Cyberpunk (27 page)

case that’s fifteen millimeters
longer
—it was perhaps the first of the

modern high-powered military rifles!” Johnson unzipped his belt pouch

and whipped out one truly
enormous
rifle cartridge. The jarheads all

oo’ed and ah’ed.

Johnson dropped the round into the magazine. “Rifles and carbines

based on the Mosin-Nagant design were manufactured by the Imperial

Russian Arsenals at Tula and Sestroretsk,” he dropped another round

into the magazine, “the French Manufactory at Chatellerault,” he

dropped in a third round, “the Swiss Industrie Gesellschaft at

Neuhausen-am-Rheinfalls,” he dropped in a fourth round, “the Austrian

Osterreichische Waffenfrabrik at Steyr,” he slapped the magazine

trapdoor shut, “and by the American firms of Remington and New

England Westinghouse.” Flipping the rifle over, he hefted it, as if

considering something. “As late as 1960, variants were still being

manufactured by Finn SAKO and the ChiComm People’s Armory.”

Johnson cranked the bolt open again. I saw a shiny brass cartridge

pop up into the action. “Beginning with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904

and the Russo-Persian War of 1911, the Mosin-Nagant rifle saw action

in most of the major conflicts of the Twentieth Century! From the frozen

plains of Russia to the steaming jungles of Southeast Asia, it has been

proven time and again to be a reliable, accurate, and deadly weapon! For

these reasons, you will continue to find Mosin-Nagants in service in the

Third World to this day!” He slapped the action shut. The cartridge

seated with an ominous
thunk
.

Raising the rifle to his shoulder and pointing it down the airstrip,

Johnson squinted through the sights. Then he returned it to port arms.

“The Mosin-Nagant has two design flaws,” he said. “The first—a

relatively limited magazine capacity—did not prove relevant until the

Vietnam War, and the advent of the American M-14 and M-16

automatic rifles.

“The second is more serious. Unlike comparable German and

American designs, the Mosin-Nagant has
no
cross-bolt safety!” Johnson

Cyberpunk 1.0
145

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

held the rifle out at arm’s length and pointed to a large knobby thing on

the end of the bolt. “While the exposed firing pin does mean that the

weapon remains combat-serviceable as long as the barrel and bolt are

intact—if all else fails, you can always fire it by hitting it with a stick—

“It also means that any sudden jar or impact,” Johnson’s voice

choked off. The rifle slipped out of his fingers; he fumbled, bobbled,

almost caught it. The butt of the rifle hit the ground—

“
BLAM!
”

By the time the sound stopped echoing back from the woods, I

figured I was safe getting my face out of the dirt. Payne’s boots were

right there, two feet off my nose.

“Very good, Harris,” he said. “You too, Spinelli. Howe. Chang.” He

stepped back, looked around, took a deep breath and warmed up for

some bellowing. “The rest of you: What the hell’s
wrong
with you?

Didn’t you hear
gunfire
?

“Let’s do this again. Drop!” The rest of the class flopped down hard

on the grass.

“Better. Now give me twenty.”

#

My Tuesday afternoon History class let out early. I ducked around

the Admin Building to avoid running into Rogers and started down the

back path through the woods to the library. Mr. Lewellyn had given me

a doozy of a problem that Monday, and I didn’t feel like waiting ‘til my

scheduled Wednesday study time to see if my answer checked out.

Plowing through the ferns in the gulley, I darted up the slope and

bounced into the Library.

“Mister Lewellyn!” The door was open; the lights were out. The

library was dark, empty. Odd. “Mister Lewellyn?” Cautious —I didn’t

want anyone to think I was sneaking someplace I didn’t belong—I

slipped through the stacks. The door to Lewellyn’s office was ajar. I

pushed on it, a little; old hinges turned with a slow groan.

He was lying, sprawled on the floor, next to a tipped-over stepstool

and a scatter of books. His face was the color of cold, dead, ashes.

Cyberpunk 1.0
146

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

One instinct told me to get out of there before anyone saw me;

another said to get in there and
do
something. I listened to the second

one. His skin was cold and clammy; his heart was beating slow, s-l-o-w,

but it was still beating. His breathing was shallow, almost imperceptible.

I ran for help.

He never regained consciousness. They MedEvacced him to

Calgary; I never heard what happened to him after that. A week later the

new librarian—a tall, beak-nosed sourball named Fellows—showed up,

and Lewellyn’s Apple got crated up and sent to the storeroom.

“So you’re that Harris kid,” is how the new librarian introduced

himself when I showed up. “I’ve heard about you.” Then he informed

me that the library was a
privilege
reserved for
responsible
cadets, and

that I would need a signed note from an instructor before I would be

allowed to study in the library.

The day I realized Lewellyn was never coming back was the last

time I ever cried.

#

I wrapped up my first Grade One year with a lot of nice round

numbers: zeroes in everything. Absolute complete flunkout. The plan

didn’t work, though. Dad just slapped down another tuition check and

the Academy reenrolled me.

My surprise was total. All my life, I’d been taking competitive

exams to get into better schools. It’d never occurred to me there might

be such thing as a school you
couldn’t
flunk out of. One night I woke up

at 3 a.m. from a nightmare about being forty years old and still a Grade

One cadet, and that’s when I decided I’d better make minimum effort at

passing some classes.

The summer I turned 15 was the worst summer of my life. I couldn’t

mix with my class; after all, they all were Grade Twos, and I wasn’t

even a Grade One. I couldn’t mix with the summer boys; after all, I’d

been through that game already. Payne’s summer boys did galley

warfare that year, and I spent most of my time in the mess hall, cleaning

up after their foodfights.

Cyberpunk 1.0
147

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Until the first week of August, when it occurred to me one day they

were just about ready for the final trick. I insinuated my way next to a

couple of them, tried to tell them about the battle of Aegespotami.

But who listens to a cyberpunk?

#

My second Grade One year was even worse than the first one, and

for one major reason:
Douglas Kemuel Luger
. He’d gone home at the

end of that first summer, and I’d bid good riddance to him then. Trouble

was, I flunked out at the Academy, but good ol’ Deke Boy flunked out

of the real world. On the first day of the fall semester I fell in for

inspection and found Deke standing next to me, smug and cold as ever,

and it only took me a little contact to flag he’d picked up something new

while he was back home: a mean streak a mile wide.

I decided, since I couldn’t get anybody to
like
me, I was going to flip

my toggles.

Sunday night, after I finished polishing Roid Roger’s boots, I went

to bed as Mikey Harris. Monday morning I woke up as Max Asshole,

Def Cyberpunk.

During the winter of my Grade Two year, I took basic electricity and

learned about Ohm’s Law: resistance plus energy equals
heat
.

Cyberpunk 1.0
148

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Chapter 13

One minute I was sleeping; next minute I was waking up all fury and

derangement with a hand clamped over my mouth and an evil whisper in

my ear. Then I recognized the Survival Instructor’s voice. “Get your

boots. Go outside. Maintain silence.”

Hey, at age sixteen Harris, Michael A., former CyberPunk—
me
, to

tag a constant—might be contending for Oldest Grade Two in camp, but

this kid’s no vidiot! Soon’s I IDed that swine I knew
precisely
what

kinda loaf had pinched on me and opted for Least Painful Response

Mode: Instant Compliance.

After three rotten years at the Von Schlager Military Academy, I

was finally starting to get the hang of LPRM.

This time it meant barefooting out of the barracks and into the cool

and dewey late-May dawn—the pines were still; the owls had called it a

night and the meadowlarks weren’t ramped up yet —sitting down in the

butt-freezing damp grass, and velcroing my boots while the S.I. dragged

four more blear-eye Grade Twos from their bunks. In a coupla minutes I

was sharing the grass with skinny Murphy, in t-shirt, sweat pants, and

sullen attitude; hulking Buchovsky, in waffle weave, cut-offs, and cowlike

calmness; snake-dangerous Kao Vang, in heavy black pajamas and

Who-me-did-I-get-tipped-off? smile—

And
gruppenfuhrer
Luger, in boxer shorts. Oh fritzing great, just the

guy I wanted. Luger, at near 17 the reigning Oldest Grade Two in camp

and my self-appointed mortal enemy. Luger, telepathing,
“If I wasn’t

too tough to shiver I’d
kill
for that thinsulate jumpsuit, Harris.”
Luger:

Murphy and Kao Vang grouped with him and hostilated at me. I could

see already this was gonna be certified zero fun.

One by one we got our boots on and sneaked behind the trees to get

Cyberpunk 1.0
149

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

the moss steamy. Then the S.I. popped past and gave us the silent signal

to follow. Obediently, we fell in behind.

#

Don’t ever quote me, but a three-klick run at dawn is
real
good for

flushing the sludge out of your headworks. I was feeling alertness, total,

by the time we got to the airstrip, so just before we ducked into the

briefing shack I caught a shadow glimpse of the ground crew rolling out

a helo and confirmed what I’d pretty much inferenced. This wasn’t

standard character-building harassment; we were doing The Colonel’s

Game, elimination round.

The briefing shed was lit, bright, and heavy with the smell of fresh

coffee and doughnuts. A seriously pinholed tactical map covered most of

the short wall opposite the door, and five small piles of name-tagged

gear lay on the floor. I spotted mine, but before I could check it out the

S.I. barked, “Attention!” and we snapped to. He walked past us, stern

and inspecting, hooked himself a cup of coffee, sipped, grimmaced,

added sugar ...

“This,” the S.I. said at last, “in case you stupid sods haven’t figured

it out yet, is your Combat Survival Final Exam. In the next week we’re

going to find out what kind of stuff you’re
really
made of.

“Whether you have the right,” he sipped his coffee and eyed the

doughnuts, covetous, “to call yourselves
men
, or if you’re better off