“Then you see the speaker point to a mountain when he says shan, and you realize what it means. From that you can start making guesses about what other words might mean. That’s what we’re doing these days. Once we used things like word association tests. Now we look for certain kinds of patterns in response to particular stimuli. How’s your mother these days?”
“Fine.”
The screen swirled with a rapid cascade of colour. Dr. Franklin read love, worry, protectiveness.
“What’s the earliest thing you can remember?”
So it began, the methodical review of Pierce’s life. Each question put a series of doorways on the screen, and Franklin chose which to open and how far to go down the hallways beyond them before he opened yet another door. Franklin pushed back beyond Pierce’s earliest conscious memories; he believed he had sometimes reached prenatal memories as early as six months post-conception, but nothing that drastic seemed necessary here.
The key memory turned up in the afternoon of the first day. Pierce must have been about two years old, toddling about the little apartment in Taos. A spider scuttled across the blue tiles of the kitchen floor. Pierce’s mother, seeing it, recoiled. Jerry dropped his toy truck on the spider, crushing it. And his mother picked him up, hugged him, kissed him, filled his nostrils with her sweet smell: “What a good boy! Boy, you’re a brave little guy, aren’cha?”
“Were you a brave little guy, Jerry?” asked Franklin.
“Yeah. Not scared.”
“So, you like to take care of people.”
“Yeah. Wilbur.”
“Tell me about Wilbur.” The patterns on the screen flashed with pity, contempt, anger, and pride.
An afternoon in ninth grade, the sky over the Sangre de Cristos full of puffy clouds. Wilbur Swinden, the crybaby, was eating his lunch in the bleachers on the edge of the quarter-mile track. He was a gawky little guy with not much chin and watery brown eyes. As long as Pierce could remember, other kids had picked on him because he got so upset when they did. Wilbur had no friends. His big sister, Liz, in eleventh grade, walked him to school and walked him home again, but had little to do with him the rest of the time.
Pierce saw Pancho Quiroga and his little gang drift across the field toward Wilbur. Four stocky kids, trying to grow sideburns and moustaches, surrounded Wilbur and took his lunch away from him. Pancho plucked Wilbur’s book from him and riffled through it before scaling it over the fence into the street.
Of course Wilbur started bawling and yelling, and Pancho’s gang began to shove him from one to another, goading him to more shouts.
Jerry, jogging around the track, saw it all. He didn’t like Wilbur. Nobody did. But Pancho was provoking it, and no one else was doing anything. Jerry didn’t change his pace; he trotted down the track toward the bleachers where Wilbur and Pancho’s gang were. As he reached them, he stopped.
“Leave him alone, Pancho.”
“Fuck you, pendejo.”
Jerry had already checked: no teachers on the field. His fist smashed into Pancho’s nose, knocking him back across a bleacher seat.
“Get out of here, Wilbur,” Jerry commanded. Blubbering, Wilbur obeyed.
“Pinche cabron, te voy a matar," Pancho snarled. Pierce shoved Sixto Gonzalez down onto Pancho. The other two did nothing except to sidle off a little.
“Come on, then,” Jerry said.
Pancho disentangled himself and lunged at Jerry. Jerry stepped aside, grabbed Pancho by his hair, and flung him onto the track. Pancho grunted and struggled to his feet.
Jerry stood there, hands at his sides. No one else seemed to have noticed the scuffle. Pancho glared at him, then spat and turned away. Blood dribbled from his nose, down his chin, and across his T-shirt.
Wilbur, the retard, wasn’t even grateful; he never thanked Jerry or even mentioned the incident. Pancho Quiroga and his friends never mentioned it either. But that day after school, Liz Swinden stopped by Jerry’s locker.
“I hear you rescued my brother today.”
“Well.”
“Thanks. He gets a bad time, but he can’t help it.”
“Sure.”
Franklin nodded as he watched the scanner screen, and opened more doors. Eventually, one door opened into Donald Dwayne White’s bedroom.
“I’m glad you called, Eric. Your friend has placed me in something of an ethical bind. I think we should discuss it.”
“Say no more, Dr. Franklin. I’ll be there this afternoon.”
As it happened, Wigner reached Woodstock late in the evening. A National Guard unit, unpaid for weeks, had mutinied on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. Traffic had been blocked for several hours before troops from Fort Dix had restored order. Franklin met Wigner in his office, as before, but this time did not offer him dinner.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
They strolled out into the muggy night; the moon shining through thin clouds gave a little light on the grass.
“Are you wired, Eric?”
“With a recorder? No.” Wigner was telling the truth. Franklin was too good at spotting the vocal qualities of a lie.
“Good. Nor am I. This is a strictly personal, off the record conversation. You’re aware of our friend’s past.”
“In some detail, though I’m sure you understand it better than I.”
“He’s a killer.”
“I know. That’s why I hired him.”
“He hasn’t killed just some two-bit rapist, Eric. He shot General Pendlehurst.”
“At my request, as you must know, and not a minute too soon. I expect I’ll need his services again before much longer.”
“Why?”
“To help me get this country into the International Federation before it’s too late.”
“What’s in it for you, Eric?”
“A longer and happier career, I hope. The IF will need people like me. And like Jerry.”
“You’re making me an accessory to what amounts to treason and murder. I’m not happy at all about that.”
“Neither am I, sir. But Agency people have often been faced with hard facts and hard decisions. You more than many.”
Franklin’s voice was cold. “You didn’t ask me to get involved in this. You gave me some cock-and-bull story about security, but you’re planning some kind of one-man coup. I’m not going to go along.”
“Dr. Franklin, you have to. Look — we know our whole civilization is about to collapse. We know that from Ulro as well as what’s going on around us.
There’s no point in trying to defend a dead society, but there’s a lot of point in helping a new society come to life. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“I’m quite aware of what you found on Ulro. But the downtime chronoplanes change everything. We have a new lease on life, Eric.”
“No.” His voice was hard. “We can’t afford to settle the chronoplanes on a nation-by-nation basis, not with Doomsday staring us in the face. We’ll just end up fighting a whole new series of wars. Suppose the Palestinians want to move into Palestine on Beulah or Eden? Do you think the Israelis would tolerate the possibility of being invaded from the past? The Palestinians could go downtime, open up an I-Screen into the middle of modern Jerusalem, throw a nuclear bomb through it, and that’d be it. Meanwhile we’d be throwing more bombs at whoever we thought was responsible. No, it’d be impossible. We’ve got to have an international government with absolute authority.”
“I don’t agree.”
“I’m prepared to have your cooperation without your agreement if necessary. You see, I have all the details of Operation Pontifex and your role in it.” Franklin chuckled. “Operation Pontifex? I never heard of it.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but you’re lying. You were involved from June 12, 1981, to the end of the operation on December 1; 1987. I have the confession your cognate made on Ulro in 2005, just before you were shot as a counterrevolutionary. Also statements by three of the survivors.”
“T
here were no survivors.”
“Leon Manzari, Peter Demetroff, and Barbara Kline. I have their current addresses. Leon and Barbara are living together in Argentina, and Peter’s in Dubrovnik. If the phones are working, we can call them now.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t particularly care what you did then. It was pretty stupid, but we’ve all done stupid things for the Agency. Now I want you to do something intelligent. If you blow the whistle on me, you’re finished. If you don’t, you’ll carry on here at the Clinic for as long as you like. The IF is going to need you just as much as the Agency has. Maybe more.”
Wigner touched the old man’s arm. “Really, Dr. Franklin, it’ll be fine. Please believe me.”
Dr. Franklin walked slowly across the grass, oblivious of Wigner’s hand. At last he said: “You’re how old, Eric? Twenty-one?”
“Yes.”
“You have a great career ahead of you.”
“Hello, Ryan? Is that Ryan Andrews?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Eric Wigner here. We have a terrible connection.”
“Afraid so. I understand you’re coming to work for us soon.”
“Next week. Listen, old son, I’ve got a tip I think Semiotronics ought to consider seriously.”
“Sure.”
“Get every kopeck out of Northeast Seaboard Bank. They’re about to go under.”
“North — holy shit, are you serious?”
“Never more so, old son. And when they go, they’ll take most of their customers with them.”
“Uh, can you give your source for this advice?”
“Afraid not.”
“You bastards on East 52nd are always two jumps ahead of the rest of us. You’re sure about this.”
“Absolutely. They’ll be in receivership by the end of September, so we’ve got a couple of weeks to make a graceful exit. By the first of September it’ll be obvious.”
“Christ, Eric, do you understand the implications of what you’re saying?”
“If by that you mean the domino effect, I do, indeed.”
“Do your sources tell you why?”
“Brazil and India are going to default on their loans.”
Ryan Andrews whooped with laughter. “In that case, who cares what happens to Northeast Seaboard?”
“Semiotronics and other major depositors.”
“But the implications — ”
“Are not good. Still, we’ll be better off if we haul our money out now, won’t we?”
“Yup.”
A thunderstorm was dumping rain on the streets of Queens. Wigner handed his raincoat to the hatcheck girl, who smiled ravishingly at him. She was not about to endanger her job when the New York unemployment rate was somewhere around thirty-five percent and rising.
The lunch crowd was thin today, a few clusters of businessmen muttering over their black-market hamburgers. Wigner saw the congressman in a dark booth at the back of the restaurant.
“Hello, Mr. Charles. I’m Eric Wigner. Delighted you could make it on such short notice.”
The congressman, a short, small man with a hard face under curly grey hair, did not accept Wigner’s extended hand.
“Sit down. I already ordered for us.”
“Thank you.” The order had included a beer, which Wigner raised in a toast.
“Cheers…Excellent.”
Congressman Anthony Charles studied him with impassive distaste.
“You Trainable?”
“I have that honour, yes.”
“Well, let’s get this straight. I don’t like you guys. You think you’re smarter than you are, and you cause a lot of trouble.” He pulled out a cigar and lighted it, ignoring the NO SMOKING sign on the table.
“I can’t argue with that. Some of the dumbest people I know are Trainables, and we do, indeed, cause trouble. Still, politics is the art of dealing with people we don’t like, isn’t it?”
“When we can’t avoid it. Let’s get down to it, kid. What do you people want with me?”
“Mm — more a personal concern than an Agency matter. You’ve been stalling Bill 402 in committee for weeks now.”
“Oh, you gonna lobby me about the fucking Iffers? Tell me what a sweet bunch of assholes they really are?”
“I’m not going to lobby you, Mr. Charles. I’m going to tell you straight out to move that bill out of committee by the end of the week.”
Mr. Charles sat back in the booth and squinted at Wigner through cigar smoke. “I kinda admire your innocence, kid, but you got a lot to learn about this business.”
Wigner grinned and drew a bulky envelope from his inside jacket pocket. He handed it to the congressman. “We Trainables learn fast, Mr. Charles. I’ll bet you do, too. Take a quick look at these items.”
The congressman glanced irritably at the first document, then paused. He read it carefully, looked blankly at Wigner, and began to riffle through the rest of the papers.
“Where’d you get this shit?”
“The question is, where am I going to send it?”
“You’re not gonna get anywhere with this stuff, kid. Come on, get serious. What, you’re a jerk who hacked his way into somebody’s database and don’t even know what you got. You think you can blackmail me on this? I been in this business twenty-two years, for Christ’s sake. And you come along and think you can shove me around. Sheesh.”
The meal arrived, an indifferent fettuccini; the salad was limp and oily. Mr. Charles dug into it without saying anything else. Wigner poked distastefully at his plate.
“Mr. Charles, I’m keenly aware of your career in Congress. I know you supported the president when he declared the Emergency, and you’ve backed the CEA ever since. Nevertheless, if the CEA finds out what you’ve been dealing in for the last two years, you’ll go to Leavenworth.”
The congressman chewed energetically while thunder boomed overhead.
“Let me think about this a minute,” he said. “You say this is a personal concern, not Agency. Let’s say you’re lying and the Agency does want 402 to go to a vote. What for? They got no business screwing around trying to embarrass ExComm and everybody else. They’ll just get everybody pissed off at’em again, like Cuba and Venezuela. So fuck the Agency. Now let’s say you’re telling the truth, you’re a little prick who happens to work for the Agency and wants to throw some weight around. So you call me up for lunch, you mention East 52nd Street, but you don’t want Bill 402 moved out of committee. Even if it passed, you know ExComm would never implement it. Shit, it amounts to repealing the Emergency and giving the country to the Iffers. No way the government would stand for that. So you must want something else. What, money?”
“Bill 402 and nothing else.”
“People — you know, people can get hurt playing hardball.”
“They certainly can. A good argument for not trying to play hardball with me, sir.”
“Where I come from, that’s a threat.”
“I’m from the same neighbourhood.”
“Tell me, Mr. Wigner. Where did you get this stuff?”
Wigner smiled.
“How’s your fettuccini?” asked Mr. Charles.
“Awful.”
“Yeah. Okay, my friend, I’ll see what I can do. But I’m gonna want the originals of these, and if you think you can yank my chain twice, you’re gonna wake up with your balls in your eye sockets.”
“Mr. Charles, I’m going to yank your chain whenever I feel like it.” Wigner stood up. “Thank you for giving me some of your time. I really appreciate it.”
Peter Todman’s office was on the sixteenth floor of the Empire State Building, an oddly unpretentious location for the headquarters of the gigantic Polymath Corporation. The room would have been spacious if not for the clutter of tables and benches, all supporting computers. Todman himself was a gangling young man of twenty-seven, dressed in grey jeans and a plaid shirt. He shook Wigner’s hand shyly and waved him onto a couch littered with printouts.
>
“Just shove it on the floor. Uh, you want a Coke or something?”
“Coke is fine.”
“Two Cokes, Polly.”
The dispenser behind Todman’s desk lit up, and on its screen was the image of the little girl.
“Coming right up, Peter.”
Two cans clunked down the chute. Todman handed one to Wigner and popped the other with a nervous, practiced twitch.
“My accountant says to say thank you for that tip about Northeast Seaboard. We had a lot of dough with them.”
“That’s why I passed the word.”
“Crazy world. Something’s really gone wrong. Plenty of work to do, and nobody working. Plenty of needs, and nobody trading. Food piling up on the docks, and people starving. I’m making two million dollars a month, and most people are on ration stamps.”
“Our Marxist friends would have plenty of reasons for it, if they weren’t just as badly off.”
“Think it was Mexico?”
“Defaulting helped. The Africans helped when they defaulted, too. Now, with Brazil and India, we’re really in the soup.”
“Gee. Seems like just the other day everything was going so well. I wish to heaven we could do something. Think we ought to just migrate downtime, find some piece of wilderness and forget about this?”
“That’d be like forgetting the gangrene in your leg. Actually, Peter, I think I know a way you could do some real good. Know a guy named Bruce Fujii?”
“Flatfoot Fujii, sure. Works for Hewlett-Packard. Smart guy.”
“Steal him. Any way you can, any amount of money he asks for, anything he wants, give it to him.”
The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2) Page 14
