“Yeah, but what I mean,” I said, nervous all over again, “it’ll have to last a long time—won’t it?”
“Dearest cuddly Bear, it’ll have to last until our great-great-grandchildren roll us out and bury us! Don’t you realize that yet?”
Thank you. Whoever it is up there, even if you’re not really there, thank you. “I just had to make sure, darling Doctor. It’s a deal, partner. From now on, I’ll blast ’em, and you sew ’em back together. Okay?”
“What about Ed, your other partner?”
“Let him get his own girl!” I sat up and hugged her till she squeaked. “What do y’know—the Hero gets the Girl! Now if we can manage to survive through the last thrilling—”
“Oomph! You got any of that energy left for another? …” She flopped back onto the pillow and I settled beside her, happier, I believe, than I’ve ever been in my entire life.
“Ain’t a matter of energy, lady,” I told her. “It’s a matter, at this point anyway, of inspiration—make that respiration: think you can breathe through your nose for a little while again? I’ll hold the blankets up.”
IT WASN’T QUITE a raid at dawn. Two people forgot to set their alarms: Lucy the indefatigable and efficient, and Win the enormously pleased and exhausted. The ’com started wailing at noon—Lucy’d finally managed to wake up. We ate hastily and girded for battle. Considering everything we’d been through, we were doing great to leave the house at two.
I strapped on my Smith & Wesson, tucked the derringer into what passes for hip pockets, and added the Browning for good measure. I thought about it for a while and added the Bowie knife to my belt.
Lucy had arrived with the mate to her Gabbet Fairfax. One was bad enough, two were even worse. The huge pistols were wearing her instead of the other way around. Still, if SecPol had issued cannons like those to its agents, I’d be looking around for a new arm this morning. Or a new incarnation.
Ed had a spare .375 as I expected, but that wasn’t what caught my eye. He was holding the first two-handed piece I’d seen here, a very, very large-bore Coltomatic, firing clusters of evil-looking fléchettes that could fill an alley full of whistling death at a touch of the trigger. The drum magazine looked a bit cumbersome, but I kept my own counsel. No veteran cop’s going to sneer at a nice, comforting scattergun when there’s rough work to be done.
Clarissa, of course, would not be left behind, and it had been dumb of me to expect otherwise. She stuck sensibly with her everyday Webley, a couple of spare magazines, and, somewhat ominously I felt, a hefty emergency medical kit.
Almost without speaking, Lucy clutching a hard-copied map, our little Doomsday squad went downstairs. Ed climbed into the Neova and fired up the engines. I got in beside him, and the women, occupying somewhat less volume than the pair of us, wedged themselves into what Ed optimistically considered a back seat. We were out of the garage before the Neova’s gull-wing doors were down and locked.
“Let’s see that map, Lucy.” Ed looked back over his shoulder. He was running full fans, and I kept watching for road-company traffic cops. Hate to get busted doing 175 in a 90 zone. He glanced at the printout and took a corner that would have been on two wheels if we’d been using any.
We swayed to a halt across from the target address, leaped out and started up the walk to a single-family dwelling, half the size of my Denver apartment block, painted a pleasant beige over brick. A finely manicured lawn wrapped itself around the usual hedges and shade trees.
Ed motioned silently: Lucy should circle around back. He went for a side entrance, Clarissa and I took the front. Halfway up the curving walk, we dropped into a canter. I gained the doorstep, flattened beside the door, and tried the knob. Open. Clarissa covered a window. I bashed my shoulder against the door, drawing the Smith, snatching the Browning from my armpit. We ducked down a short corridor and to the left, weaving, jumping at shadows. I heard Lucy shout something, Ed crashing the side door, just as we exploded into the living room.
“ALL RIGHT!” I screamed. “FREEZE, YOU—”
“Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday, dear …”
“—bastards?” I finished lamely, both pistols pointed from a crouch, Clarissa leveling hers over my shoulder. Ed stared grimly down the barrel of his fléchette gun. Lucy looked like Clint Eastwood in drag. We had ’em covered, dead to rights: about sixteen five-year-olds and their mothers, sitting around a table, birthday cake in the center blazing idiotically away.
I draw a discreet curtain over the ensuing recriminations. To this day, I’m grateful we weren’t a year or two later. Around age six or seven, little Confederates begin acquiring handguns the same way I got my first bike. Let it be said, only, that little Junior Higginbotham, the tyke-of-honor, enjoyed a rather more remunerative birthday than he ever had before. Or was ever likely to again.
In brief, we settled out of court.
AT THE CURB, Ed glowered. “You gonna let me see that map of yours again, or not, Lucy?”
“Don’t look at me!” she replied. “I only did the programming!”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Garbage in, garbage—”
“Now wait a minute, you two! Blame the Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce—that’s where I got the original map. And put that gun away, Lucy, I’m rattled enough already!”
“Chamber of Commerce, my—oh, pshaw!” She holstered her pistol.”Anybody got any ideas before we all become reluctant Hamiltonians?”
“Or radioactive vapor,” Ed reminded, leaning dispiritedly against the hull of his car. “I guess it isn’t Fort Collins SecPol they’re trying to contact, is it?”
“Unless we’ve just been routed by a force of invading midgets. How about it, dear?” Clarissa grinned ruefully. “Any midgets in SecPol?”
“Only mentally, my dear Watkins, only mentally—and we’re giving them stiff competition for the title!”
XXIII: Deadly Window
In the final analysis the only thing the Federalists lacked was intellectual courage. Their inheritance as well as ours included the maxim, “That government is best which governs least.” But it was an act of enormous daring for Gallatin to perceive that “The government which governs least is no government at all.” And such daring, not a part of the Hamiltonian makeup, in the end sealed their fate.
—Jennifer A. Smythe
Madison: the Final Days
“DENVER!”
“What?”
“Denver, that’s where they are!” I slapped my forehead, disgusted I hadn’t thought of it sooner. “The regional SecPol headquarters.”
Ed nodded grimly. “Saint Charles Town. It makes sense.”
“All this is very interesting,” Lucy said, “but are we gonna stand out in the street all day, burning daylight?”
“Wait!” Something else clicked in my head. “I’ve just had another thought.”
“Did it hurt?” Lucy and Ed asked simultaneously. Clarissa grimaced and put a hand delicately over her mouth. I like loyalty in a woman.
“Okay, wise-asses. Burgess was regional head of the most important federal agency in the country. There were a couple thousand flunkies available to get their hands dirty for him on field operations. So why his personal involvement in this whole thing? Why did he return to the Meiss murder scene? Why did he follow me to Fort Collins? Why did he kill everyone who interfered with him: Meiss, MacDonald, all the attempts on me?”
Lucy nodded impatiently.
“He was up to something on his own,” I finished. “Something he didn’t want others—especially his bosses—horning in on. He had a plausible excuse to keep Meiss under surveillance, but some Federal lab in Denver or Washington should have been duplicating Meiss’s work, not a second-rater like Bealls.”
“Now wait a minute,” Ed said. “Are you implying that your ‘benevolent’ government would never have gone along with—”
“No, Ed, I’m not. Burgess just didn’t want to share the pie. I think Bealls will be contacting S
ecPol cold. They may not even know that the Confederacy exists.
“That’s pretty iffy, Winnie.”
Clarissa had caught on. “But if Win’s right, Bealls will have to send a great deal of information through to SecPol, something like Deejay sent to Meiss. That’s going to take time, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “and perhaps a bigger Broach than Bealls is capable of generating. It also means bureaucratic delays of all kinds, passwords, countersigns—”
“So we’re not gonna get nuked day after tomorrow,” said Lucy. “That’s good news.”
Ed was shaking his head. “Based on a tenuous string of unsupported suppositions. Win, you’re making up fast for all my fumbling. Suppose you’re wrong and the whole agency knows about the Broach. Suppose they simply assigned their top man because it’s important. Suppose—”
“Okay! Okay!” I said. I’m still betting they’re in Saint Charles, and I’m going down there to get Madison. You coming?”
“I am, Win,” Clarissa said. I put my arm around her, wanting to refuse, knowing she’d never understand or allow it. This was a different culture, and Confederate womanhood is quite capable of loading hell in its own holster.
“Oh, very well. But no more birthday surprises, okay?” Ed scowled hard at Lucy and me, creasing his face into a reddened, fleshy X. We all burst out laughing.
“So how do we find Bealls?” Lucy asked, blowing her nose. “Saint Charles Town ain’t exactly the big time, but—”
“I’ve got an idea.” I lifted the Neova’s door panel, punched the combo for Deejay’s laboratory. Presently the screen displayed a terrific view of another Telecom screen.
“Please identify yourself,” requested Ooloorie’s twice-relayed image.
“It’s me, Ooloorie. Is Deejay there?”
“Greetings, Win Bear. I witnessed your combat yesterday, gallantly against sharks. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll—”
“No need, dear.” Deejay squeezed in beside the robot. “Win, I was just about to try your number again. I wanted—”
“We’ve been otherwise occupied,” I grimaced, outlining our recent humiliation and such conclusions as we’d reached. “You mentioned building a device to detect someone else’s use of a Broach?”
“But that’s why I’ve—We finished it this morning. A simple matter of harmonics. We could have saved you all the trouble you got into!”
“Oh my aching bank account! Any idea where Bealls might be by now?”
“I’m afraid so. Somebody’s firing up a Broach a hundred miles or less to the south. But Win, my small-scale dirigible Broach could—”
“Swell. Can you pinpoint that other Broach—point it out on a map, even narrow it down to a street address?”
“Oh, much better than that! I can name the square foot within a room! But once you know where it is, what are you planning to do about it?” She gave Ooloorie a concerned glance.
“Do about it? Why, we’ll just smash in there and—”
“Landling,” observed the porpoise, “you leave too much to random factors. Has it not occurred to you that they will have taken security precautions?”
“Well sure, I—”
“Have you not also reasoned that you will be violating their rights, as fully as they plan to violate ours? Would you—”
“Fuck all this philosophy jazz!” I shouted. “This is a matter of survival!
“And importing unprincipled behavior is an aid to that end? My poor ignorant—”
“I agree, Win,” Deejay interrupted diplomatically. “It’s not only suicidal, but morally wrong, as well.”
“And unnecessary,” the principled porpoise added. “Nothing encourages ethical practices so well as a practical alternative to evil.”
“Didn’t Gallatin say that?” Deejay asked.
“No, I did,” Ooloorie replied.
“What are you two driving at?” I demanded. Clarissa, Lucy, and Ed crowded behind me, following the debate.
“We’ve discovered an interference factor!” Deejay said excitedly.
“A who?”
“Stated very simply,” Ooloorie condescended, “one Broach mechanism can interfere with another, an effect, ordinarily, of little or no practical benefit. However—”
“Who’s telling this, Ooloorie, you or me?”
“Why, I was, naturally, Deejay.”
“Well, I’m telling it, now. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t mean a thing. You’d have to line up two generators, practically touching, before you’d notice any effect. But a dirigible Broach, one that projects over distance—”
“I get it! If Bealls turns his machine on, all you have to do is send your … your …”
“Field interface?”
“Field interface close enough to interfere with his! That’s great! We can hold ’em off forever!”
“It isn’t quite as simple as that, Win,” Deejay said. “There are some qualifications. Alignment is critical; the two fields can’t be more than a tenth-inch apart. They must also be non-concentric. It’s like the inverse-square law for electromagnetics, only in this case, the exponent is—”
“Exponential. What happens if the fields are concentric?”
“Well, I … hmm. It’s just like building one window in front of another: whatever goes into Broach A comes out Broach B, instead of winding up in the other universe.”
I thought about that. “Sounds like you’ve invented matter-transmission. But seriously, can you interfere with Bealls, way down in Saint Charles?”
“If that’s where he is, no, Win. That’s another qualification. Range. It’s less a consideration of power than of accuracy, but—”
“How far can you do it from?”
“Detection or interference?”
“Well, both.”
“Oh, detection is easy. I’m picking up intermittent signals now. I think Bealls is tuning up his machine. Interference—not more than a couple of miles, I’d say.”
I looked at Ed, then back at the Telecom. “How difficult would it be to set your machinery up somewhere else?”
She considered. “Providing we had sufficient power? All we’d need is a pinhole, and detection hardly requires—”
“Great! We’re all going on a little trip!”
WE DROPPED CLARISSA and Lucy off to get another car, and headed for the university, where Deejay readied several bulky packages. We filled Ed’s luggage boot and waited for the Thorneycroft to take the rest. A few minutes later, a little red Sunrider swept up into the lot. Clarissa at the wheel, Lucy beside her looking unhappy.
“I told you this was a mistake!” she complained. “That junk’ll never fit in this wind-up toy of yours!”
“Lucy, your car just isn’t fast enough to keep up. Isn’t that right, Ed?”
“I abstain,” he equivocated, “on grounds of long friendship—and continued survival.”
“Not to mention the Chinese ideogram for ‘trouble,’” I added.
“Besides”—Clarissa shuddered—“I’ve ridden with you behind the wheel before.”
“No sportin’ blood to this generation,” Lucy muttered. “All right. Let’s get this show on the road!”
Riding within the city limits hadn’t prepared me for Greenway 200. Draw two ocean waves, adjacent curves, joined in the middle, a round-bottomed W. That’s a cross-section of the Greenway—parallel troughs covered with mutated crabgrass, that titanium rocket tunnel buried under the median. Drift too far from the center of your lane, and the upslope gently pours you back where you belong. The outside edge works the same, except for an occasional off-ramp or feeder advertised miles in advance.
Don’t let the simple construction fool you: within and underneath the roadbed, sophisticated systems provide power for induction vehicles, guidance, information and entertainment, arrangements for eliminating ice and snow.
We enter a landscaped cloverleaf, accelerating until the up-curved roadbed was a greenish blur. Deejay and her equipment were crammed into the
scanty back seat. The Sunrider followed “bumper-to-bumper,” about a mile behind.
I glanced over at Ed’s instrument panel—my own controls were folded away, making room for an extra box resting uncomfortably on my lap—and read our ground speed: 355.
“Say, Ed, I thought you said this thing would fly. Wouldn’t that get us down to Saint Charles quicker?”
Ed snapped a final switch, and, to my horror, folded his steering wheel into the dash, turning his seat around to face me! “You look a little pale, Win. What’s that you were saying?”
“I s-said how come we don’t fly down to Saint Charles?”
“Relax, we’re on autoguidance. The Greenway’s practically a straight line south anyhow; we wouldn’t gain that much. Besides, we’re overloaded—with Deejay’s bulk in the back seat.”
“I beg your pardon!” the physicist demanded.
“All your equipment, I mean. We can make better speed down here. Convertible or not, this is still primarily a ground vehicle. We’ll be in Saint Charles in another ten minutes.”
I shook my head. “Not even time for a good cigar. Do you realize this trip used to take me nearly two hours and without an automatic pilot? I had to—”
“Walk to school every day through six feet of snow?” Deejay asked.
“Split rails for a living, too. What can I say?” I craned back over my shoulder, trying to see through the sloping rear canopy. A tiny bright-red hovercar trailed behind us.
Abruptly the dashboard Telecom bleeped. Clarissa’s face appeared, Lucy squished into the display beside her. “Hello, darling! Ed, radar says we’ve got company about ten miles back. Altitude, three hundred feet. See it?”
He cleared the display. “Got him now. Making about four-fifty.” I twisted my neck again, trying to see what was coming. “I’m going back on manual. May be nothing at all, but—”
“There he is!” Deejay screamed. “Look out!”
A long slender shape flew beside us, paralleling the right-hand road crest, perhaps twenty-five feet off the ground, and dropping to our speed.