Time Travel Omnibus, page 881
“They told me you would be cowards,” Claude said.
It was supposed to be an insult. Tom had heard it before; from Nazis dressed up as Marines, from aging cartoonists who were no longer funny, from the washed-up Borax salesman who was governor of California. It didn’t matter. As his roommates passed around the joint he’d lit with his induction notice, they’d agreed they’d rather be live cowards than dead heroes of an evil war.
Tom looked at Claude and saw Mike’s ghost. Claude would be a good soldier. March and follow orders. Kill and stand ramrod straight and salute, notSieg Heil but Hail Nixon. Mike had not wanted to become a monster, but Claude did, and he scared Tom. Tom didn’t want to kill or fight anyone. He wanted the war to end so everyone would leave him alone. Maybe that was how his father had felt about the Nazis. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I am. Maybe we all are. You want our places, and we give them to you.”
“It is a vital war, you know. I have read about it up then. The communists are evil. Don’t you care?”
“I wouldn’t make a good soldier,” Tom said, not wanting to argue. He knew a thousand reasons to stop the war, but he knew Claude didn’t want to listen any more than Mike had.
“I’ve trained for this, up then, but our military camps only play at war. I have to test myself in a real war.”
“You’re not afraid?” Tom had to ask.
“No. There is risk, yes, but a small one. We have a little to fear from your weapons, but there must be some risk for there to be reward. To be a man, you have to fight and risk death. That I believe. That we all believe. That is why we came down now.”
Tom wondered why Claude was arguing with him. Was the replacement really trying to convince himself? He let Claude talk, but he didn’t really listen.
In the end, when they had nothing more to say, Claude stood and shook Tom’s hand formally, thanking him for the chance to be a soldier. Drained, Tom thanked the other man for going.
They were the third pair of men to leave the little conference rooms. Juan asked if they had finished everything, running through a list, and when he was satisfied pointed them to separate benches. Joe looked at Tom when he sat down, and whispered, “They’re strange, man. They’re really strange. This dude thinks he can’t die. The Army’s all about death, man.”
“Yeah,” Tom nodded. “Brainwashed.”
“Must be,” whispered the other. Tom smelled liquor on Joe’s breath, but he sounded sober. “They don’t fit where they came from. That’s why they come back here. Weird guys.”
Mutely, Tom agreed. They waited silently for the other two pairs to emerge. When all were done, Juan stood before them with a clipboard.
“The time machine will be ready in ten minutes. It looks like a small room with metal walls. You walk inside with the gear you brought. Nobody brought more than one pack, did they?”
His eyes swept the five as they shook their heads.
“Good. All five of you go at the same time. I close and lock the door behind you. It will be dark inside, completely dark. Don’t try lighting a match; it can mess things up. You will feel vibrations for what seems like a couple minutes. When you get up then, it will be two years and five weeks from down now. Your replacements and I will be here to greet you. As soon as I open the door from the outside, it will swing open and you can walk out. We have to lock it for safety.”
“Why we gotta be locked in, man?” one of the white guys asked. He sounded like he’d stayed up waiting for the Sun with a couple of joints.
“Safety,” Juan repeated. “You’re not in normal space and time when the machine is running. Everyone can get messed up real bad if anybody freaks and tries to climb out the door.”
“I don’t like it,” the guy said.
“You want to go help Uncle in the rice paddies? Lots of other guys want to get out.”
“Cool it, Frank,” one of his buddies said. “It’ll be okay.”
Juan thanked him. “Don’t split right away when you get there. You’ll have a couple of years to catch up on.”
Tom hadn’t thought much about that. Two years would be 1971. More men would have walked on the Moon. His wise-ass sister would be in college. He wondered what would happen as he hoisted his pack and walked with the others into the metal box. Juan clanked the door shut and there was darkness and utter silence except for a hum that came from the shaking of the metal itself. He felt stuck in suddenly thick air, unable to move or talk, unconscious of breathing. The box pulled back and forth, floating, rising, falling, like a stoned elevator. Somebody screamed, and the sound echoed down corridors. Then the door opened, light blinded him, and off-balance, Tom staggered against the wall. The guy who had complained had fallen to the floor.
Juan held the door as they staggered out. As Tom’s eyes adjusted, he realized the light was dim. Five people sat on folding chairs, but as they came into focus, he realized Marie was one of them. Joe’s replacement was there, and three white soldiers, but not Claude. Tom looked around, but saw no one else.
“Welcome to November 21, 1971. It’s debriefing time, kids. You soldiers need to tell the dodgers what happened. You dodgers, you need to pick up enough of their stories to pass for veterans. On paper you spent the last two years in the war. The briefing rooms are set up; the same ones you used before you left. We put note pads in the rooms, and you can have all the time you want.”
He looked straight at Tom; two sudden years showed on his face, a dash of gray in the long sideburns that hadn’t been on his face when Tom had left. Juan looked very tired, with deep circles under his eyes. “We’ve got to talk to you separately, kid.”
Tom walked to the office with Juan and Marie. The room had aged; the walls needed paint, trying to remind him two years had passed. “Where’s Claude?” he asked when they sat down.
“The damned fool got himself killed, kid.” Juan put his hand over his face and sighed deeply. “It had to happen sometime. Some of them think they’re immortal down now. He played hero, charging the VC, and they dropped an artillery shell square onto him. There wasn’t enough left to put him back together, even up then.”
Two years or half an hour ago Tom had talked to the dead man. He felt numb, but it was not like when he had heard about Mike. When Tom heard the sadness in his father’s voice on the heavy black phone, he had known something was wrong. “We got a call from Mrs. Szczepanski,” his father had said slowly, and Tom had known that Mike was dead. “I’m sorry, Tommy, but I had to tell you.” His father was crying, and Tom had cried too. His father had started talking about missing his brother, and cried some more before Tom hung up, went back to his room and got stoned.
“I’m sorry,” Tom said, looking at Juan. “But lots of people get killed in ‘Nam. Claude knew it.”
“It wasn’t supposed to be possible, kid.”
“He must have known there was a risk, Juan,” Marie said. “Nobody up then is immortal. They make all the substitutes coming down now certify that they understand the dangers. We had to do that ourselves. Remember?”
“Sure. But the nanos can heal all ordinary twentieth-century diseases, the same way they can fix up wounds that would kill anybody else on the battlefield.”
Juan’s words cut through the last wisps of haze in Tom’s mind. Something the substitutes had brought from the future could save them from being killed in the war. “What?” he broke in.
The two looked at him, uneasily.
“You said something could fix wounds on the battlefield. What was it?”
The woman looked at Juan, seeming very shaken. “We aren’t supposed to say anything about the nanos, Juan. Just let the dope-heads think they were off on another trip.”
After a long pause, Juan turned toward her. “Does it matter? No technology down now can detect the nanos. We’re clean.”
Tom looked between them, climbing step by step through levels of uneasy dreams toward whatever passed for reality. It had been hard to sort reality from the dreams when his nose still pulled in ghosts of pot smoke with every breath. The only smell in the old office was stale air, harsh in his lungs.
Juan turned toward him. “Look, kid, remember we told you we came from the future. Up then, we’ve learned how to repair the body. Not just sew up wounds, but heal them. We have little synthetic cells in our bloodstreams; we call them nanos. Some stop cancer cells from multiplying; some clean up arteries so the blood flows smoothly. Some can build new organs to replace damaged ones. If a substitute takes a bullet through the heart, the nanos can rebuild the damaged tissue in minutes. Nanos in the brain fix up any damage from loss of blood. The substitutes wake up in ten, fifteen minutes, weak but okay, like they were stunned. In the thick of battle, nobody notices.”
“You mean guns can’t hurt them? Like they’re only playing soldier?” Tom shivered.
“Not that simple, kid. The nanos can’t put somebody back together if they’re blown up as bad as Claude was. They are programmed so small wounds take a normal time to heal. We don’t want replacements to look like supermen. Nobody down now is supposed to know about this.”
“Then why are you telling him, Juan?”
“We owe it to him, Marie.” He looked at her with obvious annoyance. “We were supposed to help him, and we screwed him up instead.”
“I want to help him. This will only make things worse,” she said.
“I want to know,” Tom tried to get their attention.
Juan glanced at him, then turned back to Marie. “Look, this works because we take only kids the Feds won’t believe, heads and stoners and black kids without much schooling. Remember back in June? The cops picked up some kid on a bad trip in the Haight, and he told them all about us. I played Mr. Clean, and showed the Feds the old auto parts in the back room, and said they better lock that freak in the nuthouse. By the time the shrinks get done, he’ll think we were hallucinations.” Juan turned toward Tom. “You’re smart enough to keep your mouth shut and stay out of trouble, aren’t you kid?”
Tom nodded. “Yes.” It had all sounded too easy. “But if nobody’s going to believe me, anyway, you can tell me more, can’t you?”
“Okay, kid. We understand each other.” Juan’s eyes sparkled a moment.
Questions tumbled through Tom’s mind. “Why do they come to fight in ‘Nam?” he asked. “Why not some better war? Don’t they want to fight against Hitler?”
“Some do, but there weren’t a lot of draft dodgers in World War II. A few want to fight for Hitler, but we won’t let them,” Juan said. “Vietnam is so unpopular in America that it’s perfect for us. How many of your friends wanted to go, kid?”
“One did. He killed, and he got killed.” Tom wanted to cry, but he couldn’t cry in front of them.
“The substitutes coming back say it’s an evil war,” said Juan. “But new ones keep coming for the action. Lots of men dodged the draft for the American Civil War, but the action is too slow for up then. They would love the high-tech wars in your future, but we can’t make substitutions after the military starts genetic profiling of soldiers. Vietnam is the perfect war, kid.”
Tom didn’t understand what they meant by genetic profiling, but he wondered about the future. “Can they change what happens?”
Juan shook his head. “They can change some people’s lives, and maybe affect a battle or two, but not who wins the war. That’s a lot bigger then individual lives, kid.”
“What about my life? What am I supposed to do now?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know.” Juan looked down and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Down now you’re dead, kid. The government has closed the books on your life. The Army picked up what was left of Claude and shipped it back to Illinois, and your parents cried and buried the pieces.”
“Couldn’t they tell it wasn’t me?”
“No. There wasn’t much left, kid. The chaplain recommended a closed-casket funeral. We didn’t find out until afterwards.”
“Everybody who knew you thinks you’re dead. You’ve got nothing left down now. We can send you up then, to our future,” Marie offered. “It’s a different world, but a good one. We’ve made peace with nature and each other. With the nanos, you can live almost forever. Look at me; I’m 134 years old. There’s nothing left for you here.”
“I . . . I . . . don’t know.” Tom looked back and forth between them. “Can I come back if I don’t like it?”
Juan shook his head. “No, kid. Once you’re up then, you can’t come back down now in this time line. Otherwise you violate causality.”
The woman glared at him.
Tom stared at them both. The reality hit him slowly. On paper he was dead; Claude was in his grave. His parents had already buried him. They must have cried over his death. Tom felt tears coming, squeezed his eyes shut, and put his eyes over them so the two wouldn’t see. “Please let me think.”
“We can send you up then right away, with the substitutes returning up then. It will be much easier for you,” Marie said.
“Let him think, Marie,” Juan said. “It’s not much extra trouble to send him up then separately. Let’s get the others out of here. We’ll be back, kid. There’s just two of us down now in the Bay Area, and we’ve got to do everything.”
A chair scraped and two pairs of shoes trod across the bare concrete floor. The door opened and shut. Alone, Tom put his head on the desk and wept in silence, thinking how bad his father must have felt.
Someone knocked on the door. “Tom, you in there?” The knob turned, the door squeaked open, and Tom looked up at Joe. “What happened, man?”
“The substitute got killed. They buried him for me. Everybody thinks I’m dead.”
“What you going to do?”
Tom started to shrug, then changed his mind. “Let’s get out of here. They want to send me to their future, but I’m not ready to go.” He grabbed his pack.
“The old lady sounded really uptight. They rushed the other guys out and forgot I was in the john. They’re sending the soldiers back in the time machine.”
Tom shouldered his knapsack and Joe opened the door for him. The lights flickered and the time machine whined. They slipped out the peeling white door and walked down the alley. The day was cool and drizzly. They could see the changes two years had brought; the barber shop had become a variety store, and the other men on the street had longer hair and beards, but they didn’t stop.
“I’m hungry. I’ll buy you some lunch,” Joe offered. “Let’s go find someplace to eat and think.”
They walked several blocks, saying little as they looked around, the drizzle seeping into their clothes. A newspaper in a sidewalk box confirmed it was November 1971. The war was still going. They came to the lunch counter where Tom had eaten before visiting the draft counseling office on Telegraph. The same blonde girl was behind the counter, but she didn’t recognize Tom. Nobody would remember him after two years.
Tom ordered a hamburger platter, with fries and a soda. He was surprised to see Joe order a steak, rare. It had been a long time since Tom had bought anything but the cheapest items on the menu. Joe paid with a fresh twenty-dollar bill. It was mid-afternoon and the place was almost empty, but they took their trays to a booth in the back.
“Why would they send you to the future?” Joe asked after they sat down.
Tom’s hamburger tasted good; he squirted ketchup on the fries. “Maybe to get me out of the way. The Army sent the substitute’s body home, and my parents buried him. Everybody thinks I’m dead.”
“So the Man can’t come get you.” Joe sliced his steak and chewed with enthusiasm.
“And I can’t go back home, or I let out that I never was in the Army.”
“Do you want to go back? Parts of my past, I’d be glad to lose. I’m tired of playing dumb for white cops. Maybe the future doesn’t have bigots.”
“I don’t want to give up everything.” Tom picked up a fry and bit off the ketchup-coated end. It wasn’t perfect, but it was crisp and the ketchup tasted good.
“Me neither. Future’s likely to be a weird place. Probably couldn’t get a real beefsteak up there.” Joe chuckled as he took another bite.
“Can’t be much stranger than Berkeley,” Tom said, looking at a fry with skin still on one side. “But they said there was no coming back once I went. All I wanted was to stay out of the war.”
“It ain’t my war, and I ain’t going, that’s what I said, Maybe I’d fight the Klan, but they ain’t them.” Joe said. “Now I got discharge papers, I’m free. I told the guy who went for me to take the medal back where he came from.”
“I didn’t get anything. I don’t know what to do. Got no place to go. Maybe go underground, I guess.” Tom wondered about Canada. He didn’t know how much a train ticket would cost; maybe he could hitch.
Joe sipped his lemonade. “I guess I’m lucky. I told my uncle I was splitting, and he said I could stay with him whenever I came back.”
“Guess I screwed up everything,” Tom muttered. He felt sorry for his father. He’d buried his only brother, and now he thought he had lost his only son.
“You don’t want to go to the future?”
Tom sipped his soda through the straw. “No,” he said, thinking. “The old lady’s crazy. She said she was 134 years old, and that I could live forever in the future. They do something to people so their wounds heal. Juan said that’s why the substitutes weren’t scared.”
“She’s crazy, man. People live longer than they used to, but not forever. The guy who went in for you got killed. If people can live forever, they would end up like her.”
“I don’t want that,” Tom said. He could still feel her trying to pull strings to make him do what she wanted. Ideas tumbled through his mind. He wanted to tell his parents he was alive, but couldn’t just go back home and say he’d never been in the Army. Canada should be more like home than the future, and he could call his parents from there. “I need time to get my head together.”
“I know the feeling,” Joe said. He cut another piece of steak and chewed slowly, savoring the red meat. His dark eyes looked into Tom’s. He put down his knife and fork and pulled a thick envelope from his pants pocket. Tom stared when he saw it was full of twenty-dollar bills. “It was his mustering-out pay,” Joe said. He peeled off some bills and pushed them toward Tom. “Take it.”
