Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

Julian was allowed to ride with her, which was mostly a matter of watching her sleep. When the sedative wore off, about an hour from Houston, they talked primarily about work; Julian managed to avoid lying to her about what might happen if they jacked in her almost-connected state. He knew she would read all about it soon enough and then they'd have to deal with their hopes and disappointments. He didn't want her to build up some transcendental scenario based on that one beautiful instant. The best that could happen would be a lot less than that, and there would probably be no effect at all.

The care center was shiny on the outside and shabby on the inside. Amelia got the only bed left in a four-bed "suite," inhabited by women twice her age, long-term or permanent residents. Julian helped her settle in, and when it became obvious that he wasn't just working for her, two of the old ladies were ostentatiously horrified at the difference in color and age. The third was blind.

Well, they were out in the open now. That was one good thing that had come from the mess, for their personal lives if not their professional ones.

Amelia hadn't read the Chandler book, and was delighted. It seemed unlikely that she would spend much time in conversation.

Julian was headed for conversation that night, of course, Friday. He decided to show up at the club at least an hour late, so Marty could tell the others about the operations and reveal the sordid truth about him and Amelia. If indeed it was actually secret to anybody there. Straitlaced Hayes knew and had never given a hint.

There was plenty to occupy him before the Saturday Night Special, since he hadn't even checked his mail after reading the note under his door, when he returned from Portobello. An assistant to Hayes had written up a summary of the runs he and Amelia had missed; that would take a few hours' study. Then there were notes of concern, mostly from people he would see that night. It was the sort of news that traveled fast.

Just to make life interesting, there was a note from his father saying he'd like to drop by on his way home from Hawaii, so Julian could get to know "Suze," his new wife, better. Unsurprisingly, there was also a phone message from Julian's mother, wondering where he was, and would he mind if she came down to escape the last of the bad weather? Sure, Mom, you and Suze will get along just fine; think of how much you have in common.

In this case, the easiest course was the truth. He punched up his mother and said she could come down if she wanted, but that his father and Suze were going to be here at the same time. After she calmed down from that, he gave her a quick summary of the past four days' excitement.

Her image on the phone took on an odd appearance as he talked. She'd grown up with sound-only, and had never mastered the neutral expression that most people automatically assumed.

"So you're pretty serious about this old woman."

"Old white woman, Momma." Julian laughed at her indignation. "And I've been telling you for a year and a half how serious we were."

"White, purple, green; doesn't make any difference to me. Son, she's only ten years younger than I am."

"Twelve."

"Oh, thank God, twelve! Don't you see how foolish you look now to the people around you?"

"I'm just glad it's not a secret anymore. And if we look foolish to some people, well, that's their problem, not ours."

She looked away from the screen. "It's me that's the fool, and a hypocrite, too. Mother's got to worry."

"If you'd come down once and meet her, you'd stop worrying."

"I should. Okay. You call me when your father and his playmate have gone on up to Akron – "

"Columbus, Mom."

"Wherever. You call me and we'll work out a time."

He watched her image fade and shook his head. She'd been saying that for more than a year; something always came up. She had a busy life, admittedly, still teaching full-time at a junior college in Pittsburgh. But that obviously wasn't it. She really didn't want to lose her little boy at all, and to lose him to a woman old enough to be her sister was grotesque.

He'd talked to Amelia about their going up to Pittsburgh, but she said she didn't want to force the issue. There was something less simple at work with her, as well.

The two women had opposite attitudes toward his being a mechanic, too. Amelia was plainly worried sick all the time he was in Portobello-much worse now, since the massacre-but his mother treated it as a kind of brainless second job that he had to do, even though it got in the way of his actual work. She never seemed to have any curiosity about what went on down there. Amelia followed his unit's actions with the single-minded intensity of a warboy. (She'd never admitted this, which Julian supposed was to spare him anxiety, but she often slipped and asked questions about things that nobody could have found out if they simply followed the news.)

It suddenly, belatedly, occurred to Julian that Hayes, and probably everybody else in the department, knew or suspected there was something going on because of the way Amelia acted when he was away. They worked hard at (but also had fun) playing the role of "just friends" when they came together at work. Maybe their audience knew the script.

All part of the past now. He was impatient to get to the club and see how people had reacted to the news. But he still had a couple of hours if he was going to give Marty ample time to set them up. He didn't really feel like working, even answering mail, so he flopped down on the couch and asked the cube to search.

The cube had a built-in learning routine that analyzed every selection he made, and from the content of what he liked, constructed a preference profile that it used to search through the eighteen hundred available channels. One problem with that was that you couldn't communicate with the routine; its only input was your choices. The first year or so after he was drafted, Julian had obsessively watched century-old movies, perhaps to escape into a world where people and events were simply good or bad. So now when the thing searched, it dutifully came up with lots of Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne, and Julian had found through objective observation that it did no good to yell at it.

Humphrey Bogart at Rick's. Reset. Jimmy Stewart headed for Washington. Reset. A tour of the lunar south pole, through the eyes of the robot landers. He'd seen most of it a couple of years before, but it was interesting enough to see again. It also helped deprogram the machine.

EVERYONE LOOKED UP WHEN I walked into the room, but I suppose they would do that under any circumstances. Perhaps they kept looking a little longer than usual.

There was an empty chair at a table with Marty, Reza, and Franklin.

"You get her safely ensconced?" Marty asked.

I nodded. "She'll be out of that place as soon as they let her walk. The three women she's sharing the room with are straight out of Hamlet."

"Macbeth," Reza corrected me, "if you mean crones. Or are they sweet young lunatics about to commit suicide?"

"Crones. She seems okay. The ride up from Guadalajara wasn't bad, just long." The sullen waiter in the artfully stained T-shirt slouched over. "Coffee," I said, then caught Reza's look of mock horror. "And a pitcher of Rioja." It was getting on toward the end of the month again. The guy started to ask for my ration card, then recognized me and slumped away.

"Hope you re-enlist," Reza said. He took my number and punched in the price of the whole pitcher.

"When Portobello freezes over."

"Did they say when she'd be released?" Marty asked.

"No. Neurologist sees her in the morning. She'll call me."

"Better have her call Hayes, too. I told him everything was going to be all right, but he's nervous."

"He's nervous."

"He's known her longer than you have," Franklin said quietly. So had he and Marty.

"So did you see any Guadalajara?" Reza asked. "Fleshpots?"

"No. Just wandered around a little. Didn't get into the old city or out to T-town, what do they call it?"

"Tlaquepaque," Reza said. "I spent an eventful week there one day."

"How long have you and Blaze been together?" Franklin asked. "If you don't mind my asking."

"Together" probably wasn't the word he was searching for. "We've been close for three years. Friends a couple of years before that."

"Blaze was his adviser," Marty said.

"Doctoral?"

"Post-doc," I said.

"That's right," Franklin said with a small smile. "You came from Harvard." Only an Eli could say that with a trace of pity, Julian mused.

"Now you're supposed to ask me whether my intentions are honorable. The answer is we have no intentions. Not until I get out of service."

"And how long is that?"

"Unless the war ends, about five years."

"Blaze will be fifty."

"Fifty-two, actually. I'll be thirty-seven. Maybe that bothers you more than it does us."

"No," he said. "It might bother Marty."

Marty gave him a hard look. "What have you been drinking?"

"The usual." Franklin displayed the bottom of his empty teacup. "How long has it been?"

"I only want the best for both of you," Marty said to me. "You know that."

"Eight years, nine?"

"Good God, Franklin. Were you a terrier in a former life?" Marty shook his head as if to clear it. "That was over long before Julian joined the department"

The waiter sidled over with the wine and three glasses. Sensing tension, he poured as slowly as was practical. We all watched him in silence. "So," Reza said, "how 'bout them Oilers?"

THE NEUROLOGIST WHO CAME to see Amelia the next morning was too young to have an advanced degree in anything. He had a goatee and bad skin. For half an hour, he asked her the same simple questions over and over.

"When and where were you born?"

"August 12, 1996. Sturbridge, Massachusetts."

"What was your mother's name?"

"Jane O'Banian Harding."

"Where did you go to grade school?"

"Nathan Hale Elementary, Roxbury."

He paused. "Last time you said Breezewood. In Sturbridge."

She took a deep breath and let it out. "We moved to Roxbury in '04. Maybe '05."

"Ah. And high school?"

"Still O'Bryant. John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science."

"That's in Sturbridge?"

"No, Roxbury! I went to middle school in Roxbury, too. You haven't – "

"What was your mother's maiden name?"

"O'Banian."

He made a long note in his notebook. "All right. Stand up."

"What?"

"Get out of bed, please. Stand up."

Amelia sat up and cautiously put her feet on the floor.

She took a couple of shaky steps and reached back to hold the gown closed.

"Are you dizzy?"

"A little. Of course."

"Raise your arms, please." She did, and the back of the gown fell open.

"Nice bottom, sweetheart," croaked the old lady in the bed next to her.

"Now I want you to close your eyes and slowly bring your fingertips together." She tried and missed; she opened her eyes and saw that she had missed by more than an inch.

"Try it again," he said. This time the two fingers grazed.

He wrote a couple of words in the notebook. "All right. You're free to go now."

"What?"

"You're released. Take your ration card to the checkout desk on your way out."

"But... don't I get to see a doctor?"

He reddened. "You don't think I'm a doctor?"

"No. Are you?"

"I'm qualified to release you. You're released." He turned and walked away.

"What about my clothes? Where are my clothes?" He shrugged and disappeared out the door.

"Try the cabinet there, sweetheart." Amelia checked all the cabinets, moving with creaky slowness. There were neat stacks of linen and gowns, but no trace of the leather suitcase she'd taken to Guadalajara.