First Family

by Patrick Tilley

  Chisum evaded his grasp and backed off.

  Steve found his voice but the questions came out in a hopeless jumble. ‘What d’you mean I’m not – who are these – how can –?!’

  ‘Shut up! Sit down!’ hissed Chisum. ‘Someone’s coming! Forget what I told you, okay?!’ He turned away abruptly and walked to the far end of the room as a medic who’d been involved in the two-day examination entered and came over to where Steve, dressed in a white hospital gown, sat limply with his hands in his lap.

  The medic laid his hand on Steve’s shoulder. ‘Okay, you can get dressed now.’ Steve didn’t respond. ‘Hey, soldier – what’s the matter? You’re trembling.’

  ‘Just cold,’ said Steve weakly. He rose sluggishly to his feet forcing his head up and his shoulders back. The roaring in his ears began to fade. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I feel fine, sir. Just fine…’

  ‘Good,’ replied the medic. ‘Tomorrow morning you go before the Board of Assessors for your first debriefing session.’

  Later that night, while Steve slept restlessly in the empty hospital ward, Chisum used his ID-card to gain entry to a small conference room where a large, wall-mounted tv screen faced the open end of a U-shaped table with nine seats around it. As Chisum sat down in the centre seat at the base of the U, a camera mounted above the tv unit recorded his arrival and confirmed his identity by subjecting his electronic image to computer analysis. At the appointed time, the red, white and blue star and bar Amtrak logo disappeared from the screen and was replaced by the top half of a young, dark-haired woman sitting behind a metallic silver desk with a mirror-like finish.

  Chisum rose respectfully.

  The woman leant towards him, put her forearms on the desk and laid her hands one on top of the other. ‘Good evening, John.’ Her low-pitched voice was firm and well-modulated.

  ‘Good evening, Fran.’

  ‘Take a seat.’

  Chisum sat down and assumed the same position as his interlocutor, hands crossed on the table in front of him.

  Fran had a pale, oval face, a wide, firm-lipped mouth, and greyish brown eyes. Her short straight hair, parted on the right, was brushed in a sloping line across her forehead and swept back behind the ears. She was dressed in a silver jump-suit – the official work uniform of members of the First Family – with dark blue and white inserts that denoted her rank. Chisum, who had been in contact with Fran for some six months judged her to be about twenty-seven years old – it was hard to tell with the Family. Even though her location could not be far from where he now sat they had never met face to face, and since taking up his present assignment he had only learned two things about his Operational Director; her full name was Franklin Delano Jefferson, and she was Steve Brickman’s controller.

  ‘How is 3552?’

  ‘Chipped, but not about to crack apart,’ replied Chisum.

  ‘Has he communicated anything of interest regarding the period he spent in captivity?’

  ‘Nothing at all. There exists the possibility of a potential relationship but, being a wingman, he is extremely self-reliant. I’ve tried to get him to open up but he exhibits absolutely no need for any significant degree of social interaction.’

  ‘It’s true he does have an exceptionally well-integrated sense of identity,’ admitted Fran.

  ‘I also have a strong impression the subject suspects I’m there to do more than clean out test tubes.’

  ‘It would be surprising if he didn’t,’ replied Fran. ‘He’s a sensitive, like his kin-sister. He’s also a little paranoid. He suspects everybody. Did he ask about the result of the tests?’

  ‘Yes. I replied as instructed. His reaction was very much as you predicted. For a moment or two I thought he was going to come apart at the seams. It was, uh – an interesting experience.’

  Fran nodded thoughtfully. ‘After the exposure he’s had it’s not surprising that some of the mind-blocks have worked loose. What do you think, John – will the conditioning hold?’

  Chisum chewed over his reply. ‘I’m no expert but if you’re prepared to gamble on my intuition, I think the answer is “yes”. On the other hand, if it turns out I’m wrong, could he be reprogrammed?’

  ‘Good question, John. It’s something that’s never been tried before. This segment of OVERLORD has been running for over fifty years but we’re still very much in uncharted waters. Any attempt to reprogramme one of the current subjects may cause more problems than it will solve.’ Fran ran her fingers through the hair on her forehead and favoured Chisum with a warm smile. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Chisum. ‘Despite his very high degree of self-control, I loosened some of the cement when I mentioned the name of his kin-sister. This was definitely a genuine emotional response. It’s possible that the hard-soft-hard approach we decided to adopt is beginning to pay off. On the other hand he may be harbouring some feelings of guilt towards Roz – uh, I mean, 3801. I think we should seriously consider putting the two of them nose to nose. In view of the psychosomatic wounding she suffered when he crashed, I would expect her to know that he is still alive anyway.’

  ‘And here at Grand Central…’ added Fran.

  Chisum shrugged. ‘That wouldn’t surprise me either.’

  ‘So what you’re suggesting is that we let him go before the Assessors as planned, and if he proves a tough nut to crack we put him together with his kin-sister then – once she’s involved – use her to apply leverage?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Chisum. ‘Meanwhile, I’ll keep playing the good guy. And, of course, my position would be enhanced if I could be instrumental in arranging for them to see each other…’

  Fran nodded. ‘I like it. Well done, John. I’ll clear things this end and get back to you. Stay tuned.’

  ‘I will.’ Chisum got to his feet.

  ‘Good night, John.’

  ‘Good night, Fran.’

  Her image was replaced by the Amtrak logo – a blue circle enclosing within its circumference a white, five pointed star. Set on either side of the circle were two rectangular white panels each split horizontally by an outward-pointing red arrow. The circle and the panels were surrounded by a border of the same colour and thickness. According to the Manual, the white star symbolised Texas, the Lone Star State, the Inner State where the Amtrak Federation was born; the blue background represented the blue sky world to which it would return. The red border around the star and bars symbolised the overground frontier being pushed ever outwards by the arrows – red like the blood that was being spilt in the process. The two white rectangles traversed by the red arrows represented the Outer States that had been won back from the Mutes – the cleansed overground.

  As Chisum carefully repositioned the chair, he reflected upon the realisation that the true genius of the First Family lay in its infinite capacity to deceive. At some time in the distant past, the Jeffersons – a self-perpetuating dynasty whose interrelated members were currently believed to number around five thousand – had succeeded in placing itself at the apex of a pyramid of cunningly woven lies and deceit that, over the centuries, had gradually assumed the authority of received truth; had slowly hardened like the rock of ages within the earthshield, providing them with the solid foundation upon which they had constructed their present unassailable position of power.

  Brickman was a special case, but everyone else had been conditioned too. Even Chisum could not bring himself to fully believe that what he had discovered was the truth. That was one of the curses of being an undercover agent. Truth and untruth quickly become indistinguishable; assumed identities merged with the underlying self leaving you, in the end, with only one touchstone of reality – the fact that you were alive. And even that fact could quickly become obsolete. One big black mark was all it took.

  Chisum left the conference room and headed back towards the quarters he shared with three other medics. Yeah… it was a hard world, sure enough. The only thing the First Family didn’t control was the state of after-death. They cou
ld kill you a dozen different ways and at infinitely variable speed but once that old heart stopped pumping, you were – metaphorically speaking – out from under. Up and running.

  Yes, sir…

  Always assuming, of course, that there was some part of you left, and some place to run to. Chisum hoped there was. He had been thinking about the idea for years, ever since a Tracker – one of a gang of cee-bees he’d tracked down in a warren of pre-Holocaust tunnels below an overground site called Dallas – had shown him a book. Not The Book; not the Manual; not electronic pages from the video-archive but lines of words on yellowing, tattered rectangular leaves of a thin, fabric-type substance.

  The old guy had told him it was paper. The nearest thing to it that Chisum had seen was plasfilm – the stuff maps of the overground were printed on. The book, which was called the Old and New Testament, contained a string of stories about what was supposed to have happened way, way back before even the blue-sky world had taken shape. Chisum, whose task had been to infiltrate the group, took time out to read great chunks of it. It hadn’t been easy. Most of the pages which were supposed to be fixed together down one side had come loose, some were missing, or were torn. It was not surprising that the Federation had switched to putting everything on video. Chisum’s overriding impression of the book was that times hadn’t changed much. There were lots of battles, bad times, good times, people getting shafted – there was one guy, Job – Christo! Now he really had a bad time! And then there were a lot of guys making promises about a better tomorrow, a lot of talk about right and wrong, and a place called Heaven, the Kingdom of God. Like the blue sky world – only better.

  When the group had been rounded up, Chisum had hidden the book away behind some loose bricks in one of the decaying tunnels. He’d meant to return for it but a Provo demolition gang had blasted the gang’s hide-out into a heap of rubble. Chisum often told himself it was the best thing that could have happened. That book could have cost him his life. As part of an undercover law-enforcement unit he knew what the rules were but, having discovered that book, he could not understand why possession of it should be a Code One offence.

  From that moment on, Chisum had begun to examine more carefully what he was asked to do: not to question orders – that would have been fatal – but to ponder the reasons why people like him were necessary. Some of the ideas in that old book still stuck in his mind, and one persistent question had remained to nag him. Just before the hide-out had been raided, the old cee-bee had let Chisum in on a big secret: under another part of Dallas he had discovered a big underground gallery containing thousands of such books full of all kinds of stories, pictures, and facts about the pre-Holocaust world. Swore to it on the P-G’s life. This old man had actually spent two whole days just walking round it! Rack after rack of books from floor to ceiling; set in long lines that seemed like they went on for ever. He had promised to show Chisum where it was but, on the very day he was due to lead him through the maze of tunnels, Chisum’s team and their Provo back-up had swooped in and bagged the whole bunch. That had been five years ago.

  Were those books still there? Chisum wondered. Lying sealed behind the rubble? And did the First Family – who, through the medium of the video archives, had only the barest information to offer about the pre-Holocaust period – know they were there?

  The Board of Assessors that Steve found himself facing the following morning consisted of five men and three women. The ninth member – the President of the Board had not yet arrived. Steve stood at ease in front of the chair that he was scheduled to occupy for the better part of the next five days and tried to guess the demeanour of the individual board members as they took their seats on either side of the President’s hand-carved, high-backed chair. The table, at which the Assessors would sit, was semi-circular in shape, curving round on both sides of Steve’s chair so that he could be observed closely while under interrogation.

  Raising his eyes, Steve caught sight of one of the ever-present tv cameras and mike units that would record everything he said and every movement he made. The videotapes would be carefully scrutinised later; every aspect of his performance would come under review. It was the standard technique applied to all Trackers, regardless of rank. Everybody below senior executive rank was interviewed at three monthly intervals by two Assessors. An individual’s performance and attitude were evaluated and he was rewarded or penalised with plus or minus credit points. This process began at the age of five and continued for most Trackers until the bagmen called. Steve had always managed to do well in his quarterly assessments but he had never faced a full board before. He glanced discreetly at the board members and tried to guess their ages. He judged them to be between thirty and forty years old. The greying hair was no guide at all. Some execs had white hair at twenty-five and, after a particularly hard tour, a lot of Trail-Blazers ended up as silver-tops too. It was said that, even if they were stark naked, you could always spot an Assessor by the way they looked at you. That piercing gaze. For some unexplained reason, Assessors almost always had abnormally intense pale grey or cold blue eyes and an air of total dedication. They could quote page after page of the Manual and were absolutely fanatical about points of procedure, rules and regulations. But while there were some word-perfect pedants who could not see the wood for the trees, there were other Assessors who were remarkably shrewd observers adept at spotting the slightest hint of evasiveness or insincerity.

  A tv monitor was set into the table in front of each assessor on which data relating to the examinee could be displayed. Each member of the board was also provided with an electronic memo pad to make notes on. The pads could be plugged into the monitors, enabling them to send messages to one another without the examinee knowing what was being said. A number on Steve’s side of the table identified the individual board members; 1-4 on his left, 5-8 on his right. The President’s position needed no clarification.

  A door on the left-hand section of the wall behind the table opened. Steve sprang to attention as the President of the Board entered and moved to her place directly opposite him. The eight Assessors waited deferentially until she sat down, then followed suit.

  ‘Sit down, Steven.’ The President’s voice was low-pitched, firm and well-modulated. Her dark hair, parted on the right, sloped across her forehead and was swept back behind the ears. Her eyes were greyish-brown. It was Fran. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Steve’s controller.

  Steve had no means of knowing this, or that she was Family. Fran was dressed in the standard grey jump-suit worn by all members of the Federation’s Legal Division. Draped over her shoulders was a loose-sleeved, three-quarter length sessions gown – part of an Assessor’s formal dress. As the Board’s President, Fran wore a vermilion gown with charcoal grey trim. The other members of the Board wore similar gowns with the colours reversed. Had she cared to consult COLUMBUS, Fran might have discovered that the shape and cut of the gowns recalled those worn by ivy-league college professors in the halcyon days preceding the Holocaust. The others – who, despite their Level 12 ID-cards, would never acquire the same unrestricted access – were destined to remain ignorant of this minor piece of sartorial history – and a great deal more besides.

  Fran exchanged the customary greetings with the other members of the Board and checked that the monitor intercom system was working satisfactorily. The preliminary questioning of the examinee, which followed a standard procedure, was conducted by the Board’s President. The primary function of the eight Assessors was to observe the examinee and evaluate their responses, but individual members were permitted to seek clarification of an answer, or ask a supplementary question. Any Assessor wishing to do this sent a signal to the President then waited for the green light. Fran used this brief settling-in period to make an appraisal of Steve. Since taking over as his controller she had studied the videofile covering the relevant stages in his life from birth to date, but this was the first time she had met him face to face. As a woman, she liked what she saw but that did not
affect her resolve to extract from him every ounce of information he possessed about the Mutes.

  Fran leaned her forearms on the table, placed her palms carefully together and fixed Steve with her grey-brown eyes. The corners of her mouth tweaked up into a half-smile that belied the serious note in her voice. ‘Steven, before we ask you to describe your experiences, I want to emphasise that despite the circumstances surrounding your initial reception at Pueblo and Santa Fe, the Federation does not consider you to have defaulted in any way. In no sense are you suspected of dereliction of duty whilst serving as a wingman.’ Fran glanced round the table. ‘I think, in that respect, I speak for all members of the Board?’

  The eight Assessors nodded and murmured their assent.

  Fran turned her attention back onto Steve. ‘As you are no doubt aware from the degree of incredulity you encountered at Pueblo and elsewhere, you are the first Tracker ever to have survived capture by the Mutes – and the only individual that has had the opportunity to make an in-depth study of the Plainfolk. What you have to tell us will be invaluable in planning our campaign to repossess the overground. It follows that – since your experience is unique – there can be no question of this Board seeking to censure any aspect of your behaviour, or any observations you might have to make about the period under review.’ Fran paused and treated Steve to a sympathetic smile. ‘It must, to put it mildly, have been a very difficult time. Traumatic even.’

  Steve thought it appropriate to reply at this point with a sober nod.

  ‘I can believe it,’ continued Fran. ‘However, we are going to ask you to relive each moment from the time you took off from The Lady with –’ She broke off to consult the screen. ‘– with White, G.R… your friend Gus… until you arrived over the way-station at Pueblo. I want you to consider this examination as an extended version of the debriefing process you would normally undergo at the hands of your Flight Operations Officer. All we wish to do is to share the knowledge you have gained during captivity in the hope that it will provide us with a greater understanding of the enemy. Do you understand that?’