The Eternity Brigade

PART 1: EARTH-1

PART 1: EARTHHawker was one of the early ones.

The auditorium hadn’t been crowded when he sat down, but as ten o’clock approached the seats began filling up. Since nothing was happening up front, Hawker found himself constantly turning in his seat and craning his neck to look over the later arrivals. He was hoping there might be someone he recognized, someone to sit next to him and maybe talk with later about whatever this mysterious assignment was.

But the army was just too big, and he couldn’t possibly know everyone. Whatever obscure qualifications the army had used to pick the men for this briefing, Hawker fit them and his other acquaintances didn’t. It made him nervous. He still didn’t know what this was about, and their making him sign that nondisclosure agreement before he could attend only made it seem that much more ominous.

At a minute before ten there must have been close to a hundred men in the auditorium, although the room could have seated twice that number. The seats on either side of Hawker were still vacant. Then, at the last second, a sandy-haired young man made his way down the row and asked whether the seat on Hawker’s right was taken. Hawker admitted it wasn’t, and the fellow sat down.

They both rose to attention a few moments later as a captain entered the room and stood on the speaker’s platform. The captain asked them all to be seated again, and spent the next minute fidgeting through a sheaf of notes on the lectern. He was a thin man with a prissy Hitlerian mustache—a desk jobber, Hawker surmised, who’d probably never been near a battlefield in his life. By contrast, most of the audience looked to be front-liners—none of whom were much impressed by officers who shuffled paper. Hawker could almost read the collective thoughts of the audience: What kind of s**t do we have to sit through today?

The man next to Hawker leaned over and whispered, “Well, at least it won’t be another STD lecture—there’s nothing secret about those.”

Hawker nodded, and smiled in spite of his nervousness. He was wondering how he should reply when the captain began to speak.

“Is there anyone here who hasn’t signed one of these?” The captain held up a copy of the NDA Hawker had signed earlier. When there were no hands raised after a few seconds, the captain put the paper back on the bottom of his stack. “Good. Just remember what you signed. What I’m about to tell you is all classified ‘Secret’ at the moment. Whether you end up volunteering or not, you’ll still be bound by that oath. Any man who doesn’t think he can handle it had best leave now.”

“When he says it that way,” whispered the man on Hawker’s right, “nobody dares leave.”

The captain gazed out over the audience and, as Hawker’s neighbor predicted, no one got up from his seat. After a discreet pause, the captain continued once more, “Very well. Let me introduce myself. I’m Captain Dukakis, and I’m going to describe to you a project that will probably sound far-fetched, but it’s one we’ve given serious consideration and the army wants to give it a try. I must emphasize again that this is entirely voluntary, and no one will be forced to sign up for the program. I’m just going to tell you about it and let you decide for yourselves.

“As you all know, both from having been there and from reading all the criticism, the United States was badly prepared for the African Wars. We got sucked into it so quickly there was no way out, and we didn’t have enough well-trained men available. Part of the reason for those initial heavy losses was that our troops were inexperienced, and made stupid mistakes that combat veterans would never have made. We started out off-balance, and spent most of the war just getting back on our feet.

“In analyzing the problem, the Pentagon decided that the peacetime gap between ground wars was a major factor. For several decades we’d been able to avoid any major ground conflicts. We used air strikes to bomb our enemies into submission. Our soldiers were excellent in peacekeeper duties and skirmishes, but they couldn’t handle all-out warfare. Frankly, we were rusty. When the multiple crises hit us in Africa and it was time to fight, our troops made the same mistakes over and over again. They had to relearn the entire art of fighting in a hostile environment—and the lessons were costly ones.

“The African Wars are over now, and we’re once again at peace. But how long that peace will last is anybody’s guess. It could be a month, it could be a hundred years.”

“I’ll put my money on the shorter end of that scale,” whispered the soldier on Hawker’s right.

The captain continued his lecture, oblivious of the interruption. “Each of you men was carefully selected. Each of you saw fighting in Africa, and each of you served with distinction. Each of you served your tour there and signed up for a second. This indicated to us a certain dedication to your duty and your country that we wanted for this program.”

“All it indicates is we’re too stupid to get the hell out while the getting’s good,” commented the soldier beside Hawker. He was careful, though, that his voice didn’t carry to the captain.

Captain Dukakis was so engrossed in his notes that little short of an earthquake would have halted his progress. “We also had our computers search through thousands of personnel records, looking for people who exactly fit the profile we wanted. Every one of you in this room has already been thoroughly screened for the desirable characteristics.”

The captain paused and looked up briefly from his notes. “How many of you are familiar with the word ‘cryogenics’?”

The soldier next to Hawker put his hand up, along with a scattering of others. Hawker wasn’t one of them.

Captain Dukakis was not happy with such a small show of hands, because it meant he would have to explain. He took a deep breath and buried his head in his notes once more. “Essentially, cryogenics is the science of supercold, of freezing objects down close to absolute zero. In this particular case, we’re interested in freezing people.”

Hawker was expecting another wisecrack from his neighbor, but saw to his surprise that the soldier was leaning forward, interested in hearing more about this.

“What we hope to do,” Captain Dukakis went on, “is to reproduce artificially what some animals can do naturally. Bears, for instance, hibernate during the winter and emerge in the spring ready for action. We have found by experimentation that it’s possible to freeze a person’s body down to the point where he seems barely alive, and thaw him out again at a later date. In this suspended animation state, the subject does not age at all—at least, not perceptibly—and may be stored indefinitely; yet when he is quickened once more, he is as fresh as when he went in. His health is good, and there is no memory loss or brain damage. It’s as though he went to sleep and just woke up the next morning.”

The captain dimmed the lights at this point and showed a video, explaining the experiments portrayed. The audience watched various animals—mostly rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees—being placed in casketlike containers hooked up to endless amounts of scientific equipment. The captain did not describe the freezing process in detail, but there were a few quick shots of the monkeys lying peacefully in their coffins. Then there were scenes of the monkeys being revived once more. The earliest experiments had been for a few days, then a few weeks; eventually the scientists gained such confidence that one chimp had been kept in hibernation for two full years and then revived without any ill effects.

“Of course,” whispered the soldier on Hawker’s right, “they’re not showing us all the monkeys that died along the way.”

The video went on to document the experiments done with human subjects, prison inmates who’d volunteered to undergo the hibernation treatment in return for lessened sentences. Tests had so far shown that men could be frozen for six months with no ill effects whatsoever. Men were shown after their experience, walking and talking normally, taking various verbal and physical tests. Interviews showed that the men felt as though they’d only been asleep overnight, and were quite stunned to learn that six months had passed.

And, Dukakis pointed out proudly, not a single human subject was harmed by the experiment. The army, he was sure, had the process down cold.

He was quite startled by the mild laughter that greeted his remark. He hadn’t realized he was making a pun, and it took a moment for him to realized what he’d said.

The lights came on again as the video ended, and Dukakis returned to his lectern. “This, as you may have guessed, is the army’s answer to the problem of how to keep enough trained soldiers on hand during peacetime, without letting their skills deteriorate. By freezing our best soldiers at the end of one war and reviving them to fight in the next, we maintain a sense of continuity that is otherwise impossible to achieve. A man in the state of suspended animation can be expected to age about one day during the course of a year, so that even a gap of a decade or more is no hardship.

“You men have been selected to participate in this experiment, if you choose to volunteer. You would be placed in suspended animation until you are needed, then revived and sent out for a tour of combat duty. You would each be put in charge of a squad, so that your experience could be used to train newer soldiers in the field.”

He paused and cleared his throat. “Let me run through the risks one more time. We have a perfect record with freezing men for up to six months. We propose to freeze you for what might be a considerably longer period. We will, of course, monitor each individual for signs of trouble, and revive him instantly if anything goes wrong. Nevertheless, there might be some slight chance that something could go wrong and we wouldn’t know about it until we wake you up.

“When you are revived, you go into combat like any other soldier, and you face the same risks of death that you always did—except that you’ll be more experienced than most of the people around you, which hopefully will give you an edge. After your tour of duty, you will be discharged with the army’s gratitude for a job well done.”

Captain Dukakis paused once more and looked out over the audience. “Are there any questions?”

“Yeah,” said a soldier in the first row. “What’s in it for us?”

“Oh, did I forget to mention it? There’s a bonus of….” He shuffled through his papers to find the appropriate figure. “…of thirty-one thousand, seven hundred dollars. That includes the standard re-enlistment bonus plus a special hazard bonus. You get the money plus a three-week leave before reporting back to begin the experiments. We think that’s eminently fair.”

The audience was buzzing as the men started talking among themselves. The thought of having close to thirty-two thousand dollars to go on a three-week spree was tempting—and as for risks, they had certainly faced worse ones on the front lines in Africa.

After a moment’s thought, the soldier next to Hawker raised his hand. Captain Dukakis waited until the noise in the room died down a bit, then nodded acknowledgment.

“What about our pay?” Hawker’s neighbor asked. “Do we earn our regular salaries all during the time we’re in suspended animation?”

Captain Dukakis looked uncomfortable. It was clear he’d hoped no one would think of that point. “It, uh, it’s something that can be negotiated.”

“It damn well better be. Sir.”

There were quiet murmurs of agreement in the crowd as each soldier began computing how much he might possibly earn while he “slept.” The financial rewards were looking better every minute. To try to take their minds off that, Dukakis hastily recognized another questioner.

“You say we’ll be frozen until there’s another war,” one man said. “What if there isn’t another one?”

The remark drew a general laugh and assorted catcalls, but the soldier persisted. “No, I’m serious. What if there’s a sort of uneasy peace from now on and no real fighting breaks out? Do we just stay frozen forever?”

“There is a definite maximum term,” Captain Dukakis replied. “We would revive you in no more than fifteen years, whether there’s a war or not.”

“They probably couldn’t afford more than that,” Hawker’s neighbor whispered. “I’d have to check a table of compound interest for exact numbers, but even if they only kept us out for ten years, we’d each wake up with a small fortune—and we’d still be young enough to enjoy it, if we survived that war too.”