Forever Peace - Joe Haldeman

I shocked myself by wondering whether I could live like that, and in the same instant shocked myself again by admitting I could. Relationships emotionally limited, temporarily passionate. And then back to real life for awhile, until the next one.

The undeniable lure of that extra dimension-feeling her feeling you, thoughts and sensations twining together-in my heart I'd built a wall around that, labeled it "Carolyn," and shut the door. But now I had to admit that it had been pretty impressive just with a stranger; however skilled and sympathetic, still a stranger, with no pretending about love.

No pretending: that was true in more than one way. Marty was right. Something like love was there automatically. Sex aside, for several minutes she and I had been closer, in terms of knowing, than some normal couple who'd been together fifty years. It does start to fade as soon as you unjack, and a few days later, it's the memory of a memory. Until you jack again, and it slams back. So if you kept it going for two weeks, it would change you forever? I could believe that.

I left Marty without discussing a timetable, which was literally an unspoken agreement. We wanted time to sort through each other's thoughts.

I also didn't discuss how he was able to have military medical records altered and have pretty high-ranking officers shuffled around at will. We hadn't been jacked deeply enough for that information to come through. There was an image of one man, a longtime friend. I wished I didn't even know that much.

I wanted to postpone any action, anyhow, until I had jacked with the humanized people in North Dakota. I didn't really doubt Marty's veracity, but I wondered about his judgment. When you're jacked with someone, "wishful thinking" has a whole new meaning. Wish hard enough and you can drag other people along with you.

JULIAN WATCHED THE RAIN for about twenty minutes and decided it was not going to let up, so he splashed on home through it. Of course, it stopped when he was half a block from the apartment.

He locked the bike up in the basement and sprayed the chain and gears with oil. Amelia's bike was there, but that didn't mean she was home.

She was sound asleep. Julian made enough noise getting his suitcase to wake her.

"Julian?" She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "How did it go with – " She saw the suitcase. "Going somewhere?"

"North Dakota, for a couple of days."

She shook her head. "Why on earth ... oh, Marty's freaks."

"I want to jack with them and check for myself. They may be freaks, but we may all be joining them."

"Not all," she said quietly.

He opened his mouth and shut it, and picked out three pairs of socks in the dim light. "I'll be back in plenty of time for the Tuesday class."

"Be getting a lot of calls Monday. The Journal doesn't come out till Wednesday, but they'll be calling everybody."

"Just stack 'em up. I'll tap in from North Dakota."

Getting to that state was going to be harder then he thought. He found three military nights that would zigzag him to the water-filled crater Seaside, but when he tried to reserve space he was informed by the computer that he no longer had a "combat" flag, and so would have to fly standby. It predicted that he had about a fifteen percent chance of making all three flights. Getting back on Tuesday would be even more difficult.

He called Marty, who told him he'd see what could be done, and called back one minute later. "Give it another try."

This time he got all six flights booked with no comment. The "C" for combat had been restored to his serial number.

Julian carried his armload and the suitcase into the living room to pack. Amelia followed him, shrugging into a nightgown.

"I might be going to Washington," she said. "Peter's coming back from the Caribbean so that he can do a press conference tomorrow."

"That's a change of heart. I thought he'd gone down there to avoid publicity." He looked up at her. "Or is he coming back mainly to see you?"

"He didn't exactly say."

"But he is paying for the ticket, right? You don't have enough credit left this month."

"Of course he is." She folded her arms on her chest. "I'm his coresearcher. You'd be welcome there, too."

"I'm sure. Better that I investigate this aspect of the problem, though." He finished packing the small suitcase and looked around the room. He stepped over to an end table and picked up two magazines. "If I asked you not to go, would you stay here?"

"You would never ask me that."

"That's not much of an answer."

She sat down on the sofa. "All right. If you asked me not to go, we would fight. And I would win."

"So is that why I don't ask you?"

"I don't know, Julian." She raised her voice a little. "Unlike some people, I can't read minds!"

He set the magazines inside the suitcase and carefully sealed it shut, thumbprinting the lock. "I really don't mind if you go," he said quietly. "This is something we have to get through, one way or another." He sat down next to her, not touching.

"One way or another," she repeated.

"Just promise me that you won't stay permanently."

"What?"

"Those of us who can read minds can also tell the future," he said. "By next week, half the people involved in the Jupiter Project will be sending out resumes. I'm only asking that if he offers you a position, don't just say yes."

"All right. I'll tell him I have to discuss it with you. Fair enough?"

"That's all I ask." He took her hand and brushed his lips across her fingers. "Don't rush into anything."

"How about... I don't rush and you don't rush."

"What?"

"Pick up the phone. Get a later flight to North Dakota." She rubbed the top of his thigh. "You're not going out that door until I convince you that you're the only one I love."

He hesitated and then picked up the phone. She knelt on the floor and started unbuckling his belt. "Talk fast."

THE LAST LEG OF my flight was from Chicago, but it overshot Seaside by a few miles so we could get a glimpse of the Inland Sea. "Sea" is a little grandiose; it's only half again as big as the Great Salt Lake. But it's impressive, a perfect blue circle sketched inside with white lines of wakes from pleasure craft.

The place I was headed was only six miles from the airport. Taxis cost entertainment credits but bikes were free, so I checked one out and pedaled there. It was hot and dusty, but the exercise was welcome after being stuck in airplanes and airports all morning.

It was a fifty-year-old building style, all mirror glass and steel frame. A sign on the frizzled lawn said ST.BARTHOLOMEW'S HOME.

A man in his sixties, wearing a priest's collar with everyday clothes, answered the door and let me in.

The foyer was a white box devoid of ornament, except for a crucifix on one wall facing a holo of Jesus on the other. Uninviting institutional couch and chairs with inspirational literature on the table between them. We went through double doors into an equally plain hall.

Father Mendez was Hispanic, his hair still black, his lined dark face scored with two long old scars. He looked frightful, but his calm voice and easy smile dispelled that.

"Forgive us for not coming out to greet you. We don't have a car and we don't go out much. It helps maintain our image of being harmless old loonies."

"Dr. Larrin said your cover story contained a grain of truth."

"Yes, we're poor addled survivors of the first experiments with the soldierboy. People tend to shy away from us when we do go out."

"You're not an actual priest, then."

"In fact I am, or rather, was. I was defrocked after being convicted of murder." He stopped at a plain door that had a card with my name on it, and pushed it open. "Rape and murder. This is your room. Come on down to the atrium at the end of the hall when you've freshened up."

The room itself wasn't too monkish, an oriental carpet on the floor, modern suspension bed contrasting with an antique rolltop desk and chair. There was a small refrigerator with soft drinks and beer, and bottles of wine and water on a sideboard with glasses. I had a glass of water and then one of wine while I took off my uniform and carefully smoothed and folded it for the return trip. Then a quick shower and more comfortable clothes, and I went off in search of the atrium.

The corridor was featureless wall along the left; on the right were doors like mine, with more permanent nameplates. A frosted-glass door at the end opened automatically as I reached for it.

I stopped dead. The atrium was a cool pine forest. Cedar smell and the bright sound of a creek tumbling somewhere. I looked up and, yes, there was a skylight; I hadn't somehow been jacked and transferred to somebody's memory.

I walked down a pebbled path and stood for a moment on the plank bridge over a swift shallow stream. I heard laughter up ahead and followed the faint smell of coffee around a curve into a small clearing.

A dozen or so people in their fifties and sixties stood and sat around. There was rustic wooden furniture, various designs arranged in no particular order. Mendez separated himself from a small conversational group and strode over to me.

"We usually gather here for an hour or so before dinner," he said. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Coffee smells good." He led me to a table with samovars of coffee and tea and various bottles. There was beer and wine in a tub of ice. Nothing homemade and nothing cheap; a lot of it imported.

I gestured at the cluster of Armagnacs, single-malts, anejos. "What, you have a printing press grinding out ration cards?"

He smiled and shook his head, Ming two cups. "Nothing so legal." He set my cup down by the milk and sugar. "Marty said we could trust you enough to jack, so you'll know eventually." He studied my face. "We have our own nanoforge."

"Sure, you do."

"The Lord's mansion has many rooms," he said, "including a huge basement, in this case. We can go down and look at it later on."

"You're not kidding?"

He shook his head and sipped coffee. "No. It's an old machine, small, slow, and inefficient. An early prototype that was supposedly dismantled for parts."

"You're not afraid of making another big crater?"

"Not at all. Come sit over here." There was a picnic table with two pairs of black-box jacks. "Save a little time here." He handed me a green jack and took a red one. "One-way transfer."

I plugged in and then he did, and clicked a switch on and off.

I unjacked and looked at him, speechless. In one second, my entire world view was changed.

The Dakota explosion had been rigged. The nanoforge had been tested extensively in secret, and was safe. The Alliance coalition that developed it wanted to close off potentially successful lines of research. So after a few carefully composed papers-top-secret, but compromised-they cleared out North Dakota and Montana and supposedly tried to make a huge diamond out of a few kilos of carbon.

But the nanoforge wasn't even there. Just a huge quantity of deuterium and tritium, and an igniter. The giant H-bomb was buried, and shaped in such a way as to minimize pollution, while melting out a nice round glassy lake bed, large enough to be a good argument against trying to make your own nanoforge out of this and that.

"How do you know? Can you be sure it's true?"

His brow furrowed. "Maybe ... maybe it is just a story. Impossible to check by asking. The man who brought it into the chain, Julio Negroni, died a couple of weeks into the experiment, and the man he got it from, a cellmate in Raiford, was executed long ago."