The Liedeck Revolution Book #2: Endgame

by Jim Stark

  She dug out her antique Mac Plus from the back of her closet, brought it into the bathroom where the camera-eye of her MIU couldn't peek, and sat the thing on the toilet seat. She then attached the mouse, plugged the old computer in, sat on the edge of the tub and waited half a minute for the dingdang “smileyface” to get off the nine-inch gray-scale monitor. “Finally,” she said quietly as she pushed in the disk, clicked on the icon, clicked on the folder, and clicked on the only file it contained. How did humanity ever endure all this infernal waiting? she wondered while the ancient “marvel of the 20th century” coped with the apparently-Herculean task of getting the words up onto the screen.

  Dear Mr. Ball:

  If there is any reason to talk to you, I don't know what it is. You can not expect to be able to just kidnap a market by means of guile and trickery. We will naturally protect all our vital interests, and lest you imagine Annette can help, her currency is worthless here, so use your head and a little bit of Christian charity. I'm not going to ease this burden for you guys, not now, not ever! Herbert Pringle. 18he4b—23510193148

  The words made no sense, but Annette knew what to do. The second part of the code at the bottom, the long number, was a mystery to her, but the first part—18he4b—was deliciously simple. She highlighted the entire message, scrolled down the “font” menu and switched things to eighteen-point “Helvetica” ... the meaning of “18he.” Then she adjusted the margins to a width of four inches and added “bold,” the meaning of the “4b.” Now the message read:

  If there is any reason to talk to you I don't know what it is. You can not expect to be able to just kidnap a market by means of guile and trickery. We will naturally protect all our vital interests, and lest you imagine Annette can help, her currency is worthless here, so

  use your head and a little bit of

  Christian charity. I'm not going to ease this burden for you guys, not now, not ever! Herbert Pringle.

  The conversion complete, she disengaged the highlighting and read the first word on the left side of each line, in descending order. That decoded the message, which read: “If you can kidnap and protect lest her use Christian ease now."

  Ease, she considered with her chin on her fist. He must mean ... Es ... Evolutionaries ... the Christian Evolutionaries across the river, at Jesus-E! So I'm supposed to use these half-wits to kidnap and protect—she stared hard at the screen—lest ... her? It took her a few seconds to get it. Lester! she realized. Lester Connolly! But he's in a D.C. hospital, a week or so after having his left arm amputated. His life was saved, but ... it must be that his life is in danger again ... which means...

  Annette could hardly believe where her mind was now going. Only the WDA can be behind this, she realized with horror. Lester wasn't supposed to lose his arm from that disease, he was supposed to ... to die!

  She left the bathroom briefly to get a slip of paper and a pen. When she returned, she wrote a longhand copy of the message, the un-rearranged version with the two codes at the bottom, and hid it in her left sock. No ... on second thought, she reconsidered as she retrieved the note and tucked it into her brassiere, under her left breast. Then she erased the text from the disk, closed down her old Mac, and put it back in the closet.

  After putting on her coat and boots, she walked briskly out of Sleepery #1, out of the hub, down Mainspoke, and through the E-tery, all without saying a word to anyone. She took a car and drove up to Portage du Fort, passed through Canada Customs, went across the hydro dam to the Canadian province of Ontario, drove east to the bedroom town of Carp, turned left, and went a mile to the north.

  Jesus-E was a rather weird outfit, the butt of ridicule from the few remaining Normal Christian churches and a target for judgmentally raised eyebrows and deep sighs within the Evolutionary movement. There were about a hundred monks there. They never spoke, they wore funny clothes, they didn't allow women to join the order and they considered sex a sin ... at least for themselves. But that was just the quirky stuff. For reasons that no one knew, and in spite of the carnage of the LieDeck Revolution, or the Last Holocaust, these “Jesus-Eers” believed that Victor Helliwell was the Second Coming of Jesus Christ! It was often said in the region that the Jesus-Eers “were not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer.” Indeed, some doubted that they belonged in the knife drawer at all!

  No one knew why this band of monks had chosen to live in an underground 1950s-era bomb shelter that had been built by former Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker (hence the nickname: “the Diefenbunker") to save Canadian government officials from World War III. But they did. They made wine in the bowels of the Earth—award-winning wine. They never came out except to deliver product or tend their hydroponically grown grapes in a hundred mid-sized Pliesterine bubbles spread around their vast compound. And they never spoke aloud—ever—except for their leader, when a “blind” Netcall was unavoidable. They had renounced the taking of names, and their hobby, apparently, was tunneling, digging through the Earth, year after year, looking for the devil, to kill him—or so they said ... wrote, actually. There used to be a very large swamp on their property, and now it was all filled with the rock and muck they dug out of the Earth (which they then covered with topsoil, making it arable). It was all too strange for most people to even contemplate, and like most people, Annette wrote these monks off as full-blown flakes. They don't seem the type to undertake a dangerous caper, she thought. Gil must know something that I don't.

  Annette was met at the front gate by a corpulent Jesus-Eer wearing a long brown robe with a wide hemp rope around the middle, and a hood. Friar Tuck, she thought. “Hello,” she said hesitantly, holding out a temporarily de-gloved hand. “I'm Annette Blais, from Victor-E, across the river. I have a—uh—an important message for your—uh—for your leader."

  Friar Tuck took the hand with a firm, calloused grip and gave Annette an abbreviated glance and then a slight bow, which caused his hood to fall forward over his eyes. “You are going to die,” he said quietly towards the snowy ground.

  "I beg your pardon!” she almost yelped as she hastily broke off the handshake.

  "No need to be alarmed, Ms. Blais,” explained the monk as he re-raised his head and pulled his hood back up to eyebrow level. “We hardly ever talk, as you surely know,” he intoned as he reached for her purse, “but when we do, we say those exact words instead of hello, or in response to someone saying hello to us."

  "Uh ... why?” asked Annette as she handed it over.

  The monk stuck a bare hand in and rummaged around. He didn't seem very anxious to reply. What had started out as a simple courtesy was turning into a long dialogue—from his point of view. “Well,” he managed as he finished up his search, “it's the truth. You are going to die, and we Jesus-Eers prefer to start off conversations that we cannot avoid with those five words, sort of as a reminder, so nobody does or says anything they might be embarrassed to admit when their big day rolls around. Do you believe in God, Ms. Blais?” he asked as he returned the purse to her.

  "Uh ... no, actually.” Can we get the hell inside out of this cold? she thought, dancing from one foot to the other.

  "Too bad,” sighed the monk with a shrug as he turned to lead the way. “I'm sure He believes in you."

  Annette closed the purse, and hoped that she could soon drop this pointless chitchat. For a sect that never talks, she thought, this guy's a regular Jehovah's Witness.

  The monk escorted her through external security at the gate, then on to the protruding aboveground door. “Seven tons,” said the monk as they passed that door—he pointed at it so she would know what he was talking about. Perhaps he was a tour guide in a previous incarnation, thought Annette.

  They went down a ramp to an elevator, where she was given a black cloth hood ... and a gesture. She bent forward and tried to get the hood over her head without mussing her hair, though she had no idea why her appearance was important to her here. Then she straightened up, pulled the cord lightly around her neck ...
and waited. A hand took her forearm.

  For the next fifteen minutes it was into an elevator, up, down, out, down a hall, turn around a number of times, more walking, into another elevator, or the same one, and so on. Finally, she was asked to stop by a tug on the arm, and left standing. A few seconds later, a door closed and a different voice spoke. “Sorry for all the precautions,” it said. “They're for your protection too. Please, take off the hood and have a seat. Coffee? Or perhaps a glass of white wine?"

  Annette had the hood off in one swift movement, and fluffed her hair with a hand. The small room was concrete and gray, with an old green linoleum floor, polished to the shine of a showroom automobile. There were no windows, of course, and there were no paintings or decorations to soften the sense of a prison cell. In fact, there was nothing but a round metal patio table—undoubtedly from somebody's garage sale—two painted fold-up metal chairs of similar lineage and the promised refreshments. The leader of Jesus-E—at least Annette assumed he had to be some kind of leader—had seated himself on the opposite side of the table, his long, salted-brown beard sticking out from the close neck of his robe, his hood dipping almost to his eyes. She sat down ... carefully ... although it was not immediately clear to her why caution seemed to be called for.

  "Wine would be nice,” she said, remembering that these people had no names, and asked for no “sir” or anything like that. The monk poured with pride. After a sip and an approving tilt of her head, Annette explained that she was just the messenger. “I believe you're supposed to kidnap and protect Lester Connolly,” she said, sounding much more apologetic than she had intended.

  The monk seemed to be middle-aged, from what Annette could see of his face. He stroked his beard with a calloused hand, and then raised his eyes to meet hers. “And how did you arrive at this ... belief ... or understanding?” he asked.

  Annette was glad she'd thought to bring a written version of the message. She turned sideways on her chair, away from her host, and dug out the small, folded note from inside her bra. She apologized for any embarrassment, took a pen from her purse and, using the pen as a pointer, she explained the first part of the code at the end, and how reformatting had led to the message by reading the first word of each line, top to bottom. She used the pen to underline the key words: “If you can kidnap and protect lest her use Christian ease now.” The note was upside down, to her, so the monk could confirm all this. And finally, she explained about Lester Connolly losing his arm and her interpretation of “Christian ease” as “Christian Es” meaning “Christian Evolutionaries” meaning the monks of Jesus-E. She clicked the ballpoint, and waited.

  "Hmmm,” said the monk. “And ... all those other numbers at the end? What do they mean?"

  "I ... honestly don't know,” said Annette. “Sorry."

  The monk finished his glass of wine, mouthed an indecipherable prayer, then reached over and took the pen from Annette. He pulled the note closer to himself, clicked open the ballpoint pen, and hunched down. His hood concealed everything, and Annette had to wonder if enough light could squeeze in there so that he could see what he was doing. “The numbers go up,” she heard him say ... or thought she heard him say ... she couldn't be sure those were his words. Annette didn't respond, and she thought belatedly about how embarrassed she would feel if a virtually illiterate monk broke a code that she, a former security expert, had missed. “Two, three, five, ten ... like that,” he mumbled from somewhere beneath the lump of coarse brown cloth. Surely not, thought Annette, with a shadow of a smile—that was so simple, but she had missed it. Suddenly, the monk's head popped up and the note and pen were pushed to her side of the table. And there it was! He had circled the words whose positions in the message corresponded with the ascending numbers: “There is ... reason ... I ... expect ... guile ... vital ... help.” She raised her eyes from the scrap of paper, almost expecting to be chastised, but the monk only smiled at her ... if she read the slight movement in his mustache correctly. Then he stood up and walked out of the room—no “thank you,” no nothing.

  Annette threw back the rest of her glass of wine, stuffed the note back into her bra, and waited. Soon, her guide returned and asked her with a hand gesture to put the black hood back on her head.

  Less than two hours after leaving home, she was back at Victor-E, flopped down on her bed in Sleepery #1, taking deep breaths as she reflected on her day. She found herself wondering how long it might be before the Netnews would report the disappearance—or the kidnapping—of Lester Connolly ... or, more likely, the capture of a batch of confused and unarmed monks making the attempt. More importantly, she wondered what would happen the next time she was given a routine LieDeck-verification by the WDA ... well, by Captain Lilly Petrosian, she realized.

  Chapter 23

  A GOOD KID

  Monday, February 14, 2033—6:45 p.m.

  Lilly was thinking about Victor as she navigated the two miles of rugged private road from the lodge on Wilson Lake back to the manor. Mostly, she found herself thinking about the lamb kebob she'd missed out on. At the mansion, she killed the engine and braced herself. “Nobody should have to live in this weather,” she muttered as she dug some Kleenex out of her purse and gave her nose a mighty blow. Then she got out of her new Aura, slammed the door and trotted up the sanded walk to the huge stone building. The door was opened by a butler as she reached for the buzzer, and she hurried inside. “I do not believe this cold,” she said.

  "May I take your coat?” he asked solemnly. “I understand it's supposed to warm up by the weekend."

  Meaning you don't expire in eleven minutes or less, thought Lilly as she handed over her trench coat and took off her light rain boots. She withdrew her shoes from the bag and put them on. Then she was shown into the library, asked to wait, and offered coffee.

  As the door closed, a wall-mounted Netscreen made a “bing” sound and lit up—and there was Randy, her sullen seatmate on last Tuesday's flight from the mellow climes of Florida. He was hunched forward over a carpeted floor elsewhere in the manor, lining up a putt and not looking up at his MIU. “Are you following me around?” he asked, drawing back his putter and striking the ball.

  Lilly watched the ball roll slowly towards a flanged putting plate twenty feet away. The putt was off line, to the left, from the start—a pull. “Try to not look up at all until you count to three after impact,” she said. “It works for me."

  Randy straightened up and looked directly into the camera-eye of his MIU, which is to say just above the screen, in the middle. “So now you're an expert at golf?” he asked sarcastically.

  "Like I said,” shrugged Lilly, “it usually works for me. Try it for a few hundred putts and let me know if it helps. I also pretend that the spirit of Ben Crenshaw is controlling my body from heaven when I putt."

  "Yeah right,” muttered Randy. “Net, down, now."

  Lilly wondered why he hadn't given her grief for not mentioning on the plane that her new job was at Victor-E, where his Aunt Julia lived, where his little sister Venice wanted to live. He must know by now, she figured. I guess he's saving that potshot for later.

  Michael carried in the tray of coffee and sugar cookies himself, and found Lilly still standing. “Hi,” he said, placing the tray on a low table and then offering his hand. “How did it go with Victor?” My God she's tall.

  Lilly shook his hand, correctly, and noted the absence of pleasantries—she expected he would mention the fact that she and his son Randy had met on the plane during their flight up to Canada. Michael had the same light blue eyes as Randy, except his were calm and full of warmth, where Randy's were angry and accusatory. “Actually, up until I got booted out, it went rather well,” she said, without elaboration ... and without explaining her scratchy, low-pitched voice. “So,” she began as she seated herself, correctly, “there was something you wanted to tell me?” She could pass on pleasantries too.

  Michael took a cookie and sat down opposite his guest. “I felt it was important to
talk to you about Victor before you went out to the lodge, but you saw it differently,” he said politely, looking down. “He actually ... talked to you?” he asked, looking up. “I mean he hasn't said a solitary—"

  "Non-stop, for a while,” said Lilly, as she sat down. “He's got a lot of issues from the past, and now with the illness, well ... he—"

  "Look,” said Michael, “I do want to talk about Victor, but ... have you met my sister Julia over there at the Victor-E clan?"

  Lilly was suddenly aware of being “at work,” having been presented with a question and an opening that required a personal reaction, for business reasons. “I ... sure did!” she said in a voice laden with unspoken meaning. “Last Tuesday. She ... apparently got elected to be my greeter, like at the Wal-Mart. We had supper together that night too. It didn't ... go very well. I kept making mistakes and ... well, hurting her feelings, but she ... she seems to keep forgiving me. I was awfully tired when I arrived, and I was getting this cold, so—uh—my diplomatic abilities weren't ... quite up to snuff, I'm afraid."

  Lilly felt proud of her masterful response. She had spoken more about who she was than she had about Julia, between the lines and in the well-acted pauses she had inserted at strategic points. She'd also established her general level in the ladder of life by using the archaic expression “up to snuff,” and by expecting Michael to understand it and take it in stride.

  "She ... does require patience,” said Michael. “I was hoping you might—uh—have some insights, you know? I don't get to see her much any more, I'm afraid. She's ... hard to love, sometimes."

  Lilly was very pleased at the way this was going, and it seemed that the best way to consolidate the direction was to jump right in. “Do you ... want me to speak freely? In ... confidence?"