"Did you test the gun cartridges? Just in case?"
Janis nods. "Thunder stick go bang. No fear on that account."
"Well, at least something's going to work, then." I'd be happier if we could lay in a brace of stunguns, but since I'm not wearing Fiore anymore, that would be kind of difficult to arrange.
Janis looks at me. "Make or break time."
I breathe deeply. "When has it been any other way?"
"Ah, but. We had backups, didn't we?" Her shoulders are set defensively. "This time it's our last show. It isn't how I expected things to turn out."
"Me neither." I finish packing my bag and straighten up. "Do you think anyone will crack?"
"I hope not." She stares at the wall, eyes focused on some inner space. "I hope not." Her hand goes to her belly again. "There's a reason I recruited gravid females. It does things to your outlook. I've learned that much." Her eyes glisten. "It can go either waypeeps who're still role-playing their way through YFH in their head get angry and frightened, and those who've internalized it, who're getting ready to be mothers, get even angrier about what those brainfuckers are going to do to their children. Once you get through the fear and disbelief, you get to the anger. I don't think any of the pregnant females will crack, and you'll notice the males who were along all have partners who are involved."
"True." Janisno, Sanniis sharp as a knife. She knows what she's doing when it comes to organizing a covert operation cell. But if she's a knife, she's one with a brittle edge. "Sanni, can I ask you a question?"
"Sure." Her tone is relaxed but I see the little signs of tension, the wrinkles around her eyes. She knows why I used that name.
"What do you want to do after this?" I grasp for the right words: "We're about to lock ourselves down in this little bubble-polity like something out of the stone age, a generation ship ... we're not going to be getting out of here for gigasecs, tens of gigs, at a minimum! I mean, not unless we go into suspension afterward. And I thought you, you'd be wanting to escape, to get out and warn everybody off. Break YFH from the outside. Instead, well, we've come up with a case for pulling down the escape tunnel on top of ourselves. What do you want to do afterward once we've cut ourselves off?"
Sanni looks at me as if I've sprouted a second head. "I want to retire." She glances round at the basement nervously. "This place is giving me the creeps; we ought to go home soon. Look, ReeveRobinthis is where we belong. This is the glasshouse. It's where they sent the damaged ones after the war. The ones who need reprogramming, rehabilitation. Yourdon and Hanta and Fiore belong herebut don't you think maybe we belong here, too?" She looks haunted.
I think for a minute. "No, I don't think so." Then I force myself to add, "But I think I could grow to like it here if only we weren't under pressure from... them."
"That's what it was designed for. A rest home, a seductive retirement, balm for the tortured brow. Go on home to Sam." She walks toward the stairs without looking at me. "Think about what you've done, or what he did. I've got blood on my hands, and I know it." She's halfway up the stairs, and I have to move to keep up with her. "Don't you think that the world outside ought to be protected from people like us?"
At the top of the staircase I think of a reply. "Perhaps. And perhaps you're right, we did terrible things. But there was a war on, and it was necessary."
She takes a deep breath. "I wish I had your self-confidence."
I blink at her. My self-confidence? Until I found her frightened and alone here, I'd always thought Sanni was the confident one. But now the other conspirators have gone, she looks confused and a bit lost. "I can't afford doubts," I admit. "Because if I start doubting, I'll probably fall apart."
She produces a radiant smile, like first light over a test range. "Don't do that, Robin. I'm counting on you. You're all the army I need."
"Okay," I say. And then we go our separate ways.
I walk home, my mesh-lined bag slung over one shoulder. Today is not a day for a taxi ride, especially now that there's some risk of running into Ike. Everything seems particularly vivid for some reason, the grass greener and the sky bluer, and the scent of the flower beds outside the municipal buildings overwhelmingly sweet and strange. My skin feels as if I've picked up a massive electrostatic charge, hair follicles standing erect. I am alive , I realize. By this time tomorrow I might be dead, dead and gone forever because if we fail, the YFH cabal will still have the T-gate, and their coconspirators won't hesitate to delete whatever copies of us they have on file. I might be part of history, dry as dust, an object of study if there ever is another generation of historians.
And if do somehow manage to survive, I'll be a prisoner here for the next three unenhanced lifetimes.
I have mixed emotions. When I went into combat beforewhat I remember of itI didn't worry about dying. But I wasn't human, then. I was a regiment of tanks. The only way I could die would be if our side lost the entire war.
But I've got Sam, now. The thought of Sam's being in danger makes me cringe. The thought of both of us being at the mercy of the YFH cabal makes me a different kind of uneasy. Bend the neck, surrender, and it will be fine : That's the echo of her personal choice coming back to haunt me. I rejected her, didn't I? But she's part of me. Indivisible, inescapable. I can never escape from the knowledge that I surrendered
Sanni has surrendered, I realize. Not to Yourdon and Fiore, but to the end of the war. She doesn't want to fight anymore; she wants to settle down and raise a family and be a small-town librarian. Janis is the real Sanni now, as real as she gets. The glasshouse may have been subverted and perverted by the plotters, but it's still working its psychological alchemy on us. Maybe that's what Sanni was talking about. We're none of us who or what we used to be, although our history remains indelible. I try to imagine what I must have looked like to the civilians aboard the habs we conquered through coup de main, and I find a blind spot. I know I must have terrified them, but inside the armor and behind the guns I was just me, wasn't I? But how were they to know? No matter. It's over, now. I've got to live with it, just the way we had to do it. It seemed necessary at the time: If you didn't want your memories to be censored by feral software, or worse, by unscrupulous opportunists who'd trojaned the worm, you had to fight. And once you take the decision to fight, you have to live with the consequences. That's the difference between us and Yourdon, Fiore, and Hanta. We're willing to harbor doubts, to let go; but they're still fighting to bring the war back to their enemies. To us.
These aren't good thoughts to be thinking. They're downright morbid, and I can live without thembut they won't leave me alone, so as I walk I try to fight back by swinging my bag and whistling a jolly tune. And I try to look at myself from the outside as I go. Here's a jolly librarian, outwardly a young woman in a summer dress, shoulder bag in hand, whistling as she walks home from a day at work. Invert the picture, though, and you see a dream-haunted ex-soldier, clutching a kitbag containing a machine pistol, slinking back to her billet for a final time before the