Cyberpunk (24 page)

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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 bloody

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.

Damn, 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 God!), and Payne brought in a couple cases of Coke 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 boner

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 leave

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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. God 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 hell?” 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 a

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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

Butthole Skinheads were a problem, God 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 stitched 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. God, 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
.

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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 butterfly

stroke through the air.

Dinosaurs didn’t die out, is what Biology Instructor Baker told us.

Rather, they evolved into birds. Imagine that: dinosaurs swimming

through air.

The hawk spotted something. It twisted its head around sharp.

Wings flared; then a tuck and a roll and it dropped like a diving Stuka.

A moment later it was climbing again, some kind of dead rodent in

its talons. Beautiful.

#

Uh oh. A couple upperclassmen walked into my peripheral vision. I

screwed my back muscles just a titch tighter, stuck my chin out just a

hair further, and locked my vision on the great ambiguous beyond. As

they walked by, I snapped off a quick, robot-perfect salute.

They stopped, looked me over. Surreptitious, I checked out their

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braids: Grade Twos.
Damn
. Just upperclass enough to be utter jerks.

One stepped up, smiled, and gently asked, “Do you have a name,

plebe?”

“Sir! I am a worthless, insignificant maggot, sir!”

He nodded, sage. “I thought as much.” He started to turn away, then

turned back. “Say, weren’t you out here last week, too? You must be a

slow learner, plebe.”

“Sir! I don’t have the sense God gave a garden slug, sir!”

He nodded again. “Very well. Carry on.” He started to turn away.

“Yes, sir! Fuck you very much, sir!”

He hesitated a mo, shook his head just a bit.
Gotcha, you S.O.B.!

Amazing how if you soften the “F” and run the “k’you” together, no one

is really sure what you said. They
think
they know what they heard, but

they can’t quite
believe
they heard it, and by the time they loop through

it a few times and decide it bugs them, they’ve got enough doubt so that

they feel damned silly making an
issue
of it—

The Grade Two decided to let it go. Him and his buddy, they strolled

off.

Me, I went back to watching the sky.

#

Fat old Jupiter was rising, a bright whitish blob making his slow,

ancient way through Taurus. Some nights it was so clear out there I

could swear I saw the Galilean moons. One night I shook up Physics

Instructor Schmidt real good by picking out Mizar and Alcor with my

naked eyes.

I turned my head just a bit, trying to get a look at the Big Dipper.

Cadet boots came pounding across the quad behind me.
Damn
. Eyes

front, Harris! Ten-
shun
, Harris! The kid came into view, and I relaxed a

half notch. It was just another Grade One, like me: Billy Pickett, from

Georgia.

“Yo, Cyberpunk!”

Scratch that. He’s not quite like me; he’s got a name. Me, I’m

maggot
, to Roid Rogers.
Plebe
, to any other upperclassman. But more

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and more, to the guys in my bunkhouse, I’m stuck with the title of

Cyberpunk
. Dear God, how I truly
hate
that name!

“Y’all listenin’ to me, Cyberpunk?”

“Yes, sir.” I’ve learned to call everyone sir. Saves time.

“Cadet Captain Rogers says y’all can come in now.”

“Thank you, sir.” I didn’t move. This threw him for a mo.

“Well?” Pickett thought it through. “Uh, at ease.”
Nope, try again.

“How ‘bout, dismissed?”
There,
that’s
the magic word
. Turning stiff, I

started marching across the quad, towards my bunkhouse. The gang back

home should see me now; I’m so good at robodancing I can hardly stand

it.

Pickett fell in beside me. “Tell me something, Cyberpunk. Do y’all

go out of yo’ way to piss off Captain Rogers?”

“Sometimes we do,” I said.

#