Metal taste of blood strong in my mouth.

Breath coming back in short, ragged gasps.

At first I was afraid to know, then I felt out the cut lip with my tongue and realized it wasn't critical. I had sc.r.a.pes on my palms and face and a cl.u.s.ter of aches that'd be major bruises soon, but the b.l.o.o.d.y nose was slowing up and nothing else felt dangerous. I opened my eyes.

Correction: My eyes were open. My eyes were open in a dense forest under an overcast night sky, dark as the inside of a cow.

When eyes are useless, ears get big. Swallowing hard, I held my breath and listened to the blood pounding in my ears, to the pop and crunch of dry needles settling underneath me, to the scuttle of things in the dark.

Nothing that sounded like cadets' boots, though. I started breathing again. Think, dammit, think! The gameplan is totally down the tubes!

Thinking went nowhere because my head was seriously garbaged with unanswerables: Had I given Luger and Kao Vang the shake-off? Should I keep moving? Or stay put? What is that scratching sound off to my left? Should I head east? Did Luger think I'd try another misdirecter, or would he think I'd think he thought- "ARGH!" I screamed pure frustration and tried to jump up, but the knife-sharp pain in my ankle knocked me right back down again. When the searing white subsided, I realized sudden I'd hacked into a whole new level of trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for "Boy, you are in trouble!" Gingerly, I crawled off a ways until I found a big tree, then dragged myself around to sit with my back against it. If they were nuts enough to be hunting me in the dark-and they'd already proven they were nuts-at least maybe they wouldn't trip165 over me. My ankle was starting to swell up bad, so I tore open the velcro and loosened my boot.

By and by the pain receded, and feeling too rotten even to swat bugs, I dozed off. Along about 3 a.m., it started to drizzle.

I thought a lot about my wimp switch that night, and on into the next morning. No matter how I stacked the variables, it was the path that made sense. I was wet, cold, and miserable; my gamethink hadn't worked; Luger and Kao Vang were now somewhere real close by (I figured half a klick), and I'd given them a good trail to follow; and my ankle, while not broken, was so sprained I could barely walk. I had done my last runaway. The question no longer was whether I could take them out, but whether I could cheat them of the fun of taking me out.

Anybody with smarts would have agreed it was situation hopeless and opted for the bailout.

I could even see the look on the S.I.'s face. He'd smirk down at me and say, "See, Harris? I knew you wouldn't make it. You'll never get out of the academy. You'll never even pa.s.s my cla.s.s."

And that's when something clicked. Deep inside me, some little part.i.tion of my thinks.p.a.ce that I hadn't used in three years suddenly went real gritty. No, dammit! You are not out of this until you say so!

You're so balled up with what could happen you're not thinking about what you can do!

I could still move. I could still set an ambush. When it got bright, I got to my feet, hobbled along slowly until I found a fallen branch I could use for a crutch, then hobbled along a little faster.

I'd only gone half a klick or so when I heard Kao Vang coming up behind me, crashing through the undergrowth like an impatient elephant and swearing at the top of his lungs. Okay, they were trying to drive me.

(Odd tactical, I thought, given they were only two people.) I hadn't gotten as far as I'd hoped, hadn't found the spot I was really looking for, but I could still make a good show of Harris's Last Stand. A fair-sized166 tree stood alongside the trail; I got behind it and crouched down low.

Holding my crutch like a bat, tensing my muscles, I shut off all pain inputs from my ankle and concentrated on how good it would feel to take one of them with me.

Kao Vang never saw it coming. He stomped past the tree, still swearing at the top of his lungs; I swung my crutch around so hard it broke across his shins. For a moment he had the most startled expression I've ever seen, and then he let out a real satisfying painful bellow, collapsed like a wet dishrag, and I was on top of him, grabbing his collar, groping for his wimp switch- No pull-tab. It was already gone.

"G.o.ddammit Harris!" he yelled when he figured out what was going on, "that hurt!" He wasn't fighting back, I noticed. And once the hand-to-hand rush ebbed, I also noticed he didn't have his knife, canteen, or far that matter most of his clothes. "Harris," he said with forced calm, "it's okay. Honest mistake. I'm not mad." He lifted his chin, to show me the empty pull-tab socket. "I'm dead, see?"

I rolled off and let him sit up. He started rubbing his shins. "What happened?" I asked.

"Fuggin' Deke took me out!" he spat. I looked him in the face and dumped off some disbelief. "No zut! G.o.ddam S.I. woke us this morning-you know they have two-way voice on these fuggin'

collars?-said it was his last warning to split up. Right then and there, fuggin' Deke reaches over and yanks my switch!" Kao Vang calmed down slightly, looked at me, and asked, "Say, can I have a drink? That barf-brain took my canteen."

I unhooked mine, unscrewed the cap, and handed it over. He took a deep drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, said, "Thanks."

Another swig, and he added, "I tried to pull his switch, but the dead can't take out the living. Fuggin' pull-tab locks. So I slugged him, and the slimeball pulled his knife. Made me hand over my canteen, my clothes, my... " He shrugged, and gestured at himself. "See? Everything but boots, undies, and compa.s.s." He looked at me, appraising. "You got167 anything to eat? I haven't eaten in three days."

d.a.m.n him for reminding me! My stomach growled in sympathy.

"Where you going?" I asked, changing the subject.

"The S.I. radioed after my switch went. Congratulated Deke on his fuggin' clean kill, gave me a heading for the Grade Five camp, told me to hike out! Speaking of which..." Vang started to look around in the weeds. I helped, and in a minute we found his compa.s.s. He took another hit on the canteen. "I told Deke we shoulda gone 'round the marsh, but no-o! We couldn't find jack squat to eat, and then all our matches got soaked. I was so hungry yesterday I caught a frog. Ever try to eat raw frog?"

"You checked your compa.s.s?" I asked. "Mine is off by ninety degrees."

"No zut?" He looked at his; I unscrewed mine and handed it over.

He looked at them both, frowned, swore some more. "You mean I been walking south when ... ? Thanks, Harris." He handed my compa.s.s back to me. "Y'know, if you can just stay loose another day or two, Deke won't have time to hunt you. He'll be too busy looking for something he can eat. G.o.d, what I wouldn't give right now for a steak! I'd even settle for one of those hockey pucks the mess hall calls-"

"Vang?" I asked. "Shut up. Just, shut up."

He got to his feet, pretending to look at a watch. "Well, I simply must get going," he said, oozing sarcasm. "Places to be, people to meet, y'know. Say, if you get back to the academy alive, we'll just have to do lunch some- "Vang?" I asked again. When I got his attention, I pulled out a ration bar and threw it to him.

He looked at it a minute, then grinned. "Harris, you are something else." He offered me a hand up, and that's when he noticed my ankle.

"Oo, that's bad," he said after he checked it out. "You considered bailing out?"

I shook my head. "It's down to me and Luger now. I might actually have a chance."168 He smiled wry. "You're crazy." Then he started peeling the wrapper off the ration bar. "No, I take that back. You're a weird kind of twonk, Harris, but you're okay. Now Deke, he's crazy." Vang took a bite out of the bar and tried to snicker with a full mouth. "Y'know, he thinks you're gonna double-back again and he'll outfox you by going due east?"

I considered that data worth another ration bar and gave it to Vang.

After finishing both bars and washing down the crumbs with a swig from my canteen, he did me an incredible good turn and cut a strong staff to replace the one I'd broken across his shins. We hiked half a klick together, and when his last try at talking me into bailing out failed, he split off to find the Grade Five camp by dead reckoning.

Ten steps down the path he stopped and turned around. "Say, Mike?

There's something I should tell you. Deke's trying to carve a bow; say's he's going to risk tularemia and hunt rabbits. I don't think he's sharp enough to make one that really works, but if he does, I wouldn't put it past him to take a potshot at you. Be careful, okay?"

"See you back at camp," I answered, cheerful. A good plan, a really good piece of tactical and gamethink was coming to me at last. For the first time in three days I was starting to feel confident.

Vang waved, then headed east; I went west. Progress was slow 'cause of my ankle, but faster than before because I was taking a straight line and knew exactly where I was going. By dark I'd found my chute again. Rolling myself up in the camouflage fabric, I settled in for a comfy night of resting and stepwise refinement of my plan.

Day Four dawned perfect and clear, all calm blue skies and sunshine. Even the birds seemed really pleased with it. In five minutes I'd limped back down to the lake and was refilling my canteen. The little fish were still there.

Odd, how in the end it all came back to a question of catching fish.

Unzipping my jump suit, I pulled out my Starfire and hefted it.

Flipped up the wafer display, checked the power indicator; it still held 55% charge. Maybe there was still time to think of a brilliant piece of169 programming?

Nah. I poked through the weeds at the water's edge until I found a precision circuitry conversion tool, or as we call 'em in the profession, a big fuggin' rock. Diodes, resistors; the Starfire was just full of shiny little lure-like things.

Late in the afternoon, I cleared a firebreak and built a greenwood fire so big even Luger couldn't miss it. Loaded on lots of fresh, resiny pine branches; the smoke rose up in the still sky like a big arrow saying, "You are here!" If Luger was where Vang said he was going-and I didn't doubt Vang anymore- at best speed it'd take him five, maybe six hours to come to me. I was counting on him showing up well after dark.

I checked the 'chute-fabric decoy tent one more time, then started whittling my staff down to a nasty sharp spearpoint. Just about dusk, I spitted a bunch of fish, set them far enough from the fire so that they'd cook slow, and slithered into my blind.

Sounds c.o.c.ky don't it? Truth was, I was still scared stiffless; the whole plan hinged on two a.s.sumptions. One was that Luger'd be using his stomach instead of his brain. Given how hungry Vang was, and given that Luger had forty more pounds of body ma.s.s to feed, I felt pretty good about this one.

The second a.s.sumption, though, was the one that would get me real hurt if I was wrong. It was convoluted double-gamethink: Luger's paradigm of me ran on a heavy mix of fear and wimpishness. But how did he weight my hate for the academy? And did his paradigm allow for me being scared reckless, scared crazy? If it came to a crunch, did he think my core personality was a totally gutless wimp or a terrified nutcase who'd do anything to get away from him?

Time to find out. And the throbbing in my ankle said I only got one chance.

A few hours after dark, in the b.l.o.o.d.y red light coming from the last coals of the dying fire, I spotted Luger circling around in the shadows and checking out my camp. He was wearing Kao Vang's black jammies170 and carrying a crude bow and a couple arrows, with one nocked and ready to shoot. Trying his best to be wary, cunning, he slipped from tree to tree, drawing closer to the tent.

With luck, he wouldn't get close enough to see the trash in it wasn't me.

My luck held. Suddenly, he stopped. Sniffed. Turned his head from side to side like a radar targeter, zeroing in on the broiled fish still spitted over the coals.

Another of the colonel's sayings goes, "If a real war ever starts, all the sophisticated weapons will be gone in a week. Then we'll be back to bows and arrows." I'd always wanted to argue with that one. A bow is a complex weapon: Takes practice to use it, two hands to hold it, and you have to put it down if you want to do something else.

Like eat.

Stealthy, Luger grabbed a fish and scuttled around to the side of the fire opposite the tent, where he crouched and started eating. Chomping and growling like a bag full of hungry cats, his hands full of greasy fish bits, he kept a nervous eye on the tent.

And his back to me.

Quiet as the pain in my ankle allowed, I crawled out of my blind, got to my feet, and crept up on him. He didn't see me coming until a nanosecond before I teed off into his ribs with the shaft of my spear.

d.a.m.n, he had good reflexes! Surprised, winded, knocked flat on his back, he still managed to get hold of his knife. He was really good!

But not fast enough. Before he could get off his back I was standing over him, the point of my spear resting lightly in the hollow just below his adam's apple. The knife twitched, nervous, in his hand.

"Harris!" he gasped, trying to bl.u.s.ter but without cooperation from his voice. "The game's over, Harris! Let me pull your switch now and I won't hurt you!"

I let out what I hoped was a convincing hysterical cackle.

"Hurt me?" I laughed. "You miserable pusbag! You've been badgering me and b.u.g.g.e.ring me for two years, and now you think I'm171 gonna roll over and die? This is where you pay, Luger!" I put a little weight behind the spear.

"Harris?" The bl.u.s.ter failed, so he tried reasonable. "This isn't like you; you don't wanna do this. You know what'll happen to you if you really hurt me?" His eyes were flickering like a pinball between b.u.mpers, from me, to the knife, to the spear, to me.

"Yeah," I hissed, low and guttural. "They'll send me back to the States for trial. Oh, I'd hate that!" I licked my lips and tensed my arms, readying a thrust. "C'mon, try the blade! Give me an excuse, Luger!"

Luger might be a skinhead, but he's not completely stupid. With a careful sidehand, he threw the blade away. "What are your surrender terms?" he whispered.

Using shroud cord from the parachute, I trussed him up like a roasting pig. Tied his hands behind his back so he couldn't get hold of his wimp switch; tied his feet together so he couldn't run; tied a leash on his collar so I could keep him near by. Yeah, I fed him, too. I wanted him alive and healthy.

I just wish I coulda seen the look on the S.I.'s face the next morning, when he radioed to ask why Luger hadn't pulled my switch yet and found out what'd really happened. It must have totally ruined his voyeuristic little fun, 'cause he sent a helo that very afternoon to extract us.

Two days early. I'd set a new record for pa.s.sing ComSurEx.

Not that it was a big graduating cla.s.s. Murphy'd tried to go walkaway and run into a bunch of Grade Fives; they b.u.g.g.e.red him up so bad that his parents pulled him out of the academy and filed suit.

Buchovsky lost track of time and refused to come out on Day Seven; the staffers had to send in a pshrink team to talk him out. Kao Vang had to repeat that summer, of course, but Luger, because he was gutless enough to get taken alive, went on the winter ComSurEx.

Me? Since I'd gone over two days without treatment, they couldn't foam a walking cast around my ankle. Instead, I got an InquisitionCyberpunk 1.0 172.

surplus leg brace, a heroic-looking limp, and two months' excuse from Phys Ed. Even better, I heard the colonel took what was left of my Starfire, stuck it in a block of Lucite which he used for a doorstop, and p.r.o.nounced it the most useful computer he'd ever seen.

What I know is that the next Sunday, up in front of the entire a.s.sembly, the Colonel gave me a handshake, a working compa.s.s, and the knife I'd used on ComSurEx with my initials, MAH, engraved on the blade in big Gothic letters. He also gave me a little bit of braid to st.i.tch on my greens.

I tried not to lord it over my ex-bunkies too much, though. We Grade Threes were above that sort of thing.

Most of the time.173

Chapter 16.

I was feeling good, real good, when I handed in my Physics final. It was the kind of good comes from knowing you've just put in three bunbuster weeks, covered a whole semester's worth of study, and done the ace on one serious b.i.t.c.h of a test. I'd shown those m.o.f.os; I didn't win ComSurEx on dumb luck! This kid Harris could be truly sharp, if he wanted.

'Sides, it would've been a major embara.s.ser to be the only Cadet Grade Three still taking Academic Two cla.s.ses.

So I'd taken the point; I'd done the long march. An ace on my Physics final-I was sure it was an ace-sitting alongside another ace in Algebra, a pyrrhic B in Military Science, a salvage job on History and a C with honor in Geography, and I d.a.m.n near needed depleted uranium boots to keep my feet on the ground!

Long as I didn't think about my English final. Hey, grammar and spelling're what word crunchers are for, right? I'd done a bada.s.s job on my important cla.s.ses, and I was walking tall when I handed in my blue book, saluted the instructor, and marched outa that lecture hall.

Some Grade One gopher with a complexion problem and a stick up his b.u.t.t was waiting for me in the corridor. "Cadet Harris?" he yelped.

Why he had to ask I don't know; the nametape on every shirt I own shouts my name in letters two inches high. (Sometimes I fantasize getting all the cadets to swap shirts, just to see what'd happen. I suspect the whole system'd come crashing down like a glacier into the sea.) "You Mike Harris?" the gopher shrilled again.

"Yo," I answered, feeling too good to give him c.r.a.p about his protocol slip. I'd spent two years as a Grade One under Roid Rogers; I thought maybe the kid'd appreciate the break.

He handed me a speedmemo. "Cadet Harris, you are hereby ordered174 to report to Colonel Von Schlager's office on the double, sir!" He whipped off a salute that nearly put out his eye, spun around in a perfect 180o pivot, and went marching off heels clicking crisp and precise on the floor tiles. I changed my mind, and swore silent. What an opportunity I'd missed! Some people, I decided, thrive on protocol and deserve c.r.a.p when they botch it.

Then I realized what he'd said, and I started to do the slow glacial crash. OmiG.o.d. I was being called into the Colonel's office. I'd been at the Academy long enough to know that old Von Schlager meagered out praise in a.s.sembly and shoveled out punishment in private. I couldn't think of anything bad I'd done in the last three weeks, but something smelly must have hit the fan in a truly big way.

Well, nothing to do but hope he'd make it quick and relative painless. I spent just a moment considering rolling some other cadet to steal his shirt and name, then switched on the most pitiful limp I could manage and hobbled over to the Admin Building.

Colonel Ernst Von Schlager was a living myth, about on par with the Chimaera. You know, a fire-breathing bra.s.s-balled thing, and watch out for fangs. My handshake after ConSurEx was a real singularity; most times we low- and mid-grade cadets didn't see him at all, excepting his weekly rants on the quad and the occasional times he felt like doing pugil stick training. (Getting your brainpan bashed in by an old grizzle is in some respects very educational, but it doesn't tell you much about the guy on the other end of the stick.) The camp had been talking about my handshake for weeks now; seems right up to the second he let go some Grade Fours were betting he was just setting me up for a koshijutsu throw.

'Course, there were rumors about what the Colonel was like in private. One said he had a Grade Five political science cla.s.s you got into only if he picked you, personal, and once you took it you understood everything. A variant of that said he believed the wrong side had won World War Two, and by the time you finished his cla.s.s you'd believe it,175 too.