Turning around, I said, "Yes, sir?"

He was shuffling through my personal file again. "I've been looking over your Fall cla.s.s schedule, and I've reached a decision. Drop Pacific Rim history; I want you in my Advanced Theory cla.s.s."

"Sir, that's a Grade Five course."

"And most Grade Fives are seventeen going on eighteen, like you.

Don't argue with me, Harris. You're in my cla.s.s."

"Thank you, sir." I think. He dismissed me again, and this time I made it out the door before he had any more afterthoughts.

Bright and early Monday morning, I went down to the bursar's197 office and got everything squared away. I must have signed a hundred papers; every time I thought I was done, Nuttbruster'd trot out another load of multipart forms and resume the Holy Chant of the High Church of Paperpushing: "Sign here ... and here ... and here ... "

I finished up just about the time the supply plane arrived, and after lunch the mail clerk popped by my office and dropped off a letter from Dad. Eager, I tore it open. Could it be-? YES!

The letter began, "Dear Michael: Congratulations on your promotion to Grand Imperial Eunuch, First Cla.s.s. As you know, I had a similar experience once ... "

For a few minutes, there, I had this vision. It's a thousand, five thousand, maybe ten thousand years in the future. I'm gone, Dad's gone, everybody who ever knew any of us is dead and gone, but somewhere deep in the ruins of the Fuji-DynaRand corporate headquarters there's still this stupid little program kicking out incoherent pseudopersonal letters every three months, regular as a cesium clock. Only the olders finally got the hang of email, so the letters get zapped by SatLink to the former site of the Von Schlager Military Academy, where somewhere deep in the bowels of what was once the Michael A. Harris Memorial Computer Science Building a primitive tribe gathers four times a year around an ancient Apple ][+, to wait for the words of their oracle to show up in smudgy green phosphor. Arguments start, then fights; whole wars have been fought over the interpretation of The Message.

I fell off my chair and bruised a rib, I was laughing so hard.198

Chapter 19.

The Colonel died the summer I turned 19. His death is a big black hole in my memory; I mean, a literal astronomical black hole. The last place in the universe I ever want to go again, but its gravity keeps sucking me back.

I've rerun it in my mind a thousand times, trying to figure out what I could have done different. Volunteered for proctor? But I did my magic show for the summer boys, and took my maximum best shot at flagging the trouble cases. For chrissakes, the kid wasn't even an Involuntary!

Just another quiet little boy with dark hair and a dark att.i.tude: A loser in the games, a last-finisher on the obstacle course, a wallflower in discussion. Until the day some stupid bunkhouse prank blew his final fuse, and he smashed the lock on the door of the firing range locker.

Then he was primal insanity with a three-foot steel p.e.n.i.s.

I was off on a long explore with the other Grade Fives that day; we didn't find out what'd happened until after we got back. They say the Colonel had almost talked the kid into putting the rifle down when a couple gung-ho Grade Twos came charging in like tag-team Rambo. The kid fired one wild shot.

The bullet went in through the Colonel's left eye and came out just above and behind his right ear.

No farewells, no goodbyes, no famous last words. The body kept breathing for a few more hours, long enough for them to MedEvac him to Calgary, but everything that was Colonel Ernst Von Schlager, Real Army Retired and Our Founder, died the moment that kid pulled the trigger. I understand Payne broke four noses and a jaw-none of them his own-keeping the kid alive 'til the Mounties showed up.

The next couple days were fractaled, chaotic. The camp boiled with199 rumors about the Board, controlling votes, and the Colonel's will. At the end of the week, Nuttbruster and two other admins flew down to the States for an emergency meeting with Von Schlager's ex-wife.

Nuttbruster never came back. Instead, the next Monday a red and white private Lear made one low buzz over the academy, then swooped down to the airstrip. Five minutes later, one of the helos came whopwhop- whopping up from the airstrip to land square in the middle of the quad.

The new commandant, Gary Von Schlager, had arrived.

After that, things happened real fast. DeWitt, the purchasing agent, and Pavelcek, the registrar, got fired that very morning. The chief cook and the nutritionist were next, and Chomsky quit in disgust on Thursday.

Each time the Lear flew some of the staffers out, it came back with their replacements, and Gary greeted every one of the new guys like a longlost brother. Gary's buddies, I flagged, were partial to wraparound sungla.s.ses, slicked hair, and expensive shoes.

Except the new guy who just sort of appeared one day, and took Chomsky's place. He looked like a d.a.m.n walking ad for paramilitary supplies: camo boots, camo clothes, camo beret, camo sungla.s.ses. I saw him putting balm on his sunburnt lips, his second day up, and d.a.m.ned if it wasn't camo chapstik! He packed jungle knives in his boots, throwing knives up his cuffs, a row of green anodized shuriken on his belt, and an official Rambo-signature machete in a breakaway scabbard on his thigh.

Then an old, old memory swam up, and I had to run and hide to keep from laughing in his face. He looked like one of those silly Lance Stallone clones I met on my original flight up!

Not only that, he clanked when he walked.

I don't recall that anyone actually called a Council Fire. I was just out for a quiet dusk stroll, trying to evaluate the new situationals, when I spotted a little orange flicker through the trees and bent my path over that way.200 Payne was sitting by himself on the edge of the council ring, tending a tiny fire of twigs and pine cones. I found a dead branch, broke it into a couple short pieces, and walked in. "Mind if I join you?"

No words. He just gestured, like to say it was a free country. I dragged up a section of stump and sat down, about six feet away.

Feinstein, captain of the history department, joined us about five minutes later; Baker and Schmidt from the science department about ten minutes after that. By the time it was proper dark, most of the surviving staffers had wandered into the circle, and we'd moved the fire over to the pit and built it up.

"Funny," Feinstein said to n.o.body in particular, when Minelli from Social Studies came wandering in carrying a short birch log. "We're like Zoroasterians, all bringing our little offerings to the fire."

"Yeah," somebody else said. A couple of us nodded. The fire danced and crackled in the still night.

After a while, Baker stirred the coals with a stick. "You get a look at that new guy, the one who replaced Chomsky. What's his name?"

"Mohler," Minelli said.

"Right," Baker said. "Mohler, Boy Gary's Number Two."

"He looks like a number two," Feinstein snorted.

Baker chuckled. "Ain't it the truth. Fruitcake paramil to the nth degree. Did you see he put camo toilet paper in the admin latrine?"

We all got a quick laugh out of that one, except Payne. "Mohler?" he asked. "Daniel P. Mohler?"

Minelli turned, his face an orange and black mask in the night. "The name mean something to you?"

Payne threw a pine cone in the fire. "Could be. Remember the Anglo Resistance Movement? Those clowns down in Colorado a few years back who were going to free us from NOG-the Nipponist Occupation Government?"

Feinstein muttered a few choice curses under his breath.

"Killed some people, didn't they?" Baker asked. "Robbed a few banks? I thought they were all dead or in prison."201 "Their information minister got acquitted," Payne said, soft. "He was a whacked-out paramil named Daniel P. Mohler."

We were all quiet a minute or two, until Feinstein said, "s.h.i.t. One German was bad enough. Now we've got two imitation n.a.z.is." Feinstein suddenly flagged Schmidt was looking at him with a glare that could've peeled paint. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"Just for the record," Schmidt said, "and speaking as a third generation German-American, these neo-n.a.z.i s.h.i.theads make me want to puke. They're like Satanists: worshipping the hate and evil, and totally forgetting the good."

Feinstein blinked, and stared c.o.c.keyed at Schmidt. "Excuse me. Did I just hear you say there was good in n.a.z.ism?"

Schmidt paused, bit a knuckle, and chose his next words very carefully. "Well, Satanism is a perversion of Wiccan. And neo- n.a.z.ism-you know, there actually were some National Socialists who tried to do good. Germany in 1932 was a disaster. People were literally starving to death in the streets. And Stalinist Russia was an active and growing menace.

"Then this. .h.i.tler fellow came along, and he scared the sane people at first, but after awhile they started to feel about him the way you Americans felt about Reagan. Sure, the guy was clearly a kook, and all that ranting and raving about der Juden was pretty distasteful. But what the h.e.l.l; he was standing up to the Russians, and what he was doing for the economy did seem to be working."

Feinstein poked the fire with a long stick. "And then the Holocaust."

Schmidt looked glum. "My ancestors died, too. In Dresden. And Kessel. In the frozen mud of the Eastern Front. They were on a runaway train; they didn't know how to stop it."

"I know the feeling," Baker added.

Feinstein seemed to accept that.

After a bit, Payne spoke up. "I've got more bad news for you. You know that new purchasing agent, Shaday? I've been in touch with some of my old buddies. Seems Shaday sits on the board of three companies,202 all of which are currently being investigated for military procurement fraud." Payne cracked a little giggle, and my blood ran cold. In five years at the Academy I'd only heard Payne laugh three times, and his laugh sounded barely human. Maybe 'cause of what he found laughable.

"It's a pun, you see? Shaday? Shoddy?" Payne let his high, fingernails-on-blackboard giggle loose again.

"Fitting," said Feinstein, with a nod, "and probably a hint of what we can expect." He looked around the circle, and flagged our blank expressions. "Shoddy was originally a name for a type of recycled wool," he said, switching into professor mode. "It was given its current connotation during the First Civil War, by an unscrupulous contractor who supplied uniforms for the Union army."

We all watched the fire a while longer. Flames stirred and crackled; a major log burnt through and coals subsided, sparks rising like fireflies.

I copped a furtive glance around the circle. They were all staring hard into the fire, wrapped up in private thoughts.

Maybe that's the true secret of the Council Fire. It's an invitation to think, to ponder, with no hurry. No urgency to get things done. Just watch the dancing flames, and let them draw the thoughts out of you.

"Gary tried to give me a pep talk today," Schmidt said at last.

"Talked for half an hour about how proud he was of what the old man had built."

"That's a surprise," Minelli said.

"Then," Schmidt went on, "he started talking about what he wanted to change. Said we'd built a great program here, but we needed to improve our marketing." Schmidt switched his voice into a nasal tw.a.n.g I recognized as being a bad parody of Gary Von Schlager. "Gary said, 'I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's sacred cows, but let me give you the big picture in two words: Niche marketing.'

"'Now, now this academic program you got going here, that's nice, that's very nice, I like that.'" Schmidt reared back, and raised a finger in the air. He was beginning to imitate Gary's gestures, too. "'But I put it to you, who's got the money? Adults. That's where your real income203 opportunity is: Short-term paramilitary seminars for adults.'" Schmidt shook his head, and lapsed back into his normal voice. "Then Gary showed me a magazine article about the White Patriot's Army of Kentucky and said that's who we should be pitching our program to."

"Gah!" Feinstein cleared his throat, and spat.

Payne stirred the coals with a long stick. "How'd you react?"

Schmidt looked glum. "Let's just say I was less than thrilled. So you know what Gary said? He said, 'Fine, well, that's just an idea, okay?

Just thought I'd get your reaction. And here's another one: You know, you can actually improve profit potential by raising prices? Because, y'see, perceived value is a function of limited availability.

"'So what I'm driving at is, I'd like to get your reaction to this new concept I've got, sort of run it up the flagpole. How do you think the staff would react if we changed admission standards? I mean right now it's kind of a freak of demographics that you've got an all-white campus.

But I figure we can get another thousand dollars per student/quarter if we can guarantee parents their precious little boys won't go to school with kikes or darkies.'" Schmidt's face looked like he'd just got a strong whiff of old latrine.

Feinstein sank his head into his hands. "That does it," he blurted out.

"I quit. Gary's even more of a fascist than his old man was."

Payne's voice went low and gutteral. "Don't you ever call the Colonel a fascist again. His parents carried him across the San Francisco Wall when he was two years old." (Baker flagged my blank look. "New Osaka," he whispered.) "You'll never meet a man who loved freedom more; if he could rise from the dead to stop this, he would." Payne glared at Feinstein, hard. His eyes were like cold, steel b.u.t.tons.

Feinstein shot a furtive glance at Payne, then threw a stick on the fire. "All the same, I'm quitting. Anyone else?"

Schmidt looked twisted. "Me. Don't think I like the new smell around here."

"I'll make it three," Minelli added.

We all turned to look at Payne. This was it; I'd seen the vid a zillion204 times. This was the scene where Payne was going to stand up and make us all feel like gutless cowards. This was the time for him to give us the Big Speech, about how we had to do it for the Colonel, and the Gipper, and Truth Justice and the Soviet American Way.

What he did was pause in the act of throwing a pine cone on the fire, look at his feet, and say, "I think you've got Gary wrong. He's not an idealogue; he's worse. He's an opportunist trying to exploit idealogues."

For a mo, Payne stared at the pine cone he held in his hand. Then he dropped it into the dirt.

My blood stopped flowing. He'd stopped feeding the fire. Payne looked up, at me; our eyes interlocked, and my brain felt a wash of black. I'd never seen anyone look so defeated.

He broke off the contact-I couldn't have-and looked back into the fire. "But aside from that, yeah, I guess you're right. There's no point in trying to fight them. The colonel's ex controls 70 percent of the voting stock, and what Gary wants, Gary gets. It's over." He shuffled his feet in the dust a little, then looked up. "Only, let's stick it out a year, okay?

Long enough to get our good students placed at other schools." He looked at me, sideways. "We owe the cadets that much, don't we?"

In a vague, grumbly way, everyone there sort of agreed. I got up, and wandered away from the fire.

So much for heroes.

About two weeks before the start of Fall quarter, Gary called me into his office. He was on the phone with his back to me when I walked in, so I took a few minutes to scope the place out.

Not much had changed. The furniture was still spartan; the carpet still a bit rattish. The only changes I noticed right off were no photocube, no display of medals on the wall, and a whole pile of printout and account books stacked on the desk, right next to an overflowing ashtray. I frowned. The Colonel would never have let the place get that messy. Gary finished his phone call, hung up, and turned around.

My first reaction was to laugh. He must have shopped at the same205 place that Mohler clown did, 'cause he was wearing some kind of formal dress uniform straight out of a bad comic opera, with frilled epaulets and gold piping and braid all over everywhere.

My second reaction was to puke. Now I knew where all the Colonel's medals had gone; Gary was wearing them. Badly. The campaign ribbons, the silver star, the Distinguished Service Cross all hung like cheap costume jewelry in strange places on the jacket.

Even the Purple Heart. For just a mo, I flashed on helping Gary earn that Purple Heart ...

He misinterpreted my smile. "Hi!" he said, bright, and stuck out his hand. I took it, shook it, and returned it to him. "So you're Mike Harris.

I understand I have you to thank for this really terrific computer network here."

I nodded, deferential. "Yes, sir."

Shaking his head, he laughed and sat down on the corner of the desk.

"No no, don't bother with that military c.r.a.p. You call me Gary, okay?"

I nodded, smiled, kept my mouth shut. He leaned back to shuffle some folders around his desk, and came up with my personal record.

"Now Mike-can I call you Mike?-it seems my old man thought very highly of you." He flipped open the folder and pretended to read something. Looking up, he said, "I just want you to know that I have the fullest confidence in you, too."