Directive 51

by John Barnes

  On April 4th, Alpha/2 of the President’s Own Rangers arrested the pro-Athens commanding officer and many of his officers at Mountain Home AFB, taking the survivors back to Olympia for a possible prisoner exchange—or a trial if necessary. The remaining personnel on the base were given a choice of “nine minutes to swear loyalty to Olympia, or ninety days to walk to Utah.”

  On April 12th, forces from Fort Bragg, having come upstream from Cairo, arrived in St. Louis and intervened in favor of the white-supremacist army to take control of St. Louis, thus severing the southern rail link between Olympia and the New State of Wabash. Simultaneously, the Ranger Regiment (Reconstituted) from Fort Stewart took control of the three key independent cities in the mountains, which had refused to align with either national government: Chattanooga, Lexington, and Louisville.

  The white-supremacist triumph in St. Louis was short-lived; once the city was firmly in Athenian hands, the white leadership was put on a sealed train and sent to firmly Olympian Cedar Rapids. They were told to have all the fun they wanted as long as they never came back; the mayor of Cedar Rapids jailed them, saying, “We’ll think of a charge for it later.”

  On April 13th, in Lincoln, Nebraska, an Olympian postmaster ordered the sorting room to pull mail addressed to all of the states that had declared for Athens out of the mailbags and leave it outside on the loading dock; on his own authority he imprisoned two postal workers who refused to comply.

  On April 14th, Second Battalion, Third Infantry, a mechanized unit converted to horse cavalry, was dropped off by a fast steam train in Berthold, North Dakota, just after sunset. At four in the morning they hit the compound on the former Minot AFB where the Olympian officials were held, rescuing all the prisoners, and leaving seven guards dead. On their way out, they torched two workshops and four experimental planes under construction.

  On the docks in Morgan City, Louisana, in early March, Navy officers loyal to Athens had attempted to commandeer SS Polyxena, a schooner from Monterey that had arrived carrying forty tons of hand-canned orange pulp and fifteen tons of beets. The crew fought them, destroying the Navy’s dinghy and killing a lieutenant, and escaped with its cargo; the bank in Morgan City canceled payment. In Jamaica the citrus and beets were bartered for marijuana, which was bartered in Caracas for beef jerky; Polyxena headed south, bound eventually around the Horn. On April 16th, the Athenian government issued a warrant for Polyxena’s crew for piracy and barratry; the Olympian government declared Polyxena to be under its protection.

  On April 17th, Radio Perth (Australia) was knocked off the air by an EMP; massive fusing systems in that city limited the damage, and fire crews were ready for the many small fires that sprang up around unused water pipes, electric cables, guardrails, and wire fences.

  On April 19th, Heather found herself facing two very unhappy factions of workers from the EMP Attraction Project. After some jockeying and arguing, she identified the three political agents from Olympia and the two from Athens and put them onto the next available trains under guard. With each party, she sent a letter.

  While the letters were on their way, on April 22nd, Cameron sent a brief, coded radio message to the remaining carrier groups in the Pacific, ordering them to be prepared to seize Olympia; the Pueblo code room, which was now reading both sides’ codes, decrypted it on the 24th. Heather hoped her letter might get to Cam within a day or two more.

  She could tell that Olympia was reading Athens’s code, also, because on the 23rd, according to a message which reached Heather through the Reno pony express on the 25th, Graham Weisbrod authorized equipping four partially rebuilt planes, and twenty small boats with their experimental diesel outboards, to carry two hundred pounds each of nanoswarm crystals packed in glass bottles. They sent a copy of the order and photographs of the machinery being used to make nanoswarm—just a simple make-and-break electric coil, not unlike an old-fashioned doorbell, powered by a windmill generator—to Cameron Nguyen-Peters, via biplane to the neutral city of Hannibal, Missouri, where a fast train picked it up for delivery the next day.

  On the 27th, Arnie told Heather that there was an immense spike in communications traffic, including radio, to and from Olympia and Athens. “That’s it,” he said.

  “How much time do we have?”

  “At a guess, with the tech they use, and where I think the Navy carriers are, seventy-two hours before one side or the other jumps. But it could be less. They’re racing each other; the one that’s ready to go all-out first probably wins.”

  Heather nodded. “Is your land line phone link up to the experiment? Could you send them something, and if you ordered them to broadcast it, could they do it?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t mean—”

  “Can you power it up?”

  “Yeah, but none of the instruments are in place yet and—”

  “Well, then. All right. I’ll build you another one, I promise, with my bare hands, if big bad EMP cooks your experiment. But tell your scientists they can take any observations they want as long as they get this sent now.” She handed him a little folio of ten neatly typed sheets. “Can they record off the phone line?”

  “That was always the intention, but they won’t be happy because this is all out of order.”

  “By which you mean—”

  He shrugged, plainly unhappy himself. “We were going to do a set of sequential tests, starting with raw noise and then ramping up until we were broadcasting outright anti-Daybreak propaganda, and see at what point the EMP hits. Obviously if it’s for random noise, it’s a system artifact, and if they won’t hit us till we’re screaming Everybody kill a Daybreaker and cut down a forest, it’s an enemy. This broadcast, if we were following the rules for the experiment, would be the last, not the first, one we would run, because it will draw fire for sure if anything can. But you know, we’ll at least still get the observations that might let us figure out where the bombs are coming from. And I hate to be practical and sensible, but you’re right. No point waiting to run better experiments if we’re about to lose civilization to an idiotic civil war right this minute anyway.” Arnie looked down at the document she’d drafted, leafed through, and whistled. “You’re really going for broke, here. Just to make sure, this is what you intend?”

  “Yep. Transmit at full power. Broadcast it in clear, then in Athens code, then in Olympia code, like a Rosetta stone, loop the recording, and keep playing it till we get replies.”

  “All right, I’ll phone Mota Elliptica and tell them to stand by, then wake up Manckiewicz—if he ever sleeps—and by the time he’s practiced, they’ll be ready to record him. Just like you asked. Probably we’ll have it going out over the air within three hours.”

  “You still look pretty unhappy, Arn.”

  “I’ll get over it.” He let out a whew as if he’d run five miles and barely made it in time, and Heather saw that he was refusing to tell her how big a sacrifice this really was—which means he’s convinced it is necessary too, and he’s shutting up to avoid putting any pressure on me. Arnie held his hands up, palm out, in complete surrender. “Heather, it’s the right thing to do. But we are throwing away an experimental protocol that all my people worked very hard on, and I will have to soothe them about that, and of course this might not work.”

  “Sitting on our thumbs for sure won’t work.”

  “Like I said, I hate being sensible and practical, especially when it’s the right thing to do. I better run; if we’re doing it we need to do it now.”

  TWO DAYS LATER . PUEBLO, COLORADO. 2:58 P.M. MST. MONDAY. APR IL 29.

  Weisbrod arrived first, in Quattro Larsen’s DC-3. He looked like the oldest man in the history of the world, exhausted and sad, and for the first time she could remember, Heather saw no welcome in his eyes and no smile when she shook his hand. “Where to?” he asked.

  “By agreement, you each get a secretary, no guards, and a side of the table in my office. You can rest and wait in an adjoining room with a bed, bath, and food till Mr.
Nguyen-Peters arrives; we expect him this evening. I take it that the First Lady, here, is now your secretary?”

  “You could be less sarcastic,” Allie said.

  “I could. You should hear me with Cameron.”

  Later that evening, Heather met the Black Express, the fast unmarked steam train that carried Cameron Nguyen-Peters to Pueblo.

  She knew that both of them were men of honor; she had not worried at all about the possibility of being seized or kidnapped while meeting each of them.

  The horse-drawn carriage, a replica stagecoach from some tourist spot, had been blacked out. When she, Cameron, and the quiet young man who was to be his secretary were seated, Cam said, “This is very nearly blackmail and certainly trading on our old friendship.”

  “Graham Weisbrod said the same thing.”

  They rode quietly for a while. Cam peeked around the blind. “How are things out here?”

  “Not bad. Rail lines are up and running to Austin and Albuquerque, and even though there’s not much Denver left, the connection’s still there for east-west lines. Between that, the big post office, and the GPO, Pueblo will probably grow rich on trade.”

  “I can see why you would want peace.”

  “There’s something selfish about preferring to be free to build and prosper?”

  Cameron made a face. He bent forward, clenching himself as if he were in a straitjacket. “You always had a knack for the awkward question.”

  They said no more till at last the President and the Coordinator sat across the table from each other in Heather’s inner office.

  Heather said, “I appreciate your coming today. I know I have traded on our past friendship, nearly blackmailed you—and of course I have ensured that by broadcasting a Rosetta-stone version of your codes, if you weren’t reading each other before, you are now. So now I have you both at a table you don’t care to be at. I’m just glad to see you here. And here’s your special guest.”

  “Special—”

  Chris Manckiewicz came in looking as if he were about to be hanged, except less comfortable.

  Cameron leaped to his feet. “I didn’t think it was necessary to say ‘no press!’ ”

  Graham rose almost as quickly, saying, “And neither did I—”

  Chris looked sicker than both of them put together. “Heather has made me swear to absolute secrecy, and added that I can’t publish until she gives permission or until twenty years after both of you are dead.”

  “Nonetheless—” Cameron was packing his briefcase.

  “I am not here as press,” Chris said. “I may someday turn out to have been here as a historian, but that’s not the point.”

  Weisbrod looked as if he’d been hit across the back with a bat. He glared at Heather. “It does seem to me, looking back, that this is far from the first time you’ve manipulated me, and that my friendship for a lost, angry girl—”

  “Is still appreciated more than anything in my life,” Heather said. “In so many ways, you are the man who taught me to think. Did you expect me to give it up?”

  Chris said, “Perhaps if you explain what you have me here for—”

  Heather said, “Sit down, both of you, and I will tell you what Chris is doing here.”

  Graham hesitated, shrugged, and sat, and Cameron hastened to sit at the same time.

  Heather smiled. “I should have realized I could depend on your curiosity. Here we go. This is in the nature of an experiment, my dear friends. And I mean that. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about you sitting in your capitals, trying to decide what you think is going to be right, worrying about the civilization that is resting in your hands, taking on a burden too big for anyone. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t worry about my old friends, and miss you both. Believe that or not, but it’s true.”

  Cameron’s nod was barely perceptible; Graham’s eyes were suspiciously damp, and he lowered his gaze to the table in front of him after whispering, “I believe you.”

  “So this is in the nature of a scientific experiment that I think has not ever really been tried, though philosophers have been proposing it for thousands of years. Chris may or may not ever be the historian of the moment; you might think of him as being more like your confessor here. He is here because he tells stories well, and he asks questions well, and he’s never been afraid of a follow-up; and because, in effect, he’s not so much an expert witness as an expert at being a witness.

  “So . . . guys . . . I don’t know if Chris will ever write the history, but more than any leaders before ever have, this evening you are standing before the bar of history. Chris is going to tell you some stories, ask for your reactions, and we will do that for two hours—just two hours—and at the end of that time, you may talk to each other if you wish. And after that I will give you the best meal we can manage in Pueblo and put you back on your way tomorrow.”

  “What sort of stories?” Cameron Nguyen-Peters asked.

  “Why don’t I just start?” Chris asked. “Coordinator Nguyen-Peters, President Weisbrod, let me explain that in my last few weeks, editing the Pueblo Post-Times, I’ve built up quite a network of correspondent reporters, all over the country, and because I think it’s important for people to get the habit of reading newspapers again, and truly nothing sells papers like good feature writing, I run a lot of features, stories from my stringers about interesting people, places, situations. I get many more than I can use, and I maintain a file of those stories. So some of these will be familiar from the paper if you read it.”

  The significant pause stretched long enough for Graham to say, reluctantly, “I read each issue as it reaches Olympia. It’s important to know what’s influencing public opinion.”

  “I’ve read every word you’ve published, ads included,” Cam said. “Reading’s always been what I do so I don’t get lonely while I eat, or before bed.”

  “All right, then,” Chris said. “So let me tell you about Pale Bluff, Illinois. That’s where Graham gave a speech on his way to Olympia that—no, Cam, you don’t get to talk about it. Yes, I know you feel that he has not lived up to its principles. Just for the moment let’s agree that it was a speech and he gave it. Now let me tell you about something. Pale Bluff is a divided town; a beautiful little town surrounded by apple orchards, which local legend has it, quite incorrectly, were founded by John Chapman—Johnny Appleseed. They’re hoping to trade a few tons of apple butter and apple jam—and maybe some apple wine—this fall to some other towns nearby, for some things they need later on. Apples are sweet food with a lot of vitamins and they keep well in cellars, so they’re something the country needs. And all the people in Pale Bluff have all worked like absolute mules, you know, to take in about seventy-five percent of their pre-Daybreak population in refugees, and find work and shelter for everyone.

  “So today, it’s not rich, and it’s not an easy life, but there’s enough fish and game, and enough gardens, and lord knows plenty of apples, with chickens and sheep and maybe goats coming on line soon. There’s a guy in town who’s trying to trap some live wild turkeys because the domestic ones need too much care, and his idea is that if he can breed enough live ones, there’ll be something special for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and everyone can at least have a few mouthfuls of tradition, you know? Also, there’s a little choir forming up, too, because people miss music, and they’ve got some good singers.”

  Graham sighed. “I remember all this. Carol May Kloster’s column is what I read for dessert, after I digest the hard news stuff. I always enjoy her piece. May I ask, is this going anywhere?”

  “Just getting there. You see, when Quattro and his DC-3 landed on the highway there, it demonstrated that I-64 near the village would make a good airfield. And with Pale Bluff as a center of operations, there’s real potential for getting control of the whole lower Ohio Valley.

  “And what I hear from Carol May is that there are quiet little meetings going on, people in Pale Bluff who favor Athens, or favor Olympia, getting tog
ether with like-minded citizens. Right now they’re talking about putting together political parties for the elections in eighteen months. But you know, if the war starts . . . my guess is you each have an agent or two in those little clubs, and that in certain circumstances, you would tell that agent to start some trouble, between all those neighbors who have sweated and worked together all that time; oh, say, think maybe of two workmates that went through the whole hard winter arguing politics together . . . and now you’re putting it on course for one of them to murder the other. And maybe you should think about their daughters being best friends, too, you know? But then after a few murders and some burnings, and a few hearts broken forever, well, one of you would get control of Pale Bluff. And the first thing you would do, to make it defensible, is to clear the cover around that village. That would be those orchards, you know? Regrettable of course, good-bye apples, but you have to do what you have to do.

  “So that was my story, and here’s my question. Exactly what can you gain in the war that would be worth a dozen or so murders and burnings in that little town, and cutting those orchards down, so that soldiers could come in and throw out the families and fortify the buildings? Cameron?”

  “I see the point and it’s a well-taken idea—”

  “No, I wasn’t looking for a review. Pale Bluff might be your key to controlling the lower Ohio Valley. Now just explain why you must control the lower Ohio Valley, eh? What’s it for?”

  Cameron looked down at the table. “I suppose if I don’t answer it will look even worse.”

  “I have no opinion on how it will look. I’ll probably write the story, and only the people in this room will see you. Though of course many of us are your old friends. I like to think all of us are, actually.”

  Cameron Nguyen-Peters sighed. “All right. If we can gain the Ohio Valley this summer . . .” He shrugged. “All right, this is your point, of course, it doesn’t have much to do with apples or choirs or little girls who are friends.”