The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2)

by Crawford Kilian

  “That has to go to the Wabbies,” she murmured.

  “What is it?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Who’s it from? What is this?”

  “Just pass it on. They’ll recognize it.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Doria looked at him and shook her head slowly.

  “Here’s to the domino effect,” said Wigner. They were sitting in the West End, a bar across Broadway from Columbia. Pierce had walked down Claremont and met Wigner there; they had had mediocre pastrami sandwiches and a couple of black-market beers, and were listening to a jazz trio reviving Jimmy Giuffre.

  “Anything you say, boss.”

  “Thornton and Hardaker were only the first to fall. Now ExComm’s screening itself and its staff, and so far three paper-pushers have been found with unusually comfortable bank accounts outside the country. My faith in human nature is restored.”

  “Have the Wabbies tried anything yet with that present we sent them?”

  “Not yet. They’ll want to test it very carefully before they go all out. I’m just as glad. Flatfoot Fujii has his shield program completed and Polymath’s been making copies day and night, but they haven’t all been distributed. We’ve got them, of course, and most of our friends in the wailing-wall network, but that’s just a fraction of what needs to be covered. By the end of the week we’ll be ready for anything.”

  Pierce was having a good time that autumn. The days were warm and sunny, the sunsets spectacular in the smoky air. Mozart had been brought uptime (almost certainly on a heavy regimen of tranquilizers) and was touring the Germanys; his concerts were televised worldwide and, for cultural programming, gained good ratings. A new kind of TV called polychannel holovision could, for a very high price, put Mozart in one’s living room. Pierce could pay the price and then some, on what Wigner was slipping him.

  Over twenty Jesuit physicians and surgeons had wangled their way onto Eden, and were trying to teach medicine and hygiene from Krakow to Granada. One of them, an ebullient Paraguayan, had become a popular figure on TV talk shows: he often came uptime to appeal for funds, and his homemade videos of twelfth-century Paris and London revealed a world of gorgeous squalor that Pierce yearned to savour firsthand.

  The few surviving tabloids were screaming about UFOs sighted over the North American glaciers of Ahania, and about strange new diseases. The disease part, at least, was true enough. On the wailing-wall network people were reporting cases of yellow fever in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. A form of malaria from Eden was spreading across the Middle East. Mosquitoes could travel through an I-Screen as easily as a human.

  Pierce monitored it all, marvelling at the images of eighteenth-century America and prehistoric Europe. He thought sometimes about Ulro, but with the detachment of someone recalling a scene in a movie.

  Sometimes he and Wigner went out and picked up girls; the offer of a good dinner in a black market restaurant was too good to turn down. Afterward they would go to Wigner’s new apartment in SoHo, which he had bought on the proceeds of his recent investments. It was a jungle of houseplants, amid which stood a medium-quality Polymath with absolutely no questionable files in its memory. Wigner and Pierce and their pickups would drink, listen to music, and fornicate; a few girls lasted as long as a week.

  “At some point,” Wigner remarked after handing two of them taxi fare and a little extra, and seeing them to the door, “you want to talk to them, and they’re…un-Trainable. What is one to say?”

  “Good-bye,” said Pierce.

  Nosuke Moriyama, cultural affairs attaché in the Japanese consulate in New York, stepped into an elevator in the World Trade Centre after a hurried lunch in Chelsea. He had a very busy afternoon ahead of him, and scarcely noticed when only two other persons entered the elevator with him.

  As soon as the door closed, they turned to face him — a surprising breach of Western etiquette in close surroundings. One of them, a tall young man in grey flannel slacks and a blue blazer, pointed a Mallory.15 in Moriyama’s face.

  “Please come with us, Mr. Moriyama,” the other young man said gently, in passable Japanese. “We mean you no harm, but our business is urgent.”

  The elevator doors opened again, and Moriyama walked out with the tall young gunman just behind him and the police companion at the attaché’s side. Moriyama briefly debated eliminating them both and decided against it.

  They walked into a deserted lounge, a rather grimy place with torn upholstery on the armchairs and a persistent taint of old cigarette smoke. The polite young man with the big shoulders invited Moriyama to take a seat on the least battered couch, and then sat beside him. The young gunman took a chair nearby; he would have a clear shot at Moriyama as well as plenty of warning if anyone else wandered down the hall.

  “I apologize deeply for this unpleasant interruption,” said the polite young man. “We did not want to disturb you in a public place like the restaurant, and still less on your own premises in the consulate. The firearm is a symbol of our seriousness, not a personal threat. I sincerely hope we have not insulted you.”

  “Quite all right,” said Moriyama genially. He was beginning to be amused. At least this was not a typical mugging or extortion attempt. The polite fellow spoke Japanese like a Trainable, fluently but bookishly. Both of the young men seemed unusually intelligent, although the tall one made Moriyama a little nervous: he was clearly a killer, but of a sophisticated kind one rarely encountered outside Japan, and never as young as this one.

  “Mr. Moriyama, I wish we could introduce ourselves, but you understand that’s not appropriate. We are here simply to ask you to convey a message to your superiors in Tokyo.”

  “I will be honoured to.”

  “The message is this: the Japanese government must stop its colonization of the American west coast on Eden. At once.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this some kind of code?” But he felt almost nauseated at what the young man’s demand meant.

  “Sir, you are the senior director of Japanese intelligence operations in North America. I’m surprised that you didn’t warn Tokyo against the project. In the present political climate, an incursion into American territory can only aggravate the most reactionary and racist groups in this country.”

  “The west coast on Eden is not American territory.”

  “The American public has not yet grasped that subtlety, sir.”

  “I take it your superiors have some threat to make.”

  “My superiors make no threat at all, sir. I believe they are still unaware of the colony, although they’re bound to learn within a few weeks. But I am prepared to warn you, sir, that this colonization adventure sets a very bad precedent. No individual nation has until now tried to establish a permanent colony downtime. Settlement would be much easier if it were directed by international authorities after careful study and consultation.”

  “Evidently my government feels otherwise.”

  “Please tell them to suspend the project, sir, and to recall their colonists. Otherwise I will be obliged to roll up all your remaining agents in North America.”

  An obvious reference to the fools Thornton and Hardaker. Moriyama was tempted for a moment to ask, as one professional to another, how those two agents had been identified.

  “Young man.” Moriyama paused to gather his thoughts, and realized the young man had used the first person singular in making his threat. “You say your superiors know nothing of this project, yet you are in a position to dismantle several networks on your own.”

  “I can give you names, addresses, and phone numbers, sir.” The young man handed Moriyama a single sheet of printout. Moriyama read it in an instant and handed it back. It would be pointless to urge the young man to destroy the list.

  “I believe I should be grateful to you gentlemen. We were evidently placing ourselves in a vulnerable position. Thank you for pointing that out to us.”

  The young ma
n’s face was deeply earnest: “It’s an honour to deal with you, sir. I assure you that your interests and ours coincide. We will be in a position soon to reward your cot aeration.”

  “I have no doubt of that.” He stood up; the two young men stood also. “Please keep in touch with me. It has been a pleasure to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is ours, sir.”

  Smiling, they escorted him to the elevators and waved him onto one. Their farewell bows lacked any hint of mockery.

  Wigner turned to Pierce. “Wow. Me, giving orders to Moriyama. I ought to turn myself in for felonious chutzpah.”

  Jaz Jones and her team had gotten nowhere. Scandal after scandal had erupted in ExComm, in Congress, in the public and private bureaucracies. She had back-searched each of them, looking for something in common, some source of information. Nothing.

  It had to be Eric. Somehow he had accessed a whole cesspool and punched holes in it, but she couldn’t understand how. When she monitored him, he was innocently engaged in the making of incredible amounts of money. Semiotronics had turned in weeks from just another break-even proprietary to a major economic force in the stock market. Eric’s advice had done it, and on his own time he was becoming richer than anyone could have imagined.

  Eric understood the Agency’s methods of computer monitoring, so she had to be circumspect in keeping track of him. Still, she began to notice times when he linked up with a computer somewhere outside the Semiotronics office. On a hunch, she switched to monitoring Pierce; he, too, was linking into an unknown machine.

  Knowing that, Jaz went to Clement and asked for a bug to be placed at Semiotronics.

  “Our own people? Our own people are behind this?”

  “I didn’t say that, Jonathan. I just need to know where some people are sending messages.”

  “Is it Eric?”

  “Jonathan! I’m trying to be professional. Now, can I have the bug or not?”

  “All right.”

  The bug enabled her to pick up leaked radiation from all the computers on Wigner’s floor. Sorting through the jumble of over forty machines, she Anally found the signatures of Wigner’s and Pierce’s. They were accessing the same machine somewhere in the West 30s, and they weren’t even being very careful about it. Jaz obtained the access code from Pierce, and after a discreet pause she entered the machine herself.

  — And was stymied. The computer’s defences were formidable; any approach triggered at least three kinds of alarms, and maybe more, which could be disarmed only by someone who know specific procedures that could not be monitored. After one probe she withdrew, swearing. Her attempted entry would be recorded; Pierce and Wigner, if the machine was under their control, would be alerted and the defences would be strengthened still further.

  But what were they up to, with a private machine guarded as well as anything in the Pentagon? Mere possession of such a computer made them about as innocent as two little boys with a nuclear bomb in their wagon.

  She could simply pull in the Internal Affairs people, send them off to arrest Wigner and Pierce, and transport them up to Woodstock for deep interrogation.

  That would certainly answer questions. But it was almost like cheating; she wanted to beat them with her brain, not Agency muscle.

  “Anything come of that bug?” Clement asked after a couple of days.

  “I’ll let you know. By the way, have you heard that Polymath is putting out a new computer-security program? Are we getting it?”

  “I don’t know; I hadn’t heard. We’d better get on it. Life is tough enough without being able to get into people’s databases.”

  “God damn it to hell!” Clement shoved his chair away from his terminal and stood up. He yanked open his door and shouted for Jasmin rather than paging her on the LAN.

  “Look at this, for God’s sake,” he demanded as she entered his office and shut the door behind her.

  The terminal screen showed the front page of the New York Post: RATION STAMPS CANCER SCARE! Clement slammed the return key and the screen offered the story: a scientist with the National Institutes of Health was warning that a chemical in ration stamps could induce malignant melanoma. The scientist estimated that over twelve thousand cases were already attributable to the chemical, and predicted that cases would double every month for the foreseeable future.

  “Come on, Jonathan, it’s the Post. Just more sensationalism.”

  “It’s intolerable. Is it true?”

  “Certainly not. It looks like standard disinformation.”

  “We might run this stuff on the Russians or the Japs, but we’d be idiots to run it on our own people. Who the hell is behind this?”

  “The Russians or the Japs?”

  “Find out.”

  “On top of everything else I’m doing?”

  “I think this is part of the whole mess.” Clement glowered at the terminal screen. “Someone’s trying to destabilize this country, and they’re doing entirely too well.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  Senator Cooledge’s office staff included four plainclothes bodyguards who made no effort to conceal their Uzis or their suspicions of everyone who came down the hall. They scrutinized the pass that had admitted Wigner into the Senate Office Building before one of them muttered into a new-fangled ring-mike. Receiving acknowledgment through his earphone, he briskly patted Wigner down, found no weapons, and unlocked the door to the Senator’s office suite.

  Wigner was not deceived by the normality of the reception area or the casual, no-necktie appearance of the staff. A mirror behind the receptionist was surely two-way, with at least a TV camera behind it and probably another gunman as well. Partitions (certainly bulletproof) broke the corridors into mazes, denying intruders a clear field of fire and minimizing the blast effects of a bomb or grenade.

  The receptionist sat at a desk behind a clear plastic shield; she gave Wigner a thoroughly professional smile.

  “Please take a seat, Dr. Wigner. The senator will be free in a few minutes.”

  Wigner smiled back, more pleased than he cared to admit about being called doctor; with three Ph.D.s and two more in the works, he felt entitled. Settling

  into an armchair, he snagged the latest issue of Time. It was only forty pages long, and photos filled many of them. Advertisements were almost entirely propaganda pieces about the Civil Emergency Administration: smiling nurses in camouflage tending to ailing senior citizens, a dedicated-looking hardhat repairing a phone line (sabotaged by the Popular Action Front or the Wabbies?), a cheerfully perplexed housewife with two tots wondering how to feed her family nutritious and tasty meals. (“Have a chat with your local Food Dispensary dietician!”).

  The news stories were mostly media fog, although an inch was given to the investigation into the suicide of Congressman Tony Charles. Wigner found nothing about the bombing of the Iffers’ Los Angeles office (three dead, five injured), the police riot that broke up an Iffer parade in Chicago, or the Wabbie attack on a National Guard armoury in Little Rock. All had been big news this week on the wailing-wall network, and no doubt in ExComm’s briefings.

  Wigner permitted himself a mild twinge of anxiety. It was all very well to know from Ulro’s history that the country was still a couple of years from real breakdown, but the I-Screen had changed matters very rapidly. Daily events no longer matched the accounts Pierce had brought back from Ulro; the future was once again becoming unknowable. In playing the markets, Wigner was finding himself losing money almost as often as he was making it. It was the loss of control that worried him more.

  “Dr. Wigner, the senator will see you now.” A young staffer, short and rather slim, escorted him circuitously down the halls. Wigner had reviewed the dossiers of all congressional and senatorial staff, and knew this mild-looking man to be an ex-Marine who had won a Bronze Star in Venezuela. Senator Coo-ledge had a knack for picking highly suitable people; she could not be expected to know that even this man would not be suitable enough when the assassins came.


  The senator’s office was a windowless room with a rather poor quality hologram on one wall. It showed a redwood forest, and a little girl leaning against the trunk of a giant tree: the senator’s daughter.

  The senator herself was standing by a homey-looking maple table with four matching chairs in the comer of the office opposite her desk. The kitchen-intimate atmosphere was enhanced by a small refrigerator and stove set into the wall.

  Senator Cooledge was a tall woman with straight grey hair, high cheekbones, and a quick grin. Her sober blue suit was set off by a yellow silk blouse and star sapphire earrings. Wigner was pleased by her strong handshake.

  “Good to meet you, Eric. Have a seat. I can offer you something to drink as long as it doesn’t have caffeine in it.”

  “Whatever you’re having, Senator.”

  “Orange juice.”

  “Wonderful.”

  She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a tall glass jug. “I think they send me about twenty percent of the whole California orange crop these days. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t like the stuff so much.”

  “They’ll find a cure for the blight.”

  “I’m sure they will.”

  “Someone specific. A Chinese geneticist named Deng Yangming.”

  “Really. I thought I knew everyone working on the problem.”

  “She’s new. Doing graduate work at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. I’ve sent her some money and advice.”

  “If you’re trying to impress me, you’re succeeding. You sound very different.”

  “She’s good. But she’s not why I’ve asked to see you.”

  “I thought not.” She managed to look relaxed without slumping into her chair; Wigner made himself sit up straighter. Good for her: she knew how to control even a Trainable stranger.

  “First, I should point out that this conversation should not be recorded,” Wigner said.

  “It’s not.”

  He knew she was telling the truth. As she knew it. He had already activated a magnetic scrambler concealed in his briefcase. If any of the senator’s aides were too zealous, and had slipped a bug into the office, the scrambler would deal with it. Crudely physical eavesdropping seemed unlikely.