The Silicon Dagger

by Jack Williamson

  Unconsciously, she had pushed the tiny horse toward me, frowning at it as if she were moving a chessman in a very serious game.

  “Take a look at the group. Rob’s fighting the Feds for the cryptophone. Moorhawk’s afraid of prison for fraud or tax evasion. As for Stuart, the infonet stories on his rally have sparked a new move in Congress to disarm the militias. And now—”

  She pushed the horse abruptly aside, as if she had lost it in the game.

  “Subpoenas were served on Rob yesterday afternoon, demanding his, lab notes and business papers. Though the courts are only after the cryptophone, the documents could give them the weapon too, if any weapon does exist. I’m afraid Rob’s bitter enough to let Stuart and Moorhawk lead him into trouble.

  “Moorhawk’s the most alarming.”

  She saw my puzzled look.

  “Maybe you like him. A lot of people do. A natural leader, with too much ambition for a man his size. He could con my brothers into some tragic blunder. I don’t mean just county politics, though that’s already explosive enough. He and my brothers—”

  Staring at the black horse, she cringed as if she had seen sheer disaster riding it.

  “I’m concerned, Mr. Barstow. Terribly concerned, and not just for my own family.” Her eyes rose to me, the widened pupils dark with dread. “I’m a historian, a student of change. We face a historic event now. As great, I think, as the invention of fire or planting crops or the use of metals. That’s information technology.”

  “Alden talked about it,” I said. “He called it the taproot of terror.”

  “Because a new world is growing from it. A hostile world to those who don’t or can’t adapt. It rewards the few who learn its laws and hurts the millions who don’t. Terror’s their weapon of rebellion.” She nodded, and I caught a fleeting smile. “I read your brother’s book. I wish I’d known him. He had a real insight when he called America a powder keg, waiting for a match. I’d say the whole world is waiting.”

  Frowning, she reached for the horse again.

  “That’s why I called you in, Mr. Barstow. If Kit Moorhawk does enlist my brothers, if Rob has really invented some potential weapon, they could be about to touch a match to the powder. I want to stop them.”

  Sharply, she rapped the desk with the silver base of the horse. Her widened eyes were violet, and I heard the ring of determination in her voice.

  “I want your help.”

  She was sincere and beautiful and altogether admirable, but still no friend. I waited uneasily for her to say more and finally asked what she expected me to do.

  “Keep up your membership in Pepperlake’s congress.” Her sharp commands came as if she had made a list. “Watch him and Rob and Moorhawk. Listen to their plans. Pick up anything you can about this Silicon Shell, whatever it is or could be, about Kit's plans and ambitions, about Stuart and his Rifles. Watch Cass Pepperlake. Keep an eye on Garron and his mob. Get word to me about anything you think might lead to open violence.

  “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” I said. “On one condition. That you’ll inform me about anything that could help me find who killed my brother.”

  “I’m sorry about him.” A flash of genuine sympathy. “The case looks hopeless. I will pass along anything I learn, but that’s yesterday. Our problem is tomorrow.”

  I asked what she meant to do about tomorrow.

  “Anything I can.”

  That was all she said. It left me wondering. How far would she go to help her baby brother? What did she feel toward Rob Roy? How could she hope to intervene in whatever they planned? On the personal level, how did she feel toward me? Why had she told me so much? Was she aware of her sexual allure? Her power over me, if she chose to use it?

  “Do your best, Mr. Barstow.” On her feet, she gave me a smile that seemed for a moment to show the trust I longed for, and offered her hand. “We’ve got a lot at stake.”

  Leaving her office, I carried problems of my own. Botman, the Bureau, “Acorn Three.” I’d promised Rob Roy and Pepperlake to keep their secrets. I’d agreed to cooperate with her. I'd kept quiet about Director Garlesh and the Bureau. My own first goal was still to

  identify the bomber. I had conflicts enough to give me a headache, but I found myself haunted by her fear of some secret weapon and the powder keg it might ignite.

  At midnight, on an impulse of patriotic loyalty that overcame my qualms, I dialed Botman’s number again. His phone rang forever. I hung up at last, relieved that nobody had answered, not even Acorn Three.

  Most of next morning I spent digging into the Freeman files and writing a feature story about Rob Roy McAdam and the rise and fall of CyberSoft. Pepperlake made me redo it twice, cutting everything about the cryptophone and signal security, before he found it safe to print. Though he allowed no mention of Lydia Starker, the story brought her back as I had first seen her in the pelting rain outside our door, breathing hard from her run to warn her friends of the raid. Captured by her image in my memory, boldly heroic, desperate, vulnerable, her rain-soaked hair and clothing plastered to her body, I tried to call her on the infonet.

  She was out, her office said. I found L. Starker in the audio directory. The phone rang a long time before a sharp-voiced woman answered. I asked for Lydia.

  “Who are you?”

  “A friend.” Hoping it might prove true, I gave my name and said we had met at theFreeman.

  “Freeman!” She spoke it like an oath. “Nosing into honest people’s lives.”

  I caught my breath and asked again for Lydia.

  “Maybe she’s here. Maybe she ain’t.”

  All I heard for half a minute was a loud clock ticking, but then Lydia was on the line, seeming startled till she recognized my name. I asked if we might meet for dinner.

  “This evening?” I liked the ring of pleasure in her voice. “I have a car. Let me pick you up.”

  I was waiting in the Katz House lobby when she came in, temptingly trim in a blue denim skirt and a bright flowered blouse, her sleek hair combed back and fairer than I recalled it. She stood a moment searching almost as if we were strangers, but then her face lit as if we were already friends.

  “I’ve endured a bad week.” Even with a frown her face was still enchanting. “I’m glad to get away.”

  New in town, I let her pick the restaurant. She drove me to a small Italian place in an old house that once had been a private dwelling. Seated in a quiet back room, we shared a bottle of wine.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” she said. “Mr. Pepperlake introduced us when he wanted background on the Me Adam brothers. I think Pepperlake was his best friend here.” A shadow crossed her face. “Perhaps the only friend.”

  She refused more wine. We ordered veal scallopine. I felt happy with her. She seemed eager to hear about my life in Georgetown and my work with Alden. Listening to her talk about McAdam City and the music program she hosted on KRIF infonet, I almost forgot to eat. She said nothing about the McAdams or the cryptophone or Sheriff Burleigh’s raid, and I didn’t want to spoil the evening with unwelcome questions. In the parking lot as we left, she paused to ask me, “Where?”

  It took me a moment to get my breath and meet her eyes. I whispered, “Anywhere.”

  She drove us north on the Lexington road to a motel across the county line. The kid at the desk took my money, grinned enviously at Lydia, gave me a key and a wink. I don’t recall the room itself, but nothing will ever erase our few hours there. With hardly a word, we stripped and stepped into the shower. We soaped and scrubbed each other. She was laughing at a moon-faced birthmark on my belly when I carried her, slick and dripping, to the bed. Eagerly passionate there, she woke emotions I had never felt.

  By midnight, passions spent, we lay in bed together, naked and relaxed. I recall a hint of the lilac perfume left in her hair, her sweeter body scent, the even rhythm of her breath, her playful fingers tracing my face. Drowsily relaxed, she talked more freely about the McAdams.

&nb
sp; “I’ve known them since grade school. McAdams were royalty and I was nobody, but they were good to me. Rob used to look out for me like an elder brother. Other kids used to pick on me. For being the preacher’s brat. For wearing Goodwill garments. Because my eyes used to cross when I was tired. He beat up bullies who wouldn’t stop. And Stuart—”

  She lay still, remembering him. Her voice had softened when she went on.

  “I adored Stuart. Puppy love, I guess you’d call it. He was a smartass, always in trouble for trying to be the best, the brightest, the strongest, the bravest. He would fight anybody who said he wasn’t, but he never hurt me. He let me walk with him to school and wanted to give me his lunch money when my folks were too proud to let me take the free lunch. Years later, after we were grown—”

  She stopped, remembering again.

  “He looked me up in Louisville.” Her voice had slowed and I heard a tremor in it. “He found me in a night club—that’s what they called it. I’d used up the little luck I ever had. Hooked on coke. Down and desperate. I owe him a lot. He saved my life. Brought me home to McAdam. Helped me break the habit. I think—I really think—”

  Her body tense, she lay breathing fast. I waited till she went on, almost whispering.

  “He said he loved me. I think he really did. We lived together. He helped me finish business school and find a job. We were going to be married when his got his problems solved, but—”

  I felt her tremble.

  “Trouble happened. He never got them solved.”

  I asked about the trouble.

  “A lot of it.” She paused till I thought she had no more to say. “For one thing,” she went on at last, “he was still a lawyer then. His best clients were marijuana farmers. I guess he went too far for them, because the federal narcs got after him instead of them. They woke a devil in him.”

  I heard her grit her teeth.

  “An ugly devil.” Her voice had a bitter edge. “He was ugly to me, yet I can’t hate him. Pity him, perhaps. I’ve tried to understand him. Sometimes he was almost paranoid.” He accused me of spying for the FBI. I felt her shake her head. “I guess he was born what he is. A mix of good and bad. Like we all are, maybe, but not to such extremes. But I’m still afraid—”

  She caught a long breath and sat up on the side of the bed. “Thank you, Clay.” She leaned to kiss me as I sat up beside her. “I needed this! Needed it terribly.”

  I couldn’t ask why, but I held her close till she shivered and stood up.

  “I’ve got to go.” She gave me a wryly painful grin. “You’ve spoken to my mother. I live with her because she needs what I pay for room and board, but she can be difficult.” Soberly, her voice fell. “About Stuart, there’s something I told your brother when he asked about him. Stuart has a past. Things he wants forgotten.” She caught my shoulders to push me away and let me stand there for a moment longing to take her back to bed. Her hair was long and fair, almost a garment, falling free around her pink-nippled breasts. I tried to pull her closer. She shook her head and pushed me firmly back.

  “I like you, Clay,” she whispered. “A lot. I wish life had been simpler, but I’ve really got to go. Let’s get dressed.”

  I asked for another date.

  “When I can,” she promised. “When I can.”

  Beth McAdam smiled next day when I passed her on a campus path, but my mind was full of Lydia, her laughter at the birthmark, the way she cut her scallopine, her recollections of Stuart McAdam. I longed to know her problems, to shelter her from trouble, to hold her close again. I tried to call her at the infonet office. She was out again, but I felt happy just to be here in the same city with her.

  I spent the afternoon at the Freeman, reading proofs of my feature story and making up inside pages for the next edition. Early

  next morning, while I was boiling coffee water on the hot plate in my room and peeling a banana to go with bran flakes, my cryptophone purred.

  “Clay!” Calling in open mode, Lydia was hoarse and breathless. “If you want to know who mailed the bomb that killed your brother, get out here now. I live with my mother in a red-tiled house on the comer of Fourth and Walnut. For God’s sake make it quick.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I UNPLUGGED THE hotplate and pedaled fast to Fourth and Walnut. The red-tiled house sat on the corner across from a dark brick Church of Christ. Leaves were falling from the actual walnuts that overhung the house, but the lawn had been mowed clean. I leaned my bike against the post that supported a weathered cast-metal sign lettered STARKER and crossed a wide verandah to ring the doorbell. After an endless minute, a woman opened the door.

  “Yes, sir?” She looked a little like Lydia, but darker, shorter, stouter, gone sour with time. She wore a red-checked kitchen apron, her hair in a thick knot on top of her head. One cold eye was wide, the other squinted at me sharply. “What do you want?”

  “I want to see Lydia. She just called me.”

  “She did?” A suspicious snort. “Why?”

  “Really, I don’t know. I came to find out.”

  “What’s your name?”

  I gave her my Freeman press card. The narrowed eye squinted at it and back at me.

  “Barstow, huh? I never heard her say any such name. Are you dating her?”

  “No.” I only wished I were.

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At the Freeman. ”

  “Why was she there?”

  “She wanted to see Mr. Pepperlake.”

  “What about?”

  “Please, Mrs. Starker—you are Mrs. Starker?”

  “I am. But I don’t like anybody bustin’ into my home at this time of day.” She peered at my bike, where I had left it against the post. “What do you want with Lydia?”

  “Ma’am, I don’t really know.” Respectfully, I took off my Rebs cap. “She called like I told you. She wanted me to get here fast—”

  “Mister, I don’t know what this is all about.” She scowled at me doubtfully. “My daughter ain’t up for breakfast and I don’t like funny business. Get back on your bike and ride away before I call the cops.”

  “Please, Mrs. Starker. She does want to see me. Won’t you let me wait?”

  She studied me again, studied the press card, finally stepped back to let me into a dark living room that looked empty of luxury or even common comfort. A tall grandfather clock ticked loudly in the comer. A big red-letter Bible lay open on a library table that stood like an altar under a gold-framed print of a bleeding Jesus on the cross.

  “Sit there if you want to wait.” She waved me to a threadbare sofa. “And explain how come you’ve got such an interest in my daughter.”

  She stood glowering while I searched for a safe evasion.

  “A story for the paper,” I said. “She said she had important information for me.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s all confidential till the story breaks.”

  “Is she in trouble?”

  “I hope not, but I do need to see her.”

  “Lydia has always got in trouble.” She shook her head, raising her mismatched eyes to the crucified Christ. “Even back in school. More when she went off to sing in Louisville—if singing was all she did. Worse trouble when she got tangled up with that Stuart McAdam. I don’t want people talking about her again—”

  I heard a crash of breaking china in a room behind us.

  “That damn cat!” She hurried out. I heard a hiss and a slam. She came back muttering. “I thought it was Lydia, here to speak for herself. I don’t know why she ain’t in here for breakfast, but sometimes she does sleep late.”

  Sighing, she wiped her hands on the red-checked apron and sat down in a straight-backed chair across the room, her head cocked to listen. All I heard was the clock’s slow tick. Looking around the dark and barren room, found my eyes fixed on a white-bearded man in a photo on the table beside the heavy Bible.

  “That Lydia!” She burst out again in the same to
ne of resigned frustration. “Warren and I sweated our lives away to make her a good Christian home, with a better chance than we ever had, but she grew up—”

  The cat had meowed. She paused to listen again.

  “Grew up wild.” Her voice sank into weary despair. “Mr. Starker did punish her when he had to, but he baptized her the day she was three. He preached to her and prayed over her, but she never found Christ. Run away from home before she turned thirteen. The cops brought her back, but she run away again. And look at her now.”

  “Is she all that bad?”

  “If you don’t know—” She squinted the good eye again, trying to measure me. “You’re sure she did call this morning?”

  “Half an hour ago.”

  With a skeptical shrug, she looked at the clock.

  “I got her breakfast ready. Biscuits hot. Grapefruit cut the way she likes it. Bacon fried and eggs ready to scramble. The only decent meal she ever gets. She ought to be here.”

  She pointed at the photo by the Bible.

  “That’s Mr. Starker.” Her voice sank reverently. “A man of God. He was a missionary back from Africa when I met him. He run an honest business till his heart went bad, and served Christ all his life. He preached against the Devil-brained baby-killers in Washington and right here in the county. He prayed for the right to worship God and teach His worship in the schools. He struggled every way he knew to save our daughter from the black mouth of Hell.

  “And now she dishonors his name.”

  I had no answer for that. The clock kept counting its slow seconds till at last I saw her shift impatiently.

  “Can’t you call her?” I asked. “She seemed so anxious to see me.”

  “Maybe she thought better of it. You can see she just ain’t here.”

  “Maybe you ought to find out why.”

  She bristled.

  “Mister, I don’t need no damn fool advice from you. Lydia don’t like to be bothered, not since I found the condoms and smelled marijuana smoke in her room. It’s back of the house in what used to be a garage. She keeps her door locked and says what she does there ain’t no business of mine.”