That'd make him happy, I figured; seeing his program mature into something good.

While I was making a backup of the new code for Mr. Lewellyn, my FID bomb fired. A month early. Trashed both the source and target copies; a month of work on s.p.a.ce War shot to h.e.l.l. All that was left was Lewellyn's original.

Guess I wasn't as sharp on Apple II timing as I thought.

I spent the rest of the afternoon hunting down and destroying all the suspect copies of FID. I was late for evening mess, and by the time I got to the chow hall they were down to cold mashed potatoes, lima beans, and breaded veal cutlets in congealed gravy. But I sat down, determined, and ate it anyway.

Sometimes things are just your own d.a.m.ned fault.121

Chapter 0/F.

By the first week of August, I had a choice: I could either zipper my spatterzag jumpsuit shut, or I could breathe. While back home skinny and pale was in, I had to admit that tanned muscle didn't look that bad on me. (Of course, my impersonation of tanned muscular arms still looked like toastix compared to the jarheads.) I could jog five klicks without breathing hard; I could put ten out of ten bullets in the 40mm circle at 50 meters (p.r.o.ne position) and seven of ten from standing. I could talk to Lewellyn for hours without him correcting my grammar.

The one thing I couldn't do was win a battle for the Thebans.

By August, the game was getting truly complex. The soldiers -me, Mr. Style, Stig, and Jankowicz-had direct control of troops at the tactical level, and the generals just sat up at the top of the pyramid, generalling, all their orders piped down to the troops through the adjutant. (In the case of the Thebans, me.) Alliances had shifted, and reshifted, and finally settled down into two basic sides-Sparta versus Athens-with everybody but us and the Thracians committed to one side or the other. Scott kept telling people we were free agents like it was a big joke, but most of the time we wound up siding with Sparta, just because I didn't like Deke Luger's superior att.i.tude.

Hey, is there a better reason?

There'd been some shakeups in the armies. Luger had turned into the ultimate stiff-necked twonk, so the Athenians kept sending him into exile. But because he was the only good general they had, they had to keep calling him back, and that just made him more smug than ever. The Spartan general had stepped down, voluntary, 'cause the Spartans had started losing on a regular basis; seems he just couldn't stop secondguessing his field commanders.

Scott went the opposite way. The further he got from command, the122 happier he acted. Literally moving further and further up into the bleachers, he started seeing himself as a visionary, like Hitler, or Quadaffi. My suspicion was he'd found something hallucinatory growing out in the woods. More and more, I was the strategos, doing the actual work of leading and generalling my Thebans, while Scott was the archon, dreaming up concepts (most of which I had to ignore) and taking credit for my victories.

Yeah, just like net Peshawar. Y'know, in Periclean Athens the archons were subject to regular votes of confidence, and they could even execute incompetent politicians. Tempting thought...

Nah. I could put up with Scott. Two more weeks; just two more weeks.

Then the quiet arrangement turned into a true/true fact after one battle I blew in a real stupid way.

As had become normative, the tactical situation was already set up when we filed into the room. We Thebans took a few moments to look over the sand table, walk to our section, sit down. Stig waited until n.o.body was looking at us, then leaned over and whispered one word in my ear.

"Aegospotami," he said.

"Gesundheit," I answered.

"No, dammit!" he hissed back. "Listen to me: I recognize this setup.

The proctors were talking about it while I was shovelling out that latrine last Sunday. It's the battle of Aegospotami-only setup for land, not galleys!"

"Get real," I whispered back.

"No, look at it. The Athenians are bottled up in that valley. I know how you can waste them in ten moves, tops!"

"Sure," I said. "This another joke, Stig?"

He looked away and shook his head like I was being the most stupid putz in all creation, then turned back to me. "s.h.i.t, Harris, I know you don't trust me. And maybe I think you're a limp pud, too, with your fuggin' cyberpunk att.i.tude. You always act like you're so G.o.ddam123 superior just because your old man bought you a lot of pricey toys!

"But just once, could you maybe try listening to me?"

I gave him a cold look that told him just exactly how much I trusted him-'bout as far as I could throw him-and said, "Right." He bit his lip and turned away. A minute later the proctors called start, and battle was joined.

As usual, we wound up siding with the Spartans. The battle was a true toughie, with a lot of damage on both sides. Mr. Style's platoon got wiped; Jankowicz's nearly so. It looked like the Spartans were going to lead us into a win, but a lot of loose ends were still hanging when the proctors called time.

Instructor Schmidt stood, and turned to the armies. "Today's a.n.a.lysis is for generals only. The rest of you are dismissed." Stig jumped up and went storming out of the room with the other b.u.t.thole Skinhead.

Mr. Style and Jankowicz followed with everybody else; I was still collecting my notes and closing up the rulebook when Payne came out of the dark and grabbed my arm.

"Harris, you stay," he said. Turning to Scott, he said, "Take a hike, Nordstrom." Scott smiled, broad, like he was really getting away with something, and strolled out of the room. Payne led me over to the join the rest of the generals, and sat me down. When the last of the cadets had cleared out, the proctors shut the door and turned up the lights, and Schmidt stepped out of the room, nodding deferential to Payne.

It was Payne's show.

Payne clasped his hands behind his back, took a deep breath, and started pacing back and forth slow, all the while giving us the hairy eyeball. Sudden, I flicked back eleven weeks to the plane, and stared hard at his bulging muscles, his crawly tattoos. I hated him then. I hated him even more, now. Maybe, just maybe, I felt a little respect...

Nah.

Payne let out one more heavy sigh, and stopped pacing.

"Gentlemen," he said stern, "your performance today was disgraceful."

He paused, but no one spoke up. Even King Deke had learned the Keep124 Your Head Down rule.

"I'm not talking about the battle," Payne went on. "You fought that as well as you could." This was puzzler; we all started shooting each other sideways glances, trying to figure out what he was talking about.

"It comes down to one word," Payne said soft. "It should be a familiar one.

"AEGOSPOTAMI!" he thundered.

When we'd all climbed back down from the rafters, he continued.

"The lesson of Aegospotami is a simple one: Never ignore good advice, no matter who it comes from." He clasped his hands behind his back, looked at the floor, and then looked up at us again, bulldog angry.

"Here at the Academy, we also use Aegospotami to ill.u.s.trate a much more important lesson: Unity. That's the core strength of every command. If you do not have unity, nothing else matters!" He calmed down; his face faded back to its normal color.

"Eight weeks ago, each of you was given one sleazeball. One disreputable character you never would have picked yourself; one deadend kid exactly like the type you'll find in every platoon, factory, and business office in the world!" Payne paced a bit more, and stared at the rafters.

"There's a thing we call the Pygmalion Effect. If you take a gutter kid, remove the worst of his influences, and treat him as if he's an honest, responsible person-if you invite him to join your unity- ninety-five percent of the time he will!" He turned back to us. "During the past week, each of your problem soldiers was given the opportunity to 'overhear' a discussion of the battle of Aegospotami. No doubt at least some of them recognized it on the situation table today, and tried to alert you.

"But not one of you acted as if you had listened to them!" Once again, he took a deep breath, and lowered his voice. "Ninety percent of what we do here at the Academy is directed towards one goal, and one goal only: To build unity. Any moron can teach you to shoot a rifle, or ford a stream. History, politics, economics? You can learn them125 anywhere.

"The difference between boys-even the most extraordinarly talented boys-and men, is unity: The ability to surrender personal gratification in favor of the common goal! If in your time here we have not taught you to understand that, then we have failed." Payne turned abruptly, and strode towards the door. "You have one battle left to fight," he said without breaking stride, "and I a.s.sure you, you will need all of your platoon commanders." Throwing open the door, he marched outside.

After a few blinks, I pulled together my notes and followed him out the door. d.a.m.n Payne! Double d.a.m.n him! That's when he was worst of all!

When he was right. I set off on a jog, looking to find Stig. I had some apologizing to do.

Friday, Zero Week. My last week at the Academy; in defiance of probability also the week I turned 14. We stood in the gaming room: tense, keyed. I don't know whose idea it was to pipe in the music, but the pulsing drums and squealing flutes worked. I'd never felt so wired up, so on, so loaded with singing nerves before!

Stig stood at my right hand, Mr. Style on my left; Jankowicz and Scott were on the flanks, and the whole Spartan alliance was ranged up the bleachers behind us. Across the table, the Athenians and their allies sat with contemptuous, c.o.c.ky smiles on their faces. They looked like a pyramid of smug, coming to an apex in Douglas K. Luger's confident freckled face. His eyes locked mine for a mo, and he smiled at me with easy contempt. I let my gaze drift back down to the table.

Like two flesh ribbons snaking over the hills and into the valley, the two opposing battle lines stood facing each other. No reserves, no flankers; this time we were going to do a head-on all-out slam dance.

And my little Theban peltasts were the front line.

I didn't turn around. Turning around would have wrecked the illusion that the Spartans liked us any more than the Athenians did. The126 Spartans had a joke they told, when they thought we weren't listening; a quote from some old Chinese clown named Sun Tzu. "You don't use your best iron for horseshoes, and you don't use your best men for infantry." The Spartan general had put us in the front line because he was hoping we'd grind a little of the shine off the Macedonian's armor while we were dying.

His mistake. He'd ignored the Colonel's Number Three Rule: Always look men in the face before you order them to their deaths. If he'd looked us Thebans in the face, he might have noticed our secret smiles.

Someone turned up the volume; the drumming got mentalbreakdown intense. It was turning into a hot, noisy place, that game shed. A few weeks before the back line commanders had taken to whispering insults at each other, and the proctors had let it go. Now it was a low-key roar; the hot blood shouting obscenities over my head.

The air was thick, and close. I could smell the sweat, feel the fear. And I could feel that adrenalin burn.

"Advance," my general said softly. Slowly, cautiously, I moved my line forward. The Macedonians advanced a little, then braced for a charge. In a few seconds we'd closed to four movement units. Four moves for the heavy Macedonian hoplites, but one crazy dash for my peltasts.

Time to find out if Thucydides was right. I tapped Stig on the shoulder. "Go."

Stig and I had spent two hard days working out the maneuver, and he executed it simply perfect. Jankowicz and Mr. Style dropped back, while Stig and I wheeled and formed three-abreast columns. Scott forgot his part, but that was okay, we didn't really need him. Borec's Macedonians wasted a move trying to guess what we were doing and compensate for it in a ba.s.s-ackwards way, and by then it was too late.

Stig's column was charging.

The maneuver's called a phalanx. A human battering ram. The first six or dozen soldiers in the column die for sure, but a line just cannot127 hold up against the pinpoint pressure. My Thebans were using it a few centuries early, but the proctors didn't stop us so it must have been okay.

One move later Stig's soldiers had knifed right through the Macedonians and were running loose behind their line, wreaking b.l.o.o.d.y havoc. I sent my column charging into the hole, catching the second-line Thracians between the swords of my soldiers and the spears of the Athenians behind them. I punched through both lines in one move, and then the real trouble started.

I know I talk the Spartans down a lot, but I'll say this for them: They're not totally stupid. When my general saw Jankowicz and Mr.

Style rolling out their phalanxes, he started shouting out quick orders.

The Spartans broke formation and followed the Theban lead, and within five moves the Athenians didn't have a battle line anymore.

They had a bunch of cut off little units that were getting hacked to pieces.

d.a.m.n, we had a celebration that night! One of the proctors dropped off a bunch of CDs for Scott's boombox (not one Angina Pectoris disk in the lot, thank G.o.d!), and Payne brought in a couple cases of c.o.ke and a whole lot of junk food. Piggy Jankowicz won the belching contest hands down, with a drawn-out window-rattling gutbomb that had me looking for a mop. And after Payne left, Roid Rogers showed up with some fresh batteries for the comikaze's vidslate and a real-time ROM I'd never seen before: The Girls of Ft. Wayne (Geez, major b.o.n.e.r material!) We hooted and hollered and screamed 'til midnight, and everybody told truly outrageous lies about their experience with that subject, and I lied with the best of 'em. At long last, I was finally as good as a regular southern-fried hero, and even Deke Luger treated me like I might actually be a real human being!

The glow was still on the next morning, when Payne announced that there was no more drill, because we'd reached the end of the summer session. All we had to do was clean the bunkhouse one last time, and then it was liberty time for the rest of the day and packing for the flight out tomorrow. Twenty hours to go! What a fuggin' high note to leave128 the Academy on!

I stole fifteen minutes out of cleaning to run over to the library, return Thucydides, and thank Mr. Lewellyn for everything. Then I ran back to the bunkhouse and started packing. The mail came around noon.

All summer long, I'd only gotten two letters, both lines on cards from Mom. This time, the letter was from my Dad. It said: #.

"Dear Mikey, "I'm sure by now that you've come to appreciate the values of a Spartan education. I'm also sure that this is a time of mixed feelings for you, knowing that this is your last week at the Academy.

"Well, son, I've got some good news for you. Business is good. So good, in fact, that my bonuses are up. Therefore your mother and I have decided to enroll you full-time in the Von Schlager Military Academy.

"Make me proud, son.

Sincerely, D. W. Harris #.

The world turned hot, red, angry. I crumpled the letter into a tiny, tiny ball, but no matter how hard I crushed it, I couldn't make it disappear. G.o.d and Heaven and Christ on crutches; I'd gotten the life sentence. Oh why, oh why, oh why...

I dropped the letter, I think. I was still standing there, staring blind furious at the wall of the bunkhouse, when Scott came bouncing in.

"Twenty hours!" he crowed. "Twenty hours, dude, and we are out of here! Ain't that fuggin' terrific?" Not looking at me, he pulled off his boots, flopped on a bunk, and stuffed Angina Pectoris into his boombox.

KA-BLAM! The opening riff of "Burn the Vagrants" came blasting out at a volume that made my fillings rattle.

About three notes into the song, I snapped. Jumping over Scott, I grabbed the boombox and sprinted out the door. "What the h.e.l.l?" Scott shouted, but he was barefoot and soft and couldn't keep up with me.

Fifty yards down the line, who should I meet coming around a129 corner but Roid Rogers. "Harris!" he shouted, a wicked smile on his face. "I just got the good news! Come Monday you're my meat, little boy!"

I was too mad to be afraid. I'd learned a lot that summer, about things like surprise. And pugil sticks. Ducking my head like I was afraid of Rogers, I shifted my grip on the boombox and kept running.

He never saw it coming. Rogers was still reaching out to catch me and just starting to open his mouth again when I did a sidestep, threw the boombox around hard, nailed him square in the solar plexus.

"Ooof!" He collapsed like a brain-shot pig.

I didn't even slow down. What were those words Payne used?

Sleazeball? Dead-end kid? Pygmalion effect? If they thought the b.u.t.thole Skinheads were a problem, G.o.d help 'em. I was gonna make Stig Ballock look like a fuggin' amateur!

The yelling was just starting up a good ways behind me when I got down to the firing range. The boombox was still belting out Angina Pectoris at 110db; putting it down on a stump, I grabbed a big rock, smashed open the weapons locker, and stuffed a handful of bullets into my pocket.

Bang! The first bullet took out the left tweeter. Bam! The second drilled the right. Pow! Pow! Pow! I st.i.tched a line of bullets through the FM dial. The usual Angie Pectoris caterwauling made great dying screams!

Blam! The CD drive flew apart in a flash of red laser light and little chromy pieces. G.o.d, it made me feel good! I felt heavy footsteps thumping down the path behind me. "Drop that rifle!" Payne shouted. I ignored him, and reloaded.

Little Mikey Harris's war on the world had just turned hot.130

Chapter 10/.

Fall: The scrubby brown oaks down in the swamp were past their prime and not much to look at, but the aspens up on the east ridge were a beautiful gold color that just glowed in the light of the setting sun. Long shadows crawled out of the forest behind me, stippling the buildings on the other side of the quad in the subtle interface of light and shadow.

It's amazing what you notice when you take an hour or two to just stand in one place and watch the big old world roll by.

A red-tailed hawk soared along the crest of the ridge, riding the dying thermals in lazy circles. Pinion feathers flared and played the wind like a brilliant musician's fingers; tail feathers twitched and adjusted and kept the trim just absolute perfect. A flying bird, when you think about it, is an incredible complex piece of machinery; all balance, and trim, and micro fine-tuning. For years I'd always thought birds just sort of flapped their wings and went, but no. It's more like they swim b.u.t.terfly stroke through the air.