Read Online Warriors [Anthology] by George R. R. & Dozois Martin - Free Book Online

for sure.”
     
    “Well, I’ve got two weeks to nose around. See how much latitude I’ll have. But what about my job here?”
     
    She waved a hand in dismissal. “You can do it in twenty days a month. Actually, I was going to take you off the physics lab babysitting anyhow; just grade papers for 60 and help me with the 299 special projects.” She looked at her calendar. “I guess Basic Training will be full-time.”
     
    “I don’t know. Sounds like it, from what I’ve heard.”
     
    “Find out for me. If I have to kidnap somebody for October and November, I’d better start looking around.” She reached across the desk and patted my hand. “It’s an inconvenience, Julian, but not a disaster. You’ll come out on top.”
     
    * * * *
     
    Blaze hadn’t brought up the largest danger and the biggest attraction of being a “mechanic,” as the soldiers who operated the soldierboys were called. They all had to be jacked, a hole drilled into the back of the skull and an electronic interface inserted, so you shared the thoughts and observations, feelings, of the rest of your platoon. There were five men and five women in a platoon, so you become like a mythical beast, with ten brains, twenty arms, and five cocks and five cunts. A lot of people tried to join up for that experience. That was not quite what the army was looking for.
     
    Almost all mechanics were drafted, because the army needed a peculiar mix of attitudes and eptitudes. Empathy is obvious, being able to stay sane with nine other people sharing your deepest feelings and memories. But they also needed people who were comfortable with killing, for the so-called “hunter-killer” platoons. They were the ones who got all the attention, the bonuses, even fan clubs. I could assume I wasn’t going to be one of them. I didn’t even like to go fishing, because of the blood and guts and hurting the fish.
     
    The installation of the jack was also risky. The rate of failure was classified, but various sources put it between 5 and 15 percent. Most of the failures didn’t die, but I wondered how many of them went back to intellectual pursuits.
     
    I found out that Basic Training was indeed full-time, for eight weeks. The first four weeks were intensely physical, old-fashioned boot camp— not obviously useful for people who would spend their military career sitting in a cage, thinking. After four weeks, they installed the jack, and you started training in tandem with your other nine.
     
    I did apply to be reassigned, to infantry or medical or quartermaster. (They crossed that off; you can’t join a noncombat arm in time of war.) I was rejected the day I applied.
     
    So I increased my jogging from one mile a day to three, and worked out on the gym machines every other day. Basic training had a bad reputation, and I wanted to be ready for the physical side of it.
     
    I also spent more social time with Blaze than I ever had before. She had no teaching load during the summer. I had legitimate reasons to drop by the Jupiter Project, though I could do most of my work from any computer console anywhere in the world. I tended to show up around lunchtime or when the office nominally closed at five.
     
    You couldn’t call it dating, given the difference in our ages, but it wasn’t just coworkers having lunch, either. It could have evolved into something if there’d been more than two weeks, perhaps.
     
    But on September 2, she took me to the airport and gave me a tight hug and a kiss that was a little more interesting than a coworker saying “goodbye for now.”
     
    * * * *
     
    When I got off the plane in St. Louis, there was a woman in uniform holding a card with my name and two others on it. She was bigger than me, and white, and looked pretty mean. I stifled the impulse to walk right by her and get a ticket to Finland.
     
    When the other two, a woman and a man, showed up, she walked us to an emergency exit that apparently had been disabled, then down