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“Ishtar … yeah? What a zig! I been there too!” A rapid-fire barrage of images flickered through Garroway’s mind—scenes of Ishtar, with Marduk vast and swollen in a green sky; of the native An, like tailless, erect lizards with huge golden eyes; of the stepped pyramids of New Sumer so reminiscent of the ancient Mayan structures in Central America; of the vast and eerily artificial loom of the mountain they’d called Krakatoa; of a claustrophobic sprawl of mud huts and city walls, of dense purple-black jungle.
“Wait a minute. What do you mean, you were there too?” This glowing woman was neither a Marine nor a scientist, of that he was sure. She hadn’t been onboard the Jules Verne, either, and no other ships had returned from Ishtar since the original voyage of discovery thirty years ago.
“Sure! In sim, y’know? Most of the folks here grozzed a simtrip to Epsilon Eridani right here just last week!”
“Oh. A sim …” Well, that made more sense. With the right hardware and AI programming and decent sensory records of the target, a direct download to your cerebral implants could make it seem as though you were actually there … at the bottom of the ocean, walking the deserts of Mars, or exploring the jungles of distant Ishtar.
“Well, yeah,” the woman said. She sounded exasperated. “Why vam it in the corp, y’know? And it takes so long. A numnum feed is much better. Don’t send the mass. Just send information, reet?”
He was beginning to gather that numnum must be a corruption of noumenon. The techelms, apparently, allowed everyone wearing them to share not only surface thoughts, but emotions and sensations as well.
He must have been broadcasting some of his bemusement. “Don’t you Army types groz numnum feeds?” she asked.
“Not … Army …” he managed to say. Speech was difficult. “Marines. …”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
“No, damn it. It’s important. Marines.”
What were they doing to him? Reaching up, he fumbled with the helmet, then pulled it off.
Instantly, the falsely heightened colors and sensations dropped away. The woman of light was now … just a woman, a bit overweight and sagging despite the efforts of some decades, he thought, of anagathic nano. She was wearing nothing but sandals, jewelry, and a silver techelm. Without the light show she was not as disconcerting to look at, and from what he could see of her mouth and hair, he guessed she was rather plain behind that opaque visor. He actually liked her better this way.
But she was already turning away, losing interest.
Where were his friends? Funny. He’d thought they were still right there next to him, but they appeared to have dispersed through the crowd.
He slipped the helmet back on, hoping to spot them. The explosion of color and thought hit him again, but he found he was now able to zero in on their location.
“I wasn’t talking to you, creep! Back off!” Was that Anna’s thought? It sounded like her. He tried to locate her in the crowd.
Ah! There she was, halfway across the room, easy enough to spot now in her Class A’s, surrounded by several helmeted men and women.
“So who invited you, Teenie?” one of the men was saying. The conversation did not sound pleasant.
“Hey, I said back off,” Anna said aloud. “I don’t want any trouble.”
“Well, you got trouble, lady,” one of the women told her. “We don’t like your kind around here.”
“Hey, hey,” Garroway said, wading into the small crowd gathering around Anna. “What the hell is this all about?”
A waspish-looking man with an ornate silver and gold helmet shaped to represent a dragon turned the visor to face him. “This little Aztlanista thought she could grope our party, feo. Who the hell are you?”
“I’m a U.S. Marine, like her. And I happen to know she’s no Aztlanista.”
“Her del says her name’s Garcia,” the woman said. “Latina, reet?”
“So? My family name was Esteban,” Garroway told them. “And I was born in Sonora. You have a problem with that?”
“Yeah, we have a problem with that. You Teenies are freaming bad news, revolutionaries and troublemakers, every one of you!” The woman reached out and grabbed for the front of Anna’s uniform.
Faster than the eye could see, Anna blocked the grab, snagged the arm, and dropped it into a pressure hold that drove the woman to her knees, screaming. One of the men moved to intervene, and Garroway took him down with a sharp, short kick to the side of his knee. Spinning about, he took a fighting stance back to back with Anna. The crowd glowered, but came no closer.
“I think you milslabs better shinnie,” a man said.
“Yeah,” another agreed. “Ain’t none of you welcome here, zig? Vam out!”
Garroway looked around, searching the room for the rest of the Marines. Kat and Rog were coming fast, both tossing aside their helmets as they shouldered through the crowd. And there were Tim and Regi. All right. Semper fi. …
For a moment, he wondered if they would get into trouble—fighting in a civilian establishment. Fuck it! They started it! …
But then a sharp, hissing static filled Garroway’s ears … his mind and thoughts. Staggered, he raised his hands to his ears, trying unsuccessfully to block the literally painful noise. His vision began to fuzz out as well, blurring and filling with dancing, staticky motes of light.
An implant malfunction? That was nearly unthinkable, but he didn’t know what the civilian techelms might have done to his Marine system.
“What’s … happening? …” he heard Eagleton say. The other Marines, too, had been stricken. That elevated the static from malfunction to enemy action.
But who was the enemy? The civilians surrounding them? That didn’t seem likely.
“You are in violation of programmed operational parameters. Hostile thought and/or action against civilians is not permitted. Desist immediately.”
The voice, gender-neutral and chillingly penetrating, rose above the static.
“Huh? Who’s that?”
“This is the social monitor AI currently resident within your cereblink. Hostile thought and/or action against civilians is not permitted. Desist immediately.”
“What AI?” Womicki demanded loudly. “What’s goin’ on?”
The shrill hiss grew louder and louder, driving Garroway to his knees. Anna Garcia collapsed beside him, unconscious.
And a moment later he joined her. …
Police Holding Cell Precinct 915 East Los Angeles, California 2312 hours, PST
It had been, Captain Martin Warhurst thought, inevitable. Marines back from a deployment—especially one as long and as rugged as the mission to Lalande 21185—needed to go ashore and let off some steam. His people had fought damned hard and damned well on Ishtar; they deserved a bit of downtime.
But downtime too often turned to fighting, chemical or nanoincapacitation, and rowdy behavior frowned upon by the civilian establishment.
The guard led him down a curving passageway to one of a number of holding cells, bare rooms walled off by thick transplas barriers. This one was occupied by twenty or thirty men, with expressions ranging from dazed to sullen. Four, however, recognized him immediately and came to their feet.
“Captain Warhurst!”
“You boys okay?”
“A little fuzzy yet, sir,” Garroway said.
“Yeah,” Womicki added. “Sir, you gotta get us out of here. These civilians are freakin’ crazy!”
“What happened?”
Garroway tapped the side of his head. “Not sure, sir. Things got a little tight at a party we were at. Next thing I know, a voice in my head is telling me I’m in violation. And then … lights out.”
Warhurst nodded. “Social monitor.”
“Yeah, but what is it, sir?” Eagleton wanted to know. “I don’t remember giving permission to have anyone tamper with my ’link!”
“It was part of your agreement when you got to leave the base. Remember thumbing a nonaggressive clause?”
“Sure,” Lobowski said, leaning up against the transparency. The plastic was several centimeters thick, but the speaker system let them talk and be heard. “It said to stay out of trouble. We figured, ‘Hey, no sweat. We’re not lookin’ for trouble.’”
“Did you read the fine print?”
“What fine print?” Womicki said. “It was a download.”
“Well, you should have heard someone telling you that you were being given Class 5 nanoingests.”
“You mean when they gave us something to drink?” Garroway asked. “I didn’t hear anything about nano in the stuff.”
“Mm. Well, we’ll check that out later.”
“What kind of nano, sir?” Womicki asked.
“Short-term autodegradable. Chelates with your current implant and creates a temporary low-grade AI that acts as a kind of watchdog. You get out of line, it puts you to sleep.”
“Shit!”
“Things have changed a bit since we were out on Ishtar,” Warhurst told them. “The brass is concerned about how we behave in public.”
“So they feed us monitor nano?” Garroway said, bitter. “Such a splendid reflection of civilian respect for us. Sir.”
“Like I said, things have changed.”
“There were two women with us, sir,” Garroway said. “Vinton and Garcia.”
“Staff Sergeant Dunne is springing them, Garroway. I’m here for you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. You’ll be facing a mast for disorderly conduct.”
“But sir, they started it!”
“Freeze it down, Garroway. You boys put your foot in it. Part of my agreement with the authorities is that you go up before the Man. Copy?”
“Yes, sir. Copy.” He swallowed. “Sir?”
“Yeah?”
“Did they make you take that monitor nano for you to come down here?”
Warhurst grinned. “What do you think, Marine?”
“I don’t know, sir. You’re an officer and a gentleman and all that.”
“I had to take it, son. No exceptions. If the Marine Commandant was coming down here, they’d make him take a drink of the stuff. I don’t think they trust the devil dogs out of the kennel without a leash.”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll dissolve and be out of your system within forty-eight hours.”
“I’m very glad to hear that, sir.”
“Open it up,” Warhurst growled at the guard.
The guard touched a control at his belt, and a panel in the transparency slid aside. Garroway, Womicki, Lobowski, and Eagleton all walked out of the cell.
The Marines were wearing bright lime-green prison utilities, unlike the civilians in the holding cell. “Sir, about our uniforms. …” Womicki began.
“I know. They told me at the front desk.”
“Sir, we were robbed!”
According to the report he’d seen coming in, Raphael security forces had arrived at the Starstruck to find all six Marines unconscious and naked. There was nothing unusual in that, perhaps, so far as the condecology police were concerned, and they’d turned them over to the East LA police without comment. The Marines had regained consciousness an hour later in the police infirmary, insisting that someone at the party had taken their things, including their asset cards.
The police had already put a stop on the cards. As for the uniforms, there wasn’t much that could be done. Warhurst shook his head. What the hell did civilians want with Marine Class A’s? Costumes for a costume ball?
Or maybe it had just been a damned prank.
The guards led them back to the front receiving area, where a clerk offered a screen panel for Warhurst’s thumbprint. “Thumb here, sir. And here.”
“I’ll have someone return the prison uniforms later.”
“Don’t bother,” a beefy police sergeant said. “They’re disposables.”
“Okay. These people have any effects to sign out?”
“No, sir, They came in stripped bare.” The man smirked. “You Marines really like to party, huh?”
“These Marines were robbed, Sergeant. I will be filing a report to that effect.”
The man shrugged massive shoulders. “Suit yourself. But maybe next time your boys and girls won’t come where they’re not wanted, tendo?”
“Yeah.” Warhurst said, his voice tight. “We tendo.”
He’d been warned. Things had changed in the twenty years they’d been away.
And in some ways, things hadn’t changed much at all.
