“I expected that,” he said. “What about the rooftops? See anything?”
“We aren't sure.” Casper could see Mirim now, as a shadow blocking part of the light. He could see others around the manhole, as well.
“Is the sound system set up?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Good. Here.” He handed up the first of the bulletproof plastic panels. Someone grabbed it and lifted it away, and Casper handed up the next, and the next.
When he finally climbed the ladder out of the manhole he emerged into a booth of clear plastic shielding, each panel held by a trusted member of PFC. Each of them wore a helmet and heavy vest-lined, Casper knew, with kevlar and with ceramic shock absorbers like his own.
Together, the little clump of revolutionaries moved across the street to the sidewalk and up onto the platform set up there for Casper's use. Once he was on the platform someone handed him a microphone, passing it between two of the plastic panels.
Then the people holding the panels all sank down, sitting on the platform, ducked down low, and Casper looked out at the crowd.
The street was packed-as he had hoped. Most of them were just curiosity seekers, of course, but there might be several potential recruits, all the same.
Police were scattered around, as well. That was to be expected. There were also reporters, and a dozen or more videocameras. That was excellent. Casper wanted this as public as possible.
And somewhere out there, he was sure, there were assassins in the pay of the Covert Operations Group.
“Hello, New York!” Casper called into the microphone. “My fellow Americans, thanks for coming!”
A cheer went up.
“I'm Casper Beech, a member of People For Change, and I have a few things I want to tell you tonight-a few things about People For Change, a few things about our present government, and a few things about you!”
Another cheer. Casper heard it, but didn't pay much attention. He was listening for other things, and scanning the surrounding buildings.
“Our government has told you that I'm a terrorist, and that People For Change is an organization of terrorists, and I've come here tonight to tell you not to listen to their lies! People For Change is a peaceful political organization-we want change, all right, but we're Americans, and we believe in democracy, and in the Constitution that made this country great. We want to bring about change through the ballot box, not through terror or crime in the streets!
“And that's what scares the Republicrats!”
And the shot came.
The timing couldn't have been better if Casper had scripted it himself.
The shot itself wasn't loud. Casper wasn't even sure he'd really heard it. Its effect, though, was unmistakable. The bulletproof plastic to his right shattered spectacularly, and shards sprayed around him.
He immediately dropped and rolled, pushing aside some of his supporters. The others dropped their own shields and dove from the platform. People were screaming.
Casper still had the microphone as he clambered back down to the sidewalk.
“ That's what scares them!” Casper shouted. “People, they've been fixing the elections for decades! Who oversees the elections? The Republicrats! Why haven't any of the other parties ever gotten a foothold, no matter how unhappy the voters were? Why has the Dem-Rep Party dominated this country for…”
He'd gotten that far when someone tripped over a wire and disconnected him; there was a burst of white noise, and the sound system went dead.
And then an automatic weapon somewhere opened fire. There were more screams.
The rally collapsed into chaos, and the police started moving in, moving toward Casper; he saw them coming, and shouted, “Look! They can't let me speak the truth! They've sent the police to stop me before I can tell you any more!”
“Stop them!” someone else shouted, and a moment later a wave of angry citizens overwhelmed the police.
Casper didn't even look back. “Head for the subway,” he said.
Police ran past them, paying them no attention as they rushed to deal with the riot the rally had become.
Moments later, Casper, Colby, Ed, and Mirim dropped, exhausted, onto adjoining seats on an uptown train. For a few seconds they sat silently, catching their breath; then Mirim sat up abruptly.
“I thought that plastic shielding was bulletproof!” she said angrily.
“They must have used armor-piercing shells,” Casper said wearily. “I thought they might. That was why I got to talk as long as I did-they had to change their ammunition.” He turned to Colby. “Where'd you tell Rose to meet us?”
“Canal Street.”
“We'll need to switch trains, then-we're headed the other direction.”
“Cas, you could have been killed!” Mirim said.
Casper shrugged. “I figured the plastic would divert the first shot, and I didn't intend to hang around for a second one-but yeah, we're in this for keeps, Mirim.”
“ Why?”
“Because they're going to keep on looking for me, Mirim, and they're going to keep going until they kill me, because they consider me a threat.”
“Because they think you're going to try to take over the country.”
“That's right.”
“Well, why don't you just get out of the country, then? Then you wouldn't be a threat any more! Colby could arrange it-couldn't you, Colby?”
“Maybe,” Colby said noncommittally. “Ed might know more than I do on this one.”
Ed grunted.
“But remember Trotsky,” Casper said. “Stalin's men got him in Mexico, halfway around the world. I'd still be a threat. Besides, Mirim, I'm an American-I don't want to leave, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life in hiding, with the Covert Operations Group looking for me. So I'm taking some risks to avoid it.”
Mirim stared at him. “You're ‘taking some risks',” she said.
“That's right.”
“Casper, you spent thirty-six hours down a manhole waiting, so that you could stick your head up and get shot at?”
He shrugged.
“I can understand the thirty-six hours-back at Data Tracers you were always good at enduring crap, and that apartment you lived in, well, I guess you could put up with anything. But deliberately letting them shoot at you-I can't believe you did that!”
Casper looked at her with interest.
“You think the file's responsible?” he asked. He had to admit, thinking about it, that it did seem unlike anything he had ever done before his optimization.
“Of course it is! Casper, it's going to get you killed!”
“It hasn't yet-hell, it's saved my life.”
“But the risks you're taking-sooner or later, the odds are going to catch up with you.”
Casper gazed at Mirim for a moment, then glanced at Colby and Ed.
Ed shrugged. “You don't meet a lot of old revolutionaries,” he said. He clearly wasn't bothered by this observation.
Casper leaned back, his head against the window behind him, staring at the off-white metal ceiling as the car swayed.
“Spartacus died,” he said, to no one in particular. He frowned, and chewed on his lower lip. “I don't want to die,” he added a moment later, as the train began to slow for the next stop.
“Well, if you keep up like this, you're going to,” Mirim said angrily, reaching for the pole to pull herself upright.
Colby leaned across the space where she had been and said, “So you made your speech and they took a shot at you-now what?”
“Now we've got our Boston Massacre, our Kent State,” Casper said, standing. “There's still a way they could get out of it-but I don't think they'll do it in time.”
Mirim stared at him. “You mean you took that risk, and whatever you were doing might not work?”
“Oh, I think it will,” Casper said, pushing her toward the open door, as Ed and Colby hurriedly rose and followed. “The only way they can get out of it is if they turn in the s
hooter and say he's one of us, that we set the whole thing up. Then it'll be our word against theirs, and they'll be able to manufacture all the evidence they need. If they don't do that, and quickly, we'll be able to make the truth stick-that the feds shot at me. That'll get us a lot of sympathy, and a lot of attention, and when we put out a call for volunteers we should get them. Then we turn PFC into a genuine political party, and we make sure that they can't rig the elections against us the way they have against everyone else.”
“And then what?” Colby said, as the four of them emerged onto the platform. “You get elected president next year?”
Casper shook his head. “Not hardly,” he said. “We won't be able to take the presidency for at least twelve years, at the very best-probably twenty, maybe as long as forty-four. But if it's that long, it'll be because they've cleaned up their act, and that's what I really want.”
“You intend to be elected president?” Mirim asked.
“Probably not me,” Casper said. “Too much political baggage. I did kill those men back in Philadelphia. But someone from PFC. And I'll be rehabilitated along the way.”
“If you don't get killed first.”
“If I don't get killed first,” Casper agreed.
Chapter Nineteen
The news coverage was perfect. Casper watched intently as the networks played the images over and over-his face, looking strong and wild and noble as he spoke; the plastic shield shattering; the screaming crowd; the slow pan across the wreckage and the ambulance crews covering the bodies before hauling them away.
“Seven dead,” Mirim said, horrified.
“Were any of them ours?” Colby asked.
Tasha frowned. “We don't know,” she said. “We still have three people missing.”
“They're stonewalling,” Casper said, his eyes still locked on the video. “They're dead. They can't stonewall this and get away with it. They're just denying everything.”
“What?” Mirim asked.
“They're mishandling it,” Casper said. “Don't you see? The government, I mean-the Party. They haven't even denied that it was a fed who shot at me! They've let the networks transmit their coverage, they've let my speech-what there was of it-go out. It's been so long since they've faced a real challenge that they've forgotton how to spin the facts.”
“You're right,” Cecelia said thoughtfully. “We can tie ‘em in knots now-wrongful death suits, civil rights violations, everything.”
“We can put out a call on the nets for volunteers and donations,” Casper said. “When the money starts coming in we can hire spokesmen, turn PFC into a real political party. We'll put candidates up in every little election we can find-once we're in office a few dozen places people will take us seriously. Run a populist, anti-status quo platform, long on rhetoric and short on specifics. The Republicrats have never bothered rigging the small elections-they never had to. And then we can demand oversight on the bigger ones.”
“People were killed out there, and you're talking about elections?” Mirim burst out.
Colby, Ed, Casper, and Cecelia all turned to stare at her.
“Of course,” Casper said calmly. “That's what this is all about.”
“I thought it was about keeping you alive, Cas!”
“That, too.”
“And what makes you any more important than those seven people who died?”
For a moment, there was an uncomfortable silence. The TV babbled quietly in the background.
Casper didn't think Mirim was in the mood to hear the truth-that Casper thought he was the most important person on Earth because he was the one who could fix the country, get it back on track, make the lives of millions of Americans better, and the lives of millions more people in the dozens of countries the U.S. dominated. She didn't want to hear that.
“Nothing,” he said at last. “Not in absolute terms. But Mirim, I'm more important to me, and I thought I was important to you, that you cared about me. And with this thing the feds put in my head, maybe I'm more important to the country. If we can get the oligarchs out of power and re-establish a government that's answerable to ordinary people, and not just to corporations and lawyers, there will be fewer of these stupid deaths in the future. It'll be a better life for everyone.”
“It'll be more of the same, Cas, it'll just be you and the PFC in charge instead of the Party, instead of the people running things now. And there'll probably be hundreds of deaths along the way, won't there?”
“I hope not.” Casper got up from the couch and knelt before Mirim, holding her hand. “Listen,” he said, “I think I'm doing the right thing-but maybe I'm not. I can't tell any more what's me, and what's the Spartacus File. At first I knew, at least sometimes-it was the File that got me out of Philadelphia alive, I knew that-but the lines have all blurred. You read the notes Schiano sent; you know he said that the optimization had to fit the recipient's brain perfectly, that I couldn't have taken the Spartacus File if I wasn't suited for it, and I guess he was right, because it's blended right in. I thought it was just telling me how to do what I wanted to do, but maybe it's done more. Maybe it's changing my idea of what's right and what's wrong. Maybe there's no real difference any more between Casper Beech and the Spartacus File-that idea scares me, but maybe it's true. I can't tell. You and Cecelia are my only external connection to the original Casper Beech now, and I can't trust the internal links. So you tell me-am I just doing what I'd always thought should be done, but I didn't have the nerve or the knowledge to do it? Or am I doing something I would have known was wrong, before?”
Mirim stared at him, at the familiar face of her co-worker that had become something more. There was a gleam in his eyes and a strength in his jaw that had never been there in their years at Data Tracers; she had always thought he had a certain charm, but now that had become an irresistible charisma, like a spark fanned into a roaring blaze.
How could she tell him he was wrong?
And was he wrong? She didn't know what the old Casper's political convictions had been-if he'd had any. He had griped about the government, like anyone else, but he'd never gone into specifics of what should be done about it. He had never wished anyone ill-and as far as she could tell, he still didn't wish anyone ill, except perhaps the people who ran the government, and even them, she thought, he just wanted out of power, he didn't want them harmed.
After all, the Spartacus File was supposed to enable him to lead a violent revolution, a guerrilla war-she'd seen Schiano's notes talking calmly about massacres and riots, and here Casper was transforming that into a relatively peaceful political reform movement. He was trying to reshape the Spartacus File to fit his own beliefs.
But people were dead, all the same. Only seven so far, but who knew how many more there might be if Casper went on with his plans?
“Cas,” she said, “if you were to succeed tomorrow, if you were suddenly appointed dictator of North America, what would you do? How would you be any different from any other power-hungry politician?”
“I'm not power-hungry,” he said. “I'd do my best to restore the Constitution as originally written. I'd kick out the bureaucrats who really run everything, the staff people, the paper-pushers, the lobbyists, everyone tied to the Consortium, and then I'd hold elections. I haven't worked out the details yet…”
“And you never would,” Mirim interrupted. “Reformers have taken office before with great plans, and it's always just been more of the same.”
“I'd try very hard not to be,” Casper said.
“And you think you could be different.”
“Yes, I do,” Casper said earnestly.
“And you think it's important enough that you have your chance to reform the government that it's worth people dying?”
“I think that if we had a new government of the kind I want that there wouldn't be any more Covert Operations Group killing people, that there wouldn't be any Consortium immune to half the laws, that there wouldn't be any corporate cops who can get away w
ith killing troublemakers, so yes, I do think it's worth risking a few deaths.”
“It's worth people dying so you can be president?”
Casper shook his head. “I don't want to be president,” he said. “I just want a new government.”
“So you say.”
“I mean it!” He stared into her eyes. “Listen, Mirim,” he said, “I'm not doing this out of personal ambition, I swear it. If it'll make you give me your support, I'll make you a promise-I won't ever be president. Or dictator, or whatever. When our reforms succeed, when PFC takes power, it'll be with someone else in charge. I'm not doing this to put myself in charge.”
“You're serious?”
“Absolutely.”
And he was.
The Spartacus File required him to overthrow the present government and replace it with a more democratic one; it never specified that he, personally, had to have any role in the new one.
In fact, the idea of actually having to run a country as big and complicated as the U.S. was terrifying. He didn't want to do anything of the kind. They'd find a figurehead somewhere. Maybe Colby-he would clean up better than Ed. Much better than Ed-in fact, Ed could be a problem in the long run, a problem that might need to be eliminated.
Or maybe instead of Colby or any of the other long-time PFC people they could use Cecelia, or even Mirim herself.
Of course, Casper might still be running things behind the scenes. He wouldn't be president, he'd be chief of staff, or just an advisor with no official title. And it wouldn't be permanent.
Just until everything was settled.
Chapter Twenty
No one gave any names, and while many Americans would have thought the tall man's face was familiar they wouldn't have been able to say who he was.
Smith knew, though. As part of his job he had to be able to instantly identify any high government official, just in case he happened to see one somewhere he shouldn't, and he knew who he was facing. He straightened a little further.
This was the White House Chief of Staff-the current administration's hatchet man.
The Spartacus File Page 15
