Directive 51

by John Barnes

  “Marijuana helps induce that effect,” Edwards pointed out.

  “It does, to some extent; so does ecstasy, either the drug or the religious experience. There’s a great play where a lunatic came to think he was God because he realized every time he prayed, he was talking to himself. After a while the voice of the conversation can sound like the meaning of the universe. As long as it’s only for a few hours after midnight in a dorm room or a bar, it didn’t matter very much.

  “But the modern world improved everything, or at least made it more effective. Internet came along and made it possible for a conversation to go on like that 24-7-365, with thousands instead of a dozen participants, and a lot of the meditation and hypnosis and biofeedback tactics for focusing attention found their way out of Eastern philosophy, and a lot of the tactics for making an idea compelling found their way out of Western advertising, and one bright day, you had a great big idea that was running on so many brains and computers all the time that it was beginning to think itself. Unfortunately, it was an idea that’s been around since Rousseau or earlier—‘civilized self-hatred.’ The modern world created a perfect environment for the growth and flourishing of a general feeling that the modern world had to go.”

  “Are you saying that it was . . . like a suicidal obsession?” Lenny said. “Depressive thinking that got out of hand?”

  “Cam asked me the same question,” Arnie said. “Yeah. I always come to the same answer: I think Daybreak was like an immense death wish of, by, and for our whole global civilization. Furthermore, it has succeeded. It self-cured the same way a lot of suicidal obsessions do—it actually pulled the trigger and killed the system it was running on. But that’s just a step on the way to seeing what happened to il’Alb.”

  Lenny asked, “Is the idea you’re driving toward that it wasn’t a case of the terror groups infiltrating Daybreak, and turning it to their own purposes, but that Daybreak took over il’Alb?”

  Arnie nodded. “Yeah, I’m avoiding saying that because I know it’ll kind of freak people, and you’re right, I need to face up to it. Here’s the thing. One reason Daybreak grew so fast and effectively was its fierce immune response to ideology; it strongly discouraged anyone from talking about why to take down the Big System; the idea was to only to take it down. That let it grow very fast—it never had to fight with most of people’s pre-existing beliefs. Most Daybreak AGs started as separate organizations—little chapters of Earth First or small anarchist parties or Stewardship Christian prayer groups. After a while in touch with Daybreak, they still might have said they believed the same old weird stuff they always had, but their commitments and priorities were aligned to make them operating tools of Daybreak.

  “You know how they used to say that the Internet experienced censorship as damage, and just wired around it? Well, what I’m saying is, Daybreak experienced il’Alb as just one more affinity group that wanted to hit part of the Big System, and it subverted them the same way it did any other group, then directed them to the target that best suited Daybreak’s purpose on a given date.”

  “And you think this because—”

  “Because at every point where I’ve got data, and the processing algorithms to look for patterns, the communications look like that is what is happening—and I don’t see anything that looks like there’s any internal dictator, or any orders coming in from outside. I’ve got ten thousand ducks quacking and waddling, with one deluded chicken that thinks it’s a duck in the middle. I think it’s a flock of ducks; Cam thinks it’s a malign conspiracy of chickens.”

  After a long silence, Graham Weisbrod said, “So there you have it. Either we are being attacked by a foreign power using an absolutely brilliant new strategy—I call that the Covert Hitler interpretation—or what has just happened is more like a disastrous storm in the noosphere—call it the Hurricane Daybreak interpretation. And at first glance it would seem that the thing we have to do is figure out which it is. But Cam and Arnie asked me to be the neutral party explaining why we need to be aware of the question, try to answer it, all of that—but we don’t want to get into it today.

  “Here’s the deal. Several very large Daybreak affinity groups announced to the rest of Daybreak that they were prepared—but they never activated. And around those groups there were a lot of messages with a single theme— that you can kill a man by giving him a poison that kills all the cells in his body, or by whacking him on the head, but the way to be sure is to do both. That message was all over the Aaron Group, for example. So looking at the situation, we’re reeling from Daybreak and from the Air Force Two attack—two different kinds of massive damage—and those affinity groups seemed to be working on places where it would be more effective to hit us later, when we don’t have the tools to mitigate the attack or defend ourselves.”

  “Such as?” Edwards asked.

  Cameron shrugged. “Well, right now we could probably still evacuate a big city if we had to. Enough working phones, radios, and vehicles, especially in the so-far-lightly-hit places like DC and Miami. So right now a nerve gas attack in a downtown would be copable-with. But in a week or two, when no one has a radio, a phone, or a car?”

  Dead silence in the room.

  Weisbrod looked around. “So it doesn’t matter today, or probably even this month, whether it’s Covert Hitler or Hurricane Daybreak that has just walloped us. Whether it’s a foreign enemy or a ghost in the system, it is probably going to strike at us again in the next few days, hard, at least a few more times.

  “Strike us hard with what?” Colonel Green said. “Isn’t that the real question?”

  Cam nodded, taking the command of the meeting back from Weisbrod. “Yes, it is. And if Jim Browder here is right, we think we may know what they’ve got aimed at us. So the job for today’s meeting is to make sure that the president—whichever of them is going to be the president—does not get caught up in my suspicions and paranoia, or in Dr. Yang’s charts and equations, but focuses on the scary thing Dr. Browder will be presenting. That’s the message you’ll all be pushing as hard as you can—‘it doesn’t matter, let’s talk about pure fusion bombs.’ ”

  “You want our group to be an idea pump for that,” Edwards said.

  “Bingo.” Weisbrod, Cam, and Arnie spoke simultaneously, and everyone laughed.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. OVER EASTERN OHIO. 11:30 A.M. EST. TUESDAY. OCTOBER 29.

  It was being a morning for superlatives. As he’d ridden in the candidate caravan to the Dubuque airport, Chris Manckiewicz had received a text from Anne telling him he was getting Cletus’s old title and the biggest raise of his career. Plus he’d just finished an exclusive with the now-probable winner one week before the election. Of course, it did happen on board the Low on Taxes, High on Jesus Express, the dumbest name ever come up with for a campaign plane.

  Norcross urged him to “ask the tough ones, Chris. My polling people tell me thirty million people will vote for me on election day and hate themselves for it a month later—and hate me twice as much. I have to make them feel okay about this, because it’s their country too, and just their bad luck that they’re getting me for a president. If you don’t hit me with hard questions now, and give me a chance to say the right things, they’re never going to have a chance to give me a chance.”

  So Chris had asked about the Christian Bill of Rights. Norcross had said, “Yes, it is my belief that the Christian religion has a special place in American culture and we should codify that, but that is not what people are going to elect me to do, so I won’t act on it while our country is in danger, nor try to slip it in without adequate debate while the country is busy trying to survive.”

  He was equally blunt about everything else. Tax cuts? “Of course I want to do that. Everyone in office does. But just now we have no clue what shape the economy will be in or what actions the government will need to take; we’ll just have to see.”

  Obscenity? “Well, I’m not for it, but when I’m worried about how nearly four hundred m
illion people are going to make it through the winter, I’d be pretty silly to think the biggest thing we had to cope with was naked ladies. When everyone is warm, has a job, and can eat, then yes, there are spiritual issues I want to address.”

  At the end of it, Chris thought, My camera, my editing: the first draft of how a president formed out of an obscure nutcase senator.

  He worked quickly and well, slapping camera cuts into place, cutting stammers, nervous laughter, and trail-offs. Someday, people will point at my work and say, that’s why he became President.

  Norcross’s media people had given him access via his wireless to the plane’s satellite and roving land links. The box on the screen said it took a full minute, and 81 tries, for the whole transmission to go all the way through and receive an acknowledgment from 247NN.

  A moment later Anne appeared in a corner of his screen. “Chris,” she said, “you have one of the best communication platforms still running in North America. We’d use our own planes, but they’re grounded with burst tires and shot electronics.” A burst of scrambled sound, and the picture broke up.

  “Didn’t get that.”

  “Sorry. Okay, quickly, e-mail from me has addresses of everyone who can receive finished product at all our affiliates. Send that interview direct to them. I’ve e-mailed them all to expect it. We don’t want them to miss it but I don’t know if we can”—another burst—“from here with our”—a shriek and a black screen for a long moment before the picture came back, much grainier. “Did you get—?”

  He saw that her e-mail had come in, copied the list from it, and immediately sent out the finished interview again, as she had requested. This time it took 94 seconds and 139 tries, but it still went through. It took his e-mail, a simple short text telling her it had been accomplished, nine tries.

  Abruptly, Chris laughed. Norcross, sitting on the other side of the lounge reading his Bible, looked up over his reading glasses. “Someone send you something funny?”

  “Not exactly funny. I’ve just done my best interview ever and I got a big raise this morning, and probably the network will be gone before my next paycheck.”

  Norcross nodded, turned, and called, “Robbie? We need a plan to deal with the disappearance of electronic money in the next forty-eight hours.”

  Robbie, his economic advisor, sitting up from a nap, rubbed his face. “Right. Of course. So you need a plan in forty-eight—”

  “No, I mean all electronic money will disappear for good in forty-eight hours. That’s what, ninety percent of the economy?”

  “Old figure. Nowadays, more like ninety-seven percent.”

  “We’re an hour from Reagan National. Have a plan when we land.”

  Robbie groaned, but he sat down and unfolded his laptop. A moment later he looked up, and said, “I’m getting ‘Try again later,’ from all the Internet connections—which is about thirty line-of-sight stations. Better make that ‘our plan for what to do with the money already gone,’ I guess.”

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. NORTHEAST OF TRES PIEDRAS. NEW MEXICO. 9:45 A.M. MST. TUESDAY. OCTOBER 29.

  Jason stayed low on the ridgeline and watched. He didn’t know why he was so stupid that he had to see what had happened to the commune.

  Beth, he thought. Just couldn’t run out on you, babe, not while there was a chance you were still alive.

  The main house had been burned to a hollow black shell. There were bodies in the farmyard, but without binoculars, he wasn’t sure who. He was pretty sure the one hanged from the barn pulley was Elton. Two men with rifles guarded the farmyard, so he couldn’t go down to look for clues.

  A very soft voice said, “Hey.”

  He turned. Beth had streaks of soot on her face and looked pretty sick. She sat down beside him. “We should get away from here. Then can you tie up my wrist?”

  “Sure.” They moved cautiously back down from the ridge line, and he found a couple of thick pine sticks and, with some junk line from his pack, lashed together a sort of splint.

  “Needs a real doctor,” he whispered, apologetically.

  “You’ll do.” She kissed his cheek. “We better walk while I can. If you can find us somewhere warm for the night, that’ll help; I think I’m a risk for shock.”

  They crept along the ridge trail, back into the state park. On the broad, well-marked trail, he asked, “How’d you know I’d be there?”

  “It’s where you used to take me for sex, hon. About the only place where we could watch the commune to make sure no one was coming and still have some privacy. And if you’d went any place else, they’d’a catch you.”

  They filled his water bottle and shared long drinks at the first public pump. “I think they’ll be looking along the roads,” he said, “but we can take this trail over to the camping area in the next drainage; won’t be a lot of hikers out and nobody’s gonna think of it as transportation just yet. Gonna be a long day, baby.”

  She shrugged, and winced at how that pulled her wrist. “Then we better get going.”

  They walked. After some time he ventured, “Uh, how’d you get away?”

  “I fucked the three guys that took me off to kill me, and then cried, and promised no one wouldn’t ever know if they let me go. They didn’t really wanna kill me, I guess. Probably it was like their first lynching, and they weren’t real good at it, you know?”

  “How did you feel about—”

  “Like I feel about taking a big old painful crap when I really have to. Better’n not having done it. Prolly I’ll have bad dreams and stuff later.”

  The sun was still high in the sky when they topped the ridge; Beth looked sick, but she seemed to be bearing up, and after he added a couple more sticks to the makeshift splint, she seemed to do better.

  Somewhere, he figured, there’s a place we can blend in and not be looked for. I just hope we don’t have to join a mob and kill any Daybreak people, because I think if she had to, to live, Beth could do that. And I’m not sure I could.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. SAN DIEGO. 9:00 A.M. PST. TUESDAY. OCTOBER 29.

  Almost everywhere in the world, the first thing a cop does, when bringing a visiting cop into his territory, is to offer coffee, and any visiting cop to whom it is not allergenic death or spiritual anathema had better accept. “So,” Carlucci said, “I didn’t even know we had any future cops. What do you do, arrest crooks before they’re born?”

  Bambi ignored the joke she’d heard too often. “I’m one of five DoF employees that have the power to make an arrest. Congress in their wisdom realized it was always possible we might stumble across some present-day crime. You’re lucky all of us didn’t come. This is the first real case we’ve ever had.”

  “I guess that—” Carlucci’s phone rang, and he picked up. “Carlucci. Yeah, I—right. On my way. I’ll bring as much backup as I have. See if you can reach anyone en route and re-route them to give us some more backup. I’m on my way.” He asked Bambi, “You reasonable on the G-54?”

  “Fully qualified.”

  “Great. Follow me.” A few steps down the hall, he leaned into a room where two men sat on desks facing each other. “Terry Bolton, Larry Mensche, this is Bambi Castro, she’s badged with OFTA and coming along; gear up, and set Castro up with a Glock. Now, because we need to be rolling ten minutes ago.”

  Bolton pulled on holster, coat, and all in one fluid motion; Mensche arose from a pile of papers, tucking away reading glasses as he went, and was halfway into his coat by the time Bolton was opening the arms locker on the wall. “Can you tell us what it’s about?”

  “That number one high-priority suspect we were expecting? She, a couple AFIs, and a few Mexican Army GAFEs are all trapped in a DN-7 with collapsed tires on Imperial Avenue. Big mob that wants them to hand her over for a lynching.” Carlucci sounded no more excited than if he were talking about picking up muffins for a church breakfast.

  Bolton handed Bambi the holster, three clips, and the G-54. She checked it out; perfectly maintained, of course.
Carlucci was explaining, “—local patriots got wind and barricaded the 805 around exit 12A, which wasn’t too complicated since practically no cars are able to move, so they just dragged a bunch of stuck cars together to form a line across the freeway.”

  In the bright sun, they all flipped on shades automatically; Bolton took shotgun in the hazmat Hummer, leaving Bambi next to Mensche.

  Carlucci pulled out fast. “Mensche, best route? We need to get onto Imperial south and west of exit 12A, with—”

  “Fifteen down to El Cajon, over to 54th Street, south to Imperial, hang a right,” the agent said quietly. “You don’t think there’s going to be anybody blocking alternate routes?”

  “Sounds like they’re improvising. They didn’t actually ambush the DN-7—the Mexican commander got a tip-off from a traffic cam and had already end-run the crowd, he’d have gotten away clean but they lost five out of six tires in one big spinout. The mob up on the 805 saw that and ran down and surrounded them.” Carlucci’s eyes never left the road, a good thing at the speed he was driving.

  “Anyway,” he added, “the mob can’t really get at them—they’ve got twenty-millimeters on robot turrets, so by way of explaining ‘stand back,’ they shredded a couple of parked cars—but we’ve got to go get them out. Just now, Mexican troops in uniform are having a hard time talking to Americans, especially Americans who think they’re bringing in Ysabel Roth to personally lead the looting and burning.”

  They hurtled down the empty freeway, dodging between wrecks and abandoned cars. “This thing has a tank of antiseptic and sprays a mist of it on the tires as we go,” Carlucci explained, “just in case anyone is wondering if I’m trying to kill us all. Siren and light, you think?”

  Bolton said, “If they’re going to shoot at us, they’ll do it with or without the sirens, eh? Give ’em a fair shot at doing the right thing.”

  Carlucci turned on the noisemakers. Approaching the crowd at a sedate twenty miles per hour or so, they allowed everyone plenty of time to consider.