Scott was definitely no Rayno. If my clique was stuck with him for a general, we were already neck deep in the latrine.99

Chapter 0/D.

Cornwallis, Rommel, Yamas.h.i.ta: All your really great military leaders knew how to lose with dignity. Scott Nordstrom, on the other hand, screamed out "s.h.i.t!", pounded half the little lead soldiers of the Spartan army down deep into the sand, and went stomping away from the game table cussing a blue streak.

"p.i.s.s!" He kicked the creaky wood door open, flooding the shack with bright Friday afternoon sunlight, then stormed outside and kicked something that sounded like a garbage can. "Ow! Bunch of dweebs!"

Piggy was in vegetable mode again, staring at the rafters, and Stig, the b.u.t.thole Skinhead that Payne a.s.signed to our army (yeah, each army got either a Little Hitler, a Slammer, or a b.u.t.thole Skinhead; the generals were just thrilled about that, let me tell you)-Stig was nowhere to be found, so I caught Mr. Style's attention and pointed to the game table. "You wanna cover the post mortem for me? I'm gonna look after Fearless Leader." Mr. Style gave me a nod and started moving towards the proctors. I jumped down from the bleachers and followed Scott out the door.

It wasn't hard to figure out. Even Lawrence Borec-excuse me, General Larius, of the Macedonian Mercenaries-could have flagged the reason why Scott was acting like a three-year-old. In the first battle, on Wednesday, the ace jarhead who generaled the Spartans had spent most of his time marching his soldiers around the 8- by 8-foot sand table, trying to corner Deke Luger's Athenians. It took him about an hour to force the battle; it probably wouldn't have taken him so long but Scott let our Theban army get in the way and the Spartans had to waste almost ten minutes exterminating us.

Scott took the loss pretty bad, 'specially since the proctors spent the100 rest of Wednesday afternoon pointing out everything he'd done wrong and the Spartans were such an insufferable bunch of smug b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in the bunkhouse all Wednesday night. One of the surviving vidiots made the mistake of trying to go Tommy on them; a guy wearing vidshades and earcorks is incredibly vulnerable, 'specially to a bunch of Spartans who are really getting into the role play. Poor guy wound up dancing around out on the quad bareb.u.t.t naked, while his pants took a trip up the flagpole and got the big salute.

Lucky for me Scott kept his eyes open and his pants on, so he was still in pretty good shape when I finally pried the boombox away from his ear sometime after Thursday evening mess. Once I got Angina Pectoris shut up I was able to spend a good solid hour beating some of the more elementary rules of troop movement through Scott's thick blond head, and he even seemed to catch on to some of it.

Why'd I bother? To be true/true, the academy's war game wasn't half as complicated as division level Peshawar. But it was enough like Net Peshawar to flip my toggles, or at least two important ones: I hate losing. I really hate losing. And I truly totally hate losing when I get killed by someone else's mistakes.

Result? I tried to share a little of my gaming rolethink with Scott, and I ended actually feeling a little hopeful-and Scott was feeling downright c.o.c.ky-when we went into the Friday game.

The trouble is, it's so easy to confuse c.o.c.ky with smart. In the battle he'd just blown, Scott hid our troops in the highlands and waited until the Spartans finished off the Athenians. Then, while the Spartans were dancing around the table trying to get position on Borec's Macedonians, Scott marched us out brave and hit the Spartans head on.

They didn't even slow down. With the Macedonians behind us cutting off our retreat, the Spartans just squeezed us like a big, juicy zit they wanted to pop. Our little band of goatherds survived about five minutes, max. The judges called the battle a total loss, Scott blew a headfuse, and like I said, he went stomping out of the gaming shed.

He was disappeared by the time I got out, but on a guess I jogged101 over to the bunkhouse. The game was bringing out Scott's latent bunkhouse sulker streak, and I figured that's where he'd be. I also figured that if there was any chance of upgrading his generaling, I'd have to jump on it before he depressed himself into turning Angina Pectoris on again.

I guessed right. Scott was lying on his bunk, knees up, holding the CD in his hands and watching the dusty sunlight prism off its surface. I jumped up on the next bunk over and waited for Scott to give me an acknowledge.

He didn't. I kept trying to be derzky, and not push myself in his face, but finally my patience timed out. "Tough break," I said, final.

He looked at me, momentary. "Huh?"

"Getting caught between two hoplite armies like that," I explained.

"If it'd been another bunch of peltasts, 'stead of the Macedonians, we'd have stood a chance."

His face went into the blank mode he used when he didn't know what was going on and he was forgetting to be chill about it.

"Pelwhats?"

"Oh, sure," I said, trying to sound casual. "The Macedonians are hoplites, didn't you know? Heavy armor, just like the Spartans."

"How'd you find that out?" It sounded like an accusation.

I shrugged. "It's in the rule book. Check the hit points table, sometime. We got peltasts. Light armor. That's why the Spartans grind us up so easy."

Scott went back to staring at the CD. Prism reflections did a lightshow on his face. "Rules are for dweebs," he said, mostly to himself.

"But it's really our advantage," I said, nonchalant. "When we want to, we can move more than twice as fast as the hoplites. Check the movement table."

Still looking at the disk, Scott asked, "You memorized those tables?"

I nodded. "Seemed like a good idea."102 He snapped his head around to glare at me. "You little smarta.s.s!

Who appointed you my fuggin' remedial tutor?"

"Scott, I-"

"Maybe you get it hard for rules and tables! h.e.l.l, you got a d.a.m.n computer instead of a brain anyway! But I got better things to do with my mind!" He rolled over and slammed the CD into his boombox.

"Wait, dude!" I shouted. "Will you listen-"

BLAM! The opening riff of "Burn the Vagrants" came blasting out of the speakers at permanent nerve damage volume. "Get out of my face!" Scott screamed. "And take your fuggin' little toy soldiers with you!"

"Scott, I'm just-"

"Bug off, you little twerp! If you're so fuggin' smart, why didn't they make you general?"

Good question, that. Jeez, at least Rayno listened to my ideas! I bit my lip and walked slow out of the bunkhouse. There was a little tool shed about twenty yards away that basically offered the only bit of shade on the quad, and I was still sitting on the doorstoop of the shed, trying to think up sharp ways to let Scott know he was being a pinhead, when Mr.

Style came walking up with a bunch of Macedonians.

"Christ Almighty!" one of the Macedonians-a southern-fried jarhead but otherwise an okay guy-said, pointing at our bunkhouse.

"That bimbo sounds like a tomcat what got his b.a.l.l.s caught in a blender!" The other Macedonians laughed a lot and kept walking; Mr.

Style stopped and sat down next to me.

"I see Scott is taking the loss with his usual good grace," he said, jerking a thumb towards the noise. "You making any progress on him?"

I shook my head. "Certified zero. How'd the rest of the battle go?"

"Typical. The Spartans waxed everybody else's fannies."

I picked up a couple pebbles out of the dirt, and started pitching them at nothing in particular. "Lindsey, old buddy--"

"Please don't call me that again."

"Sorry." I tried again. "Mister, this is gonna be one long summer, if103 all we're gonna do is get beat up three times a week by the Spartans.

Think the proctors will let us Thebans stage a palace revolution?"

He smiled. "They just might. Here, I picked up a little present for you." He reached around, pulled something out of his back pocket, and threw it in my lap.

I picked it up and looked at it. "New rulebook?" I asked.

He got to his feet, and started brushing the dust off his fatigues. "It's about twice as thick as the last one. And this time, we only got one copy.

I was supposed to give it to Scott, but I thought I'd put it where it'd do some good."

"Thanks, man." I flipped to the back of the book and started looking at the tables. If what I was hoping for was there ...

"Next battle's Monday," Mr. Style said. I didn't answer 'cause I was getting absorbed in the rules. There was some truly good stuff in the new book. Fatigue factors, logistical tables, unequal forces. "Try to find something in there that'll keep us from looking quite so stupid, okay?" I think I nodded; I don't remember for sure. Jeez, there were factors in that new rulebook that were going to make the game a lot more interesting! It was almost as cool as Net Peshawar!

I didn't notice Mr. Style walking off. In fact, I didn't notice much of anything until about the fourth time through "Brucie B Dead," which was when I noticed I was getting real tired of listening to Angina Pectoris. Getting to my feet, still reading the new rulebook, I wandered off on the path behind the bunkhouses.

It must have been fate. I'd never really gone that way before, I was just looking for someplace quiet. There was a little sort of ravine that opened up back of the shower building, ran parallel to the line of buildings. Down, past the wood shop; past the dispensary. I was walking along, paying zero attention to everything but the rulebook, until the mo I hooked my toe on a root and near went splat on my face. Then I caught my balance, looked up, and spotted a sign I never noticed before: Library.

Hmm. There was a lower floor under the quartermaster's, and it was104 a library? You wouldn't suppose that meant...? Deep in my most hidden, inside pocket, my Starfire started to itch and chafe.

I patted the pocket. "Easy, fella," I whispered. Then I pasted my most honest, trustworthy smile on my face, stepped up to the door, and tried the lock.

It was open. Trying my best to radiate sincerity and politeness, I opened the door and went in.

The library was one big room, but still a cramped, musty place.

There were three big wood tables and a bunch of maximum-discomfort style style wooden chairs in the middle, and loads of big bookshelves up to the ceiling around the perimeter all stuffed full of fat, dusty old a.n.a.log books. At the far end of the room there was a cluttered metal desk, and near it some tall old guy-the librarian, I figured-was standing with his back to me, poking at a bookshelf. But nothing in the room looked even slightly like a decent LibSys term. Geez, there wasn't even an Intuit CD reader, and every d.a.m.n nursery school back home has one of those!

My eyes went back to the librarian. There was something odd about him, too, and it took me a few seconds to flag it. He was big old guy, beefy going to fat, with wire-rim gla.s.ses and thinning white hair. A few liver spots on his scalp showed through-the hair! That was what was odd about him! What little hair he had was actual normal length! And he wore civvies!

"What's the topic for your paper?" he asked weary, not turning around. His voice was deep and rumbly.

"Huh?"

"It seems like that's the only time you cadets come in here," he said, as he turned to face me. "When you need to do instant research for-"

He stopped short, and pulled his gla.s.ses down to look over the tops of the rims. "Why, you're one of the summer boys!" He broke into a big smile. "What brings you in here?"

This was an embara.s.ser; the poor old guy seemed actual pleased to see me. "Uh, sir, I was just looking for a real quiet place to read, sir."105 "A quiet place to read!" He came swooping around the tables and offered me a giant finger-crushing handshake. "Well, you've come to the right place! I'm Ralph Lewellyn, the Academy Librarian."

"Librarian, sir?" I asked. "Not L.I.?"

It took him a few seconds to catch it, then he laughed. "No, son, I'm most definitely a librarian." He walked me over to a table and offered me a chair. I sat down. "Now, is there anything in particular you want to look at? Or would you just like to browse?"

"Actual, sir-"

"Not sir," he corrected me. "Ralph. Or Mr. Lewellyn, if you feel the need to be formal."

I smiled, and tried again. "Actual, Ra-Mr. Lewellyn, I got my hardcopy right here." I pulled out the rulebook, and his face fell.

"Oh." Then his face went bright again. "Still, feel free to browse, if you want to. I've gotten some of my best ideas by accident, by stumbling across them while looking for something else."

"Thank you, sir." I opened the rulebook and started pretending to read. Lewellyn hung around for a mo, then wandered back to where I'd found him. When I figured I'd been reading long enough to convince Mr. Lewellyn, I started doing a furtive scan of the room. No net jacks anywhere I could see; no nodes, no term plugs, not even a crummy dataphone port.

I guess I wasn't doing too good at furtive. "Is there something you need?" Lewellyn asked, from across the room.

What the h.e.l.l, what did I have to lose? "Actual, sir-"

"Actually," he corrected me. "Don't you ever use adverbs?" He shook his head. "I'm sorry. You were saying?"

I looked around the library again, then blurted it out. "I was wondering if you had a LibSys terminal."

Lewellyn laughed at some inside joke, then took off his gla.s.ses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "A LibSys! Son, I'm lucky to have electric lights!" He laughed some more, then put his gla.s.ses back on.

"Actual, son, I do have a computer. It's in the back room; would you like106 a look at it?"

Would I? Is the American Pope female?

I shrugged, and tried my best chill noncommit. "Oh, I guess so. If it's not too much of a pain." Like, for sure. Understatement of the year.

Lewellyn smiled, and gave me a little gesture to follow. "C'mon."

He led me over to a back room, unlocked the door, and turned on the single bare-bulb overhead light. "There she is."

The thing on the table had a keyboard at one end, which is how I inferenced it was a computer. But there were wires all over the place, and big weird boxes scattered around the table, and circuit boards with chips the size of c.o.c.kroaches just sitting naked to the world. For that matter there was an old dumb-TV sitting in the middle of the whole works. It looked like Georgie's junk parts bin, without the bin.

I walked around the table, trying my best to be reverent. "Wow," I said. "You build this thing yourself?"

Lewellyn smiled, proud, and laid his big hand on the cha.s.sis. "This, my boy, is an Apple II-Plus. You're looking at a genuine piece of American history, here. Why, back before the Nipponese Technology Embargo..." I started to zone him out. Like, maximum yawn! Next he'd be telling me about how the U.S. used to put up satellites without Soviet boosters!

While he was nattering, I looked at the computer again and tried to believe somebody'd actually paid real money for it. "Is this like, a kit or something?" I interrupted Lewellyn. "Or are you fixing it? I mean, Christ, it's a mess!"

Lewellyn looked hurt. "It's in good working condition," he said, defensive. "I just added a few extra cards to it, that's all. Now it overheats if I don't take the top off." He pulled the chair out. "Here, try it out."

I looked at him, dubious, but he looked so eager I just couldn't turn him down. "Okay." Gingerish, I sat down and put my fingers on the keyboard. "Now what?"

"Turn it on."107 I looked around, and spotted a big white square labeled POWER in the lower left corner of the keyboard. Gentle, I put a finger it. Nothing happened. Okay, it wasn't a touch switch.

I pushed it a little harder. Nothing continued to happen. "Think your power switch is broke," I told Lewellyn.

"Gotcha!" he laughed. "That's the pilot light! Everyone makes that mistake the first time!" He quieted down to a chuckle, and then pointed to a power strip on the floor. "Use that. The original power switch broke years ago."

With my foot, I tapped the switch on the power strip, and all of a sudden Frankenstein came to life! Lights flashed, the TV set flared on, and something started grinding like a spoon in a garbage disposal. Good Lord, I was working with a steam-powered PC!

Slow, the screen came up and glared at me in text so ultra-crude text I could see each pixel: APPLE ][ After about a minute, I said, "Now what?"

"Press reset," he said, as if it was total obvious. I looked around, found a key marked RESET, and pushed it. Something I took to be a login prompt appeared.

"Okay, I got it now," I said. I entered my usual CityNet login.

Frankenstein answered, ?SYNTAX ERROR.

Okay, it didn't like my user ID. I did a getuid.