by Jim Stark
"Mom,” said Barry as he ran over to his mother. He burrowed his small head into her stomach as he wrapped his arms around her and held on tight.
"Oh ... right!” said Julia, as she finally understood the situation. “I ... forgot."
"That woman has got to learn our rules and live by them,” said Alice as she stroked her son's head. “Anybody with the flu or a cold has to be better for three full days before they enter the Kid-Kare center. It's like she doesn't even—"
"Yeah, I forgot she was sick,” said Julia. “I guess Lilly didn't know that we had a rule about—"
"It's her business to know, for Christ's sake,” grumped Alice. “And even if she didn't know, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. I mean—"
"Barry,” interrupted Julia, “let's tell your mom about all those exciting things we learned on the Net. We learned two brand new tricks today,” she said directly to Alice.
"Yeah,” said Barry proudly as his mother pried his hands off her butt. “We learned two good tricks,” he said.
Chapter 18
MURDER, HE WROTE
Monday, February 14, 2033—10:00 a.m.
Gilbert Henderson was America's marquee muckraker, the man who had almost single-handedly cranked the WDA's approval rating from an A-plus all the way down to a D-minus, or worse. His place of work was inside his plush Manhattan home, in the second floor front bedroom, to be precise, the room where his famous father had once run his investigative empire—and did so without all the advantages of 21st-century technology. Like many contemporaries of his social class, he placed a high value on antiques, and he felt a special pride in those that represented family. Three walls of his large office were covered with photos—some dating back to the late 19th century—and with awards—those won by his late father, and those he had won himself.
As Gil approached his fifty-sixth birthday, he had three unfulfilled wishes.
He wished his wife would come back to him, but that wasn't going to happen. Truth be told, he'd been a lousy husband. Like Einstein, he frequently said to himself by way of consolation, or explanation.
He wished his friend and long-time secretary, Fiona Bledsoe, was straight, or would at least accept a Valentine's Day card from him in the right spirit. He felt this sadness every February 14 ... tradition.
And finally, he wished his father had lived to witness the investigative coups he had made, the so-called “Henderson Scandals.” True, the crimes that he had unearthed were misdemeanors, really, but catching the WDA in a lie, no matter how trivial, had shaken public confidence, badly. The WDA was, after all, the organization that had restricted the LieDeck to its own use, and held global power on the basis of a self-assigned mandate to police the planet, using the device ... and whatever else it took.
All in all, Gil's life was unhappy, in spite of his successes and celebrity. Part of the problem was that he couldn't seem to stop himself from wishing the impossible. That was a double-edged character flaw, as helpful in his professional pursuits as it was unhelpful in his private life. Still, he had one more unfulfilled wish that did stand some chance of being realized. He hoped that the LieDeck device would be unbanned ... even if it meant the obsolescence of his particular career choice. And even with the great Lester Connolly out of commission for a while, he judged there was a reasonable chance that the LieDeck would soon be unbanned—and he said so just yesterday, again, in his regular column in the New York Times.
Gil lit the fireplace, a daily winter ritual. Then he sat behind his father's old desk and looked at his state-of-the-art MIU. He was ready for another day.
While his reputation was the stuff of legend at every journalism school in the world, it was always in need of furtherance, never far from danger. Peaks and valleys, he thought, just like Dad. Indeed, his father's career had survived several assassination attempts by governments and competitors. That was the trouble with investigative work in the media. It wasn't like politics, where you had a defined term of office, some corporate backers and a party structure to depend upon and lean on. Gil's constituency was the people at large, and they loved him to pieces as long as he was on a winning streak. Lose one, and they were as fickle as sports fans. “T'row da bum out,” he kept hearing in his dreams.
The screen of Gil's MIU was dark. He leafed through a stack of letters, about twenty, an average Monday haul. For the past fifteen years, ever since the SuperNet was launched by the WDA, most people simply faced their tips to him. Now, however, with widespread doubts and fears associated with the world body, many people were putting pen to paper again, using the “snail mail,” the hard mail. It wasn't actually known that the WDA could eavesdrop on civilians through the lenses and microphones of MIUs, but it was believed by many, suspected by most, and feared by all. And scariest of all was the suspicion, also held by many, that the WDA could do this illegal spying through MIUs even when one's MIU was turned off! And all this global doubt was born of Gil Henderson's labors—now referred to inclusively as the Henderson Scandals—upper case “H” and upper case “S.” Gilbert Henderson was to the WDA what Woodward, Bernstein and Deep Throat were to Richard Nixon, except his Nixon wouldn't even blush, let alone quit in disgrace. And so it was with a certain natural tension that he approached this daily snail-mail routine.
The first vetting resulted in three letters being tossed aside on the desk, still sealed. Gil never opened any letter that had no return address. That was policy at the New York Times. And besides, Gil knew that Fiona would read them, and she'd let him know if she found anything juicy. It was a ridiculous way to proceed, but he could not risk getting caught in a lie, especially on a matter of company policy. His editor at the Times was a classy man, an intellectual with solid brass balls, but ... well, one never knew who could be “turned” these days, or what all was being recorded by the WDA, for later LieDeck-verification.
The letters that he did open were briefly scanned, and deemed quite unworthy of his personal or immediate attention. He handed the whole lot to Fiona, including the three he hadn't opened. She took them with her as she stepped briskly from the office. A minute later, just as Gil was getting geared up to polish off his column for tomorrow's Netnews, Fiona returned, tossing an opened envelope on his desk. “You forgot one,” she said as she walked back out of his office.
Gil stared at the envelope. It now had a return address, written in Fiona's distinctive, ultra-neat hand. The letter had to be from “Eyeball,” the unknown source who had been behind most of Gil's biggest, career-making exposés. “Thanks Fiona,” he said casually. “Sorry,” he added as she departed, just in case he was being observed by the WDA.
Once he was alone again, Gil withdrew a single hand-written page from the envelope, wondering what new revelation he'd find inside, what could be so important as to warrant this risk. He was sure this mysterious source had to be inside the WDA, possibly even high up in the WDA. He had deduced long ago that the occasional “Eyeball” missives he had been receiving over the years could only have come from someone who had the use of a LieDeck, and no one doubted that every LieDeck in the world was possessed by the WDA. And if his source was in the WDA ... well, misuse of a LieDeck was a career-smasher and a long jail term, minimum. Under world law, the WDA could even apply the death penalty for this offense in cases where the consequences of the crime were serious. That was the law, the WDA's law, even if it had never come to that because no agent was foolish enough to do it. Except for my guy, thought Gil, wondering yet again if his “guy” was indeed an agent.
Gil read the handwritten note slowly, digesting every word:
Dear Gil:
Today, Tuesday, February 8, 2033, Lester Connolly lost his left arm to necrotizing fasciitis, and he may yet die. Sheena Kalhoun knew the exact nature of his illness at least 20 minutes before he was admitted to hospital and at least 40 minutes before it was diagnosed! For this to be, one is led to the inescapable conclusion that Lester Connolly's disease was no accident of nature, and that Sheena Kalhoun, or someone el
se inside the WDA, is guilty of attempted murder. If this is so, there must have been a conspiracy. It's probably not possible to pin this on Kalhoun or the WDA, but I hope you give it a try. Good luck.
Eyeball
As always, you must destroy this letter and envelope immediately.
Holy Christ, thought Gil. There's no way I can confirm that!
Lester Connolly was one of the gutsiest human beings Gil had ever known. He was the tireless campaigner who had founded the U.S. LieDeck Unbanning Committee, or “USLUC,” as it was more usually called. He was the first prominent American voice to vigorously challenge the WDA to lift the global ban on civilian use of the LieDeck. He had been a thorn in the side of the WDA for several years, pecking away at their feeble excuses, artfully suggesting that they had something to hide without ever making a direct accusation. His was a voice in the wilderness at first, but now, the WDA's own opinion polls were saying that seventy-three percent of civilians agreed with Lester Connolly. In fact the momentum behind his bold crusade was growing internationally, not just because of the merits of his plan, but because of the passion he was able to generate in those who caught him in full rhetorical flight. He was mesmerizing ... and now, he was recovering from a brush with death, and missing an arm.
The WDA must be going absolutely crazy that he survived, thought Gil. And ... this thought was painful in the extreme ... and now they probably want and need to finish him off! They always finish what they start.
Gil walked over to the fireplace. After reading the letter again, word for word, with his back squarely to his MIU, he made permanent mental notes of the date it was sent and the figures therein. Then he squatted down and surreptitiously placed the note and the envelope in between two spitting logs. He watched them flare up and turn to ash. “What a load of crap,” he said, for the benefit of the WDA. Thanks, old friend, he said in his mind. You're probably right about my chances, but it's best that I know about this anyway.
Eyeball had been a source of blockbuster information for sixteen years. His scrawled letters were few, but they had all been proven right—at least those that had led to closure. Some things I can't fix, thought Gil. But I've got to try to save Lester.
He went into his bedroom, where there was no MIU to spy on him, and where he kept his father's old Macintosh SE. There, he began constructing a short note on the antique computer, redoing it time after time. When he finally got it exactly right, he wrote it out on a piece of paper and erased all memory of the work he'd done from the hard drive. Then he sealed the hand-written note in an envelope, wrote “Jimmy Ball” on the outside, and put it in his jacket pocket. He walked out of the bedroom, through his office, on to the outer office, and handed the sealed note to Fiona, with only a nod. She knew what to do. After she left, he sat back down at his MIU and wrote an extremely carefully worded column about the arguably suspicious nature of Lester Connolly's untimely illness.
Minutes later, Fiona Bledsoe got on a subway train with the printed message in her pocket, a message that absolutely could not be sent electronically from Gil's MIU. Half an hour later, it was handed to Gil's close friend, Herb Pringle, the chairman of Pringle Polling, in his office. Minutes after that, Herb Pringle's image appeared on the Netscreen of an MIU at V-Insight, the aggressively assertive polling outfit owned and operated by the Victor-E clan up in Québec. Pringle spoke Gil's words as if they were his own, and made no effort to start diplomatically or exit gracefully. He just said his piece, forcefully, then blanked himself off the Net.
Jimmy Ball ran the operations of V-Insight. The corporation that he headed was in conflict with Pringle Polling over a subcontracting job that went sour back in 2032, a conflict that was certain to end up in bitter litigation. The message from Herb Pringle seemed to relate to that conflict ... but it makes no sense at all, Jimmy thought. He put this issue aside and returned to his other work.
Hours later, when he was reviewing his day and couldn't avoid getting back to that strange message, he noticed that Annette's name was included in the words that Pringle had spoken. Oh jeeze! he thought. He commanded his MIU to create a written version of Pringle's words on an old-fashioned diskette, in an ancient program called “Microsoft Word 4.” He then de-archived Pringle's message from his MIU and sent the diskette to Annette Blais by way of a live messenger, just as he had been instructed to do whenever he got any strange message that had her name in it. I wonder if I'll ever know what that was all about? he asked himself. I hope Annette doesn't notice that I missed the signal at first, when I reviewed the thing. She hates stupid delays.
Chapter 19
FROSTY RECEPTION
Monday, February 14, 2033—4:30 p.m.
Lilly was feeling quite a bit better now, although she figured it would still be a few days before her cold was gone for good. She felt well enough to get on with her LieDeck-verification of the “hermit of the lodge,” so she got dressed up in the warmest things she had that didn't make her look like a man ... no sense eliminating the possibility that a glimpse of my endless legs might be just the incentive needed to loosen the man up.
Just before she left the apartment, her MIU signaled an incoming face. She let the machine archive it, and then ran the thing. It was a Bobby Fox, the head of the Kid-Kare center, reminding her that she was not to be in there until she was over her cold for three full days. Fuck you, she said in her mind. She called him back immediately—he wasn't answering, and her clandestine view of his office showed that he actually wasn't there ... unless he's hiding from the lens. She left him a short archived face—"Sorry; it was my mistake; it won't happen again"—and closed down her MIU. It was indeed her fault, and it wouldn't happen again, but as for being sorry ... well, it's a damned good thing they don't have LieDecks, she thought as she left the room and locked the door.
When she got out to the front of the E-tery, she found a small problem with her new car. The block heater was plugged in, but not all the way in. Maybe Lars meant to do it, she thought. But ... he wants to get me in bed—me and every other woman on Earth—so maybe he did it right and somebody else came along and loosened it? Lilly figured that was the most likely explanation, but as she unplugged the cord the rest of the way, she decided not to make an issue of this. It wasn't a crime, after all. It was a nasty prank at worst, and if she made a fuss ... it's just not worth it.
Lilly got in her brand new Aura and turned the key. The engine started, although not without complaining. When she asked for heat, the fan motor whined as if to scold her for the ice crystals that had formed inside. She left everything running while she got out and gave the windows a scrub with the plastic scraper that had been left for her on the front passenger seat. After giving the front windscreen and the side windows a cursory going over, she ducked back inside quickly—she was still grossly under-dressed for this hostile weather—and then she backed the vehicle out. Her intention was to turn east on Highway 148, but when she checked right and left for traffic, she wished she had been a lot more diligent in scraping the frost off the side windows. She'd never used an ice scraper before this day—she'd never had to—and it had seemed the frost was sort of “welded” onto the glass. It was hard to scrape it off successfully, so she did a lousy job of it, and now had to stop the car, get out, and do it again, proper this time. With the job done at least better than before, she got back in her new car, looked east and west, and said “good enough.” She eased the transmission back into gear and pressed the accelerator.
By this time, the rear defog had completely cleared the window at the back. I wonder why they don't put that feature on all the windows? Truth is, they probably did, and some WDA flunky probably forgot to ask what that option was, or whether it would be needed in Québec.
"Shawville 1, Quyon 17,” the sign read. Kilometers, she reminded herself, not miles. She checked the speedometer, and it had both systems of measurement. She eased onto the road, checked all mirrors for traffic, and adjusted the seat back ... as far as it could go, actually. S
he let her mind backtrack to a brief encounter she'd had over the Net with Davie Brown, the clan's snitch. After yacking away about the local gossip, he'd put on a rather conspiratorial visage, and told her what was surely an often-repeated regional joke: “Shawville is so small that if you tell a lie, it comes back as the truth.” This Davie fellow wasn't as helpful as Lilly had hoped. She felt she had better concentrate on her driving.
The highway had been plowed, but it was still perhaps ninety percent covered with packed snow—in some places, one hundred percent. The dirty white crust was less than a quarter-inch deep, but that was enough to conceal the centerline most of the time. Her bedroom window faced the highway, and while she'd been recuperating from the cold, she'd heard and seen the huge government trucks rumble by, and she had talked to one of her Florence Nightingales about that whole d eal.
The sand was apparently mixed three-to-one with salt—otherwise the sand would freeze into a useless block. The trucks had a big, two-sectioned plow on the front; the first angled and curved blade covered an entire lane, the second covered the shoulder of the road, and the truck went so fast the snow flew off the end of the second blade onto great white banks far out beyond the shoulder. Behind the cab was a hopper for the sand mixture, and a whirling circular device at the back left which threw the grit across the entire road. From the pattern of the sand, Lilly could get a general notion of where the pavement ended and the shoulder began. She had never driven in such tricky conditions, so she resolved to take it easy, and to hell with anybody held up behind her.
A few miles later, the engine had heated up sufficiently to produce a gale of hot air, enough to melt the remaining frost from the windshield, and from the side windows too. Lilly found the nervous tension flowing out of her. She took off her right glove, inserted her Sniffer into the angled slot situated on the dash, where its camera lens would catch a driver's image, and watched out of the corner of her eye as the small screen lit up.