"Stephen Goldin - But As A Soldier, For His Country" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

BUT AS A SOLDIER, FOR HIS COUNTRY

by

Stephen Goldin



Harker awoke to dim lighting, to bells, to panic all around him. Fast, busy footsteps clacked down bunker
corridors, scurrying to no visible result and no possible accomplishment. It was wartime. Naturally.
He was in the spacesuit he has worn last time, which meant that either this war was soon after that last one or
else there had been no great improvements in spacesuits over the interval between. It fit him tightly, with an
all-but-invisible bubble helmet close around his head. There was no need for oxygen tanks as there had been on the
early models; somehow – the technology was beyond him – air was transmuted within the suit, allowing him to
breathe.
There was a belt of diverse weapons around his waist. He knew instinctively how to use each of them.
A voice in front of him, the eternal sergeant, a role that persisted though its portrayers came and went. “Not
much time for explanation, I’m afraid, men. We’re in a bad hole. We’re in a bunker, below some ruins. The enemy
has fanned out upstairs, looking for us. We’ve got to hold this area for four more hours, until reinforcements get
here. You’re the best we’ve got, our only hope.”
“Our only hope” rang hollowly in Harker’s ears. He wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. There was no hope. Ever.
“At least with you now, we outnumber them about five to four. Remember, just four hours is all we need. Go on
up there and keep them busy.”
A mass of bodies moved toward the door to the elevator that would take them to the surface. A quiet, resigned
shuffling. Death in the hundreds of haggard faces around him, probably in his own as well.
Harker moved with the group. He didn’t even wonder who the ‘they’ were that he was supposed to keep busy. It
didn’t matter. Perhaps it never had. He was alive again, and at war.

“We’re asking you, Harker, for several reasons.” The captain is going slowly, trying to make sure there are no
misunderstandings. “For one thing, of course, you’re a good soldier. For another, you’re completely unattached – no
wife, girlfriends or close relatives. Nothing binding you to the here and now.”
Harker stands silently, still not precisely sure how to answer.
After an awkward pause, the captain continues. “Of course, we can’t order you to do something like this. But we
would like you to volunteer. We can make it worth your while to do so.”
“I’d still like more time to think it over, sir.”
“Of course. Take your time. We’ve got all the time in the world, haven’t we?”
Later with Gary, as they walk across the deserted parade field together. “You bet I volunteered,” Gary says. “It’s
not every day you get offered a two-month leave and a bonus, is it?”
“But what happens after that?”
Gary waves that aside. He is a live-for-the-moment type. “That’s two months from now. Besides, how bad can it
be, after what we’ve already been through? You read the booklet, didn’t you? They had one hundred percent
success thawing the monkeys out the last four times. It won’t be any harder for us.”
“But the world will be changed when we wake up.”
“Who cares? The Army’ll still be the same. The Army’s always the same, ever since the beginning of time. Come
on, join me. I’ll bet if we ask them nice, they’ll keep us together as a team. Don’t let me go in there alone.”
Harker volunteers the next day and gets his two-month leave, plus the bonus paid to the experimental subjects. He
and Gary leave the post together to spend their last two months of freedom.
The first month they are together almost constantly. It is a riot of clashing colours and flashing girls, of endless
movies and shows and drinks. It is largely cheerless, but it occupies their time and keeps their minds on today. The
days sweep by like a brash brass carousel, and only by keeping careful track can it be noticed that the carousel goes