Airship Nation (Darkworld Chronicles Book 2)

by Tom DeMarco

  The council was won over by the three carefully planned presentations. The Proctor received authorization to send his two squadrons north. While they were “shopping,” the council suggested, they might as well pick up some of the other items they had been wishing for. The Proctor immediately planned a third squadron to raid Newark Delaware for a supply of Kevlar, a miracle sail fabric that had been produced by a DuPont factory there.

  A week before the departure, Loren was in his office at the La Sabana airship yards when Emile Jouvet dropped by. They were well acquainted, as the Jouvets were frequent visitors at Monterreal. Emile got right to the subject: “I think you’re making an enormous mistake,” he said.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “These Macintosh computers. I hear you’re considering switching over to an entirely Macintosh operation.”

  “That’s right. We’re going to pattern it on the advanced research laboratory that the DoD set up for Lamar at Johns Hopkins.”

  “Yes, I know. That was an enormous mistake too.”

  “What are you getting at, Emile?”

  “Loren, my young friend, let us consider the long run. Just for the moment, the vast manufacturing might of western civilization is in a period of retrenchment. Companies that were at their peak just before the Effectors went on, have been dealt a body blow. They are only now figuring out how to get back into operation. But the time will come when the great corporation of the world are strong again. Believe me, we have not heard the last of Exxon/Mobil or Citibank or General Electric or Ford or IBM.”

  “Uh huh.” Loren looked down at the list of tasks on his desk.

  “When they are reborn, they will be more powerful than ever. Loren, have you considered that time? Have you considered what it might mean to be cut off from the support, the strength that an IBM could provide?”

  “You want us to get IBM computers instead of Apple, is that it?”

  “Blade servers instead of Apple’s rather rudimentary ones. Of course. To align yourself with power, with the might of that great corporation. To put yourself at the technical forefront. To arm our nation with the power of z/OS, of InfoSphere, Cognos, and Hypervisor technology, just to mention a few key items.”

  Loren shook his head in wonder. “I know you were a sales executive of a large company, back in the old world, Emile. That company wouldn’t have been IBM, would it?”

  “It was.” He said it as if working for any other corporation had never been an option.

  “And this visit here today, if I understand, is more or less a sales call?”

  “A little advice, my friend, that’s all. A little sage advice from a man who has seen the disaster that can result from not going with a winner.”

  “I think Lamar Armitage and I are competent to make this decision.”

  “Like most technical people, Loren, you see only one side of the question. You’re not thinking about things like on-going support.”

  “On-going support?! Where have you been these last four years, Emile? IBM is not going to give us any on-going support. IBM is dead. The corporation is dead, all corporations are. People haven’t got time for corporations they are too busy cutting and hauling grain.”

  Jouvet looked pained. “IBM is not dead. Other corporations may be dead, but not IBM. I can assure you that in Armonk, in Peekskill, in Binghamton and in Poughkeepsie, in San Jose and Nice and Montpelier, there is stirring of new life afoot. The corporation is alive and picking itself up to be great again. And this is your chance to be a part of its renaissance.”

  “Emile, I think you’ve missed something here. We’re not planning to buy these computers, we’re going to steal them. Not that there would be anybody there to buy them from.”

  “I don’t care whether you steal them or buy them. I only care that you get the right machines. This trivial little toy servers you’re considering are not the right machines. If you persist in your current thinking, you will regret your decision forever after. I’m trying to help you avoid a terrible mistake.”

  Chancellor Brill spent most of his days at the new Government Center near the waterfront. He had his offices in a lovely suite overlooking the harbor, and a pleasant residence on its own grounds adjacent to the complex. It was a point of honor with the Chancellor that people come to him, not the other way around. So Loren was surprised to see him show up at La Sabana. The Chancellor drove up in a coach pulled by four handsome quarter horses. Loren showed him into the canteen and offered what there was, some less than perfectly fresh coffee.

  The Chancellor looked unhappily at the muddy brown liquid. “Captain Martine, Loren, I have come here today on a matter of the very greatest importance. There is nothing less than the enduring prosperity of Victoria to consider, and I want you to, well, to consider it with me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Let us cast our minds backwards to the very last council meeting, the one in which you and Dr. Armitage and the Proctor made your presentation about the ‘shopping trip,’ I think you called it.”

  “Right.”

  “Now, at that meeting, if I have got my recollection of it right, we were absolutely unanimous in agreement. Quite unanimous.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Well, I don’t see how we could have been any more unanimous, but what were we unanimous about?”

  “Um…about agreeing?”

  “Precisely. That’s what I was saying. Or is that what you were saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything. I’m just listening to you, Mr. Chancellor.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s excellent. Someone has got to listen, I guess.”

  Loren waited silently.

  “Now, as I remember it, we agreed on the idea of a trip north, an exception to the embargo. That was what we agreed on, only that. Of course, the object of the trip, the raid, was to acquire a powerful computing capacity that we all understand we need. But I don’t recall that we actually agreed on the explicit makeup of the equipment to be acquired.”

  “On the contrary…”

  “Oh, well, maybe we did just hint at one particular brand, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t reconsider now in the light of mature judgment and… ”

  “Let me guess. You have a suggestion to make about what kind of equipment we ought to bring back.”

  “Well, as it happens…”

  “You’re going to suggest that we give due consideration to on-going support, and the nature of the company that stands behind the product.”

  “Yes, I agree! Mr. Jouvet has giving me some pretty high-powered advice on just those matters. Those are important things to keep in mind. We ought not to go off half-cocked and get some stuff in here that won’t be supported and will leave us high and dry when the really big advances of the near future…”

  “Mr. Chancellor, have you ever written a program? Have you ever worked with a computer? Have you ever even stood near a computer?”

  “Not entirely near. You see, it is my function to oversee and to give direction from a perspective of seniority, paying due attention to major strategic matters such as…” Chancellor Brill let his voice trail off.

  “Don’t you think, Mr. Chancellor, that this is the kind of conversation that really ought to be completed in your office? I mean, mightn’t that be an altogether preferable site for a discussion of this importance?”

  “Well, yes. I do think that, actually. It would be more fitting, given the importance, I mean.”

  “Good. I suggest you go right back to your office then and complete the discussion. I’ll stay here. Carry on without me.”

  On the last night before departure, Kelly and Loren had supper alone on the terrace overlooking St. James. There were two candles on the table in crystal containers. The moon was new in the East, the stars were clear. Loren lifted his wine glass in one hand and Kelly’s in the other as she seated herself.

  “To love,” he said. He clinked the two glasses together.

  Kelly reached out for her glass. “And to
my brave warrior. May he come home safe. Loren, I hate it when you go.”

  “This is a piece of cake, silly. We’ll be home in four days. We won’t be resisted, because nobody has realized yet that there is something in Marlowe, New Hampshire worth stealing. Nobody’s thinking about computers except ourselves. We won’t even be noticed. I was thinking I might go into the town, very discreetly, just to see what’s happening, to pick up some news. And, I also thought I’d like to bring back a little gift for you. Isn’t that how it used to work? When a fellow went off on a business trip, he would bring back a present for his sweetheart.”

  “Well, since you ask, there is something that I would like. And you won’t even have to go into town for it. This warehouse you’re raiding, if I’ve got it straight, has got all kinds of computers and other electronic gear. Not just one kind of thing. Isn’t that right?”

  “Sure. What would you like?”

  “Well, it’s not exactly for myself. But I was just thinking that it might be best for Victoria, if, in addition to Macintosh computers, you also picked up…”

  “Kelly! Not you too!”

  “But Emile was telling me…”

  “I know what Emile was telling you.”

  Marlowe, New Hampshire: The battle pavilion Ardent rested in place over the converted mill building by the side of the Ashuelot River. With all Effectors locked, it maintained itself thirty feet up from the roof. There was an electric lift in operation, raising equipment carried up to the roof by airmen from Ardent’s crew. A force of some one hundred fifty armed soldiers guarded the periphery of the building. These had been put in place by the escort pavilions Leviathan and Swiftsure, which were now hovering two hundred feet over the site, on the lookout for resistance. So far, no one from the village seemed to have noticed the presence of Loren’s squadron. It was just after two in the morning. They would be gone before dawn.

  Inside the building, Loren was checking off equipment as it was carted up to the roof. There had been some water damage to the warehouse contents, but most of the damage was limited to the cardboard boxes, since the electronic products were secure in their plastic interior packaging. There was no evidence of vandalism except for a few broken windows. On the second floor of the mill-warehouse, they found more Mac servers than they could ever need plus forty complete jMac workstations. Armitage said that there might have been as few as one hundred of the jMacs ever manufactured. With the haul from Johns Hopkins, Victoria would have most of them.

  The servers would become the basis of a reinvented Internet for Victioria. The jMacs would suffice for development machines and for command and control systems on board the pavilions. But there was also a need for tiny single-chip computers to control the missiles and the lenses. Loren found bins of these chips in the components section of the basement. Here the water damage had been worse and some of the plastic packages had been gnawed by rodents. But he managed to assemble more than a thousand chips with reasonably integral plastic around them. They would need more in time, but this would be a good beginning. He located a half dozen interface units that would connect the development computers to the chips and allow programs to be burned into the chip memories. They took all the printers and printer supplies in the warehouse. Finally Loren gave instructions to his crew to begin loading the contents of the spare parts section, taking anything with an Apple Computer label on it. He busied himself looking for the few remaining items on his list.

  As he passed through the system section of the warehouse, he encountered two members of Swiftsure’s crew, piled high with boxes. “Hold on, airmen. What have you got there?”

  The two placed their boxes on the floor hurriedly and saluted Loren. He saw they were native Cubans. He addressed them in Spanish: “Doing some shopping of your own?”

  “No sir,” the shorter of the two replied. “Orders from Captain Hopkins. She asked us to bring back four of these boxes, Sir.” He held out a sheet of paper on which Loren read the model number and product code, written in Candace’s scrawl: BladeCenter PS700 Servers.

  “Very good, airmen. Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes sir,” they said in unison.

  “Then you’ll understand that I find it necessary to countermand Captain Hopkins’s order.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Come with me.” Loren led the two Cubans into the electronic toys and games section of the warehouse. He picked out a selection of the products on the shelves and loaded up the two airmen with them. When they could carry no more, he had them pause while he scratched a note on Candace’s sheet.

  “My regards to Captain Hopkins, and give her this.” He stuffed the sheet into the jacket pocket of the nearer airman. “She’ll find these far more useful than what she actually sent you for.”

  “Yes sir.”

  On the approach to La Sabana, Loren had his coxswain hold up and circle one time around the moored ships to check off the return of the other two squadrons. He breathed a sigh of relief to see Klipstein’s flagship Superb, and Van Hooten’s own Resolute, both new two hundred foot battle pavilions. Their escorts vessels Ajax, Revenge, Bellerophon and Dreadnought were also on their moorings. So both the Delaware and Johns Hopkins squadrons had returned safely. The rest of the fleet was out. That seemed a bit curious, since Victory and Conqueror were scheduled for refitting and should have been somewhere above or about the yards. They were nowhere to be seen. He gave the nod to the coxswain to descend and occupy the last remaining port of the airship terminal. Proctor Buxtehude met him as he came down the ramp.

  “Welcome home, Captain. All missions successful. Two squadrons already down ahead of you, as you can see, and the fourth in contact by light radio from over the Caribbean; she will be here within hours.”

  “There was a fourth squadron on the mission?”

  “Oh, yes. I sent Victory and Conqueror off to Boca Raton under Captain Wu.”

  “Boca Raton.” Loren felt weary.

  “Yes. There is a manufacturing facility there where some rather sophisticated computers were made, and I thought it might be prudent if we hedged our bets a bit and picked up a few.”

  “I didn’t think you were much into computers, sir.”

  “No, but as luck would have it, I bumped into Emile Jouvet just the morning after you left, and we had quite a talk. He’s remarkably well informed on the subject of computers, you know.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “Anyway, they’ll be here by the afternoon, and you can see what they’ve got. I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the equipment Emile has recommended. I can’t imagine it won’t be useful.”

  Loren picked up his kit and headed toward the field where a small flyer and pilot were waiting to take him down to Monterreal. He was shaking his head. It was lucky, he supposed, that Jouvet was on their side, or at least not directly opposed. He was a good soldier, doing his best in what he thought the right cause. If all his dedication and energy had been put to work for Rupert Paule, Victoria would have been in real trouble.

  11

  MARY SUNSHINE

  The man called Nehemiah had prospered in St. James. Most of the other spies, the ones sent by Rupert Paule, had gone to work at La Sabana, where the technology they’d come to steal was most in evidence. But Nehemiah’s object was not the technology. He got a job as a clerk in Chancellor Brill’s office. Just as he was a dedicated and clever spy, he was a dedicated and clever clerk. It hadn’t taken long for the Chancellor to come to depend on him to run the whole office. The position gave him access to information of all kinds. It also gave him a great freedom of motion.

  On an errand one morning to the Bursar’s office, he was passing down a long empty corridor on the top floor of Government House, the old provincial seat. He heard the click of heels approaching from the opposite end of the hall, a single female coming toward him. When she passed into the light by the bank of windows he realized with a gasp it was the Princess. He was astonished at how lovely she was, how tall and elegant, e
legant even in a pair of jeans. She had her hair up. He turned to look at her back as she passed, particularly at her slender neck. I could kill her, he thought; it would be so easy. He considered the image of his own hands wrapped around her neck and found it immensely moving. He could feel himself becoming erect. But that was not his mission, at least not yet. He carried on down the long corridor, striving to regain his composure.

  Edward Barodin, master architect of St. James was feeling mellow. He was seated in the top floor library of Monterreal Castle across from Kelly. In the fireplace at their side a fire was burning down. They had each had two glasses of Cuban brandy after a pleasant dinner. Loren had gone off to bed immediately after the meal, so now Kelly and Edward were alone. Edward was being alternately expansive and reflective: “Honestly, Kelly, what I miss most is the fun we all used to have together. It isn’t the science or the research. God knows it isn’t the math. And I always hated computers. But I loved it when we got together just for giggles: you and Loren and Homer and Sonia and myself, and Claymore. There were lovely times.”