Semper Human. Ian Douglas
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or more down in the deep benthic abyss. They genegineered a symbiotic species that could survive on land, to develop fire and industry and space travel. They helped us win the Battle of Starwall, and since then they’ve been among our closest allies. Incredible natural mathematicians. They’ve colonized perhaps two hundred worlds scattered throughout Associative space. Their latest project is this one … Eris, a newly terraformed world right here in Earth’s Solar System. Or, here’s an even better example …” She gestured again, and the images of Eris and the deep-sea Euler vanished, replaced by a world completely sheathed in dazzlingly white clouds … with just a hint of a dirty yellow cast to them. A second window opened within, showing … something. At first, Garroway thought he was looking at a crust of black, hardened lava, with streaks and veins of molten rock just visible beneath, glowing dull red. After a moment, he realized the black mass had a shape, albeit an irregular one, and things like flexible branches weaving in a searingly hot breeze.
If it was a sapient species, Garroway had never seen or heard of anything like it. He wasn’t even immediately sure that it was alive. The image shimmered and bent, as if viewed at a great depth, or within the fiery hell of a blast furnace. The background was a sulfurous red and yellow haze, obscuring vaguely glimpsed shapes that might have been spires of native rocks, or buildings.
“We call them Vulcans,” Schilling explained. “We don’t know what they call themselves. Their cultural conventions, their view of self, their worldview, all are quite different from ours. But they live within volcanic fissures on worlds like Venus. Surface temperature hot enough to melt lead, and an atmospheric pressure similar to what the Eulers enjoy. We were actually looking at the feasibility of terraforming Venus—a colossal project—but a couple of hundred years ago the Vulcans petitioned us to let them colonize instead. They live there now and like it, at pressures equivalent to the ocean deeps.”
Garroway stared at the black mass, which was oozing now into a slightly different shape. Did it have a native shape, or was it more of a crust-locked amoeba? He couldn’t tell. Were those branches manipulative members of some sort, or sensory organs, or something else entirely? Again, he couldn’t tell. “How can you trust them if you don’t even know what they call themselves?”
“The point is, General, they don’t want our kind of real estate. We have almost nothing in common with them. It’s far, far easier to terraform an outer dwarf planet like Eris or Sedna than it is to cool down a planet like Venus and give it a reasonable surface pressure, an atmosphere we could breathe. So they live on Venus, the Eulers live in Eris—they even have a small colony now in Tongue-of-the-Ocean, on Earth—and we’re scarcely aware of their activities. No borders. What would be the point?”
“Security. But I see what you mean about war being out of date,” he told her.
He wasn’t convinced that that could be true, however. Garroway tended to have a pessimistic view of human nature, one forged within a long career as a combat Marine and, as a general officer with dealing with politicians. In his opinion, Humankind could no more give up war than he could give up the ability to think.
“A war with the Eulers or the Vulcans is almost literally unthinkable,” she told him. “But the Xul aren’t competing for resources. They simply want us dead.”
“Of course. We’ve triggered their xenophobic reflex.”
“Exactly, sir. If the containment strategy isn’t working … and if they’re becoming more aware of us, well, we need you and your people, General. Like never before.”
As she spoke, Garroway was scanning through more of the download background and history. Civilians, including humans, had been attacked by locals in a gas giant called Dac IV. Anchor Marines had been sent in—the 340th Marine Strike Squadron. The situation was still unresolved, but it must be desperate. A request for a Globe Marine detachment had also been logged.
“What in hell,” he said slowly, “is an ‘Anchor Marine?’?”
“Marines who stay with the time stream,” she told him. “Like me.”
“And I’m a ‘Globe Marine?’?”
“Yes, sir. Our reserves in cybe-hibe.”
“Who thought up that nonsense?”
“Sir?”
“Marines are Marines, Captain. I don’t like this idea of two different sets of background, experience, or training.”
Here was another problem. Two months ago, a star lord at a place, an artificial habitat called Kaleed, had run into something he couldn’t handle, and requested Marines. No Anchor Marines had been available, and so the Lords of the Associative had decided to awaken a division of Globe Marines.
Apparently the third Marine Division was to be held on stand-by as the Lords monitored the situation.
“It was necessary, General,” Schilling explained. “Globe Marines need cultural liaisons, other Marines who are, well, anchored in the current background culture. Otherwise you’d be lost. There have been a lot of changes in both cultural norms and in technology since your day.”
“You’re making me feel positively ancient, Captain.”
But he understood the issue. When he’d last been active, over eight centuries ago, there’d already been a sharply drawn dichotomy between Marines and the civilian population they protected. Neither group understood the other. Neither could socialize well with the other. Neither could speak the other’s language. No wonder most Marines tended to find both family partners and sexual liaisons among others in the Corps. Marines might visit the local hot spots and brothels for a quick bit of fun, but longer and more solid relationships required a degree of mutual understanding with civilians that had become harder and harder to come by.
And it wasn’t just that Marines got into trouble with the locals on liberty. The politicians who requested Fleet Marines to put down an insurrection or show the fist to a local warlord didn’t understand them either. And that was where the problems really started chewing up the machinery.
“Okay,” Garroway said after a moment. “I understand all of that. We need babysitters. But why does the government need us at all if they have you?”
“We’re a caretaker force, sir, nothing more. The administrators. The personnel officers and logistics staff who make sure there is a Corps for you to wake up to.”
“But I see something here about Anchor combat units. …”
“Yes, sir. We have combat units, but they’re more placeholders than anything else. You are the real Fleet Marine Force.”
Garroway considered this. The Globe and Anchor was one of the oldest and most sacred talismans of the Corps, a symbol going back to the Royal Marines, who were the predecessors of America’s Continental Marines of 1775. It was an amusing idea, he decided, using globe and anchor to identify two different kinds of Marine … but the concept behind it disturbed him. Throughout the history of the Corps he knew, every Marine had known a single brotherhood, the Corps, each man and woman undergoing the same training, with the same traditions, the same language, the same background.
He found himself wondering if Captain Schilling was a real Marine, or something else—an imitation, a temporary stand-in for the real thing.
For centuries, Marine culture had been a distinct and self-contained entity in its own right. If cultural drift over the centuries had made the old Marines alien to the rest of Humankind, wouldn’t that alienness extend to these caretaker Marines as well?
“Every Marine is a rifleman, Captain,” he said.
“Pardon, sir?”
“Did you download that in training? I hope to hell you did, because if you didn’t the Corps has changed out of all recognition.”
“I don’t understand the word ‘rifleman,’ sir. Give me a second … oh.”
“The rifle