He came up at me suddenly, swinging with a roundhouse punch that would have knocked the wind out of me if I had still been there to receive it. I was already stepping back on one foot. I grabbed his arm and pulled, tripping him as he came. He sprawled flat in the dirt and skidded.
I walked over to him, kicked him gently to roll him over on his back, and offered him a hand. He refused it and sat up.
I grinned. "Want to try for two out of three?"
He shook his head.
I offered him my hand again. He refused it again and stood up by himself, brushing himself off. His expression was still smoldering.
"What's your name, Private?"
"McCain," he grumbled. "Jon McCain."
"Well, listen, McCain-" I faced him and realized again how young he was. Sixteen? Fifteen? He really was only a kid. He couldn't even grow a proper mustache-his upper lip just looked dirty-and he needed a haircut. His scraggly brown hair hung down over his forehead, almost hiding his dark shaded eyes. He looked like a hurt little boy.
"It's like this," I said. "Yes, I'm pissed as hell at you. I always get pissed at people who endanger my life. But that's not why I put you up against that wall. That's just the fastest way I know to teach you the kind of obedience that will ensure your survival. You have to trust me, because what you don't know could kill us both. Do you know my record?"
"Yes sir, but-" he caught himself. "May I speak, sir?"
"Go ahead."
"Well . . ." His resentment faded into a lopsided, almost conspiratorial malice. "I just sort of figured you had to be some kind of colossal fuck-up for them to give you this shit detail."
"Thanks for your . . . ah, candor."
"I looked up your record, sir. You've got three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, a Good Conduct Medal, and eighty million caseys in worm bounties. And, according to the military listings, you're one of the five best field agents in California. You're a real chopperbopper-too good for this job. So, I figured you must have really pissed someone off." His grin was infectious. "That's how I got here. "
"You're half-right," I admitted. "I made a bad guess last year. A lot of people died." I didn't like remembering; I liked talking about it even less. "Anyway, they put me here-where if I made any more mistakes, they'd be a lot more personal. Understand?"
"Sort of."
"Yeah, I don't like it either, but so what? This is the job. Let's get it done. I'll do the best I can. And so will you. Understand?" His grin faded. "And whatever else I might feel about it is none of anybody's goddamn business." I headed back toward the Jeep.
The phone was still yammering on the seat. I picked it up and put the headset to my ear. "JIMBO," I acknowledged. "All clear. No casualties. And your Vigilante has been removed from service." I answered a couple more questions, signed off, and looked over at the kid; he was standing rigidly, a respectful distance away from the Jeep. "What are you waiting for?"
"Your orders, sir," he said crisply.
"Right." I jerked a thumb. "Get in the Jeep and drive." I unclipped the car's terminal and thumbed it to life.
"Yessir."
"McCain-"
"Sir?"
"Don't be a robot. Just be responsible."
"Yes, sir." The kid dropped in behind the wheel, snuck a sideways glance at me, then dropped his rigid manner.
He headed us back toward the main road while I balanced the terminal on my lap and logged the destruction of the Vigilante. The kid waited until I was finished, then said, "Sir? Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"Well, it's about that spider. I thought those things were only supposed to kill worms."
I nodded. "That was the original programming. But then we started losing units. Renegades were knocking them out and dismantling them for their weaponry, so the army reprogrammed them against guerrillas too. All spiders now assume that any humans in a free-fire area-regardless of the clothes they wear or the ID signals received from their dogtags-are hostiles, until proven otherwise." I added, "And are treated accordingly."
"You mean-torched?"
"Only if you refuse to be captured." I shrugged. "Some of the reprogramming must have been a little hasty. Even desperate." The kid didn't speak for a long time. He concentrated on his driving. The narrow two-lane road was twisty.
After a while, he asked uncomfortably, "Are there a lot of those things around?"
"McDonnell-Douglas is fabricating three hundred and fifty units a week. Most of those are for export-South America, Africa, Asia-there's a lot of wild country on this planet all of a sudden; but I'd guess we've got at least a couple thousand of them patrolling the West Coast. It's the highway; 101 has to be kept open. But not all of them are Vigilantes-and it's also very unlikely that the next one you run into will be a rogue too."
"I'm not reassured."
I grinned. "You sound like me."
"Huh?"
"If you knew the statistics on the spiders' effectiveness, you'd be even less reassured."
"They don't work?"
I shrugged. "They do well enough." Then I added, "And they do have one real advantage.... "
The kid glanced over at me curiously. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. You don't have to write letters to their families when you lose one."
"Oh." He shut up and concentrated on his driving.
The real problem was that the worms were already learning to avoid the spiders; and there was even a rumor that they had begun to set traps for the machines. Like elephant pits. I didn't know. There was a lot of material I wasn't cleared to see any more.
"Hey," the kid asked suddenly. "Why'd you use limericks?"
"Huh? Oh-" I was startled out of my thoughts. "It was the only thing I could think of," I admitted. "When I get bored, I write limericks."
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
The kid pulled the Jeep onto the main road and headed us west toward US-101. "Tell me another."
"Mm, okay-I'm still working on this one: There was a young fellow named Chuck-"
The kid giggled in delight. Well, it was pretty obvious where it was going. "Go on," he said.
"Who expressed a great fondness for duck. Whether gravied or roasted, pressed, sauced, or toasted-" I stopped.
"Yeah? Yeah? Go on."
I shook my head. "That's all there is to it, so far."
"That's all?"
I shrugged apologetically. "I couldn't think of a rhyme for the last line."
"You're kidding!"
"Yep."
2
Mode: Day One
"Jesus only told us half of it. The truth will set you free. But first it's going to piss you off."
- SOLOMON SHORT
The first day of the training was about commitment. I stepped into the room-and stopped to stare.
I hadn't known what to expect, but this wasn't it.
The room was very large and very empty. Larger than a college gymnasium. Only college gymnasiums don't have dark gray carpeting. The walls were pale gray. They were absolutely bare. They felt very far away.
In the exact center of the space was a broad square dais. All four sides of the dais were faced by precision formations of chairs; they were divided exactly into two squares, eight rows deep, eight chairs to a row. The aisle between the squares was three chair wide. On the dais was a podium, a music stand, and a director chair.