"True. Unless you're home in bed when the Wyzhnyny arrive." Hawkins paused. "What about death, Isaiah? What can you tell us about that?"
"In Contemplations on the Testaments, Elder Hofer wrote that `death is the door to Heaven and Hell, and each of us chooses in life which one it will be.' So I'm prepared to die defending humankind."
"How about you, Hosea?"
"Well, Sergeant, say you're out deadening timber. And your hound's laid up hurt, so you're out there alone. You hear something and turn, and there's a big old tiger ten foot away, and you'd just set aside your ringing ax. My bet is, you'd be too scared to spit, even if you were spotless as the Lamb of God. The soul might go to Heaven, but the body? It'd stay behind for tiger feed, and don't no way like the prospect."
"Ah! Now there's a good way of putting it. Thank you, Hosea." Hawkins scanned and pointed. "Jael, you look as if you have something to say."
"Yessir, Sergeant. I'm a lot more scared of great pain than of dying. I suspect that lying out there in terrible pain, with maybe my innards ripped open and the flies buzzing, I'd be crying out to God to take me fast as he can."
"Good point," Hawkins said, thinking he'd as soon it hadn't come up. "But if it comes down to it, in combat you'll all have something in your aid kit that will greatly deaden the pain."
Jael continued before Hawkins could call on someone else. "And something else, Sergeant. There are things I want to do before I die. Have children, bring them up, watch them grow. Maybe even be a grandmother."
Hawkins nodded. "A good wish to have; a good ambition. But to enjoy it, it helps to have a safe place to live. There are lots of people who chose to stay on New Jerusalem-many with children-and they're a lot more likely to see their children murdered than grow up. While those who left with children… a labor camp's a hard place to raise a family. But when the war is over, and if we win it, things will work out for them.
"The fact is, the invaders have changed everything for us. I have a wife and two children back in North America. In a city called Madison, by a large beautiful lake. There's a good chance I'll never see them again, but I'll be doing what I can to keep them safe."
"Sergeant Hawkins?" It was Isaiah Vernon again.
"Yes, Isaiah?"
"Where do Sikhs believe they go when they die?"
Don't get into that, Arjan, Hawkins warned himself. It'll dilute the subject we're here for, and maybe generate contention. He would, he decided, give them a generality, something uncomplicated but basically valid. "Isaiah," he said, "think of it as returning to the loving arms of God."
When 2nd Platoon got back to the company area, there wasn't any real discussion about their evening. A few comments, but no actual discussion. In fact, the hut was more quiet than usual.
Jael Wesley was the first to take her toiletries bag and head for the latrine to brush her teeth. When she was almost there, she met Isaiah Vernon on his way to the hut. On impulse she stopped him.
"Isaiah," she said, "can we talk? Privately somewhere?"
His eyes widened. "What about?" he asked cautiously.
"I don't want to stand out here and talk about it. Where can we go that's private?"
For a long moment he stood silently. What would Esau think? Jael was so pretty and so nice, more than once he'd caught himself drifting into a fantasy about her. A guilty fantasy. It was well, he'd told himself, that they trained so hard and had so little time to think. "The dayroom," he said at last. "That might be all right."
She knew where it was, though she'd never been inside it. She led off, Isaiah following. No one else was there, and they sat down opposite each other at a reading table.
"It's about agreeing to be turned into a warbot," she said. "If someone's badly wounded and going to die."
He stared at her, then realizing he needed to respond, he nodded.
"I'm thinking about signing," she said.
His mouth opened slightly, but nothing came out for several seconds. "That's something you need to talk to Esau about, not me."
"I will. Before I make any decision anyway. The reason I want to talk to you is, you were studying to be a speaker. So you must have read and reread all the books, and thought about them a lot. And the first thing I need to know is… "
She groped, clarifying her thoughts. "Like I told Sergeant Hawkins, I'm afraid of great pain. And I don't trust myself to be signing for the right reason: to help out in the war. I might just want to be rescued from great pain, or not spend the rest of my life all crippled up. You see. But God might want me to experience those things. To suffer in those ways."
Isaiah's expression changed, showing not worry now, but focus, and his answer, when it came, was expressed as a speaker might have phrased it. "Jael," he answered, "you've read that sometimes God tests people, as in the case of Job, and Abraham. But there's no sign that he'd have punished them if they'd failed."
"But what about suicide?"
"Suicide?"
"If I caused my crippled body to die, on purpose and ahead of its time, would that be suicide? And if my brain got cut out and bottled, then when God gathers the blessed to rise, and if I qualified, would I be resurrected as a warbot, or a person?"
Isaiah frowned not in disapproval but in thought, then shook his head. "First of all, all I can tell you is how it seems to me. The Testaments don't speak of that, nor does Elder Hofer's Contemplations. But it seems to me a warbot is a person. Because it has a soul. And as for resurrection- If a person gets eaten by a tiger, his flesh becomes tiger flesh, but he won't be resurrected as a tiger." Jael shook her head at that, rejecting. Isaiah continued. "And martyrs that were burned at the stake won't be resurrected as smoke and ashes. Nor cripples as cripples. God wouldn't resurrect them all humped over or twisted, or short an arm or leg."
He watched her thoughtful eyes. She was even prettier than he'd allowed himself to notice before. Finally she nodded. "Thank you, Isaiah," she said. "You've been a big help." Then she got up and left, leaving him sitting there.
Feeling guilty, because he hadn't been entirely honest with her. It seemed to him they wouldn't be resurrected in a body at all. He'd thought that when he was a child, and had gradually come to believe that when the time came, folks would have no interest in bodies. They'd just be souls.
Which of course brought up a lot of questions about the Testaments themselves. That was why he seldom let himself think about such things. The thing to do was trust in the Lord, and hope God would forgive his errors. Elder Hofer-and his own father-had always stressed that God was love.
Three more trainees of 2nd Platoon went to the orderly room that evening and signed warbot agreements. Jael Wesley was not one of them; she wasn't ready yet, if she'd ever be. The company as a whole signed 10 more; given those who'd signed earlier, that made 15. Now, Mulvaney thought, if we can get the other 145 signed up…
Chapter 25
Status Review
The mahogany table and wall panels glowed with golden sunlight, the ten-foot-tall window fields adjusting both the intensity and the blend of wavelengths. The entire Commonwealth cabinet was there, along with several high-ranking officials of War House and the Office of War Mobilization. Elsewhere, selected others watched on live, closed-circuit video. Whether in person or electronically, attendance was by invitation only. For some, this cabinet meeting was their first.
Prime Minister Foster Peixoto presided, with Chang Lung-Chi beside him; since the invasion, the president invariably attended.
The prime minister began with a brief caveat. "First you must all remember-MUST ALL REMEMBER-that what you hear in this meeting is confidential. Repeating any of it without authorization can result in a charge of insubordination or even treason. The Ministry of Information decides what will be released and when, and clears those releases with myself, in consultation with the president."