People you and Ray worked on? I asked.

Exactly. More than twenty years ago. They're middle-aged now, and know they'll probably have to spend the rest of their lives in seclusion.

What the h.e.l.l did you do to them? Reza said.

Eight of them stayed jacked into soldierboys for three weeks. The other eight for sixteen days.

That's all? I said.

That's all.

It drove them crazy? Amelia asked.

Belda laughed, a rare sound, not happy. I'll bet not. I'll bet it drove them sane.

Belda's close, Marty said. She has this annoying way of being able to read your mind without benefit of electricity.

What happens is that after a couple of weeks in the soldierboy, you paradoxically can't be a soldier anymore.

You can't kill? I said.

You can't even hurt anybody on purpose, except to save your own life. Or other lives. It permanently changes your way of thinking, of feeling; even after you unjack. You've been inside other people too long, shared their ident.i.ty. Hurting another person would be as painful as hurting yourself.

Not pure pacifists, though, Reza said. Not if they can kill in self-defense.

It varies from individual to individual. Some would rather die than kill, even in self-defense.

Is that what happens to people like Candi? I asked.

Not really. People like her are chosen for empathy, for gentleness. You would expect being jacked to enhance those qualities in them.

You just used random people in the experiment? Reza asked.

He nodded. The first one was random paid volunteers, off-duty soldiers. But not the second group. He leaned forward. Half the second group were Special Forces a.s.sa.s.sins. The other half were civilians who had been convicted of murder.

And they all became ... civilized? Amelia said.

The verb we use is 'humanized,' Marty said.

If a hunter-killer platoon stayed jacked for two weeks, I said, they'd turn into p.u.s.s.ycats?

So we a.s.sume. This was done before hunter-killers, of course; before soldierboys were used in combat.

Asher had been following this quietly. It seems to me absurd to a.s.sume that the military hasn't duplicated your experiment. Then figured out a way around this inconvenient aberration, pacifism. Humanization.

Not impossible, Asher, but unlikely. I'm jacked, one-way, with hundreds of military people, from private to general. If anyone was involved in an experiment, or had even heard a rumor of one, I would know.

Not if everyone in authority was also jacked oneway. And the experimental subjects isolated, like yours, or disposed of.

That was worth a moment of silence. Would military scientists have inconvenient subjects killed?

I'll admit the possibility, Marty said, but it's remote. Ray and I coordinate all the military research on soldierboys. For someone to get a project approved, funded, and implemented without our being aware ... possible. But it's possible to flip a coin and come up heads a hundred times in a row.

Interesting that you bring up numbers, Marty, Reza said. He'd been scribbling on a napkin. Take a best-case scenario, where you have everyone agreeing to become humanized, and lining up to get jacked.

First of all, one out of ten or twelve dies or goes crazy. I'm already trying to figure ways to get out of it.

Well, we don't know- Let me go on just a second. If it's one out of twelve, you're killing six hundred million people to ensure that the rest of them won't kill anybody. You're already making Hitler look like an amateur, by two orders of magnitude.

There's more, I'm sure, Marty said.

There is. What do we have, six thousand soldierboys? Say we build a hundred thousand. Everybody has to spend two weeks jacked-and that's after they spend five days getting their brains drilled out and recovering. Call it twenty days per person. a.s.suming seven billion survive the surgery, that's seven thousand people per machine. It sounds like a hundred forty thousand days to me. That's almost four hundred years. Then we all live happily ever after-the ones who live at all.

Let me see that. Reza handed the napkin to Marty. He traced the column of figures with his finger. One thing that's not in here is the fact that you don't need a whole soldierboy. Just the basic brain-to-brain wiring, and IV drips for nourishment. We could set up a million stations, not a hundred thousand. Ten million. That reduces the time scale to four years.

But not the half-billion deaths, Belda said. It's academic to me, since I only plan on living a few more years. But it does seem a high price to ask.

Asher pushed the b.u.t.ton for the waiter. This didn't come off the top of your head, Marty. How long have you been thinking about it, twenty years?

Something like that, he admitted, and shrugged. You don't really need the death of the universe. We've been on a slippery slope since Hiroshima. Since World War One, actually.

A secret pacifist working for the military? Belda said.

Not secret. The army tolerates theoretical pacifism- look at Julian-so long as it doesn't interfere with work. Most of the generals I know would call themselves pacifists.

The waiter shambled in and took the order. When he left, I said, Marty's got a point. It's not just the Jupiter Project. There are plenty of lines of research that could ultimately lead to the planet being sterilized, or destroyed. Even if the rest of the universe is unaffected.

You're already jacked, Reza said, and finished his wine. You don't get a vote.

What about people like me? Amelia said. Who try to be jacked and fail? Maybe you can put us in a nice concentration camp, where we can't hurt anybody.

Asher laughed. Come on, Blaze. This is just a thought experiment. Marty's not seriously proposing- Marty slapped the table with his palm. d.a.m.n it, Asher! I've never been more serious in my life.

Then you're crazy. It's never going to happen.

Marty turned to Amelia. In the past, it's never been imperative that any one person be jacked. If it became an effort on the order of your Jupiter Project-the Manhattan Project-all the work that's been begging to be done would be done! To Reza: The same with your half-billion dead. This isn't something that would have to be implemented overnight. A lot of cautious, controlled research, refinement of techniques, and the casualty rate would dwindle, maybe to zero.

Then to put it in the least kind terms, Asher said, you're accusing the army of murder. Granted, that's what they're supposed to do, but it's supposed to be people on the other side. Marty looked quizzical. I mean, if you have thought all along that jacking installation could be made safe, why hasn't the army held off on making new mechanics until it is safe?

It's not the army who's a murderer, you're saying. It's me. Researchers like me and Ray.

Oh, don't get dramatic. I'm sure you've done your best. But I've always felt the human cost of the program was way too high.

I agree, Marty said, and it's not just the one-in-twelve installation casualties. Mechanics have an unacceptably high death rate from stroke and heart attack. He looked away from me. And suicide, during their enlistment or after.

The death rate for soldiers is high, I said. That's not news. But it's part of the argument: get rid of soldiering as an occupation.

Suppose we could develop a way that jacking was a hundred percent successful, with absolutely no casualties. There's still no way you could get everyone to do it. I can just see the Ngumi lining up to have their heads drilled by a bunch of Alliance demon-scientists! h.e.l.l, you couldn't even convert our own military. Once the generals found out what you were doing, you'd be history. You'd be compost!

Maybe so. Maybe so. The waiter was bringing our drinks. Marty looked at me and stroked his chin. You feel up to jacking?

I suppose.

Free at ten tomorrow?

Yeah, until two.

Come by my place. I need your input.

You guys are going to hook up together and change the world? Amelia said. Save the universe?

Marty laughed. That's not exactly what I had in mind. But it was, exactly.

JULIAN HAD TO BICYCLE a mile through much-needed rain to get to Marty's lab, so he didn't arrive in too festive a mood.

Marty found him a towel, and a lab coat against the airco chill. They sat on a couple of straight-back chairs by the test bed, which was literally two beds, equipped with full-face helmets. There was a nice view of the sodden campus, ten stories down.

I gave my a.s.sistants the Sat.u.r.day off, Marty said, and routed all my incoming calls to my home office. We won't be disturbed.

At doing what? Julian said. What do you have in mind?''

I won't know for sure until we're linked. But I'd just as soon keep it between ourselves, for the time being. He pointed to the data console on the other side of the room. If one of my a.s.sistants was here, she could patch in one-way and eavesdrop.

Julian got up and inspected the test bed. Where's the interrupt b.u.t.ton?

You don't need one. You want out, just think 'quit' and the link is broken. Julian looked doubtful. It's new. I'm not surprised you haven't seen it before.

Otherwise, you're in control.

Nominally. I control the sensorium, but that's trivial for conversation. I'll change it to whatever you want.

One-way?

We can start out one-way and go limited two-way, 'stream of conversation,' on mutual consent. As Julian knew, Marty couldn't jack deeply with anyone; he'd had the ability removed for security reasons. Nothing like you and your platoon. We can't really read each other's minds. Just communicate more quickly and clearly.

Okay. Julian hiked himself up on the bed and let out a long breath. Let's get on with it. They both lay down and worked their necks into the soft collars, slipped the plastic sleeves off the water tubes and moved their heads around until the jacks clicked. Then the front half hinged shut over their faces.

An hour later the masks sighed open. Julian's face was slick with sweat.

Marty sat up, looking refreshed. Am I wrong? I don't think so. But I'd better go to North Dakota anyhow.

It's nice this time of year. Dry.

IT WASN'T RAINING WHEN I left Marty's lab, but that turned out to be temporary. I saw a squall line coming at me down the street, but was providentially right by the Student Center. I locked up the bike and got through the doors just as the storm hit.

There's a bright and noisy coffee place under the dome on the top of the building. That felt right. I'd spent too long cooped up in two skulls, contemplating skullduggery.

It was crowded for a Sat.u.r.day, I guess because of the weather. It took me ten minutes to get through the line and negotiate a cup of coffee and a roll, and then there was no place to sit. But the inside of the dome had a ledge at the proper height for parking against.

I reviewed what I'd taken from Marty's brain: The 10 percent casualty figure for jacking didn't tell the whole story. The raw figures were that 7.5 percent die, 2.3 percent are mentally disabled, 2.5 percent are slightly impaired, and 2 percent wind up like Amelia, unharmed but not jacked.

But the cla.s.sified part is that more than half of the deaths are draftees who were slated to be mechanics, killed by the complexity of the soldierboy interface. Many of the others are due to undertrained surgeons and bad operating conditions in Mexico and Central America. On the large scale Marty was talking about, you wouldn't use human surgeons at all, except for oversight. Automated brain surgery, Jesus. But Marty claimed it was a couple of orders of magnitude simpler when you didn't have to wire into a soldierboy.

And even if it were ten percent death, the alternative is one hundred percent, chasing life all the way out to Hubble's Wall.

Still, how do you get normal people to do it? Civilians who do it fit pretty narrow profiles: empaths, thrill-seekers; the chronically lonely and the s.e.xually ambiguous. A lot of people who are in Amelia's position: someone they love is jacked, and they want to be there.

The basic strategy is, first, you don't give it away. One thing we've learned from the Universal Welfare State is that people devalue things they don't pay for. It would cost a month of entertainment credits-but as a matter of fact, you'd be spending most of that month unconscious, anyhow.

And the empowerment factor will become compelling after a very few years: people who aren't humanized will be less successful in the world. Maybe less happy, too, though that's harder to demonstrate.

Another little problem was what to do with people like Amelia? They couldn't be jacked, and so they couldn't be humanized. They would be handicapped and angry-and able to do violence. Two percent of six billion is 120 million people. One wolf for every forty-nine sheep is another way of looking at it. Marty suggested that initially we relocate all of them onto islands, asking all the humanized islanders to emigrate.

Anybody could live comfortably anywhere, once we use the nanoforges to make other nanoforges and give them out freely to everyone, Ngumi or Alliance.

But the first order of business was to humanize the soldierboys and their leaders. That meant infiltrating Building 31 and isolating the high command for a couple of weeks. Marty had a plan for that, the War College in Washington ordering a simulation exercise that required isolation.

I was to be a mole. Marty had had my records modified, so that I'd just had an understandable episode of nervous exhaustion. Sergeant Cla.s.s is fit for duty, but it is recommended that Portobello take advantage of his education and experience, and transfer him to the command cadre. Prior to that, he would do some selective memory transfer and storage: I would temporarily forget the suicide attempt, the takeover plot, and the apocalyptic results of the Jupiter Project. I would just go in and be myself.

My old platoon, as part of another experiment, would stay jacked long enough to become humanized, and I could be inside Building 31 to open the door for them when they came in to replace the security platoon.

The generals would be treated well. Marty would have temporary attachment orders cut for a neurosurgeon and her anesthesiologist from a base in Panama; together they have a phenomenal success rate of ninety-eight percent in jack installation.

Today, Building 31; tomorrow, the world. We could work outward from Portobello, and downward from Marty's Pentagon contact, and quickly have all of the armed forces humanized. The war would end, incidentally. But the larger battle would just be beginning.

I stared out at the campus through the blurring sheets of water while I ate the sweet crab-apple roll. Then I leaned back against the gla.s.s and surveyed the coffee shop, coming back down to earth.

Most of these people were only ten or twelve years younger than me. It seemed impossible, an unbridgeable chasm. But maybe I was never quite in that world- chatter, giggle, flirt-even when I was their age. I had my head in a book or a console all the time. The girls I had s.e.x with back then were in the same voluntarily cloistered minority, glad to share quick relief and get back to the books. I'd had terrible earthshaking loves before college, like everybody, but after I was eighteen or nineteen I settled for s.e.x, and in that era there was plenty of it. Now the pendulum was swinging back to the conservatism of Amelia's generation.

Would that all change, if Marty had his way-if we had our way? There's no intimacy like being jacked, and a lot of the intensity of teenaged s.e.x was fueled by a curiosity that jacking would satisfy in the first minute. It remains interesting to share experiences and thoughts with the opposite s.e.x, but the overall gestalt of being male or female is just there, and is familiar a few minutes after you make contact. I have physical memories of childbirth and miscarriage, menstruation and b.r.e.a.s.t.s getting in the way. It bothers Amelia that I share cramps and PMS with my platoon; that all the women have been embarra.s.sed by involuntary erections, have e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, know how the s.c.r.o.t.u.m limits the ways you sit and walk and cross your legs.

Amelia got a taste of that, a whisper, in the two minutes or less we had in Mexico. Maybe part of our problem now was rooted in her frustration at having had just a glimpse. We'd only had s.e.x a couple of times since the abortive attempt the night after I saw her with Peter. The night after I jackf.u.c.ked with Zoe, to be fair. And there was so much happening, the end of the universe and all, that we hadn't had time or inclination to work on our own problems.

The place smelted kind of like a gym crossed with a wet dog, with an overlay of coffee, but the boys and girls didn't seem to notice. Searching, preening, displaying-a lot more outright primate behavior than they revealed in a physics cla.s.s.

Watching all that casual mating ritual simmering, I felt a little sad and old, and wondered whether Amelia and I would ever completely reconcile. It was partly that I couldn't get the picture of her and Peter out of my mind. But I had to admit that part of it was Zoe, and all her tribe. We'd all felt kind of sorry for Ralph, his endless harrying after jills. But we'd also felt his ecstasy, which had never diminished.

I shocked myself by wondering whether I could live like that, and in the same instant shocked myself again by admitting I could. Relationships emotionally limited, temporarily pa.s.sionate. And then back to real life for awhile, until the next one.

The undeniable lure of that extra dimension-feeling her feeling you, thoughts and sensations twining together-in my heart I'd built a wall around that, labeled it Carolyn, and shut the door. But now I had to admit that it had been pretty impressive just with a stranger; however skilled and sympathetic, still a stranger, with no pretending about love.

No pretending: that was true in more than one way. Marty was right. Something like love was there automatically. s.e.x aside, for several minutes she and I had been closer, in terms of knowing, than some normal couple who'd been together fifty years. It does start to fade as soon as you unjack, and a few days later, it's the memory of a memory. Until you jack again, and it slams back. So if you kept it going for two weeks, it would change you forever? I could believe that.

I left Marty without discussing a timetable, which was literally an unspoken agreement. We wanted time to sort through each other's thoughts.

I also didn't discuss how he was able to have military medical records altered and have pretty high-ranking officers shuffled around at will. We hadn't been jacked deeply enough for that information to come through. There was an image of one man, a longtime friend. I wished I didn't even know that much.

I wanted to postpone any action, anyhow, until I had jacked with the humanized people in North Dakota. I didn't really doubt Marty's veracity, but I wondered about his judgment. When you're jacked with someone, wishful thinking has a whole new meaning. Wish hard enough and you can drag other people along with you.