Oath of Fealty

by Larry Niven

  As usual when she was disturbed at night, she looked both irritated and wide awake. "You'll tell whom?" she asked.

  "Councilman Planchet. His son's been killed."

  "Oh, no! Mac-Mac, it will kill Eunice."

  Stevens nodded. "Yeah."

  "Who was that, one of your police?"

  "Art Bonner."

  Her face showed surprise, then shock, then went blank. "But- Art, what happened to Jimmy?"

  "He was killed breaking into Todos Santos. And now I've got to call Mr. Planchet."

  She came over and held him for a moment, her head buried against his shoulder. Then she was all business again. "I'll get your coffee. And your slippers, no need for you to catch cold."

  Which was the way she handled any emergency, and why Mac couldn't conceive of life without her.

  He held the telephone without dialing. This was going to hurt. Big Jim Planchet was in many ways more powerful than the Mayor. Mayors lasted two or three terms at most, but a City Councilman could be reelected forever. This was Planchet's fourth term, and his second as Council President.

  He made himself dial the number. It buzzed four times, then a thick sleepy voice said, "Yeah?"

  "Mac Stevens."

  There was a significant pause. Stevens wouldn't call without a damned good reason. "Yes, Mac, what is it?"

  "There's been an accident at Todos Santos," Stevens said. "Your son was involved." He paused just long enough to let that sink in, to let Planchet guess there was worse coming. "He's dead, Mr. Planchet."

  "Dead? Did you say dead? But I just saw him at dinner-" The voice lowered, spoke conspiratorially. "Accident, you said. What kind of accident?"

  "Jimmy and Diana Lauder-"

  "Yeah, I know her, nice kid-"

  "-broke into Todos Santos. They were both killed by Todos Santos guards."

  "Broke in? Killed by guards? Mac, that doesn't make sense! My kid wouldn't have hurt anybody, why would the guards kill him?"

  "The Todos Santos people say they were carrying a lot of complicated electronic equipment, and boxes of what looked like dynamite. The guards thought it was a real attack by FROMATES."

  Another long pause. Then, "I'll be out as soon as I get my clothes on. Meet me at the East main entrance of the Box."

  "I wouldn't advise it, Mr. Planchet. There's nothing to see. Your son and Diana aren't there any longer, and the area where it happened is-is contaminated."

  "Contaminated how?"

  "With poison gas."

  "They gassed my kid? Gassed him?" Planchet was shouting in rage. Then his voice fell again. "Where is he?"

  "They're taking him to the coroner's labs."

  "To the morgue. Jesus, I don't want - I can't take Eunice to the morgue! What-what can I do?"

  "Stay there," Mac advised. "Get some friends over. Your clergyman. I'll look into this for you. .

  "Yeah. Do that." There was another long pause. "They gassed him. Mac-Mac, I want to see justice done here. Justice."

  "I'm assuming the District Attorney will decide to prosecute," Shapiro said. "That's a fairly safe bet. And assuming that, the first step is a preliminary hearing. The D.A. will try to convince the judge that a crime has been committed, and that they have a prima facie case against Sanders."

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. "It's not customary to put on a defense at a preliminary hearing, but my immediate thought is that we ought to. Our defense will be that there's been no crime at all, only a justified action."

  "What are the chances of winning?" Bonner asked.

  "Not good. The judge will be under a lot of pressure. Here are two dead bodies. Unarmed. Harmless kids. Were we justified in using deadly force? It's going to be a sticky decision, and most of the precedents are against us. We could win, but I doubt it."

  "Suppose we do," Barbara Churchward said. "What do we do with Sanders?"

  "Put him back to work," Bonner snapped.

  "It would be costly," Churchward said. "I think you ought to consider it carefully."

  "She's right," Mead said. "Planchet isn't going to forget this. His kid's been killed. And as long as Sanders is here to remind him, he'll be coming at us."

  "He's my deputy. I need him."

  "We need sales, too," Churchward said. "I don't mean to suggest that we dump him out, but the Romulus Corporation has a lot more enterprises than Todos Santos. And will we be doing Pres any favors by keeping him here where he'll be surrounded by people who'll call him a murderer every chance they get? Romulus is a big company, Art. They can find Pres a good post somewhere else."

  "Prisoner chasers," Bonner muttered. "Sir?" Shapiro prompted.

  "Old Army story. Never knew if it was true, but we all believed it. That if a soldier assigned to guard prisoners ever shot one, they fined him the cost of the cartridges, gave him a carton of cigarettes, and transferred him to another post. What we're proposing to do with Pres. Johnny, suppose we lose this hearing?"

  "Then he'll be bound over to the state for trial," Shapiro said.

  "And we'll try to convince a jury that he acted properly. I think we've got a fairly good chance of that. And we can always play legal games to get it declared a mistrial. And there are appeals, and-"

  "And meanwhile, Pres is in jail."

  "Well, probably out on bail."

  "And spending his life in courtrooms," Bonner said. "I'd like to think we can take better care of our people than that."

  "How?" Shapiro asked.

  Bonner shrugged.

  "That's not all the bad news," Shapiro said.

  "What now?"

  "You can bet that within a week, someone's going to file for an injunction to make us dismantle our defenses. Make us get rid of the lethal gasses. And they're very likely to get that, Art. Very likely. We've always been on shaky ground with that stuff."

  "Shit fire. Colonel?"

  Cross looked sad. “We can increase the physical security. Try to keep intruders out of the system in the first place. But it's hard to see just what more we can do. The VX was a backup, in case physical security failed. Turned out we needed it-"

  "Or thought we did," Churchward said.

  "Same thing," Colonel Cross said. "Uh - in this preliminary hearing, how much of our system do you have to make public?"

  "A lot," Shapiro said. "I have to establish just how tough it is to get into that tunnel. Show that these weren't just casual trespassers-and that Sanders had good reason to know they weren't."

  "I thought so. Tony, we're going to have to rework the system again."

  Rand nodded agreement. He had already thought of that, and was mulling over ideas. "It will take time."

  "I can delay the preliminary hearing," Shapiro said. "For months, if you'd like."

  "I don't like," Barbara Churchward said. "This thing is a financial disaster anyway. Keep it hanging fire and it's worse."

  'What about this injunction?" Bonner demanded. "How long can you delay hearings on that?"

  "A week. Maybe two," Shapiro said. "No guarantee of longer."

  "Not long enough, but it will have to do," Rand said.

  "I don't like to be crass about things," Frank Mead said, "but there's this problem I have. How much is all this going to cost?"

  "A lot," Bonner said. "And I don't think of one thing we can do about it."

  "Me either," Mead said. "Look, Art, I'm on your side."

  Sure you are, Tony Rand thought. Support Bonner all the way. Like you did Pres.

  "But it's not up to me," Mead said. "It's up to Zurich, and they're bottom-line people."

  "We're fighting for our lives," Art Bonner said. "This whole project could go down in bureaucratic regulations. The way the rest of the country's going. So. Barbara, you're going to have to live with delays, and Frank, you'll sign some big checks with a smile, and I'll talk to Zurich."

  Frank Mead's jaw tightened, but he didn't say anything.

  "No choices," Bonner said. "Rand needs time to redesign the defense system, and
until that's done we don't dare show a court the system we use now. We've got to delay. Johnny, buy us time. As much as you can. Tony, you and the colonel get to work."

  "Shouldn't somebody ask Pres?" Rand asked.

  "Sure. We'll talk to him in the morning," Bonner said. "Okay. We all know what we're supposed to do. Let's get to it."

  VIII. SERENDIPITY

  Justice consists of an enduring and unalterable intention to render to each what that person deserves.

  -Aristotle

  Thomas Lunan relaxed on one of the circular benches in the Santa Monica Mall, smiling, looking about himself, sometimes sipping a small Coke.

  Thomas Lunan had presence. He carried a tangible self-satisfaction and a nice smile. Passersby usually smiled back. He was too well dressed to be a bum, too sedentary to be doing anything but goofing off. In a minute or so he'd move on, perhaps to a drugstore, perhaps to another bench a block down.

  Every other reporter would be out at Todos Santos, or in the LA City Hall. Two kids dead, one a pretty girl, one a City Councilman's boy, both unarmed, both harmless. The story of the year! and Thomas Lunan was in the Santa Monica Mall.

  It wouldn't make sense to the City Editor. It didn't make sense to Lunan, except that he trusted his instincts, his luck, his moira.

  The crowd meandered past. Some struggled with bulky clusters of paper bags. Isolated shoppers swung wide of half-a-dozen college-age boys and a girl. Mostly Lunan was ignored. Others shared his bench; they generally refused his offer of conversation. When nobody was watching, he sometimes talked to himself.

  Lunan called it legwork.

  A young girl came past.

  Even Lunan wasn't sure what made her stand out; but she did. She was vivid in a crowd of blurred faces. Her walk. Her hair. Her style of dress. The curious way she treated the people around her: moving obstacles to be avoided, or objects of curiosity.

  A Todos Santos girl.

  He stepped briskly forward. "Pardon me, Miz-"

  Her reaction was curious: she looked around the Mall. Then she looked over Thomas Lunan. "Yes?"

  "I'm a reporter for the Los Angeles Trib. You've heard about the murders last night?"

  She almost walked away. "I've heard," she spat. Her anger showed.

  "What do you think about it?"

  She debated with herself. To speak, perchance to be misquoted - Lunan knew that reaction. But she was young, probably under twenty. She would speak.

  "They were not murders," she said, her voice very much under control now.

  "But the District Attorney is going to charge, uh, Sanders with murder," Lunan said.

  "Mister Sanders was doing his duty. The Angelinos have no right to interfere in our internal affairs."

  He was diffident. "I wonder, did the situation require such drastic action?"

  "Yes."

  "How can you be so certain? I mean, you can't know much about what happened. There was very little in the news this morning-"

  "I know exactly what happened, and I don't need to read it in Angelino papers, either. Mister Bonner showed us this morning." She saw his puzzled frown. "On the TV. Our cable station. Mister Bonner. The General Manager of Todos Santos. This morning he showed us exactly where the invaders were, and what would've happened if they'd set off a bomb."

  He would have hated losing her, but he risked it. "They didn't have a bomb."

  "Your Angelino children did their best to pretend they were FROMATE saboteurs carrying a bomb," she said. "How can they complain when they were treated like saboteurs? Think of it as evolution in action."

  I've heard that before, Lunan thought. In the City Room. Unidentified mugging victim wrote it just before somebody pounded his head into jelly. "Where did you hear that phrase? From Mr. Bonner?"

  She frowned, trying to remember. "No. I don't know where I heard it. From one of the guards when I was leaving this morning?"

  Too bad it wasn't Bonner, Lunan thought. It would make a better story if it had been said by a high official of Todos Santos. Think of it as evolution in action-"Well. It's certainly true that two of them aren't complaining. I notice you name the FROMATES directly-" Lunan's microphone, projecting from his shirt collar, stood just beyond and below his chin like a hatpin. Tiny as it was, it made some people nervous.

  But not this girl. "Who else?" she asked. "They broke up a concert with wasps only last week. They tried to put LSD in our water. They're proud of doing things like that."

  "Not bombs-"

  "No. There's another group that takes credit for bombs and grenades," she said. "The Ecology Army? Something like that. But they're all FROMATES. Who else hates us that much?"

  She had more to say, about atrocities real and fancied against Todos Santos. Some Lunan knew about. Others he would have to look up in the files. And of course she knew all about the Kansas City incident where terrorists had killed a dozen arcology dwellers. When she stopped for breath he offered to buy her some iced tea. He was beginning to think he'd struck gold.

  Let the other reporters dig for facts. The key to this affair was the conflict between two cultures. How had Todos Santos become so paranoid? Why did they react so strongly? Their official statement on the news this morning said they "regretted the necessity" of Sanders's action. Sorry they'd killed two kids, sure, but stressed the necessity of defending themselves.

  And that was what Lunan wanted. The key. Two cultures, so different that Lunan could spot a Todos Santos girl in a milling crowd of shoppers, although he wasn't sure how he'd known. She was about eighteen; she could have spent most of her life inside the towering balconied walls.

  He wanted the flavor of Todos Santos: the life, the attitudes, the philosophy. "Your Angelino children-" Like that. He let the conversation drift away from the murders, drift where it would. He asked questions. Listening is a fine art, and Lunan had mastered it.

  Her name was Cheryl Drinkwater. She was a student at Todos Santos University, where she was a sophomore in engineering. Her father was a waldo operator. Lunan had found out quite a lot about her, and it wasn't hard to get her talking about life in Todos Santos.

  " ... and we used to jump just as the elevator was starting down," she said. "If you're careful you can touch the ceiling, then get back before there's weight."

  "Sounds too bloody fast for me. Like a roller coaster."

  Cheryl was amused. "If we slowed them down, it'd take twice as long to get anywhere, wouldn't it? We've got a hundred levels to get around in."

  Narrow chin, upturned nose, brunette hair streaked with blond; she was lovely. Not beautiful in the sense of classic beauty, but lovely just the same. When she laughed Lunan wished for a photographer. Maybe later

  She knew little of the FROMATES beyond their constant sabotage attacks. When he spoke of their work in preserving the ecology of America's wild places, she laughed. "We live in a nearly closed ecology," she said. "We know exactly what comes in and goes out. We grow up knowing what your FROMATES have to go to college to learn."

  "Not my FROMATES."

  "Sorry. Not mine either." She frowned. "We never had any trouble from the FROMATES or the Angelinos when I was growing up. Say, do you remember a movie, a feature-length cartoon? Called, uh, The Nest, I think."

  "Yah. Ten years ago?"

  "Well, my parents say the FROMATES made that film, and all the hassle has come since. I don't remember." She looked a question at him.

  He had heard that, from another source, but he couldn't say so, not in his present role. He changed the subject.

  When he asked her how she liked living in a walled fort, she said that a walled fort didn't have balconies.

  "You could be getting a bit inbred," Lunan said. "Your university - are all the students residents in TS?"

  "Just about. We have a few exchange students. Some of my friends go to schools Outside. I like it where I am. We get real working engineers for instructors. And real managers. Miss Churchward teaches economics. Mister Rand lectures on city design."<
br />
  And so on. She wasn't exactly defensive, but she wasn't going to admit that life might hold more than a promise of a place in Todos Santos or some other arcology.

  "You're watched every minute of the day," he said. That's why she doesn't freeze up in front of a microphone. "Isn't that a bit much of a good thing?"