Гарри Гаррисон - There Won't Be War

“Yes,” Getty said.

“So each man in the squad can imagine he may not have shot me?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

A tight, unhumorous smile was January’s last expression. He threw down the cigarette, ground it out, poked the priest in the arm. “But I know.” Then the mask slipped back into place for good, making the hood redundant, and with a firm step January went to the wall. One might have said he was at peace.

A small boy named John balanced the rock on the edge of an orange-coloured balcony. It was heavy, and he was tired. Searching for it on the dump had not been easy, nor had the struggle up the four flights of stairs, and he thinking, and thinking, about Willie Byrne.

If Willie had only gone away after hitting him on the nose. Why did Willie force him down, rub his face into the cow dung that lay on the street, and stand there while the others laughed. Maybe if Willie had not made him look ridiculous he would not—.

His fingers tightened on the rough edge of rock, while directly below him, sleeping peacefully in a large green pram, lay the white swathed bundle of Willie’s baby sister.

John was nineteen when the gelignite blew him to pieces. How cold and wet he had been, as he prepared the booby trap for the expected jeep. How suddenly the charge exploded in his hands, causing that vague sense of identity that had been him to break into little bits.

One bit, his brain, landed on the edge of a footpath, and there considered the course of events that had brought it to its present undignified position. There had been the man he had met at the bus stop in Dublin, and the agreement reached that something should be done for one’s country. A large bare room had been entered, and his decision to join the organization accepted. And there had been the training in the use of explosives.

Here the brain tittered to itself, as the thought occurred that either the training or the gelignite had been faulty.

A late afternoon sunshine slanted painfully through the dusty streets when the machine came along. Efficiently, a shovellike mechanism shot from the side, scooped up John’s brain, and deposited it with a lot of other brains.

Trundle, trundle, it went into the approaching gloom, until it came to a broad river. Even now it did not stop, but trundled into the darkened water, for by now night was soaking darkly into everything.

After some time there was a thud, and he knew he and the other brains had been dropped through an opening onto the ground. Not that he cared, such an eventftil day, such tiredness, and now drifting into sleep.

Strong sunlight woke him, and he looked around. What a strange place, what a big dump, all those miles of lavatory and industrial waste, all shimmering, stinking, fermenting, and bubbling in the sun.

“Still it’s life, insecty life, wormy life, germy life, but still life,” said a voice behind John.

John spun his jellied remains around, and saw thousands and thousands of brains, all basking in the sunlight. The one speaking was a large purple specimen, and now it was speaking again.

“I am foreman here. I will tell you as economically as possible our situation.”

“First our comrades. They come from many places. Some were good Jews fighting the baddy Arabs, some baddy Jews fighting the goody Arabs, some were good protestants fighting the baddy catholics, some baddy protestants fighting the goody catholics, some were goody, or baddy, Viet Cong, black or white, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

“We did not eat what we killed, we did not need it for food, or to feed our young, or to use in any way towards the increase of life.

“Life, friend, that is the word. It is not the empty space between the stars, nor the unconscious mineral. But rather the movement from single cell, towards a jellied fish, bronzed weapon, space ship potential.

“Now, comrade, you enter a sun-bathed botanical garden, and you have life seeding, increasing, screaming its multi-coloured challenge towards the universe. We on the other hand, resting on this unperfiimed site, are the shrinking of life, on the way to the greatest horror of all, the nonconsciousness.

“And you, friend, and all our fellow members have offended. We stopped life without purpose, we stopped a cell on its journey from sea to star.”

John began to laugh, his jellied blob shaking and shaking and shaking, with merriment, and all the other brains began to laugh, until a great big gale of rusty laughter, went round and round, and round, the dump.

It was too nice a day for this. The morning sun was friendly warm, still early, not yet hot in the tropical sky. Salt air, sound of the gentle breakers ahead; if you closed your eyes you could picture girls and picnics. Riding waves, playing. The girls in their wet clinging suits, hinting mysteries, that’s the kind of day it should have been.

Curious sea birds creaked and cawed, begging, as they followed the craft wallowing its way toward shore. Its motor was silent, as was its cargo of boys. Quiet tick and clack as bits of metal swung and tapped in the swaying craft.

The salt tang not quite as strong as the smell of lubricant. Duncan opened his eyes and for the hundredth time rubbed the treated cloth along the exposed metal parts of his weapon. Take care of this weapon, boy, the sergeant had said, over and over; take care of it and it will take care of you. This weapon’s all that’s between you and dying.

The readout by the sight said 125. Ten dozen people he could fry before recharging.

A soft triple snick of metal as the boy next to him clicked his bayonet into place over the muzzle of the weapon. Others looked at him but nobody said anything. You weren’t supposed to put the bayonet on until you were on the beach. Someone might get hurt in the charge. That was almost funny.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” Duncan said, just above a whisper.

“I know,” the boy said. “I’ll be careful.” They really hadn’t had that much training. Three years before, they’d been pulled out of school and sent to the military academy. But until the last month it had been just like regular school, except that you lived in a dorm instead of at home. Then some quick instruction in guns and knives and they were on their way to the Zone.

The surf grew louder and the pitching of the boat more pronounced as they surged in through the breakers. Someone spattered vomit inside the craft, not daring to raise his head above the heavy metal shielding of the sides, and then two more did the same; so much for the fragrance of the sea. Duncan’s breakfast was sour in his throat and he swallowed it back. Someone cried softly, sobbing like a girl. A boy tried to quiet him with a silly harsh insult. Someone admonished him, with no conviction, to save it for the enemy. It was all so absurd. Like dying on a day like this. Even for real soldiers, dying on a day like this would be absurd.

The bow of the craft ground to a halt on coral sand. Duncan lurched to his feet, weapon at port arms, ready to rush out. Warm air from the beach wafted in with a new smell, a horrible smell: burning flesh.

He didn’t think he could kill anyone. It was all a dread-fill mistake. He was sixteen years old and at the top of his class in calculus and Latin. Now he was going to step off this boat into a firestorm of lasers and die.

“This is crazy.” The large boy loomed over the counselor’s desk, nearly as tall as the adult and outbulking him by ten kilograms of muscle. “It has to be the tests. They screwed up on my brother three years ago and now they screwed up on me.”