ROBERT SILVERBERG

THE LAST SURVIVING VETERAN OF THE WAR OF SAN FRANCISCO

*
All you have to do to become a hero is live long enough

The city on the other side of the bay was putting on its best show that morning:
shimmering and glorious in the clear December sunlight. Lovely old San
Francisco, capital of the Empire, now and always. Carlotta, readying her
great-great-multi-great-uncle for his first trip over there in forty-three
years, looked up to take in the view from the picture window of the Berkeley War
Veterans Center, where he was the only remaining resident: green hills rising
far into the distance, the twentieth-century white towers of the downtown closer
in, the sparkling, lacy roadbed of the New Bay Bridge, running parallel to the
majestic stumps of the old one.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she said, turning him in his swivelseat so he could have a
look at it, too.

"What?"

"The city. San Francisco. You see it there, don't you?" She touched the visuals
node that jutted like a tiny titanium mushroom from his left temple, giving it a
quarter turn. Maybe the sharpness was off a little. Sometimes the old man
fiddled with his nodes while he slept. "We're going across in a little while."

"All the way to the city, are we?"

"You know. For the ceremony. The anniversary of the end of the war. They're
going to give you a medal. Don't tell me you've forgotten already."

The timeless face, leathery but supple, stretched and twisted like taffy,
rearranging its sallow sagging folds into a smile. "The war's over? I'm a
civilian again?"

"You bet you are, Uncle."

The wrinkled eyelids made three or four quick traversals of the hazel-colored
fiberglass bundles that were his optical inputs.

"When did all that happen?"

"The war's been over for a hundred years, Uncle James. A hundred years today."

"No shit!" Muscle stalks moved slowly around in the crepey convolutions of his
cheeks. "Imagine that. A hundred years. That's one goddamn long time." Then he
said, after a moment, "Who won?"

"We did, Uncle."

"We did? You sure?"

"We're still a free country, aren't we? Nobody tells the Empire of San Francisco
what to do, do they? We're the most powerful country in Northern California,
isn't that so?"

e digested that. "Yeah. Yeah, of course we won. I knew that. Really I did." He
sounded a little doubtful. He generally did. Well, he had a right. He was one
hundred forty-three years old, give or take a few months, and most of him was 
machinery now, practically everything except the soggy old grey brain behind his
optical inputs. His wrists were silicon elastomer, his femurs were polyurethane
and cobalt-chromium, his eardrums were Teflon and platinum, his metacarpal
joints were silicone with titanium grommets. His elbows had plastic bushings;
his abdominal walls were Dacron. And so on, on and on. Why anyone wanted to keep
seniors alive that long was more than Carlotta could figure out. Or why the
seniors wanted to be kept. But she was only nineteen. She allowed for the
possibility that she might take a different view of things when she got to be as
old as he was.

"We're just about ready to go, now. Let's do the checkout, all right?"
Obediently he held out his arm. She opened his instrument panel and began keying 
in the life-support readouts that ran like a row of bright metal tacks from his
wrist to his elbow. "Respiratory--circulatory-- metabolic--catabolic--there,
that's a good reading--audio appercept--optical appercept--biochip
automaintain-- aminos-- hemoglobin--enzyme release--glucose level..."

There were two dozen of them, some of them pretty trivial. But Carlotta 
diligently ran down the whole list, tapping in a query and getting a 
green from each little readout plate. It took close to ten minutes. 
The newer-model senior-rehab equipment had just a single readout, which 
gave you a go or a no go, and if you got the no go you could 
immediately request data on specific organic or pseudo-organic 
malfunctions. But Uncle James was one of the early models, and there 
was no money in the rehab budget for updating citizens left over from 
the previous century.

"You think I'll live?" he asked her, suddenly feisty.

"For another five hundred years, minimum."

Quickly, deftly, she finished the job of making him ready to go out. She
disconnected the long intravenous line from the wall and put him on 
portable. She disabled his chair control override so that she alone
could guide the movements of his vehicle via the remote implant in her
palm. She locked the restraining bars in place across his chest to 
keep him from attempting some sudden berserk excursion on foot out 
there. More than ever now, the old man was the prisoner of his own 
life-support system.

Just as she finished the job Carlotta felt a strange inner twisting and 
jolting as though an earthquake had struck: the unexpected, sickening 
sensation ot seeing herself in his place, old and withered and shrunken 
and mostly artificial, feeble and helpless in the grip of a life-support. 
Her long slender legs had turned into pretzels, her golden hair was thin
colorless straw, her smooth oval face was a mass of dry valleys and 
crevasses. Her eyebrows were gone, her chin jutted like some old 
witch's. The only recognizable aspect of her was her clear blue eyes, 
and those, still bright, still quick and sharp, glared out of her ruined
face carrying such a charge of hatred and fury that they burned 
through the air in front of her like twin lasers, leaving trails of white
smoke.

Not me, she thought. Not ever, not like that.

She pressed down hard on her palm implant and sent the old man's chair
rolling toward the door, which opened at his approach. And out they
went into the hallway.

Carlotta had been working as a nurse at the center for a year and a half,
ever since she'd left high school. It wasn't the kind of work she had 
hoped for. She had imagined doing something with singing in it, or 
music, or maybe acting, at least. When she had first come to the 
center there had still been seven veterans living there and a staff of 
twelve, but one by one the old guys had undergone random system
malfunctions, probabilistic events that became statistically unavoidable 
the deeper you got into your second century, and now only Uncle James 
was left, the last survivor of the army of the War of San Francisco.
The staff was down to four: Dr. McClintock, the director; three nurses. 
But everybody understood that when Uncle James finally went they'd all 
lose their jobs.

That morning, when Carlotta showed up, there was a note from Sanchez, 
the night nurse, waiting for her in the staff room. GOD HELP YOU IF 
ANYTHING HAPPENS TO YOUR UNCLE IN THE CITY TODAY.

"Hot weather today," Uncle James said, as they emerged from the 
building. "Very nice for December, yes."

"Hot. Not just nice. Hot. It must be a hundred degrees."

"A hundred's impossible, Uncle. It doesn't get that hot even in Death 
Valley. A hundred and the whole world would melt." 

"Bullshit. It was a hundred degrees the day the war started. Everyone 
remembers that. The fourteenth of October, hot as blazes, a hundred 
degrees smack on the nose at three in the afternoon. When those Nazi 
Stukas started coming over the horizon like bats out of hell."

"Nazis?" she said. "What Nazis?"

"The invading force. Hitler's Wehrmacht."

"That was a different war, Uncle. A long time before even you were 
born."

"Don't be so smart. Were you there? Like eagles, they were, those 
planes. Merciless. They strafed us for hours in that filthy heat. Blam! 
Blam! Chk-chk-chk-chk-chk! Blam!" He glowered up at her. "And it's a 
hundred degrees right now, too. If you don't think so, you're wrong. I
know what a hundred degrees feels like."

The temperature that morning was about eighteen, maybe twenty. Very nice
for December, yes. But then Carlotta realized that the degrees he was 
talking about were the old kind, the Fahrenheit kind. One hundred on 
the old scale might be forty or forty-five real degrees, she figured. But 
he might be having some appercept trouble, or maybe even a boil-over 
in the metabolism line. She leaned over and checked the master chair
readout. Everything looked okay. He must just be excited about getting 
to go to the city.

The car that the Armistice Centennial people had sent was waiting out
front. It had a hinged gate and a wheelchair ramp so she could roll him
right into it. The driver looked like an android, though he probably 
wasn't. Uncle James sat quietly, murmuring to himself, as the car
pulled away from the curb and headed down the hill toward the freeway.

"We in the city yet?" he asked, after a time. "We're just reaching the
bridge, Uncle."

"The bridge is broken. That was the first thing they bombed in the war."

"There's a new bridge now," Carlotta said. The new bridge was older
than she was, but she didn't see much purpose in telling him that. 
She swung him around to face the window and pointed it out to him, a 
delicate, flexible ribbon of airy suspension cable swaying in the 
breeze. It was like a bridge of glass. The shattered pylons of the old 
bridge that rose from the bay alongside it seemed as ponderous as
dinosaur thighs. 

"Some bridge," he muttered. "Looks like a piece of rope."

"It'll get us there," she told him.

According to the center records, he had been taken to San Francisco for
his hundredth birthday, He hadn't been much of anywhere since. Just 
sitting in his chair, doing nothing, living on and on. If you called that
living. Old James had outlasted his son by more than a century-he had
been killed at the age of something like twenty-two in the War of San
Francisco, during the raid by the Free State of Mendocino. He had 
outlived his grandson, too, victim of an unexplained sniper attack while
visiting Monterey, Hell of a thing, to outlive your own grandson. 
James's closest relative was his great-granddaughter, who lived in Los 
Angeles and hadn't come north in decades, And then Carlotta.

She felt sorry for the old man. And yet he had managed to have one 
big thing in his life: the war. That was something. His one moment of glory,

Her life had had nothing in it at all, so far, except the uneventful 
getting from age zero to age nineteen, and that was how it looked to 
remain. The world was pretty empty, locally, these days. You couldn't 
expect much when you lived in a country thirty miles across, that you 
could drive from one end of to the other in an hour, if you could 
drive. At least Uncle James had had a war.

They were on the bridge now, meshed with its transport cable, whizzing
westward at a hundred kilometers per hour. Carlotta pointed out 
landmarks on the way, in case he had forgotten them. "There's Alcatraz
Island, do you see? And that's Mount Tamalpais, away across on the 
Marin County side. And back over there, behind us, you can see the 
whole East Bay, Oakland, Berkeley, El Cerrito . . . "

The old man seemed interested. He responded with a jumble of military 
history, hazy memories intermixed with scrambled details out of the 
wrong wars, "The Mendocino people came in right through there, where the 
San Rafael bridge used to be, maybe two hundred of them. We fixed 
their wagons. And then the Japs, General Togo and Admiral Mitsubishi, 
but we drove them back, we nuked their asses right out of here, Then a 
week afterward there was a raid by San Jose, came up through Oakland, 
we stopped them by the Alameda Tunnel-no, it was the bridge-the bridge,
right, we held them, they were cursing at us in gook and when we went 
in to clear them out we found that Charlie had planted Bouncing 
Betties everywhere, you know, antipersonnel mines . . . "

She didn't know what he was talking about, but that was all right. Most of
the time she didn't know what he was talking about, nor, she suspected, 
did he. It didn't matter. He rambled on and on.

The bridge crossing took ten minutes-- there was hardly any 
traffic--and then they were gliding down the ramp into the city.

Carlotta felt a little wave of excitement stirring within her. Approaching
the city could do that to you. It was so lovely, shining in the bright 
sunlight with the waters of the bay glittering all around. A place of such
infinite promise and mystery.

Let me have an adventure while I'm over there, she prayed. Let me 
meet someone. Let something really unusual happen, okay?

She hadn't been in the city herself in six or eight months. You tended not 
to, without some special reason. If only she could park the old man for a 
couple of hours and go off to have some fun, see the clubs, maybe check
out the new styles, meet someone lively. But that wasn't going to 
happen. She had to stick close by Uncle James. At least she was here, 
a perfect day, blue sky, warm breezes blowing. The city was where
everything that was of any interest in Northern California went on, It was
the capital of the Empire of San Francisco, and the Empire was the 
center of the action, Everything else was small-time, even if the small-time
places wanted to give themselves fancy names: the Republic of Monterey, the 
Free State of Mendocino, the Royal Domain of San Jose. Once upon a 
time, of course, it had all been a lot different.

"San Francisco," Carlotta said. "Here we are, Uncle!"

They came off the bridge at the downtown off-ramp. There were bright 
banners everywhere, the imperial colors, green and gold. Crowds were in 
the streets, waving little flags. Carlotta heard the sound of a brass 
band somewhere far away, The driver was taking them up the Embarcadero 
now, around toward the plaza at Market Street, where the Emperor was 
going to preside over the ceremony in person. Because theirs was just
about the only car in the vicinity, the spectators had figured out that
someone important must be riding in it, and they were cheering and waving.

"Wave, Uncle! They're cheering you. Here, let me help you." She touched 
her finger to his motor control and his right arm came stiffly up, fingers 
clenched. A little fine tuning and she had the fingers open, the palm turned
outward, the arm moving back and forth in a nice sprightly wave.

"Smile at them," she told him. "Be nice. You're a hero."

"A hero, yes. Purple Heart. Distinguished Service Cross. Croix de Guerre.
You ought to see my medals sometime. I've got a box full of them." He
was leaning forward, peering out the car window, smiling as hard as he 
could. His arm jerked convulsively; he was trying to move it himself. 
Good for him. She let him override her control. He waved with surprising 
energy, a jerky wave, almost robotic, but at least he was doing it under
his own power.

They had a big platform made out of polished redwood up at the plaza,
with a crowd of VIPs already there. As the car approached, everyone made
room for it, and when it halted just in front of the platform Carlotta 
hopped out and guided Uncle James's chair down the car's wheelchair ramp 
and into the open.

"Ned Townes," a fat sandy-haired man with a thick brown mustache told
her, pushing his face into hers. "Imperial adjutant. Splendid of you to 
come. What a grand old soldier he is!" He gave Uncle James a sidelong
glance. "Can he hear anything I say?" He leaned down next to Uncle 
James's ear and in a booming voice he bellowed, "Welcome to San 
Francisco, General Crawford! On behalf of His Imperial Majesty Norton the
Fourteenth, welcome to-"

Uncle James shot him a withering scowl.

"You don't have to shout like that, boy," Uncle James said. "I can 
fucking well hear better than you can."

Townes reddened, but he managed a laugh. "Of course. Of course."

Carlotta said, "Is the Emperor here yet?"

"In a little while. We're running a bit late, you understand. If you and 
the general will take seats over there until we're ready to call him up to 
receive his medal-- well, of course, he's seated already, but you know what
I- "

"Aren't we going to sit on the platform?" Carlotta asked.

"I'm afraid it's reserved for city officials and dignitaries."

She didn't move. "Uncle James is a dignitary. We came all the way 
from Berkeley for this, and if you're going to shunt him into some corner
for hours and hours while you-"

"Please," Townes said.

"He's a hundred forty-three years old, do you realize that?"

"Please," he said. "Bear with me." He looked ready to cry. "The 
Emperor himself will personally decorate him. But until then, I have to ask
you . . . "

He seemed so desperate that Carlotta gave in. She and Uncle James went
into a roped-off area just below and to the left of the platform. 
Uncle James didn't seem to mind. He sat quietly, lost in dreams of God 
knows what moment of antique heroism, while Carlotta, standing behind 
his chair, kept one eye on his systems reports and took in the sights of
downtown San Francisco with the other, the huge tapering buildings, the
radiant blue sky, the unusual trees, the shining bridge stretching off to
the east.

Uncle James said suddenly, "What are all these foreigners doing here?"

"Foreigners? What foreigners?"

"Look around you, girl."

She thought at first that he meant people from the neighboring republics 
and kingdoms: San Jose, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Mendocino. It wouldn't be 
surprising that they'd be here, considering that this was a celebration 
intended to commemorate the signing of the Armistice that had ended the 
war of everybody against everybody and guaranteed the independence of 
all the various Northern California nations. But how could Uncle James 
tell a Santa Cruzian or a Montereyan from a San Franciscan? They didn't 
look any different down there. They didn't dress any different.

Then she realized that he meant visitors from the countries beyond the
seas. And indeed there were plenty of them all around the plaza, a lot of
exotic people carrying cameras and such, Japanese, Indians, Latin 
Americans, Africans. They were wearing exotic clothing, most of them. Many
had exotic faces. The old man was staring at them as though he had 
never seen tourists before.

"San Francisco is always full of visitors from far away, Uncle. There's 
nothing new about that."

"So many of them. Gawking at us like that. They dress like gooks, 
girl. Didn't we fight that war to keep San Francisco for the San 
Franciscans? A pure nation of pure people. Look at them all. Look at
them!"

"It's the most beautiful city in the world," Carlotta said. "People 
have been coming from all over to see it for hundreds of years. You know
that. There's nothing wrong with-" 

He was raging, though. "Yellow people! Black people! Brown people! Why
not green people, too? Why not purple people? Their faces! Their eyes!
And the clothes they wear! Who let them in? What are they all doing here?"

"Uncle," she said, reaching down surreptitiously to give his adrenaline 
damper a little downtwist. your country, its greatness, its downfall. To 
speak with the general, to hear from his lips the reminiscences of 
his days of battle, the actual descriptions of the warfare-it would be 
ecstasy for me. Ecstasy. Do you understand my words?"

"His Imperial Highness Norton the Fourteenth!" cried a man with an
enormous voice. Carlotta looked around. A ground-effect palanquin 
bedecked with gaudy banners was floating solemnly up the street toward 
the plaza.

"You've got to go now," Carlotta said. "Look, the Emperor's arriving."

"But later, perhaps?"

"Well-"

"It is for the sacred purpose of scholarship only. Half an hour to speak
with this great man-"

"All welcome His Imperial Highness!" the immense voice called. "Later," 
the Brazilian said urgently. "Please!" He slipped under the rope and 
was gone.

Carlotta shrugged. If the Brazilian only knew that nothing Uncle James 
said made sense, he wouldn't be so eager. She turned to stare at the 
Emperor, atop his palanquin. She had never seen him live before. The 
Emperor was a surprisingly small man, very frail, about fifty, with pale
skin and tiny hands, which he held extended to the crowd in a kind 
of imperial blessing. The palanquin, drifting a little ways above the 
pavement, came forward to the reviewing stand and halted like an 
obedient elephant. Members of the imperial guard helped him out, and up
the stairs of the platform to the position of honor.

Someone began a long droning speech of welcome. The mayor of San
Francisco, Carlotta supposed. It went on and on, this grand occasion, this 
triumphant day of the commemoration of the hundred-year peace, on and 
on and on, yawn and yawn and yawn. The foreigners' cameras and 
recorders whirred diligently. Uncle James seemed to be asleep. Carlotta's 
attention wandered. Now and then a cheer rose from the assembled citizens.

She could see the sleek Brazilian in the crowd. He was staring at the 
old man as though he were a mound of emeralds. Then he noticed Carlotta 
watching him, and he flicked his gaze toward her, letting his eyes rest on 
her in a warm insinuating way, and smiled a sleek smile that gave her
shivers. As if he was buying her with that smile.

What did he want, really? Just to talk?

Uncle James was awake again. Instead of looking at the Emperor, who
had begun to speak in response to the mayor's oration, he was peering at
the rows of foreign tourists, gaping at them as though they came not 
merely from other continents but from other planets. In a way, Carlotta
thought, they did. Who could get to Japan or Brazil or Nigeria from 
here? They come to us; we don't go to them. It used to be different, 
she knew. Hundreds of years ago, before everything fell apart, when 
America had been all one country of incomprehensible size that 
stretched from ocean to ocean, its citizens had gone everywhere in the 
world. But now there were thousands of little principalities where
America had been, and no one went anywhere much.

"A century ago," the Emperor was saying, "the fate of this entire area 
was at stake. Every man's hand was raised against his neighbor. Cities 
that long had lived in peace had gone to war against their fellow 
cities. But then, on this day exactly one hundred years ago, the 
climactic battle of the War of San Francisco was fought. This city 
and its valiant allies in the East Bay and Marin stood firm against the 
invaders from the outlying lands. And on that day of triumph, when the
peace and security of the Empire of San Francisco was made certain
forever-"

"Start moving the old man up to the top of the platform," Ned Townes
whispered. "He's going to get his medal now. "

Uncle James was asleep again. Carlotta gave him a little adrenaline jolt.

"It's time, Uncle," she whispered.

They had a ramp around back. She touched her palm control and the 
wheelchair began to glide up it. The big moment at last.

The Emperor smiled, shook Uncle James's hand the way he would shake a
turkey's claw, said a few words, this gallant survivor, this embodiment 
of history, this remnant of our glorious past, and put a sash around 
his neck. At the end of the sash there was a mud-colored medal the
size of a cookie, which seemed to have a portrait of the Emperor on
it. That was it. Carlotta found herself wheeling Uncle James down the
ramp a moment later. Evidently the old man wasn't expected to say 
anything in reply. They couldn't even stay on the platform.

For this they had traveled all the way from Berkeley? "Will you find us 
our driver?" she said to Ned Townes. "We might as well go back home now."

Townes looked shocked. "Oh, no! You can't do that. There are further 
ceremonies, and then a banquet at the palace this afternoon for all the
celebrities."

"Uncle James doesn't eat banquet food. And he's getting very tired."

"Even so. It would be terrible if you left now." Townes tugged at his
jowls. "Look, stay another hour, at least. You can't just grab the 
medal and disappear. That's the Emperor up there, young lady."

"I don't give a damn if he's-"

But Townes was gone. The Emperor was awarding another medal, this time
to a wide-shouldered woman who already was wearing an assortment of 
decorations that had a glittery Southern California look about them.

"Permit me," a deep confident voice said. The Brazilian again. Leaning 
over the rope, tapping her on the shoulder. Carlotta had forgotten all
about him.

"Is it possible to discuss, now, an opportunity for me to record the great 
general's reminiscences, perhaps?"

"Look, we don't have time for that. I just want to get my uncle out of 
here and back across the bay."

He looked distressed. "But before you leave-half an hour fifteen minutes
. . . "

She glanced down at the emerald ring. A gleam came into her eyes. 
"There's a fee, you know. For his time. We can't just let him talk to
people for free."

"Yes. Yes, of course. Why should there not be a fee? It is no problem. 
We will discuss it." He offered her an engraved card, holding it close in 
front of her face as if he wasn't sure she knew how to read and holding 
it close might help. "This is my name. I am at the Imperial Hotel. You
know that hotel? You will come to me when this is over? With the general?
You agree?"

"Sorry, sir," a marshal said. "This area is for official guests only."

"Of course, Understood." The Brazilian began to back away, nodding, 
bowing, smiling brilliantly. To Carlotta he said, "I will see you later? Yes? 
I am very grateful. Obrigado! Obrigado!" He disappeared into the crowd of
foreign visitors. Behind her, on the reviewing stand, the Emperor was 
giving a medal to a man in a uniform of the San Jose Air Force.

It was almost noon now. People were coming out of the nearby office
buildings. Some of them were carrying sandwiches. Carlotta began to 
feel fiercely hungry. Townes had talked about a banquet that afternoon, but
the afternoon seemed a long way away. Uncle James got fed by intravenous 
line, but she needed real food, and soon, Emperor or no Emperor, she had to 
get out of here, and Townes could go whistle. Maybe the thing to do was
find the Brazilian, strike a deal with him, let him take her to his hotel
and buy her lunch. And then he could interview Uncle James all he wanted,
so long as the old man's strength held out.

All right, she thought. Let's get moving.

But where had the Brazilian gone?

She didn't see him anywhere. Leaving Uncle James to look after himself
for a moment, she slipped under the rope and went over to the place 
where the foreign visitors were clustered, No, no sign of him. People began 
to jabber at her and take her picture. She brushed her hand through 
the air as though they were a cloud of gnats. Producing the Brazilian's
card, she said. to no one in particular, "Have you seen Humberto-Humberto
Jose de Magal Magal " It was a struggle to pronounce his name.

He must have gone, though. Perhaps he was on his way to his hotel, to 
wait for them.

She rushed back to Uncle James. Some people had crept into the 
roped-off area and were pushing microphones into his face again. Angrily
Carlotta hit her palm control, backing up his wheelchair and pulling it
toward her right through the flimsy rope. At a brisk pace she headed 
across the street to the parking area where she hoped their driver was
waiting. Ned Townes, red-faced, materialized from somewhere and 
furiously wigwagged at her, but she smiled and waved and nodded and 
kept on going. He shouted something to her but didn't pursue.

The driver, miraculously, was still there. "Imperial Hotel," she said. 

"Where?"

"Imperial Hotel. Downtown, somewhere."

"I'm supposed to take you back to the East Bay."

"First we have to go to the Imperial. There's a reception there for 
my great-uncle."

The driver, sullen, androidal, looked right through her and said, "I 
don't know about no reception. I don't know no Hotel Imperial. You're 
supposed to go to the East Bay."

"First we stop at the Imperial," she said, "They're expecting us. I'll
show you how to get there," she told him grandly. 

To her amazement he yielded, swinging the car around in a petulant 
U-turn and shooting off toward Market Street. Carlotta studied the signs 
on the buildings, hoping to find a marquee that proclaimed one of them 
to be the Imperial, but there were no hotels here at all, only office 
buildings. They turned right, turned left again, started up a steep
hill.

"This is Chinatown," the driver said. "That where your hotel is?"

"Turn left," she said.

That took them down toward Market Street again, and across it. At a 
stoplight she rolled down the window and called out, "Does anyone know 
where the Imperial Hotel is?" Blank faces stared at her. She might 
just as well have been speaking Greek or Arabic. The driver, on his 
own, turned onto Mission Street, took a left a few blocks later, turned
left again soon after. Carlotta looked around desperately. This was a 
district of battered old warehouses. She caught sight of a sign directing 
traffic to the Bay Bridge and for a moment decided that it was best 
to forget about the Brazilian and head for home, when unexpectedly a 
billboard loomed up before them, a glaring six-color solido advertising,
of all things, the Imperial Hotel. They were right around the corner from
it, apparently.

The Imperial was all glass and concrete, with what looked like giant 
mirrors at its summit, high overhead. It must have been two or three 
hundred years old. They hadn't built buildings like that in San 
Francisco for a long time. Carlotta got Uncle James out of the car, 
told the driver to wait across the street, and signaled to a doorman
to help them go inside.

"I'm here to see this man," she announced, producing Magalhaes's card. 
"We have an appointment. Tell him that General James Crawford is 
waiting for him in the lobby," 

The doorman seemed unimpressed. "Wait here," he said. Carlotta waited a 
long time. Uncle James muttered restlessly.

Some hotel official appeared, studied the Brazilian's card, studied her, 
murmured something under his breath, went back inside. What did they 
think she was, a prostitute? Showing up for a job with an old man in a 
life-support chair to keep her company? Another long time went by. A 
different hotel person came out.

"May I have your name," he said, not amiably.

"My name doesn't matter. This is General James Crawford, the famous war
hero. Can you see the imperial medal around his neck? We've just been at
the Armistice celebration, and now we're here to see the delegate from
Brazil, Mr. Humberto Maria-"

"Yes, but I need to know your name." "My name doesn't matter. Just 
tell him that General James Crawford-"

"But your name-"

"Carlotta," she said. "Oh, go to hell, all of you," She pressed the palm 
control and started to turn Uncle James around. There was no sense 
enduring all this grief. Just then, though, an enormous black limousine 
glided up to the curb and Humberto Maria de Magalhaes himself emerged.

He sized up the situation at once.

"So you have come after all! How good! How very good!"

The hotel man said, "Senhor Magalhaes, this woman claims-"

"Yes. Yes. Is all right. I am expecting. Please, let us go inside. 
Please. Please. Such a great honor, General Crawford!" He extended his 
arms in a gesture so splendid that it would have been worthy of the 
Emperor himself. "Come," he said. He led them into the building.

The lobby of the Imperial was a great glittering cavern, all glass 
and lights. Carlotta felt dizzy. The Brazilian was in complete command, 
shepherding them to some secluded alcove, where waiters in brocaded 
livery came hustling to bring champagne, little snacks on porcelain 
trays, a glistening bowl brimming with fruit. Magalhaes pulled a 
recorder from his pocket, a holido scanner, and two or three other
devices, and set them on the table before them.

"Now, if you please, General Crawford-"

"The fee," Carlotta said.

"Ah. Yes. Yes, of course." Magalhaes pulled crumpled old dirty bills 
from his wallet, imperial money, green and gold. "Will this be enough,
do you think?"

She stared. It was more than she made in six months. But some demon
took hold of her and she said, recklessly, "Another five hundred should do 
it."

"Of course," the Brazilian said. "No problem!" He put another bill on 
the edge of the table and aimed his lens at the old man. "I am so 
eager to record his memories, I can hardly tell you. Now, if you would 
ask the general to discuss the day of the famous battle, first-"

Carlotta bent close to the old man's audio intake and said, "Uncle, 
this man wants you to talk about your war experiences. He's going to 
record a sort of memoir of you. Just say whatever you can remember, 
all right? He'll be taking your picture, and this machine will record
your words."

"The war," Uncle James said. And immediately lapsed into silence.

The Brazilian watched, big-eyed, holding his breath as if he feared it
would interfere with the flow of the old man's words.

But there were no words. Carlotta, who had tactfully left the Brazilian's 
money on the table, thinking it would look a little better not to pocket it
until after the interview, began to wish now that she had taken it right
away.

The silence became very long indeed.

She reached down and gave the old man a little spurt of 
heptocholinase through the IV line. That seemed to do it.

"-the invasion," Uncle James said, as if he'd been speaking silently 
for some time and only now was bothering to come up to the audible 
level. And then words poured out of him as she had never heard them come 
before, bubbling nonstop spew. It was like the breaking of a dam. "We were
dug into the trenches, you understand, and the Boche infantry came 
sneaking up at us from the east, under cover of mustard gas-oh, that 
was awful, the gas-but we called in an air strike right away, we hit them 
hard with napalm and antipersonnel shrapnel, and then we came ashore
with our landing craft, hit them at Anzio and Normandy both. That was
the beginning of it. Our entire strategy, you understand, was built around 
a terminal nuclear hit at Bull Run, but first we knew we had to close 
the Dardanelles and knock out their command center back of Cam Ranh 
Bay. Once we had that, we'd only need to worry about the Prussian
cavalry and the possibility of a Saracen suicide charge, that wasn't a real big 
risk, we figured, all the Rebels were pretty well demoralized already 
and it didn't make sense that they'd have the balls to come back at us
after all we'd thrown at them, so-"

"What is he saying, please?" the Brazilian asked softly. "He speaks so
quickly. I am not quite understanding him, I think."

"He does sound a little confused," said Carlotta.

"Well, we drove the Turks completely out of the Gulf of Corinth, and 
were heading on toward Lepanto with sixty-four galleys, full steam 
ahead. Then came a message from Marlborough, get our asses over to 
Blenheim fast as we knew how, the French were trying to break
through--or was it the Poles?-- well, hell, it was a mess, the winter was
coming on, that lunatic Hitler actually thought he could take out 
Russia with a fall offensive and damned if he didn't get within eighty 
miles of Moscow before the Russkies could stop him, and then-then-" 
Uncle James looked up. There was a stunned expression on his face. All
his indicators were flashing in the caution zone. His cheeks were flushed
and he was breathing hard.

Carlotta let her hand rest lightly on the little stack of bank notes.

"He's very overexcited," she explained. "This has been a big day for
him. He hasn't been in San Francisco for forty-three years, you know."

"Wait," Uncle James said. He stretched a hand toward the Brazilian.
"There's something that I need to say."

There was an unfamiliar note in his voice suddenly, a forcefulness, a
strange clarity. The cloudiness was gone from it, the husky senile 
woolliness. It sounded now like the voice of someone else entirely, 
someone a hundred years younger than Uncle James. 

The Brazilian nodded vigorously. "Yes, tell us everything, General! 
Everything."

Uncle James smiled. There was an eerie look on his face. "I wasn't a 
general, for one thing. I was a programmer. I never fought an actual battle.
I certainly never killed anybody. Not anybody. It's all a lie, that I was
any kind of hero. It was just an error in the computer records and I 
never said anything about it to anybody, and now it's so long ago that
nobody remembers what was what. Nobody but me. And most of the time 
I don't even remember it myself."

Uh-oh, Carlotta thought.

As secretively as she could manage it, she slid the bills from the table 
into her purse. The Brazilian didn't appear to notice.

Uncle James said, "It was only a two-bit war, anyway. A lot of miserable
skirmishes between a bunch of jerkwater towns gone wild with envy of 
what they each thought the other one had, and in fact nobody had 
anything at all. That was what ended the war, when we all figured out
that there was nothing anywhere, that we were wiped out from top to 
bottom." He laughed. "And there I sat in the command center at the 
university the whole time, writing software. That was how I spent the 
war. A hundred goddamn years ago."

The Brazilian said, "His voice is so clear, suddenly."

"He's terribly tired," said Carlotta. "He doesn't know what he's 
saying. I should have just taken him right home. The interview's over. 
It's too much of a strain on him."

"Could we not have him continue a small while longer? But perhaps we
should allow him to rest for a little," the Brazilian suggested.

"Rest," Uncle James said. "That's all I fucking want. But they don't 
ever let you rest. You fight the Crusades, you fight the Peloponnesian,
you fight the Civil, you get so tired, you get so fucking tired. All
those wars. I fought 'em all. Every one of them at once. You run the 
simulations and you've got the Nazis over here and Hannibal there and
the Monterey crowd trying to bust in up the center, and Hastings, and 
Tours, and San Jose-Grant and Lee-Charlemagne-Napoleon-Eisenhower-Patton . .
. "

His voice was still weirdly lucid and strong.

But it was terrible to sit here listening to him babbling like this. 
Enough is enough, Carlotta decided. She reached down quickly and hit 
main cerebral and put him to sleep. Between one moment and the next 
he shut down completely.

The Brazilian gasped. "What has happened? He has not died, has he?"

"No, he's all right. Just sleeping. He was too tired for this. I'm 
sorry, Mr. Magal-Magal-" Carlotta rose. The money was safely stowed 
away. "He's badly in need of rest, just as you heard him say. I'm going
to take him home. Perhaps we can do this interview some other time. 
I don't know when. I have your card. I'll call you, all right?"

She flexed her palm and sent the chair moving out into the main lobby
of the hotel, and toward the door.

The driver, thank God, was still sitting there. Carlotta beckoned to him.

They were halfway across the bay before she brought the old man back 
to consciousness. He sat up rigidly in the chair, looked around, peered
for a moment at the scenery, the afternoon light on the East Bay 
hills ahead of them, the puffy clouds that had come drifting down from
somewhere.

"Pretty," he said. His voice had its old muddled quality again. "What a 
goddamn pretty place! Are we on the bridge? We were in the city, were
we?"

"Yes," she told him. "For the anniversary of the Armistice. We had 
ourselves a time, too. The Emperor himself hung that medal around your
neck." 

"The Emperor, yes. Fine figure of a man. Norton the Ninth."

"Fourteenth, I think." 

"Yes. Yes, right. Norton the Fourteenth," the old man said vaguely. "I
meant Fourteenth." He fingered the medal idly and seemed to disappear 
for a moment into some abyss of thought where he was completely alone.
She heard him murmuring to himself, a faint indistinct flow of 
unintelligible sound. Then suddenly he said, reverting once more to that 
tone of the same strength and lucidity that he had been able to muster 
for just a moment at the Imperial Hotel, "What happened to that
slick-looking rich foreigner? He was right there. Where did he go?"

"You were telling him about General Patton at Bull Run, and you got 
overexcited, and you weren't making any sense, Uncle. I had to shut 
you down for a little time."

"General Patton? Bull Run?"

"It was that time you nuked the Rebels," Carlotta said. "It's not 
important if you don't remember, Uncle. It was all so long ago. How 
could anyone expect you to remember?" She patted him gently on the 
shoulder. "Anyway, we had ourselves a time in the city today, didn't 
we? That's all that matters. You got yourself a medal, and we had 
ourselves a time." 

He chuckled and nodded, and said something in a voice too soft to 
understand, and slipped off easily into sleep.

The car sped onward, eastward across the bridge, back toward Berkeley.