strategic forts into a symbol of the Unity itself, its foundations washed at either end by the sea.” B. Gore, ed., A Young Citizen’s Guide to the History of America, 3rd ed. (Boston: Prometheus Press, AU 71), 210

Free Read Chapter Eight

2016-09-10

Sunprairie

43.11.0/97_89.13.56/41 Sunprairie Station

15.52.07.local_12_10_AU76

The blackened door lay several meters from the portal, the rebar bent like grotesque writhing snakes.

“Sergeant Nelson, is the station secured? Any explosive devices?” Malila voiced into her headset.

“Sir. Yes. Station searched. No hostiles. Detected explosive devices: none.”

“Meet me at the entrance and keep a list of tasks.”

“Sir!”

Nelson could at least act as a scribe. Most CRNAs could hardly talk.

Nelson and she strode through the base, which extended three floors below the hulking mass of the entrance. The first floor was all equipment and vandalized as expected. On the second floor, they passed through the landing into another room, crunching glass underfoot.

“Sir! Second floor, supplies and officers’ quarters, sir. One bed, single; one command terminal, vid screen inoperative; toilet, unflushed; shower, nonfunctional; washbasin, occupied; cook surface, inoperative. Sir!” enunciated Nelson.

Malila examined briefly the damp feral sock that lurked in the washbasin.

“The colony is coming,” in red dribbled paint, decorated the back wall. It surprised her. She had been unaware the outlanders had the written word.

“Sergeant, have this room cleaned; repaint these quarters.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Malila was beginning to feel that her world was becoming understandable … until she started down to the men’s barracks on the lowest floor. A dark and foreboding pool of fetid water opened at her feet.

“Sergeant, the men will bivouac outside until we get their quarters pumped dry. Do we have cover for them? What is the weather forecast?”

“Sir! Shelters, food, water, and latrine facilities sufficient, sir. Weather report: fair weather, five days, minimum four degrees , sir.”

“Good enough, Sergeant. Let’s keep going.”

By the time she finished the inspection, Nelson had a long list of menial jobs for the men. Malila sent him to organize the perimeter.

It would take days to pump the station dry, bring the computers online, reestablish the network, and finally synchronize the signals with headquarters. The actual work was hers; CRNAs were only her bodyguard, nothing more.

Malila began work on the pumps, emerging an hour later dirty and wet after crawling around service conduits and rewiring the connection through the panel. She would be listening to the pump’s low rumble for most of the next two days.

The weather was good for autumn, and the men would be comfortable outside. She was just as glad. CRNAs always made their quarters smell foul after a few hours. As a cadet, she had called them “the rank and vile.” Malila smiled.

Other than the intermittent sound of pulse fire, the rest of the travel-shortened first day was uneventful. Malila guessed there would be an abrupt decline in the local rodent population. The judgment of the CRNAs was poor. The rifles were locked to the platoon by fingerprint readers on the triggers and ID chips embedded in the base of the thumb. It kept them from losing them. They even had the antifratricide subroutine to keep the men from firing at each other by mistake.

CRNAs were the bone and muscle of the DUFS. They were hardy, loyal, and dumb as a sack of hammers, but they fired quickly and accurately and took staggering losses before losing combat integrity. The use of their bodies, absent the higher functions, was the price the Unity had prescribed for their crimes. Lieutenant Chiu climbed up to the destroyed portal.

“Sergeant Nelson!”

“Sir, yes, sir!” rasped into her headset.

“Feed the men, and set a perimeter and watch schedule. Reveille at 0600.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

She felt better when she was issuing commands.

Her quarters were now clean, and the plumbing worked. She ate some rations, showered, threw herself onto the cot, took her ThiZ, and was asleep almost immediately.

The first night was quiet, but, fatigued as she was, Malila did not sleep well. She had her dream, waking her in the darkness with its usual panic. Once awake she could not sleep.

All her hopes balanced at some point in the future. Strangely she missed Edie. Malila had created Edie—well, had designed the accent, the speech, the subroutines, and the commands—and yet she missed her. The useless O-A hummed in her head.

She finally got up at 0200 and walked along the picket line. She found the CRNAs’ brisk challenges reassuring. She returned to her bed an hour later and was able to drop off again with the monotonous hum of the pumps sounding like a huddle of distant voices.

She awoke still grumpy and a bit dazed. Even the CRNAs were having trouble getting started in the cold morning air. It took repeated orders to get them to respond. With luck, she thought, the men would be under cover tomorrow.

Despite her weariness, Malila set to her task with eagerness. Her path to rejoin the DUFS, reenter the Unity, and retrieve her career led through the dank and dimly lit corridors of Sunprairie. In a way, she found it a pleasure to fall back onto her skills as a warrant officer, doing her own work and depending on her own computations. She spent the day fixing one problem only to find another that had been undiscoverable until she had fixed the first.

Every few hours she went to the surface to give a new task to Sergeant Nelson and the CRNAs.

She worked through the afternoon and into the evening before she caught herself nodding. Then she ordered Nelson to wake her at 0530, took her usual hit of ThiZ, stripped down to her skivvies, ate some rations, and threw herself onto the bunk in a haze of exhaustion.

She slept well until, hours later, she awoke in the dark with a hand over her mouth and a knife to her throat.

“Don’t move, lass,” hissed a voice. The hand moved enough for her to breathe, if just barely. She heard the muffled sounds of what might be commands, several loud reports, and then single shots at longer intervals. After the first few, Malila counted thirty-seven shots fired. She felt a jab in her thigh and then nothing

Free Read: Chapter Nine

2016-09-10

Hecate

Nyork, Unity

12.47.11.local_11_10_AU76

Hecate ran down the stone steps of the museum and into the street without looking back, glad that a real excuse compelled her to leave Malila and go where she might think. She hurried along the sidewalk under the awnings put up to catch the buildings in their inevitable decay. After taking the descender for the belt trip uptown, she looked at her watch. She’d get back only a few minutes early, and it made her nervous. She would feel much better if she arrived at her usual fifteen minutes before the end of lunchtime.

Maneuvering to the fastest belt, she started walking whenever she could, dodging small groups of people as she went, and emerged into the towering lobby of the People’s Building at 148th.

Malila was so frustratingly dense at times! It came from her finding things so easy. She had never needed to study at school, had never needed to practice. It gave her a blind spot, almost a cruelty. It also made Malila blind to the failings of the Unity. Hecate supposed that was only reasonable for a DUFS. The whole society heaved and groaned, toiled and struggled, merely to give the soldiers their next shiny toy. Certainly, no one was going to dispute their position of supremacy. Data readouts and ponderous reports were no match for a couple of pulse mortar shells lobbed into a ministry.

Hecate absentmindedly walked to her elevator and announced her floor before settling back into thought.

She had gotten much up too upset about the krill farm and could not blame Malila, or her boss, for not sharing her concern. She supposed Undersecretary Rice herself was engaged in an unseen battle with her own superiors, just as Hecate was engaged with Rice. While Hecate had to contend with awkward facts coming in from the field, Rice had to contend with a couple dozen S22s, like Hecate herself. Rice had to keep the S22s moving forward and had to make her own bosses happy with an analysis of the analyses. Hecate wondered if she would ever have the ruthlessness needed for Rice’s job.

Exiting the elevator, Hecate entered the bustle of her office, dodging the kid from CORE as he sped by on skates.

“Kazzen! Can I talk with you?” she said to the disappearing back of the computer tech.

“Get back to you in a minute, Jones,” echoed back to her in the nearly empty office.

She finally was able to wend her way to the small desk in a windowless corner, and her stomach lurched.

“Jervani-ah, can I help you?” she said, and the young man looked up.

“Oh, uh, hi, Hecate! I was just looking. Nice holos, really,” he said, rapidly putting down. Then he moved it and put down a paper he was carrying. “I should check up on something … Bye,” he said as he walked off.

Dumb and clumsy, Jervani-ah was somebody’s new henchman. It might just be a mind game, but it might be someone trying to gather the innocent coincidences that fueled office politics. It had taken Hecate only a short time to realize that politics was the true product of her whole division.

Rearranging her pictures back to where they should be, she picked up a holo of her friends and herself in a frame she’d made in school as a child, all improbable flowers and pink hearts. A younger Malila smiled back at her from midair as the projection sensed her regard and activated itself.

The image, giving her a faint buzzing feedback as it appeared to rest on her palm, enlarged as she moved it nearer. Malila smiled broadly at her from an age ago. Malila was the true believer of the group and never saw the problems others did. If she led, people followed.

Luscena, next to her in the holo, possessed the sheer vitality to lead, but her talent had seduced her. She preened herself as long as others applauded. Alexandra, next to her, had the smarts but not the personality to make a stand on her own. Alex spun stories to spec, fooling the less wary … and herself along with everyone else.

Hecate moved a finger along the contours of the holo to the last of her friends, Tiffany’s auburn hair off-color in the image. Tiffany was such a good person, bumbling along with her head down, doing good things for less worthy people, and not looking where she was going. It was always so good to have them together again, just like today. It spoke to old times and confidences.

She loved them all, with a childish ardent love that she could never really examine. And she loved Victor.

Hecate’s coworkers started arriving, coming back from lunch the usual thirteen minutes late. She put the holo image down; it faded slowly as she moved to the next holo of Victor himself, looking a bit absentminded as he received the Osmian Prize in 74.

Doctor Victor di Lorenzo was her first patron … her only one for the four years since they’d met. He was one of the people her teachers had helped her choose among the more senior staff when she was an E7, just starting government guild school.

The whole thing had terrified her younger self. Hecate could see the utility of the system easily enough, of course. Take the new kids straight out of the crèche, and have them mentored by the experienced bureaucrats. In exchange for guidance and protection, the thirteen-year-olds provided loyalty and pleasure-sex.

But she had not enjoyed offering herself. It must have shown. In the morning, after each submission ceremony, the other patrons-elect had wished her well and wished her elsewhere. None had accepted her as a protégé.

Victor had been an S31 and an E28 when they’d met. She’d followed the protocol precisely: disrobing, then enunciating the submission speech while looking into his eyes. Victor had held her by the hand before leading her to his bedroom.

He’d held her all night in a warm embrace, listening to her fears and hopes, sharing stories of his life, and letting her sleep. She had risen the next morning to leave, thinking he had rejected her as a protégé, only to be surprised as he gently had pulled her back to his bed and told her of his acceptance.

They had been inseparable ever since. He was not a particularly good patron for someone in the bureaucracy. His area of expertise was in bacteriology, but his work was important and well regarded. Their prolonged relationship had amused and then concerned her teachers. It was a joke among his friends. Neither she nor Victor cared. They were both happy to remain each other’s sole pleasure-sex partner and nearly constant companion.

Victor reminded her of Tiffany, in a way. He was a good man who dealt with the problems at hand and expended little regard for the commotion of life around him. He lived, in his way, a life of quiet seclusion: doing his experiments, collating the data, writing his insightful papers, publishing them, and defending them with humor and dignity. Fame surprised him.

With Victor now an S33 their lives should be easier, but Victor was probably not as good an administrator as he was an investigator. He depended too much on others’ good will and integrity.

Her world revolved between these three centers of gravity: Victor, her friends, and work.

Work … She had found her work fulfilling until Undersecretary Rice had arrived. Her last boss, Wiscoll Root, had always maintained that their job was to get the best information into the most understandable package for the ward leaders and district supervisors to argue over and let the chips fall where they may. As long as the information was sound, he did not care what happened to it.

Undersecretary Rice cared what happened to it … sometimes. She would devote endless efforts to craft a report one day. On another, she would shovel critical findings into an obscure footnote in a huge routine report. Victor had sniffed when Hecate had told him Rice was her new boss.

Hecate replaced Victor’s holo in line and straightened them all again before sitting down to start the report for the now-defunct krill farm. It would be a short report.

A group of touring schoolchildren had arrived to discover the entire effusion was dead or lost back into the ocean. The nets had rotted in the water. The workers had been long gone, their names fictional, the manager a well-protected career bureaucrat in Nyork who most likely had no idea where Negzed was located in the first place. Victor had somehow known something was wrong.

Victor always knew a great deal more than he admitted, which was odd, as he was so nonpolitical. Even granting he was a brilliant man, his influence seeped into odd places, like the book warehouses. Hecate always wondered why they had not just burned the books for fuel during the chaotic days of the Meltdown. Instead, the books had been bundled up and tossed into old warehouses near the wharves. Victor had obtained the pass on a whim when they had been lazing away a Sunday morning in bed.

The volume of old books, the really old ones on paper, was huge. Many had been destroyed by mildew and rats, but some of the books in the interior of the bundles had been saved from destruction. Those she read. She brought the stories back to Victor, and he loved them … but then again, Victor loved her. Hecate mined the warehouses for tales and stories to make Victor laugh and, on occasion, to make him appear as young as when they’d first met. Victor would be forty years old in April AU 78, months from now. Then he would be gone.

Chapter Ten: Suarez and the Gray Man

2016-09-11

DUFS Divisional HQ, Nyork,

Unity 07.11.43.local_17_10_AU76

The skimmer accepted its passenger and traced a seemingly random pattern on empty streets before entering the S30-and-above armored carriageway under the city. It delivered its passenger to an anonymous beige office building three minutes later.

A senior officer of the DUFS strode through the lobby and to the elevator. The elevator moved. Lieutenant Vivalagente Suarez remained brooding.

The Chiu woman had delivered another black eye. The failure of a sensor station was a triviality, and if Chiu had admitted her failure instead of trying to ape her superiors, nothing more would have occurred … other than her demotion. Foolishly, Chiu had jeopardized Miro, knowingly or unknowingly, and there was nothing for it. It had taken years to find him, and Suarez was not going to let this girl mess it up. Looking after Miramundo was the least she could do for her dead parents.

But she had let her anger affect her judgment. In a moment of pique, she’d sent Chiu to fix the station herself. A squad of CRNAs and an OAA would have been sufficient, and Chiu should have been able to put the station to rights in a few days. Instead, the jumped-up little fool had gone missing. Most of the platoon identifiers had died within minutes of each other. The scout craft had discovered Sunprairie still smoldering. The few operating implants had come from the bottom of a mass of charred bodies in a half-submerged stairwell.

It had taken a day to ensure that Chiu was not within the death pit. After recalibration, they had picked up her O-A signal. That had led to a wasted day tacking back and forth across a patch of muddy water on some nameless river in the outlands.

As she stepped from the elevator, she said, “Get Jourdaine in to me as soon as you can, Adrianna,” without breaking stride as she entered the security portal of her office. It was time to see what her new adjutant was good for.

Lieutenant Colonel Jourdaine noted the summons and, turning, emptied the contents of his desktop into a secure drawer. He fastened his own ElectoMag lock onto it and pressed his thumb to the surface to secure it. He left his austere office and began to trot the several floors to his audience with Suarez.

Jourdaine Eustace Tilley, lieutenant colonel, DUFS, E21, S29, had made himself a very useful man, he thought. He had made his career by being useful to his superiors, to the DUFS, and to the nation. One commanding officer after another had given him the jobs that had no glamor if successful and immense disgrace if not successful.

Yet nothing about him had ever seemed to snag the recognition of his superiors. He had gone a full year in General Suarez’s staff before she’d remembered his name reliably. Nonetheless, after his recent elevation to adjutant, he would be the officer to whom Suarez gave the jobs that required subtlety, judgment, and ingenuity. Her demands would serve him well … for a while, at least.

He never stayed within any one command very long. They would name him to a post, he would be quietly proficient for a year or so, and then he would quietly start the rumors. Sometimes his superiors had taken excessive liberties in the distribution of spoils. On other occasions, unit money had been misapplied. Sometimes exposés of darker political ambitions among his fellow officers had surfaced. There was always something. With some clever manipulation on his part, he would enlarge any potential wrongdoing and expose the perpetrators. Then those higher up would promote him and quietly transfer him to another unit. His old commander would retire “for the good of the service.” Thus did Eustace Jourdaine prosper.

Jourdaine smiled more broadly at the irony of it as he exited onto Suarez’s floor.

Even as Jourdaine was shown in, Suarez said, “Tell me about Sunprairie.”

Jourdaine came to parade rest.

“It was a trap, sir. An entire platoon is dead, and Lieutenant Chiu is missing and presumed captured. I assume that was the object of the outages all summer long … to capture an officer for questioning.”

“How many pulse rifles were lost?” she asked.

“Uhh … forty-two plus Lieutenant Chiu’s sidearm.”

“They weren’t recovered when the sensor station was retaken?”

“No, sir. We had to excavate the stairwell to recover the bodies …”

A faint grimace of distaste crossed Suarez’s features. “Spare me the details. Any disfigurements of the bodies, Colonel?”

He stopped for the beat of a heart. She already knew! “Yes, sir, the right forefingers were removed at the DIP joint, as well as skin and tissue of the thenar eminence.”

Suarez looked at Jourdaine and raised an eyebrow.

“Ah, DIP … They cut through the first knuckle … here. And the thenar eminence is where we insert the ID-chip on version S72.” He indicated the base of his thumb.

“So how many signature chips have these savages obtained?”

“Forty-two, sir.”

“How many weapons with their signature chips have we lost in the outlands prior to this?”

This was not going as he had expected. “I don’t immediately know the answer to that question, General Suarez.”

“Five since the start of the Unity. Five total. So now the savages have forty-two Springfield model 72s, our best field weapon, and the lieutenant’s sidearm. Chiu has delivered this disaster into our laps. I hope for her sake she’s dead.”

“May I ask, General, what you propose to do?” Jourdaine kept his face bland for the woman to inspect.

“I plan to give you the problem,” she said finally.

“Yes, sir. How would you like me to proceed? Shall I call a committee meeting of … ‘interested’ parties?”

“Good start, Jourdaine.” She gave him an odd look, hawk-like. He was beginning to feel increasingly mousy.

“Keep me posted,” she said. “The advantage to this is that the disaster is big enough that most other commands within the service will want to help us minimize the damage.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, Colonel, tell me your views of the Aroostook Campaign.”

The hawk was showing him her talons, but he’d come prepared for this one.

“Sir, the Aroostook Campaign is winding down. The Quebecers have pretty much gotten what they wanted. My opinion is that the war has been a nightmare and was probably never winnable. Getting a rail line to an ice-free port is a realpolitik goal for Canadians. Northern Main is just blueberries and pulpwood for us. My understanding is that General of the Army Emanuel is awaiting a vote of confidence.”

Suarez smiled. “So suddenly, the Unity has a stable northern border, and we will have to recycle these troopers within eighteen months,” Suarez said.

“Recycle?”

“If you are going to be an effective adjutant, there are a few things you should know. You have just passed into the senior staff, Eustace. Here is point number one: CRNAs don’t last more than about four to six years after Sapping. They do improve with training … slowly, of course. So currently half of our experienced troopers will be compost in eighteen months.” She looked down to brush at her sleeve, as if giving him time to consider.

“Then it is imperative that we use the army now rather than waiting.”

“You understand. Excellent. Where would you use them?” she asked quietly.

Jourdaine hesitated. Anywhere from the ruins of Detroyt to Bangor, Main, would be part of a treaty settlement with the Canadians. An attack anywhere west of the Rampart, roughly the crest of the Applach, from Pensy to NorKarolyna, would require logistical support through the Unity’s own farmlands and power grid. A counterattack, although improbable, would be damaging to the Unity’s breadbasket. Moreover the entire area west of the Applach had been Scorched and was still useless for agriculture. Attacking west, they would be fighting uphill, at risk, for nothing more than ashes.

“Aytlana, Jorja Province,” he concluded aloud.

The Scorching had not been as devastating farther south. Jorja remained a prize now that the Unity was to make peace with the truculent Canadians.

Suarez smiled. “Excellent, Colonel. Tell me how you would proceed.”

Jourdaine hesitated before continuing. Suarez’s question might be a trap. A little too much candor in a subordinate was not seemly. He looked at her and caught for the least slice of time her rapt expression. Her eyes gleamed, and she licked her lips as she waited. He suddenly understood that Suarez wanted a partner in this, someone with whom she could share the hard decisions. The way ahead appeared clear.

“Make an air strike to take power and communication centers in Aytlana with forces following up on the ground with munitions and pulse cannons. Then fortify Aytlana and wait to receive a counterattack.”

“Why would they attack us? Why not just seal us off and starve us out?” the hawk asked the mouse.

“It’s classic Unity analysis, sir, Center of Gravity. They would have no choice but to attack. Aytlana is the center of all ground transport in the region, a manufacturing center, the capital of Jorja, and a bastion against an attack on Florida. They either attack or surrender.”

“Then what?” she asked.

“They would attack and lose. As they retreat, we pursue and destroy them in detail. We would have a hundred and fifty thousand hectares of new land.”

“Problems?” asked Suarez.

“You have to convince the council and avoid the Solons’ veto.”

Suarez smiled.

Go for broke, he thought.

“You have three obstacles,” he said. “One is that the Unity has become complacent, and the other generals will not like being reminded of it. Since the shooting war up north cooled off in 72, the DUFS have become more a police force than an army.

“The second is that the outlands have become an enigma, and no one likes walking into a dark room. Once we stopped patrolling the outlands, we lost touch with the tactical situation. Forty-two sensor stations work well but never show any activity whatever. Sunprairie works only when the barbarians let it, and then it sees nothing until the next attack.

“And finally, with all due respect, the third reason is you, sir. You will gain power if the council approves the plan. Concentrated power in one individual makes the council nervous. You have had too much success in the past to make them want to give you more.”

Suarez looked pleased, and, in turn, Jourdaine was pleased—for different reasons.

Suarez stood from behind her desk for the first time. “The council will have to agree, Colonel. The Unity is at its most fragile state since the start of the new republic. Food reserves are falling, despite whatever the gray suits tell us. We need more food and more power production. Both those things need land.”

“Why don’t we just get rid of the Sisi? Fewer nonproducers could only help us sooner, General.”

“That’s the one thing we dare not do, Colonel!”

She explained.

“Oh, I see, sir. We are in a trap, aren’t we?” replied Jourdaine. Obviously a new balance needed to be reached.

“Pretty much, Colonel. But it is worse,” Suarez continued. “Recruiting all the men and infertile women only nets about one in three as a CRNA. The other two enter a sort of catatonia and have to be recycled as fertilizer. Last year, we changed the process, sacrificed a little of the operational specs for better recruitment and longer life span, but that only helps a little. We need more land and water in the short run and better recruitment methods in the long run.” She paused. “Sit down, Colonel, and let me show you the plans for Jorja.”

Jourdaine accepted the seat gratefully. “What of the Solons, General?” he asked.

Indeed what of the Solons? The council discussed, planned, and proposed. The Solons disposed. The original Solons had offered stability in return for loyalty. Now they were anonymous, selecting their members from those about to retire.

“What of them, Colonel? I expect they can do the math as well as we can.”

“Don’t you think they will be unwilling to drop one war just to pick up another somewhere else?” Jourdaine was authentically curious as to what his commander might say.

“They don’t think like us … or maybe they do,” Suarez said. “What happens in an offensive war, Colonel? You spend men and matériel on the chance you get more resources to feed the survivors. If you win, the country has more food to share among fewer mouths, less likelihood of a rebellion but more of a coup d’état from your successful generals.”

“I see, sir, and if you lose, you can eliminate your most likely competitors, the generals, but will be more likely to suffer a rebellion with less resources to put it down. But you still have fewer mouths to feed.”

“So as a Solon, if the Unity wins?” asked the Hawk.

“Placate the generals with bribes and honors and then make them the face of retribution with the people.”

“And if we lose?”

“Execute the generals and placate the people with the resources of those killed already,” Jourdaine said promptly, exhilarated, looking behind the curtain of power.

“So, Colonel, given the information, do you think the Solons will agree?” Suarez asked. Jourdaine could detect no right answer from her face or attitude.

“They will agree. Regardless, win or lose, they will have fewer mouths. In the long run, they win, as CRNAs are always improving.”

The hawk smiled at the mouse and called out for tea.

Two hours later, after leaving his commander’s office, Jourdaine took the stairs three at a time. Suarez’s desire to bury the news of the Sunprairie debacle was predictable. As a loyal subordinate, Jourdaine would work tirelessly to accomplish that end. He would also have one more piece of black capital when it came for her denunciation. Suarez, if he pitched it to the right people, would show herself to be the architect of an embarrassing Unity defeat and cover-up. Moreover, he now had an idea of Suarez’s real goal, and that fact was invaluable.

Returning to his office, he entered and locked his door, checked the telltales for any unauthorized entry in his absence, and unlocked his desk. The Chiu woman had played her unenviable part in his own elevation. She was a messy detail. If alive, she could show, if anyone asked, that she had never intended to implicate Miramundo Morales in her own plot. That would lead Suarez to discover how he, Jourdaine, had faked the original committee list. That would, in turn, be … unfortunate.

Inside the Unity, he could have contained her. She was no longer contained, if she was alive at all. The odd behavior of Chiu’s implant indicated a certain amount of craft. It suggested that she was a great deal more resourceful than expected or that someone else thought her worth the effort. This required his immediate Presence.

Jourdaine composed himself at his desk and contacted Major Rajesh Khama via their mutual O-A contact.

Khama was a lucky early discovery of Jourdaine’s, useful beyond expectations. No faction claimed him. To Jourdaine, it was like having a direct line to an unknowing coconspirator, the adjutant for General Ingamar Magness, a man noted for his political longevity and careful avoidance of both risk and excellence. Any action from Major Khama would be imputed to Magness and discounted as trivial. On the surface, Khama and Jourdaine’s relations were cordial if somewhat distant.

After some banter, Jourdaine’s Presence skipped across the connection and ransacked the recent memory of the other officer. He numbed the growing panic and increased the appropriate neurotransmitters a bit before placing the necessary command and erasing Khama’s labile memory of himself. Instead, Khama would have warm fuzzy thoughts about Jourdaine for days

Outland Exile: Chapter Eleven; the Presence

2016-09-14

Divisional Shop, Nyork, Unity

07.42.19.local_18_10_AU76

“Guess what jag Major Khama is on today?” Technical Sergeant Iain Dalgliesh reported as Gunnery Sergeant Jasun Ciszek entered the ops center for Battalion Thirty-Nine.

“Haven’t a clue, fecker. Stopped eavesdropping on that ensign has he?”

Iain laughed. “Nope, this is on top of that. Ya know that maintenance platoon that went missing last week? Well, it appears the looie’s implant is still skidding around the bottom of some outlander river. Khama’s intrigued.”

“One less hero of the Unity. Imagine my sorrow, would ya?” said Ciszek.

“Funny thing, Gunny, is that the lieutenant was an S08, bottom of the barrel.”

“Well, how Major Khama amuses hisself is none of my nevermind. What’s he got ya doing anyway, Doggy?”

“I set up an on the looie’s plug job every few hours. If she comes within a hundred fifty klicks of the Rampart, we get a signal.”

“I need to do anything?”

“As if I could trust you, Gunny.” He smiled. “Nope, the signal goes to Khama himself.”

“Sounds good to me, Doggy. Let’s sit down and go over the new enunciation protocols before ThiZ time, okay?”

“Aye, aye, Gunny!”

Feigning work, Iain watched as Jasun walked over to his workstation and reversed a blue folder from its habitual place. Someone from Ciszek’s faction would notice, no doubt, and would report the odd occurrence to his handler. Iain was sure to meet his own handler, a woman he knew as Shirley, within the day.

The factions were quiet for now. That was good. He had come to like Jasun, even if he belonged to the wrong faction. He really wanted things to be peaceful for a while, at any rate. He was distracted.

Monee’k was quite a distraction.

Jourdaine’s Presence was his own discovery from years ago while he had been a mere ensign. He had told no one about it since. Jourdaine did not have a foolishly generous character. Really, he thought of it as the unintended reward for attempting to rescue the COREd-out protégé of his commander Major General Divny. For reasons that escaped Jourdaine, the old man, almost a Sisi himself, had decided to rescue his E7 boyfriend from a CORE coma.

“You know him, don’t you, Eustace? He was a classmate of yours at the academy, wasn’t he? Olevar Thimosen? You could talk him out of it. It was a mistake, I’m sure. I shouldn’t have been so harsh with him. A bit too much ThiZ, and he looked into the CORE. I found him at my apartment, dead to the world. He’s at Bellvu now. We have to do something!”

“It would mean trying to go into the CORE myself, sir. I-I’m not sure, sir.” Jourdaine had sensed his heart pounding in his ears.

“I’m not a fool, ensign! I have a CORE tech on the strength. He has an idea. The implants have their own ID number, of course. He can reprogram your implant. Get you to poor Olevar’s locus in the CORE in one shot. Olevar trusts you. He’ll listen to you, and we can put a tracer on you … give you a way back. It’d mean a promotion for you, just for trying. I know I’m asking a lot, but if this works, think what good it would do for all the other COREd-out citizens?”

Jourdaine indeed knew young Olevar. They had been more than classmates but less than lovers. Olevar had abandoned him the month before Jourdaine had gone off to Officer Training School.

After an admittedly long period of self-loathing, Jourdaine had bounced back to what he’d hoped was a competent sober officer. When Olevar had joined Divny’s professional family as a protégé, neither of them had acknowledged their previous attachment.

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. For the good of the service. I am sure he will know me. I consider it a great honor, sir.”

His stomach lurched at what he was saying.

“That’s my boy! I’ll contact Pippitte right away. He’s the CORE tech. One more thing: When was your last ThiZ? Pippitte wants the attempt to be done cold, off ThiZ at least for forty-eight hours.”

“I haven’t had mine today, sir.”

“Good, it will give us some time to set up. Go see to transferring your assignments, and we will contact you. Dismissed.”

Taking ThiZ was the only way he knew to navigate the rest of the day, and now that was taken away as well.

“Sir, yes, sir!”

After the wrenching diarrhea and nausea of the next two days, the little of Jourdaine’s confidence had drained away with the toilet flushings. Nevertheless, he came when summoned.

Pippitte turned out to be a dark little man who talked to himself. Jourdaine was required to wear some sort of orthodontic apparatus that allowed him to hear Pippitte even when he was in the CORE.

The first few attempts were futile. The CORE illusion using the standard O-A was of gleaming mental corridors, branches, turnings, doors, passwords—a net of connections, passages, and information. Jourdaine easily slid along the illusion at Pippitte’s direction, his nausea subsiding as he went on, even as the man’s mutterings grew less helpful. In the end he ignored them.

He reached a blockage. Pippitte’s plan was foolish, really. No two consciousnesses could occupy the same locus at the same time. Jourdaine was preparing himself for failure when he glimpsed the dark line along the wall. It should not have been there. Questing along the line, it moved to his command.

He pushed again; it opened to blackness. He looked around to see if anyone noticed.

He moved through the gap more from frustration than curiosity to find himself in another reality. Nothing was “up” unless he told himself so. He looked back at the defect he had discovered. The bright corridors of the ’net stretched around him but were different from this vantage point, “the outside.” It looked like patchwork, as if made of plates. He expected it was code segments.

He had escaped the interior of the ’net; he was outside. His disembodied bowels began to rebel. He was floating free. He would be lost … like so many others. In panic, his mind yearned … quested … to touch the merest edge of the crack from which he had just emerged, to find a handhold, something solid … and it was so. Gracefully, his Presence swept back to the fissure, and Jourdaine reached out a “hand” to run along the edge. It sizzled coldly at his touch.

Finding Olevar was just as easy. Jourdaine thought of his name and was drawn the short distance to the locus. He could tell it was Olevar somehow; he had the right smell. However, the tornado of swirling thoughts surrounding Olevar battered Jourdaine away. Olevar recognized him.

“What are you doing? Why are you here? Useless. I’m so cold. Where are all the pencils? The general … wanting … Don’t! Why? Go away! Og ywaa?”

Olevar was continually terrified of falling, but his frenzy was like a buzz saw to Jourdaine’s touch.

Pippitte’s urgent mutterings broke through to Jourdaine, even here, and ordered him to return. Once back, Jourdaine just told them he had been successful in contacting Olevar. The general was pink with hope. Pippitte wiped his mouth on his sleeve and asked for his apparatus back.

Jourdaine went again. He had to. Divny demanded, cajoled, and eventually ordered him, then fell to wringing his hands during Jourdaine’s attempts. Later, Jourdaine’s questing mind went unsupervised. He stopped using ThiZ. He was learning.

The CORE, outside the limitations of the Unity conventions, was a great temptation.

The lights, sounds, concepts, and jangle of identifiers flashed by, oblivious to Jourdaine’s freed Presence. In the CORE but outside Unity restrictions Jourdaine claimed a new world as his own.

Sitting near Olevar’s turmoil, Jourdaine watched huge magenta engines of commerce chunter by, flaking off RFPs in the same color that scattered in six directions. Svelte ellipses of the arts in myriad colors teemed in a large scintillating ball in the distance, waiting for sponsors, occasionally fountaining off into smaller groups, then recombining. Individuals appeared to him, at a distance, to be wraithlike squiggles, nodes that, while appearing to fill the space, were invisible when he looked past them, varying in appearance only once focused upon. Whole dimensions of meaning were somehow compressed into the scene, obvious to him but near impossible to describe once he had exited.

Only with difficulty did he go back to Olevar.

“Olevar, it is me. It is Eustace. You know me. You liked me once. Remember? You don’t have to do this. You can come back with me. Everything will be all right. Divny wants you to be happy. I want you to be happy. Just take my hand … Olevar, it’s me,”

he said again and again.

At first that had slowed the maelstrom of mirrored thoughts, but only at first. Olevar had stopped talking after the first few times. At intervals, he lashed out with bursts of sensation: heat, cold, a stench of death, quinine bitterness, and pain. But far worse were the memories: memories of Eustace being taunted by his crèche mates, Olevar’s own abandonment, Olevar’s ascendancy as Divny’s protégé, his smug disdain for the plodding Jourdaine.

“Olevar, it is me. It is Eustace. You know me. You liked me once. You don’t have to do this. You can come back with me. Everything will be all right. Divny wants you to be happy. I want you to be happy. Just take my hand … Olevar, it’s me. It is Eustace.”

It was all he could offer, unarmed as he was before the mounting violence of his friend’s circular thoughts. Battered, he would leave for a few hours, only to be forced back by Divny’s mounting anxiety and threats.

Jourdaine recounted to Olevar his own memories, random but always containing something that he should recognize: a teacher, a matron, a lost friend. Eventually, mercifully, it worked. Jourdaine never knew what it was that stopped Olevar’s whirling intensity of self-loathing. The chaos slowly petered out like a dying top.

For the first time, Eustace saw what had become of Olevar in the mirrored corridors of his thoughts. Wizened, sapped of vitality, feral, his face in the illusion of the CORE was nevertheless unmistakable. Jourdaine still shivered anytime he thought about it. The face was there, the same smooth brow and gentle mouth, but now creased with rage, guile, and savagery. In repose, the face relaxed almost to beauty—until Olevar recognized Jourdaine.

“Little Useless, come to fumble, have you? Clueless Useless, fathering baby. Feck off someplace and fumble yourself!”

“Olevar, I came to help you come back.”

“You help me? Help me? You have nothing! Nothing to help me!”

Jourdaine had tried again and again, but that one thought was the only one he got from the creature that Olevar had become. Pippitte told him to return. By then, Jourdaine was weary and repulsed by the creature.

In his disgust, Jourdaine killed Olevar just before he left.

Sacrifices had to be made.

The boy’s body died a few days later. Jourdaine’s report to the general described how the damage was too severe. It gave no mention of the illusion of Jourdaine’s hand sliding along the slender silver tether of Olevar’s life and severing it with a paroxysm of disgust.

The exercise had gained him rewards. Divny had given him an excellent efficiency report and, after being denounced, had not suspected Jourdaine’s betrayal. In his grief, the man had no longer cared.

Thus, Jourdaine learned to be a thinking Presence, a resident phantom in a land peopled by tourists. He alone had plumbed the possibilities of the CORE. He could project his Presence into the CORE itself and thence to another O-A recipient.

Cadets for generations had been warned that they might contract CORE fever. He wondered if the CORE had been warned that it might catch a case of Jourdaine