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He turned. Allyn Buckner sat down on the other end of the bench and casually pretended to read a newsheet. He was wearing a conservative green and violet smartsuit and dark data visor.
“Buckner. Why’d you drag me out here?”
“Security, of course. I can’t very well come to your office, or even your home, not without my presence being noted on a dozen e-logs. Nor could you visit me unnoticed. And hotel rooms, restaurants, and places like that all have so many electronics nowadays there’s no way to guarantee a private conversation.”
Billingsworth took another long look at the people passing by. This hardly seemed private … and even an open park had more than its fair share of police surveillance floaters, security scanners, and even roving news pickups.
But Buckner had a point about other possible meeting places. Public establishments were entirely too public, while offices and government buildings were heavily wired for all manner of electronic communications and data access. He would have preferred to meet with the PanTerran VP in one of his own secure meeting rooms—there were ways to avoid the log-in and ID protocols—but this, he supposed, would have to do.
“Well?” Buckner asked with brusque matter-of-factness. He scanned a fast-moving live newsfeed of a religious riot in Bombay, then folded the sheet and dropped it on the bench. “Let’s have it.”
Billingsworth sighed. “Operation Spirit of Humankind is still go,” he said. “Scheduled departure is four months from now … October fifteenth.”
“Give me the details.”
Billingsworth reached out and took Buckner’s hand, shaking it as if in greeting, pressing the microelectronics embedded in the skin at the base of his thumb against similar nanocircuitry in the PanTerran officer’s palm. The ultimate in secret handshakes, the transfer of files stored in the SecState’s cerebralink to Buckner’s files took only a few milliseconds, with no RF or microwave leakage that might be intercepted and monitored.
“Excellent.” Buckner seemed satisfied, in his acidic way. “My people were afraid that the government was going to backstep on this.”
“I don’t understand why you need me to be your … your spy.”
“Not a spy, Mr. Billingsworth. Our associate. In twenty years, if all goes well, our very, very wealthy associate.”
“Twenty years …”
“Think of it as long-term investment. You’ll be … what? Eighty-one? Eighty-two? Young enough to benefit from a complete rejuvenation program, if you wish. And still be rich enough to buy that Caribbean island you want to retire to.”
Billingsworth felt a sharp stab of alarm as a floater with the WorldNet News logo on its side drifted past, its glassy eye on the lookout for anything newsworthy. Humans might forget a face, but not a news bureau AI; he turned his head away, studying the foreplay antics of the couple on the hillock behind them. With a soft whine of maglifters, the flying eye drifted past, moving slowly toward the Fourteenth Street entrance.
“But I still don’t understand what you need with these briefing records,” he said when the snoop-floater was out of range.
“They help us plan, Mr. Billingsworth. The government is notoriously unreliable when it comes to long range planning. You can never really count on anything past the next round of elections. When dealing with business opportunities light-years away, that can be a distinct disadvantage. With this,” he tapped the right side of his head, “we know we can proceed with certain plans, long range expensive plans, without risking the loss of our investment when the government waffles, or changes its mind, or decides to have a war. Besides, you need to do something to justify your shares in this venture, right?”
“I suppose so. But the scandal if this gets out—” he broke off as another congressional jogger bounced past, oblivious and anonymous in his sensory helm. Next time, Billingsworth thought, he would definitely wear one of those, but with the ID functions off. There had to be a way to rig that, somehow.
Buckner gave a thin smile. “Then it’s in both our best interests not to let it get out, right?”
“Yes, damn you.”
“Good. You’ll let me know if there’s any change or new development. The usual e-drop.” He stood up, dropping the newsheet in a nearby recycler. “And cheer up! You’re going to be rich and live to be two hundred, easy. And no one will ever hear about those bad investments of yours last year.”
Buckner turned and walked away, heading toward gardens filling the Mall interior.
Billingsworth watched the couple having sex on the hillside a moment longer, then used his cerebralink to signal the robocar, stood, and walked toward the Fourteenth Street entrance to meet it.
He was sweating, despite the Mall’s air-conditioning, and his breath was coming in short, hard gasps. Damn it, he had to find a way to guarantee better privacy for his meetings in the future.
8
24 JUNE 2138
DI’s Office, Company 1099
U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Center
Parris Island, South Carolina
0920 hours ET
“Garroway! Center yourself on the hatch!”
Garroway leaped into the DI’s office, moving at the dead run that had been demanded of him and all of his fellow recruits in Company 1099 since the day they’d arrived at Parris Island.
“Sound off!” Gunnery Sergeant Makowiecz barked without looking up from his desk display.
“Sir!” Garroway snapped back as the toes of his boots hit the white line painted on the deck and he came to rigid attention, eyes locked firmly on an ancient water stain on the cinder-block bulkhead above and behind the DI’s left shoulder. “Recruit Garroway reporting to the drill instructor as ordered, sir!”
“Recruit,” Makowiecz said, his voice still as razor-edged as a Mamaluk sword, “your indoctrination classes are complete and you are about to enter phase one of your training. Are you fully aware of what this entails?”
“Sir! This recruit understands that he will be required to surrender all technical and data prostheses still resident within his body, sir!”
“Well quoted, son. Right out of the book. Stand at ease.”
The sudden change in his DI’s manner was so startling that Garroway nearly fell off his mark. Almost reluctantly, muscle by muscle, he relaxed his posture.
“Why do you want to be a Marine, son?” Makowiecz asked.
“Sir, this recruit—”
“Belay the third person crap,” Makowiecz told him. “This is off the record, just you and me. You’ve seen enough of boot camp now that you must have an idea of how rough this is going to be. You are about to go through twelve weeks of sheer hell. So … why are you putting yourself through this?”
Garroway hesitated. He felt like he was just starting to get the hang of automatic recitations in the third person—“this recruit”—and it somehow didn’t seem fair for the DI to suddenly come at him as though he were a normal, thinking human being. It left him feeling off balance, disoriented.
“Sir,” he said, “all I can say is that this is what I’ve wanted ever since I heard stories from my mother about my great-grandfather.”
Makowiecz placed his palm on a white-lit panel on his desk, accessing data through his c-link. “Your great-grandfather is one of the Names of the Corps,” he said. “Manila John Basilone. Dan Daly. Presley O’Bannon. Chesty Puller. Sands of Mars Garroway. That’s pretty good company. His name is a damn fine legacy.
“But you know and I know that there’s more to being a Marine than a name …”
He paused, waiting expectantly, and Garroway knew he was supposed to say something. “Sir … this recruit … I mean, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I can’t go back to what I was. Sir.”
“You have an abusive father.”
The change of topic was so sudden, Garroway didn’t know how to respond. “Uh, it’s not that bad, sir. Not sexual abuse or anything like that. He just—”
“I’m not interested in the details, son. But hear me, and hear me loud and clear. All abusive behavior by parents or stepparents or line-marriage parents—or by anyone else in authority over a kid, for that matter—does incalculable damage. Doesn’t matter if it was sexual abuse or physical abuse with routine beatings or ‘just’ emotional abuse with screaming fits and head games. And it doesn’t matter if the adult is alcoholic or addicted to c-link sex feeds or is just a thoroughgoing abusive asshole. It’s really impossible to say which is worse, which kid gets hurt the most, because every kid is different and responds to the abuse in different ways.”
“My father yelled a lot,” Garroway said, “but he never hit me. Uh, not deliberately, anyway.” He didn’t add that Carlos Esteban had hit his mother, frequently, and threatened more than once to do the same to him, or that he was an alcoholic who’d disabled the court-appointed cybercontrols over his behavior.
“Doesn’t matter. It says here your mother has filed for divorce. She’s out of the house?”
“Yes, sir. She’s staying with a sister in California now.”
“Good. She’s better off out of this guy’s way, and you’ll be better off knowing she’s okay.” He got a faraway look in his eyes as he scrutinized the data feed flowing through his link. “It says here you were hospitalized once with a dislocated shoulder after a domestic altercation.”
“That was an accident, sir.”
“Uh-huh.” The sergeant didn’t sound at all convinced. “Your father has been cited seven times … domestic violence … disturbing the peace … assault … This bastard should have been locked away and rehabbed a long time ago.”
“There are … political factors, sir. He’s a pretty big man in Sonora, where we live. He’s good friends with the local sheriff and with the governor.”
“Shit. Figures.”
“Sir … I don’t understand where this is going. Are you saying I’m not qualified to be a Marine because my father—”
“You’re qualified, son. Don’t worry about that. What we’re concerned about right now is your c-link. Your implant is a Sony-TI 12000 Series Two Cerebralink.”
“Uh, yessir. It was a birthday present from my parents.”
“Do you have a resident AI?”
“A personality, you mean? No, sir.” Most cerebralinks had onboard AI, for net navigation if nothing else. He didn’t have one with a distinct personality, though. His father hadn’t believed in that sort of thing.
“Cybersex partner?”
“Uh … no …” He’d linked into a number of sex sites, of course, for a few hours of play with various fantasy partners. Everyone did that. But he didn’t have a regular playmate.
“Cyberpet?”
“No, sir.” His father had been pretty insistent about his not having any artificial personalities—a waste of time and money, Carlos had said, and a threat to his immortal soul—and he’d done a lot of e-snooping to make sure his orders were obeyed.
“What did you do for companionship?”
“Well … there’s my girlfriend. …”
“Lynnley Collins. Yes. You’re pretty close with her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A fuck buddy? Or something closer?”
“She’s a friend. Sir.” He had to bite back his rising anger. This kind of cross-examination was the sort of thing his father did, stripping him of any semblance of privacy.
Of course, he’d known he would be surrendering most of his privacy rights when he signed up. But this prying, this spying into his private life … damn it, it wasn’t right.
“I know, son,” Makowiecz said gently, almost as if he was reading Garroway’s mind. “I know. This is as intrusive, as downright abusive, as anything your old man ever did to you. But it’s necessary.”
“Sir, yes, sir. If you say so, sir.”
“I do say so. Does it surprise you that we pay pretty close attention to a recruit’s private life here? We have to.” He pulled his hand off the contact panel on the desk and leaned back in his chair. Outside, clearly audible through the thin walls of the DI’s barracks office, a boot company jogged past, sounding off to a singsong cadence to the beat of footsteps thundering together.
“Am I right or am I wrong?
Each of us is tough and strong!
We guard the ground, the sea, the sky!
Ready to fight and willing to die!”
“It’s a damned paradox, Garroway,” Makowiecz said as the chanting faded away across the grinder. “Lots of kids join the Marines who had bad childhoods. For a lot of ’em, the Corps is their mother and father put together. I know. That’s the way it was for me. And we have to put you through six kinds of hell, have to break you in order to build you up into the kind of Marine we want. If that’s not abuse, I don’t know what is.”
“A history feed I downloaded once said that it used to be that Marine DIs couldn’t even swear at the recruits. Sir.”
Makowiecz nodded. “True enough. That was back, oh, 150 years ago or so. We couldn’t lay hands on recruits then either. A number of Marine DIs were discharged, even court-martialed and disgraced, for not following the new guidelines. They’d grown up in the old Corps, after all, and they thought that harassment and even physical abuse toughened the recruits, made them better Marines.
“We know better now. Still, the rules have relaxed a bit since then, because it was discovered that we couldn’t make Marines without imposing discipline … and sometimes some well-placed profanity or grabbing a recruit by the stacking swivel and giving him a shake is just what is needed to get the message through his damned thick recruit skull. You copy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We have to invade each recruit’s private life, right down to his soul—if he has one. We need to know what makes him tick. How he’ll react under stress. And how we can transform him into a U.S. Marine.”
“I understand that, sir.” And he did, reluctantly … and with a few reservations.
“Good. You understand too that we have to remove your cerebralink.”
“Yes … sir.”
“You don’t sound so sure of that.”
“Well, it’s kind of scary, thinking about being without it. I’ll be getting a Marine Corps model, right?”
“That’s affirmative. Eventually. But first you will learn how to function without any electronic enhancement at all.”
“Without … any? …” The thought wasn’t scary. It was terrifying.
“Right. Look … you know the cerebralink is nothing but a tiny set of parallel computers nanotechnically grown inside your head and connecting to certain parts of your nervous system, like the linkpads in the palm of your hands. It lets you link head-to-head with others with compatible hardware, lets you connect with the WorldNet and pull down the answer to any question, gives you a whole library just a thought-click away. You can see anything, call anyone, make reservations, even download the whole history of the Corps just by thinking about it. The thing is, too many kids nowadays rely on the net, know what I mean?”
“I guess so. But … are you saying it’s wrong to link on?”
“Wrong? Hell no. Direct net access is one of the great cornerstones of modern technology and culture. But you as a Marine need to learn that you can get along without any technic prosthesis whatsoever … not just learn it, but know it right down to your bones. Our ancestors went a long way without implants or c-links. You can too.
“However, we’ve found a special problem with kids coming from families with major dysfunctions. Alcoholism. Net addictions. Violence. Kids who don’t get the love and care they need at home tend to grow up relying on surrogates, like AI companions, cyberpets, or e-mates. When they’re separated from their comfort-of-choice, whatever it is, it can be pretty rough.”
“Why don’t you just keep them from enlisting, then?” Damn it, if they were going to kick him out of boot camp for this …
“If we did that, son, we’d have to exclude the majority of our volunteers. And some of our best people came from bad home situations. Myself included. But we do take them aside first, like I’m doing with you, and give them a final chance to think about it, think about what they’re in for. When we pull your hardware, you’re going to feel more alone, more lost, more isolated than you’ve ever felt in your life. It’s going to be hell. And you’re going to have to ride it out. Eventually, you will be issued with a Marine Corps implant. If you make it through.”
“And if I don’t?”
