Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Monday, December 15, 2042

Lessing shielded the notepad so that no concealed TV eye could see. Wrench had scribbled: “Needle bug in place-mat by coffee cups. Probably mike in wall outlet too. Somebody really wants to know. Leave?”

Lessing used the agreed-upon cue: “Mr. Mulder, the air in here is not good for your asthma. Perhaps President Outram wouldn’t mind talking during a drive… or at some place outdoors?”

Mulder glanced across the polished table at Sam Morgan, the sharply dressed young aide-de-camp from the American branch of the Party of Humankind who had accompanied them from McChord Air Force Base to Colorado. He asked, “Car, Sam?”

“Easy.” Morgan raised a slender eyebrow at the two stiff-faced soldiers who had guided them down into this subterranean labyrinth. They, in turn, glanced at each other and shrugged; the pasty-faced one picked up a telephone and whispered into its hush-piece.

Transport was not long in coming. The telephone shrilled, and they were led out through offices and galleries that displayed the same determined cheerfulness that Lessing remembered from Marvelous Gap. The effect was identical: efficiency, tastelessness, tension, and claustrophobia. This was NORAD headquarters at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex: miles of rooms and tunnels, observation and intelligence equipment, barracks and kitchens and storage chambers, a full complement of troops and vehicles and weaponry and state-of-the-art aerospace technology. The Born-Again presidents had added SDI control consoles and huge, wooden crucifixes.

And then somebody hit the world with Pacov and made the installation as useless as a firecracker underwater.

The main tunnel debouched into a long, dark chamber that stank of gasoline and damp concrete.

“Car park,” Morgan stated unnecessarily. “That must be the limo.”

On a whim Lessing said, “Take the other one instead… the black Titan over by the wall.”

“That’s General Anderson’s car,” one of their escort protested. “We don’t have the keys.”

Wrench prowled forward to peer into one vehicle after another. “Here’s one with the key still in the ignition.” “We can’t….”

“You just did,” Lessing said. “Tell the owner we’ll be nice to it We’ll have it back within two hours, and we’ll even pay for the gas.” “President Outram “

“…Will want to talk to our employer in utmost comfort and security.”

The two hesitated.

“Come on, you can get permission. Then have your people bring Outram in whichever car he wants,” Wrench urged. “Surround him with Secret Service. He can ride with General Custer’s cavalry for all we care.”

“General Custer? Who’s…? Oh…”

Wrench grinned.

Lessing unfolded a road map, peered at it, and jabbed a forefinger at a crossroad he had already marked with an “X” in preparation for just this contingency.

“This looks good. We’ll meet Outram here. It’s not far.”

The second soldier took out a pocket transmitter and muttered into it. The First stood glowering, suspicion clouding his face.

“Green light,” the man with the communicator conceded. “The President’ll meet Mr. Mulder where you say. A stroll in our winter wonderland.”

Once beyond the mighty entrance valves of the Cheyenne Mountain Complex the real world returned: no more shadowless fluorescents and whispering, secretive air conditioning; no odors of rubber and oil and ozone and whatever the perfumy stuff was that was supposed to make the air smell “outdoorsy.” Wrench drove, Lessing settled into the front seat beside him, and Morgan perched nervously in the rear with Mulder.

Colorado had mountains; Iowa was flat. Nevertheless, this place reminded Lessing of his boyhood: crisp snow, crackling cold, dark evergreens, leaden ice shimmering in the ponds and brooks they passed, a sky so blue that you could paint with it, as his sixth grade teacher used to say, back in some forgotten, antediluvian world, a world as lost now as sunken Atlantis.

He shook himself mentally and clicked his briefcase open. Inside, on top, lay a thick, folded rectangle of cloudily translucent plastic. He and Wrench had prepared everything in advance, including the typed note he now handed Mulder. It said: “Read carefully. The area (room, vehicle, outdoors) we’re in now may be bugged. This plastic tarp blocks transmitters, long distance mikes, and even lip-readers with binoculars. It unfolds to the size of a small tent.

Drape it over your and your hearers’ heads while talking. We will try to debug others first if possible.”

Mulder nodded. Morgan stared curiously at the array of tubes, vials, and miniaturized weapons visible beneath the plastic bug-shield in the briefcase’s grey-foam receptacles. It was obvious that he itched to talk, but Wrench waved him to silence. Even this car, its key neatly inside, could be a plant.

Lessing had chosen the proposed meeting place randomly, sight unseen, from the map. It turned out to be a rutted, snow-bound side road halfway up a mountain. In the summer the view would be glorious: craggy, verdant, and clean.

It would probably be the same long after the last humans had strangled in their own foaming, bacteriological broth.

The news they had picked up in Seattle was bad: many of the great Eastern cities were dead or dying; Houston and Dallas had been infected with a ghastly, bacteria-borne, botulin-like poisoning. Similar outbreaks were now being reported in Cleveland and Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and Boston and Portland and Salt Lake City and Miami and a dozen other places. The nation was being held together only by the most desperate measures imposed by frantic police, National Guard units, and the military. In Detroit the FBI nabbed a man in the very act of emptying a vial of bacterial broth into a reservoir; the man swallowed the stuff and then leaped into the water anyway. Detroit was now off-limits to anybody not wearing an N.B.C. — nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare — suit. The Army estimated nearly a million deaths in Detroit already. The toxin was delivered through the water supply, but it killed more than just those who drank it— and those who came into too-close contact with the drinkers as they vomited and coughed their lives away; wherever it collected, in holding-tanks and sewers, it fumed and bubbled and emitted bacteria-laden mists. When a fire set off a sprinkler system in a discount store in Cleveland, a thousand people died. It was the same all over; Russia’s science had been almost as thorough as America’s in the megadeath department.

New York, Chicago, and Washington were cemeteries. Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and certain other Western cities had so far escaped. Perhaps the enemy’s distribution system had failed on the West Coast. Perhaps it was just slower, and Death was still on his way.

Pacov had dealt Russia and Asia a grand-slam-home-run blow. The Russians had come right back in the next inning with Starak, however, and it looked like a rally for their team. The series was still up for grabs.

Who was spreading the toxins? The carriers were entering the United States along the drug routes: Miami and the Gulf Coast, the Canadian border, and the deserts of the Southwest. Morgan, who served as the American representative for one of the movement’s conglomerates, had heard that most of these people were a motley assortment: druggies with habits so heavy they would risk anything for a pop of smile-dust; the usual dispossessed Palestinians and Iranians; criminals, psychopaths, and madmen whose hatred and greed outweighed their instinct for self-preservation; and meres willing to escalate war beyond any usual “civilized” limit No genuine Russians had been caught thus far.

“There,” Morgan grunted. “Outram’s coming.” He pointed to the string of black and Army-green vehicles wending its way toward them along the snow-drifted slope.

After India and Ponape, the cold was breathtakingly painful. They disembarked into the chill air, Mulder bearing the mute-tarp under his arm. He reminded Lessing of some old movie star — was it Laurel or was it Hardy?… whichever the round one was — carrying a rolled umbrella.

A bear-sized man in a baggy, brown jacket with patch sleeves clambered out of the lead car. Outram had obviously not planned on an outdoors excursion; either that, or he anticipated a very short conversation. It was colder than the proverbial polar bear’s paws. Those behind Outram wore uniforms, dark overcoats, or fashionable ski-gear: soldiers, White House staffers, advisors, and Secret Service men. Two of the last-mentioned advanced, inspected Mulder and his plastic bundle, then waved him on. The press apparently had not been invited.

Wrench extracted a pair of binoculars from somewhere and began searching the slopes above and below the road. “Don’t suppose they’d let us examine Outram,” he grumbled. “What if he’s got bug-itis?”

“Forget it. Some things you can’t help.” A flash from one of the President’s escort vehicles caught Lessing’s eye. He motioned to Wrench, who swung his glasses around. The little man shook his head. Probably somebody shutting a car door.

A pair of Outram’s Secret Service kikibirds picked their way through the snow toward them. The one in front was red-blonde and ruddy-faced, cheeks splotched with scarlet beneath the cowl of his padded, blue ski-jacket. The other, an older man, took a position to the rear as backup.

“You!” the blonde one called. “You guys! You Mr. Mulder’s beegees?”

Lessing said, “That’s us.”

The man produced an electronic device, similar to Lessing’s own bug-detector. “Leave your weapons in the car.” He flicked a forefinger at Lessing’s briefcase. “Set that down there, in the snow by the fence post.”

They complied. The agent first went over the two of them, then the briefcase, and finally the vehicle itself.

“Something…” he muttered. “The car…”

They all heard the helicopter simultaneously. The sharp chuff-chuff-chuff of its blades smacked against the frigid air like hammer blows. Lessing twisted around, and Wrench fumbled with his binoculars. Thekikibird, too, raised his head, eyes slitted against the white dazzle.

The machine was a tiny, military Stinger 297-G, nicknamed the “hoppy-choppy” because of its maneuverability. It carried two people and was used mainly for reconnaissance, though it could be armed with small rockets and light automatic weapons. About a hundred meters away, Mulder and Outram pulled off their mute-tarp to stare upward. There was sudden activity around the fleet of official vehicles. A soldier ran toward Outram shouting.

It appeared that the helicopter had not been asked to the party. Newspapermen? TV?

No, the machine was armed! Lessing saw blunt, silvery rocket noses peeping out from launching racks under the fuselage.

Lessing took no chances. He shouted at Mulder to get away, get down, get under cover. Wrench joined in, and the Secret Service man began squalling into his communicator.

The helicopter was hostile. The pilot circled to target his missiles on Mulder and Outram below.

The second agent reached their limousine, braced himself against its roof, drew a big magnum automatic from his coat, and took aim. Morgan dashed forward, perhaps to help Mulder through the drifts, while the soldier did the same for Outram.

The President’s people were firing. Puffs of pale smoke jetted up from the line of automobiles, and the popping of small-arms fire slapped against the heights and echoed back down upon them. It would take Lessing too long to dig his sniper rifle out of its compartment in his briefcase. He could only flounder after Morgan and Wrench to draw fire away from Mulder— if indeed the hoppy-choppy was after him rather than Outram.

Something coughed, loud over the helicopter’s steady chatter, and a streak of flame shot out from the machine’s underbelly. A solid spear of pearly smoke etched itself upon the sky.

“Rocket!” shrieked Wrench. He threw Mulder flat, rolling over and over in the powdery snow.

The missile hurtled toward Mulder. Then, oddly, it veered away to the right, graceful as a stooping falcon, and plunged directly at the limousine Mulder’s party had used.

Memories of hot, dry, Syrian sand, of stones and baked earth, took over as Lessing hurled himself down. He glimpsed Wrench’s deep footprints in the whiteness in front of him; then he ploughed into them face first. A wave of heat, light, and unbearable noise smashed against his back.

He struggled up, dazed but relieved to be alive.

Nothing broken, no blood, no pain. Any flying shrapnel had missed, and the snow had saved him from a nasty fall. His ears rang; his vision was blurred. Somehow he had managed to turn around and was now looking back toward their car. In its place a pillar of flame and dark, oily smoke roiled up into the sky. There was no sign of the gun-wielding agent, and the blonde man lay face down in a jumble of red, blue, and charred black. He did not move.

Wrench crawled over to Lessing. “Christ, man! You dead?”

“Not yet.” His voice sounded tinny and far away. He hoped any hearing damage was temporary. “Mulder? Morgan? Outram?”

“Okay, I think. Goddam! Here comes the bastard again!”

The hoppy-choppy clattered back across the azure bowl above them, a second rocket peering malevolently out from underneath it. The popping started up from the President’s escort once more. Then a pencil of fire shot out from among the vehicles, and they heard the breathy whoosh of a hand-held GTA rocket launcher. An arrow of flame-laced smoke reached up to caress the helicopter’s beetle-green carapace.

A bright flower of fire bloomed in the air.

The helicopter twisted, lurched, and faltered. Then it exploded. Metal and glass debris rained down onto the snow. The body of the machine tumbled down into the road, two hundred meters west of the fleet of escort vehicles.

There was silence.

People stared openmouthed, stunned by the noise, the light, and the grim suddenness of others’ dying.

Mulder and Morgan came staggering over to the wreckage of the car, followed by Outram and three of his aides. One of the latter shouted something about being a doctor; he knelt to help the blonde agent, but the man was dead, a shard of glass from a car window buried in his throat.

An inane thought crossed Lessing ‘s mind: how would they ever explain this to the poor bastard whose car they had borrowed?

Wordlessly they all tramped back down the road to inspect the helicopter. Its second rocket had gone off in its mounting, and the machine was an inferno. Serious forensic science would be needed to identify its occupants. One of Outram’s people used his communicator and learned what Lessing expected: no record of any authorization and no flight plan. Not any more. Somebody had been clever. The facts might eventually be discovered, but it would take time.

Outram motioned his escort back to their cars. He towered over his men, a hulking walrus in his mid sixties with a full head of rumpled, iron-grey hair, drooping mustachios, and mottled skin like a lemon left too long in the sun. Lessing couldn’t remember whether he hailed from Idaho or Wyoming — one of the two.

The President beckoned to one of his aides. “Get Pierce and MacNee and Korinek on this, Charley. Find out who the hell is behind it.” He glanced beyond at a uniformed Army colonel. “And, George, I’m ridin’ back with you. No helicopters… no big mallard duck flyin’ over all the hunters in creation!”

Everyone scrambled to obey. Outram wheeled around, saw Mulder, and rumbled, “You’re ridin’ with me too, Herman. You and your boys. And don’t you give me no shit about security, George. Not after this morning!”

George clamped his lips together, dismissed his enlisted-man chauffeur, and drove.

As they entered the last stretch of road leading into the complex, Outram leaned forward. “Listen,” he said to George, “I ain’t goin’ back down into that hole. Find us a motel… one with good coffee… and we’ll talk while we eat.”

Lessing, next to the driver, opened his mouth to protest, but the President clapped him jovially on the shoulder. “Sure, we don’t have your plastic shower curtain any more, but what the hell? The whole world’s gonna know anyhow.”

There was no arguing. On the seat behind, Lessing saw Wrench make a circular warning gesture to Mulder: bugs, recorders, spy devices were possible in this vehicle, too.

Mulder ignored him and said, ‘The missile… the rocket… was aimed at us, Jonas. Yet it arced away and hit our car instead.”

“Prob’ly a heat-seeker. Your car’s engine was off, but it was still the hottest thing the damn missile could see within its range.”

Lessing had another thought. “The Secret Service man… the one who was killed by shrapnel…”

“Cargill? What about him?” Outram twisted to peer at his face, silhouetted against the smoked-glass windows in the front seat.

“Just before the rocket hit he said there was something strange about our car. Maybe a bug. Maybe it was a homing device for the missile.”

“But you went over the car…?”

“We didn’t have much time. Anyway, if the thing wasn’t using power or emitting a signal, it couldn’t be detected until it was activated, likely by radio. Hide it in the ignition, the transmission, the systems-check computer, and nobody could find it without tearing the whole car apart.”

“You can paint circuits directly onto the body,” Wrench added. “Then spray enamel finish over ‘em. One transistor here, another way over there. The whole car itself becomes a bug.”

“I got plenty of opposition,” Outram declared cheerfully. “People who ‘d rather have a turd in their soup than me for President. My folks’re good, though. They’ll find the bastards responsible.” As he spoke, his cowboy twang seemed to fade in and out, like distant music. Chameleons and politicians both changed color to good effect.

Outram’s answer was not reassuring. What if the missile had been planned only for Mulder’s car? What if the hoppy-choppy, arriving at the meeting site late, after they had disembarked, had had no time to reprogram the missile to manual targeting? The assassins might have decided to try for Mulder — or Outram, or both — anyway.

“Does this… this business just now… change what we discussed?” Mulder questioned in neutral tones.

“Hell, no, Herman. You boys got the organization, ‘specially in the rural states… the South, the Midwest, the Northwest. We can use you.”

“As I said, we’re not as powerful or as well structured as you think…”

“Horseshit! I seen Eighty-Five’s printouts… some of ‘em anyhow. You got tentacles, Herman. What you got ‘em for I don’t know, but you got more tentacles than a bull octopus! You got church groups, but you’re no preacher; schools, but you’re no educator, universities and colleges, but you’re no goddam flip-top egghead; labor committees, but you’re no union man; lots of capital that stretches way overseas and down into the cracks in a bunch of places….”

“Really

“Shit!” Outram chided, unperturbed. “The one thing you ain’t is what we… my folks… also ain’t: minority-operated, y ‘might say. Civil Rights’re ‘civil wrongs’ in a lot of cases.”

“In some things we agree,” Mulder replied. “But we… my friends… share broader, more international interests “

“Just fine. Sunnier’n hell in July, Herman. Where we’re together, we’re together. Where we ain’t, we can wrassle later.” Outram sucked in a breath. “You seen what happened this morning? We’re gonna get a lot more of that: people who want things we… you ‘n’ me… don’t. Mebbe leftists, mebbe liberals, mebbe the minorities, mebbe the money men and the industrialists, mebbe the soldiers… like George here “He grimaced at the back of the driver’s head and cracked thick, splotched knuckles. “One thing’s sure: I ain’t givin’ the United States back to them who was ruinin’ it before. No more big-city lobbies, no more robbin’ good, hardworkin’ folks to please every ‘interest’ with its own row to hoe. No more sendin’ billions overseas to prop up mealy-mouthed little fuckers who spit on your hand even while they’re takin’ your cash!” Mulder uttered a noncommittal grunt.

“Can you deliver, Herman? Can your people help us organize? Help us fight? Help put the country back together?” Outram’s voice took on a resonant, sepulchral, organ tone. “You shoulda seen it: the dead piled in heaps twenty feet deep, the fires, the wreckage, the looters, the local bosses thinkin’ now they’re almighty warlords and buildin’ their own private armies. You’ll help, Herman! When you see what I seen, you’ll help. Whatever you and your folks believe, you’re still Americans. You’re prob’ly better Americans than the dribble-assed weaklings who got us into this mess in the first place!”

“Where were the regular troops?” Wrench wondered. “The police? The National Guard?”

“It happened so fast. Our guys were either busy or dead. A lot of our forces overseas we can’t get home… hell, some we ain’t even heard from yet! We still got units dealin’ with what’s left of the Russians, the Chinese, and the Middle East. Central America likewise. Japan’s hunkered down, waitin’ for either Pacov or Starak… or mebbe both. So’s Korea and Australia and other places.”

“India?” Lessing had to know.

“What about it? Rama-what’s-his-name has turned India into a Hindu dictatorship. No Pacov or Starak there yet… that we know of.”

“The missiles?” Mulder asked. “The space platforms?”

“’Tween us and the Russians, we got more shit up in the sky than God. We nearly had it all down in our laps too, last week. One more panicky Russkie with an itchy finger, and we’d have had fireworks up over the Pole. Thank God that Pacov took out almost all of their missile people and their chain of command.”

“And now…?”

“We’re both about done for. A helluva lot of our people lived in cities, Herman. We didn’t lose ’em all, but we did lose millions. And the rest’re shook outa their trees, so disorganized we can’t even get food and supplies to ‘em. Russia’s less citified, but Pacov hit harder than they hit us with Starak or whatever. Their casualties amount to somethin’ like eighty percent of their population… practically all of European Russia, lots of the central regions, the Caspian… Jesus!”

“Europe? Israel?”

“Britain’s seethin’ with Starak. Europe’s full of refugees, and Israel’s okay: busy blamin’ the Arabs and stompin’ Palestinians Shit, the Jews’re even threatenin’ to blow up Mecca and Medina it the Muslims don’t get peaceable fast.”

“Huh! They really must be feeling their oats, Lessing exclaimed The Israelis had left those two places as independent “international holy cities” to keep the rest of the Islamic world off their necks, he knew. He had fought out there and had a feel tor it.

Outram shot him a calculating look. “You know somethin’ about them parts, young man?” When Lessing nodded, the President said, “Then you’ll be useful later, if we kin get our butts through the next coupla weeks!”

“Again. How can we… my colleagues and co-workers… help…?” Mulder inquired.

“We got to fight whoever done this, Herman. God knows what the fuckers’ll do next. Then if we win we gotta rebuild. We gotta do the job right, or else next time some asshole’ll really push them buttons… in this country and in Russia! Then up goes the planet and us poor suckers down here won’t have a cow-pie left to stand.

The rapt looks on the faces of Wrench and Morgan told Lessing that Outram had charisma. That was why he had been elected every term since Lessing could remember — and why all of the liberal efforts to unseat him had failed. He spoke to the majority ol Americans in ways they understood: plam and direct, if nchly profane, to the menfolk, and courteously — “Old Time Cowboy — to the women.”

Lessing shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had heard too many speeches too many times before. There was more, much more, as they drove, all delivered in the same wide-open- spaces Western lilt. Lessing glanced over at the blank-faced driver and wondered just what George thought.

More to the point, what did he himself think? Outram’s message sounded close to Mulder’s: the good of one’s ethnos, one’s nation, one’s community. Do what you had to do to keep your own folks going. If that meant domination of other groups, then you tipped your hat and dominated, as peacefully, gently, and politely as possible. That was not “bad.” That was ethically and realistically right’. If domination had to come at the expense of smaller, less aggressive, or less successful groups, then so be it. 1 hat was the way things crumbled. Call it “realism” or call it “creative evolution in action.” Good-bye, dinosaurs! Good-bye, snail darter and dodo bird! Hello, enlightened self-interest!

And was that such a bad thing? It ran counter to the great religions, of course, and it didn’t jibe with liberal humanism either; yet Lessing knew that those time-honored institutions preached more than they practiced So it had been with his mother, and so it was in Angola, Syria, and India. So it was also in the United States, but hypocrisy had grown ever more sophisticated as the media learned how to present “reality” their way.

Enlightened self-interest did not imply cruelty or indifference; in fact, the world would benefit from it, now that the present system was in chaos and doomsday only a heartbeat away. The Party of Humankind promised to stop the crap and solve the gut-issues of food, war, jobs, overpopulation (maybe no longer!), pollution, and much else. The Party’s origins did not matter; who cared whether it arose from the SS, the Christian church, the Bangers, or the Abominable Snowman? What was important was that it offered a way up out of this current abyss. Pacov and Starak only made this message starker: humanity could no longer limp along from catastrophe to catastrophe. Indeed, the present crisis might already be the last.

Failure this time would be it. All. Terminus. The end. Welcome back to the Paleozoic!

Lessing himself wasn’t terribly interested. He had never joined any political organization, religion, or movement. Why bother? Let others wave the flags; he just did his job, quietly and without fanfare, until somebody paid him to go do something else.

The motel they found was minimally open. Word had spread that Colorado, with its missile sites and military bases, was a likely target for Starak and atomic warheads — as well as rampaging Banger gangs from the Los Angeles ghettoes. Refugees from both coasts and from Texas preferred to move on into Montana, the Dakotas, or up to Canada.

The tiny, hard-featured, old woman who ran the place gaped at the invading horde of limousines, uniforms, dark business suits, and bright ski-jackets. Then she stuck her gum under the counter and methodically went about stoking up the big coffee-um beside the grill.

Outram waved them all to “set.” To George, he added, “Fix us up with rooms tonight.”

The officer frowned “This place, sir?”

“Spent my young life in motel rooms… ‘n’ not always sleepin’ neither. You git all the security you need. Call in patrol ‘copters… just so’s you’re sure they’re ours this time! Register mc and Herman in rooms down at the end of the court, but we’ll actually stay up here close to the coffee shop. That oughta fox any sonuvabitch who knows where we are and wants to call in an air strike.”

George hurried away. Outram beckoned Mulder over to a booth in the comer and allowed both Lessing and one of the Secret Service men to check for bugs. They found none, and the President gestured everyone except Mulder out of earshot.

The rich fragrance of American coffee — unavailable in India — filled the overheated room. Odors of snow-wet clothing and, after a while, of hamburgers, French fries, eggs, and bacon followed. Silverware clattered above the buzz of voices. An hour passed, and the waning sun turned the frost patterns on the windows into yellow sapphire and orange topaz. The cut-out paper Santas pasted on the panes became bloodstained ogres, and the wilted, little Christmas tree by thecash register blazed with ruddy light, like Moses’ burning bush.

This year Santa was splashed with gore, and the burning bush was not a sign from a caring God but rather a harbinger of His Last Terrible Trump.

Come to Judgment, folks! It’s Armageddon Day!

A heavy-set Secret Service man stamped in, all snow and steaming breath, to tell Outram that the media-hounds had tracked him down. Three carloads of TV people and journalists waited outside.

Outram scowled. “Let the fuckers freeze! Tell ‘em no comment tonight.” Then he relented. “Aw, hell, get me’n Herman out the back way and into our cabins. After we’re gone you can let the bastards in to warm up. This weather’d ice the balls on a snowman!”

It was an hour before the two cabins were readied and checked. Lessing, Morgan, and Wrench were quartered in the cabin adjacent to Mulder’s, where they set up their own sentry-watches. Mulder seemed to trust Outram, but Lessing refused to take chances.

In the cold, eery moonlight, with the snow blanketing a world of pastel blues, greys, and relentless black, Lessing leaned against the jamb, just inside their cabin’s single door. Nothing moved outside; only the stiff, anguished figure of a Secret Service man was visible in the snow by Outram’s window. God, the man must be cold! The price of serving the mighty.

A snuffle in the darkness told him Wrench was up. He heard the slithery sounds of clothing being donned and shoes slipped on; then the little man was beside him.

“Matter?” Lessing grunted. “Got to pee?”

“Can’t sleep. Anything?”

“No.”

Wrench noted the Secret Service man and made clucking noises. “Jesus, they’ll have to thaw that guy out with a blowtorch!”

“Be glad Mulder didn’t have us stand guard out there.”

“Screw that! Devotion has its limits.” Lessing sniffed. “How’s Morgan?”

“Sleeping the sleep of the innocent. He’s an up-and-comer, a fairhaired boy who never expected to double as batman for General Washington at Valley Forge!”

“Double as what!”

“Batman… aide-de-camp, valet. You know. British army term, dear boy.”

Lessing changed from one numbed foot to the other. A question had been bothering him all day, and he asked it: “What’s Outram want? Why call Mulder all the way from Ponape?” Wrench would know if anybody did; Lessing had seen him talking with the President’s staff.

“Outram can’t hold it together. He needs Mulder… the Party.”

“For God’s sake, why? He’s President. He has the Army, the Marines… the police.”

“Washington’s gone, New York’s gone, Chicago’s a mortuary. Things’re falling apart fast. The military wants to push the wagon. So do some governors and some mayors and a lot of other guys. Outram knows he can’t handle them alone. He can’t use the traditional controls either; they’d have things ‘back to normal’ before you could say ‘lox ‘n’ bagels.’ He thinks the Party has potential.”

“Your Party’s too small. What can it do?”

“A lot. Outram’s calling in favors from every so-called ‘rightist’ faction in the country. He has to gel his act together before the big-city liberals of the Establishment… what’s left of ‘em… get theirs going again. He needs support, but the political Right is split up into personalities, parties, and sects… all fucked up, with their pants down as usual!”

“And?”

“That’s where the Party of Humankind comes in. Outram knows Mulder, and he knows our Party is the best organized, best funded, and best trained of all the ‘right wing’ shit-kickers. We’re also international, we know business, and we have credibility in the Third World. In the United Stales we’re strongest in rural areas, the towns, and the smaller cities… the very places where the most people, the real American majority, live. They’re the ones who’ve survived Starak fairly intact. A lot of those folks believe what we believe, but they couldn’t say it… not with the lobbies and the pressure groups and the media all ready to whomp ’em for being ‘racists’ if they open their mouths. Rural support is historically right for the Party, too. The National Socialist Party in Germany had a heavy ‘farm’ streak: agrarian radicals, the dignity of labor, farm boys with scythes, sturdy Aryan youths with pitchforks standing beside plump, blonde Frauleins mit braids und der big boobies, ja?”

Lessing chuckled. “I’ve seen the posters. Not my type.”

“Anyhow, the great American majority is pretty pissed. Ready to stand up at last and kick some butt on its own. It always has been, down through history. Nobody, but nobody, can bushwhack our ethnos and not get a lot bigger whack in return! Outram can use us, all right! He probably guesses we’ve got plans for later, but he can’t be choosy now.”

“What’s next?”

“Christ, ask Mulder! All I got was that in the morning orders’ll go out to our American cadres to start bangin’ the drum. Hang out the signs, sing, dance, and peddle snake-oil like crazy!”

“Get out the vote while the opposition’s still unzipped?”

“Yeah. Like that.”

Lessing asked, “And Mulder? What does he want? What the hell is he all about, anyway?”

“He wants a better-run world, one where his ethnos… his people, his Volk, his nation… can shine again and be free.”

“That’s fine for a press release. Now tell me the rest.”

Wrench’s eyes glittered powder-blue in the moonlight. “Straight?”

“Yeah.”

The little man blew out his cheeks. “What makes him tick, way down deep? I don’ t know. Maybe he wants his honor back, the honor of his grandfather and the others who died for the Third Reich.”

“After nearly a hundred years? Come on!”

“No, for real. They… the SS… a lot of other Germans… did what was right for their country. For a communist-free Europe. For the Aryan race. For the future of the world.”

“That was a century ago. Who cares now? Nobody! Mulder’s as flaky as a mere I once knew who wanted to restore the Roman Empire!”

“You want to know who cares? Who really cares? The guys who continue to use their so-called ‘Holocaust’ to pry bucks out of us ‘guilty’ suckers! The ones who peddle a grossly falsified version of the history of the last century or so and try to have anyone who disagrees with them locked up. They care very much.”

“They say its you who distort history.”

“So why don’t they face us… examine our evidence, debate, talk… act like real historians instead of thought-police? Why shut us out of the media, pass laws against our speaking, persecute us, sue us, and vilify us? This is what lights Mulder’s fire: a matter of justice and a fair shake. You can’t even debate a different point of view any more, much less present it as an ‘option’ in a school or university. History is what they say it is. Mulder’s ancestors hold top billing as the original, A-l, prime-time, world-class villains, creatures of Satan, murderers. Fiends, monsters, and sadists. Say different and you ‘re an ‘anti-Semite,’ a ‘Nazi,’ apsychopath. You’re evil. You lose all credibility, maybe your job, maybe your life.”

“It’s all ancient history now, water over the dam. Why not just concede and move on? Let the Jews have their ‘Holocaust,’ real or otherwise?”

“Because they affect us, man! Their social, economic, and psychological clout shapes our world and our lives.” Wrench waggled his fingers. “We have a right to examine what they’re telling us. We have a right to freedom of expression, to the truth. We have a right to defend our own ethnos.”

“Some see that last as ‘racist.’ A lot of people think ‘racism’ is un-American.”

“Let ‘em. Shows what they know about the real will of the majority. Enlightened ‘racism’ is the shortest way out of our present mess. We don’t hate anybody; we’re not out to slaughter Jews or other minorities. We’re not backwoods hillbillies who hate anybody who looks different. We’re for America: for freedom from lobbies and ‘interests,’ for freedom of expression, for freedom for our people to run their lives as they see fit. It is very American to want our nation, our ethnos, to succeed and prosper, to defend it against those who would tear it down and turn us into something we don’t want to be.”

Lessing rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “God, Wrench, but you’re an asshole when you talk about this stuff! Like my dad used to say, ‘God save us from priests, patriots, and pickpockets!’” He paced away, then back again.

He had never found anything within himself that he could call patriotism, idealism, or religion. Back in high school one of his girl friends, Emily Pietrick, had found a term in some poem or novel or other that she said described him perfectly: “the empty man.” He had shown her that he was not empty — not in bed anyway — but the idea still niggled at him. In an odd sort of way he found himself envying Mulder.

Wrench dutifully changed the subject: “Did you hear what George said to that big fucker, the guy with the red nose who looks like a banker?”

“No. And what does a banker look like?”

“Like him. Honest. Anyway, Outram wants some of his guys to head for New Orleans to organize things.”

“So?”

“He’s sending some others into Washington to secure the central terminal of Eighty-Five, the big mainframe computer. There’s a rumor that certain unfriendlies intend to take it over.”

“How’s that affect us? We’re going back to Ponape.”

Wrench grinned, a halfmoon of glimmering blue-white. “Morgan’s off to whomp up the parade in the Midwest. Mulder goes with Outram to New Orleans. But us… you ‘n’ me, poor dipshits…” he paused for effect “…we’re travelling with Outram’s boys into Washington, whatever the hell Pacov has left of it.”

Lessing stared. “What/or?”

“Some of the movement’s corporations had offices in Washington. A few of our political groups and lobbies had headquarters there, too. We’re gonna pay ‘em visits to see if they’re croaked.”

“Why us? Any Party grunt can do that!”

“Yeah, but it makes a good excuse to give Outram. The real reason we’re along is to see if any of our own insiders at Eighty-Five’s main terminal are still kicking. If they’re okay and green-light, then we stay low. But if the opfoes are digging through Eighty-Five’s ‘forgotten’ files, we take action. With extreme prejudice.”

“I repeat, damn it: why us? I can’t tell a mainframe from an electric shaver!”

“I can. Didn’t you know? Never sneak a look at my personnel file at Indoco? I sure looked at yours!” Wrench stifled a bubble of laughter, Morgan stirred on the farther bed. “Hell, Lessing, I have a Ph.D. in computer science from MIT!”

“Jesus! And you were working security for Indoco out in India?”

“Reasons.” Wrench rarely spoke of his past, and even more rarely of his personal goals. He might just be telling the truth.

“Okay, that explains you. But why me?”

“You’re going along to protect me. You ‘re Mulder’s soldier-boy, general of his forces, the Herr Generaloberst of his Wehrmachll That’s how he sees you.”

Lessing exploded, “Goddam it, I’ve told you and I’ve told him: I’m not a member of your Party! I only work here.”

“That’s what I meant when I called you the Generaloberst of the Wehrmacht… not the Obergruppenfuhreroi the Wqffen-SS. You’re the apolitical military man, not the ideological Party soldier.”

The distinction was lost on Lessing. He was tired of political game-playing, and he was fed up with Wrench’s coy attempts to recruit him for the “cause.” He growled, “I said: I only work here. Leave the rest alone.”

Wrench struck a soulful pose. “Mulder sees you as something else, too.”

Lessing asked before he thought; maybe he didn’t want to hear the answer. “What?”

“The son he and the Fairy Godmother could never have.”

For some reason that struck a very sore nerve. “Bullshit!” he snapped. Hadn’t he had enough trouble with his own parents? Memories tried to push up into consciousness, but he swatted them away like summer gnats.

Wrench eyed him, a trifle apprehensively. “Right. Okay… okay! Back to the job. Mr. Lessing goes to Washington. Saves Mr. Charles Hanson Wren and gorgeous Miss Eighty-Five! All for democracy, for America, for the world!” He added a weak cackle.

Morgan was up, hair disheveled, rubbing at his eyes, and yawning hugely. “You guys talk too much. My watch?”

Lessing turned away to peer out at the pallid, snow-silvered desolation framed in the door’s single windowpane. He found himself staring at his own reflected image. God, he didn’t look any better than Morgan. In fact, the old phrase “like death warmed over” came to mind — or in his case “like death frozen over.”

He let out a long, careful, slightly shaky sigh and went to bed.