Systemic Shock

by Dean Ing

  Quantrill took two wrong turns before finding the bungalow, let himself in with Abby's key, assured himself that the telephone line was still active even without house current. It had been Abby's idea that she might be able to phone him. He spent an hour taping seams in Abby's bedroom, stacking books and magazines against the outside wall, listening to his radio quantify the gradual rise in radiation in the area. He found a certain satisfaction in anger over their decision, the night before, to sleep in the garage. It would have been so much better, infinitely more voluptuous, to writhe with Abby between sheets. On impulse he pulled back her coverlet, thrust his face against her pillow; inhaled. It did not smell of her presence, but mustily of her absence.

  Quantrill did not understand how much the human organism is sexually provoked by sudden social change. He knew only an enormous need, and lying in Abby's bed his daydream led him to assuage that need. He felt guilty afterward, as always—but felt relieved as well.

  Sundown found Quantrill piling blankets on the Chevy's seat. This time he ran over only a few curbs and took only one wrong turn before parking the little camper near their rendezvous point. He had moved stealthily on foot into the grove of small trees, was estimating where he could most easily drive up to the chain-link fence, when he first heard the delta approaching.

  It came as a faint hiss, then a whirr, then the susurrus often billion sopranos whispering in the dusk. When he finally looked to the west the tiling was nearly overhead. The yellow delta slid down its invisible glidepath like a sharply defined cloud, rocking very slightly in warm evening breezes, a rigid polymer-skinned dirigible the length of two football fields, powered by external multiblade propellers. Quantrill had seen the fat spade-shaped cargo craft many times, but always at great distance. Even with its elevons canted and its engine pods gimbaling for thrust vector control, a delta did not look like a steerable craft; certainly not like one that could winch sixty thousand kilos of cargo into its belly and skate away into the sky at the speed of a fast monorail.

  A trapezoid of lights flickered across the meadow inside the museum perimeter, making Quantrill squint. It seemed to throw the drainage ditch into deeper shadow. The ponderous delicacy of the delta's mooring held Quantrill's attention for long minutes. Finally anchored by rigid struts, the great helium-filled airship stilled its propellers. The air-cushion cargo pallet rose to meet the section of shell that scissored down with cargo. Quantrill could hear faint shouts of the handlers five hundred meters away and wondered if the commotion would help Abby.

  A part of him hoped that Abby would want out, for whatever reason; he did not want to go over that fence. Yet if Abby said to come, he would do it. When had she made a poor decision?

  He would not know the answer for many hours.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  While Quantrill roved the perimeter in search of sentries, peering through the last light of a blood and saffron dusk, Eve Simpson catalogued her new hardships among California's Channel Islands. "They promised me," she said, scowling in the late sun as she jogged along the beach, '"promised me I'd be playing that civil defense bit against a war hero. So what do I get? A vapid nit without a ribbon!"

  Trundling beside little Evie in a gold cart, her male secretary made an entry in his portable 'corder and judged that it was time for his hourly demur. “Evie dear, they don't have any new heroes available just yet. He did look the part. And my goodness, what a voice!"

  "Resonance I'll give him," Eve puffed. "Brains, I couldn't find. The next hapless ass NBN fobs off on me who blows a dozen takes because his labile memory isn't up to three lines of dialogue, welllll," she said ominously, and fought to recover her breathing rhythm. As much as she despised jogging, Eve loathed dieting more.

  Bruce, her secretary, knew why the National Broadcasting Network paid him so well: given enough provocation, NBN's most prized teen sexpot could discover a blinding migraine that might hold up shooting schedules for days. It wouldn't be such a bitch of a job, he admitted to himself, if little Evie were your standard model seventeen-year-old Hollywood centerfold—which is to say, trained to be utterly disinterested in anything beyond immediate appearances. But Eve Simpson was distinctly abnormal, he gloomed, noting the rivers of perspiration that trickled down her spine to be absorbed by the velour stretched across those famous buns. In ten years she might be pudgy. Right now she was a morsel men—most men, he smiled to himself—craved. Until they fetched up against the inner Evie. A mind swift and incisive as a weasel's bite, a tongue she wielded like a broken bottle. A clever gay fellow could feast like a pilot fish on gutted egos, cruising near the jaws of Eve Simpson.

  Eve slowed to a walk as the beach curled toward the east, then turned away from rocky prominences and began to retrace her path. "You're watching the rad counter, I hope," she said. "The Lompoc and Santa Barbara fallout pattern could shift on us."

  "We're clean as puppy teeth," he said and snickered, waving a negligent palm at the glass-ported concrete dome just under their skyline. "I'll bet there's a batch of vice-presidents gnawing their cuticles to ribbons up there, watching you and worrying enough for all of us." He steered around a pile of kelp, giggled. "If the wind changed we'd hear them from here; they'd have a feces hemorrhage."

  "Bruce, you wouldn't say'shit' if you had a mouthful," she accused, lengthening her stride as she called back. "Did you ever wonder if there were such a thing as being too socialized?"

  "Oh, Gohhhd, Evie's a sociologist again," he moaned.

  "At least you can pronounce it," she shot back. “Oh: see if I have a schedule conflict between my dialect tutor and blocking out the scenes for my Friday 'cast. And have wardrobe magic up some bra straps that don't slice me in three," she added.

  It was pure hell to make do on a desert island, she thought. Well, not exactly a desert. Eve slowed to a walk again, noting the similarities between the familiar scrub oak and cactus of Catalina, and her present location on Santa Cruz Island. She knew the history of Santa Cruz from the Caire settlements through the Stanton purchase, its off-limits status, and the far-sighted lease arrangements NBN had worked out with the Bureau of Public Information. Knowing the dichotomy between news broadcasts and the actual progress of the war, little Evie thought of it as the Bureau of Public Disinformation. Invasion defenses by civil defense organizations in Los Angeles, indeed! What organization? What Los Angeles?

  For that matter, what civil defense? Eve's media theory tutor, a Southern Cal professor named Kelsey with connections at AP and UPI, was already squirreling away a collection of news items which, by the process of wartime censorship, had become non-news. One day it might become ten pages in a learned journal; meanwhile it was grist for Eve's formidable mill.

  News: patriotic Americans over eighteen years of age were swamping induction centers.

  Non-news: it didn't take many people to swamp induction centers that for the moment had no means to ship inductees, or training centers for them. When the military machinery got in gear, sixteen-year-olds might feel the draft.

  News: a coordinated counterattack by US/RUS orbital weapons had won the first great battle in near space. We alone had orbital spies.

  Non-news: the RUS moonbase was now only a collection of desperate people in a few leaking domes, unable to mount another launch and without hope of survival if another bevy of nukes came their way.

  News: an estimated twenty per cent of China's population, and twenty-five per cent of India's, had perished.

  Non-news: so had a full forty per cent of ours. Centralization had provided the good life. Too much centralization had obliterated it.

  News: survivors in all US coastal areas were girding themselves for invasion, clearing debris from vital thoroughfares, cheerful in their faith in flag, mom, and apple pie.

  Non-news: that piece of news was a lie. Survivors in most coastal regions were scrabbling for existence after less than a week. Any transportation that depended on rails or macadam was in thick yogurt, though belt line throughways aro
und a few cities had survived beyond Dead Day. Moms were dying, apples were radioactive, and east of the Alleghenies the flag carried paranthrax.

  News: crisis relocation centers were getting supplies from federal stores by secret means in a coordinated mutual-aid effort. The few isolated cases of local satrapy would be documented and punished. Non-news: it would be hard to keep the role of the delta dirigibles a secret for long, and few of the centers showed much interest in anything beyond their own survival. Some were dispensing antibiotics and broadcasting survival tips oriented toward keeping their gates clear of more evacuees. News: The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints urged Americans to turn to prayer and good works; to accept this judgment of God with a firm resolve to emulate the Godly as a path to survival. Non-news: Catholics, Jews, Unitarians and athiests wanted equal time. It was not difficult to infer a connection between different ratios of survival between faiths, and different amount of Godliness. What was difficult, to gentiles, was explaining away the fact that Mormon temples were responding heroically with food and medical help to anyone standing in the queues outside.

  Eve Simpson had already absorbed an undergraduate's knowledge of media and information processing. She knew that word of mouth was still the best advertising, and that a convincing demonstration was the spoon that filled mouths with the right words. It occurred to Eve that Senator Collier of Utah was a convincing demonstrator with the right words and, under these circumstances, the right background. B. A., J.D., and LDS. His Presidential candidacy might be a foregone conclusion if the latest rumor were true.

  She had heard it while on Stage Three, one of the concrete domes of the hush-hush complex they called Sound Stage West. The complex had been built into the mountain overlooking the secluded valley of Santa Cruz Island so that news, non-news, and rumor could all receive their 'proper' processing in an emergency. The President, it was rumored, was not safely tucked into a maximum-security hole, nor was the Vice President. The stream of messages issued by the

  White House press secretary only purported to come from the top. The rumor dealt with a brace of impact nukes and one of the provisioned caverns of Virginia's once-lovely Shenandoah Valley. If it was true—real non-news—then the Speaker of the House was now President of the United States.

  Eve found the rumor worrisome. "Give me that towel," she said suddenly, and mopped herself as she climbed aboard the golf cart. "Put this thing in overdrive or something, Brucie; I want back inside."

  "You've got time," he soothed.

  "Have I? If our government goes belly-up, Bruce, the only thing left to glue this country together will be media. Tell me honestly: do you think Sound Stage West could take a direct hit?"

  "So they say," he replied, intent on conning the vehicle. "Since three of NBN's top shareholders and a senator are here with their hotsies and luggage, I tend to believe it."

  The big titties bounced with Eve's laughter. "Why is it that fags have all the brains," she gurgled rhetorically. Bruce merely smiled. He knew how to field a left-handed compliment, however poorly tossed.

  Chapter Thirty

  By nine PM Eve had finished her stint for NBN, a rack of lamb, a half-hour mimicking the lilting lingo of South Afrikaners for the government's impending plea to African neutrals, and a quick scan of Media's Games Governments Play. It was a curiosity and a commonplace that, for all her media experience and theory, Eve had never actually watched a news broadcast during its taping. Now, cloistered with five hundred others in an effort to maintain a 'business-as-usual' impression to holo viewers, Eve found herself in closer quarters. She needed merely to traverse a tunnel to emerge in the wings of NBN's Nightly News set. The item on the Amur crossing, she realized, was several hours old even though it was datelined on Thursday morning, RUS time.

  In Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the Nightly News tape aired at midnight. Lieutenant Boren Mills had been awake for twenty hours; he damned the discomfort of his contact lenses, switching to bifocals in the privacy of his room in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters. His attention was only half on the holo because Mills already knew of the Sinolnd invasion of the Amur region.

  "… Shortly before dawn, this Thursday morning," said a young man in clipped British diction. In the distance sprawled mountains; a river glinted not far away, partly hidden by massive concrete apartment complexes of a typical small RUS city. At ten klicks' distance no flames were visible, but smoke roiled from rooftops. Mills guessed it must be Khabarovsk.

  But the newsman continued, "Elements of the Chinese Third Army crossed the Amur River here, at Blagoveshchensk. Amphibious trucks towed primitive rafts filled with soldiers, protected by mortar fire. The Chinese met stiff resistance here and at Khabarovsk; but in several places along the six hundred kilometer front, CPA troops have driven thirty kilometers or more into RUS territory.

  "The civilian population has been evacuated. The civil defense cadre of Blagoveshchensk remained behind and is inflicting heavy casualties on the advancing Chinese People's Army. A RUS spokesman has assured this correspondent that the CPA cannot hope to consolidate these temporary gains. He says the Chinese are using outmoded equipment that probably can't withstand modern RUS weapons expected soon from Vladivostok.

  "But this morning, the CPA took portions of the old trans-Siberian railway north of the Amur. So, at high noon in Siberia, the CPA boasts an invasion and a vital rail link. The question is: can they keep either of them moving? In Blagoveshchensk, I'm Peter Westwood for the BBC."

  Mills was wide awake now. As the news turned to Cana da's entry into the western rank of warring nations, he cudgeled his memory for the Vladivostok messages that had passed through his ELF channels. The RUS port city, within artillery distance of China, had taken such a nuclear shellacking that even its submarine pen entrances near Artem had collapsed. There was no longer any point in sending US subs there for repair or provisioning. Mills made a silent wager that China had more than an old rail link in mind. Strongly gifted with visual memory, he recalled that the Chinese thrust was generally northeastward. By driving to the Sea of Okhotsk they would also cut the big new Baikal-Amur railway—a truly crucial artery through Siberia which had cost twice as much as our Alaska pipeline.

  Oil, iron, coal, even diamonds passed from Siberia to the coast on the new artery and if it were slashed, much of Siberia might bleed to death. Yes, Mills decided, the RUS was in damned big trouble if Sinolnd forces could push a spearhead to the Okhotsk Sea. And if the RUS was posturing about help from devastated Vladivostok, that posture would fool no one—that is, no one but surviving Americans who found their media more believable each year.

  Boren Mills had guessed already that Canada was ready to throw in with the good guys, even with her growing mistrust toward the fumbling RUS colossus that owned more Arctic resources and techniques than Canada herself. Mills did not care what Canada did, so long as she did not permit the US Navy to install the new ELF grid at Barnes Icecap on Baffin Island. The grid could be laid there cheaply and quickly, could be easily hidden there; but already, as a very junior and very efficient officer, Mills knew that he could give odds on his being posted there. Baffin Island! Mills groaned to himself and, as NBN turned to the siege of Guantanamo, began to snore.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  "Turn the durn thing off, Liza," growled the weather-beaten man on the pallet. "It'sjust wastin'power, and l can do without hearin' why the Mexes are neutral." The hand he waved toward the old portable TV was a ghastly contrast to the rest of his wiry body. The fingers were so grossly swollen by blisters that the hand seemed a cluster of long pinkish grapes. Way land Grange had not yet lost much of the sparse straight hair on his head, but swarthy skin already was peeling from his forearms. He closed his eyes, held his breath, lay back and faced the ageless stalactites overhead.

  Louise Grange nodded to eleven-year-old Sandy, who snapped off the set. "You ought not to take off that cold compress, Daddy," she rebuked her husband softly.

  "Ain't the hand tha
t hurts," he grunted, now staring into the gloom of a cavern lit by a single candle that kept his wife's coffee warm. "Tryin not to lose my supper." His stomach muscles knotted again; he felt the cool damp rag caress his forehead, recognized the loving touch as his daughter's. Like her father, Sandy wasn't long on talk. But her soothing hands were quick and sure, and the girl always seemed to know where it hurt without being told. "Must be half-past twelve," he managed to say. "Time you was asleep, sprat."

  "Daddy's right, Sandy," said Louise, nodding toward the pile of quilts and supplies they had carried from the scorched Blazer. "Make you a nice pallet, hon."

  "Can I write in my journal?" Sandy's few words, moth-flutter soft as usual, managed to carry both acquiescence and pleading without a hint of protest.

  "Just for a minute," her mother warned, redirecting a stray wisp of graying blonde hair that had escaped the bun at her nape. Louise and Wayland Grange exchanged eyebrow lifts, signals that passed for smiles in the laconic little family.

  Sandy's journal was one of life's little mysteries. Wayland had once teased his wife about a traveling book salesman because, as he put it, “You and me together couldn't read our way through a deck of cigarette papers."

  Sandy's school near Sonora, Texas, may not have had carrels or video classes, but it had something, for sure. Even if Sandy did not read much, even if her spelling was no-holds-barred after she'd missed a year with that lung infection, the sprat had filled more than one spiral binder with words. No one but Sandy had ever read those words. No one in the family had ever mentioned the possibility, despite curiosity that was a mixture of pride and concern. The Granges were that kind of family.