I'm the youngest of the Saturday Night Special crowd by at least ten years; the only one who's not a full-time intellectual. I'm "Blaze's boy"; I don't know which of them knew or suspected I literally was her boy. I came as her friend and coworker, and everybody seemed to accept that.
My primary value to the group was the novelty of being a mechanic. That was doubly interesting to them, because a senior member of the group, Marty Larrin, was one of the designers of the cyberlink that made jacking, and thus soldierboys, possible.
Marty had been responsible for designing the system's security. Once a jack was installed, it was failsafed at a molecular level, literally impossible to modify, even for the original manufacturers; even for researchers like Marty. The nanocircuitry inside would scramble itself within a fraction of a second if any part of the complex device was tampered with. Then it would take another round of invasive surgery, with a one-in-ten chance of death or uselessness, to take the scrambled jack out and install a new one.
Marty was about sixty, the front half of his head shaved bald in a generation-old style, the rest of his white hair long except for the shaved circle around his jack. He was conventionally handsome, still; regular leading-man features, and it was obvious from the way he treated Amelia that they had a past. I once asked her how long ago that had been, the only such question I've ever asked her. She thought for a moment and said, "I guess you were out of grade school."
The population of the Saturday Night Special crowd varies from week to week. Marty is almost always there, along with his traditional antagonist, Franklin Asher, a mathematician with a chair in the philosophy department. Their jocular sniping goes back to when they were graduate students together; Amelia's known him nearly as long as Marty.
Belda Magyar is usually there, an odd duck but obviously one of the inner circle. She sits and listens with a stern, disapproving look, nursing a single glass of wine. Once or twice a night she makes a hilarious remark, without changing expression. She's the oldest, over ninety, a professor emeritus in the art department. She claims to remember having met Richard Nixon, when she was very small. He was big and scary, and gave her a book of matches, no doubt a White House souvenir, which her mother took away.
I liked Reza Pak, a shy chemist in his early forties, the only one besides Amelia with whom I socialized outside the club. We met occasionally to shoot pool or play tennis. He never mentioned Amelia and I never mentioned the boyfriend who always drove up to fetch him, exactly on time.
Reza, who also lived on campus, usually gave me and Amelia a ride to the club, but this Friday he was already uptown, so we called a cab. (Like most people, Amelia doesn't own a car and I've never even driven, except in Basic Training, and then only jacked with someone who knew how.) We could bike to Hidalgo in daylight, but coming back after dark would be suicide.
It started raining at sundown anyhow, and by the time we got to the club it was a full-fledged thunderstorm, with tornado watch. The club had an awning, but the rain was almost horizontal; we got drenched between the cab and the door.
Reza and Belda were already there, at our usual table in the grease section. We talked them into moving to the Club Room, where a phony-but-warm fireplace crackled.
Another semi-regular, Ray Booker, came in while we were relocating, also drenched. Ray was an engineer who worked with Marty Larrin on soldierboy technology, and a serious 'grass musician who played banjo all over the state, summers.
"Julian, you should of seen the Tenth today." Ray had a little warboy streak in him. "Delayed replay of an amphibious assault on Punta Patuca. We came, we saw, we kicked butt." He handed his wet overcoat and hat to the wheelie that had followed him in. "Almost no casualties."
"What's 'almost'?" Amelia said.
"Well, they ran into a shatterfield." He sat down heavily. "Three units lost both legs. But we got them evac'ed before the scavengers could get to them. One psych, a girl on her second or third mission."
"Wait," I said. "They used a shatterfield inside a city?"
"They sure as hell did. Brought down a whole block of slums, urban renewal. Of course they said we did it."
"How many dead?"
"Must be hundreds." Ray shook his head. "That's what got the girl, maybe. She was in the middle of it, immoblilized with both her legs off. Fought the rescue crew; wanted them to evac the civilians. They had to turn her off to get her out of there."
He asked the table for a scotch and soda and the rest of us put our orders in. No greasy waiters in this section. "Maybe she'll be okay. One of those things you have to learn to live with."
"We didn't do it," Reza said.
"Why would we? No military advantage, bad press. Shatterfield's a terror weapon, in a city."
"I'm surprised anyone survived," I said.
"Nobody on the ground; they were all instant chorizo. But those were four – and five-story buildings. People in the upper stories just had to survive the collapse.
"The Tenth set up a knockout perimeter with UN markers and called it a no-fire zone, collateral casualty, once we had all our soldierboys out. Dropped in a Red Cross med crawler and moved on.
"The shatterfield was their only real 'tech touch. The rest of it was old-fashioned, cut-off-and-concentrate tactics, which doesn't work on a group as well integrated as the Tenth. Good platoon coordination. Julian, you would have appreciated it. From the air it was like choreography."
"Maybe I'll check it out." I wouldn't; never did, unless I knew somebody in the fight.
"Any time," Ray said. "I've got two crystals of it, one jacked through Emily Vail, the company coordinator. The other's the commercial feed." They didn't show battles while they were happening, of course, since the enemy could jack in. The commercial feed was edited both for maximum drama and minimum disclosure. Normal people couldn't get individual mechanics' unedited feeds; lots of warboys would cheerfully kill for one. Ray had top-secret clearance and an unaltered jack. If a civilian or a spy got ahold of Emily Vail's crystal, they would see and feel a lot that wasn't on the commercial version, but selected perceptions and thoughts would be filtered out unless you had a jack like Ray's.
A live waiter in a clean tuxedo brought our drinks. I was splitting a jug of house red with Reza.
Ray raised a glass. "To peace," he said, actually without irony. "Welcome back, Julian." Amelia touched my knee with hers under the table.
The wine was pretty good, just astringent enough to make you consider a slightly more expensive one. "Easy week this time," I said, and Ray nodded. He always checked on me.
A couple of others showed up, and we broke down into the usual interlocking small conversational groups. Amelia moved over to sit with Belda and another man from fine arts, to talk about books. We usually did separate when it seemed natural.
I stayed with Reza and Ray; when Marty came in he gave Amelia a peck and joined the three of us. There was no love lost between him and Belda.
Marty was really soaked, his long white hair in lanky strings. "Had to park down the block," he said, dropping his sodden coat on the wheelie.
"Thought you were working late," Ray said. "This isn't late?" He ordered coffee and a sandwich. "I'm going back later, and so are you. Have a couple more scotches."
"What is it?" He pushed his scotch away a symbolic inch.
"Let's not talk shop. We have all night. But it's that girl you said you saw on the Vail crystal."