Part 35 (1/2)

Save it for the court martial. She leaned against me, crying softly. I put the gun down and held her. I don't know what the h.e.l.l's going to happen now. I don't think Marty does, either.

A stranger came running toward us, his hands in the air. I picked up the weapon and pointed it in his direction. This facility is closed to unauthorized personnel.

He stopped about twenty feet away, his hands still in the air. Sergeant Billy Reitz, sir, motor pool. What on earth is going on?

How did you get in here?

I just ran by the soldierboy; nothing happened. What is all this craziness?

As I said- I don't mean in there! He gestured wildly. I mean out here!

Amelia and I looked out past the compound's fence. In the dim dawn light stood thousands of silent people, stark naked.

THE FEWER THAN TWENTY individuals who comprised the Twenty were able to solve interesting and subtle problems with their combined experience and intelligence. They'd had this enhanced ability from the first instant they were humanized.

The thousands of POWs in the Ca.n.a.l Zone were a much larger ent.i.ty, which only had two problems to work on: How do we get out of here? and What then?

Getting out was so easy as to be almost trivial. Most of the labor in the camp was done by POWs; together, they knew more about how it actually ran than did the soldiers and computers that ran it. Taking over the computers was simple, a matter of properly timing a simulated medical emergency in order to get the right woman (whom they knew to be kindhearted) to leave her desk for a crucial minute.

This was at two in the morning. By two-thirty, all the soldiers had been awakened at gunpoint and marched to a maximum-security compound. They gave up without a shot being fired, which was not surprising, given that they faced thousands of apparently angry armed enemy prisoners. They couldn't know that the enemy were not really angry, and const.i.tutionally unable to pull the trigger.

None of the POWs knew how to operate a soldierboy, but they could turn them off from Command and Control, and leave them immobile while they pried the mechanics out of their cages, and took them down to join the shoes in prison. They left them plenty of prison food and water, and then went on to the next step.

They could have simply escaped and dispersed. But then the war would go on, the war that had turned their peaceful, prosperous country into a strangled battlefield.

They had to go to the enemy. They had to offer themselves.

There were regular freight s.h.i.+pments between Portobello and CZ via monorail. They left their weapons behind, along with a few people who could speak perfect American English (to maintain for a few hours the illusion of a functioning POW camp), and crowded into a few freight cars manifested as fresh fruit and vegetables.

As the cars pulled in to the commissary station, they all undressed, so as to present themselves as totally unarmed and vulnerable-and also to confuse the Americans, who were strange about nudity.

Several of their number had been sent to the camp from Portobello, so when the doors opened and they stepped in unison into the shocked floodlights, they knew exactly where to go.

Building 31.

I WATCHED THE SOLDIERBOY at the guard box teeter for a second and then swivel, taking in the magnitude of the phenomenon.

What the h.e.l.l is going on? Claude's voice boomed out. Que pasa?

A wrinkled old man shuffled forward, holding a portable jack transfer box. A shoe rushed up behind him, raising an M-31 b.u.t.t-first.

Stop! Claude said, but it was too late. The b.u.t.tplate smacked into the old man's skull with a cracking sound, and he skidded forward to lie at the soldierboy's feet, unconscious or dead.

It was a scene the whole world would see the next day, and nothing Marty could have orchestrated would have had such an effect.

The POWs turned to look at the shoe with expressions of quiet pity, forgiveness. The huge soldierboy knelt down and carefully scooped up the frail body, cradling him, and looked down at the shoe. He was just an old man, for Christ's sake, he said quietly.

And then a girl of about twelve picked the box up off the ground and pulled out one cable and offered it wordlessly to the soldierboy. It went down on one knee and accepted it, awkwardly plugging it in while not letting go of the old man. The girl plugged the other jack into her own skull.

The sun comes up fast in Portobello, and for the couple of minutes that tableau lasted, thousands of still people and one machine in thoughtful communion, the street began to glow, gold and rose.