Cutter wanted to box somebody’s ear. Watson might have been an innocent bystander/civilian, but he was Harris’s adjutant. In the admiral’s mind, Watson’s connection to Harris made him fair game.
“What do you hear from Harris?” he asked, knowing full well Watson had not heard anything.
“I haven’t heard from him,” said Watson. “Have you heard anything?”
Have you heard anything…sir, Cutter thought. He said, “The reason we left Mars was because the general ordered us out of the space lanes.”
“He ordered us out?” asked Watson. He looked confused.
Cutter took some satisfaction in the perplexed expression on Watson’s face. At least the boy knows who is in charge, he thought. “Ordered us out,” he repeated.
“Admiral, maybe I don’t understand the chain of command. Harris told me you gave the orders.”
Cutter heard this, and his tension eased again. He said, “I thought maybe things were getting hot for him. When things heat up, Harris acts like a rabid dog. It’s a Liberator thing.”
“Did he say why he wanted us to leave orbit?”
“When Harris goes rabid, he doesn’t make a lot of sense. He called my crew incompetent and told me to pack up and leave.”
“He hasn’t contacted me,” said Watson, “not since he left for Mars.”
Cutter leaned back in his chair. He stared at Watson but said nothing. He bounced the chair back gently, let it rock forward, then settle back. Finally, he said, “Maybe you can help me interpret something. Harris gave me a message he wanted me to relay to you. He said, ‘Anything that can be programmed can be reprogrammed.’”
Watson shook his head, and said, “I’m not familiar with the phrase. Did he say what it’s supposed to mean?”
“If he had told me what it meant, I wouldn’t ask you to help me interpret it,” said Cutter, smiling with a new sense of smug satisfaction. “He said that anything that can be programmed can be reprogrammed, and he said to tell you that Ray Freeman wanted you to know that.”
“Ray Freeman again,” said Watson. “Is Freeman on Mars?”
Cutter shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t know how he could have gotten there, but no one ever knows how Freeman does anything. The man is more mysterious than God himself.”
“Admiral, I still don’t know anything about Freeman—just that I wouldn’t want to be trapped on a transport with him.”
“I’ve met him,” said Cutter. “He’s a merc.”
“A what?”
“He’s a mercenary. No. Stow that. That’s a euphemism. Freeman isn’t a mercenary, mercenaries fight wars. Freeman’s a damn sight worse than a merc. He’s the scariest man alive. The bastard’s eight feet tall with skin as dark as night and fists the size of rucksacks.”
“You’re joking, right?” asked Watson. “He sounds like a troll in a fairy tale.”
“I may be exaggerating a bit,” Cutter admitted.
Watson said, “He can’t be any worse than Harris.”
Cutter laughed. “Harris looks like a missionary next to Freeman; no, a Boy Scout. We’re all babes in the woods compared to that man. He’s a grenade without a pin.”
“How do I find him?” asked Watson.
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” asked Admiral Cutter.
“I heard you.”
“And you still want to find him.”
“It sounds like the only way I’m going to decode Harris’s message is to find Freeman and ask him what it means.”
Even warned that Freeman is dangerous, the kid wants to find him, Cutter thought. He found new respect for Watson, maybe even for Harris. Harris was the one who’d hired him. Cutter tapped a few keys on his computer, and said, “Here’s the video feed of my conversation with Harris. You tell me what you think of it.”
The officers aboard the Churchill referred to the spaces in which they rested as their “quarters” or their “billet.” Watson referred to his as his “cabin.” Military men spoke military jargon. Travis Watson took pride in his ignorance of military terminology.
“Anything programmed,” he said to himself as he entered the room. “Computers,” he whispered. Too obvious, Watson decided. If Harris had wanted to communicate the obvious, he would have come right out and said it.
He went to the workstation, sat, and thought, Anything with a computer…bombs, missiles, ships, tanks, cars, clocks, the entire mediaLink. A hijacker could use the mediaLink to send subversive messages.
You know what, he thought, Cutter was right. Harris was irrational. He was acting like a lunatic. Maybe it was a Liberator thing. What he said, the way he was acting…and Freeman. What could Freeman have to do with any of it? When did Harris hear from Freeman? Unless he was on Mars, how would Harris have talked to him?
But something about what Harris had said resonated with him. Something about reprogramming things that are programmed. Watson had watched the video feed closely. He had seen the way Harris had fought to say those words. Irrational or not, they meant something. Even if they only had meaning for Harris, he must have seen something significant in them.
It must have had something to do with weapons. The only thing Harris ever worries about is guns and weapons, Watson thought. Weapons…If it was important to Harris, they were reprogramming weapons.
And so he went through a litany of weapons in his head.
Guns and knives—unprogrammable. Not a problem.
Tanks and jets had computers. What would you achieve by reprogramming them? You could make them crash or blow up. You could stop them from working. Maybe you could program them to attack each other.
But why go to the trouble of reprogramming them. There would be simpler ways to sabotage a tank or a jet.
There are computers in a fighter carrier. There are lots of computers in a fighter carrier, navigation, life support, weapons systems. There had to be more computer systems. Watson knew that there had to be more computers on board this giant ship, but he could not enumerate them.
The same question occurred to him again and again: “Why bother?” If you could get close enough to the computers on a fighter carrier to reprogram them, what would prevent you from destroying the ship?
Whatever they were reprogramming, it had to be big, big enough to justify the risks…big enough to cause damage to more than just itself and the clones inside it. Big enough…
And then he lit on an idea—Clones are programmed. The neural programming in clones was hardly a secret; but if there was a way to reprogram them…Watson explored the idea of reprogramming clones. It seemed unlikely, but then he asked himself, Isn’t that the point? Anything, ANYTHING that could be programmed, could be reprogrammed, even the programming you’d think was sealed.
How would you do it? he asked himself. Would you need to catch them one at a time and cut into their brains? Would you lobotomize them? That hardly seemed like a reprogramming.
He imagined an army of clones, all of them with long incisions across their skulls and bald spots where the hair would never grow. He imagined an army of zombies and laughed it off.
Then Watson considered the ramifications and the ugly possibilities—a shadow government controlling the synthetic government that appointed Earth’s puppet government. The clones had been benevolent conquerors, more interested in maintaining order than avenging past wrongs. No one wants their nation conquered, but the Enlisted Man’s Empire had been benign.
Watson, whose father had fought as a SEAL, recognized that the clones had plenty of reasons for wanting revenge. Though he feigned a casual air around them, he admired Harris and Cutter for the measured way they ran their empire.
Cutter had said he would send the video feed of Harris to Watson’s computer.
Watson pressed an icon on his monitor and brought up his mail. The message from Cutter sat at the top. Watson ran the feed. The screen split in half, the right side tight on Wayson Harris’s face, the left side not quite as tight on Cutter. At first glan
ce, they looked like mirror images of each other.
Harris stared into the camera, waiting for Cutter to respond. He looked irritated. When the admiral answered a few seconds later, Harris looked angry enough to kill. Harris asked, “When’s the last time you visited the spaceport?”
Cutter, clearly not realizing that Harris’s anger was directed at him, asked, “How bad?”
“Bad. I saw a couple swapping speck on a blanket. There were people all around them, but they didn’t care. Rabbits have more inhibitions than these people.”
“They didn’t mind the audience?” asked Cutter.
“What options did they have? You either get used to it or go eunuch. It’s not like the spaceport has speck-swapping rooms you can rent by the hour.”
Cutter said, “I hope you didn’t stare.”
Cutter and Harris were friends. Watson had seen them joking freely with each other. On this call, Harris lashed out. “I didn’t come here for fun.”
“Are you okay?” asked Cutter. He looked concerned.
“What the speck is that supposed to mean?”
“You seem tense.”
“Yeah, well, you come here and see how you like it. It’s not like lounging around on a spaceship.”
“Spaceship?” Watson muttered. When Harris spoke about Navy ships, he generally referred to them by name or by class. Harris always referred to the Churchill by name or by class, a Perseus-class fighter carrier.
“Real or not real?” he asked himself aloud. It was a game he’d begun playing with himself shortly after taking the job as Harris’s adjutant. It was his way of controlling the paranoia that came with the job.
On the feed, Harris said, “These people can’t even take a shit without a hundred people waiting in line behind them. They plan a day in advance just to take a shit.”
Both men remained silent, traces of anger evident in both their expressions.
“Harris, something’s happening back in the spaceport. We can’t reach Jackson.”
“What do you mean, you can’t reach him?”
“There’s no Link connection. They’re lost. I’m going to send down a team to look for them.”
“You can’t lose a specking regiment of Marines. That’s like saying you misplaced a gawddamned planet. What’s the matter with you?
“They’re here, in the Air Force base with me. I ordered them to come, and they came.”
“How did they get there?”
“What the speck do you mean, ‘How did they get here?’”
“I mean, Harris, how did that regiment of Marines travel from the spaceport to the base? They didn’t fly to the base. We’ve been watching the spaceport. None of the transports have launched. They couldn’t have taken the train, you told us to shoot out the rails.”
“Either you have someone asleep at the wheel, or your ship is broken, Admiral.
“They flew here. They boarded fifteen transports, and they flew here. How the speck do you miss fifteen transports? They’re big. They’re slow. They probably radioed in for clearance before they left the spaceport. Check your damn records.
“You know what? Don’t check your records. The transports are here, my men are here, I don’t give a shit what your specking records say, Cutter. I watched Jackson walk down the ramp. If your records say something else, then you’ve got bigger problems to fix than a few missed transports.”
“Maybe,” said Cutter.
Damn, Watson thought as he watched the blistering. No wonder Cutter was fuming. Watson had seen Harris get angry; but he had never lost control like this. Harris was like a child having a temper tantrum…a homicidal child. From what Watson knew about Liberators, they killed entire populations when they lost their temper.
On the screen, Harris said, “Listen, Cutter, I’ve already lost two Marines on this op. We’ve infiltrated Martian Legion headquarters. Okay? I’m closing in on the objective. I’ve almost finished what I specking well came here to do. You got that? Am I getting through to you?”
“Yes, you are,” said Cutter. His face turned red, and his expression became steely.
Harris said, “We’ve almost got this operation complete, and the last thing we need is for you to get in the way, so pack up your specking space patrol and get the hell out of here. Do you understand? Do you read me?”
Watson could not understand what was preventing Cutter from threatening Harris or maybe relieving him of command. Cutter was the superior officer. He had every right to slap back.
Cutter said, “We’ll clear out.”
“Good move,” said Harris.
He’s acting like a schoolyard bully, thought Watson. It wasn’t enough that he got his way; he had to have the last word and humiliate the other guy.
“Do you want me to leave Watson?”
Oh God, no! thought Watson.
“Why the speck would I want him around?” asked Harris. Then he said something so random Watson suspected that someone had edited the video feed. His face tightened as if he were fighting back pain, and he said, “Give him a message for me, would you. Tell that bastard that anything programmed can be reprogrammed. You tell him that. You tell him that for me.”
Watson reversed the feed and watched it again.
“Why the speck would I want him around?
“Give him a message for me, would you. Tell that bastard that anything programmed can be reprogrammed. You tell him that. You tell him that for me.”
He reversed and replayed, studying Harris’s face carefully, watching for any break in the transmission, anything that might suggest that Cutter or someone else had edited the feed. There was a clock in the corner designed as a security to prove the transmission had not been altered. It ran smoothly.
“Why the speck would I want him around?
“Give him a message for me, would you. Tell that bastard that anything programmed can be reprogrammed. You tell him that. You tell him that for me.”
“What the hell?” said Watson. He noted the crazed look in Wayson Harris’s eyes and the way he drew back his lips. The man was either insane with anger, in pain, or both.
Watson played the remaining seconds of video feed.
“What was that?” Cutter asked. “What was your message?”
“Not my message, asshole. Tell him Ray Freeman said that.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
Location: Washington, D.C.
Date: April 7, 2519
The people who ran the Unified Authority had seen themselves as creating a glorious history, a history they wanted preserved for future generations. They preserved the public side of that history in an archive that could be accessed from anyplace in the galaxy using a standard mediaLink connection. More private documents were stored on government computers. Highly classified files could only be accessed inside the Unified Authority archive building, in Washington, D.C.
Information involving Ray Freeman was kept in the archive building.
The Unifieds had listed him alternately as a contractor, a fugitive, an envoy, and an enemy. The files included several video records as well as documents.
Watson found and examined several photographs of Ray Freeman.
The man was a giant. He was not eight feet tall with “skin as dark as night” and “hands the size of rucksacks,” as Admiral Cutter had described him; but still, a dark-skinned giant.
In one photograph, Freeman stood beside a row of clones as they waited to enter a transport. Freeman wore combat armor, but no helmet. To Watson, who had grown up in a world devoid of ethnicities and races, the color of Freeman’s skin looked like an optical illusion. He thought that perhaps Freeman was standing in a shadow. He also thought Freeman might be standing on a curb or a platform. The next photo proved both theories wrong.
In this one, Freeman, Harris, and an unknown clone stood talking. Harris was nine inches shorter than Freeman; the top of his head was even with the big man’s chin. The unnamed clone was five inches shorter than Harris. His head
was level with Harris’s nose and Freeman’s chest.
A third photograph was taken with Freeman looking away. The back of his head was covered with scars. From the back, he looked like a burn victim.
The archive collection included a list of video feeds labeled with names and dates and marked EXPEDITED. The first one was marked, JOHN TURNBOW—EXPEDITED, 03/06/03. Watson ran the feed and immediately recognized it as a view seen through the computerized scope of a sniper rifle. Readouts along the edge of the scope tracked wind velocity—fifteen miles per hour—and distance—2.3 miles. As the time stamp along the bottom of the screen ticked off seconds, lines closed in around the target, a man walking toward a car.
A voice so low that it reminded him of a kettledrum asked, “Do you confirm identity as John Turnbow?”
“Identity confirmed. Expedite.”
Without responding, Freeman fired.
The rifle made a sound no louder than a muffled cough. Having never witnessed a murder or an execution, Watson felt his breath catch in his throat. For a moment, Watson thought the bullet had missed. One second passed and nearly another, then a bright red halo appeared around the target’s head, and he fell.
That was it. From this distance, it looked like Freeman might have shot him with red paint.
Watson found one file marked, EXPEDITED—MORGAN ATKINS, 11/8/09. “Morgan Atkins?” he whispered.
Until that moment, Watson had believed that Atkins, whose fanatical followers had nearly overthrown the Unified Authority, had merely disappeared. His prurient interest overpowering him, Watson booted the feed.
The video was captured using night-for-day lenses to compensate for the lack of ambient light. Up ahead, a shuttle sat on a runway surrounded by a small army of guards.
Watson wondered if he was looking through the lenses of a combat visor.
“Are we on?” the now-familiar voice asked.
“Yes.”
“Yes,” just “yes.” That simple word had signed the death warrant of one of the most famous figures in human history. Watson sat transfixed.
The Clone Sedition Page 14