Subterrene War 02: Exogene (40 page)

“Because,” I said, “it isn’t
their
victory. One day you’ll understand, but not today. Just believe me, that I believe this, and swim for it when I tell you to. This is what I have to do to make it all worthwhile.”

I left her there, standing, and climbed into my bunk, pulling only a thin sheet over me because already the temperatures had gotten warmer as we sailed south, and the compartment felt steamy. Her sobs lulled me to sleep then, a sleep so deep that I didn’t dream, one that could only have come from having achieved what had eluded me all these years: acceptance.

The water seemed to glow all around the ship as Margaret and I worked our way up, taking more than an hour to reach the top of the huge stack of shipping containers at the vessel’s stern, where a crane towered over us. We lay on our backs. Even with the ships’ lights we saw the stars clearly, the first chance I’d gotten to look at them since Megan and I had shared a foxhole aboveground, so long ago. Tomorrow we would dock. But there was still time to enjoy a moment or two, and when I found out that Margaret had never seen the stars the obvious thing to do was to show them to her.

“There are so many,” she said.

“Millions. Billions. I heard men talk about them, in the tunnels, and apparently they plan to visit them someday.”

“You lie,” said Margaret.

“It’s true. All these wars are good in a way, they’ve
spurred an effort to launch men back into space finally, to mine asteroids and other planets. Already teams are on their way.”

She didn’t say anything, then reached over to hold my hand. “That’s what I want to do someday. Go out there and just look at things. Study them.”

“Like a scientist?” I asked.

“Why not?”

I laughed, but quietly since we weren’t supposed to go on deck at night, let alone atop the cargo. “We are killers, Margaret. Not scientists. Only people like Alderson or Lev can be scientists, because they have a way of disconnecting their curiosity from any sense of responsibility or accountability. They are cowards.”

“Still,” she argued. “I think I’d like to try. I don’t want to go through life as a trigger-finger.”

“Well, you’ll have to go to a nonbred school. And you’ll need a last name, because nobody will call you Doctor Margaret.”

We laughed for a bit and then stared some more, the warm air tropical now, so that a sweat broke, making me wish I was the one going for a swim. There was always the danger of sharks, but the calculus was obvious so that even Margaret saw it eventually, that risking sharks was preferable to the certainty of death at American hands. For her, at least. She hadn’t yet understood my motive for staying, but at least she had accepted it and her pleas for me to join her had stopped the day before.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“I think so. How far is it to the water?”

I looked over the edge and felt dizzy from the height; up there, the wake’s waves looked small and white.

“We’ll climb down,” I said, “to the deck, and you can go over the railing. Swim as far from the ship as you can, as soon as you hit the water, and then head northwest.”

Margaret nodded. “I should get started.”

We climbed down the outsides of the containers, and then across them until we hung over the deck before dropping two meters onto it. Margaret landed with a thud beside me. We both looked over the railing then, to our west. Stars silhouetted a black shape on the horizon, which rose from the water in a hump and had a few lights twinkling in its center—an island. We smelled land. It was close now, and Margaret looked at me while her eyes teared. She pulled me in, hugging me tightly for what seemed like five minutes, and by the time she let go she had stopped crying.

“I’ll miss you.”

I nodded and helped tie her hair, which reached the middle of her back now, into a ponytail. “I’ll miss you too. Keep your toes pointed and hit the water feet first. Go.”

Before I said anything else she vaulted the railing and disappeared into the night. I leaned over to try to see or hear the moment when she hit, but the engines and sound of waves against the hull swallowed everything. I never saw her again. On my way back to the room I thought about what I’d write, if anything more needed to be said about Margaret and the fact that I never fully understood how a Germline could transform into something so indecisive, incapable of the calculus of war, but then shrugged the thought away. Margaret was who she was because of her own experiences; that was her tale, not mine. There were really only a few pages left to write, so after shutting the door behind me I turned off the light and climbed into
bed. Rest would help me face what was coming in the morning.

The next morning I rose early to scribble until there was only a bit more to say; already I felt the ship slow, the thrum of its engines deepening as they dropped in power, then eventually nearing total quiet when they shut off completely. It was especially hot. The air in my cabin didn’t move, was humid and thick, so that my coveralls—the same ones acquired in Wonsan—soon soaked with sweat and my head swam until I finished off a bottle of water, wanting more almost immediately. There was a knock on my door. I knew who it would be before opening, so wasn’t surprised to find the captain with two armed men, their pistols pointed at my chest as they squeezed in. He spoke English now.

“The American Navy is about to board us,” he said. “Where is your friend?”

“She jumped overboard last night.”

He ordered his men to search the room, which didn’t take long. When they didn’t find her he scowled. “I know what you are, and they want you and her. Now.”

I bent over the table, trying to jot down the final lines. “Wait. Just a second.”

“You can finish writing on the launch to the American boat. There will be time.”

I knew then why it was so important to write a few last words, because I wrote them as much for my sisters as for the nonbred like Alderson who would wonder, like Margaret had, why I hadn’t taken the chance to run, why I hadn’t jumped overboard. The message I was to deliver
included everything we experienced in North Korea. The foxes, the bears, the flowers, and the ocean. It was so simple. We had all been born into the world as killers, all of us Little Murderers in our own way, and the role suited us because it felt so good to kill, to be perfect at the job for which we had been created: to hate. But hatred was man’s will. The spoiling eroded the emotion and took from us the one thing that had been our vocation, our identity, and it made us question the single action that defined us as creatures: murder. At first I thought the spoiling was also man’s will, but this was wrong. It was God’s test of faith. Given enough time, all of us—not just me, as Margaret seemed to think—every one of my sisters who escaped, did so to find a way past the spoiling and so walked a path to Him. It was always His will that we kill, but with honor, and the nonbred corrupted this the same way they corrupted everything they touched, but like nature reclaimed the waste in Korea, it would someday fix all of us who had escaped man’s influence, and now I understood what Heather had meant when she’d said I’d figure out the message.
Men
were the abomination. They had replaced God with themselves; pity for the nonbred and discharge at their hands, the damned, was a ticket to His side, but so was finding one’s own way.

Death and Faith.

Memorandum for Dr. Reynold T. Gregson

Defense Policy Board

Pentagon

Dear Dr. Gregson:

Attached is a verbatim copy of the document found with Unit AA-057111, Germline-One-A, Catherine, which you and your staff requested on 26 April. As you are aware, now that American forces have returned from the east, all seven active ateliers have been shut down and mothballed per Presidential Directive 311256, and ateliers under construction were returned to a greenfield state until such time that program reactivation becomes necessary. Reactivation, should it ever occur, will take place in accordance with the new wartime mobilization guidelines adopted by the Pentagon for the U.S. postwar readiness strategy. A few additional notes are warranted here, however, since the attached document presents new data that haven’t been previously considered
.

I had been told that this was a set of notes, and relayed that same information to you in my April briefing to the Board. That information was inaccurate. The document attached is almost a complete file on Catherine’s
activities since de-tanking, including some of her thoughts and feelings as they relate to combat, the loss of friends, and her own mortality. In light of this I recommend that it be incorporated as part of future Germline training regimens, as originally outlined by General Urqhart before his death in the Almaty encirclement. Clearly this book is an important find. In my professional opinion—both as someone who had regular contact with Catherine and as a psychiatrist—her book validates many of the fears we had regarding religious aspects of the girls’ training. General Urqhart, were he alive, would be pleased to know that in my opinion, he was right: Catherine was the one we had been looking for all along. She could have taught the other units much about what was expected of them and how to handle discharge at the appropriate time
.

Preliminary modeling of Catherine’s analyses suggest a strong likelihood that should we adopt her writings and incorporate them in the Modern Combat Manual, future generations of Germline units will receive a far more detailed preview of what to expect as they age, and will recognize the signs of spoiling with far less stress than the last models fielded. It may even reduce the number of escapes—perhaps bringing them to zero entirely. My staff feels that we could rewrite her biography so to seamlessly incorporate it into the latest versions of the Manual, perhaps referring to it as the “Gospel of Catherine,” or something along those lines. Of course the final few paragraphs would have to be changed. We also advise passing copies of this book, once it is finished, to escaped Germline units in Thailand; our models suggest that doing so may convince more of them to report for voluntary discharge
.

Of course, as long as production of Germline units is prohibited by the Genetic Weapons Convention, we should consider discussing this in a classified venue and should the Board decide to move forward I hope that you will give our findings the attention they deserve and consider the recommendations hereby set forth. My staff and I are looking forward to seeing you at the symposium in Hawaii; we trust that you and your wife are doing well
.

Warm Regards
,

Quentin Alderson, PhD

Chief Psychiatrist

Germline Wartime Mobilization

Strategy

Think Tank

Hamilton Diversified Corp
.

T. C. M
C
C
ARTHY
earned a BA from the University of Virginia, and a PhD from the University of Georgia, before embarking on a career that gave him a unique perspective as a science fiction author. From his time as a patent examiner in complex biotechnology to his tenure with the Central Intelligence Agency, T.C. has studied and analyzed foreign militaries and weapons systems. T.C. was at the CIA during the September 11 terrorist attacks and was still there when U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, allowing him to experience warfare from the perspective of an analyst. Find out more about the author at
www.tcmccarthy.com
.

If you enjoyed
EXOGENE
look out for

The Subterrene War: Book 3

by T. C. McCARTHY