group sent an order out to Io, it would get there fifteen to twenty-four minutes later, and of course the response would be delayed by an equal length of time. A lot can happen in forty-eight minutes; twice, the Project had to be halted and reprogrammed—but you couldn’t really “halt” it, not all at once, because the submachines that were making the parts that would go into orbit just kept on going for forty-eight minutes plus however long it took to figure out how to reprogram them.
Over the Jupiter Program director’s desk, there was a picture from a movie over a century old: Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, staring dumbfounded at the endless line of brainless brooms marching through the door.
* * *
i slept a couple of hours and woke up suddenly, in a panic sweat. I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming about, but it left me with a fading sense of vertigo, falling. It had happened a few times before, the first day or two off duty.
Some people wound up never getting any deep sleep unless they were jacked. Sleeping that way gave you total blackness, total lack of sensation or thought. Practicing up for death. But relaxing.
I lay there staring into the watery light for another half hour and decided to stop trying. Went into the kitchen and buzzed up some coffee. Really ought to work, but I wouldn’t have any papers until Tuesday, and Research could wait until tomorrow morning’s meeting.
Catch up on the world. I’d resolutely stayed away from it in Cambridge. I turned on Amelia’s desk and decrypted a thread to my news module.
It humors me and puts the light stuff first. I read through twenty pages of comics and the three columns I knew to be safely immune from politics. One of them did a broad satire about Central America anyhow.
Central and South America took up most of the world news section, unsurprisingly. The African front was quiet, still stunned a year after our nuking of Mandelaville. Perhaps regrouping and calculating which of our cities would be next.
Our little sortie wasn’t even mentioned. Two platoons of soldierboys took the towns of Piedra Sola and Igatimi, in Uruguay and Paraguay; supposedly rebel strongholds. We did it with their governments’ foreknowledge and permission, of course—and there were no civilian casualties, equally of course. Once they’re dead they’re rebels. “La muerte es el gran convertidor,” they say—“Death is the great converter.” That must be literally true as well as a sarcasm about our body counts. We’ve killed a quarter-million in the Americas and God knows how many in Africa. If I lived in either place I’d be a “rebel.”
There was a business-as-usual running report about the Geneva talks. The enemy is so fragmented they will never come together on terms, and I’m sure at least some of the rebel leaders are plants, puppets ordered to keep the thing good and confused.
They did actually come to agreement over nuclear weapons: neither side would use them except in retaliation, starting now, though Ngumi still won’t take responsibility for Atlanta. What we really need is an agreement on agreements: “If we promise something, we won’t break the promise for at least thirty days.” Neither side would agree to that.
I turned off the machine and checked Amelia’s refrigerator. No beer. Well, that was my responsibility. Some fresh air wouldn’t hurt, anyhow, so I locked up and pedaled toward the campus gate.
The shoe sergeant in charge of security looked at my ID and made me wait while he phoned for verification. The two privates with him leaned on their weapons and smirked. Some shoes have a thing about mechanics, since we don’t “actually” fight. Forget that we have to stay in longer and have a higher death rate. Forget that we keep them from having to do the really dangerous jobs.
Of course, that’s exactly it for some of them: we also stand in the way of their being heroes. “It takes all kinds of people to make a world,” my mother always says. Fewer kinds to make an army.
He finally admitted I was who I was. “You carrying?” he asked as he filled out the pass.
“No,” I said. “Not in the daytime.”
“Your funeral.” He folded the pass precisely in two and handed it over. Actually, I was armed, with a puttyknife and a little Beretta belt-buckle laser. It might be his own funeral someday, if he couldn’t tell whether or not a man was armed. I saluted the privates with