The Silicon Dagger

by Jack Williamson

  “But we want no war.” He smiled disarmingly at Stuart. “Liberator McAdam lets his own eloquence carry him away. We are not aggressors. We stand ready to negotiate with Senator Finn when he arrives. All we ask is to be left alone.”

  “Really, sir.” Del Rio’s dark-lined eyes widened in innocent surprise. “Do you really think the national authorities can afford to leave you alone?”

  “We’ll see.” He shrugged, with no visible concern. “We’ll see.”

  When I looked out again, the cherry picker had moved to the light pole at the other end of the block. The man on the platform was busy with the light, but in a moment he straightened to stretch himself and scratch his hip while he stood gazing up the street toward me. He shrugged at last, turning back to the light. I took a shower and ate a bowl of cold stew. Del Rio was back on the infonet a few hours later, as chipper as ever.

  “An epic unfolding!” It seemed to delight her. “WebWatch One is hot on the spot, with the hyperest hype. The rebel militia surrounded the McAdam County courthouse when officials refused to swear allegiance to their Liberation movement. The siege is now over. Sheriff Burleigh lowered his flag this afternoon and surrendered the building.”

  The camera swoing from her bright child-face to pick up Burleigh’s black-jowled scowl. He come down the courthouse steps, his deputies behind him. They all wore holstered pistols. One carried a flag. Another had his arm in a sling. Hunn followed, and a score of others I didn’t know.

  “Deputy Franks was wounded in an exchange of fire when he tried to leave the building,” she said. “I’m told that there were no fatalities, no other injuries.”

  Stuart met them at the bottom of the steps, a Rifle unit standing at attention behind him. The deputy gave up his flag. They all dropped their weapons in a pile in front of Stuart. The camera followed them to a waiting school bus and returned to Del Rio’s delighted smile.

  “Under the terms of surrender they were granted amnesty and free passage out of the county if they want to go. Family members will allowed to follow, with their household possessions. Sheriff Burleigh and a few others have chosen to accept a compromise that lets them remain in the county.”

  The camera picked up a police car flying the Haven flag, a single white star on a green field. It swung in front of the bus and led it off the square, a train of cars and loaded pickups behind.

  “An instant of history!” The lens picked up her vivid face again, excited emotion pealing in her voice. “Join me as we follow the refugees out of town on the Lexington Road. Exiles from all they knew and loved. Here is where we have to leave them, at the county line.”

  The camera zoomed through a haze of sunlit dust to the road ahead of the convoy. It picked up the white-starred flag on a police car stopped beside the pavement, and paused again on the stars and stripes flown on a troop carrier parked beyond a yellow-striped barricade.

  “Our new frontier!” She gestured at the barrier. “The county line. The National Guard stopped us there. The convoy was allowed to go on, but the guard refused to let us take our cameras into their staging area.”

  “Top scat from where it’s at.” Tex Horn was on the tube, his big white hat tilted raffishly. “Ramona Del Rio is still on the spot, watching the rebels for Washintel WebWatch One, ready to pick up the poop when it pops.”

  His nasal drawl quickened to a graver tone.

  “A White House bulletin, in the meantime, has released an update on Senator Finn. The senator’s private jet arrived over the outlaw county an hour ago. He found the McAdam municipal airport closed, the runways blocked with captured guard vehicles. Unable to land, the senator’s aircraft returned to Lexington. He says he will try again tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE CHERRY PICKER was gone when I looked out, but the moving van was parked in front of the vacant house across the street. I worked out again on Marion’s Total Toner, ate the last of my stew, and went back to the infonet. The rebels had sealed off the county roads. The guard perimeter was under a security blackout, but newshawks had met the refugee convoy on the road beyond it.

  “A turd on a stick!”

  Deputy Sheriff Cornwall came on the monitor, dirty, unshaven, and seething with fury. “If Stuart McAdam thinks he’s gonna be a king of the county, like his great-granddaddy was a hundred years ago, we’ll be back to squash him like the cockroach he is.”

  On the salvation channel was Father Garron, a long-beaked bird of prey perched in the pulpit beneath his tall silver sword, preaching to the multimillion-soul infonet congregation he claimed.

  “Soldiers of the sword, strike for God!” The hall must have been empty; his voice made a hollow boom. “Stand with Liberator McAdam against the baby-killing snakes of Satan who had tried to frame a God-loving Christian for arson and murder. Ben Coon never killed Dr. Ryke. Never needed to. No matter who drove the gasoline truck, that fire in that murder mill was an act of an angry God.”

  An infonet reporter had found a wild-bearded militia leader haranguing his followers somewhere in Arizona. They voted to rally with their pickups and hunting guns to form a freedom caravan to reinforce Stuart McAdam and his heroic Kentucky Rifles.

  “Heroes of freedom!” He flourished a six-gun. “Don’t let them die alone!”

  Alden startled me when I found him on the tube. C-Net was rerunning an interview taped the week before his death. He spoke about the unrest he had found in McAdam County and tried to answer critics who called his book a moneygrabbing slander on the peace-loving people of small-town America.

  A panel of wise old heads followed him, pontificating on “American Malcontents.” Beginning with the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, which had melted away when Washington sent thousands of troops against it, the tape skipped past Aaron Burr and the Civil War, down to Waco and Ruby Ridge and the Montana Freemen.

  “In spite of his critics,” the chairman concluded, “Kirk’s lesson is clear enough. The blaze of treason is burning America. We must put it out, as Washington and Lincoln did when they had to. President Higgins promises to follow their example. Whatever the cost in money or pain or blood, the Union has to be preserved.”

  Somebody at Bethesda had leaked the president’s medical records, which showed that he was suffering from an inoperable pancreatic cancer. Against the advice of his personal physician, he had insisted on an experimental genetic treatment. The outcome was still uncertain, but a recent physical had found no improvement. In a top secret memo, his surgeon reported the prognosis dim and advised him to prepare for the inevitable.

  “A barefaced hoax,” a White House spokesman answered. “Lies invented by his political enemies to destroy his administration on the eve of the November election. In actual fact, the doctors found the president in excellent health, with the body of a far younger man. Now in the midst of this national crisis, these malicious rumors amount to high treason. The FBI has been ordered to track down the sources.”

  Tex Horn was back with a final roundup on the rebellion. A spy satellite had found the airport runways still blocked. Though the county line was closed, even to outside journalists, Ramona Del Rio remained on the spot for Web Watch One, ready for the hype when it happened.

  “That’s the scam where I am.” He tipped the white Stetson. “Senator Finn is spending the night at a Lexington hotel, awaiting permission to cross the county line. Will the rebels let him in? Will they listen to his plea from the president? Or do we face a second Civil War? Keep your eye on the Web Watch sky. Exclusive views of all the news!”

  The moving van was gone next morning. The street looked empty till I saw the big Dalmatian leading Abram Koster down the sidewalk. He hauled the dog to a stop, stood a long time idly scanning Alden’s frost-crisped rose garden and glancing sharply now and then at the front of the house. He bent at last to dig a rolled-up newspaper out of the fallen leaves on the untended lawn, peered into the end of the roll as if examining something hidden there, and buried it again before he let the dog lead him on
.

  The phone rang again while I knelt at the window. A dozen rings, and still it kept on. Botman, still searching for me? Someone else in the bureau? Acorn Three? Or simply some troubled friend of Marion? I was on my feet, almost ready to risk an answer, before it stopped.

  Cleaning out the refrigerator, I fried the last two slices of bacon, scrambled the last egg, peeled the last orange, made coffee and toast, and sat down to one more breakfast before I went back to search the daysnews channels. The first thing I found was my own face. I was wanted for arson, murder, flight to escape justice, interrogation about the fate of a missing federal agent. The rewards required me to be taken alive. Feeling desperate enough, though I had no arms and looked harmless enough in Pepperlake’s photo for the Freeman, I sat staring till my image was gone.

  “Tex Horn on Washintel WebWatch One.” He greeted me when I found the will to touch the keys again. He stood on newly sheared grass on the grounds of the state capital at Frankfort, the big hat tipped to shade his eyes from the sun rising over the lantern dome. “On tap with the scat from Senator Finn and Governor Train.”

  The camera shifted to a makeshift platform of unpainted boards. Finn and Train climbed the steps to it and shook hands with ceremonial smiles for the lens. A svelte honey-blonde in green and gold stood close behind Finn, her eyes shifting from him to the screen of a tiny palmtop. A heavy bear of a man in an olive-green safari suit shambled to Finn’s side, touched his sleeve, and breathed something into his ear. It took me a moment to place him.

  “Rocky Gottler,” Horn was murmuring. “A McAdam banker. Friend and political backer of the senator.”

  Finn nodded his thanks to Gottler and stepped to a lectern flanked with the flag of Kentucky and the stars and stripes.

  “Fellow Americans—”

  Suddenly very grave, he paused to let the camera zoom to his head. A wasted moment. His eyes hollowed and shadowed, he looked as if he hadn’t slept or shaved.

  “We face a threat to the nation. A group of misguided men and women, here in our own great state of Kentucky, have embarked on a reckless act of rebellion. President Higgins doesn’t want a second Chechnya or another Bosnia here in Kentucky. He sent us down to negotiate a fair and peaceful resolution. The rebels have shut him out of McAdam County and refused to talk.

  “We spent most of the night in conference calls with President Higgins and members of his cabinet. We conferred with the leaders of Congress, the National Security Agency, the chiefs of staff, Director Garlesh of the FBI. We found a strong consensus. They are all as anxious as we are to avoid any needless waste of American blood.

  “Early this morning, we agreed on an offer of amnesty to the these misguided rebels. Our terms are generous. The airport and the roads must be opened. The insurgent militia must lay down their arms and register their identities with the FBI. The leaders of this ill-named Liberation movement must submit to interrogation and swear allegiance to our national government. This malicious mockery of creating a new and independent nation must be forgotten.

  “In return, we have agreed to press no charges of treason or any other offense, not even against the individuals who fired on the county courthouse and wounded a county official. Two hours ago, this offer was transmitted to the rebels. Their reply was a bitter disappointment.

  “They don’t want amnesty.” Voice falling, he shook his head. “They demand the recognition of total independence for their Free State or the Haven—they seem to disagree on what to call their new utopia, but they swear that they’ll give their lives to defend it.”

  He stepped aside and beckoned Train to the lectern.

  “My fellow Kentuckians, most of you know me.” A quick little bird of a man, he had won his first distinction riding an unlikely winner at Churchill Downs. Unsmiling, he had the face of a loser now. “I have relatives and friends in McAdam County. The tragic crisis there wrings my soul, but it has forced me to support a terrible decision.

  “Sadly, sadly, these outlaws have left us no choice. As they are already informed, I have mobilized the Kentucky National Guard. President Higgins has dispatched a unit of heavy armor from Fort Knox to support the guard. The combined strike force is now assembled on the McAdam County line, ready to go.

  “Yet, one more time, we are repeating our offer of amnesty. We are still waiting—and I pray Almighty God that He may chasten the stubborn hearts of the rebels and lead them to see their way to sanity and peace. The alternative will be the swift and severe punishment they have been fools enough to ask for.”

  He paused to shake his head.

  “I beg them—I beg you, my good friends in McAdam County— to think of the cost of any continued defiance. A tragic cost, not only to you but to your neighbors and your own families, perhaps to hundreds or thousands of innocent people. President Higgins made his resolution clear. He is prepared to act at once, with whatever force may be required to save the nation.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “It is now 7:56. Our strike force has orders to move at nine, unless the rebels have informed us by that time they accept amnesty. Our offer is too generous to be repeated.”

  “Stay tuned to the tube for the news while it’s new.” Tex Horn was back on the monitor, his hat pulled low. “Ramona Del Rio is still on top of the spot in the rebel county. You’ll get the hype when it it’s ripe, hot from the top of Web Watch One.”

  The camera picked up the white-starred flag flying from the courthouse and panned to Ramona Del Rio standing beside her car at the curb. Her sleek black hair looked freshly done, the silver streak as bright as new metal, though stress and fatigue had begun to wear through her makeup.

  “WebWatch One, fact and fun!” She chanted it like a mantra. “The newborn nation will live or die today. The tiny rebel army, a former militia group, is dug in on the county line. Colonel Stuart McAdam, its commander, stands facing a force that seems overwhelming. The deadline is near. I’m Ramona Del Rio, now driving out to the front to show you the showdown.”

  Her camera man shooting from the car, she rounded the courthouse square and drove out of town on the Lexington road. The lens lingered on a busy mall, swept a used car lot, a farmer’s market, an empty-looking warehouse. Here and there it zoomed to a homemade rebel flag flown from a building or a fence post, the white star raggedly stitched.

  A road block stopped her: two police cars parked off the road and flying the rebel banner. Half a dozen men in red Kentucky Rifle shirts stood around them, wearing blue-and-white arm bands as Liberation uniforms. One stepped out to the side of her car.

  “Sorry, Ma’am.” His voice was hoarse and anxious, and I saw dark spots of nervous perspiration under his armpits. “For your own safety, we have to halt you here.” He listened to her protest and finally nodded. “Pull off the pavement if you want the risk. Your own funeral, lady. I’d advise you to head back to town and get under cover.”

  She drove down narrow back roads and parked at last on a hill. Her camera man caught a farm pickup, following fast. The driver tumbled out and marched toward her, shouting angry demands for money. Though green-and-white ribbons fluttered from his radio antenna, he refused her check on a McAdam bank. He wanted no rebel money, if they had any, but American cash.

  “Okay.” With a satisfied grin, he folded her bills into his wallet. “Stay as long as you want. Me, I’m outta here.”

  He departed under a plume of yellow dust.

  Back on the monitor, Tex Horn reran the appeals from Train and Finn on the statehouse lawn and followed with glimpses of Director Garlesh, the attorney general, finally the president.

  “Zero hour—” Sitting in the Oval Office, Higgins looked drawn and puffy around the eyes. His hand quivered when he glanced at the watch on his wrist. “Our forces are poised and ready, but I have delayed the strike order for another fifteen minutes to allow this last plea to my troubled fellow citizens in McAdam county. My good friends—” Pale eyes watering, he blinked into the camera. “I beg you one mor
e time to inform us that you will open the roads and accept the thanks of your nation and the forgiveness of Almighty God—”

  He gulped and bent his head. His image gave way to the face of a clock, the hands creeping toward bright red numerals: 9:15. They faded back to Horn’s big hat.

  “—Watch One.” His voice had quickened, the drawl almost forgotten. “The rebels have given no hint that they will knuckle under. The security blackout allows us no facts about the strike force. Friends of the rebels have extended their night-long candlelight appeal to the White House, but sources there confirm that the deadline will not be extended again.”

  The clock face was on the screen again. Dead silence. Then the slow tick of the clock. A ruffle of martial music.

  “Seven minutes!” Horn intoned. “We’re waiting to know the fate of the county, perhaps for the fate of the president in November. For hoots and scoops, watch WebWatch One!”

  A montage of the stars and stripes, the white-starred banner, the clock, the McAdam courthouse and the statehouse dome, the clock, Burleigh shaking a furious fist at Stuart, the bleak-faced president, the rebel officials at their table in the McAdam city hall, and again the clock.

  “Five minutes . . . Four . . . Three! We return you now to our Ramona Del Rio, on the battle beat for WebWatch One.”

  The camera caught her facing the wind from her hilltop, lean and bold in her trim black slacks and sweater, a hand camera aimed into the distance.

  “Two minutes!” She picked upon the count. “Ramona Del Rio standing by on the McAdam battlefield, if there is to be a battle.” Her long lens found another rebel flag on a pole trimmed from a tree beside the road. It dropped to a barrier across it, a rough timber striped green and white, laid on saw horses. Closer, a double line of road-worn cars and pickups were parked to block the pavement. Men with rebel arm bands crouched behind them, rifles ready.