Cyberpunk (37 page)

Then he was primal insanity with a three-foot steel penis.

I was off on a long explore with the other Grade Fives that day; we

didn’t find out what’d happened until after we got back. They say the

Colonel had almost talked the kid into putting the rifle down when a

couple gung-ho Grade Twos came charging in like tag-team Rambo. The

kid fired one wild shot.

The bullet went in through the Colonel’s left eye and came out just

above and behind his right ear.

No farewells, no goodbyes, no famous last words. The body kept

breathing for a few more hours, long enough for them to MedEvac him

to Calgary, but everything that was Colonel Ernst Von Schlager, Real

Army Retired and Our Founder, died the moment that kid pulled the

trigger. I understand Payne broke four noses and a jaw—none of them

his own—keeping the kid alive ‘til the Mounties showed up.

The next couple days were fractaled, chaotic. The camp boiled with

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rumors about the Board, controlling votes, and the Colonel’s will. At the

end of the week, Nuttbruster and two other admins flew down to the

States for an emergency meeting with Von Schlager’s ex-wife.

Nuttbruster never came back. Instead, the next Monday a red and

white private Lear made one low buzz over the academy, then swooped

down to the airstrip. Five minutes later, one of the helos came whopwhop-

whopping up from the airstrip to land square in the middle of the

quad.

The new commandant, Gary Von Schlager, had arrived.

#

After that, things happened real fast. DeWitt, the purchasing agent,

and Pavelcek, the registrar, got fired that very morning. The chief cook

and the nutritionist were next, and Chomsky quit in disgust on Thursday.

Each time the Lear flew some of the staffers out, it came back with their

replacements, and Gary greeted every one of the new guys like a longlost

brother. Gary’s buddies, I flagged, were partial to wraparound

sunglasses, slicked hair, and expensive shoes.

Except the new guy who just sort of
appeared
one day, and took

Chomsky’s place. He looked like a damn walking ad for paramilitary

supplies: camo boots, camo clothes, camo beret, camo sunglasses. I saw

him putting balm on his sunburnt lips, his second day up, and damned if

it wasn’t camo chapstik! He packed jungle knives in his boots, throwing

knives up his cuffs, a row of green anodized
shuriken
on his belt, and an

official Rambo-signature machete in a breakaway scabbard on his thigh.

Then an old, old memory swam up, and I had to run and hide to keep

from laughing in his face. He looked like one of those silly Lance

Stallone clones I met on my original flight up!

Not only that, he clanked when he walked.

#

I don’t recall that anyone actually called a Council Fire. I was just

out for a quiet dusk stroll, trying to evaluate the new situationals, when I

spotted a little orange flicker through the trees and bent my path over

that way.

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Payne was sitting by himself on the edge of the council ring, tending

a tiny fire of twigs and pine cones. I found a dead branch, broke it into a

couple short pieces, and walked in. “Mind if I join you?”

No words. He just gestured, like to say it was a free country. I

dragged up a section of stump and sat down, about six feet away.

Feinstein, captain of the history department, joined us about five

minutes later; Baker and Schmidt from the science department about ten

minutes after that. By the time it was proper dark, most of the surviving

staffers had wandered into the circle, and we’d moved the fire over to

the pit and built it up.

“Funny,” Feinstein said to nobody in particular, when Minelli from

Social Studies came wandering in carrying a short birch log. “We’re like

Zoroasterians, all bringing our little offerings to the fire.”

“Yeah,” somebody else said. A couple of us nodded. The fire danced

and crackled in the still night.

After a while, Baker stirred the coals with a stick. “You get a look at

that new guy, the one who replaced Chomsky. What’s his name?”

“Mohler,” Minelli said.

“Right,” Baker said. “Mohler, Boy Gary’s Number Two.”

“He
looks
like a number two,” Feinstein snorted.

Baker chuckled. “Ain’t it the truth. Fruitcake paramil to the
n
th

degree. Did you see he put camo toilet paper in the admin latrine?”

We all got a quick laugh out of that one, except Payne. “Mohler?” he

asked. “Daniel
P
. Mohler?”

Minelli turned, his face an orange and black mask in the night. “The

name mean something to you?”

Payne threw a pine cone in the fire. “Could be. Remember the Anglo

Resistance Movement? Those clowns down in Colorado a few years

back who were going to free us from NOG—the Nipponist Occupation

Government?”

Feinstein muttered a few choice curses under his breath.

“Killed some people, didn’t they?” Baker asked. “Robbed a few

banks? I thought they were all dead or in prison.”

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“Their information minister got acquitted,” Payne said, soft. “He

was a whacked-out paramil named Daniel P. Mohler.”

We were all quiet a minute or two, until Feinstein said, “Shit. One

German was bad enough. Now we’ve got
two
imitation Nazis.” Feinstein

suddenly flagged Schmidt was looking at him with a glare that could’ve

peeled paint. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Just for the record,” Schmidt said, “and speaking as a third

generation German-American, these neo-Nazi shitheads make me want

to puke. They’re like Satanists: worshipping the hate and evil, and

totally forgetting the good.”

Feinstein blinked, and stared cockeyed at Schmidt. “Excuse me. Did

I just hear you say there was
good
in Nazism?”

Schmidt paused, bit a knuckle, and chose his next words very

carefully. “Well, Satanism is a perversion of Wiccan. And neo-

Nazism—you know, there actually
were
some National Socialists who

tried to do good. Germany in 1932 was a disaster. People were literally

starving to death in the streets. And Stalinist Russia was an active and

growing menace.

“Then this Hitler fellow came along, and he scared the sane people

at first, but after awhile they started to feel about him the way you

Americans felt about Reagan. Sure, the guy was clearly a kook, and all

that ranting and raving about
der Juden
was pretty distasteful. But what

the Hell; he was standing up to the Russians, and what he was doing for

the economy
did
seem to be working.”

Feinstein poked the fire with a long stick. “And then the Holocaust.”

Schmidt looked glum. “My ancestors died, too. In Dresden. And

Kessel. In the frozen mud of the Eastern Front. They were on a runaway

train; they didn’t know how to stop it.”

“I know the feeling,” Baker added.

Feinstein seemed to accept that.

After a bit, Payne spoke up. “I’ve got more bad news for you. You

know that new purchasing agent, Shaday? I’ve been in touch with some

of my old buddies. Seems Shaday sits on the board of three companies,

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all of which are currently being investigated for military procurement

fraud.” Payne cracked a little giggle, and my blood ran cold. In five

years at the Academy I’d only heard Payne laugh three times, and his

laugh sounded barely human. Maybe ‘cause of what he found laughable.

“It’s a pun, you see? Shaday? Shoddy?” Payne let his high,

fingernails-on-blackboard giggle loose again.

“Fitting,” said Feinstein, with a nod, “and probably a hint of what

we can expect.” He looked around the circle, and flagged our blank

expressions. “Shoddy was originally a name for a type of recycled

wool,” he said, switching into professor mode. “It was given its current

connotation during the First Civil War, by an unscrupulous contractor

who supplied uniforms for the Union army.”

We all watched the fire a while longer. Flames stirred and crackled;

a major log burnt through and coals subsided, sparks rising like fireflies.

I copped a furtive glance around the circle. They were all staring hard

into the fire, wrapped up in private thoughts.

Maybe that’s the true secret of the Council Fire. It’s an invitation to

think, to ponder, with no hurry. No urgency to get things done. Just

watch the dancing flames, and let them draw the thoughts out of you.

“Gary tried to give me a pep talk today,” Schmidt said at last.

“Talked for half an hour about how proud he was of what the old man

had built.”

“
That’s
a surprise,” Minelli said.

“Then,” Schmidt went on, “he started talking about what he wanted

to change. Said we’d built a great program here, but we needed to

improve our marketing.” Schmidt switched his voice into a nasal twang I

recognized as being a bad parody of Gary Von Schlager. “Gary said, `I

hope I’m not stepping on anyone’s sacred cows, but let me give you the

big picture in two words: Niche marketing.’

“`Now, now this academic program you got going here, that’s nice,

that’s very nice, I like that.’” Schmidt reared back, and raised a finger in

the air. He was beginning to imitate Gary’s gestures, too. “`But I put it

to you, who’s got the money?
Adults
. That’s where your real income

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opportunity is: Short-term paramilitary seminars for adults.’” Schmidt

shook his head, and lapsed back into his normal voice. “Then Gary

showed me a magazine article about the White Patriot’s Army of

Kentucky and said that’s who we should be pitching our program to.”

“Gah!” Feinstein cleared his throat, and spat.

Payne stirred the coals with a long stick. “How’d you react?”

Schmidt looked glum. “Let’s just say I was less than thrilled. So you

know what Gary said? He said, `Fine, well, that’s just an idea, okay?

Just thought I’d get your reaction. And here’s another one: You know,

you can actually improve profit potential by
raising
prices? Because,

y’see, perceived value is a function of limited availability.

“`So what I’m driving at is, I’d like to get your reaction to this new

concept I’ve got, sort of run it up the flagpole. How do you think the

staff would react if we changed admission standards? I mean right now

it’s kind of a freak of demographics that you’ve got an all-white campus.

But I figure we can get another thousand dollars per student/quarter if

we can
guarantee
parents their precious little boys won’t go to school

with kikes or darkies.’” Schmidt’s face looked like he’d just got a strong

whiff of old latrine.

Feinstein sank his head into his hands. “That does it,” he blurted out.

“I quit. Gary’s even more of a fascist than his old man was.”