Part 2 (2/2)

Army, I said. I didn't bother with the ID.

Figured. He rummaged. You know they got a law I got to let the f.u.c.kin' Endies in the store? They never buy anything.

Why should they? I said. World's going up in smoke tomorrow, maybe the next day.

Right. Meanwhile they steal y' blind. All I got's cans.

Whatever. I was starting to shake a little. Between the Ender and this trigger-happy clerk I'd probably come closer to dying than I ever would in Portobello.

He put the six-pack in front of me. You don't want to sell that knife?

No, I need it all the time. Open fan mail with it.

That was the wrong thing to say. Got to say I don't recognize you. I follow the Fourth and Sixteenth, mainly.

I'm Ninth. Not nearly as exciting.

Interdiction, he said, nodding. The Fourth and Sixteenth are hunter-killer platoons, so they have a considerable following. Warboys, we call their fans.

He was a little excited, even though I was just Interdiction. And Psychops. You didn't catch the Fourth last Wednesday, did you?

Hey, I don't even follow my own outfit. I was in the cage then, anyhow.

He stopped for a moment with my card in his hand, struck dumb by the concept that a person could live nine days in a row inside a soldierboy and then not jump straight to the cube and follow the war.

Some do, of course. I met Scoville when he was out of the cage once, here in Houston for a warboy a.s.sembly. There's one every week somewhere in Texas- they haul in enough booze and b.u.m and squeak to keep them cross-eyed for a long weekend, and pay a couple of mechanics to come in and tell them what it's really really like. To be locked inside a cage and watch yourself murder people by remote control. They replay tapes of great battles and argue over fine points of strategy.

The only one I've ever gone to had a warrior day, where all of the attendees-all except us outsiders- dressed up as warriors from the past. That was kind of scary. I a.s.sumed the tommy guns and flintlocks didn't function; even criminals were reluctant to risk that. But the swords and spears and bows looked real enough, and they were in the hands of people who had amply demonstrated, to me at least, that they shouldn't be trusted with a sharp stick.

You were going to kill that guy? the clerk said conversationally.

No reason to. They always back off. As if I knew.

But suppose he didn't.

It wouldn't be a problem, I heard myself saying. Take his knife hand off at the wrist. Call 9-1-1. Maybe they'd glue it back on upside down. Actually, they'd probably take their time responding. Give him a chance to beat the Rapture by bleeding to death.

He nodded. We had two guys last month outside the store, they did the handkerchief thing, some girl. That was where two men bite down on opposite corners of a handkerchief, and have at each other with knives or razors. The one who lets go of the handkerchief loses. One guy was dead before they got here. The other lost an ear; they didn't bother to look for it. He gestured. I kept it in the freezer for awhile.

You're the one who called the cops?

Oh yeah, he said. Soon as it was over. Good citizen.

I strapped the beer onto the rear carrier and pedaled back toward the gate.

Things are getting worse. I hate to sound like my old man. But things really were better when I was a boy. There weren't Enders on every corner. People didn't duel. People didn't stand around and watch other people duel. And then police picked up the ears afterward.

NOT ALL ENDERS HAD ponytails and obvious att.i.tudes. There were two in Julian's physics department, a secretary and Mac Roman himself.

People wondered how such a mediocre scientist had come out of nowhere and brown-nosed his way into a position of academic power. What they didn't appreciate was the intellectual effort it took to successfully pretend to believe in the ordered, agnostic view of the universe that physics mandated. It was all part of G.o.d's plan, though. Like the carefully falsified doc.u.ments that had put him in the position of being minimally qualified for the chairmans.h.i.+p. Two other Enders were on the Board of Regents, able to push his case.

Macro (like one of those Regents) was a member of a militant and supersecret sect within a sect: the Hammer of G.o.d. Like all Enders, they believed G.o.d was about to bring about the destruction of humankind.

Unlike most of them, the Hammer of G.o.d felt called upon to help.

ON THE WAY BACK to campus I took a wrong turn and, circling back, pa.s.sed a downscale jack joint I'd never seen. They had feelies of group s.e.x, downhill skiing, a car crash. Done there; been that. Not to mention all the combat ones.

Actually, I'd never done the car crash. I wonder if the actor died. Sometimes Enders did that, even though jacking's supposed to be a sin. Sometimes people do it to be famous for a few minutes. I've never jacked into one of those, but Ralph has his favorites, so when I'm jacked with Ralph I get it secondhand. Guess I'll never understand fame.

There was a new sergeant at the gate to the university, so we went through the delaying song and dance again.

I pedaled aimlessly through the campus for an hour. It was pretty deserted, Sunday afternoon of a long week-end. I went into the physics building to see whether any students had slipped papers under my door, and one had-an early problem set, wonder of wonders. And a note saying he'd have to miss cla.s.s because his sister had a coming-out party in Monaco. Poor kid.

Amelia's office was one floor above mine, but I didn't bother her. I really ought to work out the answers to the problem set, get ahead of the game. No, I ought to go back to Amelia's and waste the rest of the day.

I did go back to Amelia's, but in a spirit of scientific inquiry. She had a new appliance they called the anti-microwave; you put something in it and set the temperature you want, and it cools it down. Of course the appliance has nothing to do with microwaves.

It worked well on a can of beer. When I opened the door, wisps of vapor came out. The beer was forty degrees, but the ambient temperature inside the machine must have been a lot lower. Just to see what would happen, I put a slice of cheese in it and set it to the lowest temperature, minus forty. When it came out I dropped it on the floor, and it shattered. I think I found all the pieces.

Amelia had a little alcove behind the fireplace that she called the library. There was just room for an antique futon and a small table. The three walls that defined the s.p.a.ce were gla.s.sed-in shelves, full of hundreds of old books. I'd been in there with her, but not to read.

I set the beer down and looked at the t.i.tles. Mostly novels and poetry. Unlike a lot of jacks and jills, I still read for pleasure, but I like to read things that are supposed to be true.

My first couple of years of college, I majored in history with a minor in physics, but then switched around. I used to think it was the degrees in physics that got me drafted. But most mechanics have the usual compulsory-ed degrees-gym, current events, communication skills.

You don't have to be that smart to lie in the cage and twitch.

Anyhow, I like to read history, and Amelia's library was lean in that subject. A few popular ill.u.s.trated texts. Mostly twenty-first century, which I planned to read about when it was over.

I remembered she wanted me to read the Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage, so I took it down and settled in. Two hours and two beers.

The differences between their fighting and ours were as profound as the difference between a bad accident and a bad dream.

Their armies were equally matched in weaponry; they both had a diffuse, confused command structure that essentially resulted in one huge mob being thrown against another, to flail away with primitive guns and knives and clubs until one mob ran away.

The confused protagonist, Henry, was too deeply involved to see this simple truth, but he reported it accurately.

I wonder what poor Henry would think about our kind of war. I wonder whether his era even knew the most accurate metaphor: exterminator. And I wondered what simple truth my involvement kept me from seeing.

JULIAN DIDN'T KNOW THAT the author of The Red Badge of Courage had had the advantage of not having been a part of the war he wrote about. It's harder to see a pattern when you're part of it.

That war had been relatively straightforward in terms of economic and ideological issues; Julian's was not. The enemy Ngumi comprised a loose alliance of dozens of rebel forces, fifty-four this year. In all enemy countries there was a legitimate government that cooperated with the Alliance, but it was no secret that few of those governments were supported by a majority of their const.i.tuents.

It was partly an economic war, the haves with their automation-driven economies versus the have-nots, who were not born into automatic prosperity. It was partly a race war, the blacks and browns and some yellows versus the whites and some other yellows. Julian was uncomfortable on some level about that, but he didn't feel much of a bond with Africa. Too long ago, too far away, and they were too crazy.

And of course it was an ideological war for some- the defenders of democracy versus the rebel strong-arm charismatic leaders. Or the capitalist land-grabbers versus the protectors of the people, take your pick.

<script>