Oath of Fealty

by Larry Niven

  Two dead, Rand thought. What the hell did they use to interfere with the surveillance?

  Art Bonner came in. He took in the situation at a glance, his eyes resting momentarily on the full ashtray. "Status?" he asked.

  "You already know," Sanders said. "I gassed Niner. They're getting men into survival gear to go inspect. And-"

  "INTRUDER CAPTURED," MILLIE announced. She used audio to speak to all of them.

  Fleming appeared on the screen. "Got him." Another image formed: a young man, early twenties at most, long hair in back but cut short at the sides and in front; scraggly beard, which wasn't unusual; cotton denim pants and jacket.

  "No weapons," Fleming reported. "We fluoroscoped him. Nothing. And Medical says no drugs. He tried to put on he was high, but we've got him convinced we know better."

  "That may have been a mistake," Sanders said. "Mister Bonner's here. Take over, Mister Bonner?"

  "I relieve you. Get Delores up here, will you? And Sandra. I'm going to have to have some sleep before this night's over, and you will too. Fleming, send that intruder up here."

  "Yes, sir." The images faded.

  Bonner put his hand on Sanders's shoulder. "Relax." Sanders tried to smile. It didn't work.

  "I killed them, Art. Both. In cold blood."

  "Sure. Tony, get Pres a drink."

  "It happened so fast. All over in a minute. Art, what if it's nothing? Like that kid, no weapons, nothing? Just trying to throw a scare into us? They never had a chance!"

  Tony Rand brought over a brandy. "If they were trying to scare us, they made it nicely," he said. "Here."

  Bonner nodded agreement. "You made the right decision. Same as I would. What if it wasn't nothing? What if they had bombs all set to take out the hydrogen lines? Set off the hydrogen with a big whoosh. Big bonfire, right in the park."

  "I wish it hadn't been .me."

  "It was. And I'll back you all the way."

  "It isn't Zurich I'm worried about. Or the Angelino police. It's me."

  "Sure."

  The boy was grinning. That was the first thing Tony Rand noticed when Lieutenant Blake ushered him into Sanders's office: a wide, triumphant grin.

  "We got an ID on this one," Blake said.

  "Sure. I'm Allan Thompson," the youth said. His voice was pleasant and sounded educated. "My father's a real estate broker in Hollywood. Where are the others?"

  "What others?" Bonner asked.

  "Aw, come on," Thompson said. He was still grinning. "You gotta have them by now-" He shrugged. "Maybe you don't." That seemed to amuse him even more.

  Preston Sanders had ignored his brandy, and sat staring at the youth, his eyes a study of misery. The grin got to Tony Rand. "What's so damned funny?" Rand demanded.

  Bonner raised a hand in warning. Rand subsided.

  "We found a VIP Visitor badge outside the crawlway entrance to the unfinished section," Blake reported. "A Mr. Roland Thompson, who's a favored customer for a number of places."

  "Sure, that's my Dad's badge," Allan Thompson said. "Okay, so now you call him and tell him the prodigal's in trouble again."

  "Please sit down, Allan," Bonner said carefully. "And tell us why you were crawling around on a catwalk a hundred meters above ground level this late at night."

  "It was fun, man." Thompson sat with the attitude of an important visitor. "We thought, what the hell, they're always talking about the security system at Todos Santos, we'll just show 'em it's not as good as they think-"

  "We?" Bonner demanded. "Who are the others?" Thompson grinned slyly. "So you really haven't caught them yet! That's choice. Well, I better tell you, 'cause it's getting pretty late and sitting here's a bummer. I don't guess you'll let me loose until you round 'em up. There are two, Diana and Jimmy, and they stayed in the stupid tunnel we got in from."

  There was a sharp hiss as Preston Sanders took in a quick breath. Lieutenant Blake looked grim.

  "Hey, what's the matter?" Thompson demanded. "Look, they aren't going to hurt anything!"

  "Allan, were your friends carrying anything? Special equipment or anything like that?" Bonner asked casually. It was difficult to keep the strain from his voice.

  Tony Rand leaned forward to listen. He felt the same thrill of horror that Bonner did; but he also wanted to know, how did they do it?

  "Oh, some big boxes full of sand. Had 'dynamite' painted on the outside, you know? Just to show you. And Jimmy, that's Jim Planchet, he's an electronics genius. He made something that he thought would really give your detection stuff fits-"

  "What? How did it work?" Rand demanded.

  "Hell, I'm no electronics type," Thompson said. "But it must have worked if you haven't got 'em yet!"

  Art Bonner was posed in the characteristic way he used to talk to MILLIE with his implant. His face looked-strange. Rand got up and went behind the desk so that he could see the TV screen that Sanders was watching. What had Bonner found out?

  The screen showed:

  JIM PLANCHET. IDENTIFICATION.

  COUNCILMAN JAMES PLANCHET OF LOS ANGELES HAS A SON AGE TWENTY NAMED JAMES EVERETI' JR.

  "Lord God," Tony said involuntarily.

  "What?" Allan Thompson squinted at Rand. "Did you say something?"

  "No," Bonner said. "Who is Diana?"

  "Aw, Diana Lauder. Kind of engaged to Jimmy, you know? Rooms in the dorm with us."

  "I see. Well, I hope the automatic systems haven't harmed your friends," Bonner said evenly. "Lieutenant, please take Mr. Thompson to Central Security. We'll have to hang on to you for a while, Allan. What you did was highly illegal, didn't you know that?"

  "You mean unlawful. Illegal's a sick bird," Thompson said. "We didn't mean any harm. Might even have done you a favor. Suppose we'd been somebody really out to get you? Wasn't my idea anyway. Jimmy's father kept spouting off about this place, and - there's something wrong, isn't there?" The boy's grin faded.

  "Jesus, they weren't hurt, were they? Look, Mister, they didn't mean any harm, they didn't have any weapons or anything! You didn't hurt them, did you? Jesus, Councilman Planchet will kill me if anything's happened to Jimmy!"

  "So it was your idea," Bonner said evenly.

  How can he be so calm? Rand wondered. And Pres just sits there staring at the brandy.

  "Take him out, Blake," Bonner said. "We'll talk to him later."

  "Hey, wait a minute, tell me, what's happened to Jimmy and Diana? Let me go, you goddam rent-a-cop! What did you bastards do? You can't handle me this way-"

  The door closed behind the guard and the struggling youth. So that's that, Art Bonner thought.

  "Kids out playing," Sanders said. "I don't want to believe it! Boxes full of sand. Art, they're as dead as-they're dead! I killed them, and they were just kids!"

  "Yeah. Get hold of yourself. You did the right thing, given what you knew. Suppose it'd been FROMATES with a bomb?"

  Sanders sat unmoving, staring at a wall he couldn't see. "Come on, Pres, it's all right," Rand said. "Look, they tried their best to make you think they were FROMATES, right? I thought so, watching over your shoulder. What else could you do?"

  Medical. Get someone in here to take care of Mister Sanders, Bonner thought.

  ACKNOWLEDGED.

  And get Sandra on duty. For everything except this. I don't want to be bothered with trivia.

  MS. WYATT IS JUST REACHING HER OFFICE.

  Tell her she's in charge as soon as she sits down. And Medical can give Pres a shot to get him through the night, but what the hell are we going to do tomorrow?

  An LA City Councilman's kid and his girlfriend. Planchet - Jesus, why did it have to be him? He spouts off a lot, but he's not really an enemy. Wasn't an enemy. He will be now.

  Can we keep it a secret? No. Thompson knew where the others were. Others might. Maybe not. Unwanted, a thought crept into the darker part of his mind. Sorry, kid, you know too much - Bonner pushed it away.

  Get me legal. Roust out Johnny Shapiro, right now, and get h
im up to my office.

  ACKNOWLEDGED.

  Status?

  SECURITY TEAM NOT READY TO ENTER. DETOXIFICATION ALMOST COMPLETED. ESTIMATE TEN MINUTES UNTIL SAFE TO ENTER.

  We'll just have to wait.

  Rand watched impatiently: Bonner giving orders and getting reports through his implant, while Tony knew nothing. Bonner could have had the decency to put it all on the TV screen! "What's happening?"

  "They're flushing out the last traces of nerve gas," Bonner said. "Not important enough to send guards in there with protective suits, not until it's safer. Is it?"

  "Don't think so. I tried to get a robot in, but the comm link is still jammed."

  "Why the hell can't your people develop something better than nerve gas? Something to knock a man over instantly but not kill him?"

  "Tall order," Rand said. "You've got one, but it has to be inhaled. These were wearing gas masks. If you want something that works on skin contact and knocks them over before they know what hit them, war gasses are all there is."

  "I suppose."

  "Here's the route they must have taken," Bonner said. A thin line moved through the holograph; a second screen showed what someone traveling that route would see. Twice the stark words appeared:

  IF YOU GO THROUGH THIS DOOR

  YOU WILL DIE

  SI USTED POR ESTA PUERTA

  HABRIA PASADO, USTED HABRIA MUERTO!

  MUY PELIGROSO

  "Subtle we aren't," Rand said. "And those were good locks on those doors. Anything more and we couldn't get through them ourselves. Maybe if I-"

  "You too?" Bonner said irritably. "Look. We took precautions. At great expense. Dammit, we aren't morally obligated to design this place so that idiot geniuses can't hurt themselves! What are we supposed to do, sit back and let a pack of crummy bastards shoot our police, poison our people, burn the city, put our people out of work-and never fight back?"

  "Sure," Tony said; but he couldn't help wondering if there wasn't something else he could have done. A more foolproof design. But these kids were anything but fools!

  A young medical resident came in and gave Preston Sanders a shot. Later, a security team brought out the bodies of Jimmy Planchet, age twenty, and Diana Lauder, nineteen. They had nothing dangerous with them; only dummy bombs with garish cartoons, a box of sophisticated electronic gear that Rand thirsted to study, and masks connected to Scuba gear.

  There were no weapons at all.

  VI. EYE OF THE STORM

  Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

  -Henry Brooks Adams

  Lying on a strange bed in a strange city in a foreign country, Sir George Reedy gradually realized that he wasn't going to sleep.

  It was jet lag, of course. Sir George had always suffered from biorhythm upset. It was a pity, because his work involved a good deal of traveling. He would not have survived had he not learned to sleep on airplanes.

  But, having slept through the flight to Los Angeles, Reedy was now wide awake at midnight. He was tired but not sleepy. If he closed his eyes tight and clenched his fists and willed himself to sleep, he'd still be doing it came the dawn. He'd tried to force sleep often enough. The trick (he thought, as he sat up and reached for his contact lenses) was to take the additional awake time as a gift, and do something with it.

  The day was full of undigested data … Anthony Rand had mentioned stockholders who worked outside without ever leaving Todos Santos. An intriguing possibility in a world running out of fuel. What had Rand called them? Waldos. And a technical term he'd forgotten.

  MILLIE, Sir George said in his throat. Reedy.

  READY, SIR GEORGE.

  What have you got on waldos?

  WALDO: A SYSTEM IN WHICH THE MOTIONS OF A HUMAN HAND OR HANDS ARE IMITATED BY A MECHANICAL HAND OR HANDS LOCATED ELSEWHERE. THE IDEA WAS FIRST CONCEWED BY ROBERT HEINLEIN FOR A SHORT SCIENCE FICTION STORY, Waldo, PUBLISHED IN 1940. WALDOS, OR TELEOPERATED DEVICES, WERE LATER DEVELOPED FOR USE IN HANDLING RADIOACTIVES, THEN FOR ANY DANGEROUS PROFESSION: THE MINING OF URANIUM OR COAL, MANIPULATION OF DANGEROUS CHEMICALS, WORK IN VACUUM ON THE MOON. THE TELEOPERATED TOOL MAY BE OF ANY SIZE, AND MAY BE MITTEN-SHAPED RATHER THAN HAND-SHAPED. A ROUTINE MAY BE RECORDED ONCE USING AN OPERATOR, THEN THE PROGRAM MAY BE REPLAYED INDEFINITELY.

  How many waldo operators presently reside here?

  FOUR HUNDRED AND TEN.

  Reedy was at the window now, looking out at a glowing carpet of light. Indeed, Los Angeles was beautiful … from here. Does the Todos Santos air conditioning system filter smog?

  YES, WITH 80% EFFICIENCY.

  Cost?

  RESTRICTED.

  Sir George paced. Order me a large mug of chocolate and two ounces of bourbon.

  DONE.

  This science fiction writer. What else did he invent? Did he make any money at it?

  ROBERT HEINLEIN IS CREDITED WITH THE IDEAS BEHIND THE LINEAR ACCELERATOR LAUNCHER, THE MOVING WALKWAY, AND THE WATER BED. NO PATENTS ARE ON FILE.

  Reedy shook his head, grinning. Typical. But waldos, now; that would have a strong bearing on how much parking place Canada must allot to a projected arcology. What else should he be checking, before he started digging for real information, tomorrow?

  An arcology wouldn't work without a city nearby? If true, it was crucial. What kind of city? How near? Todos Santos and Los Angeles were perhaps too close; relations between the two seemed strained. The kind of tension he'd already seen couldn't hold forever, Reedy thought. Something would snap.

  Perhaps the Canadian host city, or its citizens, should be given concessions of some kind?

  That family in the Commons: they had been financed by Todos Santos itself. Bonner had said so. How would that work?

  MILLIE.

  READY.

  What data have you on a Phillips family, man and wife and at least two children?

  PHILLIPS, CALVIN RAYMOND, AND JUDY NEE CAMPBELL. INDEPENDENT STOCKHOLDER RESIDENTS. MARRIED ONE TIME NINE YEARS TO PRESENT. CHILDREN CALVIN RAYMOND JUNIOR PRESENT AGE EIGHT YEARS, PATRICK LAFAYETTE AGE SIX YEARS. COOPERATWE OWNER UNIT 18-4578. PERCENTAGE OF OWNERSHIP RESTRICTED INFORMATION.

  Omit personal details, Reedy instructed. How was his business financed interrogative.

  DIRECTOR FOR CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT ADVANCED CORPORATE LOAN FUNDS IN EXCHANGE FOR ONE QUARTER INTEREST IN THE BUSINESS ENTERPRISE.

  What security was given for the loan? Sir George scratched his ear. The tiny voice in his head tickled.

  NOTE OF HAND ON RECOMMENDATION OF MISS CHURCHWARD.

  He'd heard that name ... from Bonner? Who is Churchward?

  DIRECTOR FOR CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT.

  "My word," Reedy said aloud.

  QUERY?

  Glitch. Is this kind of financial arrangement normal?

  443 STOCKHOLDERS HAVE OPENED BUSINESSES IN TODOS SANTOS USING LOANS RECOMMENDED BY BARBARA CHURCHWARD. 27 HAVE SINCE DECLARED BANKRUPTCY.

  That was quite a good record, Reedy decided. Tell me about Barbara Churchward.

  PERMISSION FROM CHURCHWARD REQUIRED. CHURCHWARD HAS PRESENT STATUS NO DISTURBANCES FOR ROUTINE MATTERS. IS THIS AN EMERGENCY?

  No. That will be all, thank you.

  The table opened to deliver Sir George's hot chocolate. He sipped enough to make room, then added the bourbon. The mix had put him to sleep on other occasions.

  Sipping, he smiled out at the carpet of light. No wonder the Angelinos were bitter. Every previous arcology had begun its life as a hopefully self-sufficient entity. Todos Santos had begun as a symbiote on Los Angeles. Now, by searching out the people it needed, by luring them inside with loans and concessions, the city-in-a-building was making every attempt to become self-sufficient, within Los Angeles's borders.

  Just how necessary was Churchward to the process?

  Might she be looking for a new career, with a hefty rise in salary? Reedy made a mental note to find out.

  That a man could be so lost in despair that he was prepared
to destroy himself, and that other men could mock him in the very act! He would never have believed it. The last of his illusions had burned out of him while he danced in the wind on the high board. His anger was deep inside him, too deep to show, and turned against itself.

  His face wasn't even sullen. It was dead calm, as he sat, waiting, waiting; for what he didn't know, and didn't care. He had walked where the guards had led him and sat where they pointed.