Maximum Light

1

SHANA WALDERS

By the time they truck us to the staging area, which is the parking lot of some old church, the train has been burning for two days. It’s one of those new Korean maglevs that isn’t supposed to derail ever, no matter what, but there it is in some D.C. suburb, burning like a son-of-a-bitch. Carrying some sort of fuel canisters; somebody says that it could burn for a week if the scientist-types don’t figure out what to do. Which I guess they haven’t, because the area is evacuated and glow-marked, and we jump off the truck a couple thousand feet away from the wreck. Other trucks are bringing in civvies, some of them crying.

You have entered an area electronically cordoned by the United States Army, the truck is saying over and over. Unless you are authorized to be in this area, turn around immediately and leave. You have entered an area electronically— My NS sergeant reaches into the cab and slaps it off. She goes to report in to a regular-army sergeant, so I sort of slouch over to a soldier and say, On. What we got?

He gives me that look they all do, the Who-let-you-put on-a-uniform-and-by-the-way-you’re-not-real-army-anyway-asshole look. But I ignore that and repeat, What we got here? and this time I smile at him, the just-a-hint-of-promise smile, and he don’t resist. They never do. I’m a gorgeous kid.

We’re taking the evacuees back in, in twos. For their pets.

"Their pets?"

Yeah, sweetheart. The army’s just one compassionate subrun. He laughs, but I don’t get the joke. They got a lot of jokes like that, the regulars do, to keep us NSs on the outside. I don’t care. We’re going in.

Got your adrenalin up, huh? the soldier says. Your little titties erect? They’re not supposed to talk like that to us—such fragile youngsters like us, just doing the year of National Service we owe our country—but I don’t care. I can handle soldiers. And my titties are anything but little.

I laugh, and the soldier moves closer. His eyes gleam. He isn’t that old, and not bad looking, but I’m not in the mood. We’re going in.

Shana, my sergeant calls, over here. You and Joe hand out gear, help the civilians put it on. Send them by twos over there.

"On. You aren’t keeping me here, are you? I say. Instead of going in?"

The sergeant sighs. They handle us with velvet gloves in the NS, not like at all like the rough stuff in the real army. We’re a precious resource, after all, us kids. Fewer of us every year, what with the fertility crisis. It’s all right by me. I smile at my sergeant. That smile.

Oh, all right, you can go in, she says. But first get some of these people in gear. Fall to.

I fall to, shouting at Joe to bring over two civvies, pulling two hazard suits off the back of the supply truck. The civilians are old, of course, but not real feeble fusties, probably no more than fifty. They climb into the suits with no trouble. The woman, though, don’t want to put the helmet on. A lot of people are like that, scared to seal off their heads. Even some NSs. She stands with her gray hair—she don’t dye it, God knows why not, I sure would—blowing into her eyes, which are red and swollen.

It’s my cat, she says, almost like she’s apologizing to me. Widdy. Short for Kitty-Widdy, embarrassing as that is. She smiles at me, almost begging. For what? I don’t know her cat from dogshit.

Please put on the helmet, ma’am, I say. I’m getting a real kick out of sounding in charge, even if I’m really not.

When I left the house to go shopping, Widdy only had a little water left in her bowl, the woman pleads. And that was two days ago!

Yes, ma’am. Please put on the helmet.

"I was out shopping. I wasn’t even at home when the train derailed!"

Yes, ma’am. The helmet, ma’am.

I … can’t.

Then please remove your suit, ma’am, so someone else can wear it to rescue their pet. I’m making this up as I go along. I love it.

I … can’t. What about Widdy? She looks wildly around, like maybe there’s somebody else to go rescue Widdy. I guess she don’t see nobody, because suddenly she jams the helmet over her head. I reach out and seal it for her. Behind the faceplate, she’s crying.

I hope I never get that scared of life.

I point toward the regular army, and she shuffles off in that direction. Joe and I pull two more sets of gear off the truck and the sergeant sends another two civvies shuffling toward us. This time they are moldy oldies, barely strong enough to pull on the damn suits. All around the church parking lot, NS teams are suiting up civvies. I watch carefully, the whole procedure, to be sure I know how to work it so I actually get sent in. I’m holding my sergeant to her promise.

Hanging over the parking lot is a huge holosign with the usual government garbage: SHARED RESPONSIBILITY: TOGETHER WE STAND. Shimmery holo people of all different ages, holding hands and smiling at each other like morons. Suddenly thick clouds of black smoke blow in our direction, blotting out the sign. I don’t put on my helmet unless I absolutely have to—I’d rather soak it all in undigitalized—but for a moment I can’t see the signs, the trucks, the civvies, the fancy stained-glass window in the front of the church, with its blue and red figures of some ancient saints older than rocks. The smell is awful—like burning tires mixed with rotted garbage. Then the wind shifts and the smoke blows in the other direction.

*   *   *

I don’t get to go in until afternoon. They let the regular army do it for hours, truckload after truckload of civvies, probably to be sure it’s safe for us precious little NSs. Us kids have to do a year of National Service to learn selfless dedication to the good of the group, blah blah, but nobody wants us to get killed. By noon, when nobody’s been blown up and the eight regular soldiers are due for rotating breaks, they let us have a turn. I’m right there with the first bunch.

I’m paired with a soldier who, behind his faceplate, looks in his forties or fifties, a career soldier, all business. We jump in the back of a truck with eighteen suited, scared civvies all thinking about their dogs and cats and parakeets. The truck rumbles along toward the burning wreck.

The soldier briefs me. Nobody goes in closer than eight hundred feet. Nobody. This lot swore they all lived farther away than that, but they could be lying. You escort your charge in and out of the house. They get four minutes, you time it. Grab the pet and out. Nothing else, this is just about pets. If they can’t grab their animal in four minutes, out anyway. By force, if you have to. They even teach you kids to use your stun gun?

Yes, sir, I say, ignoring the insult.

Just the pets, he repeats. No money, pictures, terminals, furniture, jewelry. And don’t fucking get yourself injured.

No, sir. I flash him a big smile. He stares at me a minute, then looks away, his mouth twisted in disgust. I don’t care. I’m too damn happy.

The smoke gets worse, and pretty soon we can see flames. That train is burning like the hell the preacher used to try to tell us about, when I was in the government school. Another glow marker, waist high, with the field set to bright yellow, snakes along eight hundred feet from the maglev track. The houses beyond the marker are standing, all right, but I wouldn’t bet much on that if any fuel canisters blew. What is that stuff, anyway? Probably some long unpronounceable name only stewdees would care about.

We stop about a hundred feet from the marker. Eighteen civvies, three soldiers, three NSs. The sergeant gets the first six civvies off the truck and running toward houses, each civvy with a soldier or NS. Some of the civvies could barely shamble along. My civvy is never going to win any marathons, but he moves pretty fast for a mosstooth. I trot along beside him, parallel to the marker glow. Other pairs disappear into the smoke in other directions, or into houses, which are the little row-jobbies you get in places like this. I see one soldier-with-civvy come out almost immediately, followed by a big dog barking its fool head off with doggie joy.

We trot on. And on. Where does this guy live? We’re almost at the end of the houses. Beyond are just big gray windowless buildings, warehouses or factories or something. There wouldn’t be any pets in those. Would there?

All of a sudden the civvy puts on a big burst of speed. Son of a bitch! He’s away from me before I can get out my stun gun, which I hadn’t been expecting to even need. Not to rescue a fucking kitty! The mosstooth races away from me and right through the glow marker. When I follow him through, there’s a brief burst of pain in my chest, but nothing my suit can’t handle. We’re inside the explosion zone. I’m gaining on him, but not by much, when he runs into the nearest big gray building.

And locks the door behind him.

I waste precious seconds pounding on it like some kind of stewdee. Then I run around the outside of the building. In the back is a loading dock, but it’s locked, too. So is the emergency exit. How come these people had time to lock everything up tighter than a religious virgin?

Then I see my guy running out of a little side door. He don’t expect to see me, clearly, since he almost runs into me. Which is how I get a good look at what he’s carrying in his arms.

And I don’t even draw my stun gun. I’m the one stunned. It’s like I can’t even move.

Until I realize what’s going to happen next. Has to be. The guy has already disappeared into the smoke—he knows where he’s going, all right, and how much time he has to get there. I don’t. But I start running for everything I’m worth, away from the windowless building, and every second I’m farther away is a gift, a present, a fucking miracle. Another second I’m alive.

The building blows.

I dive behind somebody’s brick barbecue—by this time I’m back among the houses—and crawl inside. It’s got a metal cover to keep rain off the grill, because the grill is jammed with terra cotta dishes and wooden spoons and shit for cooking. The terra cotta shatters and rains down on me, but otherwise I’m okay. I cover my head and wait and, sure enough, the building explosion ignites the closest of the train cars and it blows, too.

Poisons. Toxins. Radiation? What is the stuff in those canisters?

I don’t know and it wouldn’t help me if I did. I’m screaming my throat raw until I notice and make myself stop it. The noise all around me is like the end of the world. The black smoke makes it impossible to see my own knees, even though I’m crouched so that my face is jammed up against them. I’m pretty sure I’m going to die. If all the train cars blow, I’m probably going to die.

But they don’t, and I don’t.

From the sound, only one car ignites, and I ran away from that direction. I can’t remember if I ran back through the glow marker, out of the explosion zone. I didn’t feel no marker. I don’t feel nothing for a few more minutes, except the fact that I’m fucking alive. Then I crawl out of the barbecue pit and stand, wobbly.

My helmet switched itself to virtual vision, for better resolution. Around me it looks like a war movie, something from the action in South America. Houses burning, houses fallen down. The gray building just isn’t there no more. Only rubble, and smoke, and noise that rings in my ears like it was far away instead of practically on top of me.

I wobble my way between the fires and back toward the staging area. Somewhere I’ve lost my direction because I approach the church parking lot sideways, from between two houses on its east side.

The parking lot don’t even look real.

Old people everywhere, some still in suits without helmets, some out of suits, everybody smeared with soot so you can’t tell if they’re black or white or purple. And pets. A dead cat lying on the pavement, with a woman wailing over it, tears streaming through the wrinkles on her face. A live puppy, one foot crushed but wagging its tail like Christmas morning, while another rusty fusty cries over it. A big Labrador retriever racing around in circles, barking and barking. Cats spitting at the Lab. Vets with medical scanners crouching over dogs. A geezer holding an empty dog dish, just standing there gazing at it, never moving a muscle. The regular army soldiers trying to load the civvies back onto trucks: It’s not safe here, sir. Get on the truck immediately. Leave the dead animal, please—

Nobody listens. Vid crews maneuver their robocams, people wail and shout. And closest to my side of the parking lot, a huge sooty parrot digs wicked claws into the shoulder of a grinning man who don’t even wince, the bird squawking over and over, "Access granted. Here we go! Access granted. Here we go! Access granted—" And in the distance but coming closer, the scream of more fire-fighters and equipment arriving by air.

My sergeant spots me. She’s crossing the parking lot at double time, and she glimpses me between the buildings and stops dead. Her face changes completely, and I know what I’m looking at. Relief. She thought I was dead, and that she was the one who lost a precious NS, and that she would have to pay for that real hard and real long. Only here I am, alive. Never mind that no civvy isn’t with me—the civvy isn’t nineteen years old and a national resource.

Walders! she snaps at me, and I know just how upset-relieved she is. Usually they call us by our first names. Report in!

And I do. I wobble forward, on knees made of water, and not because I almost died. Not because I lost my civvy, either, and fucked up the first hazardous-duty NS assignment I ever got. My knees wobble because I have to report in, a full report, including exactly what I saw the running civvy carry away with him. And I don’t know, can’t even imagine, what will happen to me after that.

2

NICK CLEMENTI

It’s the same dream. I sit beside my mother by the duck pond, throwing our lunch to the ducks. See, Nicky, the babies swimming behind their mommies! If we were duckies, you’d swim right behind me and Jennifer and Allen. I want to swim in front of Jen’ver and Allen! I say, and my mother laughs. She is very young herself, and beautiful, sitting barefoot on the grass. The ducks fight over the bits of peanut-butter-and-jelly, and quack and shrill and shriek and become my wrister.

I rolled over in bed and said, Reception.

A call, Dr. Clementi, said the MedCenter computer in its pleasant, androgynous voice. Code Four. Mrs. Paula Schaeffer. Complaints are tingling in left leg, lethargy, irritability. Instructions, please?

Schedule a visit in the morning, I said, probably as irritably as the would-be patient. If the computer decided the call was a Code Four, it could wait. Tingling in the leg could be anything, was probably nothing. Lethargy, irritability—Mrs. Schaeffer always had those, as far as I could see. She was eighty-seven years old, for God’s sake, and it was two o’clock in the morning. Did she expect to be dancing a jig and planning a party? But they were all afraid everything meant a stroke.

The wrister had woken Maggie. Nick? Do you have to go out?

No. Just another Fretful Fossil. Our private name for them—even though we ourselves were both in our mid-seventies. Or maybe because. Joke about it, taste it, get used to it in small silly references to other people, and it will be easier to live with. Mithridates, he died old.

Maggie rolled to nestle, spoon-fashion, against my back. Buttons on her nightdress poked into my skin.

Your clothing is attacking me again.

Sorry, love. She shifted position.

Not good enough. Take it off.

You’re a dirty old man, Nick. And then, Nick?

It was going to be a good one, a hard one. I could feel it.

She was light and sweet in my arms. In her forties and fifties Maggie had gained weight, a hot exciting cushion underneath me, but in her sixties and seventies it had all come off again, and I could feel her delicate bones. And that fragrance—Maggie always had a fragrance to her, a unique odor, when she was ready. She was ready now. Her thin arms tightened around me, and I slid in, and it was indeed one of the good ones.

Oh, nice, nice, Maggie said, as she had said for fifty-one years now.

I love you, Maggie.

Uhmmmmmmm … oh, yes, Nick, just like that.

She always knew what she wanted. For fifty-one years, I’ve been grateful it was me.

Afterward, the wrister rang again. Maggie dozed, one leg flung over mine, a stray white curl tickling my nose. I must have slept, too; morning light filtered through the curtains. Maggie woke and shifted. "Damn it, why can’t they let you sleep? Don’t answer it; it’s probably just a tingling in Paula Schaeffer’s other