Well, he had plenty of good ideas, and she liked the whole idea of getting into politics, but she wasn't going to let some damn piece of spy fiction run her life.
Her phone beeped; she snatched it up and opened it.
“Grand,” she said.
“Celia?”
It was Mirim's voice, not Casper's.
“Yes? Where's Casper?”
“He told me to apologize, said he couldn't help it.”
“Couldn't help what?”
“He's heading for the Fringe.”
Word went out on the net before Freight 2105 was even off the ground—Casper Beech was aboard, tucked in a crate in the cargo hold with his own oxygen, water, and food supplies. The passenger flights were too closely watched, and he'd wanted to get to the Fringe, so he'd had himself smuggled aboard an unmanned supply ship.
All along Florida's northern Atlantic coast, people looked out their windows at the line of flame that was Freight 2105's launch from Kennedy and ascent toward space.
Most of them, thanks to the rumors on the net, knew that Casper Beech, already something of a folk hero, was supposed to be aboard.
And hundreds of eyes saw the sudden flash and knew instantly what it meant.
“The guy gave his name as Thomas Paine,” the security guard read from the screen. “It's apparently phony—we aren't getting a description match on any real Thomas Paine, so it set off the security check, a bit late. He's already left the port. Whoever he really is, we think he might be connected with People For Change.”
The spaceport's traffic manager asked, “People For Change—isn't that the group Casper Beech runs?”
“Sure is,” the guard agreed. “Rumors on the net say Beech is being smuggled off-planet, and this guy checked some freight aboard 2105—a goddamn big crate, according to the shipping people. Big enough to hold a man and three days’ supplies. We thought you might want to hold the launch until we've searched it.”
“You're a little late,” she said. “2105 took off for the L5 colony five minutes ago.”
That was when the alarms went off. The flash hadn't been visible in the windowless office, but there were plenty of other reports of the explosion aboard Freight 2105.
“Goddamn it,” the White House Chief of Staff said, “I thought I told you to countermand those orders.”
“I did,” his aide said. “Someone must have gotten the word late.”
“Shit. This'll mean another show trial; it makes us look really bad.” He sighed. “Well, at least Beech is out of the way.”
Cecelia appeared before the cameras with tears on her cheeks, her make-up smeared.
“Casper Beech was aboard that ship,” she said, “and the Covert Operations Group, a branch of the government of the United States, shot it down to make sure that he was not able to bring his message to the people of America. I demand that those responsible be brought to trial for murder!”
The White House spokesman was visibly ruffled, though nowhere near as distraught as Cecelia, when he said, “This was an unfortunate accident. The orders to destroy any ship Casper Beech boarded had been countermanded, but apparently word had not reached everyone. We're still trying to locate whoever was responsible.”
Casper smiled as he watched. Even the feds thought they'd done it, and that he was a burnt corpse on the bottom of the Atlantic.
The wreckage ought to be so far down that no one could recover it and find out that there weren't any corpses, or at least none that had Casper's DNA.
If they ever did find it, of course, they'd guess the truth—that he was safe in a cabin in the Poconos, and Mirim would be joining him as soon as she could get away.
There were still other loose ends to be dealt with, as well. He had to make sure that Ed was out of the way, that the genetically-engineered virus he'd injected with that slap on the back had done its job and erased his memory—otherwise, the possibility that Ed might reveal the fraud would always be there. Ed and his terrorist past didn't fit with the new People For Change, in any case.
He hoped the virus wasn't fatal; the black market gene tailor hadn't made any promises. The thing had originally been developed with the idea of erasing outdated or proprietary imprints, but had never been used—it ate out huge chunks of the user's memory, along with the imprinted skills, and the developers hadn't been able to find a way to target it more precisely.
Casper was trying to resist the Spartacus File's ruthlessness. He hadn't simply killed Ed, though that would have been the easiest way to cover his tracks and remove an embarrassment from PFC—but Ed was going to lose so much of his past life and personality that death might almost have been preferable. If the virus performed as advertised, the old-line revolutionary would never be able to tell anyone that Beech was still alive, or that the crate that had supposedly held Beech and his life support system had actually held the bomb that destroyed Freight 2105.
That would take care of most of the loose ends, but there were other things he still had to do. Casper knew he'd have to find some way, working by proxy, to convince Cecelia to let Mirim act as her speechwriter, so that he could supply Mirim with the words to keep PFC on the right track.
But all in all, everything was going just fine. The revolution would continue, without violence, and this time no one was going to crucify Spartacus.
He'd beaten them to it.
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Epilogue
It was snowing in Washington, but nobody seemed to care; the crowd listening to the new president's inaugural address applauded enthusiastically at every opportunity.
Maybe, Casper thought cynically, as he watched the spectacle on his screen, they were doing it to keep warm.
For himself, his enthusiasm had worn away over the past seventeen years—along with his control over the PFC. He listened to Cecelia delivering her speech, and could not find a single sentence of his in it.
The populist ideals were gone; instead, she was mouthing platitudes about compromise and reconciliation. The Democratic-Republicans on the dais behind her were applauding as loudly as the PFCers.
The PFC might have taken control of the government, but it was plain that the government, in turn, had taken control of the PFC.
Had taken it away from Casper.
The PFC was just more of the same old authority.
For sixteen years, Casper had appeased the demon in his head by exercising regularly with elaborate martial-arts routines, by keeping in practice with every weapon available, by planning campaigns for any PFC candidate who didn't look like a sure winner, by writing speeches for Cecelia and a dozen others, but now, as he watched President Grand, the Spartacus File was active again, and unsatisfied.
He watched Cecelia's every gesture, listened to her every word, thought over everything Mirim had relayed of late.
The PFC was the government now. They had the presidency, they had two hundred thirty-eight seats in the House and forty-three in the Senate.
And the Spartacus File compelled him to rebel against the government—any government.
That son of a bitch Schiano had never bothered to put in any end to the program; he and Covert had always assumed that their Spartacus would wind up dead, one way or another.
Covert was under Cecelia's command now. They'd tell her anything she wanted to know about the Spartacus File.
Casper knew that she had figured out, long ago, that he was still alive. She'd never said so, never told anyone else, he was sure, but she'd read those speeches, seen those campaign plans, and Mirim's name at the top or bottom wouldn't have fooled her.
And she hadn't forgiven him for lying to her, or she'd have sent him a message. She wouldn't have cut his every word out of her inaugural. She'd have mentioned her party's martyr during the campaign.
She had probably stewed constantly over the image of Casper and Mirim holed up somewhere, cozy and safe, while she fought her way up step by step through the political nightmare of the
past sixteen years.
And when she talked to Schiano and the others, she'd know what would have to be done.
And Casper already knew what he had to do.
He wondered, as he packed, whether the Spartacus File had planned this all along, whether it required a constant cycle of revolutions, or whether this was a bug in the program.
In the end, it didn't matter whether it was a bug or a feature, so long as it was there.
When the SWAT team arrived two days later they found the cabin dark and empty. A note was pinned to the door with a knife.
“The battle continues,” it said.
It was signed “Spartacus.”
* * *
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