“We’ve got them, sir.” The sergeant paused for a moment. He was clearly uncomfortable about my hearing what he had to say next. “Sir, they can’t be Mogats. One of them is a clone.”
He should have been uncomfortable. The soldier was a general-issue military clone. He was programmed not to talk about clones and cloning; but he was also programmed to obey orders, and some officer had clearly ordered him to report when we stepped off our ship. The cognitive dissonance this must have caused that poor grunt.
He came with a squad of twenty soldiers. These men were regular Army, dressed in standard Army fatigues, on loan to the Dulles Spaceport Authority. They all carried M27s as a matter of course. None of them pointed their weapons at us.
The sergeant listened to a receiver concealed in his helmet. He cleared his throat. “Do you have any cargo you wish to unload?”
“No,” I said.
Freeman pressed a button, and the rear of the transport shut behind us. The motor that moved those thick metal doors worked quietly, but the cogs and sprockets in the doors ground. When the doors closed, they sealed with a soft clang.
“Um, you don’t have a messiah on that transport do you?” the sergeant asked. He sounded nervous.
“A what?” I asked.
“A messiah?” he repeated.
“Not so much as an angel,” I said.
“Just checking,” the sergeant said. “You didn’t bring pamphlets or Space Bibles did you?”
“Sergeant, I have no idea what you are talking about,” I said.
“Okay. Okay, just checking,” the sergeant said. “Why don’t you gentlemen come with us? There are people waiting to debrief you.”
So much for sodden babies and an entropic society. As far as I could tell, Washington, DC, had not changed. Dulles Spaceport looked as pristine as I had ever seen it. Through the open door of the hangar, I could see atmospheric jets taking off and landing. The terminal building, a five-story box with black windows encased in white marble frames, sparkled in the sunlight.
The soldiers had parked a “covered wagon” just outside the hangar. “Covered wagon” meant an Army transport truck with a heat-shielded tarp. In a world with satellites and other orbiting spacecraft, tarps could make all the difference in hiding troop movements from prying eyes.
The soldiers, GI clones who stood just under six feet, hopped into the back of the truck without having to worry about hitting their heads on the Army green canvas tarp or the metal frame that held it in place. At six- three, I had to duck my head as I came up the three steps that led into the back of the truck. Then came Freeman, seven feet tall and hugely broad-shouldered.
There is a tendency to think of a Goliath like Freeman as slow and powerful. The stereotype did not fit in this case. Freeman was powerful all right, but he was also agile. He stepped onto the middle rung of the three-step ladder and bounded into the back of the truck. He was so tall, however, that he had to drop to his knees to scoot under the lip of that tarp. Once in, he had to crouch as he moved to an empty spot on the bench.
The clones noticed his agility, too. Some stared at him. Others simply stole sideways glances. I thought back to the first time I had laid eyes on Freeman. He had made me just as nervous as he made these boys.
Since I had never served with any of these clones, they all looked alike to me. To make matters worse, only a little sunlight penetrated the canvas tarp, leaving us pretty much in the dark. Had I served with them, I suppose I would have noted subtle differences. When I ran a platoon in the Marines, I could tell my men apart. But looking around the benches, these guys looked as identical as eggs in a carton. I wondered how the sergeant could tell his boys apart.
“You guys aren’t Morgan Atkins Separatists?” the sergeant asked.
“Not likely,” I said.
The sergeant had identified me as a clone when he met us outside our ship. I had the same brown hair and brown eyes as other clones. My facial features looked somewhat similar to the features on all of these boys. If you stood us beside each other, people would have thought I was their taller and more-scarred-up brother.
“Our traffic guys tracked you coming in from a Mogat ship,” the sergeant said. “Your transport looks like it’s Galactic Central vintage.”
“It is,” I said. “Not all of those ships are under Mogat control.”
“No shit?” the sergeant asked.
“No shit,” I agreed.
“Does that mean the Separatists are fighting among themselves?”
We rumbled up a ramp and into a covered tunnel. Looking out the back of the truck, I could see a concrete ceiling with rows of fluorescent fixtures.
“The Confederates, the Mogats, and the Japanese, it’s a three-way split,” I said.
“Damn,” the sergeant said. “Who’s winning?”
“The Mogats,” I said.
“Damn,” the sergeant repeated.
“What did you mean about having a messiah on our ship?” I asked.
“Oh, that? That was a Mogat thing. They dressed a transport up so that it looked like a golden chariot, then they set it down in Israel. They had some guy dressed in a white robe come out the back and say he was Jesus returning to claim the world.”
We went down a ramp. The soldiers all swayed with the direction of the truck, but Freeman did not move.
“You’re joking,” I said.
The sergeant shook his head.
“How do you know it wasn’t Jesus?” I asked.
“The guy died,” the sergeant said. “He landed by some old temple in Jerusalem. They think he was hoping for Christian pilgrims, but he got Jews and Moslems instead. They stoned him to death before the police could arrive.
“Anyway, his chariot came out of a GCF ship just like yours.”
The truck pulled to a stop in an underground parking area. One of the soldiers flipped the ladder out of the back of the truck, and the others started filing out.
After most of the soldiers climbed out of the truck, Freeman climbed out. He did not use the ladder to climb down. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and hopped down. It was not much of a hop.
“And the Space Bible?” I asked. The sergeant and I were the last people out of the truck. I knew what Space Bibles were. That was the name people commonly called
“Proselyting,” the sergeant practically spit the word out like a gob from his throat. “That’s their latest. They come by every few weeks and chuck pamphlets and Space Bibles out of their ships. I guess they’re looking for converts.”
The soldiers led us into an office complex that appeared devoid of people. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the building itself, the lights and the air-conditioning worked fine. I could not tell whether it had been abandoned or evacuated, but this wing of the building was empty.
“The Mogats want to start a church on Earth?” I asked. That did not sound likely. One of the major tenets of Mogat belief was independence from Earth.
“They’re not getting many converts. Sometimes they fly over cities, see; and then they start shoveling out them pamphlets and Space Bibles. I figure they’ve hit a few thousand people…killed most of ’em, too.
“Shit, you drop a two-pound book from a few miles up, and you got to figure you’re going to deal some damage.”
