“Where do they have you stationed?” Mooreland more or less grunted his question, wrestling my attention away from the girl in his arms.
“I’m running errands for Glade,” I said. That was General James Ptolemeus Glade, commandant of the Marines.
“An officer like you in the Pentagon, what a specking waste of talent,” Mooreland said. “They should have you out in the field somewhere. Maybe they should send you to the outer planets …see if we can reclaim lost territory.”
“Teddy, I’m ready for a drink,” Ava said.
“Yeah, let’s head over to the bar,” Mooreland said.
“Nice meeting you, Harris,” Ava said in a voice so sweet and soft it sounded like she’d sung the words.
It was like I was in a trance. I extended my arm as if I wanted to shake hands with her. She giggled, took my hand, and gave it a soft squeeze, then she turned away. Mooreland remained another second and gave me a smirk that said it all.
“Better check for frostbite, Lieutenant; I bet that bitch has icebergs flowing in her veins,” one of my Marines said.
“What a ball-buster,” another said.
“I’d kill to put my arm around her like that,” said the third man on my detail. Watching Ava and Mooreland disappear into the crowd, we all agreed with him.
We were at a party that few Marines thought would take place—a New Year’s Eve celebration ushering in the year 2516. I began the year battening down the hatches on a planet called New Copenhagen, making a last stand for mankind against an alien onslaught. Other than Earth, New Copenhagen was the only Unified Authority planet that had not been conquered by the aliens which the top brass now knew as the “Avatari.”
At the time, all we knew was that wherever the Avatari appeared, our planets fell in a matter of minutes. We’d gone from 180 planets spread across the galaxy to two in a couple of years. Even after winning the battle on New Copenhagen, we were still down to two planets.
Across the floor, a handful of silver-haired couples danced to moldy songs performed by a live orchestra. A buffet of desserts and finger foods stood mostly ignored, but a large crowd of men in tuxedos and military uniforms milled around the bar. On the far side of the ballroom, women in sparkling gowns sat and gossiped. Waiters in white uniforms walked the floor carrying trays with champagne and hors d’oeuvres, offering food and drinks to everyone except me and my Marines.
But we only had eyes for Mooreland and his date. We watched Mooreland in astonishment as he guided Ava around the floor, introducing her to officers and politicians.
An air of scandal surrounded the “glamorous” Ms. Gardner. Gossip columnists and Hollywood reporters spread dark rumors about her being cloned from an actress who died five hundred years ago. Despite the fact that the nearly all-clone military had just saved mankind, the natural-born crowd still looked down their un-engineered noses at us clones. If the rumors proved accurate, her career would be ruined; but the hint of scandalous dirty secrets surrounding her only made Ava more intriguing so long as they remained unproven. There is a mystique about a starlet who is rumored to have worked her way into Hollywood as a call girl, but an actress known to have worked as a prostitute is nothing but a whore.
Since I was a lowly lieutenant, I came to this party as the hired help. That was one of the differences between me and Ted Mooreland; he came as a guest, and I came as part of the color guard. He and I were both officers, we both put our asses on the line on New Copenhagen; but I was a clone and he was a natural-born.
The ballroom hummed with the sounds of music, muffled voices, and the clink of ice cubes in glass. The only light in the room came from dimmed chandeliers and candles on tables. When they had the chance, the Washington elite preferred to lurk in shadows.
“I never paid much attention to her movies,” I told the Marine beside me.
“You made up for it just now,” the Marine said. “I thought your eyes were going to fall out.”
“Go speck yourself,” I whispered. A Marine could end his career using that word at an occasion like this.
“I’d rather speck her,” the Marine answered. We both laughed.
“Speck” was the obscenity of choice among the Marines. It referred to the fluid being transferred rather than the act of transferring it.
For the rest of the night, I tried to forget about Ava Gardner. I went about my duty, occasionally catching glimpses of her here and there. As the evening went on, Tobias Andropov, the newest rising star in the Unified Authority Senate, made glowing remarks about the recovery of our Earth-based economy. Generals and admirals gave three-minute speeches about the readiness of the U.A. military. The presentations ended with William Grace, the retiring head of the Linear Committee, presenting plans to rebuild the Republic.
Hiding in the back, I listened to these optimistic speeches and wondered what galaxy these people lived in. From what I could tell, we had barely survived the attack and had no real means of defending ourselves if the aliens returned.
The speeches ended at 2300. With an hour to go before the climax of the evening, the orchestra returned, and the night became festive. Some of the politicians put on party hats and played with noisemakers. The pace of the drinking picked up, and a steady herd remained on the dance floor. I caught a brief glimpse of Colonel Mooreland and Ava on the floor. They cut a striking couple. He was about my height, six-three, but more muscled, with a broad face, a dark crew cut, and a square jaw. She was petite, and her head rested in the hollow between his chest and shoulder.
I had an inexplicable desire to shoot Mooreland as I watched them dance. She was scrub, nothing more, just another girl, prettier than most to be sure; but just a skirt all the same.
At midnight the guests drank, shouted, and shot off party favors. Mooreland and Ava stood in an exclusive knot of revelers that included “Wild Bill” Grace and two of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mooreland was their boy, a man with a thor oughbred bloodline and a good combat record. His father, a former commandant of the Marines, had died fighting the Avatari. Now Ted stood shoulder to shoulder with generals and politicians, a man with a future and Ava Gardner in his arms. Whatever angels looked after him, I hated the speckers.
As I presented the color guard to end the evening, I spotted Ava and Mooreland in the front row of tables. I performed my duties, staring past them into space. The revelers stood at attention as we marched the flags out of the room, and the party came to a close.
For the next few weeks, I fantasized about Ava calling me; but, of course, she never did. All that came of Ava was a string of cold showers. When I went out with other women, I sometimes thought of her; but those daydreams faded away.
It was an exciting time. As the politicians had predicted, the Unified Authority began to rebuild. For the first time that I could remember, no one questioned the military. The Senate enacted a new holiday celebrating the victory on New Copenhagen. In past times, the House of Representatives had been a vipers’ pit of sedition. Since the war, it had become the soldiers’ best friend, calling for improved GI benefits, increased military spending, and the erection of a New Copenhagen Memorial in Washington, DC.
In January 2516, the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Military History opened a wing dedicated to the history of cloned soldiers. Clones in the Smithsonian—I never thought I would see the day, but there it was.
I visited the exhibit and learned things about clone history that I had never known. One display showed the first cloned soldiers—big, brainless, and brawny; a force of brutes that lived and died like robots. The evolution of synthetic humanity quickly selected those first Neanderthals for extinction, and a new class of smaller, smarter synthetic soldiers replaced them.