Soldiers

by John Dalmas

  Joseph Switzer shook his head. It was his own fault he was here. The project had been his idea in the first place, and no one else in the organization was suited for the assignment. He knew Luneburger's World, and he knew its people. With a little care, he still passed for one of them.

  The wail of a train whistle jerked him from his revery, and he looked down the tracks. The train was in sight half a mile west, its locomotive spewing thick black smoke. Unconsciously he curled his nostrils. Instead of stepping out on the platform, he remained beside the depot door, well apart from the collection of young women who also waited. From there he'd be able to see if any of the Jerries he'd met at North Fork got off. Hopefully Wheeler, who'd been responsive and very promising.

  Slowing, hissing, sighing, the train drew alongside the platform. Brakes squealed, couplings clashed, cylinders released steam. A conductor swung down from the first car, followed by a stream of uniformed soldiers. And there, the very first of them, was Wheeler, conspicuous by his height.

  Instead of going out to him, Switzer waited. Wheeler was walking and talking with another soldier whom Switzer recalled. Elijah somebody. As they passed him, he spoke. "Good morning, Moses," he said. "Good morning, Elijah. Good to see you again."

  Today he would get down to business.

  Chapter 36

  Charley Gordon

  Admiral Alvaro "Spanish" Soong pressed the button beside the door and waited. An admiral waiting to be let in! he thought. On business, on his own flagship! Ah, the universe we live in.

  There was no real irony in the thought. Courtesy was almost always appropriate, within the bounds of circumstance, and rare resources could require special treatment.

  The door opened, and Ophelia Kennah looked out at him. As a savant's attendant, she was old-style: her personnel file said she was psychic. The briefing he'd been given on savants stated that many of the new savant attendants were simply empaths trained to act as nurse, hypno-technician and companion. Also, Kennah was fifty-one years old, though slender and still graceful, with calm observant eyes.

  She stepped back, and he entered. "Good morning, Ms. Kennah," he said.

  "Good morning, Admiral."

  The room was large for a ship's quarters, and impressed him as the most aesthetic on the flagship. Though if asked, he couldn't have said why it seemed that way. Near one side stood a sort of wheeled stand, with a 30-inch-long module mounted on it. The module contained cube ports, and on its top a multisensor set. Just now only one of its sensory status lights was on.

  "What's he listening to?" Soong asked.

  " `Concierto de Aranjuez,' " she answered. "By Joaquin Rodrigo. It's quite old; 20th century."

  Spanish, Soong thought. He didn't speak the language, beyond a few courtesies-family heirlooms. His mother's clan had long since abandoned both Spanish and Catalan.

  He wondered if he'd ever heard the concerto. He enjoyed music when he had time, but seldom paid attention to who'd composed what. Probably Ophelia Kennah could set the player so she heard it too. She'd probably been listening when he'd rung, and switched off the room speaker before opening the door.

  "I need his services," he told her.

  "Of course." She stepped to the stand and touched switches. Two additional status lights flashed on. "Charley," she said quietly, "the admiral needs you."

  Charley Gordon, that's the name. Presumably he'd been given it at the Institute. Soong wondered how that had happened. The savant's one-page personnel brief listed him as Male Infant Doe, followed by a registration number. A designation dating to when he was processed into the Institute.

  "Ah! The admiral!" said Charley Gordon. "Good day, sir. I'm happy to be of service. Do we have a moment?"

  The response astonished Soong. His impression had been that idiot savants were invariably retarded, by definition. And till now, Charley had never spoken in his presence except in trance, channeling messages from War House. Now this request for "a moment."

  Soong answered solemnly: "A moment, yes. Then I must have your help."

  "It is my privilege to serve." The statement sounded, and might well have been, sincere. Certainly Soong discerned no irony in it. "Meanwhile," the voice went on, "I shall take advantage of my moment." It paused. "You never visit me except for my services. Perhaps if I invite you, you will. Therefore, will you visit me? For friendly conversation, man to man?"

  This question too took Soong off guard. "Why… If you'd like, yes. We'll soon enter hyperspace again, this time for an extended period. I'll visit you then."

  "Thank you, Admiral. I will hold you to that." Again Charley Gordon paused. It seemed to Soong the savant had turned his gaze to his attendant, though the ocular sensors were immobile. There had to be a means of directing visual attention. "Ophelia," Charley Gordon said, "I am ready."

  "Good," she replied, and paused. "We will now start. Begin the session." She looked expectantly at the admiral.

  "Begin the session" was the standard formula that triggered Charley Gordon's trance. Soong began his message.

  It had an unspoken context, one familiar to both himself, the prime minister, and War House. Soong had been given a four-week limit to finish training his battle force, then reluctantly granted a four-week extension. He was still not fully satisfied with its exercises in cross-dimensional combat. And it was entirely possible, if unlikely, for a battle to involve rapid transitions between warpspace and F-space. But his people had become basically competent, and three days earlier Admiral Tischendorf had told him there could be no further extension. The Commonwealth and the human species couldn't afford it.

  Thus, Soong's message to War House and the prime minister was expected and succinct: "At 1100 hours Greenwich, this date, the 1st Sol Provisional Battle Force will generate hyperspace and proceed to the vicinity of the Nei Frieslan System. There we will determine what further jump seems appropriate for the effective interception and engagement of the enemy armada. Meanwhile I will contact you at appropriate intervals, and of course remain receptive of your orders and advices. Admiral Alvaro Soong, Commander."

  A minute later, his message acknowledged, Soong left the savant's quarters. Thinking not of his responsibility, nor of his force's battle readiness, but of Charley Gordon, his strange power, and his seeming intelligence.

  Soong often learned a great deal about people from their faces-their expressions and their eyes. But Charley Gordon? At least until very recently, savants had faces too. The only savant he'd seen before, he'd observed at War House before getting his present assignment. Chloe was tiny, deformed, and severely retarded, but her face, unexpressive though it had been, had permitted him to watch her consciousness shut down when her attendant spoke the brief hypnotic formula. Her features had fallen slack, and he'd known she was in trance.

  Charley Gordon's apparent intelligence was far more interesting. I'm glad he invited me to visit him, Soong realized. I would never have thought to invite myself.

  He decided to make his visit that evening, and calling Ophelia Kennah, arranged for a specific time. Then he asked a question: "Is Charley as intelligent as he seemed to be this morning?"

  "Just a moment," she replied. He imagined her looking toward her charge, to see if he could overhear. Apparently he had his external sound sensor turned off, perhaps listening to music. "Charley's intelligence is an enigma," she answered. "He does-indifferently on intelligence tests which measure reasoning ability, though better than any other savant I'm aware of. But he does exceedingly well on rote memory tests, as do many other savants."

  "Interesting. He memorizes things then."

  "If by `memorize' you mean an effort to imprint a visual or auditory experience, or to create a mnemonic to assist recall-no. He simply experiences things, then recalls them exactly. He can recite extensively and verbatim from biographies of great composers."

  "So he reads."

  "He does, but prefers audiobooks. He plays them at a rate incomprehensible to me-a high-pitched twittering. Faster
than I can read them silently."

  The admiral stared. She paused. "I haven't finished answering your first question. A test of intuitive intelligence was being circulated before we left Terra, a preliminary version for testing and professional critiques. I tried it on Charley. His score was nearly the highest possible. I sent a report on it to War House, but when we left, I hadn't had an answer. It seemed to me he might be of greater value there than here.

  "Formal tests, of course, do not correlate perfectly with life performance. Charley sometimes produces marvelously logical replies to questions; produces them intuitively. If he is allowed a hand in directing your conversation with him, I do not doubt you'll be pleased and impressed. On the other hand, if you arrive with a list of questions, you may be disappointed. I recommend you simply open the conversation and let things develop as they may."

  Soong wondered what Ophelia Kennah's intelligence score was.

  She paused, then added: "Charley tires rather easily. The central nervous system tires; that's one reason students need rest and recreation. Channeling and other psychic activities tire it more than most. Typically, psychics hold up reasonably well during the activity, but if it's protracted, they may collapse afterward.

  "Excitement may also tire Charley. He's not used to it, and having an actual visitor will be exciting for him."

  Alvaro Soong's attention had been hooked by the mention of psychic activities. Like many people, he tended to respond skeptically to the word "psychic." The field of psychodynamics had risen above alchemy and Freudian psychology, to about the level of the phlogiston theory, but had yet to birth its Newton or Lavoisier. A few psychic applications had become routine in the world, but these were no longer thought of as "psychic." The term tended to be reserved for fringe activities and fakery.

  But what the communication savants did was genuine enough. And the instructions on the management of savant communicators had warned against overworking them.

  "Are there subjects I shouldn't bring up?" Soong asked.

  "Charley is emotionally quite stable," Kennah answered. "I know of no subjects you should avoid. He is perfectly willing to discuss his condition and history. And yours, if it comes up."

  ***

  The admiral's appointment was for 2000 hours, and he was there on time. To find Charley not listening to a cube; he was waiting, ready. "Hello, Admiral," he said. Pleasure and anticipation were apparent in his voice.

  Remarkable, Soong thought, that his equipment reflects emotion so well. "Hello, Charley," he answered. "Or would you prefer I call you Charles?"

  "Charley, please. I have never been Charles, though it is a nice name. Please have a chair, Admiral, and be comfortable."

  Soong pulled one to face Charley's sensorium.

  "I've been studying your open file, sir," Charley said. Brightly. Eagerly. The announcement took Soong by surprise. Kennah must have gotten it for him, he decided. Meanwhile Charley continued. "It says almost nothing of your life before you attended the Space Academy. Born near Terrassa, in the Catalunya Prefecture, and attended the Space Academy in the Colorado Prefecture-twenty years in just a few lines!" He added the last almost merrily. "Then graduated with high honors; one more line! After that it summarizes your service record. Surely there is more to be told than that."

  "Not really," Soong replied. Untruthfully of course, but it wouldn't be very interesting. Except possibly to a student of social and professional acculturation and family iconography. "I'll tell you what," he added. He was surprised at what he found himself saying. "I'll have some spare time for a while. Enough to sit down some day soon and record a few items of my childhood and youth for you. Things that may provide amusement, or insights."

  He took a different tack then, to get his own questions answered. "You know more about me than I do of you. I read a bit on savants years ago. My impression was that most of them were children."

  "Idiot savants you mean," Charley answered. "The adjective is apt, and typically accurate. Many of us are severely defective physically as well as mentally, and die as infants or children. Typically with our potentials undiscovered. Historically, especially before the Enlightenment, others were killed-sometimes burned-as being possessed by the devil. And later, many were put away, out of sight in institutions."

  Charley sounded quite serene as he recited, as if he'd long since come to terms with the facts.

  "As for me-I am thirty-three years old, and spent my life in an institution from perhaps two days of age until the War Mobilization Directorate learned of me."

  "Was that when you were installed in a bioelectronic interface unit?"

  "To understand that, you need to know my origins. As far as they are known. I was found abandoned in a trash bin, in Rio de Janeiro, in the Brazilian Autonomy. Seemingly in my first day of life. The police delivered me to a hospital, which passed me on to another, which forwarded me to the Sacred Heart Research Institute. Where I remained for more than thirty years."

  Sent to a research institute at what? Five days of age? There has to be an interesting story behind that, Soong thought.

  Charley paused. "As for being bottled… My early years involved a continuous struggle on the part of the Institute's personnel to keep me alive, because of the physiological imbalances that continually afflicted me. Finally they arranged with another research organization to extract my central nervous system and bottle it. An operation quite illegal then, even for research, and carrying severe penalties. But I was beginning to show signs of the hormonally driven syndrome referred to as adolescence, a period of powerful physiological changes. My staff guardians doubted I could survive it."

  "They didn't call my bottle a bottle, of course, or even a bioelectronic interface unit. They called it a modularized life-support unit. It was hoped that that and being a monastic order would protect them, if the act came to the attention of the secular authorities. But it required extraction of a living central nervous system, which legally made it bottling."

  Again he laughed. "And now, all these years later, here I am in my technological glory, and some would say middle-aged. Incidentally, what you see before you is my third module. The technology does progress, you know, albeit covertly."

  The admiral sat without speaking. I'll have to digest all this, he thought. Sleep on it, see how it looks in the morning. Meanwhile, Charley seemed to be waiting. "How did you go from being `Male Infant Doe' to `Charley Gordon'?" Soong found himself asking.

  "Ho ho! You have opened a new area there! In the beginning it wasn't known that I was a savant. I was simply a medical challenge, not in the Savant Division at all. What set me apart from most critically defective infants was surviving my first day. Despite having been discarded. The neighborhood I was found in was quite degraded. I could easily have been eaten by rats.

  "My savant status was first suspected before my third birthday, when I showed a love of good music, and recognized and asked for certain numbers. It was also determined that I could be educated to a higher level than supposed. The highest of any wards of the Institute, actually.

  "Finally, at age twelve, my physical condition became quite precarious, and I was bottled."

  Charley paused long enough that it seemed he'd finished. "You were about to tell the admiral how you came to be called Charley Gordon," Kennah said.

  "Oh yes. Excuse me, Admiral. One of my mental weaknesses is a tendency to lose track of the subject. I have noticed that normal people sometimes do the same thing, but I excel in it. If I may use the word `excel' in this sense.

  "Now, where-oh yes. I was named Charley Gordon after a person in a story: a retarded man who became a genius."

  He paused, then spoke again. "I really should tell you the rest. Otherwise it's not very meaningful.

  "The study that discovered my ability to learn, was part of a project that became very important. Leading inadvertently to the discovery of savant-facilitated instantaneous communication."

  Charley's fluency and apparent understandi
ng awed the admiral.

  "And as one of the study subjects, it was determined that I had `the talent,' as it is called. I might then have been assigned to the Commonwealth Ministry, and sent to an embassy on some colony world. But because bottling was still a felony, I remained at the Institute, occasionally taking part in research projects as a subject or advisor."

  Again he paused. "Admiral, I'm afraid I'm a poor host. I have not offered you food or drink. Ophelia, would you please?"

  "Of course, Charley. Admiral, I do not have an alcoholic beverage to offer you, but I do have a mixed fruit drink, and some hors d'oeuvres."

  "Thank you, Ms. Kennah," the admiral said gravely. "The fruit drink will be fine, and I'm sure I'll like the hors d'oeuvres as well. But I shouldn't stay long. I didn't tell the bridge where I'd be."

  She saw the statement as an excuse. He could easily call the bridge and tell the officer of the watch where to reach him. "Of course," she replied. "Perhaps you could select your own hors d'oeuvres in the kitchenette."

  The suggestion sparked his curiosity; it seemed lame. He wondered if Charley saw through it. Or didn't it matter to him? Either way, he thought. If she wanted privacy…

  The kitchenette was small but not tiny. The door closed itself behind them. The hors d'oeuvres were on a tray. "Ms. Kennah… " he began quietly.

  "Call me Ophelia if you'd like," she prompted. "Or Kennah without the miz. Or Ken; that's what they called me at the Institute. Actually, I prefer Kennah."

  "Well then, Kennah it will be. How long have you known Charley?"

  "Since he was only days old; as soon as he came out of intensive care. I was a seventeen-year-old apprentice nurse, assigned to watch him eight hours at a time, with a half-hour lunch break. It was then I learned to love him, when he was still a tiny baby. Before it was recognized how truly special he was. He is special, you know. The whole staff came to feel it. All the children are special, and loved, but Charley more than any. His fight to live was so brave. As if he knew he had a special gift to share." Again she shrugged. "And he was so cheerful! Did you know a sick infant can be cheerful? You can hardly imagine what he went through. For years! And his growth as a person and a personality have been equally outstanding."