Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  The message was repeated in Spanish. The humming noise increased. And quite suddenly the train was moving, slowly because it was still in town. And the humming noise dropped away entirely, creating an illusion that the train was already going faster than sound.

  The future, Loren thought. This is what all the old science-fiction movies thought the World of Tomorrow was going to be like. Everything automated, everything perfect. Silent. Efficient. Clean.

  He looked behind him again. It was eerie. There was absolutely no one else on the train.

  Everything was so perfect, Loren thought, that human beings could be left out completely. There wasn’t even a brakeman— scanners on the tracks were supposed to signal the train whenever there was an obstruction ahead. Even instructions to the passengers were given by a computer voice, however human it sounded.

  The future. Right.

  He wondered if it was a sin to plan a future without people in it, and if so which one. Covetousness?

  No, he thought. Pride.

  The cinder-block and galvanized-steel buildings of Picketwire passed by on the right, separated from the tracks by a sturdy chain link fence topped with razor wire. Having left untidy humanity behind, the train picked up speed. Loren felt himself pressed back into his seat. Naked desert shot by, marked by flashes of cholla, yucca, creosote. The absence of sound was striking— only when the train was passing through a cut or beside an embankment was there the sound of wind, and then only a distant, forlorn cry.

  Then the train was decelerating into the Vista Linda station. Gravity tugged at Loren’s belly. The humming started again, and the doors rattled open.

  “One-minute stop,” said the computer voice.

  No one got on during the interim.

  The voice spoke its piece, the doors rattled shut, and the train began to accelerate, much faster this time. Gees pushed Loren back into his seat. Brown desert blurred by. The bridge over the Rio Seco was a flash of silver. Then Loren was on ATL land, part of the old Figueracion Ranch, and the train was decelerating.

  “The train will return in half an hour,” the voice said. “Thank you for following instructions and being a good passenger!”

  Loren, rising from his seat, found himself wanting to determine the source of the cheerful voice and crush it under his heel.

  The station was marked by a dark polycarbon arch thrice the height of a man. There were little precise diamond-shaped cuts in it, matching brass scrollwork on the concrete and pebble floor beneath. The arch was an elaborate sundial, helping to keep the nonexistent commuters adhering to their schedule.

  A blustery wind had come up. Half the sky was shaded by cloud. There would be a thunderstorm before long, one of those spontaneous, violent rainfalls generated in the New Mexico sky, that filled arroyos and caught strangers by surprise. Parts of the state had road signs that read WATCH FOR WATER, amusing with only a desert as backdrop, amusing till you saw your first flash flood.

  Still. Any water was welcome after the three-year drought.

  Beyond the arch was a booth with a pair of guards, a man and a woman. The pair were seated and listening to a portable radio. Unlike the pairs who traveled in the jeeps, these wore neat khaki uniforms and baseball caps with the ATL logo. The holstered pistols, Loren saw, were Tanfoglios.

  The woman rose from her chair and suppressed a yawn. “Yes, sir?” she said.

  “Loren Hawn. I’m here to see your boss.”

  “Could you sign in?”

  Loren did so. The layout of the book, he saw, was similar to the phone log that he still carried guiltily in his breast pocket. The woman handed him a red pass with VISITOR on it and a large number 11.

  “Could you tell me where Mr. Patience has his office?”

  “If you’ll wait a moment, we’ll call and get you an escort.”

  Loren sighed. First the Disney World cheerfulness of the computer voice on the train, now this institutional uniformed paranoia. What did they think he was going to do, plant a bomb somewhere?

  “Not necessary,” he said. “Just tell me the way.”

  “If you’ll just wait . . .”

  Loren pointed a finger randomly at one of the buildings. “That building, I think he said.” And took off.

  “Ah. Sir. Sir!”

  Loren increased his pace and put on his shades. Right in front of him was a wide, blacktopped avenue with a green landscaped lane divider. At its terminus, right in front of the arch, was a tall modernistic piece of sculpture, long jigsaw forms of dark polycarbon and bright aluminum twisting up into the sky. Loren had seen pictures of it and knew it had some vaguely scientific name— was it Hidden Symmetries? Something like that, anyway.

  Brown buildings flanked the avenue. Some were obviously administrative, three-storied, windowed, flat-roofed structures of cinder block, stuccoed in imitation of New Mexico adobe. Others were blank-walled, with large, heavy steel doors at either end and barrel-vaulted roofs vaguely reminiscent of Quonset huts. One of them, for some reason, had the word FIDO printed on it in huge blue letters. Presumably these contained heavy apparatus. Other buildings were low, built into the ground like bunkers, with heavy flat roofs covered with solar cells. Loren wasn’t even going to guess at what might be inside these last.

  Each building was painted the same desert-brown and had a large blue number twice as tall as a man. They weren’t taking any chances on people getting lost.

  “Sir! Sir!”

  The woman caught up with him. A long blond braid, hanging down her back, swung madly left and right as she bounced up next to him. “I’ll just go with you, shall I?” Her voice had a condescending, false heartiness as distasteful as that on the maglev.

  “Suit yourself,” said Loren. He walked past the sculpture. The wind made a hollow whistling sound as it gusted through the metal structure.

  “Interesting sound, huh?” the guard said. She had to adopt a kind of skipping step to keep pace with his long strides. “Do you like our Discovered Symmetries?”

  Loren glanced up at the structure. He’d got the name almost right. “It’s okay. I don’t know much about art.”

  “I like the noises it makes, different depending on where the wind is coming from. We want to turn left here.”

  They turned between a pair of Quonset-like buildings and headed down a bare concrete walk lined by naked brown soil on either side. A gust of wind funneled between the buildings and spat desert grit into Loren’s eyes in spite of his shades. He blinked and put a hand in front of his face. A spatter of rain impacted the back of his hand. Other large drops exploded on the concrete nearby.

  The gust fell away. Loren lowered his hand and saw William Patience appear from out of a wind-whipped cloud of dust and gravel, walking hastily with his head down and his hands in his pockets. Patience looked up as rain began falling like a barrage.

  “Loren!” he shouted. “I’m not surprised you didn’t want to wait! This way!”

  He turned and began sprinting down the walk. Loren grabbed his pistol holster to keep it from bouncing and followed at a lumbering run, water spattering the lenses of his dark glasses. His escort, braid swinging, turned to run back to her station.

  Loren sprinted past a large asphalt parking lot, part of which was fenced off with chain link and filled with brown Blazers, then into a large steel-walled building sitting beside it. Loren noticed a security camera set over the door. Patience was waiting for him, breathing hard and brushing water off his gray jacket. He pulled the elastic band off his ponytail and shook out his long, wet hair. With the hair hanging to his collarbones and his carefully cut uniformlike clothes, he seemed a unique combination of respectability and menace, like some retired, well-heeled drug dealer sunning away his days in Cancun.

  “I’ve got the logs for you,” he said. “For Friday and Saturday both.”

  “Thanks.”

  “They’re on computer.”

  “I’d like to see the originals.”

  “It’s the originals t
hat are on computer. I’ll show you.”

  Loren was in an anteroom that featured white ceiling tile, desert-tan steel walls, and a gunmetal desk with a dozen television monitors presumably keeping track of various sensitive parts of the complex. There was no one watching the monitors. Heavy steel doors, painted government green, pierced three walls. On the walls hung a number of posters concerning security: COMPUTER SECURITY IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY; and YOU NEVER KNOW WHO’S LISTENING, with a picture of a couple of people, one in military uniform, gabbing on the phone with a sinister character grinning evilly as he listened on a line tap.

  Rain drummed on the metal roof. Patience sliced a card through the reader on one of the doors, and there was the sound of a buzz lock; Patience yanked open the door and held it for Loren to pass through. Walking past the man, Loren had the intuition that Patience was running him through some obscure test and intently observing the results. Loren’s performance so far, he suspected, had been disappointing.

  The corridor beyond was empty, fluorescent-lit; there was a corkboard on one wall with notices pinned heedlessly to it, fluttering in the air-conditioning, and a camera at the far end. Patience resumed the lead.

  “Did you say the original logbooks are on computer?” Loren asked. “At the station I just signed a real book.”

  “It is the originals that are on computer,” Patience said. “There’s a scanner at each security station— we read the information and signature into our data banks as soon as it’s on paper. Then the computer compares the signatures to the ones in each employee’s files.” Patience turned into a brightly lit room. “You want some coffee? I could use some.”

  The room was a small cafeteria with half a dozen tables and bench seats. Vending machines and a couple of video games, one with a pistol attached to the machine with a cord, sat next to the wall. The video games made combat noises that were largely overwhelmed by the drum song of rain on the roof. On the walls were posters advertising elite military units, each featuring a soldier with his weapon in a combat-ready stance. Special Forces, Loren recognized, Marine Force Recon, SAS in black balaclavas that concealed everything but their eyes, somebody in an obvious Russian uniform, carrying a Groza bullpup assault rifle and identified by Cyrillic lettering and multiple exclamation points.

  Patience beneath a picture of a Green Beret, pouring into a thick insulated cup with his name on it. The Green Beret was wearing camouflage face paint.

  “It’s good coffee, by the way,” Patience said. “We filter our water.”

  “In that case,” Loren said, “I’ll have some.”

  “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Black.” Loren looked at the vending machines. One was for soda, one for snacks— peanuts, chips, crackers— and a third for plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Loren looked closer at the last one.

  Coffee, potato chips, ham and American cheese on white bread.

  John Doe’s stomach contents.

  An electric current crackled in Loren’s nerves. He crouched to look at the labels on the doors of the sandwich machine. Egg salad, tuna salad, ham and cheese. There it was.

  “Want something to eat?” Patience asked.

  “No. Thanks.” Loren realized he was still staring at the cellophane-wrapped sandwich, and he straightened. There was a crackle from the stolen log sheet in his breast pocket and he gave a start at a sudden, guilty memory of his theft.

  Patience, he observed, was watching him intently.

  “I’d like to see the original logs,” Loren said.

  Patience cocked his head slightly, then cast a look up at the roof. “Let’s wait till the rain dies down a bit,” he said, “and I’ll run out and get them. In the meantime I’ll show you how the computer works.”

  He handed Loren his coffee and gestured for Loren to follow him. They went down the corridor again, past closed steel doors with cardboard tags inserted in metal slots in the center of the door. Loren read people’s names on individual office doors, then ARMORY, all in caps, and DETENTION. He paused by the last one.

  “You keep prisoners in here?” he asked.

  Patience gave a dry little laugh. “It’s never been used. It’s intended mostly as a drunk tank. If one of our employees gets loaded and has to be held until he sobers up.”

  Loren looked at the heavy buzz lock. “You don’t have powers of arrest,” he said.

  “When someone works here, they sign a waiver giving up certain rights,” said Patience. “We can hold them for up to twelve hours.”

  Loren scratched his jaw and looked at the door. “I don’t think that’s legal. Waivers get broken in court all the time. A person can’t give up his right to due process just by signing his name.”

  An unreadable expression flickered across Patience’s face. “Let’s just call it a gray area in the law, okay?” His voice was flat, brooking no further argument. Loren decided the point wasn’t worth contesting. If Patience wanted to court a lawsuit from the ACLU, that was fine with Loren.

  Patience led him past the office of his secretary— a trim middle-aged woman whose bearing seemed as military as that of her boss. She had decorated her room with large travel posters. Patience opened another buzz lock with his card, then led Loren into his office. “You can use my terminal,” Patience said. “I’ve got it set up for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sit down here.” Indicating the dark fine-grained leather of his padded chair.

  There was a Turkish carpet on the floor. The lighting was from floor lamps, not overhead fluorescents, and the lamps had intricately designed brass-framed lampshades in the same style as the carpet. There was an elaborate brass coatrack and two bookshelves crammed full of books. The desk was a wide, modern hardwood rolltop, designed to hold a computer terminal. In one corner stood an American flag, the pole capped with a gold-plated eagle; in another corner was a flag Loren didn’t recognize. There were a pair of filing cabinets in military matte black, and on the wall were framed certificates and a plaque with the Special Forces shield and the motto DE OPPRESSO LIBER. There was another plaque featuring a black stylized helicopter on a blue background, with a bloodred lightning bolt, all in murky colors that made the design hard to make out. UNIT 77-112, it said. ABRACADABRA.

  There was a picture on the wall of a young, round-cheeked Patience with short hair, a mustache, and a green beret, and a second photo of a ten-man Special Forces team. In both photos the young man’s expression was intense, unsmiling, and uncompromised— essentially unchanged from the older Patience who used the office. There was another photo on another wall, a picture of a hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed man in a gray uniform.

  “Who’s he?” Loren asked.

  “Mushegh Abovian. Armenian freedom fighter.”

  Loren looked at the flag he hadn’t recognized. “And the flag? It’s Armenian, too?”

  Patience tapped keys on his computer. “We had a big interest in the Armenian revolt when I was in Special Forces.”

  “Huh. Which side were we on?”

  Patience glanced up, gave another quick, humorless smile. “I can’t say. Everything’s still classified.”

  “Yeah.” Loren sat down at the computer and put his coffee cup on the desk. There was a picture of Timothy Jernigan on the screen, staring at Loren through his thick lenses. Patience hovered over Loren’s right shoulder, pointing at icons on the screen. Loren detected the faint scent of gun oil from the pistol under Patience’s arm.

  “I’ve called up the file on people going in and out the last few days,“ he said. “Here’s Dr. Jernigan’s name, ID number, job assignment, signature, and comparison signature from computer memory. We use a hypertext system that can call up additional information— here.” He leaned forward and punched the button on the mouse. The flickering image on the screen changed, began to scroll down an image of a standardized form. “Here’s Jernigan’s employment file and personal history. You won’t be able to get at anything that’s classified, but with this system you have access to everything els
e.”

  “How about Sondra Jernigan?” Loren asked. “I’ve been wondering if our John Doe knew her rather than her husband.”

  “Just use the hypertext. Here.” He pressed the button again; the screen altered again. Sondra Jernigan’s picture appeared. She was smiling prettily, with faintly flushed cheeks— not Loren’s view of the woman at all. “Here’s our file on the wife. We don’t have much. If you want hard copy of anything, just tell the system to make one for you. Or if you want to copy something onto disk to read later, you can do that.” He handed Loren a stick of portable memory.

  “Thanks.” A cold suspicion filled Loren. Patience was making this all too easy, giving him vast amounts of data. It would take weeks to check everyone’s story, and in the end it would probably amount to nothing.

  Patience straightened. “I don’t envy you,” he said. “We had thirty-odd extra Ph.D.’s on base during that accelerator run. Some flew in from California, Massachusetts, and Illinois.”

  On base, Loren thought. An interesting slip. Patience went on:

  “After seeing this, you still want the original logs?”

  Loren looked at him. “Sorry, Bill. But yes.”

  Patience looked at him for a long, intense moment. Jesus, Loren thought, doesn’t the guy ever lighten up? “Okay,” Patience said finally, and opened a drawer on a cabinet to pull out a plastic bundle wrapped with a large rubber band. He pulled off the band, then shook out the bundle. A hooded plastic poncho in desert camouflage.

  “I’ll be back in a little while,” he said. “Annette can look after you in the meantime.”

  “Thanks,” Loren said.

  Patience didn’t answer, just breezed out through the heavy door. Loren pondered for a moment how awful it would be to have William Patience as a boss, then rose from his seat. He stepped over to the bookshelf beneath the window, then scanned the titles. Shooter’s Bible. Improvised Munitions Black Book— three volumes. Escape and Evasion Manual. Guerrilla Warfare and Special Forces Operations (FM 31-21). Loren’s eyes dropped a few shelves. History of Modern Turkey. The Armenian Struggle for Statehood. Disintegration of the Soviet Empire. History of the Transcaucasian Republics 1918-1921. The Glory and Resurrection of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Armenian, Russian, and Turkish dictionaries and phrase books.