Right, I wanted to say. That's my record you're reading?

He flipped the folder shut and tossed it back on the desk. "And that's why I'm so pleased to be the guy who brings you this good news. Mike, my old man thought so highly of you that he left a special bequest in his will. Your tuition is paid up for the full year already. Isn't that great?"

He smiled at me, broad. I nodded.

"But you're more than a student," he went on. "I like to think that you've made a special contribution to this Academy. This computer network you've built, I'm really impressed with it, did I say that? And I hope that in the months to come, you can teach me all about it."

"I'll try, sir."206 He shook his head and laughed again. "No, really, forget the military jive! I know I've got the uniform-," he fondled the DSC, and laughed at himself, "-stage dressings, to impress the yokels, y'know? But I don't want you to think of me as your commanding officer. Think of me as your friend, okay?"

And this is the part where he puts his arm around my shoulders, right?

He did. "Sure, Gary," I said. He didn't know me well enough to flag the sarcasm.

"That's better. Cigarette?" He fished a silver case out of his jacket pocket and offered one. I declined.

"Hey, that's cool. I can relate." He lit himself a cigarette, and stepped back over to the desk. "So, tell you what," he said, "now that we're friends, maybe you can answer one question for me. Correct me if I'm right, but I've been looking through all this s.h.i.t," he lifted the system design manual and shook it at me, "and I still can't figure out how our system connects to the outside world."

All my nerves went on maximum alert, and a million little warning flags went up. Sure, I had spent two years begging Nuttbruster for a SatLink, but all the cues I was getting from Gary made me real suspicious. I just didn't trust the man, it was simple as that. So why was he so hot for my computer?

I smiled, casual. "Tell me what you want it to do, Gary. Maybe we can work it out."

He dropped the system manual on the desk. "Well, to get right to the crotch of the matter, I was really hoping we could tap the Utah Genealogical Database," he said. "Wouldn't that be neat? To build up background information about our applicants? Y'know, see if there are genetic factors that influence ... uh, influences?" He went silent, studying me, and took a deep, nervous drag on his cigarette.

Okay, Harris, a little voice in the back of my thinks.p.a.ce said, this is it. How badly do you want the SatLink? Bad enough to give Gary and his little gang of fascists a way to screen applicants by race? Bad enough to207 negate everything the Colonel tried to build?

Get thee behind me! Sudden, I spun off this idea that maybe some hardcodes were wrong. Maybe the war games, maybe the tactical training-maybe even the Colonel's Advanced Theory cla.s.s, with all his carefully refined Clausewitz and Mao Zedong -maybe that was all wrong.

Maybe sometimes you do reinforce lost positions.

See, there's this thing called integrity. And sometimes it can drive you to actions that, at first glance, seem like truly bad tactical. Stupid actions, pointless actions, actions that have only one redeemer: They're right. So what if Payne and the rest were ready to give up; I still felt I owed something to the Colonel.

Basic insurrection theory holds that defeat on the battlefield is just the first stage in a guerilla campaign. If I stuck around the academy another year, I could make life real miserable for Gary Von Schlager.

"Sorry," I said, and I threw him a big, fake smile. "Can't be done.

All this archaic junk your dad's bean counter saddled me with, you know."

The disappointment on Gary's face was intense; half the cigarette went up in his next drag. "Oh, that's a b.u.mmer," he said. "That's bad."

Then he looked at me, and smiled brightly. "But we can work on this, okay Mike? There might be another way?"

I smiled big. "Sure, Gary. We'll work on it. We got the whole school year to work on it." For just a moment I flashed on the Spartan commander at Thermopylae, committing himself to that final, really stupid tactical, all in the name of his personal integrity.

After five years, I finally understood why he'd done it.208

Chapter 20.

FLASHBACK: It's a raw, rainy day, ugly even for late March.

Clouds hang low and dark in the sky like ghost battleships; the cold wind knifes through every crack and c.h.i.n.k in the walls and rattles the panes loose in the window sashes. Come June, I intuit, a lot of Grade Twos are going to be learning the care and handling of caulk guns.

But that will be in June. For Now, for the particular timeframe that defines this image, we Advanced Theory students are sitting taut in our seats, paying sharp attention to the Colonel in hopes of keeping our minds off our cold, aching bladders, and trying to lean just a few imperceptible millimeters closer to the Franklin stove-without looking like we're trying to get closer.

After you've split a few cords of firewood, you learn that the trick is to out-stoic everybody else. Unless, of course, you want to volunteer to split the next cord.

So here we are, wrapped up in extra sweaters and bits of blanket looking just like some of Washington's soldiers recently thawed out from Valley Forge, while up at the front of the cla.s.sroom the Colonel paces stiffly back and forth, hands clasped behind his back, that sharp look on his face that means he's going to toss a real poser at us just as soon as he figures out the toughest way to phrase it. Every few laps he stops, turns with a wicked smile on his face, starts to reach for the whiteboard- Then he catches himself and goes back to pacing. The Colonel hates the whiteboard.

And this, I guess, is the essential dichotomy of the Von Schlager Military Academy. On one side of the cla.s.sroom we have a cast-iron Franklin stove, design unchanged in 250 years, cooling slow because no209 one wants to be the first to admit he's cold and go fetch more wood.

On the other side we have a whiteboard, one of (shamed am I to admit this!) Nuttbruster's truly great ideas. He found six of them surplus somewhere, and the first I knew about it was when he showed up in my office one day with a hand-drawn pinout of the comm port. The concept is your basic wall-sized chalkboard, except you use a magnetic stylus instead of chalk, and once you have the thing all scribbled up you can- ZAP! Press a b.u.t.ton, and hand out photocopies of the board to everybody in the cla.s.s!

ZAP! Press a different b.u.t.ton, and fax a bitmap image to any other whiteboard or graphic terminal on the Academy network!

ZAP! Press a third b.u.t.ton, and b.i.t.c.h a lot at Mikey Harris because he still hasn't found an Optical Character Recognition program that can decipher chickentrax instructorscript and turn it into nice, neat, ASCII text and .PGI graphics. Which, I guess, was Nuttbruster's whole argument for getting the whiteboards in the first place: Further pursuit of the mythical "paperless office." (And after that, the paperless latrine?) Come to think of it, after six months of being b.i.t.c.hed at, I'm not too crazy about the whiteboards, either.

The Colonel reaches the end of a lap, pivots, and comes to a stop.

"Question!" he barks out, looking up. (Question! the guy sitting next to me dutifully writes on his notepad.) "What is the legitimate mission of the military in peacetime?"

Six guys start to raise their hands, then stop and slow, awkward, try to pretend they're actually scratching their noses or something. The Colonel looks around the room, snorts in disgust, and picks a victim.

"Well, Mister Vang?"

Kao Vang blinks, clears his throat, and says hesitant, "Preparedness?"

"By which you mean ... ?"

Vang clears his throat again, and speaks up a little louder.

"Preparing for the possibility of war?"

"And how do you do that?"210 "Uh, training. Drilling. Procuring weapons and stockpiling materiel.

And, uh-"

A southern-fried jarhead named Hudson gets a c.o.c.ky smile on his face and runs his hand up. The Colonel nods to him.

"Studying the opposition's resource deploymentalization!" Hudson booms out. "Evaluating possible confrontational venues, prioritizing mission objectives, and projectionizing the cost/benefit of various hostile engagement scenarios!"

I saw Hudson accidentally cut himself once. He didn't bleed. He exsanguinated.

The Colonel turns away from us, and does another lap. Pausing, he looks up again. "Let me phrase it a different way: What is peace?"

"A period of cheating between wars," Singh blurts out.

"That's the smarta.s.s answer," the Colonel says with a glare. "I want an objective definition: What is peace?" He looks at us, sharp. We all look at each other.

After a minute or so of silence, the Colonel sighs and tries again.

"Okay, Singh, let's follow up your line of thought. What does Machiavelli have to say about peace?"

Singh smiles, proud, and raises his voice. "Peace is the breathingtime which gives you the leisure to contrive, and furnishes the ability to execute, military plans."

The Colonel freezes and points at Singh. "Lock in on that thought. A time to contrive plans. How do we contrive plans?"

We all look at each other a little more, then Kao Vang clears his throat and speaks up. "Well, the various divisional staffs-"

"That's tactical planning," the Colonel interrupts. "Who's responsible for strategic planning?"

"The Joint Chiefs of Staff?" Vang hazards.

"But even that takes place within a larger context. Who defines the mission statement? Who sets the ultimate goals?" We blank again.

The Colonel frowns. "Okay boys, here's an easy one. What's Clausewitz' first dictum?"211 Everybody's right hand shoots up. "War is only politics conducted by other means."

"Nice to know you're well-conditioned little idiots," he grumbles, not really to himself. Then he stops, parade rest, takes a deep breath, and looks up at us.

"Here we have the essential fallacy of Clausewitz!" he booms out.

"On War was written in a culture and at a time when military and civilian leadership were interchangeable. He could as easily have said, 'Politics is only war conducted by other means,' and he would have been just as correct-for his time!

"But times change. Cultures change. Political inst.i.tutions grow and evolve in an organic fashion. In a very real sense, a human society is a colony organism!" He pauses. We all blink a little and try to decide how we feel about being called a bunch of uppity sponges.

The Colonel lowers his voice and continues. "Clausewitz was correct-for the organism of which he was a part. But contemporary society is much more complex; the organism is more clearly differentiated. Try to apply Clausewitz literally today, and you can easily conclude that the sole function of the military is to serve domestic political expediency!"

Yeah, that seems to follow. The Colonel turns and paces a bit. "This single concept," he says without stopping, "is responsible for more stupid debacles than any other phenomenon in modern history.

Consider: Vietnam. Lebanon. Cuba. The Proxy War. While military force without the will to use it is like t.i.ts on a boar-" He stops, turns, raises a finger in the air like he's going to indict G.o.d Himself.

"Will without a clear knowledge of the value and limits of force is a recipe for disaster!"

He pauses, and looks us over, searching. I suddenly flag this is a critical point and scribble t.i.ts on a boar on my notepad.

"I suggest," the Colonel says softly, "that the biological a.n.a.logue of contemporary society is the human brain." He makes a chopping gesture with his left hand, then turns it palm up as if holding something. "On212 one side, you have the military command structure." He turns his right hand up. "On the other, the civilian political system.

"Two autonomous hemispheres. A human brain, but with a divided corpus callosum." He looks at his hands, and then at us. "So, I put it to you again: What is the legitimate mission of the military in peacetime?"

He scans us over, sharp, looking for signs of intelligent life. Hudson gets a confident look and raises his hand. The Colonel makes eye contact. "Mister Hudson?"

"Domestic surveillance and political management, sir!"

The Colonel snorts, derisive. "You'll be a big hit with the Nixonistas, Hudson, but fortunately most of the U.S. is still a democracy." He resumes scanning us. "Anyone else have an idea?" I must be goofing up somehow, because he locks his sights on me.

"Mister Harris?"

When in doubt, jargonize. "To maximally facilitate the infrastructure interface," I say as if it's perfect obvious.

The Colonel looks at his shoes and chuckles a little. "You have a great future ahead of you in law, Harris. I didn't understand a thing after 'to.'" He looks up again, still chuckling, and scans us over once more.

"Consider the last hundred years," he says at last, soft and serious.

"In every military action our nation has taken-every one-the question of victory or defeat has been decided long before the first shot was fired.

Decided by the diplomatic objectives set by the civilian government.

Decided by the scope of action the right brain-," he shook the imaginary lump of political gray matter in his right hand at us, "- allowed the left. Decided by the weapons procured, the negotiating positions taken, the rhetoric used.

"Decided by the civilian government in light of what it thinks the military can do!"

He looks at the floor and raises a finger to his lips as if shushing us.

"I submit to you," he says softly, "that the legitimate role of the military in peacetime is education. Your first duty is to ensure that your civilian political leaders have a clear understanding of what you can and cannot213 do. They need to know what your real capabilities are."

His voice drops to a low, ghost whisper, just barely audible above the cruel March wind. "If to no one else, you owe it to the men you command to ensure that their lives are not p.i.s.sed away defending some fool's re-election speech."

REALTIME LOCK-IN: The sky is clear, bright, French royal blue.

The hot June sun beats down hard, making my scalp sweat under the black beret. I cop a surrept.i.tious look down the line and flag we all look uncomfortable as uncomfortable can be, but just about the time that the lad next to me starts to keel over-("Faint if you must," Payne once said to me, "but dammit, faint at attention!")-just about the time his eyes are rolling up, the windy old wheeze up on the reviewing stand finishes the commencement speech and backs away from the microphone.

We emit maximum applause. The wheeze beams and nods, obviously thinking we're applauding his content. Then Gary Von Schlager stands up, smiling sincere as any used-car salesman, shakes the wheeze's hand, and turns him over to a pair of weasels who guide him into a comfty chair at the back of the reviewing stand.

With the addledoid safely out of the way, Generalissimo Gary steps up to the podium and smiles at us. The sun glints impressive off his gold epaulets; the gold piping and blue satin of his pseudo-uniform reflect strange colors on his face. For a moment I look at his cheekbones, his eyes, the line of his jaw, and I think about how much he really does looks like his old man.

A little chill runs through me. I wish the old man were here now.

There's a point I want to argue with him.

Colonel?, I'd say, you told us our first duty is to make sure our civilian leaders understand our real capabilities.

But sir? What if the civilian leadership is the enemy?

From the podium, Commandant Gary looks down at the a.s.sembly, searching through the faces. He finds me, and gives me a smile and a wink. I'm amazed he still does that.214 I mean, it's not like I've been indiscrete. Those purchase requisitions that were "accidentally" routed to the wrong vendor -one who supplied real FDA-inspected beef, not the MUO (Meat of Unknown Origin) Shaday's company supplies-there's no way anyone can prove they were anything but a data hiccup. And after Gary finally bought me the SatLink, I did sort of give him what he was asking for, after a fashion. I mean, the admissions program looks real promising, even though it wasn't actually working in time to screen the summer boys. By now I've gotten real good at kicking whatever rackmount is convenient and saying, "Dammit, Gary, it's all this antique junk we're using. If you'd let me buy some modern hardware..." I've got great deniability.

Still, you'd think that sooner or later the guy'd put two and two together and come up with something approximating four, wouldn't you?

Maybe not. Maybe I've slipped below his threat a.s.sessment threshold. We make eye contact; Gary smiles down at me, and I return a small, dignified nod. Then he looks out at the a.s.sembly, smiles fierce and proud, and yelps, "Ten-hut!"

Idiot. We are at attention.

He whips off a wild, arm-swinging salute. We return it in crisp unison. He smiles again, orders us at ease. I quick slip a hand behind the lad next to me, bracing him up for a few seconds until he gets his color back and his feet steady. "Thanks," the lad whispers. I flash him a true/true smile.