me by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-07-22T23:58:27+00:00

* * #

Well, it didn't seem that way. If the Real-Americans felt themselves honored, they didn't show it. They seemed if anything glummer than usual as they followed Jupe and the Governor back to the tidy green-decorated room where General Morton T. Marxman was being drawn back to the world of the living for their amusement. They didn't seem amused. "You know," Jupe whispered fiercely to the Governor, "these people aren't doing the right thing at all!"

The Governor gave him a bad look. Part of it was anger and part reprimand for daring to criticize his President ... but there was also a part that was agreement; for indeed things were not working out well. She said, "Be still for a while, Jupe. Let's get through this damned ceremonial anyway."

General Marxman had been taken out of his cocoon bed where monitors tested his blood and feces and urine and sweat and thoughtfully filtered out the bad parts from the blood and added the good parts he needed to keep what was left of his metabolism functioning, more or less. He had been reattached to the little shock-machine that reminded his heart when to beat and the gas-pipes that metered out what went into his lungs. He was reclining on his ceremonial couch, the one that propped him nearly half-sitting up and guarded him against falling.

He actually looked quite alive.

He could even talk, and he knew his lines. "Welcome," he rumbled. Some old men's voices get cracked and shrill— that's hardening collagen in their vocal cords. Some get deep and glottal, and that's better, so the medics in charge of General Marxman had selected for deep and impressive. His eyes were even open, though it was hard to tell what they were seeing, if anything. Taken all in all, he

looked about as much as a living general should as any museum reconstruction of an extinct species.

He even impressed the President, thought Jupiter proudly. At least Castor was clearly fumbling about for some appropriate statement. He glanced at Delilah for help, got none, took a deep breath, and improvised:

"Ah, General Marxman," he said, "we, uh, have come here to pay our respects to a great American hero. You," he added, to clarify the matter.

He paused for a response. He got none. The general appeared to be thinking that over.

That was normal enough, of course. Stimulants or none, since his stroke, the general did not move very rapidly, but Jupe knew that the best medical opinion believed that inside that head a brain still frequently functioned. He wondered what it was like to be trapped and helpless in a dying old body. He looked on the recumbent figure with pity and contempt; how could anybody let himself get old? Was it really possible that the general had once been a boy, a youth, a second lieutenant desperate to be admired, an astronaut, a colonel? (The general's rank Marxman had finally bestowed on himself—reasonably enough, as the only commissioned member of the United States Armed Forces within nearly forty light-years.

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