Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

"Do you want to surprise her?"

"What does that mean? She's staying with someone?"

"No, no. Yeah, but it's Ellie Morgan. Nothing to get all bothered about."

"Who's bothered? It was just a question."

"All I meant was, should I call and say you're coming?"

"Sorry. I'm in a state. Go ahead and give her a... wait, no. The phone might be tapped."

"Not possible," Spencer said.

"Humor me?" He looked at the address Jefferson had written down. "Good. I'll take a cab to the mercado. Lose myself in the crowd and then dive into the subway."

"Your caution verges on paranoia," Spencer said.

"Verges? I'm well over the edge, actually. Wouldn't you be paranoid if one of your best friends just ripped out half your life-and some Pentagon general is sending assassins down after your lover?"

"It's like they say," Jefferson said. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't someone after you."

HAVING SAID I WAS going to the market, instead I took a cab out to T-town and then the subway back into the city. No such thing as being too careful.

I slipped from a side street into the courtyard of Amelia's motel. Ellie Morgan answered the door.

"She's asleep," she said in a half-whisper, "but I know she'd want to be woken up." They had adjoining rooms. I went through and she eased the door closed behind me.

Amelia was warm and soft from sleep and smelled of lavender from the bath salts she liked.

"Marty told me what happened," she said. "It must be horrible, like losing one of your senses."

I couldn't answer that. I just held her close for a moment longer.

"You know about the woman and ... and Ray," she stammered.

"I've been there. I spoke to her."

"The doctor was going to jack her."

"They did that, a high-risk speed installation. She's Hammer of God, same cell as Ingram." I told her about the general in the Pentagon. "I don't think you're safe here. Nowhere in Guadalajara. She traced us from St. Bart's right to the clinic door, through low-orbit spy satellites."

"Our country uses satellites to spy on its own people?"

"Well, the satellites go all around the world. They just don't bother to turn them off over the U.S." There was a coffee machine set into the wall. I kept talking while I set it up. "I don't think this Blaisdell knows exactly where we are. Otherwise we probably would have had a SWAT team instead of a lone assassin, or at least a team backing her up."

"Did the satellites actually see us as individuals, or just the bus?"

"The bus and the truck."

"So I could walk out of here and go to the train station, and just slip away to some random part of Mexico."

"I don't know. She had a picture of you, so we have to assume that Blaisdell can give a copy to the next hit man. They might be able to bribe someone, and you'd have every policeman in Mexico looking for you."

"Nice to feel wanted."

"Maybe you should come back to Portobello with me. Hole up in Building 31 until it's safe. Marty can have orders cut for you, probably with a couple of hours' notice."

"That's good." She stretched and yawned. "I just have a few hours to go on this proof. I'd like to have you go over it; then we can send it out through an airport phone just before we leave."

"Good. It'll be a relief to do some physics for a change."

Amelia had written a good concise argument. I added a long footnote about the appropriateness of pseudo-operator theory in this regime.

I also read Elbe's version for the popular press. To me it seemed unconvincing-no math-but I supposed it would be best to bow to her expertise and keep my mouth shut. Ellie had intuited my unease, though, and had remarked that not using mathematics was like writing about religion without mentioning God, but editors believed that ninety percent of their readers would quit at the first equation.

I had called Marty. He was in surgery, but an assistant called back and said that orders would be waiting for Amelia at the gate. He also passed along the unsurprising news that Lieutenant Thurman was not going to be among the humanized. We'd hoped that the peaceful mental environment, being jacked with people from my converted platoon, would eliminate the stress that was causing his migraines. But no, they just came on later and stronger. So like me, he'd have to sit this one out. Unlike me, he was virtually under house arrest, since the few minutes he did spend jacked were enough for him to learn far too much.

I looked forward to talking to him, since we were no longer bureaucrat-and-flunky. We suddenly had a lot in common, involuntary ex-mechanics.

I also suddenly had a lot more in common with Amelia. If there was any advantage in my losing the ability to be jacked, that was it: it erased the main barrier between us. Cripples together, from my point of view, but together nonetheless.

It felt so good working with her, just being in the same room with her, it was hard for me to believe that the day before, I'd been ready to take the pill.

Well, I wasn't "me" anymore. I supposed I could put off finding out who I was until after September 14. By then, it might be immaterial-I might be immaterial! A plasma, anyhow.

While Amelia was packing her small bag, I called the airport for the flight number, and verified that they had pay phones with long-distance data links. But then I realized that if Amelia had orders waiting down in Portobello, we could probably deadhead down in a military flight. I called D'Orso Field and, sure enough, Amelia was "Captain Blaze Harding." There was a flight leaving in ninety minutes, a cargo flyboy with plenty of room if we didn't mind sitting on benches.

"I don't know," Amelia said. "Since I outrank you, I should get to sit on your lap."

The cab made good time. Amelia uploaded twelve copies of the proof, along with personal messages, to trusted friends, and then posted copies on the public domain physics and math nets. She put Ellie's version on both popular science and general news, and then we ran for the flyboy.

RUSHING OFF TO THE air base, rather than waiting in the motel for the next commercial flight, probably saved their lives.

A half hour after they left, Ellie answered a knock on the door to Amelia's adjoining room. Through the peephole, she saw a Mexican maid, apron and broom, pretty with long black hair in ringlets.

She opened the door. "I don't speak Spanish – " The end of the broom handle plunged into her solar plexus and she staggered backwards, crashing to the floor in a ball.

"Neither do I, Satan." The woman lifted her easily and threw her into a chair. "Don't make a sound or I'll kill you." She pulled a roll of duct tape out of the apron pocket and wound it around the woman's wrists, and then wound a tight loop twice around her chest and the chair back. She tore off a small piece and smoothed it over Ellie's mouth.

She shrugged off the apron. Ellie gasped through her nose when she saw the hospital blues underneath, streaked with blood.

"Clothes." She ripped off the blood-stained pyjamas. She pivoted, tense muscular voluptuousness, and saw El-lie's suitcase through the open double door. "Ah."

She walked through the door and came back with jeans and a cotton shirt. "They're a little baggy, but they'll do." She folded them neatly on the end of the bed and peeled away enough of the tape so that Ellie could speak.

"You're not getting dressed," Ellie said, "because you don't want to get blood on your clothes. My blood on my clothes."

"Maybe I want to excite you. I think you're a lesbian, living here alone with Blaze Harding."

"Sure."

"Where is she?"

"I don't know."

"Of course you do. Do I have to hurt you?"

"I'm not telling you anything." Her voice shook and she swallowed. "You're going to kill me no matter what."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because I can identify you."

She smiled indulgently. "I just killed two guards and escaped from the high-security area of your clinic. A thousand police know what I look like. I can let you live." She bent to the floor in a gymnast's sweep and took a glittering scalpel from the apron pocket.

"You know what this is?"

Ellie nodded and swallowed.

"Now, I solemnly swear that I will not kill you if you answer my questions truthfully."

"Do you swear to God?"

"No, that's blasphemy." She hefted the scalpel and stared at it. "In fact, though, I won't even kill you if you tell me lies. I'll just hurt you so badly that you'll beg for death. But, instead, just before I leave, I'll cut out your tongue so you can't tell them anything about me. And then cut off your hands so you can't write. I'll tourniquet them with this tape, of course. I want you to have a long life of regret."

Urine dripped on the floor and Ellie started sobbing. Gavrila smoothed the tape back over her mouth.

"Did your mother ever say 'I'll give you something to cry about'?" She stabbed down hard and pinned El-lie's left hand to the chair.

Ellie stopped sobbing and stared dully at the handle of the scalpel and the rivulet of blood.

Gavrila rocked the blade slightly and eased it out. The flow of blood increased, but she gently folded a Kleenex over it and taped it in place. "Now if I let you talk, will you just answer questions? Not cry out?" She nodded her head listlessly and Gavrila peeled back half the tape.

"They went to the airport."

"They? Her and her black friend?"

"Yes. They're going back to Texas. To Houston."

"Oh. That's a lie." She positioned the scalpel over the back of Ellie's other hand, and raised her fist like a hammer.

"Panama!" she said in a hoarse shout. "Portobello. Don't... please don't – "

"Flight number?"

"I don't know. I heard him writing it down" – she pointed with her head – "over by the phone there."

She walked over and picked up a piece of paper. " 'Aeromexico 249.' I guess they were in such a hurry they left it."

"They were in a hurry."

Gavrila nodded. "I suppose I should be, too." She came back and looked at her victim thoughtfully. "I won't do all those terrible things to you, even though you lied." She smoothed the tape over Ellie's mouth and took another small piece and pinched her nose shut with it. Ellie began kicking wildly and jerking her head back and forth, but Gavrila managed to make a couple of tight turns of tape around her head, fixing the two small pieces in place and cutting off any possibility of air. In her struggles, Ellie tipped the chair over. Gavrila bought her back upright with an effortless lift, as Julian had done with her a couple of hours earlier. Then she dressed slowly, watching the pagan's eyes as she died.

THERE WAS A MESSAGE waiting for us in my BOQ office, flashing on the console screen, that Gavrila had overcome her guard and escaped.

Well, there was no way she could get to us inside the base, locked inside a building isolated by Pentagon decree. Amelia was worried that the woman might find out where she had been living, so she called Ellie. There was no answer. She left a message, warning about Gavrila and advising her to move to some random place across town.

Marty's schedule said he was in surgery and wouldn't be free until 1900-five hours. There was some cheese and beer in the cooler. We had a slow snack and then collapsed into bed. It was narrow for two people, but we were so exhausted that anything horizontal would do. She fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, for the first time in a long time.

I woke up groggily to the console pinging. It didn't wake Amelia, but I did, in my clumsy efforts to extricate myself. My left arm was asleep, a cold tingling log, and I had romantically left a spot of drool on her cheek.