Read Online The Eternity Brigade by Stephen Goldin, Ivan Goldman - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Stephen Goldin, Ivan Goldman
Ads: Link
back with him to his hotel room, but despite the best efforts of both of them, he found himself impotent. At length angered by his inability, he chased the woman out his room, then cried himself to sleep on the bed.
The world around him became progressively less real, a scene of shifting shadows. He had come here, subconsciously, to say good-bye, but the world seemed to have already left without telling him, leaving him alone in an emotionless void.
Three days before his leave was due to expire, he saw a dime on the sidewalk. He stopped and stood over it, heedless of the people who pushed by him on their hurried way. The small circle of silver became a mystic token, symbol of an entire world he was departing forever. Already it was considered an insignificant piece of change, but he remembered receiving a dime as a kid and buying himself some candy. The dime was a solid link to his past, but what of the future? What if there were no dimes when he awoke? What if there were no money at all, and everyone used credit cards or something? What if there was nothing familiar when he woke up, and he found himself facing a world of alien complexities? He’d been frightened enough of the world he knew; could the future be any less terrifying?
He stared at the dime for half an hour, until a little boy noticed what he was looking at and ran over to pick it up. The kid ran off with the coin and Hawker, jolted out of his reverie, returned slowly to his hotel.
He spent the remainder of his leave in his room, not even venturing out to eat. He turned on the television and sat hypnotized, blinking uncomprehendingly as images paraded across the tube. His face grew gaunt, and bags appeared under his eyes. He dozed a couple of times in front of the set, waking with a start each time and returning to his meaningless preoccupation.
His strange ritual finally completed, he checked out of his room and prepared to return to the base. Unshaven and haggard, he looked like a derelict, though he still had plenty of unused bonus money in his pocket. Hawker didn’t care what people thought about him. He had divorced himself from the present the only way he knew how, and was prepared to step into the future.
***
It turned out to be a longer step than he’d counted on. He was not put into suspended animation immediately upon his return. Instead, he was placed in a separate barracks with the other volunteers, and was told there would be several weeks of special weapons training and physical testing before the experiment began.
Green was here too, as was Symington. Both were delighted to see him, and the threesome spent their first few minutes together thumping backs and swapping insults. Green and Symington both pretended they’d hardly missed Hawker at all. But significantly, neither of them ever asked Hawker where he’d gone—or what he’d done.
Of the ninety-three men who’d volunteered for the project, eleven did not return from leave. After twenty-four hours, they were listed as AWOL and dropped from the subject rolls. Hawker sometimes wondered about them, and whether their lives were better or worse for having made the decision they did.
But the army gave him little time just then for idle speculation. The volunteers were given a course in weapons use conducted by a Special Forces instructor who did not tolerate failure. They spent four hours a day in a classroom learning the theory of weaponry, and eight more hours a day in the field putting their knowledge to practical use. They started with the simplest weapons—knives, bows and arrows, spears, and swords— learning not only their use but how to improvise them in the field if they found themselves unarmed. They spent long hours on the target range until each of them was adept at these before moving on to more modern armaments. They learned about guns, from the earliest to the most modern, including some of the more experimental computer-guided models and the laser rifles that
The world around him became progressively less real, a scene of shifting shadows. He had come here, subconsciously, to say good-bye, but the world seemed to have already left without telling him, leaving him alone in an emotionless void.
Three days before his leave was due to expire, he saw a dime on the sidewalk. He stopped and stood over it, heedless of the people who pushed by him on their hurried way. The small circle of silver became a mystic token, symbol of an entire world he was departing forever. Already it was considered an insignificant piece of change, but he remembered receiving a dime as a kid and buying himself some candy. The dime was a solid link to his past, but what of the future? What if there were no dimes when he awoke? What if there were no money at all, and everyone used credit cards or something? What if there was nothing familiar when he woke up, and he found himself facing a world of alien complexities? He’d been frightened enough of the world he knew; could the future be any less terrifying?
He stared at the dime for half an hour, until a little boy noticed what he was looking at and ran over to pick it up. The kid ran off with the coin and Hawker, jolted out of his reverie, returned slowly to his hotel.
He spent the remainder of his leave in his room, not even venturing out to eat. He turned on the television and sat hypnotized, blinking uncomprehendingly as images paraded across the tube. His face grew gaunt, and bags appeared under his eyes. He dozed a couple of times in front of the set, waking with a start each time and returning to his meaningless preoccupation.
His strange ritual finally completed, he checked out of his room and prepared to return to the base. Unshaven and haggard, he looked like a derelict, though he still had plenty of unused bonus money in his pocket. Hawker didn’t care what people thought about him. He had divorced himself from the present the only way he knew how, and was prepared to step into the future.
***
It turned out to be a longer step than he’d counted on. He was not put into suspended animation immediately upon his return. Instead, he was placed in a separate barracks with the other volunteers, and was told there would be several weeks of special weapons training and physical testing before the experiment began.
Green was here too, as was Symington. Both were delighted to see him, and the threesome spent their first few minutes together thumping backs and swapping insults. Green and Symington both pretended they’d hardly missed Hawker at all. But significantly, neither of them ever asked Hawker where he’d gone—or what he’d done.
Of the ninety-three men who’d volunteered for the project, eleven did not return from leave. After twenty-four hours, they were listed as AWOL and dropped from the subject rolls. Hawker sometimes wondered about them, and whether their lives were better or worse for having made the decision they did.
But the army gave him little time just then for idle speculation. The volunteers were given a course in weapons use conducted by a Special Forces instructor who did not tolerate failure. They spent four hours a day in a classroom learning the theory of weaponry, and eight more hours a day in the field putting their knowledge to practical use. They started with the simplest weapons—knives, bows and arrows, spears, and swords— learning not only their use but how to improvise them in the field if they found themselves unarmed. They spent long hours on the target range until each of them was adept at these before moving on to more modern armaments. They learned about guns, from the earliest to the most modern, including some of the more experimental computer-guided models and the laser rifles that
Similar Books
