Don Pendleton - Civil War II

by Don Pendleton

  CHAPTER 9

  George Reamer had never considered himself a dedicated civil servant. Actually George had great contempt for civil servants. "Government workers are the flattest people on earth," George Reamer always said. And if he happened to be in a jocular mood, he would usually add, "That's why the blacks moved in on the field—they were born flat."

  George actually had no solidified dislike for blacks, though. He would tell you so, if you should ask him. He thought they could be made better through technology, specifically through genetic engineering. "All of us, all life forms, are just so much electricity solidified," George would tell you. "In humans there are good circuits and bad circuits. It isn't the black's fault that he's composed of mostiy bad circuits."

  Reamer's greater interests in life lay, however, in electronic technology, not in human genetics. Another thing which George always said was, "I'm sure glad the human race has technology. We sure have nothing else worthwhile."

  George liked machines. Machines he could understand. Especially electronic machines—and "the more sophisticated, the better," George liked to say. People were merely imperfect machines. George built perfect machines. His official title was CATCO, or Chief of Airflow Technical Center Operations. And George was more than a CATCO, George was CATCO at Kansas City, which meant that George Reamer was CATCO of the center of the universe. He was never hesitant to say so. He was proud of it. He had a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering, a master's degree in electronic logic, and a doctorate in electronic philosophy. The thesis he offered for his doctor's degree was titled "Electronic Parallels of Space-Time Continuua." It was to a challenge of Einstein's model of the cosmos, and few minds in the United States would admit to having the faintest idea of what the man was suggesting, though most scientific minds respected George Reamer. George did not like to discuss the thing himself. It seemed to embarrass him—perhaps in the same sense that it would embarrass God to discuss the secrets of creation with mere mortals who could never hope to grasp the heavenly language—and George would always switch the conversation to something more concrete, such as who he picked to win the next World Series or the future of aviation in America.

  Once he confided to a friend that "God is unharnessed energy. Whatever portion we harness, dies. Therefore, mankind is daily killing and eating God." But nobody was ever able to tie that idea into his theory of electronic continuua.

  At any rate, it seemed somehow fitting, to George's mind, that he be at the center of the universe and, in his mind, that is exactly where he was, electronically speaking and airflow-wise. The Kansas City Airflow Technical Center (KCATO) was actually the "brains" of the entire nation, aviation-wise. It was an electronic wonderland. KCATO occupied a low-slung building comprising more than two-thousand acre-feet. George had engineered the entire feat—or, at any rate, he had been the Project Leader during the entire period of design and development. Fittingly, he was offered the office of CATCO when the project was completed and placed into operation. And, also fittingly, George accepted the position. Even if it was a civil service job. Nobody else really knew just how to keep all the computers properly meshed, or how to keep all the robot stations properly balanced to insure that no two aircraft ever occupied the same precise cube of airspace at (he same precise time. In the era of supersonic air transport, which also happened to be the age of heli-cars, hovercars, zot-cars, air busses, air shuttles, and air taxies, this was no small task. George Reamer was the genius of Hie airflow age, and none would contest this.

  One of George's most persistent nightmares always found him standing at the central computer, the big brain, feeding a program tape in backwards or upside down. Another one which cropped up now and then involved independent action by the machines he'd created, a dream in which they "took over" and began thinking for themselves. George had his nightmares. It was the price of genius.

  There was one man at the Kansas City Central in whom George Reamer had absolute confidence. The man was a mere technician; his name was, incredibly, Archibald Gillingham. George called him "Gilly," and Archibald didn't seem to mind. Gilly, indeed, never seemed to mind anything George did or even suggested doing.

  Gilly seemed eager to devote as much of his own life to the KCATO as did Reamer himself, and he had studied diligently under George for three years. He seemed to possess a natural knack for electronic philosophy; indeed, the tutor-student relationship between the two proved so stimulating to George that he had experienced a veritable explosion of consciousness, an expansion of awareness, to use his words, which was far greater and more meaningful than anything the student himself could have gained from the relationship. The explanation, of course, and one which George himself readily recognized, was that he had at last found someone who could understand him when he talked. The student became a sounding-board—George could "talk these things outside"—and, in so doing, he could solidify what may have otherwise amounted to no more than transitory impressions.

  On the night of March 9th, 1999, George Reamer experienced a nightmare. It was shortly past midnight. The vision was so realistic, so fraught with the concrete, that he simply could not get back to sleep. He paced about the social of his suburban Kansas City cube for perhaps thirty minutes, drinking warm milk, then warm brandy, then mint-flavored whiskey. But he could not shake the feeling of impending doom. He saw airplanes, throughout the skies of North America, suddenly being diverted electronically into patterns of chaos—large astro-liners flying wingtip formation to shuttle-busses, zot-cars shooting straight upwards into the bellies of chopper-ferries, and thousand-passenger jet commuters diving vertically towards the earth.

  And, in his agony, George Reamer began to form another theory of universal mind. He was becoming psychic, or tuned-in, to the logic circuits—or thought processes—of the airflow computers. He was developing ESP with his machines! They were plotting somethingl

  For another ten minutes the CATCO tried to shake off the nutty idea, and it was a nutty idea, he knew it was. Finally, however, George could stand it no longer. He had to get out to the KCATO and see for himself that the machines had not taken over.

  He threw a robe on over his pajamas, tubed up to the roof, stepped into his zot-car and flew a beeline uncontrolled transit to the center. It was shortly after two o'clock, Kansas City time, when he ran into the central computer room, his robe flying out behind him, his hair streaming down across his forehead, for all the world an Einstein on the run.

  Then he saw Gilly, standing nonchalantly at the brain console, a faint smile on his face.

  "Thank the ohms," George muttered. Had Gilly experienced a similar dream? "Well, well," he called over, trying to sound casual, "the two old philosophers, prowling

  around the universal center in dead of night. What brings you out here, Gilly?"

  The other man flashed him a smile. "I had an idea, just couldn't shake it, thought I'd come out and see about it," he replied.

  Sure, okay, so Gilly did have the same uneasy feeling. "I think it's continuum-ESP," George told him in a husky voice.

  "No, I'm working on another idea," Gilly replied.

  "What do you mean?" George asked, a shivery feeling gripping his spine. "What kind of idea?"

  "Well . . . come over and take a look," Gilly suggested, the smile widening.

  "Hey! Hey hey hey!" George cried, bending low over the console. "What the hell is this?'

  "I programmed the inductance relay back through the and/or logic to see if I could pick any transients. Look. It's working. See?"

  George screamed, "You crazy bastard do you know what you've done?" Then the deeper implications crashed into his reeling mind in a blinding expansion of awareness. "Oh God" he gasped. "You've given them an in You're letting it THINKl"

  George staggered to another console and snatched up a microphone, "Attention all aircraft, emergency, airflow emergency!" he gasped. "Fly dead Fly deadl Ohmigod migod, I'm not getting out, I'm not, what's the matter with this goddamn transmitte
r—don't tell me they've got it tied up tool" He rolled frantic eyes toward his student assistant. "Gilly! Goddammit come over here and help me!"

  "It's too late, Whitey," Gilly told him, positively beaming as he strolled toward the console.

  "What? What? Whatta you mean? Then George saw the small revolver in Gilly's hand, and he immediately began to form a dizzying theory regarding the natural perversity of animate objects. But George did not have time to bring in all the parameters and exponentials of the theory and Gilly would not have been inclined to "talk the

  thing outside" with him anyway.

  The revolver reported once, just once, and a tiny hole opened just between George's eyes, and it was the end of another nightmare. It was, perhaps, the price of genius.

  Commentary on the National Air Disasters of 1999

  Due to the overshadowing events in which they found their context, the air disasters of March 9-10, 1999 were never coherently cemented in the public consciousness. Indeed, a complete assessment of "what happened in the airspace" was not formalized for several years, and then only through a laborious gleaning and inspection of isolated and fragmented news reports originating in various parts of the nation. It is perhaps proper then, that an attempt be made here to determine and document once and for all, the march of events across the continental airspace during those, fateful few hours of national history.

  The earliest documented disaster involves Oceana Flight 140, enroute from Sydney, Australia to an airdrome outside the old city of Chicago, Illinois. A stratocruiser, this TomFan-80 type aircraft, developed by the Australian government in the middle nineteen-nineties and operated under a charter granted by the Oceanic Alliance in 1997, was a rough equivalent of other atomic-powered craft of that day. Passenger capacity ranged between five hundred and six hundred and fifty, depending upon cargo manifested; it exhibited a cruising range of some 35,000 miles at 2500 knots, with an operating ceiling of 65,000 feet. Flight 140, departing Sydney at one o'clock on the afternoon of March 10 (East Meridian Time), made a hover-stop over the Samoan Republic, enplaning some 40 passengers, then back-tracked for a cargo hover at Guam, in the Mariannas Mandate, and then proceeded along a flight path to make a foodstuffs drop over the offshore islands of Taiwan, where survivors of the China plague-famine belt had been spotted some days earlier.

  At 11:55 PM (Pacific Standard Time) on March 9 (West Meridian Date) an APR (Automatic Position Reporter) signal recorded the flight's approach to Vancouver, B.C.,

  in a planned penetration of North America continental airspace. This flight had received prior approval from the l).S. Government to make a port of entry landing at the chicago airdrome, and there is no reason to believe that this was not the intent. At 12:03 AM, however, tracking tapes show that Flight 140 suddenly veered south from a position near Spokane, Washington, and appeared to be ( limbing from a programmed altitude of 52,000 feet. An electronic tracker (robot station) near Pocatello, Idaho recorded at 12:09 AM that the flight was at an altitude of 63,000 feet and on a heading of 185° magnetic. No other tracking reports concerning this flight have been found. According to the official record, an eyewitness report filed at Tahoe, California on the morning of March 10, 1999, a TomFan-80 type aircraft, later positively identified as Oceana Flight 140, moving at a speed estimated as supersonic, with navigation and visual display lighting fully operative, appeared suddenly from an alto-cumulus cloudbank and proceeded in a straight vertical dive into the waters of Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada range, impacting at approximately 12:35 AM. Where the craft had been, and what it had been doing during the intervening twenty-six minutes of supersonic flight since the last APR report, remains a mystery. This flight carried a passenger list of 478 and a crew of 24. There were no survivors.

  At the moment when Oceana 140 first exhibited erratic characteristics, it was nearly three o'clock on the U.S. East Coast. At 3:03 a chartered ferry operated by Eastern Consolidated Airways, on the return leg of an excursion from New York to Miami and carrying eight hundred and seventy young women of the Metropolitan Secretarial Society, was executing a routine automated instrument approach to Continental Airdrome on Long Island. This ferry suddenly veered off the base ALS leg, dislocating its course by seventeen degrees southward and climbing nearly three thousand feet in a matter of seconds, colliding in mid-air with a shuttle which was inbound to the Trenton (N.J.) Municipal Airdocks. At best count, 240 lives were lost in this disaster.

  Three-seventeen A.M. saw a spectacular four-way 127

  collision in the air over Chillicothe, Ohio, involving a zot-car, two heli-buses, and a small air shuttle. Only eight lives were lost as a direct result of this collision, but a large food processing plant and numerous residences along the Chillicothe Strip were destroyed by flaming debris raining down from the disaster in the air.

  A few moments later, or at a recorded time of three-eighteen point seven, a landing strato-cruiser sheared off the local-control tower at Boston National and plowed into three smaller passenger craft then loading for various destinations. Death toll: 982.

  At 2:48, Central Time Zone, a collision in the approach lanes to O'Hare Serviceport near the old shell city of Chicago accounted for two strato cruisers of the U.S. Twenty-First Century configuration (full atomic) and a death toll estimated at 1,450.

  Meanwhile the disasters continued, in a random, non-pattern sequence. At four-thirty, Washington time, a White House aide declared that the President had been apprised of developments and was "watching the situation."

  At four-forty A.M., the White House ordered a cancellation of all penetration clearances by foreign flag air-carriers, and at 4:43 a spectacular mid-air collision occured in the air over Washington, the wreckage falling within sight of the White House.

  At best count, the two hours and some odd minutes following the first disaster of record saw the destruction of 17 astro-cruisers, 36 air busses and shuttles, 4 large ferries, an indeterminate number of private craft (though estimated in the several of thousands), and something beyond 14,000 human lives.

  A news story filed near Kansas City just before dawn in that area noted that "Dr. George Reamer, genius of the electronic age and CATCO at Kansas City"—had committed suicide in the central computer room at that facility, "perhaps mistakenly blaming himself for the chaos in airspace. A KCATO technician, Archibald Gillingham, demonstrated to this reporter the perfect functioning of the automated equipment which controls all air movements in the continental airspace (above 1,000 feet). Gillingham praised his late Chief, saying, 'Dr. Reamer taught me everything I know about this facility. I don't know what we'll do without him. I'm just a technician myself.' "

  The news story concluded, "KCATO is all systems go. This reporter saw it for himself. So—what is happening in our airspace?"

  What was happening in the airspace, it can now be told, was a result of "random transients" deliberately induced in the master brain computer at the Kansas City ATCO— "establishing an electronic parallel in the airpsace's time-space continuum." Whatever that means.

  CHAPTER 10

  Howard Silverman, White House correspondent extraordinary and national television commentor, peered glumly at his watch, then shook it at Phil Angelo, the wire services man. "What the hell is wrong with old Arlie this morning," he grumbled. "He's been up, I know, since the sky started falling."

  Angelo grinned and commented, "You bitch when he's early, you bitch when he's late, and you bitch when he's on time."

  "You'd think a man his age would have enough sense to sleep more," Silverman growled. "Now what the hell can he do about falling airplanes? You have any idea how many times I've had to stagger around in the early dawn to cover his breathless announcements?"

  Angelo's youthful face drew into a thoughtful frown. "You have to admit, Howie, something damned funny is going on."

  "Always has been," Silverman said, sighing. "Ever since Arlie moved into the White House, something damned funny is always going on."

  "I don't know wh
y you're complaining," the wire reporter commented. "Since Arlie's been in office you've developed the most distinguished name in television."

  "Oh hell, I know that. But as for the most distinguished name on teevee, that's a small honor. I'm afraid there's nothing especially distinguishing about television today. And you can thank the old mountain goat for that, too."

  "Well now I wouldn't say that." The telephone rang and Angelo scooped it up. He listened for a moment, grunted something unintelligible into the transmitter, and hung up. " Now, as I was—"

  "Who was that?"

  "Janie," Angelo replied, rolling his eyes and stroking his leg suggestively. "Arlie's on his way down. He's catching some air on the way, walking around by the terrace. We got a couple minutes. You're all set, aren't you?"

  Silverman glanced again at his watch. "Ten 'til eight," lie grunted. "She give any clue as to why the twenty minute delay?"

  "Yeah. He was waiting for Phillips and Lilienthal. Neither one showed and Arlie has the storm flags flying. So don't cross him."

  Silverman's bushy brows came closer together. "The ISC and the African Secretary," he murmured. "He hasn't had (hose two birds together since, let's see . . . hell I can't remember when. You know what, Angelo? Something big is brewing, and it's not just another dry run either. I feel it in my bones. I saw Fairchild here last night, with Mike Winston. Now Fairchild is dead and Winston is canned. I wonder what . . ." His voice trailed away and he lost himself in thought.

  "Aw hell, if you're thinking of foreign intrigue, how the hell could they sabotage all our planes like that?"

  Silverman stared at his companion for a moment, then replied, "I'm not saying that anything has been sabotaged. But . . . well, hell. No, I don't believe Africa is involved, I'm not saying that. They're too busy fighting one another. No. No, it's something else. Something's brewing. I feel it in my newsman's bones."

  Angelo shivered. "Well, don't look so damned smug about it."

  "You're a newsman, aren't you?" Silverman replied, smiling faintly.