Serpent's Walk

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Friday, August 5, 2050

“Not happy?” Liese stood by the window that looked out over the jigsaw puzzle of Seattle’s city center. From the V.I.P. penthouse on the top floor of the hospital, Puget Sound was visible between the tall, grey buildings as a pool of silvery mercury spilled across a rumpled, green-baize horizon.

“Sure,” Lessing replied. “Happy as a man can be with a face full of cotton wadding.” He tried not to lisp. The wound in his cheek was nearly healed, but the stitches and plastic still felt awkward.

He shifted to take the weight off his left side. Last Wednesday the doctors had performed what they said would be the final operation on his shoulder, and it still hurt. In time, he’d regain the complete use of his arm, they told him: no prosthetics, no slings, not the black, leather-clad hand that Wrench had offered to have Eighty-Five design, the one replete with a dagger, a tear-gas projector, a stitch-gun, and probably a sixty-five-blade Swiss army knife! He was reminded of a mad scientist in some movie he had seen in his childhood, a man whose artificial arm had a will of its own.

Liese drifted over to the bed. She sat on his right side to let him rub her neck with his good hand. “Feels nice.”

“It better. I spent weeks strengthening these fingers when they thought I was going to lose the arm.”

“Green light soon.” She twisted around to kiss him. “Mmm. Back to work now.”

She could be so cool and so frustratingly remote! He said, “You always have to go. Wait’ll I bust out of here!”

“Lots to do. Lib-rebs. Outram too sick to do much. Vice-Presi- dent Lee an idiot. Mulder in seclusion. Goddard feuding with Wrench and Morgan.”

“Hey, we agreed that you’d use verbs and full sentences once in a while!” He strove for a cheerful tone, but Liese was in no mood for speech therapy. After a moment he asked, “So there’s trouble between the Cadre and PHASE? Open squabbling?”

She made a face. “No. Covert. Mulder trying to keep them together.”

“Damn politics! The Party needs all its strength. The old power elite is going to make a comeback: the bureaucrats, the political parties, the religious sects, the C.I.A., the I.R.S., the corporations, all the pressure groups from Big Labor to ‘Save the Prairie Dogs.’”

“Business as usual. Shock of Starak wearing off.”

“My God…! After the death of half the country!”

Liese took him literally. She said, “Not half. Census not in. Forty-five to sixty million Starak-related American casualties. Toxin itself, plus panic, starvation, other diseases. Maybe a billion dead from Pacov in Europe, Russia, Israel, Africa, parts of China… elsewhere. Pacov bacteria supposed to die after one generation but mutated to ‘Black Pacov’ in Africa instead. Most gone now, though.”

Gordy Monk rapped on the door. He was the chief of Lessing’s squad of bodyguards. “Sir, Cadre-Commander Wren is here.”

“Go!” Liese whispered. She reached for her charcoal-grey autumn coat on the foot of the bed and started to get up.

“Stay!” Lessing rapped back at her. It was hard to muster true authority with a mummy-wrapped shoulder and a cheek bandage that made him look like a lopsided squirrel.

Wrench sidled around the door, winked at Liese, then came on in. Today his cream-colored, gabardine uniform was tasteful, and he had kept the medals and insignia down to a non-blinding minimum.

“Sit down,” Lessing grumbled. “Makes me nervous when people stand over me.”

Liese went back to the window, but Wrench complied He grinned at Lessing. “Sorry to disturb you. Pay a call on the weak, the sick, and the elderly! Civic duty, you know!”

“Weak, sick, elderly… bullshit! I’m a goddamned hero, thanks to you. Home-Net is playing me up as the greatest military commander since Napoleon. And you run Home-Net.”

“We believe in scrupulous honesty: all the commercials, soaps, game shows, jiggly bint-babies, and tasteless violence the traffic ‘11 bear. Which are you?”

“News?” Liese demanded impatiently.

Wrench gave her a smile like sunrise. “Knowing that our boy hero here doesn’t get his daily dose of holo-vid, allow me to ‘recapitulate the news,’ asHome-Net’sgreatest commentator, Jason Milne, says.” He cleared his throat portentously. “War breaks out between India and the Islamic Theocracy of Indonesia-Malaysia. China intervenes and threatens a tactical nuclear strike unless Prime Minister Ramanujan’s forces leave Cambodia, like real pronto. In Pakistan, the Red Mullah stays neutral, with one eye on Turkey to his west and the other on the Izzie-Vizzies to his north; this worries his ophthalmologist. South Africa politely offers to ‘surgically remove’ the U.S.-supported Nation of Allah Almighty… the Khalifa’s folks… unless granted mineral rights in the Congo. Spanish forces help Morocco rescue hundreds from the ruins of earthquake-stricken Rabat. General Rollins’ troops have now reached Veracruz, bypassing Mexican units lurking in what’s left of Mexico City after Starak and the big fire. The confrontation between Peru and Brazil escalates. The White House dithers over whether to stomp Central America and do away with the drug trade by the Biblical method… fire and sword… or to take the dragsters’ bucks and shut up. Australia and New Zealand have gone inside, locked their doors, and put up a sign saying, ‘Nobody bloody-well ’ome. Go ‘wye ‘n’ g’dye t’ye, myte!’”

“You make a better Jason Milne than Jason Milne does.”

“All bad!” Liese shook her dark-blonde tresses vehemently. “No good news?”

Lessing said, “The world’s a machine with a broken flywheel: it’s coming to pieces.”

“We’re what’s holding it together,” Wrench answered. “Our good old North-European ethnos. Without us the game would be over. We’re actually gaining, doing good stuff internally and helping sister organizations abroad. And allies among some really unlikely ethnos groups, too, like the Khalifa’s Nation of Allah Almighty.”

“Khalifa Abdullah Sultani…,” Liese began.

“I think 1 met him once.” Lessing saw a flicker of ice-blue, and an odd tremor crept into his voice.

She smiled, puzzled. “Working with us. ResettlingBlackpopula-tion in Africa.”

“It’s hard to imagine: the Khalifa on our side!”

“Why not? Good for his people. We help. Don’t interfere.”

Wrench said, “Reorientation for Black lib-reb prisoners includes courses taught by the Khalifa’s people. We’re sending him trained recruits, not a bunch of bang-nog jizmos. He gets what he wants, and we get what we both need: racial separation with room to grow.”

“Same in Central and South America,” Liese added. She picked up her coat again. “Re-education. They want it; we help. Party strongest in Argentina, Brazil.”

Lessing scowled. “I still get the feeling it’s all coming apart. We have to win the lib-reb war fast. Then we have to reunite. Otherwise the wheels and springs fly off.”

Wrench showed his gleaming, while teeth. “You’re a great, ugly clot of doom today, aren’t you, Lessing? Let me give you some good news: San Francisco’s about to fall. Last night Tim Helm’s guys and some regular units… Marines, I think… busted through the lib-reb lines north of Walnut Creek. They took the San Leandro reservoir and pushed the opfoes back to Pleasanton and Livermore. Best guess is that the lib-rebs may try to hold down by Fremont, but we’ve got ‘em on the run, and our artillery’s setting up to shell Oakland and Berkeley from the hills. A good fireworks show may scare the lib-rebs out of San Francisco and save the city. Be a shame to thumb it”

“Why do they fight on?” Liese wondered sadly. “Can’t win.”

“Same reason we’d keep going,” Lessing told her. “Because there’s nowhere else to go. Not for their side.” He struggled up and began brushing his pale hair. It was becoming noticeably thinner.

Wrench said, “Times change. A century ago they said we were finished, out on the garbage dump of history. Now it’s their turn. The wheel’s gone around a full circle. Skirts go up, then down, then up again: about a twenty-year cycle. Eighty-Five says that whenever there’s a major upheaval, like Pacov, there’s also a tendency toward authoritarian politics. The liberals were up, now they’re down, as outdated as wig-powder. We’re the big kids on the block now… and believe me, we’re looking real hard for ways to keep the swing from dropping us back into the shit-pile again.”

Lessing didn’t want to talk politics. “Let me ask “

“First things first.” Wrench got up and twisted the holo-vid dial until he found a yowling Banger concert on Yama-Net. He bent close to Lessing and motioned Liese over as well. “Just so we don’t hear a voice saying, ‘Speak louder into the bedpan, please!’”

Lessing raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Oh, come on! Security on the brain.”

“Relax. Goddard’s been getting feisty lately. He’s set up files in Eighty-Five that I can’t get into. Neither can Outram’s trained seals.”

“I wasn’t asking about Goddard!”

“He’s got eyes and ears right here in your hospital boudoir, you know, but we can’t find his mikes.” Wrench made a vague, circling gesture toward the ceiling. “Anyway, I know it’s Hollister you want to hear about. The Euro-mercs haven’t seen him since he pulled out of the Izzies’ colony in Ufa months ago. We’re sure he’s in lib-reb territory.”

“For that you need a mega-billion-buck computer?”

“Easy! We’ll find the gubber. You needn’t worry: plenty of security.” He snickered. “Even got guys sniffing your pee for slow-acting poisons. No more funny teddy bears.”

Lessing lay back down. “Those people… our people… died because of me. Ken Swanson, with a plastic star in his brain. The lib-rebs, too… Gottschalk and his woman.”

“You couldn’t help what Hollister did. Nobody blames you… or the Cadre either. Your guys didn’t know what the pog was happening. The peaceniks roasted us for thumbing prisoners, and the good folks up at Dee-Net in Montreal are raising a holy stink about ‘war-crimes.’ But the public’s on our side: nobody expects soldiers in a combat zone to react any differently to a bomb tossed… literally… into their soup!”

The memories hurt. He said, “Jennifer came to see me. I was worried about her.”

“Smart girl. When the teddy bear blew its stack, good old Jenny was flat on her back with some doggie under a table.”

“Not fair!” Liese cried. “Mullet! It was Arlen Mullet! Wounded protecting her! Threw her down when Alan yelled.”

“Oh, I know!” Wrench put out a hand in the closest thing to an apology Lessing had seen him make. “Just a dumb joke. Jen and Mullet are green light now, though he couldn’t sit down for a couple weeks, and Jen’s got shrapnel scars across her back. She’s gone back east to Goddard’s PHASE headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland. She’ll be closer to Mulder there too.”

“Is Arlen still at Cadre Officer’s Training School in Denver?” Lessing owed his aide the big one. Mullet had said “Mistadet” meant “Mister Death.” Without that warning Lessing would have ignored the little girl with the teddy bear. He would have died. So would a lot of other people.

“Yeah. He’s happy. Got a card from Stan Crawford, too. He’s driving for Tim Holm now, down on the San Francisco front.”

“Patty… the kid who brought me Hollister’s present… is here in the hospital, in the bum unit. I… I couldn’t block all the hot soup when I fell on her. Do me a favor and go see her.”

“I have. A couple of times.”

“Me too,” Liese said. “Often.”

“Patty’s physically as good as new.” Lessing swallowed. “She’s not over it, but she’s coming. Did you find out her last name?”

“Not yet. She sure as hell wasn’t Gottschalk’s kid, nor any relation to that kosher wildcat he had with him. Patty remembers her name as something like ‘Heuer’ or ‘Hoyer,’ and we think she came from Eureka. The war destroyed the records, though, and… well, we’re just not sure.”

“A loose casualty of war!” Suddenly the tension pent up within him poured out in a single, ragged snarl: “God!”

Liese touched his good hand. “Hey, hey, green light! Changed my mind. No work. Lunch. With Patty and Wrench. Tall Pines Restaurant. Pretty day. Lake Washington.” Lessing’s anguish was contagious; it was playing havoc with Liese’s speech.

“As I was saying about Goddard….” Wrench, too, saw the danger of letting Lessing brood upon the Lava Beds massacre. “Well?”

“Let me warn you. When Outram goes there’ll be a power struggle like you wouldn’t believe, a real rough-and-tumble. It’ll be time to choose up sides and smell armpits!”

Lessing glanced over at Liese. She wrinkled her nose. Wrench’s Goddard-o-phobia might be no more than his usual paranoia; wherever there was an extreme. Wrench seemed to delight in going beyond it. Still, Goddard was quite capable of an end run for the touchdown.

“Lunch.” Liese picked up the telephone and dialed. After a moment she nodded to Lessing. “Lunch. Downstairs. Patty.”

He dressed, favoring his injured shoulder. Two of his bodyguards stayed in the hospital room; the other four accompanied them down in the elevator and fanned out into the parking garage. They checked Lessing’s black Titan-909 Party sedan, then joined Wrench’s squad in their two escort cars.

So much security struck Lessing as unnecessary. Hollister had had plenty of chances to thumb him: a shot from a passing car, a sniper on a rooftop, walk up on the street and unzip him with a kitchen knife! Wrench was obsessed with Goddard more than Hollister, of course; he was also worried about the lib-rebs, the Izzie-Vizzies, and probably Dracula and the Loch Ness monster as well.

Some of his fears were not entirely groundless.

Patty pushed through the glass doors, trailed by one of the bodyguards and a nurse. Lessing found her beautiful: a skinny, lively child of six or maybe seven — who knew? — with eyes as pale blue as Lessing’s own. She had shoulder-length, sun-blonde hair, which she combed, teased, permed, braided, and manipulated in whatever other way the holo-vid bint-babies did theirs. Today Patty wore a white blouse and black jeans, the Party’s unofficial kid-suit.

In a more peaceful world she could have been Liese’s and Lessing’s daughter.

“Hi, Lessing! ” She always called him that, just his last name, no titles, nothing. She took his arm, giggled, and pulled him down for a peppermint-flavored nuzzle.

She was rarely this bubbly. Her burns had mostly consisted of splatters along herright arm and shoulder. The pain was mostly gone now, but she still had nightmares.

“Hi. You in the mood for salmon? Crab legs?”

Patty flicked a self-conscious glance at the watching security men. “No. Spaghetti.”

“Seafood,” Liese announced. “My vote.”

The little girl shrugged. “You’re buyin.’” She’d get her way; Liese would give in.

The Tall Pines Restaurant was new and glossy, the sort of place beloved of businessmen and the supper crowd: a “yuppy-suppy,” Wrench called it. This afternoon a third of the tables were occupied by civilians and another third by soldiers home on leave from California, but the remaining places were empty. It took a while for tourism and gracious living to return to normal after losing upwards of forty-five million customers.

Lessing slitted his eyes and saw peace: a drowsy August afternoon, with pleasant people enjoying good food in comfortable surroundings in a happy land. He saw summer: time to go up to the San Juan Islands, over to the Olympic Peninsula, maybe to Mount Rainier. He did not see war, soldiers, tanks and guns, Pacov and Starak, Armageddon.

It was like in combat: when you can’t stand to think of bullets and pain and death any longer, your mind turns off. You look at the sky, the weeds in your foxhole, the color of the rocks, the patterns made by runnels of sweat in the dust in front of your nose.

During the past weeks, lying in his hospital bed, Lessing had come to a decision. He would give in to Liese, Wrench, and Mulder and join the Party of Humankind. It might not provide “balanced,” “moderate,” “open-minded,” “liberal” solutions, but it was better than anything else going. The Party promised peace, prosperity, stability, progress, and love.

Love?

He had thought it over, and it was true. The Party’s foes did not see its policies as “love,” of course, especially its racial policies and the exclusivity of the ethnos. Yet love was the essence: love of one’s people, love of one’s heritage, love of those with whom one em-pathized and identified.

The Party of Humankind offered love — love in the societal sense — the only type of love that made survival sense. The Party, the movement, had an uncompromising ideology and a stern discipline, but it also seemed to be the best means of keeping humanity — all humanity, all the ethnos groups — alive on Earth.

Their Cadre uniforms got them a table right away, and the waitress took their order.

“School?” Liese inquired of Patty.

The child favored her with a level, blue gaze. “September tenth. Third grade. Missed a year ‘cause of the war.” She rarely spoke of the weeks she had spent in the Lava Beds. Her memories of that place were mostly of cold and hunger and smelly tents and caves and noise and terror. Gottschalk and his strange companion had dwindled away to become dream figures. Children were more flexible — at forgiving and forgetting — than adults.

“Which school?” Wrench asked idly. The waitress was busy with a party of brown-uniformed PHASE officers two tables away, and he was keeping an eye on them.

“Oak Tree.” Party schools were named for positive, natural images. Patty took a spoonful of mushroom soup, then gasped, “Wow, tha’s hot’.”

“Excuse me,” Wrench muttered. He rose and pushed through the crowd to the PHASE men’s table. One of his bodyguards dawdled along after him.

“All education equal in our new schools,” Liese said to Lessing. “Same curriculum everywhere. Same tests. Standardized. Teachers nationally trained and licensed. Frequent transfers to other cities and states to maintain uniformity. No tuition.”

“Those are Wrench’s ideas. He loves tinkering with things like educational reforms.” Lessing, too, was watching the PHASE men. “Mulder’s pushing Wrench for Secretary of Education and Information.”

“Too radical sometimes. Should think more about reforms first.”

“Like a certain blonde, revolutionary lady I know.” They smiled at each other, and Liese put out a hand but did not quite touch his. They were together a lot these days. They hadn’t talked marriage-many people no longer wanted to risk the legal hassle just for a piece of paper — but both felt a growing commitment

Patty glanced from one to the other. “Wrench says school’ll cost a lot.” She gave Lessing a big-blue-eyed, I-love-you look. “Lessing, you gonna pay for me?”

He laughed. Her grown-up ploys continually amazed him. “Don’t have to. It’s in the Party plan: free school for everybody.”

He thought about Wrench’s struggle to make education a top Party priority. Eighty-Five had had to do some fiscal footwork, even though a fat military budget was no longer as urgent as it used to be. Pacov and Starak had taken care of keeping up with the Soviets and the Chinese. There were other priorities, of course: the lib-reb war, disaster relief, reorganizing the shattered economy, national medical care, aid to the elderly, farm subsidies — a lot of things. Yet education was the key.

American education had been a haphazard house of cards built upon foundations of sand. Western civilization wouldn’t last long in the hands of illiterates. Bring your kids up to the standard of students in Japan, the blossoming Turkish empire, the Izzie-Vizzie Russian colonies, and a revitalized Europe, or else watch while those other ethnos groups shouldered you aside and ran the planet their way. Sweeping reforms were hard, though: the academic establishment was as crusty and conservative in practice as its educational policies were doggedly liberal. A step in any direction gored somebody’s ox and provoked loud, literate cries of outrage. The Party of Humankind had to take advantage of the country’s post-Pacov disruption and do something before the Old Boys’ clubs regained control. Once that happened, it would be business as usual: committees and reports and task forces and meetings and bullshit bureaucracy until it was too late. It was almost too late now.

Party schools, youth camps, parental organizations, sports groups, scholarships, curricular revisions — Wrench had laid out a whole agenda of changes, and Mulder was doing his best to see that he got them. As somebody once said, “Give me the children until they are seven, and anyone may have them afterwards.”

Lessing came back to Patty. He would do everything in his power to see that she got the best.

What was she to him? Why did he care so much? He wasn’t sure. He had never been much for introspection. Examining your innermost feelings — clearly and objectively — was like trying to peek up your own asshole. Contortionists could do that, but Lessing — along with a couple billion others — could not.

Was Patty just a sop for all the guilt he carried around with him, like Atlas with the world on his shoulders? Be nice to this one child and thus atone for the deaths of half the planet — whether he was guilty of those deaths or not? Or was he atoning for the Lava Beds massacre?

No, neither. He wasn’t much for guilt trips.

Guilt made him think of his mother. Guilt was the mainspring of her life. In her flinty way, she believed that God would take away her guilt on Judgment Day. After all, hadn’t Jesus Christ died for her sins? Whatever she did was already forgiven. If God got snotty with her, she could point over at Jesus and proclaim, “He’s already paid my tab, Lord!” Then she’d weep, get down on her bony knees, and repent like she was humping for an Academy Award! God would surely see things her way.

Christianity and the other Middle Eastern religions were certainly alike in one respect: they all sweated over “sin.” The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead had a great judgment scene, Lessing had read somewhere. When you died, Thoth, the ibis-headed god, weighed your heart against the Featherof Truth. You confessed your sins before Osiris, the Lord of the Dead, and if you lied you were lunch for a crocodile-headed monster. Needless to say, this sternly moral scene was followed by other chapters that told you how to lie safely to the Forty -Two Judges of the Dead, how to con Osiris, how to fool old Croco-Smilc, and how to sashay on into the Fields of the Blessed without anybody laying a hand, claw, or tentacle on you!

Why did all the religions from that part of the world bother postulating an omnipotent, omniscient god who handed down iron-clad commandments — only to spend the rest of history figuring ways to bamboozle him? Must be something in the Middle Eastern psyche.

Patty jogged his arm for the salt shaker, and Lessing returned to reality with an palpable jolt. If somebody had suggested that Patty, all by herself, were a complete and sufficient reason for love, he wouldn’t have known what to say.

Wrench slid back into his chair, polished his silverware on his napkin, and devoured his chowder in uncharacteristic silence. By the time their entrees arrived, however, he was telling Patty fantastic stories about Indian elephants and maharajahs. Lessing watched him curiously.

The salmon steak was good, and Liese’s prawns were perfect. There was no spaghetti on the menu, but Patty allowed herself to be satisfied with her braised beef, even so. She was definitely no seafood lover.

The winking, garnet goblets, the tablecloths of red damask, and the silver-gleaming cutlery took Lessing back to the restaurant in Sioux City where his parents had celebrated their anniversaries. The memory was as hazy as candle smoke, yet it was immensely comforting. Angola and Syria and India and Ponape and Palestine and New Sverdlovsk faded away; they had never happened. Pacov and Starak were meaningless acronyms on file covers in some forgotten desk drawer. This was reality.

A buzz of conversation near the door caused him to glance in that direction. Half-a-dozen tall men in black uniforms had entered the restaurant and were looking around. One of them spotted Lessing, motioned his sable-hued comrades to wait, then made his way slowly along the aisle toward their table.

Something stirred deep in Lessing’s memory but did not make it to the surface. He watched warily as the stranger approached.

“Hey, Lessing, you pogger!” Wrench crowed in his ear. “Don’t you know this jizmo? Bill Easley… Cadre… from Kansas?”

The youth who bent over their table had a friendly, hawk-beaked, Midwestern face with a toothy grin. “Remember me, sir?” He extended a hand.

Lessing’s memory finally yielded up a few faint images from the past, and he husked, “Yeah… sure. Haven’t seen you for a long time. New Orleans, wasn’t it? What’re you doing now?”

“Second looie, sir. Cadre’s Victory Battalion… brand new, like your own American Freedom Brigade. We’re down near Lake Tahoe, guarding lib-reb prisoners from Sacramento and Fresno until they’re handed on to PHASE.” The hero-worship in Easley’s voice was thick enough to pour over pancakes. He pointed back toward the clump of Cadre uniforms by the door. “Uh… could my friends come over and meet you, sir?”

“Fine. Glad to say hello.” Lessing was back in control.

“Prisoners?” Wrench asked sharply. “PHASE?”

“Yessir. Cadre-Commander Wrench, isn’t it?” Easley had met him too, but Wrench wasn’t “military”; he attracted fewer groupies.

“Aren’t lib-reb P.O.W.s supposed to be shipped immediately up to Oregon?” Wrench persisted.

Easley wasn’t interested. “Uh… yessir. They are. But we pass ‘em on to PHASE first for screening out the hard cases, you know. PHASE mostly sends ‘em on to Oregon… just keeps a few of ‘em, not P.O.W.s but some of the civilians, families, like.” He beckoned to his companions. “Me’n my buddies’re on leave… ‘till we start gettin’ prisoners in from San Francisco.”

“God damn it,” Wrench hissed. “Lessing, we have to talk.”

“Later.” He refused to think about the Cadre and PHASE.

Wrench read Lessing’s mood and let the matter drop for the moment. They greeted Easley’s friends, four young Cadremen who gawked, shook hands, and uttered stumbling courtesies. These were Lessing’s fans, just as if he were a Banger star, and they must not go away disappointed.

When dessert and coffee were finished Wrench went over to Easley’s table, and Lessing saw him pick up their check. Wrench had to be the greatest public relations man since P. T. Bamum!

They drove back to the hospital in a well-fed stupor. Wrench watched Patty’s escort take her up in the elevator, then he said, “Got to find the kid a home. She can’t live all her life in a hospital.”

Lessing grimaced. “I can’t take her. Another week, and I’m back with my unit. A military camp’d be no good for her.”

“Liese, I know you don’t have time… and no place for her either.” Wrench jabbed the elevator button. “Same here. Jennifer has a great apartment, of course…” he saw Liese’s look and smoothly changed gears, “but Jen’s lifestyle might not be suitable for a young girl, to put it politely.”

“Mrs. Mulder!” As soon as he spoke, Lessing knew he was right.

Liese nodded emphatically, and Wrench banged the button a second time. “Perfect, man! Patty gets spoiled rotten in the lap of decadent luxury! Let the Fairy Godmother stuff her with cookies and cake frosting! They’ll both love it!” He rubbed his hands together, then sobered. “Now we have another, more serious problem for discussion!”

Lessing sighed. His mood of gentle peace was fading fast. “Goddard and PHASE?”

“Yeah. Listen, why don’t you both come downtown with me to the corn-link at Party headquarters? We have to talk to Goddard!”

“Matter?” Liese asked. “Urgent?”

“You heard Easley? Lib-reb prisoners are supposed to go straight from holding camps back of our front lines to reorientation villages in Oregon. Goddard’s PHASE guys are screening them and taking some away. Why and where Easley didn’t know.”

“1 caught it,” Lessing said, “What the hell is that about?”

“Who knows? Lib-reb prisoners are military and Cadre business. PHASE doesn’t have the authority to grab prisoners.”

“Goddard can make up the authority. The lib-rebs emptied the jails all over the Southwest and Mexico to get troops. He can say that his boys are screening for criminals and escaped felons.”

“Yeah, I suppose he can,” Wrench mused. “Mulder persuaded Outram to make PHASE a Federal agency and let it coordinate all police functions across the country.”

“Dumb! Outram could’ve used the FBI… and saved us all from Bill Goddard!”

“Outram doesn’t trust the FBI. President Rubin packed it with smart-ass Eastern-Establishment lawyers who used to chase Outram’s right-wing friends around the block.”

“But prisoners?” Liese put in. “Civilians? Families? Why! Not partisans or saboteurs.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Lessing asked her. ‘“Special squads’ and necktie parties? Bill’s views on minority affairs start about a mile to the right from where Attila the Hun leaves off.”

“He wouldn’t do that!“she flared back. “We want trust! Nodeath camps! Party directive.”

“Okay, okay… green light! But if Big Bear Bill is doing what people used to accuse the Third Reich of doing, then he’s going to run smack into me. I never signed on for that kind of stuff!”

“Give Goddard a chance!” Wrench protested. “We don’t know anything yet! I’m going to put in a call to him. Then another to Mulder.”

Liese frowned. “Alan and I? Do?”

Wrench slammed the elevator button again. “You, Liese, have been with the movement a long time. You can talk to Bill. And you, Lessing, command the American Freedom Brigade. You can order your officers not to cooperate with PHASE until we know what’s going on!”

“Doing what with prisoners?” Liese rubbed at her bare arms as though she were cold.

Wrench answered her: “He could be doing just what Easley said: screening for hard cases, with everything legal and proper by the book.”

“He could also be playing water sports,” Lessing contradicted. “You know, fly prisoners out over the Pacific and see how they swim home.”

Wrench held the elevator door for Liese. “One way to find out. C’mon, let’s go down to my office.”

It was four o’clock before they reached Party headquarters opposite the old Public Safety Building on Third and Cherry. Twenty years ago this truncated pyramidal skyscraper of black glass and steel had been erected to house tentacles of the King County administrative octopus. After Starak the Army and the decontamination services had taken it over, although Seattle had missed being hit for reasons no one knew. Outram’s martial-law government then had occupied the lower floors for the next two years, while the remainder stayed empty. Now the building was refurbished, bright with American flags and Party bunting, and thronged with staffers on their way home from world.

Wrench shepherded them through the crowd, secured an elevator, produced a key, and pushed a button. The capsule-like car raced up the outside of the pyramid at stomach-clutching speed.

The doors opened on the twenty-fifth floor to reveal a square tablet of white light floating in the air. The hologram displayed letters of blue fire: PARTY OF HUMANKIND DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION. WHOM DO YOU WISH TO SEE?

Wrench said, “Director’s office.” The hologram changed to read: PLEASE LOOK INTO THE EYE-PRINT BOX ON THE WALL TO YOUR LEFT AND STATE YOUR FULL NAME.

They obeyed, and the hologram glided away down the corridor flashing FOLLOW ME, PLEASE in luminous red.

Wrench almost glowed. He said, “Neat, eh? And security all the way!” He pointed up at camera-eyes in the ceiling. “Eighty-Five is watching us… watching everybody. Hell, in a year or two we won’t need I.D. cards at all. Everything’ll be done with eye-and voice-prints.”

“Big Brother…”

“Bull. That’s gungo, as the Bangers say. Hell, America’s been under surveillance for almost a century: cops, the I.R.S., credit checks, Social Security numbers, the F.B.I., you name it. Moreover, Eighty-Five can sniff out most crimes right now without adding a single chip! All we’re doing is consolidating existing data banks. Today it takes twelve minutes to scan some jizmo’s records in fifty-one states and six foreign countries… a week for a big corporation. With every computer system shaking hands with Eighty-Five, we’ll have that info within seconds. But average folks won’t get hurt. And we’ll catch and convict the crooks, scammers, welfare frauds, and credit-card weasels. A lot of crime… from check-kiting to big, corporate hanky-panky… will be as passe as stage-coach robbery.”

“People will protest. Like crazy!”

“They’ll get used to it. They’ll get real happy when they see what we save them in taxes, crime protection, and other ways. Folks’re fed up with laws that don’t work, rich lawyers, whimsical judges, and crooks that wriggle through the system like worms through a dog’s gut! Our penal system’s as outdated as the Bastille! We’re working with Outram’s allies in Congress to push some changes through. We may need amendments to the Constitution to do it, but we’ll get it done. Everything legal, one hundred gubbin’ percent.”

“Extreme…”

“Yeah. Draconian. I like that word. It’s what America… the world… needs: tough love.”

“You really should strain this through Eighty-Five a few more times before you bottle it!”

“We have. Eighty-Five predicts acceptance within five years.”

“Um. You… and it… could still be wrong.” Lessing wanted to rub his cheek, but that would hurt.

Wrench halted before a huge, double door whose leaves were seamless sheets of burnished copper. He threw out his arms dramatically and cried, “Open, sesame!” To his companions he whispered: “Doesn’t matter what you say. The voice-print’s what counts.”

“Did you know about these changes?” Lessing murmured to Liese as they followed Wrench inside.

“Not everything. I… my staff… busy. Popularize the Party. Dom.”

“‘Dorn’ will have to do a heap of explaining to convince the folks down home: a police state that makes the Soviet Union’s Gulag look as laid back as a Banger snuffy-doo orgy!”

Liese bridled. “Totalitarian state not necessarily cruel or brutal! Good government doesn’t harm good citizens. Solves social problems. Helps economy. Deters crime. Efficient aid for needy, old, sick, mentally ill. Benefits outweigh restrictions!”

“You’re great at summing up the Party platform, love. But people will balk at government by super-computer! It’s not cricket, as the British say.”

Wrench had paused inside the ornate reception room to stare into another blink-box beside a glass door leading to a complex of inner offices. He grinned back at them. “Not cricket! That’s just it, Lessing: we’re not playing cricket; we’re talking law! Nobody mentioned good table manners or the Code of the West! Fair is protecting the citizens; unfair is letting the wolves go on munching on the sheep!”

“Logically you’re right. But people don’t always see things logically. It’s people you’re dealing with.”

Wrench sniffed. “People need education. Then they’ll see we’re doing what’s best for our ethnos. For the world, man!”

Wrench’s office was austere, almost monkish: a long room with one glass wall overlooking the dizzy drop down the face of the pyramid, past roofs and wharves and ferryboats to Elliott Bay. Lessing glimpsed work tables, swing lights, green-glazed cabinets, and half a dozen unoccupied desks. A niche in one of the inner walls contained a photographic hologram of children playing volleyball before a brick school building. It was now after four in the afternoon, and the staff had gone home.

“Hello, Cadre-Commander Wren,” Eighty-Five’s smooth “Melissa Willoughby” voice emerged eerily from nowhere. “Program Director Meisinger, Mister Lessing.”

Wrench said, “Access, encode, protect, and create a safe file Name it Goddard-com. Find Bill Goddard.”

“PHASE-Commander Goddard is in his office in Bethesda, Maryland. Do you require further location coordinates?”

“No. Establish contact.”

The hologram of the schoolchildren blinked out, and Bill Goddard appeared in its place. He sat at a cluttered work table, surrounded by computer terminals, communications gear, and half-a-dozen PHASE personnel, among whom Lessing recognized Chuck Gillem and Dan Groto from Ponape. Plastic plates, coffee cups, and an empty, orange-splattered pizza carton littered the files and documents in front of Goddard and his crew. Eighty-Five had caught PHASE in the middle of a supper-cum-staff meeting. Goddard looked up at the camera, surprise evident upon his fleshy features.

“Well, well!” He leaned back in his chair. “Mary and two of her little lambs!”

Wrench started to make a sarcastic reply, but Lessing cut him short. “Bill, can we talk? Without the personalities?” Goddard pursed his lips. “Why not?”

All three spoke at once, but Lessing got the floor. “We have a problem.” He related what Easley had told Wrench.

Goddard shook his grizzled head. “You’re an amazing dinker, Lessing. What kind of ka-ka do you smoke? Of course PHASE is screening lib-reb prisoners in California… for the best reasons in the world! Some of ’em are criminals with records long enough to step on, some are escapees, some are assassins who’d make a bee-line for Outram or Mulder… or you… if we let ’em go! Some are Vizzies… the same lovely bunch who dropped Starak on us! Remember? What do you expect? Of course PHASE is looking at ’em!”

“Okay, okay,” Wrench tried to mollify him. “But without consulting Lessing, here? Or Mulder? Or Outram?”

“Shit. We don’t need consultation. PHASE has Federal police powers. And we did inform your guys on the scene. Check with Holm.”

“Told you so,” Lessing muttered to Wrench.

“Anyway, we don’t grab off many of your lib-rebs. We question them, pull out those on the wanted list, and hand your guys legal warrants. I guess we’ve picked up a couple hundred of their laugh-able ‘soldier boys’ that way. No more. The rest we gave back to you… and you’re welcome to ‘em.”

Wrench bit his lip. “I was told that PHASE was grabbing off a lot of lib-rebs. More than a couple hundred, anyway. Not all military, either, but civilians and families.”

“Gub it, you are crazy! No such thing! Why would we want ‘em? We don’t have camps… tents… personnel.” His eyes widened. “And don’t tell me we’re taking ‘em off and shooting ‘em! Don’t try to pin that on PHASE!”

A voice off -camera said something, and Goddard grunted. “Hell, I’m told that our guys in California think you’re disappearing some lib-reb boogies! Quite a few of ‘em never made it to Oregon. We were about to ask you where the bus slopped.”

“What?” Lessing was baffled. “I don’t…!”

Wrench said, “Eighty-Five? You listening? Dammit, of course you are! Compare Cadre lists of lib-reb P.O.W.s taken in Sacramento with arrival rosters at the reorientation centers in Oregon. Print out any names not on both lists… and check for reasons why.”

“You should’ve done that before you came hollering at me!” Goddard complained. He addressed Eighty-Five also: “Compare those Cadre lists with PHASE files of lib-rebs taken into custody in California and Oregon.”

It took less than ten seconds. A box appeared in the corn-link hologram to the left of Goddard’s face. Names scrolled past.

“Hard-copy that!” Wrench commanded. A printer began to whine behind him.

Goddard pointed at his own screen. “Jesus, look! Those’re mostly Jewish names… Rosenbaum, Siegel, Greenberg, Silverstein, Levine, Aaron…”

“Isn’t Daniel Jacoby the producer who made Train to Darkness… the movie that came out a few years ago about World War If?” Lessing asked. “You know, the Treblinka camp… Bella Gold starred in it?”

“Yes.” Liese reached past him for the printout. “Reuben Meyer. Financier. Corporate raider.”

“Marvin Weisskopf!” Wrench dug fingers into his wavy, brown hair. “Hey, I met that guy! Theoretical physics professor. M.I.T.! Eighty-Five, provide dossiers on these people!”

The printer churned, and paper piled up in the out-tray.

A name caught Lessing’s eye. He bent down and read: “Arthur Shapiro. Consultant: American Zionist Action Committee of New York. Age fifty-nine. Male. Divorced.”

He saw a white-wrapped mummy spreadeagled amidst glittering implements. Horror

Ice-blue

The printer stopped.

“What… where… these people?” Liese glared at Goddard.

The big man scowled back. “Not with us. Not PHASE. Ask Wrench, there, or Lessing.”

“You’re thumbing prisoners!” Lessing accused angrily. “Vanishing ‘em… like in South America… death squads!”

“Bullshit!” Goddard roared back. “Not my people! PHASE is more disciplined than that! Your half-assed toy soldiers, now…!”

“Eighty-Five, list the units that took custody of the people who disappeared,” Wrench ordered. “There must be documents… authorizations, transport, food, supplies, fuel for trucks. Records, damn it!”

The machine said, “PHASE Special Unit F near Sacramento. PHASE Special Unit M at Red Bluff. I can provide details, if you wish.”

Goddard shoved his ruddy face forward, almost into the camera lens. “What the pog’re you talking about? We don’t have any such units! There is no ‘Special Unit F’… no ‘M’ either! Somebody’s fuckin’ well lying!”

His eyes swivelled right to stare at the screen in PHASE headquarters. Lessing and his companions saw the same thing on theirs: a blue-and-gold shield, upon which the words “U.S. GOVERNMENT: ACCESS RESTRICTED” now flashed angry scarlet

Before they could speak, the hologram changed again. The shield was replaced by a man’s face: squarish, mottled pallid-pink, with ice-chip-blue eyes, and hair like tendrils of white frost. His expression was a mixture of surprise, wariness, and something like hostility.

“Just what is it you’re looking for?” Janos Korinek inquired mildly in his high-piping, reedy voice.