CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ooooooooo
Warnings
TODD had begun to shiver and sneeze from the damp of this place. He was still mildly queasy, but he cued the systems and checked the outside. He knew they weren’t waiting for him, weren’t trying to kill him—unless by accident—yet he almost wished he could fly out and meet them and give them a bit of a scare for a change.
Getting out of the building wasn’t as tricky as getting into it, but still, doing so took some careful maneuvering. Once he was out in the open air, he followed the four-lane avenue, heading back to the heart of New Washington and CNAU Civil Order Enforcement. Follow the regs. He contacted CNAU Flight Control and apprised them of his radically changed flight plan, and that he was on his way to report a whopper of a complaint against two other fliers, not that it would do any good. Then he called Iris.
He talked over and around her surprised questions, wondering if the experience was showing in his face that much. “Tell Dian . . . please. I’m due there right now, and I can’t make it until later.”
“Boss . . .”
Impatiently, Todd went on. “And have Bob send over a mechanic team to CNAU Enforcement. I put this poor beast through hell and need it checked to be sure it’s okay. Also, reserve a couple of seats on tomorrow’s orbital flight out of Orleans. I’ll be spacing, and Dian will probably be going with me—”
“Boss!” Iris finally broke through, sounding harried. “Your mother’s holding on another line. She wants to know where you are. I think she just got back from a campaign trip with your brother. What shall I tell her?”
Todd sighed. “You might as well tell her I’ll be at CNAU Enforcement. Otherwise she’ll ride everybody ragged. Where’s Falco?” A quick check informed him the crack ComLink interviewer was in the city, finishing up an assignment. “Get him and a tech team over to Enforcement HQ, too, as soon as they can make it. I’ve got a news release to get out under an interview cover. I want it to go global, so tell them to bring full translator gear. Got all of that?”
Iris nodded. “It’ll be there, boss.”
With genuine affection, Todd smiled at her. “You’re a gem. How about a raise? Starts yesterday. I’ll put it through before I lift off tomorrow.” She was grinning widely when he broke the connection.
Todd landed in CNAU Enforcement’s V.I.P. strip. Rank had its privileges, and Saunder Enterprises fed plenty into the public coffers of Central North American Union. The session with the police went about as he had expected. He had to edit his complaint. Some things he didn’t want to reveal—the illegal translator strip, for one, Yet he could, with convincing anger, put on a terrific performance as an outraged citizen who had been attacked and nearly killed. There were questions and more questions, and recorded forms for him to affirm with his hand-print. There was a space for signatures, though a lot of complainants had to sign via a comp printout. Todd impressed the higher brass and working investigators by using a pen as if he did it all the time.
He wondered if Falco had arrived yet. They would probably keep the reporter and the techs outside until the questioning was over. Jael would also be showing up soon, if she ran true to her habits.
The chief investigator was making noises as if the formalities were over. Todd was about to excuse himself and leave the rest of the digging to Enforcement when a com call interrupted them. There had been a slip-up in communications. Todd realized as he listened that he wasn’t supposed to hear the incoming report. Confidential police business. He couldn’t hide his shock.
“. . . matches the descriptions you just put out on the Saunder attack incident ninety minutes ago. Both pilots are dead.”
It didn’t make sense. The wrecked planes and the pilots had been found less than thirty blocks, from where Todd had hidden in the ruined building. He had watched his attackers leave the area. They had been much farther away from him than that when their com signals faded. It was very unlikely they had doubled back, or they would have spotted him when he finally emerged from his hiding place.
“. . . idents on bodies confirm probable Serene Future connections. One of their splinter groups, Chief . . .”
The ranking officer was looking unhappily at Todd. He didn’t want to be obvious and shut up the reporting officer, not when Todd Saunder was president of the world’s most powerful telecom network. There were laws about the suppression of information that should be available to the public. “Uh . . . thanks, Williams. Full investigative teams will be there in ten minutes. Seal off the evidence.” The chief nervously turned to Todd. “We don’t know anything for sure yet. It’ll have to go through the labs. I’d appreciate it if you’d be discreet about this, Mr. Saunder. Wouldn’t do to go blabbing it until we have some proof. Could be a frame-up.”
Todd was positive that it was indeed a frame-up. The Serene Future political party was part of the Spacer coalition, fighting for Goddard’s rights in Protectors of Earth’s assembly. True, Serene Future had reacted very badly to the news about the alien messenger. It was as panicky and paranoid in that regard as the most rabid Earth Firsters, though for different philosophical reasons. But Serene Future was a mystical movement. Its members had been known to commit suicide in protest of the death penalty, one of the most extremist and eccentric actions yet produced by the Spirit of Humanity religion.
The dead men couldn’t have been those who attacked him. Dupes. More pawns and sacrifices. The logic was obvious. And Todd wasn’t so sure the blurted com call from the officer in the field was an accident, either. Maybe he had been meant to hear and believe so that his suspicions would focus on Serene Future—and not on the real culprits.
I’m becoming as paranoid as Mari. But, like her, it isn’t paranoia when they really are trying to get you . . .
“No, I won’t broadcast it, Chief. You have my word on that. But I want to be kept updated on what you find out,” Todd stated sternly.
“You sure will, sir. Soon as we know anything definite.”
The suspicion had been planted. The lid clamped on. Todd would play the enemy’s game, for now.
Miguel Falco’s ComLink team and Jael, accompanied by a horde of muscular bodyguards, arrived at CNAU Enforcement HQ simultaneously. When Todd came out of the building, they were engaged in a hot argument, as hot as Falco dared. One of Jael’s bodyguards had fetched Todd’s coat out of the flier. He shrugged into it as the ComLink interviewer closed in on him.
Jael advanced on him, too.
“In a minute, Mother.”
“I’ve got my trains waiting. Your mechanics are taking that plane of yours apart. Iris said you have to pick up Dian. That poor girl has been cooling her heels for—”
“In a minute!” Todd said loudly. He didn’t have Pat’s wonderful, carrying voice, but he had recovered his volume, after the hoarseness caused by the Search fire. Jael reeled back, stunned, looking up at her son as if she didn’t recognize him. “Dian’s going to wait. She knows me. I sent her a message. Right now there’s something I’ve got to do. It won’t take long, but I’m going to do it, Mother. Do you understand?”
A slow, deep flush spread up from her fleshy chin to her forehead, the reddening skin standing out in contrast to the white ermine fur fringing her coat hood. Her velvety tone was gone. “I understand,” she said harshly. “We’re going to talk about this later, Todd.”
“No doubt. Miguel . . .” He briefed his media star quickly, priming Falco on which questions to ask and how to stage the brief interview. Jael’s bodyguards began fanning out to form a fence around them, keeping curious CNAU troopers away. Beyond them, out on the V.I.P. airstrip, Todd noticed some of ComLink’s mechanics busy dismantling parts of the swift little flier. Troopers watched them, some fingering the scrape marks on the flier’s belly and speculating on what the craft had been through.
Falco’s techs framed him and Todd and signaled go. “Listeners of Earth,” Falco began, shamelessly borrowing from his boss’s brother, “we’re here with a late-b
reaking bulletin. Todd Saunder, president of SE ComLink, has just been attacked by two unidentified hostile pilots and was nearly killed. Police are investigating right now. It looks like an assassination attempt, isn’t that so, Mr. Saunder?”
Todd hadn’t been in front of a lens for a few years, but he hadn’t forgotten the techniques. He pulled old talents out of storage, letting some of his leftover fear show. Pat termed that the Everyman Syndrome—show the audience you’re human and that you can be scared, too. Pat needn’t be the only actor in the family.
“Yes, that’s right, Miguel. It was very close. I’m a pretty good flier myself, but those guys meant business. For a little while there I thought I was done for. Finally managed to shake them . . .”
Jael butted in, breaking her own rules about staying in the shadows. “This is simply terrible, Miguel . . .” Hastily, sotto voce, Falco introduced her to the audience while Jael went on. “The police must solve this thing quickly and bring those men to justice. No one is safe these days! It’s exactly what my son Patrick has been saying—that we have to bring some order to Earth before we slip back into the Chaos. They’ve even made attempts on Patrick’s life, you know, during those tours in South America and Europe. . .”
“Do you think this latest attack is really aimed at your older son, then?”
Todd hadn’t interrupted, but Jael was aware of his burning stare. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. They’re trying to hurt all my family, and I think they must be caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law. I don’t want to make any insinuations, but it could be some of Patrick’s enemies, striking at him by attacking Todd . . .”
“We see you brought some bodyguards with you, Mrs. Saunder. Is that going to be common practice from now on?”
“I fear so, at least until the campaign is over. There’s too much at stake . . .”
“Especially with a new little Saunder in the making, too, right, Mrs. Saunder?” Falco obviously thought it wouldn’t harm his standing with the family corporation if he alluded to the expectant parents’ happy announcement to the media a couple of weeks earlier. Then he swung back to the man paying his salary. “Todd, any speculations why they might be after you specifically?”
Todd timed the pauses as best he could, copying Pat’s skillful delivery. “This attack might have been aimed at the family, and at Pat’s campaign. But I believe it has something to do with Project Search, because I’m sponsoring the contact attempt with the alien vehicle.”
Jael’s motherly facade was crumbling, and the lens techs tactfully trimmed focus away from her, concentrating on Falco and Todd.
“They burned out Project Search’s New Washington headquarters last week, and now this attack on me. Just put two and two together,” Todd said coldly.
“It’s obvious you and your brother differ in your attitudes about this alien messenger, Todd. He says it’s a scout for an invasion from space. You don’t think so?”
They had covered this territory before, many times, since the Science Council presentation and the worldwide release of the news. Usually Todd had let more media-comfortable spokesmen talk for him. Now he took the initiative. “No, I don’t. I think it’s the greatest opportunity ever offered to mankind. Our future for centuries to come will be different—and better,” Todd said emphatically. He couldn’t express his own uncertainties. Not here. This was the time to do his own propaganda spreading. “But there are people who hide their heads, who aren’t willing to reach out for the wonderful opportunity that’s coming. These misguided, frightened people are the ones who scare me. I sincerely believe they’re the ones who sent fliers to attack me and firebombed Project Search and killed a man and hurt eight innocent people.” Jael had turned her back on him, refusing to look at or hear him. Todd breathed deeply, hoping to convince the viewers he was taking a reluctant but absolutely necessary step. “I can’t allow any more of my people to be hurt, and I’m not going to play target myself. So I’m transferring Project Search to space.”
Jael reacted, whirling around, her mouth open in disbelief as Miguel Falco picked up his cue. “When is this going to happen, Todd?”
“Immediately. Some of my people are still in the hospital, of course. But all the equipment and translation linkages will be moved to space. When my staff has recovered, they’ll join us in orbit.” Falco moved in close to him for a two-shot, contributing his presence to the concluding statements, grabbing a little ego-flattering broadcast space for himself in the bargain. “Project Search will go on. These people who are trying to stop me have failed. When the alien messenger reaches Earth orbit, about a year from now, my people are going to be the ones to go out and meet it—as friends, not as frightened, cowardly enemies who would burn or shoot innocent people. Rely on it.”
Falco wrapped up. Todd waited to see what Jael would do. She didn’t speak. After a long moment of glaring daggers at him, she marched out across the airstrip toward the SE Trans Co spur. Todd and her bodyguards followed. There were three cars, two security brackets and one for the illustrious passengers. Todd wasn’t overly fond of modern rail travel, but he climbed in the private car and sat with Jael. The propulsion systems took them up to speed very rapidly, and they connected with the direct line to the terminal.
Silence was a black cloud enveloping them. They hurtled through the tunnels at top speed, magnetic resistance nil. Jael’s car was the best money could buy, custom-manufactured by the same people who catered to kings and dictators. She could live in this car, if she chose, and live far better than most of the world’s population was living right now.
“Mother,” Todd said softly.
“You talk too much.”
Well, that was something. At least she wasn’t shutting him outside with her silence any more.
“I inherited that from Dad. He always said what he thought, and not always at the best possible times for other people,” Todd reminded her.
She still refused to look at him. “Ward didn’t propagandize.”
“He did when he believed in a cause. So do his children. Pat hasn’t got a patent on using my network to broadcast his message of hate—”
“Stop it!”
“That’s what it is, Mother—hate. Hate for the aliens he doesn’t even know, won’t make any real effort to understand, through their communications. The only reason he wants my decryption data as it comes in is so he can build it into still more hate propaganda and whip the whole damned world into a paranoiac frenzy. Get them so scared they’ll vote straight Earth First Party. Isn’t that the strategy, Mother? He manipulates. He always has, and you let him. You egg him on, don’t you? Nothing’s too good for Pat . . .”
“Stop it!” Jael was on the verge of tears, angry tears, But there was something else in her face. “You don’t understand—won’t. People are scared. They’d be scared whether or not Pat made speeches. You did this to them, Todd. Acknowledge it! You and that damned alien thing. You had to find it, didn’t you?”
He tried to break in, to explain again that his detection of the vehicle was academic. Discovered or not, it was already altering vector before he had made any moves to communicate with it.
Jael wouldn’t listen. “Your . . . that thing is bringing all our worst nightmares to life!”
“Not my nightmares. And not Dad’s. He had confidence in the future, in his ability to meet it and cope with it. What’s happened, Mother? You used to feel that way, too. I’ve seen you digest his patents, learn to operate devices half the world’s techs couldn’t begin to comprehend. You’re not some dithery, uneducated, stupid nonentity. You’re Jael Saunder,” Todd said with fierce familial pride. “You showed us kids how to be tough, taught us that knowledge was the key. ‘Outsmart them all, and live.’ Do it now. Outsmart the idiots who can’t see anything but a menace in contact with another intelligent species. Dammit, we’re Saunders! You told us we’re the cream. It ought to be we, the intelligent ones, who talk to that alien and give it its first impressions of what humani
ty is like. Do you want it to see some slavering United Theocracies crazy, ranting about how cosmic rays are destroying his liver and his precious soul? Or should it be a bunch of goons smashing windows and clubbing people and setting off firebombs to destroy what they can’t understand? Mother? I want you to be proud of this, of what I’ve done.”
Jael shook her head, the white streak in her hair gleaming in the car’s interior lights. There was defeat in her manner, a deep, pained anguish. “I . . . I can’t. I used to, but I can’t. Not any more. It’s too much, Todd. Too fast. I could absorb it when I was younger. But now . . . just . . . just give me time, time to get things in order. Pat’s . . .”
“Don’t bring Pat into this,” Todd pleaded. “I realize you’re involved in his career, but what about my career, and Mari’s? Yes, Mari has a career now, too. You may not like her taste in housing, but she’s got purpose to her life now, a damned important purpose, for her and Goddard and the future of Earth.”
“And Mars? I know what they’re doing, those fools. We can’t afford it! We’ve got to pull together and get Pat elected to the Chairmanship first. You’re going to wreck it for him—you and Mariette and all this damned space travel!”
Jael and Pat had resisted, violently, when Todd had broken the news about the alien messenger. He had assumed they would see the inevitable in time. Pat had the ability and the intelligence. But his motives were skewed. So were Jael’s. She wanted the alien messenger to disappear. It was complicating Pat’s straightforward rise to political power. And right now, she wanted Todd and Mari to disappear, too. Either that, or to come home to Mama and confess their sins and admit they had been doing wrong and misbehaving. Come home and be her little loving, obedient babies again. But they had never been all that obedient, even as children. Jael was still trying to make that ideal fantasy—the perfect marriage despite all opposition, three perfect children despite the criticism she had taken for opting to have three children during famines and disasters—be true. She was attempting to rewrite history, working with her children’s lives.
Tomorrow’s Heritage Page 28