Systemic Shock

by Dean Ing

  "You were doing it."

  "To spook you," Sabado said easily. "Makes it a cinch. Your opponent gets fluttery guts and then he's lost."

  Quantrill looked away with a headshake as if to some onlooker. And scored with a double-crossover. He scored with each hand; sometimes with eyes closed; sometimes crossing. He did not miss once in fifty moves.

  "Okay, game's over," Sabado grunted finally, as if troubled. "For awhile I couldn't figure out how you were doing it. Nobody's quicker than I am."

  "You think I'm cheating?"

  A snort. "No. I was wrong, that's all; somebody is quicker, compadre. Not because I was spooked. That's easy enough to prove."

  Sabado placed his hands atop QuantriU's again, pointed out that neither of them betrayed hypertension with vibratory tremors. "Yeah, I thought so," Sabado said, lowering his hands. "You're a gunsel, all right."

  A gunsel, he said, was an old tag. The Army psychomotor test people had culled it from studies on what they termed the 'gunslinger mystique'. The adrenal medulla produced both adrenalin and noradrenalin in response to stress, heightening the speed and strength of muscle response. In nearly all humans were emotional side effects as well as physical, a shakiness that could interfere with coordination, that could even produce panic or unconsciousness.

  But in every million humans were a few who made optimum stress-management responses. Those few, said Sabado, got the advantages of their adrenal glands without the disadvantages. ' "That's me," he added, “and that's you. In the 1880's we'd've been gunslingers. Nowadays there isn't much call for that. But the Army needs a few gunsels, people who can act alone under special hazards. I'm a referral service for those few."

  Quantril checked his lapel dosimeter, relieved to find that they were taking only a fraction of a rad per hour outside. "How do they use those guys, Sergeant: Something like a regimental combat team?"

  A long slow smiling headshake. "More effective than that, with lower profile. When I said 'alone' I meant it, Quantrill."

  "Doesn't sound like the Army to me."

  "Doesn't, does it?" Sabado pursed his lips reflectively. "But let's suppose there was a foreign national, someone who did top-level liaison between the President and, ah, another NATO country. Run it on down with me: supposethis bastard was a mole—a deep-cover Sinolnd agent—who was pinpointing our key installations to be nuked on cue. Like the Shenandoah Command Center, or the Grand Island Quartermaster complex."

  Quantrill's eyes widened. Both of those underground centers had been secret until they'd taken consecutive impact nukes, drilling down into bedrock to atomize a President and a supply center. “I guess the FBI would shoot him on sight," he said.

  "The feebies don't ice folks on contract these days. Some CIA people do, but not on US soil. Treasury Department sticks to other duties. That leaves military intelligence, com-padre." Sabado's eyes were glimmering slits in the half-light. “I hear the Army has such an agency. I would imagine they'd have a few gunsels train able to go anywhere, anytime, to complete an assignment. The question is: are you interested!"

  "This is crazy, Sergeant. I mean, it can't be this simple—"

  "It isn't simple; but this is how it starts. Did you think they'd advertise in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram!"

  "No-o-o, but if they did they wouldn't ask for anybody fifteen years old."

  "Don't second-guess the Service. They'd be interested in a toddler if he had your reflexes—but it shit-sure isn't an open sesame, they run you through a heavy wringer before they take you. “If they take you. I gave somebody your name a week ago; surely you don' think I'd make this pitch unless somebody higher up gave the word. But I've told you everything I can until I get a commitment. Yes or no!"

  A youth came out the door, affixing his headgear, nodding to the pair who stood near. Quantrill smiled, nodded back, waited until they were alone again. "When do you need my answer?"

  "Right now. I didn't come here tonight because I like green beer. Something else that should go without saying but I'll say it anyhow: whatever you answer, you don" even hint to anybody about our little talk. I'd have to say I lie a lot. I wouldn' like that."

  Quantrill took a long breath; expelled it. "Okay, I'm still not sure I believe it. But I'll do it. It sure isn't what I had in mind when I joined up, Sergeant. You sure I won't wind up with an assignment like yours?"

  He had never heard Sabado laugh and was surprised at the musical gurgle deep in his chest. "This isn't an assignment, Quantrill; this is what I ask for between assignments. I'm not always a sergeant. It depends," he added vaguely.

  This Sabado was subtly different from the big swaggerer on the practice mats. The difference was unsettling until Quantrill realized it lay in the man's speech patterns. Tonight Sabado was relaxing, letting his Tex-Mex accent have its way. Tonight Rafael Sabado was not bothering with bullshit. “If he plays a lot of parts, a gunsel must get a lot of ID's," said Quantrill.

  "Sure. But none to link him with 'T' Section. For what it's worth, a gunsel can't flash an ID if he gets in trouble on assignment. And he's up against people who know some tricks—cosmetic work, false prints, martial arts—so he gets the best training Uncle can provide. What he doesn't get is any promise about tomorrow."

  "At least you're up front about it. I gather a gunsel doesn't take prisoners."

  "If they need the quarry alive, the feebies can handle it. If they don't, somebody in T Section gets the assignment."

  "What does 'T' stand for?"

  "Terminate."

  "I hope they terminated the guy who pinpointed Shenandoah."

  "What if I tol' you it was a woman, compadrel"

  "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 mat."

  "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 a
nswered 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.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The knock came two minutes early; tentative raps on the massive wooden door. Quantrill opened it intending to be surly, but changed his mind in an instant. She was a stunner.

  "You're Ted Quantrill, I'm told. May I come in? Or would you rather explore the grounds?" Her voice was musical, her olive skin flawless; her name, she said, was Marbrye Sanger. Quantrill decided she was the kind of college girl for whom tight slacks had been designed.

  "I've, uh, looked around some. Getting chilly out there," he waved toward the evening haze, then stumped to one side, made maladroit by her presence. "C'mon in; it's warm."

  She tossed him a preheated smile, but he fumbled it badly. Evidently she had grown accustomed to the setting and to youths who fell before her like conversational saplings. "I bet you haven't found the booze." He hadn't. She showed him the false front in the rococo cabinet, the ice cooler, the vodka and bourbon, the mixers; and then she made them each a drink before folding the long legs beneath her on the bench at the big window.

  "Don't let all this put you off," she said, indicating the room. “It came with the lease but for God's sake don *t break anything. Unless you're better than I am at asking questions to a library carrel, you must be edgy as a straight razor by now. Any questions?"

  He began with the obvious. What the hell had they done to his face, and how? Did Marbrye Sanger have the foggiest idea how this gargantuan dollhouse on a mountaintop could be tied in with pursuing a war, and where the goddam hell was everybody, and when were they going to get on with it, and by the way, what was a girl like her doing in a place like this?

  San Simeon, she replied, was a world to itself. Its staff was housed in clapboard bungalows nestled among the slopes below the 'big house', as everyone called the castle, and it had been William Randolph Hearst's royal hostel a half-century before. Then the place became a state monument, with sightseers bussed from a parking lot several klicks away for an hour-long guided tour of the big house and what was left of the vineyard, the zoo, the outrageously lavish mosaic pool, and statuary ranging from the sublime to the plain silly. "It's still open on weekends, war or no war. Now you tell me, what could be a more unlikely place for T Section training than a place with tourists barging around snapping holomatics?"

  "Unlikely is dead right. About as unlikely as my face."

  She sipped her bourbon, squinted at him in the fading light, cocked her head and let her short chestnut curls fall loose as she studied him. If Marbrye Sanger did not know how delicious she looked, thought Quantrill, she was dumber than she seemed. She took another sip without looking away, licked her lips delicately, said, "Quit bitching, Mr. Q. They did some microsurgery on me, too, but as soon
as I quit biting my cheeks I got used to it. You look pretty damn' good to me. Were you even better before?"

  His glass was empty, his patience draining away as well. “I was me before," he said, heading for the bourbon already a bit light-headed. "How the fuck, 'scuse me, I'm fresh from basic training, how'd they do it so fast? And I'm not 'Mr. Q', I'm Private Ted Quantrill and I wonder when the training starts."

  "You're not a private, Ted." The voice was still musical, but low and earnest. "Your pay is a three-striper's, same as mine, and you'll have your fill of training before you leave this lotus-land."

  "But there must be somebody I report to."

  "You mean Control? Take it from me," she smiled, “Control doesn't impose any hut-hut stuff unless you need it. You'll find out about that in a class we call 'Cover'; the Army more or less took us apart and rebuilt us before we got here. It's a departure from other intelligence schools, but one of the things they know about you is that you don't need saluting or motivating. Gunsels just don't, I guess. None of us do."

  Quantrill poured himself a generous slug of bourbon. “What if I motivated myself down the mountain and hitched a ride somewhere?"

  "I imagine Control would disappear you—but as far as I know, that's never happened. They know what you want, Ted." For a moment the brown eyes lit with an odd intensity, the nostrils flared above an aggressive grin. "You have the right stuff to take direct action; personal action. Once they weed out the crazies—the ones who just get their jollies from icing people in general—they come down to us. We have the natural equipment to face an enemy one-on-one, and we're willing to flog like hell for the chance. I don't think you'd be here if you wanted anything more than you want that."

  Studying the girl, Quantrill sensed her zeal to destroy the destroyers, to hunt the hunters. Evidently he had joined the right club. He smiled and tried to sip without choking.

  She watched him drink. "They say bourbon affects people's sex drive. D'you think it interferes or helps?"