The Silicon Dagger

by Jack Williamson

  “That enough?”

  “It will do.” Dazed, I sat there trying dully to recall the far-off simplicities of life in Georgetown as it had been before the letter bomb arrived. “You’re my lawyer,” I said when I found wit and breath to speak. “What can we do?”

  “Not much.” Dismally, he shrugged. “Stuart won’t see me alone, but yesterday afternoon I went back to his headquarters in the old armory with another group trying to petition him for a constitution, and a convention to draw it up.

  “They never let us in, but Colonel Burleigh—he’s a colonel now—finally came out to talk to our spokesman, Hack Klappinger, a social science prof from the college. Hack tried to warn him that Stuart is turning off a lot of people who used to support him.

  “Burleigh snorted at that and gave us their line. The general says we’re standing at a turning point in history. He has this unique chance to share his brother’s secret weapon with all mankind and set the whole world free from oppression forever.”

  Katz made a sardonic face.

  “General Stuart Me Adam! A great man now, or he thinks he is. And ruthless when he tries to prove it. His military cops were busy all night, rounding up people on his blacklist. And you—” He shook his head at me. He means to make an example of you. “Your court-martial is set for tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” That took my breath.

  “No help for it, Mr. Barstow.” His voice rose in anxious apology, but then he managed an uneasy grin. “A tricky situation, but I’ve seen Colonel Hunn and worked out a scheme to save your hide.” “Saul Hunn?” I recalled the feral fox face in its artful frame of silky silver hair. “What sort of scheme?”

  “Hunn’s the military prosecutor now, and here’s the deal.” Katz hesitated, searching me shrewdly. “I want you to plead guilty to all the charges, and throw yourself on the mercy of the court.”

  “Whose mercy?” Trembling, I reached to catch his sleeve. He flinched away from my hand. “Stuart’s?”

  He shrugged, with an air of gloomy impotence. “What else do you think I can do?”

  “I don’t know.” His stubbled face was blank, his wary eyes almost hostile, but I plunged ahead. “I’m not guilty of anybody’s murder. The FBI did send me here, if that’s a charge against me. I did steal that farmer’s pickup. But I didn’t knife Lydia Stalker or drive that firebomb into the Ryke clinic. I certainly didn’t shoot Colin McAdam in the back—”

  “Who did?”

  “If I could guess, I’m afraid the right guess could get me killed.”

  His shrewd little eyes fixed on me for several seconds. “If you’re afraid to guess, let’s have what you know.”

  I got up to look through the bars. The corridor seemed empty. Angry voices in the tank seemed far away. Speaking under my breath, I gave him a full catalogue of my misfortunes.

  “I have to trust you, Mr. Katz.”

  “Of course!” He was alarmingly loud. I raised my hand, and he dropped his voice a little. “And this scheme with Hunn is your best chance.”

  “A guilty plea? I don’t trust Hunn. I won’t do that.”

  “Please, Mr. Barstow!” He caught my arm. “I am your attorney. My best judgment is that you are asking to face a firing squad. That’s what Hunn will be demanding, if your case goes to trial. Think about it.”

  Gripping my arm, he gave me half a minute to think.

  “Here’s the deal. He bent so close I caught the onion and cigar tobacco on his breath. “The General would love to see you wearing a blindfold in front of a rifle squad, but Hunn and I have worked out a strategy that ought to save you.”

  I sat shaking my head, but he went doggedly on.

  “The General’s still at odds with the Haven councilors. He has them here in jail, but they’ve got him stalled. His bid for world power depends on his threat to arm his militia allies with silicon shells. Rob Roy balks at that.

  “He’d built one of those portable units. When the General made his putsch, Mike Densky and his crew used it to wall themselves

  up in the CyberSoft building where nobody can get at them. That’s the basis for our arrangement.”

  He paused, with a strained grin of satisfaction.

  “The General would prefer you dead, but Hunn thinks he’d settle for a mobile shell unit. He’ll ask the court to accept your guilty plea and exile you from the Free State. You will leave with an Arizona militia group, armed with one of these portable shell units.

  “You ought to be happy with that.”

  I wasn’t, but before I had time to say so, a guard was at the door.

  “Time, Mr. Katz. Time to go.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THE SHEER ADVENTURE of it drew me. An unbelievable escape after all my weeks of desperate flight and hiding, the chance to set out with a tiny convoy of battered pickups and a few reckless men determined to bring down the old America.

  Making history for Stuart. History for the world. A dazzling prospect, if the silicon shell could actually heal the contagion of terror that had obsessed my brother. It might free me from the stink of the jail and the promise of a rifle squad.

  I lay awake half the night, imagining the push across the nation in search of a welcome and haunted by the hazards of it. Hostile mobs, battling to defend the dying past. Air attacks, tank traps set for us, bridges mined to blow up beneath us. Madly hopeful, I dreamed of victory after stunning victory as we rolled safely onward inside our moving fortress.

  I woke to a breakfast of boiled turnips and fried grits, and a shock of cold reality. It could never happen. Even if Rob Roy could be persuaded to give his secret up, I had no wish to destroy America.

  I sat on the hard bunk, waiting uneasily till Katz came with the guards. They manacled my hands, marched me to the elevator, took me down to the dismal courtroom. A silent crowd waited in the pewlike seats. The jury box was empty, but half a dozen of Stuart’s Riflemen stood at parade rest in front of it. Katz sat down with me at a counsel table inside the railing.

  Across the room, Ramona Del Rio was murmuring into a silenced mike. Her camera man was fussing with a tripod. He swung the lens to me for a moment, and then to sweep the room.

  I found Beth and her father in the front row. He sat stiffly erect, but looked pinched and shrunken, his gnarled old hands clutching a cane. His deep sunken eyes were fixed on me with no expression I could read.

  Sight of Beth quickened my breath and stabbed me with ache of hopeless longing and regret. Without makeup, she looked tired and troubled, yet alluring as ever, even in a simple blue business suit. She had bent to murmur something to her father. I watched till she turned to glance at me. Her eyes held mine for an endless moment, as if she tried to search my heart, till she flushed and turned very quickly away.

  Hunn and Gottler came strolling in together, carrying thick briefcases. They paused for a formal handshake with Katz and a glance at my manacled hands before they settled themselves at the opposite table.

  “Rocky?” Katz breathed in my ear. “What the hell’s his business in the court?”

  I had no idea. The room fell silent. I heard a bugle blast.

  “By order of General McAdam,” the Rifle sergeant bawled, “the high court of the Free State of America is now in session. All stand for the judges.”

  One by one, he chanted their names. Colonel James Burleigh. Colonel Benjamin Coon. Major Aaron Hawes. All newly uniformed in scarlet jackets and blue, gold-braided pants, they marched in to seat themselves behind the bar.

  Burleigh glanced at me, grinned, and leaned to whisper to Coon. I remembered Hawes, the police sergeant who had arrested me the night McAdam was shot; his cold stare sent a chill through me. Burleigh banged his gavel and called for order in the court. The white-headed court reporter bent over his antique machine, and the camera lights blazed on me.

  Hunn made me stand and state my name.

  “Clayton Barstow, you stand charged with capital crimes against the Free State of America.” He repeated the cha
rges. Murder, arson, grand larceny, flight from justice. I heard a stir and whisper from the crowd. Burleigh slammed his gavel and turned to Katz.

  “How does the prisoner plead?”

  I caught my breath to speak. Features twisted with the tic, Katz gestured to stop me. He came to his feet.

  “Sir, I have counseled with my client. My advice—”

  I stood up.

  “I plead—” Katz glared at me, muttering. I raised my voice. “I plead not guilty to all charges.”

  “Idiot!” A whispered snarl. “You’re asking for what you’ll get—”

  Burleigh banged his gavel.

  “The trial will proceed.”

  “Sir,” Katz spoke louder, “I move that the case be dismissed. This is a military court. The prisoner is not in the military. The court lacks jurisdiction.”

  “Nonsense!” Burleigh shouted. “Until the Free State enacts a constitution, we have no civil law. General McAdam has placed the entire Free State under military law.” He turned to Hunn. “The prosecution may proceed.”

  “Sir,” Katz persisted, “we object that this is not a proper military court for the trial of a capital case. Military law would require a general court-martial, consisting of at least five appointed officers."

  “Sit down, Mr. Katz.” Burleigh banged the gavel. “Until the Free State has approved a constitution, our law here is what General McAdam says it is. This court is duly appointed, vested with full capital authority. Your frivolity will not be tolerated.”

  Flushed and fuming, Katz sat down.

  Hunn's first witness was Mrs. Stella Starker, attired in a frilly lace blouse, a purple skirt that swept the floor, and a boat-shaped hat decorated with a tall spray of artificial ferns. Sworn, she turned from Hunn to stab a finger at me.

  “That’s him!” A piercing screech. “Him that slaughtered my precious daughter!”

  I heard a gasp from the audience. Burleigh slammed his gavel down. Katz was on his feet, objecting. Grinning, Hunn admonished her not to speak except in answer to his questions and asked if she had seen me at the time of her daughter’s death.

  “He come bustin' into my house before six that morning, lookin' for Lydia. He had this crazy rigmarole that she’d called him to come help her out of some trouble, but she had no trouble I knew about and anyhow I never let her have callers that time of day, when no decent woman would entertain a man. She wasn’t even up for breakfast.

  “I tried to send him on his way and saw him on his bike, but when I looked in Lydia’s room, there he was, standing over her naked body on the bathroom floor, a bloody knife in his hand. He’d stabbed her to death—”

  Katz objected again. The witness should be advised that she could only relate what she had seen and heard, with none of her own conclusions. Hunn agreed, with another grin for the judges, and kept her on the stand to testify that she had never seen me before or heard Lydia mention my name.

  She and Mr. Starker had prayed over her since the day she was born , and worked their fingers to the bone to bring her up to fear God and honor them. It broke their hearts that she never found Christ, but there had never been a grain of truth in all the wicked tales people told about her. She had no enemies but Satan and servants of Satan like—

  She was glowering at me, pointing again, but Katz was objecting before she could go on. He had no questions for cross. Hunn excused her and had the plastic-wrapped knife entered in evidence. A police sergeant swore that the fingerprints on the blood-stained handle were mine.

  A brawny black man in yellow coveralls identified himself as Fire Chief Tyson Tellmark. Keeping a wary eye on the judges, he testified that he had been on duty on the night of Dr. Ryke’s death.

  “The phone rang just after three. A man likely trying to disguise his voice—it was shrill as a kid’s and he put on a queer accent— he told me to watch out for a hot night. He said it was going to be a hell of a night for the baby-killers at the clinic. He hung up when I asked who he was.

  “The automatic alarm went off maybe thirty minutes later. I rushed over to the clinic in my own car ahead of the equipment. The pickup with the burning oil drums had rammed into the door. I got the smell of gasoline. The flames were already so high I couldn’t get close, but I found a man crawling away from the fire.”

  “Who was the man?”

  Tellmark looked at the judges, nervously licking his lips.

  “Did you recognize the man?”

  “Yes sir.” His voice had dropped to a husky whisper. “He had stumbled on the curb and fallen in the street. Maybe knocked out. His hair was singed and his nose was bleeding. I helped him into my car and rushed him to the hospital.”

  “You did recognize him?”

  “I—I knew him.”

  “What was his name?”

  He glanced at the judges again and shrank down in the chair.

  “He—he was Mr. Ben—Colonel Ben Coon.”

  I heard a gasp from the crowd but saw no change on Coon’s hard flat face.

  “Thank you, Mr. Tellmark,” Hunn moved smoothly on. “Did Colonel Coon tell you how he had got there?”

  “Yes sir.” Tellmark sank back in the chair, relaxed. “He did.” “What did he say?”

  “He said he was driving past the clinic on his way home from working late on the payroll at the Rifle headquarters.” Tellmark kept his eyes on Coon, who nodded in approval. “He said he seen the pickup crash into the clinic and the gas explode. A man running from the blast came past his car. The headlights caught his face.” “Did the colonel know the man?”

  “He says he did.” Tellmark looked at me. “He says it was the man you’ve got right there.”

  “Clayton Barstow?”

  “Yes sir. The colonel says he met him the day he came to town, and asked him to join the Rifles.”

  Smugly content with the witness and himself, Hunn asked Katz if he had anything for cross. Glumly, Katz said he had nothing. Feeling helpless, I looked at the judges. Coon looked grave till Hawes murmured something I didn’t get and leaned to shake his hand. Burleigh nodded cheerfully and announced a twenty-minute recess. They left the courtroom.

  “They’re lying!” I told Katz. “All lying. I was in the strip-mined country out beyond the county line when the clinic burned, beaten unconscious and lying in the mud.”

  “If you care to tell Coon and Burleigh that, I’ll put you on the stand when the prosecution rests.” Katz shrugged and shook his head. “If you think anybody will believe you.”

  The judges returned. Hunn had a pistol entered as evidence. Officer Hyde identified it as a nine-millimeter Chenya automatic, illegal in America and known as “the cop-stopper” because it could penetrate body armor. He testified that this was the gun he had picked up outside a shattered window at the McAdam mansion on the night Colin McAdam was shot. My fingerprints were on it.

  Hunn’s next witness was Orinda King. Old and anxious, her thin white hair closely clipped, she shuffled to the witness box and sat peering through gold-framed glasses at him and the judges. Speaking in a breathless whisper, she testified that she had worked as a maid for the McAdam family all her life. Her time-seamed face wrinkled into an uneasy smile when he had her look at me. Yes, she knew me. I had been at the McAdam house on the night Mr. McAdam was shot.

  Why was I there?

  I was a friend of the family.

  Did she know I was a fugitive from the law, hiding from the police?

  “He never said nothin’ like that.”

  He made her examine the pistol. Had she seen it before? “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t know nothin’ about guns.”

  Had she seen a gun that looked like it anywhere in the McAdam house? He offered it again. She shrank as if it had been a venomous snake.

  “I don’t want no truck with that ugly thing.”

  “Do you want to go to jail?” Hunn shouted at her. “Or do you want to tell the truth? The truth you swore to tell. Did you see a gun like that in the McAdam house?”


  “Maybe like it, sir. Maybe I did.”

  “Where did you see it?”

  “In a drawer, sir.” Her whisper was nearly too faint for me to hear. “In a drawer by the bed in the room where Mr. Stuart slept back when he was still at home.”

  “Who had been using the room since General McAdam left?” He gestured at me. “Was it Clayton Barstow?”

  “He didn’t—” She swayed to her feet, shouting at him and the judges in her thin old voice. “He didn’t do all you say he did. He’s a decent gentleman. I don’t believe he killed nobody.”

  Trembling, crying like a hurt child, she sank back into the chair. Hunn asked the judges to have her outburst stricken, and

  turned to Katz with a mocking grin to ask if he had questions for her. When Katz had none, he hustled her out of the box and turned to face the court.

  “Gentlemen, you have heard how Clayton Barstow killed Lydia Starker and Dr. Stuben Ryke, and how he tried to kill General Me Adam’s father. Our next witness will tell you why.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  HUNN’S SURPRISE WITNESS was Rip Ralston, out of jail and cleaned up, the mermaid and the octopus discreetly hidden under a gray sports jacket, a neat black patch over the battered eye. At ease in the box, he raised a heavy, black-haired hand for the oath, gave me a sardonic wink, and turned to pose for Del Rio when her camera light came on.

  Hunn asked what he did for a living.

  “Just a soldier, sir. A professional man at arms. I work where I can. Recently I was a guard at CyberSoft.”

  “Prior to that?”

  “Before that?” He shook his head. “My last job was confidential. I couldn’t talk about it.”