Alien Landscapes 2 Page 5

  Berthold 17 hit the books again, studying, studying. It would be a long night. . . .

  Meanwhile, in another campus library in another state, Berthold 18 sat surrounded by legal tomes, equally convinced that he would pass the upcoming bar exam with flying colors.

  #

  They were all dying of ebola-X.

  Berthold 3 could do nothing to save the afflicted villagers, but he forced himself to remain at their sides and comfort the men, women, and children in their final hours. He prayed with them, he listened to them, he comforted them. Not being a doctor, he was unable to do anything else . . . and even the doctors couldn’t do much.

  Ebola-X, a particularly virulent strain of the hemorrhagic plague, had been genetically engineered by a brutal African warlord who, upon being deposed, had unleashed it among his own population. As if their lives weren’t already difficult enough, Berthold 3 thought.

  The villagers had impure drinking water, no electricity, no schools, no sanitation. Thanks to a persistent drought, almost certainly caused by the government and its short-sighted agricultural policies, the locals had lived on the edge of starvation for years. Immune systems and physical strength were at their nadir. When the ebola-X arrived, it mowed down the village population as easily as if it were a jeep full of machine-gun–bearing soldiers. The thought of their situation tugged at his heart strings. How could a person hold so much pain?

  The hot and stifling hospital tent reeked with the stench of sweat, vomited blood, and death. Berthold 3 still heard every gasp, every moan, every death rattle. He sat quietly on a wooden stool, looking at the strained, pain-puckered face of a young mother. He read soothing passages aloud from the Bible, but he didn’t think she could hear him or even understand the flowery English words. But he stayed with her anyway, changing the moist rag from her forehead, holding her shoulders when she needed to roll over and vomit.

  The woman seemed to know she was dying. She had communicated with him about her three children, and Berthold 3 promised to look after them. He brushed her wiry hair, cooling her forehead again. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that the children had died two days earlier.

  Exhausted medics moved around him like zombies. They had too little medicine, certainly nothing effective against this epidemic. Berthold 3 tried to take as much busywork from the doctors as possible; he felt a calling to do his part, any part, so long as he helped these people. He had some first-aid training, but the bulk of his schooling had prepared him to be a missionary, not a medic. Perhaps if he’d known ahead of time, Berthold 3 would have learned more practical skills. Even so, he wouldn’t have turned from this obligation. In his heart he wanted to be here, wishing only that he could ease their suffering more effectively.

  The dying woman reached out, her hand extended upward as if trying to grasp the sky. Berthold 3 took it in his own hand, folding his palms around hers and pressing her clenched fist against his chest so that she could feel the beating of his heart. She breathed twice more, arched her back, and then died.

  Berthold 3 said a calm prayer over her, then stood. He had no time to rest, no time to grieve. He dragged his wooden stool over to the cot of the next patient.

  #

  Red tape. Bureaucracy. Incomprehensible forms in triplicate. Revisions to revisions to procedures that had already been revised repeatedly.

  Job security.

  Berthold 10 could not pretend his job was interesting, nor could he console himself with the thought that it was necessary. But it was a career, and he was good at it. Few people were so careful or detail-oriented; some of his coworkers called him anal retentive.

  He sat in a small cubicle like thousands of others in this governmental office building for the United Cultures of Earth. Berthold 10 processed forms, input data, tracked regulations, and submitted comments and rebuttals to his counterparts in rival departments of the government in other cities around the world.

  He was content to be sifting through paperwork in his own tiny cog in a single component of the sprawling wheels of government. It was good to have an understanding of how the details worked, instead of just the Big Picture, which the career politicians saw. Berthold 10 had no aspirations of running for office or being a great leader. He kept his sights on a shorter-term desire for an increase in pay grade. And he was sure to get it, with only a few more years of diligent service.

  When the Urgent communiqué appeared in his IN box, Berthold 10 didn’t at first pay special attention. Urgent matters went into a separate stack and he generally made an effort to take care of them first. But when he noticed that this message was addressed to him personally, from the office of the Candidate, he read it with puzzlement, then amazement.

  He was summoned to the Candidate’s mansion at a specified time and date. Berthold 10 looked around his drab cubicle at the never-changing piles of never-changing work. He didn’t know what all this was about, and the letter did not explain. Official escorts would arrive to escort him. He smiled. At last his life was about to become more interesting.

  #

  With Mr. Rana beside him to operate the apparatus, Candidate Berthold cradled the head of the final clone in his lap. The man still twitched and struggled—Berthold had forgotten which number this was—but the clutching fingers could not remove the electrodes and transmitters pasted onto his temples and forehead.

  “I’m glad this is the last one,” the Candidate said. “It’s been an exhausting day.”

  One of the clones had struggled violently when the guards brought him in, forcing them to break his forearm. The snapped ulna—ah, the medical knowledge was coming in useful already!—had been unforeseen, but not necessarily a bad thing. In his pampered life Candidate Berthold had never experienced a broken bone; now, after absorbing the clone’s experience, he knew what it felt like.

  Memories and thoughts continued to drain out of the last clone’s mind like arterial blood spurting from a slashed throat. The candidate held his duplicate’s shoulders, felt everything surge into his own brain. What a difficult and painful life this one had lived! But the experiences certainly built character, giving him a firm moral foundation and impeccable resolve. It would be an excellent addition to Berthold’s repertoire. Each detail made him more electable.

  Since worldwide leaders guided so many diverse people, the citizens of the United Cultures of Earth demanded more and more from their rulers. To win a worldwide election, a candidate needed to demonstrate empathy for a multitude of different tiers of voters, from all walks of life. He had to be both an outsider and an insider. He had to understand privilege, to grasp the overall landscape of the government as well as the minutiae of how the bureaucracy worked. He was expected to have a passion for helping people, a genuine heart for the common man, and a rapport with celebrities and captains of industry.

  Such expectations were simply impossible for a single human being to meet. Fortunately, thanks to the mental parity of clones, men such as Berthold Ossequin—and quite certainly all of his opponents—could live many diverse lives in parallel. The clones were turned loose in various situations where they gathered real-life experiences that went far beyond anything Candidate Berthold could have learned from teachers or books. . . .

  The last clone spasmed again, and his face fell completely slack, his mouth hung slightly open. His eyelids fluttered but remained closed. A few final, desperate thoughts trickled into Berthold’s mind.

  With a satisfied sigh, he peeled off the transmitter electrodes and motioned for the guards to carry away the limp body. All eighteen of the clones were now vegetables, empty husks wrung dry of every thought and experience. The comatose bodies would be quietly euthanized, and a newly enriched candidate would emerge for the final debates before the elections.

  Berthold stood from his chair, completely well-rounded now, full of vicarious memories, tragic events and pleasant recollections. The chief advisor looked into Berthold’s eyes with obvious pride. “Are you ready, Mr. Candidate?”

/>   Berthold smiled. “Yes. I have all the background I could possibly need to rule the world . . . though once I get into office, we may decide to continue my education in this manner. Are there more clones?”

  “We can always make more, sir.”

  “There’s no substitute for experience.”

  Berthold stretched his arms and took a deep breath, feeling like a true leader at last. He issued a sharp command to his staff. “Now, let’s go win this election.”

  * * *

  Prisoner of War

  According to unofficial military policy, the US Air Force knows exactly what it takes to make the best fighter pilot: balls the size of grapefruits, and brains the size of a pea.

  Some might say that it requires all the good qualities of a fighter pilot to walk in Harlan Ellison’s footsteps. Harlan is always a hard act to follow, and it’s daunting even to try.

  When I first talked with Harlan about doing a sequel to his classic Outer Limits teleplay, “Soldier,” he was very skeptical. Given the sheer number of abysmal sequels and bad spinoffs that have graced bookstore racks and theater screens, I suppose he had good reason. “I’ve never done a sequel to a single one of my stories,” he told me. “I never felt the need. If I got it right the first time, I’ve said all I needed to say.”

  In the course of my writing career I have gathered a rather impressive (if that’s the word) collection of rejection slips—something like 750 at last count—and I never learned to give up when common sense dictacted that I should. So, I went back to Harlan. “Look, you’ve developed a sprawling scenario of a devastating future war, where soldiers are bred and trained to do nothing but fight from birth to death. Are you telling me that there’s only one story to be told in that whole world?”

  So, I got to play with Harlan Ellison’s toys.

  “Prisoner of War” is my tapdance on Harlan’s stage, set in the devastating world of “Soldier.” It is a story about another set of warriors in a never-ending war, men bred for nothing but the battleground—and how they cope with the horrors of…peace.

  As a final note, this story was written on the road during the most gruelling book-signing tour I ever hope to do—a nationwide blitz of twenty-seven cities in twenty-eight days (during which, in the event in Hollywood, I set the Guinness World Record for “Largest Single-Author Book Signing”). I dictated “Prisoner of War” in an unknown number of hotel rooms, wandering down city sidewalks, or at whatever park happened to be closest, before the day’s work of interviews and autograph sessions began. The chance to do something creative and emotionally engaging gave me something to look forward to during the long, long month.

  The first Enemy laser-lances blazed across the battlefield at an unknown time of day. No one paid attention to the hour during a firefight anyway. Neither Barto nor any of his squad-mates could see the sun or moon overhead: too much smoke and haze and blast debris filled the air, along with the smell of blood and burning.

  A soldier had to be ready at any time or place. A soldier would fight until the fight was over. An endless Now filled their existence, a razor-edged flow of life-for-the-moment, and the slightest distraction or daydream could end the Now . . . forever.

  With a clatter of dusty armor and a hum of returned weapons-fire, the defenders charged forward, Barto among them. They had no terrain maps or battle plans, only unseen commanders bellowing instructions into their helmet earpieces.

  Greasy fires guttered and smoked from explosions, but as long as a soldier could draw breath, the air always smelled sweet enough. Somehow, the flames still found organic material to burn, though only a few skeletal trees remained standing. The horizon was like broken, jagged teeth. No discernible structures remained, only blistered destruction and the endless bedlam of combat.

  To a man who had known no other life, Barto found the landscape familiar and comforting.

  “Down!” his point man Arviq screamed loudly enough so that Barto could hear it through the armored helmet. A bolt of white-hot energy seared the ground in front of them, turning the blasted soil into glass. The ricochet stitched a broken-windshield pattern of lethal cuts across the armored chest of one comrade five meters away.

  The victim was in a different part of the squad; Barto knew him only by serial number instead of a more personal, chosen name. Now the man was a casualty of war; his serial number would be displayed in fine print on the memorial lists back at the crèche—for two days. And then it would be erased forever.

  Barto and Arviq both dove to the bottom of the trench as more well-aimed laser-lances embroidered the ground and the slumping walls of the ditch. As he hunched over to shield himself, the helmet’s speakers continued to pound commands: “KILL . . . KILL . . . KILL . . .”

  The Enemy assault ended with a brief hesitation, like an indrawn breath. The soldiers around Barto paused, regrouped, then scrambled to their feet, leaving the fallen comrade behind. Later, regardless of the battle’s outcome, trained bloodhounds would retrieve the body parts and drag them back to HQ in their jaws. After the proper casualty statistics had been recorded, the KIA corpses would be efficiently incinerated.

  In the middle of a firefight, Barto and Arviq could not be bothered by such things. They had been trained never to think of fallen comrades; it was beyond the purview of their mission. The voice in the helmet speakers changed, took on a different note: “RETALIATE . . . RETALIATE . . . RETALIATE . . .”

  With a howl and a roar enhanced by adrenaline injections from inside the armor suits, Barto and his squad moved as a unit. Programmed endorphins poured into their bloodstreams at the moment of battle frenzy, and they surged out of the trench. The Enemy encampment could not be far, and they silently swore to unleash a slaughter that would outmatch anything their opponents had ever done . . . though this most recent attack was assuredly a response to their own previous day’s offensive.

  Moving as a unit, the squad clambered over debris, around craters, and out into the open. They ran beyond monofilament barricades that would slice the limb off an unwary soldier, then into a sonic minefield whose layout shone on the eye-visor screen inside each helmet.

  With a self-assured gait across the no-man’s land, the soldiers moved like a pack of killer rats, laser-lances slung in their arms. They bellowed and snarled, pumping each other up. As he ran, Barto studied the sonic minefield grid in his visor, sidestepping instinctively.

  From their embankment, the Enemy began to fire again. The smoky air became a lattice of deadly lines in all directions. Barto continued running. Beside him, Arviq pressed the stock of his weapon against his armored breastplate, pumping blast after blast toward the unseen Enemy.

  Then a laser-lance seared close to Barto’s helmet, blistering the top layer of semi-reflective silver. Static blasted across his eye visor, and he couldn’t see. He made one false sidestep and yelled. He could no longer find the grid display, could no longer even see the actual ground.

  Just as his foot came down in the wrong place, Arviq grabbed his arm and yanked him aside, using their combined momentum. The sonic mine exploded, vomiting debris and shrapnel with pounding soundwaves that fractured the plates of Barto’s armor, pulverizing the bones in his leg. But he fell out of the mine’s focused kill radius and lay biting back the pain.

  He propped himself up and ripped off his slagged helmet, blinking with naked eyes at the real sky. Arviq had saved his life—just as Barto would have done for his squad-mate had their situations been reversed.

  Always trust your comrades. Your life is theirs. That was how it had always been.

  And even if he did fall to Enemy attack, the bloodhounds would haul his body to HQ, and he would receive an appropriate military farewell before he returned to the earth—mission accomplished. A soldier’s duty was to fight, and Barto had been performing that duty for all of his conscious life.

  As he activated his rescue transmitter and fumbled for the medpak, the rest of the soldiers charged forward, leaving him behind. Arviq didn’t ev
en spare him a backward glance.

  #

  Some said the war had gone on forever—and since no one kept track of history anymore, the statement could not be proved false.

  Barto knew only the military life. He had emerged from a tank in the soldiers’ crèche with the programming wired into his brain, fully aware, fully grown, and knowing his assignment. If ever he had any questions or doubts, the command voices in his helmet would answer them.

  Barto knew primarily that he had to kill the Enemy. He knew that he had to protect his comrades, that the squad was the sum of his existence. No good soldier could rest until every last Enemy had been eradicated, down to their feline spies, down to the bloodhounds that dragged away Enemy KIAs.

  Winning this war might well take an eternity, but Barto was willing to fight for that long. Every moment of his life had encompassed either fighting, or learning new techniques to kill and to survive, or resting so that he could fight again the next day.

  There was no time for anything else. There was no need for anything else.

  Barto remembered when he’d been younger, not long out of the tank. His muscles were wiry, his body flexible without the stiffness of constant abuse. His skin had been smooth, free of the intaglio of scars from a thousand close dances with death. Barto and his squad-mates—apprentices all—had fought hand-to-hand in the crèche gymnasium, occasionally breaking each other’s bones or knocking each other unconscious. None of them had yet earned their armor, their protection, or their weapons. They couldn’t even call themselves soldiers. . . .

  Now consigned to the HQ infirmary and repair shop, as he drifted in a soup of pain and unconsciousness, Barto revisited the long-ago moment he had first grasped a specialized piece of equipment designed to maim and kill. The soldier trainees had learned early on in their drill that any object was a potential weapon—but this was a spear, a long rough bar of old steel with a sharpened point that gleamed white and silver in the unforgiving lights. A weapon, his own weapon.