Systemic Shock tq-1

by Dean Ing

  The two joggers neared the castle promontory with its challenging uphill portion. "For Christ's sake slow down," Goldhaber called ahead. "You think Sanger's watching, or are you just trying to kill us both?"

  Stung by this reference to the svelte Sanger, Quantrill forgot himself. “Why not? You said Control might blow me away anyhow," he called back. Then he stopped; turned. Goldhaber stood, eyes wide in horror, breathing hard, both hands pressed over his ears as if to protect him from some lethal signal.

  Quantrill's hands gestured helplessly. "Sorry; sorry," they fluttered, as Goldhaber trotted past him with a stony glance. Of course there was no assurance that Control was monitoring, or that a monitor would make anything of Quantrill's angry shout. Quantrill told himself as much a few weeks later after Goldhaber disappeared.

  Chapter Sixty

  Mason Reardon was an eminently forgettable figure; medium age, medium height, weight, nondescript face and manner. When you described Reardon you were describing anybody, hence nobody. Old successes in surveillance made Reardon an expert on how to be a Reardon. On April 2 his night class was a class of one.

  "You're letter-perfect on your cover, Quantrill," he mused, "and I watched you tail Cross like an old hand through that mob of tourists today. When Marty Cross says you'll do, you're good. So what's eating you? Afraid you'll choke on your first assignment?"

  Quantrill said nothing. His face was denial enough.

  "Can't be buck fever; your record shows you've iced two or three people already, and even managed to hide some of it 'til you were under sedation. That takes coolth," Reardon said, savoring that last word like a rarely-indulged sweetmeat, and then took away the gas-pen. Quantrill had been turning it over, again and again, in his hands. "Is it this?" Reardon held the innocent little pen up for display. “It really writes. Its pressure cylinder dissolves in a pond or a toilet tank. Lasser tells me you can zap a fly with it. And two minutes after your mark gets a faceful of spray, he'll show no symptoms but classic heart failure. But it's scheduled for Saturday the fifth, which means you leave here tomorrow, and I'm not clearing you 'til I think you're ready."

  "I've memorized the whole campus layout, and the Army annex dorm floor plan. I'm ready."

  "You're not. Look, I've even told you this bastard Fowler was nailed while sabotaging a supply fleet that cost us a lot of men — not once, but twice! Naval Intelligence is dead certain it's Lt. Fowler. The only reason they're not icing him themselves is that Fowler's in Corvallis for a tri-service seminar, and the Army's running it.

  "What more do you want for reassurance, Quantrill? I assure you, you won't get nursemaided like this when you graduate." Reardon waited in vain for Quantrill to meet his gaze. "I'm tired of guessing — unless you're spooked about your return route."

  "Damn" right," Quantrill blurted, the green eyes a sullen flash. "Why didn't Goldhaber get back?"

  "Ah. So that's it." Reardon handed the little weapon back, sat down facing Quantrill, inspected his own cuticles. "I've heard the rumor. All I know is that he drew an early assignment, and blew it. Maybe he was tortured by those religious fanatics in Flagstaff and asked for termination. Maybe he's still alive; they didn't tell us. You know your implant — what do you guys call it, a critic? Your critic can't help you if you're trussed up in a cave somewhere."

  "So far as I'm concerned," Quantrill snapped, "my critic's some guy with a World Almanac and a monorail timetable who won't know shit about what I'm up against or how I'm feeling about it. All I want from you is a promise that Control will leave me the fuck alone as long as I'm doing the job."

  Now Reardon had his anonymous face on: emotionless, impersonal, a system automaton. It occured to Quantrill Reardon might be repeating something he was receiving from a critic of his own. "You have my solemn pledge that Control will not interfere with you unless you ask for it."

  "Good enough." Quantrill pocketed the weapon. “Now, where's my ticket to Corvallis?"

  Mason Reardon managed a convincing smile, patted his trainee's shoulder, and pronounced himself satisfied now that Quantrill himself seemed satisfied.

  The following day, Quantrill flew by Military Airlift Service to Salem, Oregon. Clouds masked much of the desolation below, but he spotted Sacramento through a rift of cumulus. He saw some activity at the docks. For the most part, the city seemed an ages-dead ruin that might have been exposed by shifting dunes that day. What blast effects from the two air bursts had not accomplished, the overlapping firestorms had. The collapsed freeway overpasses had, at least, been cleared. A pattern of faint smudges from survivor hearthfires ringed the rubble-choked city center. It might have been Raleigh, he thought, and steered his mind forward. The Mormons might be able to counter destruction with rebirth; was there any paradox in T Section's development of human weapons, to counter with more destruction?

  Quantrill, wearing dark body stain and false gold caps on his teeth, excited no one's interest. His scalp felt tight under the longish tight-fitting black wig. As Vitorio Sanchez, a part-time student and dormitory custodian, he had good reason for the master ID plate in his pocket. He also had an assignment to terminate Lt. Jon Fowler somewhere on the campus of Oregon State University.

  'Sanchez' hauled his bulky bag from the Corvallis monorail, located Western Boulevard in a light drizzle, and used one of his tokens on the automated shuttle to the campus, pleased that his briefing had been so thorough. The nearer the shuttle came to the campus, the more variety he saw in foliage — and the more he saw of a familiar color combination. Either Oregon State's colors were orange and black, or Corvallis celebrated Halloween in April.

  He walked in gathering dusk beneath huge dripping conifers from Thirtieth to the modular annex dorms, located the garbage recycling area, trudged behind the dorm annex with shoulders slumped. His fingertip masks were tight even with rain trickling down from his wrists. He pulled a tab on the bag, watched a long jagged rip extend along old seams, drew the antistatic vacuum cleaner from the bag's remains and stuffed the bag into a recycling container. No one would be saving such an article now, even by happenstance.

  His entry to the Army dorm annex was merely a matter of offering his ID plate to the door slot and keeping a lugubrious face turned toward his brogans as he passed a trio of young Army officers. The vacuum cleaner unpersoned him, and provided a stash for his change of identity. He turned toward the stairwell that would lead to 'his' room — vacated the previous day by a man in Army Intelligence — and then continued his lackluster pace beyond it as the two Naval officers brushed past.

  "… See whether Oregon State coeds are really berserk over uniforms," the taller one was saying.

  The other was compact, aquiline-nosed, with a receding vee of dark hair and thick dark brows. "Ah, Jon, always the researcher," he replied softly, glancing at the shabby janitor, holding the sleeve of his dress whites aloof. The lieutenants paused at the entrance to curse the rain, and to don filmy ponchos while Quantrill knelt to pry at an ancient blob of chewing gum in the carpet. A moment later he heard the voices attenuate; hurried back down the stairwell and breathed a long exhalation as his ID plate triggered the door slider.

  The room was still furnished. Under a crucifix, the twin-sized bed was unmade. Quantrill sat on it, held up one darkened hand, grinned lamely. The hand wasn't trembling, but he felt as if it should be. The dapper little man with thicket eyebrows might pose a problem, because he obviously knew the tall lantern-jawed officer by name. 'Sanchez' had not needed to hear that name; he'd recognized Lt. Jon Fowler instantly.

  And craved his death in that instant. It was cruel sport to meet your enemy the minute you set foot on his turf, like the flaunting of some trophy, and to find that you could not reach out and take it. Quantrill knew that his quarry had a midnight curfew; knew that he slept alone; knew even the position of the bed in which Fowler would lie. He could not know that in icing Fowler he would be compounding an error of Naval Intelligence.

  Nor could Jon Fowler assist in setting
the record straight. He had a pristine conscience and no idea that he had been isolated, mistakenly, as the Project Phillipus saboteur. By Navy reckoning Fowler was the only man who could have insinuated the subroutines that had twice allowed SinoInd fighter-bombers to destroy Allied supply ships. The Allied presence in India was still not secure, the Mills strategy still undetected.

  Quantrill shook the folds from his change of clothing, reassembled the antistatic cleaner, checked the blackout drapes and switched on the wall holo, his alarm set for One AM. Had he chosen, he could have had an alarm sent directly into his head. Yet he did not want that assistance. He wanted to listen to the rain, and to watch Eve Simpson's nightly cameo.

  Mason Reardon's promise haunted him like an echo. Maybe Control would interfere only if a gunsel asked for it — but now Quantrill felt sure the cynical Goldhaber had been right.

  There were several ways you could ask for it.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Quantrill did not sleep. Faint vibrations spoke of late arrivals in the dorm, of spirited military scholars enjoying a brief return to a university campus. The holo spoke and postured of success. Success against paranthrax; in Kazakhstan; in Gujarat; and as always, the heroes of the day were dubbed 'saints'.

  Lt. Boren Mills did not sleep either. He had found Oregon coeds with Fowler, but unlike Fowler he'd found them too old, had excused himself early in favor of a cram session in his own room on the floor above Quantrill's. Mills took intellectual delight in applying his notes on linear servo systems to social systems. He paid special attention to the optimal control of human elements in the social circuits of industry.

  To Mills, Phillipus was only one step in his progress toward a society of rational control, by the few rational people destined to exert that control. Mills was not disturbed by tile deaths he had caused in the Arabian Sea; he viewed one mighty will, his own, as infinitely more valuable than a thousand lesser wills. Had Friedrich Nietzsche not existed, Mills would have invented him.

  For a time Mills had studied the structure of Mormonism, certain that his rise to prominence in a postwar economy would proceed best through that circuit. Now he saw it as a subsystem to be controlled from outside if at all. The LDS simply was not constructed to let a late convert rise to pinnacles of prophet or seer. But among the corporate bodies that might exert outside influence on a theocracy, only one had an open channel by which a brilliant manager might float quickly to the top: media.

  Mills put away his notes and watched Eve Simpson. He heard Jon Fowler enter the room across the hall and hoped he'd struck out; Fowler had already enjoyed too much success.

  An hour later, Mills was roused from nodding by a faint noise; the sound of a door sliding shut. His holo was on. Still half asleep, Mills decided the noise was from the holo.

  Quantrill tingled with anticipation as Fowler's door slid open, keyed by his master plate. If Fowler were still awake, Quantrill would peer at the scribble on his note pad, apologize in soft sibilant accents, claim he had a message for Lt. Fowler as he moved near.

  The room was dark, but Fowler's sleep was shallow. As the door slid open, Quantrill saw the form sprawled in bed, stepped through the portal, waved it shut again while memorizing placement of the two chairs and the shoes on the floor. Once more in darkness, he moved silently past the built-in carrel to the opposite end of the room. His own clothing was of low-friction fabric and made little sound. But sheets and blankets, suddenly thrust aside, make their own audio signatures.

  "Who's'at?" The light over Fowler's bed winked on, Fowler blinking tousel-headed toward the door. He saw only innocent disarray ahead, did not immediately glance behind him.

  The canny Marty Cross had taught Quantrill well. By remaining absolutely still, Quantrill managed to extend the moment to what, subjectively, was almost a geologic era.

  Quantrill could not have expressed his need for this first sanctioned kill with words, nor his joy in its approach with song. Here in this moment he could face the specters of slain parents, of friends murdered by panic and by casual bestiality, without apology for his own survival. Here was irresistible justice come to face immovable evil. In his mind, Quantrill had created deaths of Byzantine complexity to fit crimes beyond understanding — but the teachings of Sabado and Lasser urged a quick, clean kill.

  Quantrill could not afford to savor the confrontation longer than it took to make identification certain. When he saw Fowler's face, he would fire the gas pen. In the endless heartbeat before that, he was a silent demon of entropy who waited to unwind the clockspring of Fowler's universe, the better to celebrate its last anechoic tick.

  Fowler's head snapped around.

  The grey mist met him full in the face, his assailant only a blur that muffled him in his bedclothes before he could shout. Quantrill fought to hold Fowler's wrists through the coverlet, lying atop his writhing quarry to prevent signs of violence, waiting out the first ten seconds of Fowler's death struggle. After that, Lasser had assured him, his problem would be over.

  But Lasser had not dwelt overmuch on the mechanism of a dying human system, and Quantrill was moved to sorrow by the thin despairing wheeze as the innocent Fowler fought for oxygen he would never use. To Quantrill it seemed that the word, 'Why?' punctuated each gasp.

  "You know why," Quantrill muttered, and fought his pity as well.

  When the shudder subsided, Quantrill risked a glance at Fowler's fingernails, saw that they were slate-grey. Then he scurried to the half-bath, flushed the pressure cylinder away, remembered Reardon's dictum that every new instant may bring discovery. A cover story perfect at time one might not work at time two. Quantrill took the fifty dollar bill from his pocket, palmed it. He glanced again toward the thing on the bed, turned out the light, damned his sorrow as weakness, listened at the door before sliding it open to the hall. He heard nothing because Mills had slid his own door open while Fowler's toilet flushed and was still standing there, wondering if Fowler was out after curfew, wondering what use he might make of the fact.

  Quantrill slid the door open, found himself staring into a familiar face under a vee of short hair with eyes that stared back unwinking under heavy level brows. He mastered the impulse to attack, essayed a sad little flash of gold teeth. “He said he would be nice to me," Quantrill almost whispered, and let the banknote show as he stuffed it into his pocket. "But he was not nice. Me, I think he is sick." He waited until the door slid shut behind him, slouching as if contrite, dropping his eyes, then shuffling away to the stairwell. The witness had said nothing, but had changed everything. Quantrill knew he must not look back.

  Mills almost smiled at the retreating youth. This was a datum worth remembering, he thought; a slice of Fowler's life that Mills had never suspected. There had to be a touch of the sadist in Fowler, too; those had been real tears in the eyes of the little latino.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Sandys jurnal Ap 5 Sat.

  Mom says no use crying your lucky to be alive, at least you cant have a baby at your age. Maybe but I hurt down there a lot. I wish it was right to kill, I woud make Profet Jansen burn in hell if there is one. I woud do it while he is asleep, he always fires a little vessel and then sleeps after they raid a temple of false saints like they did in Roswel today. He says it is his godgiven rite. He says a lot of dumb things to make it alright that he is stealing. He tried to give me a dimond ring to make me stop hurting. Id rather have soap to wash his smell away. I wish I coud talk with afreind, somone who likes to make you smile, somone gentle. I wonder where Ted is tonite.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Because Quantrill could not know that Mills had bought the charade, he could not risk staying in the room until dawn. He ran the wig and custodian's clothing through the vacuum cleaner's macerator, pried off the gold caps and removed the contact lenses, washed the pigment from his brows; flushed the debris away in several stages. He almost forgot to swallow the fingerprint masks and strip away the filmy covers that had transformed expensive low-qu
arter shoes into cheap brogans, but the shredded covers went down the tube as well. He kept the master ID plate in case he had to flee into some other campus building.

  Ten minutes later, he exited the basement room leaving only an antistatic vacuum cleaner behind; a sturdy blond youth whose ready cash took him back to Salem on the two AM interurban. En route, he delaminated the ID plate and abraded its card to powder underfoot.

  Finally in Salem he allowed himself to contact Control. "Tau Sector, Tau Sector," he intoned, and waited. The voiceprint, the staggered frequency, and the key phrase all had to match.

  Somewhere in Salem the freq. pattern triggered a relay. Somewhere in Ft. Ord the key phrase alerted a sleepy major in Control. From the unique voiceprint ConCom, the electronic part of Control's gestalt mind, identified the gunsel, Quantrill. By far the longest part of the process was the major's yawn before replying.

  The major's voice was processed into the epicene contralto a gunsel was trained to recognize. Implanted critics had been known to pick up bits of stray messages. No human voice, not even castrati, sounded quite like Control's, so that no gunsel would be fooled by accident or countermeasure.

  It had not escaped T Section's notice that by reprocessing every Control voice into the same voice, ConCom further removed the element of human contact from a gunsel's work. It was, in several ways, inhuman — which pleased Control immensely.

  "Your program is running," said Control. Always that acceptance phrase, or back to square one.

  "Message delivered, Control. Am I clean?"

  "Wait one, Q." The long pause gave the major time to key vital data on his display, then to query the automatic event analyzers that monitored military and civilian agencies in Corvallis, Oregon. There was no homicide bulletin or APB on anyone matching the description of Ted Quantrill. “You're clean," Control reported, "and on the carpet. "So, he could fly back to San Luis Obispo. Other key phrases would have sent the gunsel to a safe site, or to one of the transient camps that now stretched along railway right-of-ways near some cities.