Armor (29 page)

Was she kidding? Word for word. I wanted to know about this. . . that man.

In a few minutes, with Holly and now Lya, beside me, I went to Hell again. The next day, after Lya had gotten over her first immersion need for sleep, I went again. And again and again.

But Felix wouldn’t die.

We, the three of us, slept and ate and rested and smoked and, rarely, chatted all in perfect comfort. But once, and later twice, a day, we would put on these silly little helmets that looked like skullcaps and live and breathe and fear and despair within the very skin of a man rushing through a forest of gigantic mandibles and huge globular eyes, tearing through this forest, shedding and spraying its black blood, carving through it with blazebombs when he could or a blazer rifle while it lasted or, much more often, with bare armored hands that ripped and tore.

But he wouldn’t die.

The absolutely incalculable pressure of Banshee and the killing and the. . . total alien nature of his new world. . . it grew and grew in him. We felt it, each of us. We felt him separate and fight. We knew his dispassionate talent for carnage. We knew his inner terror and revulsion. We knew them as different and as the same. We knew they were separating, these two people, from themselves. We knew they were getting farther and farther apart. And we knew there was no room for this.

But still he wouldn’t die.

Fleet didn’t seem to know that Felix was only a human being. Maybe they didn’t know this because he wouldn’t act like one. Maybe they didn’t know this because his ID was stuck firm inside a computer glitch. Or maybe they didn’t know because he never spoke when he wasn’t dropping we wondered a lot about what his life was like aboard ship. Or maybe they didn’t know because. . . they didn’t care. Because they sure as hell did not care; they just kept dropping him again and again and again and. . . .

But he wouldn’t die.

God, how I hated him.

And so, of course, did Holly and Lya. But I didn’t know that then. Because I was too ashamed maybe, of my own hatred. Or maybe because I didn’t care about them anymore. So more drops and more horror and more hate and Felix wouldn’t, wouldn’t, die.

Holly tripped on one of the suit’s boots, splayed out in the passage between two of the three loungers. He spun about, furious, to see what it was that had interfered with him. When he saw it was the suit, he paused, thought far too long for spontaneity, then kicked the suit as hard as he could in the chest. The field wasn’t on so there was some flex there, but it still hurt his foot a lot to kick plassteel. He groaned and hopped up and down for a few seconds. He didn’t say anything when he noticed I was watching. He didn’t have to. I knew it had been worth the pain to him.

The suit was, of course, unmoved by the blow.

Lya’s hatred was pseudoscientific as long as she could string it out. Talked about how the graphs and charts of Alpha series readings and the like just didn’t fit. It was, she said, getting to be a “sore point” with her. Nobody laughed when she said this. Or paid much attention.

But one day, I did. When she was stalking back and forth on our break and mumbling to herself about this and that and I thought I heard the word “breakdown.”

I asked her if she thought that’s what Felix was going to have and she said: “Oh, he’ll have a breakdown all right. At the rate he’s going, he can’t miss.” Her voice was bitter, bitter, when she said this. But still I held my hand in front of my face so that no one would see the eager vicious look her words had sparked.

Another time, at the end of the “day” . . .

She slammed her fist angrily against one of her screens. We, Holly and I, looked up. She noticed our notice and got red in the face. “It’s just,” she began by way of apology, “that it’s the most spectacular survival mechanism I’ve ever seen! And it’s killing him!”

We didn’t say anything. We just sat there watching her. No quarter.

So she went on with: “He’s too sane, you know, to split completely. Too firm a grasp on reality. And the situation isn’t real!”

Holly probably meant to be compassionate. But it came out bitter with: “It sure seems real enough to me.” And a small smile.

“Oh does it?” she demanded, the hurt in her tone too plain. “This constant ant horror, the killing the dying and never getting a break from Fleet, his own, our own people?” She stopped abruptly. Her chin quivered. “Who’d ever believe….”

And she sobbed.

The sound of that burned through Holly and me and we were silent and as unmoving as statues while she hurriedly, thankfully, regained control.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a moment or two. “It won’t happen again.”

Not where we could see it, she meant.

It kept getting worse. Not as bad as that first time, not as bad as the Knuckle, not then. But the pressure was accumulating. It was building up in us. Because we knew it was in him.

We got weirder. We moved through the days like Zombies. Or like K Dick wireheads. But worse because we weren’t even happy hooked up.

And because Felix wouldn’t die.

Everybody else did, though. Or had or would. And that was one of the most disquieting and. . . disorienting. . . things. It was really so goddamned dreamlike. There were all new faces around him all the time and always dying. Slowly or quickly or quietly or screeching.

New players each time but always the same game. And once through the mists of our shoddy little obsession, I remember thinking: Four years of this so far!

Goddamn us.

And Felix wouldn’t die.

I awoke crying. In Karen’s arms.

She was real good about it. She held me until the sobs stopped. Until I could stop shivering. She may even have rocked me a time or two. But it disgusted her. And as soon as I seemed to be okay, she got up out of bed, dressed, and left.

I didn’t much care. No waking moments, however pleasant with her or barren without, could make up for the nightmares themselves.

I sat up and lit a cigarette. I couldn’t remember what I had been dreaming exactly. But I had a damned good idea. It was always a bad night on those days when Felix had been seriously injured. And the day before had been one of the worst. Lya, with her medical background, had estimated that he had been hurt badly enough to be in intensive care at least three times. Or four, counting today.

But he wouldn’t die.

I was the first one down that morning, furious with Lya because today was the day she had insisted we discuss the science of what was happening to him. I was furious at this waste of time. For a sense of imminence had begun to be felt by each of us. Any day now. Any drop.

Any ant.

But she would not continue, she said, until all the psychological and physiological and other ramifications starting with P were discussed. She wanted answers to this mystery.

It made me mad. Time was wasting. And it was so obvious anyway.

Looking impatiently around the lab I noticed a calendar. I sat up straight in my chair, astonished to see that over three weeks had passed since this had begun. Idly I wondered how many rendezvous I had missed with Wice. I thought two, but I couldn’t be sure.

Holly came walking briskly in, hiding his anger better than I did. In fact. Holly had hidden his reaction to the whole experience pretty well. He had always been quiet, of course. Now he was quiet and surly, a small difference really. And cold, of course. But we had all become that. Even Lya, as much as she could. He sat down beside me and pushed a tape into the slot.

“Look at this,” he said as he keyed it on. I did but I didn’t follow the jargon of the local computer. I said so.

“It’s about Lya’s request for information on that recitation

Felix gave on that first day. You gave it to her. Remember?”

I nodded. He pointed to a row of abbreviations. “All this means is the extent of the scan. This machine didn’t have any reference. So it asked the Fleet Beam. Nothing there, either.

Had to go all the way to Earth, to the Biblioterre’ in Geneva.”

“Holly,” I sighed, not bothering to hide my lack of interest, “where did it come from.”

He looked at me. “Oh. Uh, Golden.”

“Golden?” I cried, surprised.

“Yes. It’s part of the coronation ceremony for Guardian. But not just any Guardian you know they have about twenty but for the First Guardian. The “Guardian of Gold,” it says here.”

“The Boss, you mean.”

Holly laughed. “Boss is a way of describing the most powerful monarch of the richest and most influential planet in manned space. The First Guardian is Golden.” He smiled, shook his head at me. “Boss indeed!”

I shrugged. “Anything else?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. It’s a secret.”

“But it was in the computer.”

Holly frowned. “In a way, it was. You see, we asked what it meant. If we had asked what it was, we’d have gotten nothing.”

I didn’t get it. “Then why have it in there at all?” “History. The Biblioterre’ is where everything is kept from all the planets that they want to last forever.” He grinned wryly. “Once this colonizing ‘phase’ has exhausted itself.”

I was wondering how much I liked this new sarcastic Holly when Lya breezed briskly into the room, her arms full of coils. She sat down across the table from us and began inserting various coils into various slots. She made the panel appear at that end and, with it, several screens rise into position. She looked very determined today. Not as if she had solved anything yet. But as if she was damn well going to before anybody took another step.

I lit a cigarette and waited for her to finish her preparations. Holly went to some trouble to appear calmly attentive, but he was just as impatient as I was.

At last, she was done. She came around to our side, transferred control to the other panel before her, and began to lecture.

Holly winced a little when he heard that tone in her voice. He glanced at me, his face expressionless but his meaning clear: Uh, oh, the cold dispassionate scientist is back. I kept my face equally blank, but I was wincing, too. Not so much at his coldness, but at the price of it. In fact, the price of the whole scene was getting awfully high.

No more Young Genius worshipping the Great Jack Crow, which was no loss. But no more sweet Holly melding warmly with his exquisite Lya either. And that was going to be missed.

I glanced at the suit, back to the two of them, already debating.

“Notice first these three frequencies representing stress,” said Lya, pointing to the largest screen. “The figure for stress is found by correlating …”

“Yes, yes, I see it,” Holly didn’t quite snap. “It’s a three.

Low.”

“Particularly since this was recorded during battle.”

Holly blinked. “Hub? It can’t be.”

She shrugged, turned the panel toward him to have him see for himself. He did. He checked her figures in her specialty. If she was angry, she didn’t show it. Holly sat back when he was done, “Your equipment must be faulty.” Lya’s eyebrows lifted. Her equipment indeed. But all she did was key another screen and say; “Not necessarily. This is the Alpha series for the same period.”

Holly’s eyes widened. “Whew! A nine! I knew he was scared.”

“So we have an apparent paradox.”

And an argument. Or what would pass for one during this zombie time. In general, they were trying to figure out about Felix’s split personality. Why was he splitting? How was he splitting? How come it worked? Specifically, how come his mind was terrified but his body was not? Sort of.

“Felix’s fear is as strong as anyone’s,” said Lya. “We know that.”

“Or stronger,” said Holly.

“Or stronger,” she agreed. “But it would seem to be limited to certain parts of his brain.”

“How?”

“Perhaps it’s his overall sense of defeatism and despair.” “Then how does that correlate with his incredible battle energy?” Holly wondered aloud. “It couldn’t be the instinctive will to survive.”

“Not in the usual sense,” she agreed. “For then the despair would go. The brain would discard it in order to save the psyche.”

Holly sighed. “Perhaps it is equipment failure. Since there is no apparent motivational pattern.”

“But there is a pattern. The readings are consistent.” “Consistent but illogical. Psybernetically false. Because there must be overall motivational factors. There must be something to give it all a push.”

Lya mused: “A terrified man, whose brain manages to compartmentalize the terror so that he is able to function smoothly. Yet the whole process is overlaid with total fatalism, a clearly discernible condition that, by electrical necessity, should negate any positive motivation. . . Hollis, no one exists like this. ...”

I laughed. “He did. And damn well.”

Lya was not amused. “We know that. Jack. We just don’t know how.”

“You keep saying that. I don’t see what the problem is.” Holly tried a patient smile. “The trouble is. Jack, that there are a couple of blatant contradictions here. You see, in a highstress situation like this one, requiring physical response to physical peril, usually one of two things happens:

The emotional reaction, the fear, becomes predominant, thereby paralyzing the body. Or, conversely, the body takes control, forgetting, for the time being, the fear.”

“You mean the guy either panics and freezes, or becomes a hero first and panics later.”

“Essentially, yes.”

“But Felix didn’t do either one,” I pointed out.

“Precisely,” said Holly nodding. “But he should have.”

“Why?”

Lya blinked. “Because he’s a human being.”

“But everybody isn’t. like everybody else.”

“True, Jack,” agreed Holly slowly. “And clearly Felix is an exceptional man. But there are limits even here. Particularly when you consider the rather obvious fact of his fatalism. A man as, well, as resigned as he is to death just shouldn’t be able to keep going. ...”

“He doesn’t believe. Jack,” interrupted Lya. “And without belief there is no positive motivational factor.”

I sat up in my chair. “You keep saying that, too. ‘Positive motivations. ‘ “ Holly lifted an eyebrow. “Yes. . . ?”

I shrugged. “But there’s nothing positive about Felix.” Holly stared at me quizzically for a few moments. Then his face brightened and his eyes lit up. “Of course’.” he shouted. “It’s not positive at all. It’s negative!”