The Amtrak Wars: Blood River

by Patrick Tilley

  ‘Only in general terms. The psychic feedback is much more precise when she’s trying to establish his location. But for some reason, the heavy snow that’s currently blanketing Illinois and Indiana makes it impossible to relate the images she is receiving to the map I gave her.’

  The P-G accepted this with an understanding nod. ‘While we’re on the subject I took another look at that video tape you sent over.’

  ‘Oh – you mean when Brickman was forced to bite the arrow?’

  ‘Yes. Very disturbing …’

  ‘I know how you feel. It never ceases to amaze me. But the one interesting point to emerge from our study of this pair is the fact that the link only appears to work one way. Brickman doesn’t seem to be aware we know he’s alive. If he did, he wouldn’t have gotten Jodi to tell Hartmann that he and the Mutes had been killed.’

  ‘Or given Rat-Catcher a message telling us – perhaps – that he was still up and running.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Fran was slow to grasp the point Karlstrom was trying to make. ‘You mean, uh … he could have telegraphed his true intentions through Roz …?’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘Maybe he did,’ mused the P-G. ‘And maybe she decided not to tell you about it.’

  ‘The thought had occurred to me,’ admitted Karlstrom. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t mention it.’

  ‘Do we have any way of finding out how this mind-bridge works – or how effficient it is?’

  Karlstrom shook his head. ‘We know as much about telepathy as we do about Mute magic. All we have is empirical proof that it works. Roz can get specific messages through to him. We have a tape of them in Santanna Deep where he mentions this.’

  ‘Yes, I remember. They connected on that incoming shuttle. So in theory, she could have told him that we’re using her to monitor his movements and his state of health.’

  ‘She could have but it would appear she hasn’t. Brickman’s loyalty may be in doubt but his sister’s isn’t. I’ve been playing up the jealousy factor. She regards Clearwater as a rival who has to be eliminated. That came over very clearly on the same tape and the video recordings of our subsequent meetings prove her feelings haven’t changed.’

  ‘Good …’

  ‘She’s also receptive to his mental state. The distance separating them is not a limiting factor. The link with Brickman is usually triggered by a specific incident involving a high degree of stress or emotion. The tapes of the psychosomatic woundings demonstrate the most striking aspect of the connection but Side-Winder’s report confirms her ability to relate mental pictures of Brickman to specific activities and identifiable locations.

  ‘Again the traffic appears to be one-way. Roz is trying to deepen their mental kinship. He, on the other hand is trying to shut her out. We only have her word for that but it’s backed up by what she says on the Santanna tapes. To prove the true extent of their telepathic abilities would require a controlled experiment.’

  ‘And the participation of both subjects …’

  ‘Exactly. So until Brickman comes back in, we’ll have to put that particular piece of research on hold.’

  ‘And hope in the meantime she’s playing ball with us.’

  Karlstrom nodded. ‘Thanks for spoiling my day.’

  ‘My pleasure, Ben.’ The P-G ushered Karlstrom and Fran towards the turnstile. ‘We’re running They were Expendable on the big screen. Why don’t you join us for supper tonight?’

  ‘I will. That’s one of my all-time favourites.’

  ‘Contains a message for all of us,’ said the P-G. His hand slid across Karlstrom’s back and gripped his right shoulder.

  Karlstrom, who had grown up with the President-General and aided his accession to the high-backed chair in the Oval Office, knew the precise meaning of the P-G’s affable gesture; the momentary but unmistakable steely pressure of fingers on bone. Behind the smiles and the jokes, Jefferson the 31st was saying: Don’t fumble the ball on this one, Ben-baby, because your ass is well and truly on the line …

  When Fran had been rotated through the turnstile into the circular reception hall beyond, Karlstrom said: ‘There’s one subject we haven’t touched upon. What to do with Jodi Kazan …’

  ‘Do we have any choice?’

  ‘Not a lot. The pity of it is she’s a good soldier. Or rather she was. Under normal circumstances, the active duty she put in helping get those Mutes out would have earned her a commendation and two full stripes. But because of what she now knows we can’t put her back with the dog-faces and she’s temperamentally unsuited for intelligence work. Then there’s the wagon-train. We’ve used drugs to counter the destabilizing influence of that lump-head bitch but it’s no more than a holding operation. What she helped do to The Lady has blown her mind.’ He grimaced. ‘Emotionally, she’s a real mess …’

  ‘Physically too,’ said the P-G. ‘That face …’ He banished the image with a shake of his head. ‘Pump her dry, then get rid of her. Oh, by the way, we’ll be eating at seven-thirty sharp.’

  Karlstrom nodded and stepped into the turnstile.

  Chapter Eight

  Poppa Jack, the guard-father of Steve and Roz Brickman, gave up the losing battle with radiation-induced cancer during the night of the 23rd/24th December 2990 – three days short of his thirty-sixth birthday. Since the quasi-religious pre-Holocaust celebration known as Christmas had been discarded soon after the birth of the Federation, there was ample time for the ex-wingman’s body to be bagged, burned and remembranced before the New Year Festivities began.

  As a double-six – the rating given to those rare individuals completing twelve overground tours and winning twelve successive commendations for meritorious service, Poppa Jack qualified for an Honour Party composed of stiff-backed, young ensigns dressed in the tricolour uniforms of the White House Guards.

  The ceremony, which included a brief televised homily by the President-General, took place on Level Six of the upward-spiralling Wall of Heroes, a vast marble-clad shaft at Grand Central. And it ended with the tear-inducing strains of an electronic Last Post as Poppa Jack’s ashes – now sealed in a slim brass shell-case – was inserted into the wall alongside his engraved name. The firing pin had been replaced by a small circular keyplate, and when the base of the shell slid flush with the lustrous black marble, the plate was turned, locking Poppa Jack’s ashes into the wall for all time.

  The upward spiral was not without significance. When the grand design was realized and the time came to take possession of the Blue-Sky World, the final exodus from Grand Central would be made along this winding ramp past the recorded names of those who, down the centuries, had made the ultimate sacrifice to turn the cherished dream of the First Family into reality and ensure the long-term future of the Amtrak Federation.

  ‘They died so that others might live.’ This inspirational utterance attributed to the Founding Father was one of the two inescapable exhortations emblazoned on every available wall-space throughout the Federation. The second, more chilling, addressed those who might be tempted to question the wisdom and supremacy of the First Family: ‘Only people fail, not the system’.

  Wearing her green blue and white jumpsuit with its big arm chevrons that identified her as a student surgeon-physician and the tasselled parade lanyard that denoted her existing rank as a general medical practitioner, Roz stood at attention facing the Wall of Heroes, chin held high, right arm raised in a military salute. She was flanked by Annie, her guard-mother, in a standard orange and grey outfit and Uncle Bart, Annie’s kin-brother, resplendent in the all-white uniform and stetson of a States Provost-Marshal. Annie’s eyes, like Roz’s, were misted with tears. Bart, as befitted his status as head of internal security for New Mexico, remained stony-faced throughout.

  As she listened to the last, echoing notes of the invisible trumpet, Roz was conscious that Poppa Jack had not been accorded the final honours that were his due. His combat record should have earned him enrolment into the select company of
Minutemen which, like the Foragers, was the ultimate achievement – short of becoming a member of the First Family – to which ordinary Trackers could aspire.

  The exclusiveness of these two companies rested upon the fact that membership was restricted to a hundred living ‘names’ at any one time. The ranks of Minutemen were reserved for combat personnel – Trail-Blazers, Pioneer Battalions and the foot-soldiers who had preceded the wagon-trains; the Company of Foragers comprised those who had rendered equally meritorious service whilst assigned to one of the other overground units – the Survey and Exploration, Mills and Mines, and the General Quarter-Master Corps whose tanker-transports provided the fuel, food, munitions and the host of other items required to keep the aforementioned groups in business.

  With so few places available only those with the most outstanding records of service could be considered as candidates and, as a result, enrolment was often a last-minute affair; the reward for a lifetime of endeavour bestowed around the age of 40.

  Since this was the average life-span of an ordinary Tracker it was, for many deserving cases, a death-bed promotion. And, human nature being what it is, the initials DBP had entered the underground language of the Federation as a synonym for intangible or illusory rewards linked to the completion of a particularly shitty assignment.

  But this was not strictly true. Although Poppa Jack had been allowed to die without the proud knowledge that he’d been chosen to join the select company of Minutemen, his posthumous election would have brought extra lifetime privileges for Annie, including uprated living quarters in one of the new deeps. But despite Uncle Bart’s connections, this last honour had been denied him.

  Roz suspected that Karlstrom and the faceless members of the First Family who were directly involved in Steve’s case had decided to accord their guard-father only the minimum recognition he could not reasonably be denied. So be it … Come what may, his name was now chiselled deeply into the black marble wall on the south side of Level Six and there it would stay regardless of what she and Steve did from here on in. Poppa Jack was finally home free and the veiled threat by Karlstrom to strip him of his field decorations could no longer be used to browbeat them into blind obedience.

  That left Annie. Despite the declaration of his desire to help them, Karlstrom had hinted that his freedom of manoeuvre was limited by less sympathetic superiors. Annie could also be in jeopardy if Roz and Steve did not do what was asked of them. But as of today, their guard-mother appeared to be out of danger. Prior to the funeral ceremony, Uncle Bart had announced that Annie would be joining his personal staff at Roosevelt/Santa Fe. Working that closely with one of the ‘high-wires’ – plus the fact they were related – made Annie a lot less vulnerable. After mulling over Uncle Bart’s news, Roz decided that if the First Family were going to dump Annie in the A-Levels – or worse – they would not have allowed the transfer, and her promotion to JX-1, to go through.

  With one guard-parent reduced to ashes and the other in a relatively safe haven, Roz felt able to breathe again. Her own future as a surgeon-physician still hung in the balance but it no longer mattered whether she was allowed to continue her studies or not. In the months that had passed since Steve returned to the overground she had discovered her life had a deeper purpose.

  This knowledge had given her a greater awareness of the nature of the power within her. She no longer feared those who sought to control their lives. When the time came she would use that power to bend their minds to her will.

  But despite this increased awareness, there remained a great many things about which she knew nothing. Take, for example, three aspects of Poppa Jack’s funeral. Roz might have viewed the future with less confidence had she known that the fifteen-minute televised appearance of the President-General during the ceremony, which had left her heart bursting with pride and her eyes filled with tears of gratitude, was not the live broadcast or pre-recording she might have expected but an electro-mechanical creation.

  As the biological begetter – in theory, at least – of the present generations of Trackers, George Washington Jefferson the 31st was the benign, in vitro father of them all. This progenitive feat – made necessary because the majority of both sexes were born sterile – was lauded in the prayer which Trackers were called upon to recite twice a day whilst facing one of the countless portraits of the President-General. Like the slogans which met the eye whichever way one turned, the holographic portraits had to be displayed in every public access area, workshop, mess-deck and accommodation unit containing over thirty square feet of floor space.

  … Saviour of the Blue-Sky World, Creator of the Light, the Work and the Way, Keeper of all Knowledge, Wisdom and Truth, in whom the Seven Great Qualities are enshrined, and from whose sacred life-blood our lives spring …

  Since, in biological terms – or so ran the popular belief – every Tracker was related to the present or previous holder of the office of President-General, he or she was expected to display the same seven qualities which characterized the unique nature of the First Family and their right to eternal leadership of the Amtrak Federation. Qualities without which the nation would have perished centuries ago: Honesty, Loyalty, Discipline, Dedication, Courage, Intelligence and Skill.

  To contravene the Behavioural Codes was not only an act of disloyalty to the Federation, it was a betrayal of parental trust. Paternalism, however, is a two-way process, and in return for their unquestioning devotion and allegiance, it was only fitting that the President-General should say a few words when the more deserving of his ‘children’ were buried. It was part of the firm but caring image the First Family wished to project. But the sheer numbers involved made a personal appearance in front of the video cameras a logistical nightmare.

  The problem, like nearly all those encountered by the First Family, had been solved with the usual mixture of ingenuity and cold-eyed efficiency. Like his predecessors, the 31st President-General had provided the programmers with a comprehensive holographic film portrait which had been used to produce computer-generated audio and video master-tapes. Using digital processors, these tracks and images could be manipulated to produce a totally authentic-sounding speech on any subject, tailored to the required length, and underscored by the appropriate gesture or expression.

  In the case of Poppa Jack – 2003-4093 John Roosevelt Brickman – his file had been pulled from the archives by a keyboard operator in the Obit Section of the Disabled Veteran’s Division and combined with an appropriate funeral oration from a regularly renewed selection of over two hundred. The only other information required was the transmission date and time and whether it was to be networked or ‘vectored’ which meant the President-General’s speech praising Poppa Jack would only be screened in specific locations such as Roosevelt/Santa Fe – his home base – the Air Force Academy at Lindbergh Field beneath the deserts of New Mexico where he trained as a wingman, and on the sets dotted around the Wall of Heroes in Grand Central where the ceremony was taking place.

  COLUMBUS, the central computer that was the guiding intelligence of the Federation – or one of its many satellites – had done the rest, slotting Poppa Jack’s name and glowing references to the salient points of his military career into the speech in the same way that pre-Holocaust form letters offering credit on easy terms, or car-winning ‘lucky numbers’ tied to trial magazine subscriptions were warmly and personally addressed to the recipient throughout.

  The result was slick, seamless and, to Trackers raised from birth with the aid of video screens, indistinguishable from the real thing – right down to the carefully-engineered catch in the throat.

  Secondly, Poppa Jack’s listing on the Wall of Heroes was not as permanent as Roz imagined. In the Federation you could become a non-person just as you could under earlier totalitarian regimes. Her guard-father’s name might have been carved with graceful precision by a computer-controlled mechanical engraver but it could be obliterated overnight by the application of a special silicon paste mixed with the bla
ck marble dust. When ground and polished, the virgin surface was restored – ready to receive the name of someone deemed more fitting for eternal remembrance.

  This third and last point concerned the identity of the man that Steve called ‘crazy Uncle Bart’. Bart Nixon Bradlee, Annie’s kin-brother was one of the many members of the First Family who had been given permanent ‘deep-cover’ assignments in the community at large. These individuals, however, were not agents of AMEXICO. Like the majority of the Family, Bart did not even know such an organization existed. Indistinguishable from ordinary Trackers, their task was to act as role-models for their ‘comrades-in-arms’ and through their rapid promotion to high ranking positions, demonstrate what ordinary Trackers could achieve through hard work and selfless devotion to duty.

  The truth was somewhat different. While people like Hartmann and Anderssen could rise from the ranks to command wagon-trains and way-stations, they were deployed overground. The scope of their operations – and by extension, the power they were able to exercise – was governed by the logistical back-up supplied by the Federation.

  Control of the interfaces, and the divisional bases within the earth-shield was a quite different matter. No one outside the First Family was permitted to occupy senior positions or any key posts in sensitive areas such as communications, policing, food-processing, inter-state transportation and the all-embracing environmental services.

  Had Roz known that Bart was Family, she might have been tempted to believe that Annie, as his kin-sister, was now immune to any threat of reprisal. It would have been a mistake to think so. The female egg and male sperm that formed Annie were brought together in a laboratory dish while Bart was the product of normal sexual intercourse. It was this reproductive act – identical to that employed by the primitive Mutes – which set the First Family apart from their subjects. But even if Annie had been conceived in this fashion it would not have made her invulnerable. In the past, when the future of the Federation had been threatened, the Family had never flinched from devouring its own – and it would not hesitate to do so now.