The War in 2020

'What happened?' he asked, begging for knowledge.

'Quietly,' Taylor said. 'Speak quietly.'

Meredith looked at the colonel. The cold made the old man's scars stand out lividly. But the sight of Taylor's ruined face was nothing beside the inexplicable condition of the men inside the M-100.

'Why?'

'Just speak quietly.'

'Why? For God's sake, what's the matter with Lucky Dave? Is he going to be all right?'

'Merry, get a grip on yourself. We have work to do.'

'What's going on?' Meredith demanded, his voice almost a child's.

'You have to keep your voice down. They might hear you. Let's not make it any worse for them.'

Meredith looked at Taylor in shock. It had never occurred to him that the ruptured behavior of the men they had found might include consciousness of the speech of others. It was too incongruous. The men had obviously lost their minds. Their eyes didn't even focus. They were shitting and pissing all over themselves.

'Listen to me,' Taylor said quietly. The snow was beginning to decorate his shoulders. 'I think they hear us.

I think they hear every word. They just can't respond.'

Meredith stared at the devastated face in front of him, not really seeing it.

'Listen to me carefully, Merry,' Taylor began. 'Ten years ago, when you were off studying your Russian, I was involved in some unusual programs. Between L.A. and our little jaunt down to Mexico. We were working like mad, trying to come up with alternative technologies for a military response to the Japanese. The M-l00s are one result of all that. But there were a lot of other projects that didn't make it all the way to production. For a variety of reasons.' He shook Meredith by the arm. 'Are you all right? Are you listening to me?'

Meredith nodded, with the acid aftertaste of vomit and snow in his mouth.

'We tried everything we could think of,' Taylor said. He shook his head at the memory, loosening snow from his helmet. 'Some of the ideas were just plain crazy. Nonsensical. Things that couldn't possibly have worked. Or

that needed too much development lead time. But there was one thing…'

Meredith was listening now. Hungry for any information that would explain events that his mind could not process. But Taylor kept him waiting for a moment. The colonel stared off across the whitened steppes, past the waiting M-100 that had brought them to this place, past another ship half-buried in the snow, to a faraway, indefinite point that only Taylor's eyes could pick out.

'It was out at Dugway. You had to have every clearance in the world just to hear the project's code name. Some of the whiz kids out at Livermore had come up with a totally new approach. And we looked into it. We brought them out to Utah, to the most isolated testing area we had, to see what they could do. They didn't care much for the social environment, of course. But once we turned them loose, they made amazing progress.' Taylor paused, still staring out through space and time. 'They came up with a weapon that worked, all right. Christ almighty, we could've finished the Japs within a year. As soon as we could've gotten the weapons into the field. But we just could not bring ourselves to do it, Merry. I mean, I think I hate the Japanese. I suspect I hate them in a way that is irrational and morally inexcusable. But not one of us… not one of the people that had a say wanted to go through with it. We decided that the weapons were simply too inhumane. That their use would have been unforgivable.' Taylor looked down at the snow gathering around their boots and smiled softly. 'I thought we were doing the right thing. The scientists were disappointed as hell, of course. You know, the worst soldier I've ever known has a more highly developed sense of morality than the average scientist. Anyway, I really thought we were doing the right thing. I guess I was just being weak.' He shook his head. 'It looks like the Japanese have made fools of us again.'

'But… what was it?' Meredith asked. 'The weapon?' Taylor raised his eyebrows at the question as though further details really were not so pertinent. 'It was a radiowave weapon,' he said matter-of- factly. 'Complex stuff to design, but simple enough in concept. You take radio waves apart and rebuild them to a formula that achieves a desired effect in the human brain. You broadcast, and the mind receives. It's a little like music. You listen to a song with a good beat, and you tap your foot. A ballad makes you sentimental. Really, sound waves have been manipulating us for a long, long time. Well, the boys from Livermore had been screwing around with jamming techniques for years. Same principle. They started off small. Learning how to cause pain. The next step was to focus the pain. And so on. You could cause death relatively easily. But that was too crude for men of science. They went beyond the clean kill. And we developed… well, compositions, you might say, that could do precisely focused damage to the human mind.' Taylor looked at Meredith. 'Think back to your military science classes, Merry. And tell me: is it preferable to kill your enemy outright or to incapacitate him, to wound him badly?'

'To wound him,' Meredith said automatically.

'And why?'

'Because… a dead soldier… is just a dead soldier. But a wounded soldier puts stress on the enemy's infrastructure. He has to receive first aid. Then he has to be evacuated. He requires care. A dead soldier makes no immediate demands on the system, but a wounded man exerts a rearward pull. Enough wounded men can paralyze—'

'Exactly. And that's it, Merry.'

'But… how long until it wears off? When are they going to be all right?'

Taylor strengthened his grip on Merry's arm. Merry, it doesn't wear off. Christ, if it did, we would have fielded it in a heartbeat. The effects are irreversible. It's a terror weapon too, you see.'

Meredith felt sick again. With a deeper, emptier, spiritually dreary sickness.

'But… you said they might be able to understand us?'

Taylor nodded. 'It makes no difference to recovery. In fact, that's the worst part, Merry. You see, if the Japanese are using approximately the same formula we came up with, Lucky… Colonel Heifetz and the others have not suffered any loss in intelligence, or in basic cognitive recognition. What the weapon does is simply to destroy the victim's control over his voluntary muscles. There's some collateral deterioration on the involuntary side, as well, but basically you can focus the damage. See, that's the beauty of the weapon — the victims remain fully intelligent human beings, even though they are physically utterly incapable of controlling their basic bodily functions. They cannot even tell their eyes where to look. But they still process what their eyes happen to see. That way, by presenting your enemy with a mature, living intelligence, you rob him of the excuse to lighten his load with conscience-free euthanasia — you're not killing a thing. You'd be killing a thinking, feeling human being who lost the use of his body in the service of his country.' Taylor snorted. 'Beautiful, isn't it?'

Meredith did not understand how Taylor could speak so calmly.

'Merry. You need to pull yourself together now. We need to help them as best we can. And then we've got to get back into the fight.'

Meredith stared at the scarred, scarred man as though he were crazy. What on earth was he talking about? Help them? How? And what would be the point of getting back into any fighting now? If this was all that was waiting at the end of it.

'Count your blessings,' Taylor told him. 'If that escort bird hadn't gone down… well, that's war, Merry. Some die, and others live. Luck of the draw.'

'I can't,' Meredith said. Again, he had no clear idea as to what it was he could not do. But he felt panic seizing him. 'I just can't function. I give up.'

Taylor's hand came up like lightning. He slapped Meredith so hard across the face that the younger man reeled and almost fell. Dazed, he could taste blood in his mouth. It was a far better taste than the vomit and snow had left behind.

Taylor caught him with both hands this time. The grip was noticeably weaker under the bandaged paw. He held Meredith upright, pinning the younger man's arms flat against his sides.

'Merry. Please.'

Meredith tried to bond himself to reality. But this was a world out of horrific medieval paintings.

'Merry, I need you now,' Taylor said. 'You're a very brave man, and you've proved it time and again. I need you to be brave now. Because, if you can't handle this, think of the effect it's going to have