"I dunno. I guess it wouldn't make any difference."
"It didn't," Sabado grunted. "A gunsel takes what comes." Pause; flicker of something unsaid in the face. “He has to. You'll see. You have to make up your mind that T Section chose you and your assignment for a good reason.
You may never know how much you've shortened the war, how many lives you save, but," he gave a sly chuckle, "you get to see results first-hand. More gratifying than lugging mortar rounds in fucking Siberia."
"Too bad; in a way I was wondering what Siberia's like."
"You might find out if you flunk. Don't. Now get some sleep. Tomorrow right after rollcall, you make sick call. Take a book with you. Then ask to see Major Lazarus. That's all. Now repeat that."
"Uh, — sleep. Sick call after rollcall, ask for Major Lazarus."
"Take a book, compadre."
"Right." Quantrill watched the big man take the stairs two at a time; wondered if Sabado really did lie a lot; wondered if there really was a Major Lazarus.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Perhaps Major Lazarus existed. Quantrill never met him, but the fact that he became the only occupant of an examination room told him something. There were very few empty rooms in San Marcos.
The avuncular white-haired medic who bade him strip was a captain wearing a cool blue smock and a warm pink smile. Quantrill found some of the exam, like the prostate probe, familiar. The elastic straps, fitted as anklet, wristlet, and headband, placed unfamiliar devices next to his skin. Quantrill guessed they were feeding data to the computer terminal on the desk while he did calisthenics.
The medic was polite, anonymous, mildly interested in the bullet wound, more interested in Quantrill's microfiche record. When he asked whether Private Quantrill had ever shot to kill, Quantrill decided that someone had been to considerable trouble to check his recent past.
"They were shooting at me," he said defensively.
"Just answer the question, son."
"Yes, I did. I think I got him."
"I'm not judging you. And I'll only ask one more question along this line." A brief silence before, "Did you ever kill anyone, or try to, before that night at Oak Ridge?"
"No." The question, he thought, had been phrased nicely. There were more questions: childhood disease, sexual experiences, enduring friendships, special fears. Quantrill answered it all truthfully.
The psychomotor and sensory acuity tests seemed simpler than they were because the equipment was highly refined. The helmet adjusted snugly, especially around his eyes and ears so that he became momentarily blind and, except for the medic's voice in his headphones, deaf. The gloves were thin knit fabric with slender instrumentation wafers bonded to each gauntlet. When the animated displays were focused, Quantrill saw a red dot move, and snapped his fingers the instant the dot touched an edge of the maze it traversed. Then he found that he could guide the dot by moving his right index finger, and enjoyed the game. He heard various tones, tapped when he first heard them. He touched his forefingers together blindly, then tried it when the display showed an animated view of his hands before him. He smiled grimly as he learned to ignore the false information on the display. Finally came the red dot again, this time an animated mosquito that appeared and winked out repeatedly as he tried to catch it between thumb and forefinger.
Then he sat quietly like a young hooded falcon, listening to the faint running monologue in his headphones, unable to see the medic's astonishment at the test results. He accepted the flaccid mouthpiece, drew deep breaths, expelled them, heard the medic compliment him on his lung capacity. When he toppled forward, he did not feel the cradling arms.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Christmas dinner, for Quantrill, was intravenous. So were all his meals for the following week. He was wholly unaware of his encapsulation and shipment in the McDonnell that snatched up two more capsules in Artesia and Flagstaff. Nor did he awaken during that week, though dimly aware of a dream in which faceless interrogators pried at embedded memories.
Shortly before noon on the third of January, 1997, he awoke slowly, stretched until his joints cracks. He winced at a slight pain low on his right abdomen. He sniffed an aroma, salivated, then eased down from the bed and stopped naked before the big windows to stare in disbelief. His first coherent thought was that he had to be dead, or still asleep.
His view was magnificent. Through the multipaned bay window he could see the tops of great trees, rolling wooded hillocks that fell away to a shoreline a few klicks away. The room was more than sumptuous, its furniture and decorations a collection of many early styles. His bed was a four-poster. Tapestries covered one wall and the window niches in a second wall were lined with some of the most intricate laser carvings he had ever seen — either that, or genuine hand carvings, which would make the room beyond price. He was persuaded that the experience was real by the growl in his belly and by the study carrel, a gleaming plebeian model of state-of-the-art efficiency that stood against one wall like a Mondrian among El Grecos. Its terminal display was lit, and above the printed lines ran a legend that a more wakeful Quantrill would have spotted instantly: WELCOME TO SAN SIMEON.
The holo keyboard was standard. Assured that brunch awaited him in the adjoining bathroom, he ignored his belly long enough to read more, sitting nude at the carrel. Quantrill was for all practical purposes a civilian restricted within the fenced hilltop of San Simeon, a California State Historical Monument leased by Hunter-Liggett military reservation for the use of T Section.
Whoever had crafted the message had probably worked for a chamber of commerce somewhere. The location and quasi-public nature of this monument, the fabled structures and grounds of Hearst's Castle, provided an ideal ambience for training the men and women of T Section. Mr. Quantrill would be personally welcomed at four PM in his room. Until then he was at liberty to use the carrel, peruse a vintage slick-paper brochure praising the conceit of Citizen Hearst, or stroll the grounds — so long as he did not enter any structure but his own two rooms in the little (seventeen rooms!) guest house below the castle. He might notice others on the broad balconies and paths, but must ignore them. Mr. Quantrill might find it helpful to orient himself to his quarters by noting the twin towers of the castle.
He found a sybarite's meal — juice, coffee, steak and eggs, sourdough bread with garlic butter, and a tantalizing sliver of cheesecake — awaiting him, each in controlled-temperature containers on a shelf in the ornate bathroom. A vague resentment smouldered in him; had he gone through the rigors of basic to be pampered, or to fight?
On impulse he tried the bathwater taps, realized he had not soaked in a tub for months. His irritation dwindled; the steak and the stroll could wait. Bending to test the bathwater, he winced again, touched his abdomen. The appendectomy scar was clean, but it had not been there before. Quantrill wondered how long he had been asleep; he did feel a bit weak.
He luxuriated in the ancient tub until hunger drove him out, then consumed every scrap of his meal, never once consulting a mirror until after he had found the small wardrobe in the bedroom. The expensive supple brown loafers fitted to perfection; he assumed that the joggers would, too. He chose the beltless fawn slacks instead of sweatsuit or denims, a yellow vee-necked pullover from the half-dozen shirts, and grinned to himself almost apologetically as he strapped the wristwatch on en route to the bathroom mirror.
This kind of coddling still seemed a hell of a way to fight a war.
A hell of a way, indeed. The mirror revealed a well-dressed young man of leisure, whose smooth face was understandably perplexed. The face, Quantrill saw, was older. And not quite his own.