Part 17 (1/2)

People you and Ray worked on? I asked.

Exactly. More than twenty years ago. They're middle-aged now, and know they'll probably have to spend the rest of their lives in seclusion.

What the h.e.l.l did you do to them? Reza said.

Eight of them stayed jacked into soldierboys for three weeks. The other eight for sixteen days.

That's all? I said.

That's all.

It drove them crazy? Amelia asked.

Belda laughed, a rare sound, not happy. I'll bet not. I'll bet it drove them sane.

Belda's close, Marty said. She has this annoying way of being able to read your mind without benefit of electricity.

What happens is that after a couple of weeks in the soldierboy, you paradoxically can't be a soldier anymore.

You can't kill? I said.

You can't even hurt anybody on purpose, except to save your own life. Or other lives. It permanently changes your way of thinking, of feeling; even after you unjack. You've been inside other people too long, shared their ident.i.ty. Hurting another person would be as painful as hurting yourself.

Not pure pacifists, though, Reza said. Not if they can kill in self-defense.

It varies from individual to individual. Some would rather die than kill, even in self-defense.

Is that what happens to people like Candi? I asked.

Not really. People like her are chosen for empathy, for gentleness. You would expect being jacked to enhance those qualities in them.

You just used random people in the experiment? Reza asked.

He nodded. The first one was random paid volunteers, off-duty soldiers. But not the second group. He leaned forward. Half the second group were Special Forces a.s.sa.s.sins. The other half were civilians who had been convicted of murder.

And they all became ... civilized? Amelia said.

The verb we use is 'humanized,' Marty said.

If a hunter-killer platoon stayed jacked for two weeks, I said, they'd turn into p.u.s.s.ycats?

So we a.s.sume. This was done before hunter-killers, of course; before soldierboys were used in combat.

Asher had been following this quietly. It seems to me absurd to a.s.sume that the military hasn't duplicated your experiment. Then figured out a way around this inconvenient aberration, pacifism. Humanization.

Not impossible, Asher, but unlikely. I'm jacked, one-way, with hundreds of military people, from private to general. If anyone was involved in an experiment, or had even heard a rumor of one, I would know.

Not if everyone in authority was also jacked oneway. And the experimental subjects isolated, like yours, or disposed of.

That was worth a moment of silence. Would military scientists have inconvenient subjects killed?

I'll admit the possibility, Marty said, but it's remote. Ray and I coordinate all the military research on soldierboys. For someone to get a project approved, funded, and implemented without our being aware ... possible. But it's possible to flip a coin and come up heads a hundred times in a row.

Interesting that you bring up numbers, Marty, Reza said. He'd been scribbling on a napkin. Take a best-case scenario, where you have everyone agreeing to become humanized, and lining up to get jacked.

First of all, one out of ten or twelve dies or goes crazy. I'm already trying to figure ways to get out of it.

Well, we don't know- Let me go on just a second. If it's one out of twelve, you're killing six hundred million people to ensure that the rest of them won't kill anybody. You're already making Hitler look like an amateur, by two orders of magnitude.

There's more, I'm sure, Marty said.

There is. What do we have, six thousand soldierboys? Say we build a hundred thousand. Everybody has to spend two weeks jacked-and that's after they spend five days getting their brains drilled out and recovering. Call it twenty days per person. a.s.suming seven billion survive the surgery, that's seven thousand people per machine. It sounds like a hundred forty thousand days to me. That's almost four hundred years. Then we all live happily ever after-the ones who live at all.

Let me see that. Reza handed the napkin to Marty. He traced the column of figures with his finger. One thing that's not in here is the fact that you don't need a whole soldierboy. Just the basic brain-to-brain wiring, and IV drips for nourishment. We could set up a million stations, not a hundred thousand. Ten million. That reduces the time scale to four years.

But not the half-billion deaths, Belda said. It's academic to me, since I only plan on living a few more years. But it does seem a high price to ask.

Asher pushed the b.u.t.ton for the waiter. This didn't come off the top of your head, Marty. How long have you been thinking about it, twenty years?

Something like that, he admitted, and shrugged. You don't really need the death of the universe. We've been on a slippery slope since Hiros.h.i.+ma. Since World War One, actually.

A secret pacifist working for the military? Belda said.

Not secret. The army tolerates theoretical pacifism- look at Julian-so long as it doesn't interfere with work. Most of the generals I know would call themselves pacifists.

The waiter shambled in and took the order. When he left, I said, Marty's got a point. It's not just the Jupiter Project. There are plenty of lines of research that could ultimately lead to the planet being sterilized, or destroyed. Even if the rest of the universe is unaffected.

You're already jacked, Reza said, and finished his wine. You don't get a vote.

What about people like me? Amelia said. Who try to be jacked and fail? Maybe you can put us in a nice concentration camp, where we can't hurt anybody.

Asher laughed. Come on, Blaze. This is just a thought experiment. Marty's not seriously proposing- Marty slapped the table with his palm. d.a.m.n it, Asher! I've never been more serious in my life.

Then you're crazy. It's never going to happen.

Marty turned to Amelia. In the past, it's never been imperative that any one person be jacked. If it became an effort on the order of your Jupiter Project-the Manhattan Project-all the work that's been begging to be done would be done! To Reza: The same with your half-billion dead. This isn't something that would have to be implemented overnight. A lot of cautious, controlled research, refinement of techniques, and the casualty rate would dwindle, maybe to zero.

Then to put it in the least kind terms, Asher said, you're accusing the army of murder. Granted, that's what they're supposed to do, but it's supposed to be people on the other side. Marty looked quizzical. I mean, if you have thought all along that jacking installation could be made safe, why hasn't the army held off on making new mechanics until it is safe?

It's not the army who's a murderer, you're saying. It's me. Researchers like me and Ray.

Oh, don't get dramatic. I'm sure you've done your best. But I've always felt the human cost of the program was way too high.

I agree, Marty said, and it's not just the one-in-twelve installation casualties. Mechanics have an unacceptably high death rate from stroke and heart attack. He looked away from me. And suicide, during their enlistment or after.

The death rate for soldiers is high, I said. That's not news. But it's part of the argument: get rid of soldiering as an occupation.

Suppose we could develop a way that jacking was a hundred percent successful, with absolutely no casualties. There's still no way you could get everyone to do it. I can just see the Ngumi lining up to have their heads drilled by a bunch of Alliance demon-scientists! h.e.l.l, you couldn't even convert our own military. Once the generals found out what you were doing, you'd be history. You'd be compost!

Maybe so. Maybe so. The waiter was bringing our drinks. Marty looked at me and stroked his chin. You feel up to jacking?