The Silicon Dagger

by Jack Williamson

  “No good in it.” Her face turned bleak. “Not for anybody. I’ve been okay for most of my life, here with the McAdams, but I listened to the President last night. I don’t want no amnesty, whatever amnesty is. But I’ve knowed Mr. Stuart all his life. I don’t want to be nowhere with him for a king. And poor Mr. McAdam. He’s sick about it, with all three kids involved.”

  She shook her head and ladled me another bowl of her stew.

  When I heard Beth’s car in the garage I came out of my room, but she didn’t stay to talk. Laden with cheese and crackers and wine, she left them with Orinda and disappeared to take a shower. I was still in the kitchen, listening to Orinda’s tales of her unfortunate progeny, when Pepperlake arrived.

  I’d never seen him except in shirt sleeves, but tonight he had put on a neat tweed jacket and well-creased trousers. He shook my hand with no sign of surprise and accepted a glass of wine.

  “We heard Higgins,” I told him, “and Stuart. Does the council have any official answer?”

  “Nothing for the media. Senator Finn called while the shell was down, speaking for the President. Moorhawk was with us on the line for most of an hour. We tried to tell him we can’t give up our freedom. Surrendering the shell would leave us defenseless. Finn got angry, ranting till we had Rob Roy close the shell and shut him off.”

  He sipped his wine and asked about my adventures, chuckling when he heard about the observers on the street and Abram Koster strolling past with his rolled newspaper and the big Dalmatian.

  “So they were waiting for you?”

  “They’d searched the house before I got in. The cleaning woman had orders not to touch my room, but I found my reference books lined up more neatly than I ever left them. The waste basket had been emptied and set back on the wrong side of the desk.”

  He kissed Beth when she came out, adorable in a pink blouse and blue denim skirt. She sipped at a glass of wine and talked about the college till her father appeared. The shell had trapped out-of-state students, and frantic calls were coming in from distressed parents till the closing shell cut them off. Dinner was baked chicken and com bread dressing.

  “Thanks for remembering how I like it,” Pepperlake told Orinda. “My wife won’t fix it any more.”

  McAdam inquired about the Freeman.

  “Doomed.” Gloomily, he shook his head. “Unless we get the shell open to stay. No more news or features from out of the county. Not even newsprint, either, after we use up the little we have.” Yet he was soon smiling again, asking Orinda for another helping of her dressing, with an extra spoon of gravy. The meal finished, we sat around the table as Orinda cleared it. Beth offered more wine. Her father said we’d better stay sober, and asked Pepperlake what he had in mind.

  “I heard Stuart last night. I need to know how you stand on his imperial dreams.”

  “My son.” With a wry face, McAdam shook his head. “He’s always been difficult. He’s impossible now.”

  “You don’t support him?”

  “He’s gone mad. I told him so.”

  “I’ve been bailing him out of trouble since he was bom.” Beth frowned unhappily when Pepperlake turned to her. “But this is the end. I’ll never be the princess of his militia kingdom.”

  “And you?” McAdam turned to Pepperlake. “More to the point, you’re on the council. What do you want?”

  “Let me answer with another question.” He looked at Beth and back at McAdam. “You’re both historians. As honestly as you can, tell me what future you see for America. For the world?”

  “Honestly?” Beth paused as if to ponder the word and glanced at me. “Your brother selected Me Adam county as a fair sample slice of America. I think it is, and infected with what he called the spores of terror. A kind of mental pathogen spread by instant electronic technology that swallows the thinking individual into a mindless mob acting on the impulse of the moment. I’ve come to share Kirk’s fear of a total breakdown.”

  She made a hard face.

  “That seems believable enough, and I thank you.” Pepperlake made a wry little nod, and turned to McAdam. “Colin?”

  “Nothing brighter, if you want my view of the world.” Dourly, McAdam shrugged. “I’ve studied the inhumanities of mankind far too long.”

  “Can you clarify the cause?”

  “Progress, if you want one word. It’s changed the rules. We spent a million years of evolution fighting to survive, fighting famine, fighting wild beasts, fighting one another, breeding fast to replace the dead. Now we can fight with deadlier weapons that still don’t kill enough to keep the balance even.”

  “So what’s the answer?”

  “I see no near solution. In the long run nature will correct the problem, but not in any pleasant way. Finishing our ecological cycle, I’m afraid we’ll keep on breeding like the animals we are till war and disease wipe out most of us, and leave a few to begin the old game again.” Somberly, he shook his head. “Nothing I like to think about.”

  “You may be right.” Pepperlake drew a long breath, and sat straighter at the table. “That’s why I’m here. I want to talk about our own individual survival.”

  “Yes?” Beth and McAdam brightened a little, waiting.

  “If we have to predict a new dark age, I want no new empire. No warring militias. No robber barons in silicon shells of their own. No Kingdom of Christ. Instead, I see the Haven as a kind of time capsule that can keep at least a spark of civilization alive. I want to make it a safe repository for the vital records and most precious artifacts of our culture. A little island of refuge for misfits with ideas that might help ensure the survival of our species.”

  “Perhaps—” McAdam nodded, smiling uncertainly. “Perhaps we can.”

  “But there’s Stuart.” Unhappily, Beth shook her head. “I love my little brother dearly, but he’s a hot-headed egoist. I’m afraid, with no great devotion to civilization.”

  “I’ve spoken to both your brothers.” Pepperlake nodded somberly. “Stuart hoots at any danger that we can’t survive. Rob Roy calls me an idealistic dreamer. His problems with the Feds have made him a cynic. He doubts that we’ll find anybody who cares all that much about tomorrow.”

  “Closer to home, we’d better look to the survival of the Haven.” McAdam turned to Pepperlake. “Can you cope with Stuart? He’s in command of the army and the police. He has political connections and militia friends all over the country.” He sighed, with a sad little smile. “I used to be proud of him. He’s got a good brain, a fine speaking voice, a contagious charisma. But he frightens me now. Suppose he got himself elected to your congress?”

  “Nobody’s elected. We choose our own members.”

  “You do?” Beth spoke sharply. “You few? You expect to rule the country?”

  “Undemocratic?” Pepperlake shrugged. “Elitist? Maybe, but if you’ve read Kirk’s book, I think you’ve got to admit that American democracy has failed.”

  “Do we?” McAdam frowned. “Can’t your council be corrupted?”

  “Perhaps, if we had planned the Haven to be some kind of ideal utopia, but our mission is something else. Maybe more ambitious. A benign aristocracy, if you look at the Greek roots of the word.” Again he glanced at me. “It began when a little group of us had dinner with Alden Kirk.

  “We called ourselves a congress, but it was nothing formal, not at first. Only that handful of us groping for escape from the age of terror Alden had foreseen. We had no actual hope of doing anything till Rob Roy began testing his silicon shell. That was when we organized and, finally dared declare our independence. We accept no new members until we are certain of their allegiance to our goal. Stuart fails our test.”

  “He is a problem.” Wryly, McAdam nodded. “I don’t know how you’ll deal with him.”

  “Even if you did,” Beth was shaking her head, “and even if the shell holds General Zeider out, the best you can do is to cut us off from everything we need. Even from the civilization you say you want to save. It look
s to me like suicide.”

  We finished the wine. Pepperlake made his farewell. I retired to my room and slept through dreams where Beth kept changing into Lydia, dead on her bathroom floor. The power was off when I woke. The lights flickered and came on again while I was dressing in the dark.

  “We’re lucky, at least for now,” McAdam said at breakfast. “I’ve spoken to Rob Roy. He’d kept the shell open for power transmission till the government cut us off the interstate net. The council found a couple of retired engineers with the know-how to start the old station out west of town. It’s running now, but in poor repair. They don’t know how long they can keep it going.”

  Later that day, KRIF rebroadcast a recorded appeal for public calm in the face of crisis. Pepperlake, Moorhawk, and the McAdam brothers sat at a long table in the old county courtroom, the green-and-white Haven flag on a staff behind them. They seemed united for the moment, though I saw no smiles.

  Pepperlake began on a sober note. Though the attack had been halted, the county was surrounded. Vital supplies and contacts were shut off. Negotiations with Washington were in progress, but the outcome was still uncertain—

  “But we don’t want panic.” Moorhawk interrupted, speaking too fast and too loud. “We don’t want riots. We don’t want famine. We don’t want bloodshed.”

  “No danger of that!” Stuart sat erect in his neat green jacket, his voice ringing boldly. “The shell is invincible. Zeider couldn’t touch us. Tomorrow is ours. We can conquer America. We can conquer the world.”

  “Please!” Roy lifted his hand. “We can defend ourselves, but I don’t want to conquer anybody.”

  “Thank you, Roy. You have given us a great power and a great responsibility.” Pepperlake looked back to the lens. “A duty that will demand the best of us. As Stuart says, we’re in no danger— except from ourselves. That’s the reason for this appeal.”

  “An appeal for sanity.” Moorhawk spoke again, still urgent but not so loud. “We have a lot to do. We need time to do it, and order here in the county to give us that time.”

  “The situation may seem desperate.” Pepperlake paused, a little old man in a worn tweed jacket, peering soberly into the lens through his old-fashioned glasses. “Certainly for business people. The banks are closed. Credit and transportation are cut off. Sales are down or nil.

  “Yet life can go on.” Hopefully, he nodded. “It will go on. The police will stay on duty. Schools will stay open. School buses will still run, so long as we have gasoline. We must ration that, as well as essential supplies left in stock. We are inviting contributions to a food bank.”

  He turned to his companions at the table.

  “Don’t forget the Rifles.” Stuart smiled into the lens. “We’re armed to keep order and prepared for survival. Till times get better—and we mean to make them better—we are opening a soup kitchen for anybody hungry.”

  Pepperlake thanked him for that.

  “Speaking to you citizens of the Haven—” He tried to raise his thin old voice. “We beg to understand the task we face. Roy has given us a noble opportunity. If we make the best of it, we have the chance to frame a splendid future. If we fail, we face disaster. We beg you to let us try.”

  With a bleak little smile, Beth left for school. McAdam spent the day in his study, writing up his battlefield notes for the Freeman. On KRIF, the infonet line was dead. Looking for news, all I found was a story on nominees for Reb football queen: half a dozen slim young women, smiling in the monitor as if they had never heard of war.

  For lunch, Orinda served a salad from the garden and bean soup with combread muffins. McAdam didn’t eat, and she sat with me.

  “What coming, Mr. Barstow?” She made a dismal face when I praised the meal. “I was at the market this morning, shopping for supper. Mr. McAdam likes a good pork roast, but a crazy mob was there ahead of me. People piling up their carts and standing in line to pay. Meat shelves stripped bare. I guess we’ll have leftovers for dinner.”

  I asked for another muffin.

  “Idiots!” she exploded. “Piling up the meat in deep freezes, ready to rot if the power goes out again. Ain’t the whole county gone plumb mad?” She blinked unhappily at me. “Everything we need comes here from outside. Now the trains ain’t running and the trucks ain’t running. If this wall stays up, we’ll all go hungry. Don’t you think?”

  I didn’t know what to think.

  “This Free State thing? Or the Haven, if they call it that?” Anxiously, she searched my face. “Throwing Father Garron out of the county? Declaring this independence? What about Mr. Stuart? Mr. Rob Roy? People say they ought to hang for treason. They say we’ll all suffer a judgment of God if they don’t open the wall and join America again. I want things back like they used to be.”

  “I’ll stick with the Haven,” I told her. “I like what Pepperlake and Moorhawk and Rob Roy are trying to do. A noble thing. It won’t be easy, but I wish them luck.”

  “I don’t—don’t know.” Her voice was breaking, and she had to wipe her eyes. “I been with the McAdams all my life, had a better life than most, but now I just don’t know.”

  Back on the monitor, Ramona Del Rio said the camera was not allowed inside the shell and she would be back when she could. I tried to get a nap, tried to read McAdam’s first volume, tried to imagine what the shell really meant to the future of mankind. She never came back.

  Orinda’s leftovers were well disguised at dinner. We ate a silent meal, all of us too anxious to make small talk. Beth and McAdam left the table early, she to grade a test, he to revise his Civil War paper. Darkness fell and I went outside for a walk in the back yard.

  My room and McAdam’s study were on opposite sides of the house. I paced back and forth behind it, keeping to the strip of grass between the building and the garden. In the light from McAdam’s window, I saw a crouching figure. I heard the jangle of shattered glass, heard a gunshot, heard Beth scream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  STOOPING LOW, THE man ran and vanished through an open gate. I stumbled after him. A motor coughed and roared. The front yard looked empty till I came around the front of the house and glimpsed a car in silhouette against the glow of a distant street light. It raced down the drive and turned into the street, the engine thunder fading to a gentle purr.

  I went back inside through my own room. McAdam had fallen forward over the papers on his desk. The back of his shirt had reddened around a ragged hole and his blood was dripping on the floor. Bent over him, Beth straightened to stare at me in mute distress. Orinda was on the telephone, calling the police.

  “He’s alive.” I felt his limp wrist. “There’s a pulse.”

  “Who would do this?” A faint little whisper. “Why? He had no enemies.”

  I knew no answer. The ambulance came screaming up the drive. The crew unfolded a gurney, laid him on it, started an IV, took him away. Beth went with him. I was left staring blankly into the dark and empty street, wishing I’d found some word of hope or comfort for her.

  “The cops are coming.” Orinda told me. “You go to your room. Stand in the closet till they’re gone. I won’t tell.”

  I wanted to hug her, but I had to shake my head.

  “No time to run,” I said. “Nowhere to hide.” She let them in, half a dozen men in McAdam Police uniform. The sliver of brown plastic on the chest of the man in charge was lettered Sgt Aaron Hawes, Ben Coon was with them, still in his Kentucky Rifles gear, but wearing a badge that read Sheriff. He pushed importantly ahead of Hawes and stopped to blink at me.

  “Barstow!” He stopped o get his breath. “We’ve been hunting you all over. Where have you been?”

  “Out of the county.”

  “Hold him,” he told Hawes. “We’ll take him in. Frisk him and watch him. He’s been on the run for the Starker killing.”

  I had to squint into the glaring light on a video camera while they searched me. Coon turned to question Orinda.

  “He was there at his desk.�
� She pointed, and a man with a video camera was sweeping the scene. “Shot in the back, through that window.” She pointed. “There’s the broken glass.”

  Hawes had turned to look at Coon, perhaps uncertain of his authority or competence.

  “Get moving!” Coon shouted impatiently. “Get the camera! Get every thing! Frick and Hale, you take a look outside the window.”

  “Yes, sir.” They stood a moment looking at each other. I saw the hint of a wink. “Of course, sir.” Coon swung to me. “You, Barstow? How’d you get here?”

  “Through the barrier, when Garron’s people were leaving.”

  Peering hard at me, he raised his voice. “Come in the kitchen. You’ve got a lot to explain.”

  He grinned at me across the kitchen table with a sort of ferocious warmth.

  “We’re old friends, Barstow, remember? Since we met in the Jay Eye See. Looks as if things have changed, but I want to treat you fair. I don’t know what all you’ve done, but your best shot is to come clean with me. Let’s hear where you’ve been.”

  I told him what I thought he already knew, about my stay in Marion’s Georgetown house and my drive back to Kentucky in her car.

  “About this shooting tonight?” The false warmth was gone. He sat crouched across the table, his heavy shoulders tensed as if for a tackle. His eyes were bloodshot, and I caught whiskey on his breath. “Where were you when the shot was fired?”

  “Outside, walking in the yard. I heard the shot. I saw somebody running and heard a car taking off.”

  “So?” His voice turned sardonic. “Somebody who?”

  “It was dark. All I saw was an outline against the light on the drive.”

  “How come you were out of the house?”

  “I’ve had to keep out of sight. Shut up inside all day. I’ve been walking after dinner, for fresh air and exercise.”