Billingsworth watched the couple having sex on the hillside a moment longer, then used his cerebralink to signal the robocar, stood, and walked toward the Fourteenth Street entrance to meet it.
He was sweating, despite the Mall’s air-conditioning, and his breath was coming in short, hard gasps. Damn it, he had to find a way to guarantee better privacy for his meetings in the future.
8
24 JUNE 2138
DI’s Office, Company 1099
U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Center
Parris Island, South Carolina
0920 hours ET
“Garroway! Center yourself on the hatch!”
Garroway leaped into the DI’s office, moving at the dead run that had been demanded of him and all of his fellow recruits in Company 1099 since the day they’d arrived at Parris Island.
“Sound off!” Gunnery Sergeant Makowiecz barked without looking up from his desk display.
“Sir!” Garroway snapped back as the toes of his boots hit the white line painted on the deck and he came to rigid attention, eyes locked firmly on an ancient water stain on the cinder-block bulkhead above and behind the DI’s left shoulder. “Recruit Garroway reporting to the drill instructor as ordered, sir!”
“Recruit,” Makowiecz said, his voice still as razor-edged as a Mamaluk sword, “your indoctrination classes are complete and you are about to enter phase one of your training. Are you fully aware of what this entails?”
“Sir! This recruit understands that he will be required to surrender all technical and data prostheses still resident within his body, sir!”
“Well quoted, son. Right out of the book. Stand at ease.”
The sudden change in his DI’s manner was so startling that Garroway nearly fell off his mark. Almost reluctantly, muscle by muscle, he relaxed his posture.
“Why do you want to be a Marine, son?” Makowiecz asked.
“Sir, this recruit—”
“Belay the third person crap,” Makowiecz told him. “This is off the record, just you and me. You’ve seen enough of boot camp now that you must have an idea of how rough this is going to be. You are about to go through twelve weeks of sheer hell. So … why are you putting yourself through this?”
Garroway hesitated. He felt like he was just starting to get the hang of automatic recitations in the third person—“this recruit”—and it somehow didn’t seem fair for the DI to suddenly come at him as though he were a normal, thinking human being. It left him feeling off balance, disoriented.
“Sir,” he said, “all I can say is that this is what I’ve wanted ever since I heard stories from my mother about my great-grandfather.”
Makowiecz placed his palm on a white-lit panel on his desk, accessing data through his c-link. “Your great-grandfather is one of the Names of the Corps,” he said. “Manila John Basilone. Dan Daly. Presley O’Bannon. Chesty Puller. Sands of Mars Garroway. That’s pretty good company. His name is a damn fine legacy.
“But you know and I know that there’s more to being a Marine than a name …”
He paused, waiting expectantly, and Garroway knew he was supposed to say something. “Sir … this recruit … I mean, I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I can’t go back to what I was. Sir.”
“You have an abusive father.”
The change of topic was so sudden, Garroway didn’t know how to respond. “Uh, it’s not that bad, sir. Not sexual abuse or anything like that. He just—”
“I’m not interested in the details, son. But hear me, and hear me loud and clear. All abusive behavior by parents or stepparents or line-marriage parents—or by anyone else in authority over a kid, for that matter—does incalculable damage. Doesn’t matter if it was sexual abuse or physical abuse with routine beatings or ‘just’ emotional abuse with screaming fits and head games. And it doesn’t matter if the adult is alcoholic or addicted to c-link sex feeds or is just a thoroughgoing abusive asshole. It’s really impossible to say which is worse, which kid gets hurt the most, because every kid is different and responds to the abuse in different ways.”
“My father yelled a lot,” Garroway said, “but he never hit me. Uh, not deliberately, anyway.” He didn’t add that Carlos Esteban had hit his mother, frequently, and threatened more than once to do the same to him, or that he was an alcoholic who’d disabled the court-appointed cybercontrols over his behavior.
“Doesn’t matter. It says here your mother has filed for divorce. She’s out of the house?”
“Yes, sir. She’s staying with a sister in California now.”
“Good. She’s better off out of this guy’s way, and you’ll be better off knowing she’s okay.” He got a faraway look in his eyes as he scrutinized the data feed flowing through his link. “It says here you were hospitalized once with a dislocated shoulder after a domestic altercation.”
“That was an accident, sir.”
“Uh-huh.” The sergeant didn’t sound at all convinced. “Your father has been cited seven times … domestic violence … disturbing the peace … assault … This bastard should have been locked away and rehabbed a long time ago.”
“There are … political factors, sir. He’s a pretty big man in Sonora, where we live. He’s good friends with the local sheriff and with the governor.”
“Shit. Figures.”
“Sir … I don’t understand where this is going. Are you saying I’m not qualified to be a Marine because my father—”
“You’re qualified, son. Don’t worry about that. What we’re concerned about right now is your c-link. Your implant is a Sony-TI 12000 Series Two Cerebralink.”
“Uh, yessir. It was a birthday present from my parents.”
“Do you have a resident AI?”
“A personality, you mean? No, sir.” Most cerebralinks had onboard AI, for net navigation if nothing else. He didn’t have one with a distinct personality, though. His father hadn’t believed in that sort of thing.
“Cybersex partner?”
“Uh … no …” He’d linked into a number of sex sites, of course, for a few hours of play with various fantasy partners. Everyone did that. But he didn’t have a regular playmate.
“Cyberpet?”
“No, sir.” His father had been pretty insistent about his not having any artificial personalities—a waste of time and money, Carlos had said, and a threat to his immortal soul—and he’d done a lot of e-snooping to make sure his orders were obeyed.
“What did you do for companionship?”
“Well … there’s my girlfriend. …”
“Lynnley Collins. Yes. You’re pretty close with her?”
“Yes, sir.”
“A fuck buddy? Or something closer?”
“She’s a friend. Sir.” He had to bite back his rising anger. This kind of cross-examination was the sort of thing his father did, stripping him of any semblance of privacy.
Of course, he’d known he would be surrendering most of his privacy rights when he signed up. But this prying, this spying into his private life … damn