The Silicon Dagger

by Jack Williamson

  He laced his narrow fingers together and paused to let me listen.

  “You may not see me again, but I will be your contact. You will report and receive further instructions on a secure telephone. I will identify myself with the code name Acorn One. You will be Acorn Two.

  He gave me a scrambler and showed me how to use it.

  “Keep it well concealed. It’s our own encryption system. We don’t want it compromised. We’ll expect a report from you at twelve sharp every Friday night. And at midnight anytime when you have anything significant. If I’m not on the line, you will hear recorded instructions.”

  Waiting for word from the Bureau, I packed my bag, did what I could for Marion and played chess with Tim when he had time from his lessons. I heard no more from Botman, but the fax brought receipts for fees, meals, and housing at the Katz House for the fall semester at McAdam College.

  Katz House! The name startled me a little when I recalled Alden’s laptop note on Sam Katz. No connection, probably, but I had questions for him if this led me to him.

  Marion gave me Alden’s laptop and kissed me on the cheek. Tim shook my hand and hoped very gravely that I got home safe. I made the long drive down to McAdam City in a rental car with my books, bike, and baggage, and found the room the bureau had rented for me in a decayed mansion two blocks off the campus.

  The house, itself a chapter of history, was a two-story brown brick set back behind a dying lawn. Faded letters on the dingy marble facade above a long verandah spelled KATZ HOTEL. The front door framed a stained-glass rainbow. A sagging swing hung on one side, with three battered white wicker rockers arrayed on the other.

  Nobody answered the doorbell. Pushing inside, I found myself in a wide hall between a glass door lettered SAXON & KATZ, Attorneys at Law, and another door with the legend, KATZ GUNS AND AMMO. Ahead of me, at the end of the hall, a plump young woman with a pleasant round face and a towel wrapped like a turban around her hair faced me across a counter.

  “Sorry, sir.” She was shaking her head. “If you want a room, we’re full up.”

  She brightened when I showed her my receipt.

  “You’re all okay, Mr. Barstow. Paid up in full for the whole semester. We’ve put you in Number One. It’s here on the first floor, back at the end of the hall.” She pushed a key across the counter. “We keep the back door locked, but your room key works it. What you do in the room may be your own business, but we do have rules.”

  She nodded at a sign behind her.

  NO LIQUOR! NO KIDS! NO PETS!

  “No problem,” I said. She stood waiting, and I asked about the history of the house.

  -It’s old.” My interest in it seemed to please her. “Built by a Dr. Kerry McAdam, way back in the 1830s. His son went bankrupt trying to build a railroad, and Tim Katz bid it in at the auction. My husband’s people have owned it ever since. It was a button factory, a hospital in the Civil War, later a hotel. We’re proud of the place. My husband has his office here. The second floor rooms rent to college students only.”

  “He’s a lawyer?” I glanced back at the door lettered Saxon & Katz.

  Nodding happily, she gave me a card.

  Samuel Katz, Attorney at Law

  Tax Attorney Patent Law

  Confidential Investigations

  I thanked her and inquired about Mr. Saxon.

  “Dead.” Trouble furrowed her smooth pink face. “A tragic accident. Right here in the office. He was cleaning a gun. He and Sam had had a problem over their retainer in a big drug case. Saul Hunn—he’s the city-county prosecutor. A sneaky snake! He tried to nail Sam for the killing. Pure spite. We showed him up for the fool he is. Sam and I were out at a bar when the maid heard the gunshot, with witnesses to prove it.”

  “An interesting story.” I wondered how much of it Alden had known. “I’d like to meet your husband.”

  “He’s out of town,” she said. “Clean sheets and towels once a week. No maid service. You keep the room yourself. Trash cans out in the hall by seven Monday mornings. House rules are on your honor, but the maid has orders to report beer cans and empty bottles.”

  I promised to be careful and asked when Mr. Katz would be back.

  “Hard to say.” She turned impatiently. “He’s up at Lexington on a case.”

  I drove around to the back door, moved into the room, returned the rented car, and walked back across the campus. Old Calvin Mc-Adam, the family pioneer, had left a thousand dollars “to establish a Presbyterian seminary.” Not enough then, but his son Scott became a banker and invested it well. Bruce McAdam, a grandson and perhaps not so devout, took a Harvard degree and came home to become the first president of the McAdam Academy.

  The original building, small and rather shabby now in spite of the ivied sandstone walls and the white Greek columns, still stood at the center of the campus, a mile from the downtown center. I stood in line next morning to show my transcripts to a counselor. He sent me to the history department.

  “See Professor McAdam. In Liberal Arts.”

  Liberal Arts was an old red brick with neither ivy nor marble, dwarfed by the Moorhawk School of Technology, an impressive pile of silvery metal and mirror glass built in the halcyon days before Moorhawk lost his patent battles.

  Wandering down the hall, I found an open door beside a sign that read Elizabeth McAdam. A young woman sat at a computer inside. A student assistant, perhaps. My eye was caught by three large portraits hung on the opposite wall: A handsome blue-eyed boy happily smiling at a squirrel perched on his extended hand; A lean youth with both hands raised in wonder, his grave face smiling into sunlight; An older man with thick black hair and a flowing black mustache, his fine-boned features caught in a quizzical smile. All three were simply done, yet caught with verve and a sense of character.

  “Are they McAdams?”

  “My brothers and my father.” The girl turned from her computer as I spoke. “Done in a freshman art class, before I found I’d never be an artist.”

  She had taken my breath with the clear ring of her voice, her sleek sheaf of honey-colored hair, the way she filled out a neat tan sweater. It took me a moment to ask, ‘‘You’re Professor Me Adam?” “I’m McAdam. And you?”

  “Clay Barstow.”

  “Barstow?” She studied me in a puzzled way with intense blue eyes. “Have we met?”

  “I don’t think so.” I was certain we hadn’t; she was nobody I’d ever forget. “I’m down from Washington. A grad student in history.” She frowned again. “I really thought you were someone I’d known.”

  She tapped her keys and studied the monitor.

  “Clayton Barstow.” She nodded as she read. “B.A. at Georgetown. Summa cum laude. History major, journalism minor.” She looked up at me, her eyes more violet than blue, and piercingly keen. “A nice record, Mr., Barstow, from a great school. What brings you to McAdam?”

  That struck me silent. I wanted her to like me. The truth would do nothing for that.

  “I want to work toward a masters in history.”

  “Why here?”

  “I had a school friend from Kentucky.” Actual fact, but then I was forced to invention. “His people had been pioneers. I was fascinated with all he told me about his family and the state.”

  “Kentucky history has been done.” She gestured at the full shelves behind her. “Again and again.”

  “New history keeps happening.”

  “Too fast.” She nodded soberly. “In ways that sometimes sadden me. Ways too complex to be explored in a graduate thesis.”

  “I know, but I have a limited topic in mind.” I began to quote from Alden. “We’re in transition from the industrial age to the information age. I want to study the process as it affects one small group.”

  “What has that to do with Kentucky?”

  “I’m looking for a test-tube specimen of America.” More from Alden. “I hope to find it here. Kentucky is a border state, neither North nor South, East nor West. Bits of the past still
hang on in the hills. Moorhawk funded the school of technology here. New futures keep drowning the past.”

  “Sit down, Mr. Barstow.” I loved her voice, but her tone was still formal, coolly skeptical. “Do you know computer science?” “My brother gave me a Nintendo set when I was five years old.” Bits of fact when they might fit. “I’m no scientist, but I use computers. I see them changing the world.” Another bit from Alden. “I want to look at the destination of the information highway.”

  “Why liberal arts?” She frowned again. “If your interest is information science, perhaps you should register in the school of technology.”

  “The technology is moving beyond me. I find people more interesting.”

  “So do I.” She tapped her keys. “Do you have some specific area in mind?”

  “To limit the study, I want to look at the impacts on a single county. Perhaps on a single family.” In spite of her lifted eyebrows, I decided to take a risk. “Perhaps the McAdam family.”

  “No.” She spoke instantly. “I don’t think so.”

  “I never expected to be meeting you.” That brought only a gravely attentive nod. I went on, hoping for something warmer. “My friend had lived here. He spoke of the McAdams. I’ve looked them up in the Georgetown library.” Actually, I had. “Calvin McAdam followed Daniel Boone out of Virginia. Two centuries of McAdams have been bankers and lawyers and scholars. Rob Roy McAdam is the computer wizard at CyberSoft now. Your brother, I believe?” “He is.” Her fine eyes had narrowed, scanning me again. “I’m proud of Rob. Proud of my family, Mr. Barstow, but we value our privacy.”

  “Which I will respect.” She looked so firm about it that I quoted another point of Alden’s. “Though preserving anybody’s privacy is becoming a pretty difficult problem in this information age.”

  “Whose problem?” She was sharply ironic. “I think it’s worth defending. Sometimes it is defended. You may have heard of a Washington reporter recently killed by his own curiosity?”

  “You mean Alden Kirk?” I tried to hold an even tone and a poker face. “Are you suggesting that his inquiries here led to his death?”

  “Federal agents seem to think so.” She shrugged. “Down here, Mr. Barstow, we dislike prying outsiders.”

  She glanced at the door as if ready to be rid of me, but I kept my seat and asked if she didn’t have another brother.

  “Stuart?” I heard her breath catch. “What about Stuart?”

  “His name came up in my library research.”

  “So you know he’s been in prison.” Her face was suddenly flushed. “He’s out now. I want you to know, Mr. Barstow, that he’s still my brother, and I’m still proud of him. Stuart does stand up for his rights, if you think that’s a problem. We Kentuckians have always done that.”

  I’d touched a tender spot. Watching her flash of emotion, I waited for her to continue.

  “It was a drug charge, Mr. Barstow.” Her voice had quickened. “Perhaps you know that hemp was once a cash crop here. Rope was made from hemp. It’s a hardy plant, now called marijuana. It still thrives, a weed in our woods and danger to our farmers. Letting wild hemp grow on your land is a federal offense. Did you know that?”

  I shook my head and sat admiring the glow of her indignation.

  “My brother had a law practice himself before his troubles began, specializing in drug cases. He says the drug laws are racist. Whites use alcohol and drive cars till they kill themselves. Blacks and Hispanics use marijuana, which he considers less addictive and less harmful than nicotine, and go to prison for it.”

  “Stuart did?”

  “Politics, Mr. Barstow.” Her face set hard. “It’s a rough game here. We play it for keeps. Stuart plays to win. He has friends like Senator Finn, who pressed for his freedom. Friends also in the militia he’s organized.

  “A lot of his members are farmers who were arrested when a few wild hemp plants were found on their land. He kept his office

  open, defending them in court, till his enemies got him arrested and railroaded into prison. The sheriff claimed he’d laundered drug money and claimed they’d found marijuana in his home.

  “He was the innocent victim—”

  She caught herself and flashed me a momentary smile.

  “Please forgive my heat. Mr. Barstow, but I love Stuart. I don’t want him maligned.’" The smile gone, she was suddenly severe. “I believe the FBI tried to connect him with the letter bomb. Fortunately, he was still in prison when it was mailed.”

  “It was sent from here?"’

  “I know nothing about that.** Her voice had gone hard. “I don’t want to know. Perhaps that Washington reporter was on the trail. He was looking for American terrorists. The federal investigators seem to think he found more than he was looking for.”

  With another glance at the door, she waited with visible impatience.

  “One of my profs was a sociologist.’’ Not ready to go, I invented him out of Alden. “He used to talk about a wave of terror spreading through the world. Looking for causes, he believed he had found them in a wave of an anarchy created by the new information technologies as they began to erode the old systems of authority.”

  “Maybe.” The borrowed words seemed to have won me a moment of respect. “But anarchy is nothing new. The pioneers built Kentucky out of a frontier anarchy. Guerrilla anarchy ravaged the state after the Civil W ar. I hope that doesn’t happen again.”

  ‘’My prof was afraid it could. He wanted to write a book on the social impact of information technology. He suggested the study I want to undertake."

  “An interesting topic.” That moment of respect had passed. Distant again, she glanced at her desk-top monitor and sharply back at me. “But I don’t advise you to follow it here. Better forget the McAdams and look for another set of victims. In any case, you aren’t ready for any formal research.’’

  She frowned at something on her monitor.

  “I see twenty graduate hours you can transfer.” Her voice was crisply decisive. “We’ll require a full semester here before you can submit any research proposal.”

  Another student had appeared at the door, and I had to leave. Walking back toward my room, I was in no mood to enjoy the bright morning sun or share the cheer of incoming students calling greetings to one another. Certainly no bomber herself, Professor Mc-Adam had balked me and the Bureau. I longed to know her better, but she’d clearly had enough of me.

  Just off the campus, wondering about Stuart and searching for another move, I stopped at the Jay Eye See, which sported a sign with a racing Thoroughbred outlined in green neon. A few chatting students sat round a long table, ignoring a video tour of the Mammoth Cave that was running on a wall screen at the back of the room.

  I ordered a beer. A heavy man in a Me Adam Rebs T-shirt sat a few stools down at the bar. When he grinned companionably at me, I asked about the red-white-and-blue band around his brawny arm.

  “Our campus uniform.” His voice had a flat Appalachian twang. “The Kentucky Rifles.”

  I told him I was new on the campus, and asked what the Rifles were.

  “The county militia.” He moved to the stool beside me. “I been in the National Guard. Quit because the governor could mobilize it and turn it on the people. The Rifles are free, standing by for our own defense if we ever need them. Under our own command. Right here in the county, with no shit to take from anybody.”

  He eyed me speculatively.

  “I’m Ben Coon. Reb lineman last year.” He offered a muscular hand. “You might want to join us.”

  I shook his hand, ordered another round, and asked why I should.

  “Are you a loyal American?”

  “I think so.”

  “We need every good man we can get. because the liberal crazies in Washington and the international bankers are scheming to put the army under UN command. They’re plotting to let the UN enslave the nation. All the world if they can. Yammering about trying to outlaw our Constitutional right to bear
arms and make us into slaves.”

  I asked him why he thought so.

  “Several reasons.” He gave a vague shrug. “But the bombs at Frankfort and now in Washington ought to be a hint that somebody ain’t taking no more crap. If the Army comes, under orders from the UN or Higgins or anybody else, we’ll teach ’em how to fight. Fall back in the woods and give the bastards hell. Get me?”

  I said I got him.

  “We’ve got a march coming up, through town and on out to the rally. Better be there if you want to hear Captain McAdam. That’s Stuart McAdam. A damn fine man, leading the fight to save our God-given rights from the chicken shit idiots like that damn Yankee reporter that got blown to Hell by the last letter he ever saw.”

  He scowled ferociously.

  “Get what I mean?”

  I said I did.

  “Hey, Ben.” A fat girl in a red sweat suit was calling from the table. “What’s with the Rebs?”

  He nodded at me, picked up his beer, and went to join them. I sat listening as I finished my own. Loud talk of vacations and classes and Rebel prospects, with no more about the Rifles or martial law. My own thoughts, however, had gone back to Georgetown and my little nephew showing me the clean white sheet spread over my brother’s blood spattered on the floor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THAT WAS A Friday. At midnight I looked out to see that the corridor was empty, locked my door, and plugged my phone into Bot-man’s scrambler.

  “Acorn Two.” I recited the code name he had given me.

  “Acorn One.” His brittle recorded voice asked for a progress report. I had no progress to report. After half a minute of silence, his natural voice came on the line.

  “Get this, Barstow. Your mission has now become more critical than ever. Stuart McAdam is emerging as a strong suspect, but we’ve got to have solid evidence. Continue every effort. Report further action and hard information with no delay. That is all.”