Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

The helicopter suddenly lurched left and right, accelerating up. I put out a hand and kept her from falling.

"Missile," I said, in touch with the flyboy.

"A pity it missed."

"You're the only living creature aboard this craft, Senora. The rest of us are safe in Portobello."

At that she smiled. "Not so safe, I think. Wasn't that the point of this little kidnapping?"

THE WOMAN WAS ONE of the lucky ninety percent who survived jacking intact, and she did give Alliance questioners the names of three other tenientes who had been in on the Portobello massacre. For her own part in it she was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. She was sent to the large POW camp in the Canal Zone, the jack in the back of her skull guaranteeing that she wouldn't be part of any conspiracy there.

Unsurprisingly, during the four hours it had taken to get her to Portobello and install the jack, the three other tenientes and their families had dissolved into the bush, driven underground-perhaps to return. Their fingerprints and retinal patterns tagged them as rebels, but there was no real guarantee that the ones on file were authentic. They had had years to effect substitution. Any one of them might show up at the entrance to the camp at Portobello with a job application.

Of course, the Alliance had fired every Hispanic employee at the Portobello camp, and could do the same everywhere else in the city, even the country. But that might be counterproductive in the long run. The Alliance provided one out of three jobs in Panama. Putting those people out of work would probably add one more country to the Ngumi ranks.

Marx and others thought and taught that war was fundamentally economic in nature. No one in the nineteenth century, though, could have foreseen the world of the twenty-first, where half the world had to work for its rice or bread and the other half just lined up in front of generous machines.

THE PLATOON RETURNED to the town just before dawn, with warrants for the three rebel leaders. They entered the houses in groups of three, simultaneously crashing inside in clouds of smoke and vile gas, lowering real estate values but finding no one. There was no effective resistance, and they sped away in ten separate directions.

They rendezvoused at a place about twenty kilometers downhill, a feed store and cantina. The cantina had been closed for hours, but one customer remained, collapsed under one of the outside tables, snoring. They didn't wake him up.

The rest of the mission was an exercise in malice dreamed up by some half-awake genius who was annoyed at not taking any more prisoners that night. They were to go back up the hill and systematically destroy the crops that belonged to the three escaped rebels.

Two of them were coffee planters, so Julian ordered his people to uproot the bushes and leave them in place; presumably they could be replanted the next day.

The third man's "crop" was the town's only hardware store. If Julian had asked, they probably would have been ordered to torch it. So he didn't ask; he and three others just broke down the doors and threw all of the merchandise out on the street. Let the town decide whether they would respect the man's belongings.

Most of the town was tired of dealing with the soldierboys by now, and had gotten the message that the machines weren't going to kill anyone unless provoked. Still, two ambitious snipers came in with lasers and had to be shot, but the soldierboys were able to use tranquilizing darts.

Park, the platoon's new homicidal addition, gave Julian some trouble there. He argued against using the darts-which technically was insubordination under fire, a court-martial offense – and then when he did take aim with the dart, he aimed for the sniper's eye, which would have been fatal. Julian monitored that just in time to send a mental shout, "Cease fire!" and reassign the sniper to Claude, who tranked him in the shoulder.

So as a show of force, the mission was reasonably successful, though Julian wondered what the sense of it was. The townspeople would probably see it as bullying vandalism. Maybe he should have torched the store and sterilized the two farmers' lands. But he hoped the restrained approach would work better: with his laser he wrote a scorched message on the whitewashed wall of the hardware store, translated by Psychops into formal Spanish: " – By rights, twelve of you should perish for the twelve of us you killed. Let there not be a next time."

WHEN I CAME HOME Tuesday night there was a note under my door:

Darling,

The gift is beautiful. I went to a concert last night just so I could dress up and show it off. Two people asked who it was from, and I was enigmatic: a friend.

Well, friend, I've made a big decision, I suppose in part a present to you. I've gone down to Guadalajara to have a jack installed.

I didn't want to wait and discuss it with you because I don't want you to share the responsibility, if something should go wrong. My mind was actually made up by a news item, which I've put on your queue as "law.jack."

Basically, a man in Austin got jacked and fired from his administrative job, then challenged the antijack clause under Texas job discrimination laws. The court ruled in his favor, so at least for

the time being, it's professionally safe for me to go ahead and do it.

I know all about the physical danger, and I also know how unseemly it is for a woman of my years and position to take that risk because of what amounts to jealousy: I can't compete with your memory of Carolyn and I can't share your life the way Condi and the others do-the women you swear you don't love.

No arguments this way. I'll be back on Monday or Tuesday. Do we have a date?

Love, Amelia

I read it over twice and then ran for the phone. There was no answer at her place. So I played back the other messages, and got the one I most feared:

"Senor Class, your name and number were given to us by Amelia Harding as a person to be reached in case of emergency. We are also contacting a Professor Hayes.

"Profesora Harding came here to the Clinica de cirugia restorativa y aumentativa de Guadalajara to have a puente mental, what you call a jack, installed. The operation did not go well, and she is completely paralyzed. She can breathe without help, and responds to visual and auditory stimuli, but cannot speak.

"We want to discuss various options with you. Senora Harding listed your name in lieu of next of kin. My name is Rodrigo Spencer, chief of la division quinirgica para instalacion y extraccion de implantas craniales – Surgical Unit for Installation and Removal of Cranial Implants." He gave his number and the address.

That message was Sunday night. The next was from Hayes, Monday, saying he'd checked my schedule and wouldn't do anything until I got home. I took time for a quick shave and called him at home.

It was only ten, but he answered no-face. When he heard it was me, he turned on the screen, rubbing his face. I'd obviously gotten him out of bed.

"Julian. Sorry ... I've been on an odd schedule because we're testing for the big jump. The engineers had me up till three last night.

"Okay, look, about Blaze. It's no secret that you two are keeping company. I understand why she wants to be discreet, and appreciate it, but that's not a factor between you and me." His smile had real pain in it. "Okay?"

"Sure. I figured..."

"So what about Guadalajara?"

"I, I'm still a little in shock. I'll go downtown and get the first train; two hours, four, depending on connections ... no, I'll call the base first and see if I can get a flight."

"Once you get down there?"

"I'll have to talk to people. I have a jack but don't know much about the installation-I mean, I was drafted; nobody gave me a choice. See whether I can talk to her."