Mars must have felt my eyes upon him. He looked at me and flashed an innocent smile.
It took the engineers about an hour to carry the last of the bodies out, set the charges, and clear the pit. They made sure no one lingered too close to the hole, then they sealed the tunnels they had dug, sending a thirty-foot plume of dust into the air.
Seeing that our work was done and that we had not exhumed any weapons, Doctorow and his militia returned to their homes.
Hollingsworth joined Mars and me as we watched Doctorow and company load into their trucks and cars. “Specking antisynthetic pricks,” Hollingsworth muttered. Colonel Philo Hollingsworth was a clone. Scott Mars was a clone. Every man under my command was cloned, and none of them knew it. They were programmed to think they were natural-born.
“He’s not so bad,” I told Hollingsworth. “Now his wife …”
Sarah Doctorow was an antisynthetic bitch; but Doctorow didn’t share her prejudice. She saw no difference between clones and robots. He, on the other hand, did not care whether people came from a fallopian tube or a test tube.
Mars excused himself and went to help his engineers load the stiffs onto their truck. A few minutes later, Hollingsworth and I climbed into our jeep and headed back to Fort Sebastian, locking the security fence behind us. We did not electrify the fence, but we placed sensors around it to make sure no one climbed it or cut their way through.
“So what do you think they will call the war?” I asked Hollingsworth, as we pulled onto the street leading through the ruins of Norristown.
“Who are you talking about?” Hollingsworth asked.
“You know, a hundred years from now. What do you think people will call the war?”
“I don’t think anyone will remember it ever happened,” he said.
“Sure they will. Maybe they’ll call it a revolutionary war,” I said. “Isn’t it a revolutionary war when you fight for independence?”
That was an exaggeration. In truth, we were already quasi-independent. Having decided to eliminate its clone military program, the Pentagon marooned us on its fifteen abandoned fleets. The goal was to use us for military exercises as they developed newer and more powerful ships.
“It wasn’t a revolution,” Hollingsworth said. “It’s not a revolution unless you win.”
“Well, okay, maybe we didn’t win, but neither did they. I don’t see any Unified Authority guard towers. Do you?” I asked, ignoring the obvious.
“We got crushed. We didn’t win shit. They crushed us,” Hollingsworth said, stating the obvious, which I had tried to ignore.
“Okay, so we didn’t exactly win, but we didn’t totally lose. Maybe that makes it a civil war,” I said. “Like the American Civil War.”
Hollingsworth shook his head. “It wasn’t a civil war, either, sir. It wasn’t important enough to be a civil war. I bet the local media on Earth didn’t even report the battle.”
“They reported it. They lost a decorated war hero, they didn’t have any choice,” I said. “People notice when someone like Ted Mooreland goes missing.” Mooreland was a general in the Unified Authority Marines. He had led the ground assault that ended in the underground garage.
“They’ll just announce that he died in a training exercise,” Hollingsworth said.
“You’re probably right,” I agreed.
“Damn right they’ll say that,” Hollingsworth went on. “That’s all this was to them, just a training exercise. It wasn’t a civil war, and it sure as hell wasn’t a revolutionary war.”
“Maybe it was a coup,” I said, feeling a little brighter now that I had found a word to describe our insignificant revolt.
Hollingsworth shook his head, and said, “Don’t flatter yourself. A year from now, no one remembers it.”
“Oh, they’ll remember it,” I said. “The Unified Authority lost twenty-three ships. They lost three fighter carriers, five battleships, and three thousand Marines. Damn straight they’ll remember it. Anytime the Navy loses three fighter carriers, it’s a big deal.”
Hollingsworth thought about this and gave ground. “A big battle, but a minor war.”
“But it was a war,” I said.
“Okay, so it was a war, and the war is over, sir. Unless they come back to finish us, your war is dead.”
We drove across the newly restored viaduct that led along the southern outskirts of Norristown. Like seedlings springing up in the wake of a volcanic eruption, new buildings had begun to appear around the city.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Only time will tell.”
“Maybe I’m right about what?” Hollingsworth asked, sounding surprised.
“About the war being on hold,” I said.
“I didn’t say it was on hold; I said it was dead.”
I could not fault Hollingsworth for his pessimistic attitude. Based on the information he had at hand, our chances of winning a war with the Unified Authority seemed bleak. I had more information than he did, but now was not the time to discuss it. I needed to get back to Fort Sebastian to clean up. I had dinner plans that night, and I wanted to look my best.
CHAPTER TWO
Ava, my significant other/girlfriend, and I ate dinner with Ellery Doctorow and his wife every month. It was never a friendly occasion. Doctorow considered me and my Marines a relic of Unified Authority intervention and wanted us to leave. As far as he and everyone else knew, we were landlocked on his planet. We couldn’t very well fly off into space in a fleet of short-range transports, so he tolerated our settling into the Army base on the east side of town.
“Ellery tells me you want to attack Earth,” said Sarah Doctorow, the Right Reverend’s clone-hating wife.
“Wayson, are you planning attacks without telling me?” Ava pretended her feelings were hurt.
Sarah was Ellery Doctorow’s common-law wife. Ava was more like my fiancée than my wife. I got the better deal.
Wearing an ivy-colored dress, Sarah Doctorow looked like a turtle—tiny flesh-colored limbs and head, massive green shell in the middle. Her breasts hung like watermelons, and her third chin sagged so far down her neck, it could have hidden an Adam’s apple.
She looked over at Ava, gave her a warm smile, and said, “You need to keep a close eye on that man of yours. He’s planning a war behind your back.”
Ava answered Sarah in kind, smiling graciously, and saying, “That’s my Wayson.”
Ava had once been the hottest actress in Hollywood. She was a dark-haired, green-eyed goddess who might have been remembered among Hollywood’s greatest legends had word not gotten out that she had inherited her name and her DNA from an ancient actress.
U.A. society turned its back on Ava along with the rest of its synthetic progeny. About the same time that the gossip columnists began flogging Ava, the Joint Chiefs of Staff decided to jettison their clones. They sent us to the farthest reaches of the galaxy; and Ava Gardner, the fallen star, hitched a ride with us.
Sarah loathed Ava because she was a clone. Ava detested Sarah because Doctorow’s wife was a bigot and a bitch. Both women put on a great show. The first time I saw them chatting, I thought they liked each other.
“What happened to your cane?” Doctorow asked, as our better halves conversed.
“I think I’ve outgrown it,” I said.
“Congratulations on your remarkable recovery,” Doctorow said. “Your doctor gave you even chances of survival two months ago, now you’re walking around without a cane.” He lifted his wineglass for a toast. “To what should we attribute your amazing recovery? Good genes, I suppose?”
Doctorow had a talent for delivering insults as backhanded compliments. I was a Liberator, a class of clone that had been discontinued because of a tendency toward uncontrollable violence. The reason I survived was because my Liberator physiology included a special gland that pumped testosterone and adrenaline into my system to help Liberators adjust to battle. They called that feat of anatomical engineering a “combat reflex.”