CHAPTER FOUR

Transcript of 15th day counselling interview, 15th April 2083

Subcolonel Gene Kettering sits at his plaz desk and rubs tiredly at his forehead. He is sixty-nine. From top to bottom: the sort of brown-going-grey hair that just looks dead, thin on top, short at the back and swept over the crown of his head; thick, free-standing eyebrows and a heavy, sagging face, folds of loose flesh obscuring his jaw line and chin; bulbous, glans-coloured nose; stiff military uniform, antithesis to his loose skin, struggling to contain his age-fattened body; size 39 military-issue black Gucci Permashine shoes.

A wide desk takes up a large area in this small office in the Mercator IV Personnel Complex. Kettering stops rubbing his head and selects a shunt-lead from a nearby panel. The desk is bare apart from the obligatory flat monitor (facing the colonel), a hologram projector panel (adjustable to be viewed either by the subcolonel alone, or from anywhere in the room) and a neat row of three CIBM data bubbles.

He plugs the lead into the central socket of his suboccipital interface. Thus linked to the Psychan Interview Prompt, he shunts a message into the PA.

Seconds later, the door buzzes and opens. Private JB Brindle walks in and stands to attention. ‘Siddown, Jed,’ says Kettering, waving in the vague direction of a lightly upholstered, ice-blue chair.

Brindle sits. He is eighteen. From top to bottom he is 183 cee-ems tall; black hair, wiry and kinked but not tightly coiled, short to above the collar; rounded pale chocolate face, large brown eyes; an unwiped scar runs six cee-ems along the line of his left jaw; his uniform covers a well-muscled body, size 45 military-issue black Slik combat boots.

Kettering speaks. ‘Well, Jed, how are you settling in?’ The tone is genial and meant to be relaxing.

Brindle replies. ‘Very well, sir.’

Kettering: ‘Oh you can cut the formality now, Jed, this is just a little chat.’ Brindle moves in his chair and runs a finger along the course of his scar. Kettering continues: ‘Tell me how you’re finding it. This must all be very strange for you after Lejeune. How’s the moon?’

Brindle: ‘It does fine by me, sir. The low gravity takes some learning, but Lejeune’s quite low itself and I’ve worked at different gees so I don’t have the problems some are having. It’s strange to be so closed in. There are ceilings overhead all the time and even if I was allowed out into the open I’d need a suit.’

Kettering: ‘You feel claustrophobic.’

Brindle: ‘Sometimes. But it’s so big as well. You could get into a Rover and drive until the power dried up. That’s ... well, I guess that’s big.’

Kettering pauses to nudge Psychan for data.

Kettering: ‘Surgery on the 3rd. Comtac, median and suboccipital expansion. How did you take it, Jed?’

Brindle: ‘It’s weird, but I’ve done it before, sir. I can’t say I like being unconscious for a day and a half. The Comtac felt strange and I don’t know how I’m ever going to get the hang of my new suboxy. It seems to throw thoughts into my head at random — tactics, technical information, that sort of stuff. And I haven’t gotten the hang of the biofeedback yet, the juices.’

Kettering: ‘Control will come, Jed. You’ll learn to cut out the data flow. And the juices — you’ll wonder how you ever coped before. Do you think you can manage it, Jed?’

Brindle: ‘Well yes, I always have been a learner. I pick things up, you know. I guess it’s just a bit disorienting at first.’

The atmosphere in the room has changed over the course of the interview. Kettering, tired and perhaps a little depressed at first, has settled into his role of genial, friendly confidant. Brindle, tense and on guard at first, is now relaxed and comfortable, at ease in the older man’s company.

Kettering shunts an instruction and one wall turns into a large viewscreen. Brindle is initially startled, but controls himself well, as if he has mastered his new chip to some degree; maybe he had good control of his reactions anyway. Kettering: ‘We’ve just got one or two tests for you now, Jed. Logic and visual-spatial abilities. Things like that.’

A voice comes from a wall-speaker. ‘Displayed are two-dee outlines of a four-dimensional object. Using the holo-wand paint two three-dimensional through-sections of the object. You have forty-five seconds.’ Brindle at first seems stunned then rapidly produces broadly accurate holo-sketches. The test continues along the lines of a high-school Logico-Standards assessment. Kettering leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.

A high, sharp siren pierces the stillness. Rising and falling, the noise is added to by sounds of shouting, bells ringing, a masculine scream.

Brindle is guiding the wand through a three-dimensional maze. He drops the wand and stands. Kettering’s eyes remain closed.

Wall-speaker: ‘Incorrect move. Five second penalty. Resume manoeuvre.’

Brindle stares in disbelief at the motionless form of Kettering.

Wall-speaker: ‘Resume manoeuvre.’

Brindle: ‘Sir, wake up. Colonel Kettering.’ He moves to the desk, leans over and hesitates slightly before shaking Kettering’s right shoulder. Another scream breaks out over the din of sirens and shouting.

Wall-speaker: ‘Hesitancy penalty, ten seconds. Resume manoeuvre.’

Brindle: ‘But...’ He looks momentarily at the screen as if to argue with it, then he looks at the door that he knows he cannot open by himself. More screams, closer now.

Brindle: ‘Wake up, wake up,’ as he shakes Kettering vigorously by both shoulders.

And Kettering springs out of his chair and throws Brindle away. Kettering, abruptly: ‘Stand to attention.’

Brindle staggers back and is stopped by the grey office wall. Wall speaker: ‘Resume manoeuvre.’

Kettering: ‘Now get back to your duties, boy.’

Brindle: ‘But, sir. There’s —’

Kettering: ‘Stand to attention.’ Brindle obeys. Shouting, screams and sirens come from outside. Kettering continues: ‘Now pick up your holo-wand, pull yourself together and get back to your manoeuvres.’

Brindle snaps out a brief salute. Brindle: ‘Yes, sir.’

Kettering sinks back into his chair, returning to his earlier state of quiescence. Noises of terror continue to bombard the small office in the depths of Personnel. Brindle carries out several more Logico-Standards tasks, shutting out the jabber of his own thoughts. Kettering, in an exaggerated theatrical manner, reaches for a black lever on the wall behind his desk. He pulls it downwards and the sounds of panic cut off sharply in mid-scream.

Brindle watches with peripheral vision as he carries out another L-S task. He doesn’t falter in his work. Brindle carries out three more exercises. Kettering: ‘All right, Jed. That’ll do. The test’s finished. Psychan should have enough to keep it occupied for a time. Next counselling in ten days. That will be all.’

Kettering deshunts the Psychan and calls up a report on his monitor.

Brindle stands. Brindle: ‘Permission to leave, sir?’

Kettering: ‘Oh, no need for all that, Jed. See you at the next session. Bye.’

* * * *

Excerpt from Private Records of Training Sergeant Maxwell Abelson, 21st April 2083

Right. I’d better get this all down, so as how I’ve got something to base my official reports on when the time comes. (I do wish they would rearrange the filing times so as I wouldn’t have to report on things so far back in time.)

Right. Let’s start with Brindle. And how I’d love to start with Brindle. But from all the signs I can read on him, he doesn’t bend that way, not even for variety. Even if he did, I reckon as how he’s so slow he just wouldn’t get the message if I tripped him and landed first. Jeez, what a waste to mankind — women just don’t appreciate that sort of a boy.

Private Jed Brindle. Mainly Negro, scar on his jaw, good physique (he’ll cope well physically, as he’s already showing). Neat ass. Psychan says he has a good solid personality and that shows in practice. He follows orders well, initiative could take some expansion. He accepts things, takes change easily. No, cut that: he adapts well to change, but I don’t reckon as how it’s easy for him, he just works at it. He’s not lacking in intelligence, but he doesn’t let it show on him; he learns slowly but thoroughly, once he has something he has it.

Another plus is that he has a kind of empathy. He’s no extrovert, but people like him. They talk to him, share their problems. He’s almost a big sister figure. Summing up? He fits well and I reckon as how he’ll make a good soldier. Not a leader, but a good sub.

He wasn’t densely wired when he arrived — most of the cons weren’t — so he had to have the standard surgery: median, Comtac and suboccipital expansion. He’s coping well, not the fastest to learn but he’s not making the mistakes as how some of the others are.

Brindle is taking the weapons training well. He’s one of my top trainees, he uses his median interface well. With a lightweight F27 shunted he’s our top marksman. Other weapons he uses well, too. The rifle-thalamaic link is strong on him, he coordinates effectively and responds instantly. (Some are having problems with that, cerebral interference with their thalamaic functioning — I reckon as how they just can’t let go.)

Training to date has revolved around coordinating the new interfaces and basic Comtac use. No combat training yet.

Overall assessment: Brindle will do well. And what a good ass that boy has on him!

Extracts from the notes of Sal Buchner, reporter with Jensen’s Agency, 6th May 2083

Wow. Let me get my breath back and I’ll update my notes. Okay.

This is data bubble G384, Mercator IV Military Training Camp. On the Moon. (Fuck. When’s that boy on leave again? Check that.)

I made the hop from Reinhold yesterday and arrived here mid-morning. Met by a corporal — Carter was his name — who took me up to Captain Goldstein’s office.

My first sight of the base was on the ferry’s viewscreen, domes and blocks greying into the lunar regolith. It was a small ferry with a bare interior. I was the only passenger. I’m sure they were trying to tell me something by sending me an emtpy transporter, but I’m fucked if I can work it out. The base grew bigger and the ferry landed on an adjacent field. A long caterpillar came out to meet the ferry and there was Carter. I stepped through the lock and the cat crawled us over to the Personnel Complex.

Carter is a standard military-issue, glans-oriented drone. All hump and no heart, as Jinny used to say. No comparison with Brindle, but he comes later.

Two minutes on the cat and Carter had told me his life story and made a pass at me. Why are soldiers such jerks? Still, you get to learn people in this trade and a first contact is always good to get. My producer would have me out on my ass if it turned out that Carter was my only positive contact and I’d blown it. I gently turned down his offer of a seafood sauna, made it seem like I was tempted but, you know, kind of shy in this big new setting. Flutter of the lashes, right breast pressed against his arm and he knew I was drooling for him. Yuk. He said he’d be playing cards that evening in the F Division crew room. I said, well, he knew how it was for busy little reporters and I don’t know how I’ll ever manage, but I might just drop by and watch him — I do so love to watch men doing manly things. Or some shit like that.

Fuck, it’s spoiling the after effects of Brindle, thinking about a jerk like Carter.

The jerk peeled himself away from me after announcing my arrival to Goldstein’s secretary. A short wait in a drab little cubby-hole of an office with a junior officer playing at a console. After I’d had time to realise my own insignificance in the grand scheme of things (and before Goldstein got bored waiting in his office for my wait to come to an end) the junior looked at me, said, ‘Go in now,’ and returned to his console. Thank you for your decency and politeness, you little ass-licker, I wanted to say, but that would have blown it and it wasn’t the little runt’s fault anyway. I walked into the office.

Goldstein is mid-thirties, military in his looks and in everything he does. Precise uniform, precise hair (chestnut brown, short), precise manner. A slight-looking body but his movements betray his precise body tone and control. Functional.

A sharp movement of his head and he was surveying me; not the usual soldierly glance at the face (passable), swift pass down the body (slim but unbalanced) and then the slow pass back up again, lingering briefly on the pubis (ginger, if they could see through the layers of clothing) and longer on the bust (oversized, a useful tool, especially at low gees), before returning to my cold (by now) grey eyes. No, Goldstein just looked up from his desk, fixed my eyes for a second and then moved his gaze to a vacant chair. ‘You must be Buchner,’ he said to the chair. ‘Take a seat.’

Change of gears. Tits and simpering would get me nowhere with this one. Precise had to be the approach. Businesslike. ‘That is correct, Captain Goldstein,’ I said. ‘I’ll try not to take up too much of your time, sir.’

‘No need to worry about that,’ he said. When he had finished the sentence he shaped a smile on his face, held it for a second and then dropped it. Success, I had pierced his armour. Or knocked it a little, at least. ‘I’ll have someone show you your quarters, show you around a little. Then leave you to your business.’ He stood, so I followed suit. ‘If you need to see me, just tell someone and they’ll pass on the message. Good day.’ He reached over his desk and shook me by the hand. His skin was cool and had the feel of chitin.

I left the office and there was a young private waiting for me in the cubby-hole office. With her soft brown face and something absent in her expression she barely looked old enough to have joined up. Maybe she was a cadet. (Check that.) Name was Johnston.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m gunna show you to y’room.’ Weird accent. After spending the afternoon with her I’d put it at Asteroid Belt. That’s always a safe one, they’re such compact and isolated communities that all sorts of social changes occur. Anything weird and ‘Oh, it’s a miner’ explains it.

She led me along a series of nondescript corridors — they must have worked out the route just to confuse me, impress me with the bigness of it all — and then stopped and buzzed open a door. ‘Officers’ quarters,’ she said. She seemed awed by being in such a place. ‘It’s juz like a hotel: y’can voice actuvvate the door at the board.’ She indicated a console and leads jammed into the corner of the room.

The room was small. We stood in the narrow gap between one wall and the hard-looking bunk that occupied the length of the other wall. At the end of this aisle there was a curtained doorway hiding a shower and a crapper. ‘I’m gonna have a shit,’ I said and curtained myself in.

Johnston took me to a canteen for lunch and I instantly lost my bearings. ‘How will I find my room again?’ I asked her over a forkful of stewed moondust.

‘Aw, juz ask someone for corridor C38, Personnel.’

My guided tour took the whole afternoon. An endless flow of ‘This is the...’ Canteens, a library, offices, dormitories, gyms, training areas. And in the end yawns. I did get some use out of the tour though. I was shown around a medical unit where they do the surgery on new soldiers. They let me look in on a suboxy implantation. Gruesome, but worth a story.

At the end of one particularly nondescript corridor that awed look returned to Johnston’s small round face. ‘We’ve gotten one of the generals here,’ she said. ‘A general.’

It took a moment to sink in. Then: ‘You mean an AI?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ she said, drawing it out into a sigh. ‘It’s not one of the big ones, but it’s a general.’

Shit, I hate being a war-time journalist. That was one of those ‘Ah!’ moments, when you know it’s worth some digging. But I knew I would be wasting my time. The AIs — I don’t know how many there are — are behind military strategy. There are people higher than them who make policy, but when it comes to tactics a well-informed AI general can outstrip any fleshy one. And I can’t report things like this —strategic information. Jee, woman, just cool it. I don’t want to give away anything important, any more than Captain Goldstein would, but there’s a bug somewhere deep inside me that just wants to tell the story. Any story, so long as it’s a good one.

I’ve been feeding that bug with good personal interest stuff. That’s safe and I know it’ll get through Goldstein to the agency. Shit, I’m lucky at the amount of freedom they’ve given me, I shouldn’t complain. I’ll be getting some good stories out of these few weeks.

After the tour Johnston deposited me back at the canteen. I ate alone and then asked the way back to Corridor C38, Personnel. It was surprisingly easy to find. Then I saw that there were over twenty rooms to choose from. There were numbers on the doors but of course I hadn’t had time to notice that sort of thing when I was trailing away after Johnston. I decided that my room was roughly halfway down. Standing outside the door of an officer’s room and speaking your name into a small panel on the wall can earn you some strange looks when the door doesn’t open. Five of them didn’t open before I found the right one. Before the door whisked shut I made a mental note of the room number.

Before setting out for the evening I tried to have a shower. Just like a hotel, my guide had said. Fuck. Moon hotels have jetstream showers, to make up for what the place lacks in gravity. Warm air ionising body driers, too. The water from the shower in my room is so weak that you have to wait half a day before it reaches you. It just seems to hang in the air, like you’re in a zero-gee aquadrome without the nose-filter. And to make it worse I was all lathered up before I noticed how ineffective the weak spray was at rinsing away the suds. In the end I’d had enough so I rubbed the rest of it away with a coarse towel and dressed myself in a green all-in-one.

I had passed the crew room at least twice on my tour of the base but of course I couldn’t remember the route. The first set of directions lost me — soldiers have a sick sense of humour — but I found a girl who said she was heading there so I followed her.

A big, low-ceilinged room. Smells of booze and smoke (NoCee, I hope). Interested to note a whiff of marijuana on the air — the Army have made that illegal, blaming it for the hard drug problem (weird reasoning). Huddles of small tables crowded with soldiers in their light blue off-duty jump-suits. The nearest soldiers were giving me the usual once-over. Auto bar at one end of the room.

‘Heyah, baby!’ A loud, coarse shout from somewhere in the crowded room. ‘We’re over here! Come and put your pretty little ass on me.’

Chiselling a smile onto my face, I waved and wound my way through the soldiers to a crowded table at the back. I ignored Carter’s proffered lap, drew up my own chair, and squeezed it into a non-existent space at the table. There were four others and they had to shuffle around to make room for me. They were all young, slightly drunk or high and studying the parts of my body that were available. Typical military drones: great believers in their own masculinity but, as I have found before, these beliefs are usually completely misfounded.

I find it interesting that in an army that is almost thirty per cent female, these men — the ones I always find myself thinking of as typical soldiers — they hide themselves away in all male groups. Like they’re scared.

I leaned forward and, predictably, they leaned forward in impression, taken unawares by a glimpse of my cleavage. It was like they were holo-puppets and I was guiding their wands. Yes, I had a tight grip on their wands.

And then I saw Brindle. A black guy with one hell of a body, just sat on the floor, leaning against the wall. He was jacked into something, a bubble in his suboxy, his eyes unseeing. The quiet ones are often good contacts if you can penetrate their shell. At least that was my excuse for keeping that horn under close observation.

The drones went back to their card game once their hormones had settled and I watched for a few minutes. ‘It looks so ... so complicated,’ I said in my best little girl’s voice. Carter had just missed a pick-up for a diamond slam.

‘Aw, it’s okay when you get the hang, I reckon,’ said one of the troops.

Carter flushed angrily, his territory intruded upon. I used this. ‘Well,’ I said, leaning my cleavage in Carter’s direction. ‘Do you think I could have a go? I’ve played something like it before but I never did get the hang.’

‘Hell, yeah,’ said Carter, staring at my chest and talking through his penis. ‘But don’t go betting too much, we don’t want you to go home broke now, do we?’ Sucker. There followed an over-simplified, patronising explanation of the rules of Multiple Stud, leaving out all the subtleties that make the difference between scraping even and raking it in.

‘Why... I think I follow it,’ I said, fluttering my lashes.

I let them win the first two hands, keeping my losses to a minimum and folding early. Then I found myself with a good starting hand and I couldn’t resist coming on them. The stakes increased slowly and then, instead of folding and flashing my eyes, I put down a twenty.

‘Heyah, did you mean that?’ asked Carter.

‘Huh?’ said I. ‘Oh fuck, that was a twenty wasn’t it?’ I retrieved it and put down a hundred. To cut a long story short, I ended that round with a Trader’s High, Jills over Jacks. Two more rounds and they were making excuses. I found myself alone at the table, laughing at the sight of Carter’s retreating butt as I imagined him fending off the complaints of his pals.

The horn was still by the wall. I went over and passed a hand in front of his blank eyes. ‘Hi there ma’am, can I help you?’ he said. I was taken aback, not many people can be shunted and keep a track of the real world at the same time.

‘Um, I was just wondering if I could have a chat with you,’ I said.

‘Sure,’ he said and deshunted his bubble. ‘Pull up a floor.’

I sat down beside him. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt.’

‘Hell, no ma’am, I was just updating my diary.’ He grinned. ‘I noticed how you saw off old Crap-ass. It was a pleasure to watch.’

‘You mean Carter? Good name for him.’ Brindle is a real cutie, not at all the usual soldier. We talked and in the end we went back to my room. He had a thirty-six hour leave so he didn’t have to go back to his dorm. Is this okay? he kept asking, and I kept assuring him that he could tell me anything, that Goldstein would be vetting all my copy before broadcast.

We had a drink and he told me about his surgery, how he was coping with his new implants. His new suboxy has a chip in it that gives him all sorts of control. It gives him autohypnosis for learning, anti-tension, sleep and so on. Override of the adrenal medulla: a kick of adrenalin to keep him alert, keep him on a fighting edge, or a slowdown to relax, stay cool. Control of other juices, too.

Now this isn’t the place to go into what went on that night, how many times, how many positions — it makes it somehow impersonal. But, boy, he was good! I’m sure he was using his chip to good effect, chipping some adrenalin, slowing down and staying on the edge. He lasted hours. This morning too. He was so tender and careful, he really cared how I felt. Even today there aren’t many men like that around. And he’s so cute. ‘How come you weren’t called up?’ he said early this morning. From any other man I would have taken that as smooth talk, the sort of crap they think women like, but Brindle couldn’t do that if he tried. Hell, I could almost be his mother, the young whippersnapper. ‘I’ve been fucking longer than you’ve been born,’ I said. ‘They reckon you’re past it when you get to my age.’ ‘Oh yeah?’ he said, and went on to prove just how wrong they can be sometimes.

This is just how it should be: business and pleasure. Yes, I got some business out of him, too. Lots of information. He gave me a good angle on the training. Fighting away from the Earth is either long-range and technical (thankfully little of that) or guerrilla (like the Fight for Independence). The troops are trained mainly for the latter so the Peacekeeping force has ideal preparation for the Grand Union. I’ll have to follow that up.

I’m gonna have to get out of this bunk soon. Get some copy. But I can still smell him on the sheets, smell him on my body. I think I’ll just lie here a little longer, plan my notes or something. Hmmm.