Joe Haldeman Forever Peace

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"I know that."
He put Julian's file away and brought out a small white jar of pills. "This is
a mild antidepressant. Let's try it for two weeks, a pill after breakfast and
one after dinner. It won't affect your intellectual abilities."
"All right."
"And I want to see you" he checked a desk calendar "at ten o'clock on July
ninth. I want to jack with you and check your responses to this and that.
It'll be a two-way jack; I won't hold anything back from you."
"And if you think I'm nuts, you'll send me to the memory eraser."
"We'll see. That's all I can say."
Julian nodded and took the white jar and left.
I WOULD LIE TO Amelia; say it was just a routine checkup. I took one of the
pills and it did help me fall asleep, and sleep without dreams. So maybe I
would keep taking them if they didn't affect my mental acuity.
In the morning I felt less sad and conducted an internal debate regarding
suicide, perhaps in preparation for Dr. Jefferson's invasion. I couldn't lie
to him, jacked. But maybe I could bring about a temporary
"cure." It was easy to argue against the act not only the effect on Amelia and
my parents and friends, but also the ultimate triviality of the gesture, as
far as the army was concerned. They would just find somebody else my size and
send the soldierboy out with a fresh brain. If I did succeed in killing a few
generals with my exit, they would likewise just promote some colonels. There's
never any shortage of
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But I wondered whether all the logical arguments against suicide would do
anything to conceal the depth of my own resolution. Even before the boy's
death I knew I was only going to live as long as I had
Amelia. We've stayed together longer than most people do.
And when I came home, she was gone. Gone to see a friend in Washington, the
note said. I called the base and found I could fly out to Edwards as a
supernumerary if I could get my butt down there in ninety minutes. I was in
the air over the Mississippi before I realized I hadn't called the lab to
arrange for someone else to monitor the scheduled runs. Was that the pills?
Probably not.
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But there was no way to call from a military plane, so it was ten o'clock
Texas time before I was able to phone the lab. Jean Gordie had covered for me,
but that was pure luck; she'd come in to grade some papers, seen I wasn't in,
and checked the run schedule. She was more than slightly pissed off, since I
couldn't offer a really convincing excuse. Look, I had to take the first
flight to Washington to decide whether or not to kill myself.
From Edwards I took the monorail into old Union Station. There was a map
machine on the car that showed me I'd be only a couple of miles from her
friend's address. I was tempted to walk over and knock on the door, but
decided to be civilized and call. A man answered.
"I have to talk to Blaze."
He looked at the screen for a moment. "Oh, you're Julian. Just a moment."
Amelia came on, looking quizzical. "Julian? I said I'd be home tomorrow."
"We have to talk. I'm here in Washington."
"Come on over then. I was just about to fix lunch."
How domestic. "I'd rather... we have to talk alone."
She looked offscreen and then back, worried. "Where are you?"
"Union Station."
The man said something I couldn't quite overhear. "Pete says there's a bar on
the second floor called the
Roundhouse. I can meet you there in thirty or forty minutes."
"Go ahead and finish lunch," I said. "I can "
"No. I'll be down as fast as I can."
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"Thanks, darling." I thumbed off and looked into the mirror of the screen.
Despite the night's sleep, I still looked pretty haggard. I should've shaved
and changed out of my uniform.
I ducked into a men's room for a quick shave and comb and then walked down to
the second floor.
Union Station was a transportation hub, but also a museum of rail technology.
I walked by some subways of the previous century, with their makeshift
bulletproofing all pitted and dented. Then a steam-
powered locomotive from the nineteenth that actually looked to be in better
shape.
Amelia was waiting at the door to the bar. "I took a cab," she explained as we
embraced.
She steered me into the gloom and odd music of the bar. "So who's this Pete? A
friend, you said?"
"He's Peter Blankenship." I shook my head. The name was vaguely familiar. "The
cosmologist." A
serving robot took our iced tea orders and said we had to spend ten dollars to
take the booth. I got a glass of whiskey.
"So you're old friends."
No, we just met. I wanted to keep our meeting secret." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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