Castanaveras: I'm not referring to such people. There are sociopaths, but not many, at least by percentage of the population. (Silence again.) Some people have--well, the best way I can say it is that they know themselves. They know who they are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and they are at peace with themselves. Those people, they don't do things that might make them uncomfortable. (Half smiles.) It must be nice.
McKann: I take it that you're not one of those.
Castanaveras: Me? Hell, no. I do things I regret all the time.
McKann: Really?
Castanaveras: Oh--constantly.
They stood in sultry darkness beneath the shelter of the trees, a meter away from the brightly lit lawns. Glowfloats bobbed restlessly ten meters in the air above them, casting a harsh and relentless light across the scene.
A fence ran all the way around the mansion except at the main entrance. Both live and automated guards--modified hunting waldos, as near as Carl could tell--patrolled at the single gate through which traffic could pass in and out of the protected inner area. There was a well lit stretch of lawn of nearly sixty meters between the edge of the trees and the fence. I see no light trips.
Neither do I, said Carl. He focused with the sunglasses and zoomed in on the fence. A brightness above the fences was so faint Carl was not certain he was not imagining it. Look, just above the fence.
I do not...ah. They have strung fineline above the fence. Perhaps--I would guess two meters high, as high again as the fence itself. Expensive.
He has the money for it. Looks like that way's out. If we get ourselves chopped to pieces on it, it sets off a quiet alarm; if we cut the fineline it sets off one of the noisy alarms.
Her thought held sarcasm. Such brilliant deductive powers.
What does that fence look like to you?
Adobe?
Uh-huh. Old, too. Want to bet it's not sensitized? I bet they slapped the fence together about the turn of the century and never bothered to rebuild with modern sensors inside.
My preference is to refrain from betting.
You blew that one when you got up this morning.
True. Our choices then are front gate, which means taking out the waldos, or cutting through the wall.
We can't go over and we don't have time to dig under. I don't see what else it leaves.
Jacqueline nodded decisively. Straight through the wall.
They circled around through the cover of the trees, until they were out of sight of the front gate. On three; one and two and go.
They sprinted under the lights, across the bright lawns. Jacqueline outdistanced him and was flat on her stomach next to the fences before Carl had half crossed the distance. He reached her moments later and dropped to the ground next to her. Jacqueline held down the trigger on her laser, running the beam around and around in a circle not quite a meter in diameter on the surface of the fence. With his rifle Carl began tracing the outline of an 'X' inside the circle. There were minor explosions every time the beam struck a buried air pocket inside the adobe and the superheated air expanded in a shock wave. Jacqueline released the trigger on her laser. Carl followed her example a second later. The adobe was glowing cherry red, as though a huge brand had been taken to its surface. Carl, with Jacqueline bracing him, kicked with all his might at the center of the 'X', once, twice, and on the third kick the circle folded in. A fourth kick knocked out one quarter that had not popped through with the other three. Carl squirmed through, protected by his clothing from the still-glowing edges of the circle. Jacqueline followed in the next moment, more carefully; unlike Carl's inflammable fatigues, that were designed to take a laser blast without much complaint, her own fur burned quite well.
The inner yard, unlike that outside the fences, was dark. As a result, neither of them had more than a moment's warning before the silent rush of the dogs through the trees struck them.
McKann: Edit, subject of de Nostri. (Pause.) Carl, the de Nostri are at least as interested in the substance of the current debate as are the telepaths. Yet they're even more unapproachable than you are. Why is this so?
Castanaveras: You realize that I can't speak for them.
McKann: I'm not asking for that. But surely your lines of communication with the de Nostri are substantial; your people lived with theirs for over ten years.
Castanaveras: About twelve. After our attorneys won permission for us to live where we chose, they decided to return to France. Jacqueline and Albert de Nostri were largely responsible for that decision, I'm told. The younger de Nostri wanted to stay in America; most of them had grown up here. (Grins.) Unfortunately, the same legal decision that put me in charge of our children put the de Nostri elders in charge of theirs. I'm of the impression that they weren't given much choice. The de Nostri don't run things democratically.
McKann: Why do they keep such a low profile?
Castanaveras: Surely that's obvious.
McKann: I'm afraid not.
Castanaveras: Look, right now, outside our front gates, you can see some three thousand demonstrators picketing us because we're guilty of the crime of wanting to decide our own fate. A lot of that is fear; we can read their minds, and they don't much like that fact. Some of it is the hatred of difference--which is rooted in fear. But the biggest part of it is that they know where we are. Look, any educated human being on this planet who's audited one of the news Boards of late knows where we are. I mean, not necessarily the street address, but with a half hour to drive around the neighborhood, they'd find us, if only by homing in on the sound of the chanting. Now, you're a reasonably educated man, are you not? You keep up on the news, I presume?
McKann: I see where you're going.
Castanaveras: Where are the de Nostri? In France, sure, I just told you that much. Maybe you even knew. But specifically, where?
McKann: I don't specifically know. I'm sure I could find out.
Castanaveras: No doubt. Could a mob? I will tell you this much about the de Nostri--nobody's picketing them.
A snarling mass of claws and teeth struck Carl chest high and slammed him back against the wall. Strong jaws clamped down on him through the boot on his right foot and dragged him down to the ground in a single wild pull. He lost his rifle and found his knife just in time to turn its edge toward the breast of the first dog as that dog leapt upon him again, clawing at his throat. The knife melted into the dog's flesh, shearing through fur, muscle, cartilage and bone with equal ease. The dog got its teeth around Carl's forearm and was bearing down as it died. Only its mass kept the second dog from getting at Carl's face, and then something else, moving blurringly fast on all fours, went over Carl and took the dog in a tumbling roll across five meters of lawn. When their roll ceased, Jacqueline de Nostri came to her feet without pause.
Carl became aware of the weight of the dog on his chest, and its blood as it seeped over his fatigues.
Dogs, thought Jacqueline, trembling with emotion, I hate dogs.
She stood motionlessly a few steps away from him, still trembling, and Carl shoved the dog aside, removed his forearm from its jaws, stood and looked around. In the dim light from the faraway glowfloats, he saw the corpses of five animals.
He had killed only one of those five, and almost by accident.
Jacqueline was still shaking when he had retrieved his knife and his rifle, and by reflex he nearly made the mistake of saying something, of reaching in to try to help her to grow calm again; and then he remembered himself, and her, and from long knowledge refrained.
They moved on into the tree filled darkness in silence.
(An edit note attached at this point says: "The following is taken from the Thursday morning interview, early on the day Gerold McKann was murdered. Both McKann and Castanaveras are wearing the same clothing they wore in the earlier session.")
McKann: Carl, you said something a bit earlier that sounded as though you thought the demonstrations outside are staged. Could you elaborate on that?
Castan
averas: I'd love to. Look. (A holofield shimmers into existence. All that is recorded by the holocams is a blur.) This is--
McKann: Edit. Carl, you should have asked me about this. You can't holograph a holograph.
Castanaveras: Oh? Why not?
McKann: I don't know, you just can't. You don't get anything except a blur. Haven't you ever run a holocam?
Castanaveras: Not often.
McKann: Make me a copy of the images you want to run and I'll splice them in where appropriate.
Castanaveras: Fine. Should I just go on?
McKann: Edit, interview resumes. (Pause.) Could you elaborate on that?
Castanaveras: ...sure. Look, this is a compilation of holos that we took when you arrived on Wednesday and left Wednesday night. I'm sure you noticed us stunning members of the crowd so that you could get in through the gates.
McKann: It did not escape my attention.
(An image of demonstrators at the front gate of the Chandler Complex briefly overlays the primary image of McKann and Castanaveras.)
Castanaveras: This shows clearly--here, and again a few seconds later, here--these people aren't even trying to get out of the way of the stun rifles, even though it's quite clear where those rifles are aimed. Now, look, we've got these faces separated out; these are the faces of the people who were stunned. Uh, at the moment they were stunned they were not good candidates for identification; they tended to be grimacing at that point. These holos are backtracked from a few moments earlier, but there's no question that they are the images of the persons being stunned.
McKann: Stipulated. We'll confirm this.
Castanaveras: Fine. I'm not sure how to phrase this--as of today, Thursday morning, we don't have proof that any of these people are Peaceforcers. But we will, in time for your Sunday edition.
McKann: (Leans forward, looking into holofield.) I'll be damned--if you can do that, that might be interesting. But I'm afraid it might not do you a lot of good, Carl. There's no law I know of that prohibits a member of the PKF from demonstrating against the telepaths.
Castanaveras: I'm sure there's not, Gerry. But Gerry, how much would you like to bet that these men are on duty? Drawing pay, on government time, to harass us?
McKann: I think maybe that's a sucker bet. I'm going to edit what I just said.
Castanaveras: Coward. One more thing for you to think about, though. We've had between six hundred and about fourteen hundred demonstrators out there every single day since we moved into the Complex. Today there are over three thousand, and would you like to know when those crowds appeared? The very day that Judge Sonneschein ruled that we were not subject to the Official Secrets Acts of 2048 and 2054.
Damn it, what's wrong with wanting to be free? (pause)...I hope that's a rhetorical question. There's not a corner of this globe that still tolerates slavery in any form. Oh, there are idiots in India and Taiwan and elsewhere who can sign themselves into indenture for cash--but the period of indenture is limited to five years, they get paid for it, and the choice is theirs! We never once got paid for our services, nobody asked us whether we wanted to do what we were forced to, and the period of indenture was unlimited. The Secretary General's office has made no bones of the fact that it considers the Eighth Amendment an aberration, and even while conceding that it must follow the letter of the Amendment has gone to insane lengths to circumvent its intent. We are being sued by the United Nations through the Bureau of Traffic Enforcement, by the PKF for breach of verbal contract, by the Prosecutor General's office for violation of the Official Secrets Acts, by the Ministry of Population Control for failure to provide properly for our children, by the Bureau of Zoning Controls for operating a business out of a residence--that's the Chandler Complex they're referring to--and for God knows what else. I mean, we've been here in the Chandler Complex for nine months now. Is it, as the Secretary General's office claims, purely a coincidence that all of these legal problems arose only in the last two months or so? Only, in other words, since the enactment of the Eighth Amendment? Infoshit.
McKann: Traffic Enforcement?
Castanaveras: Speeding violation. No big deal. Come on, Gerry --is it a coincidence? You're a reasonable man.
McKann: I'm supposed to be interviewing you.
Castanaveras: Okay, no, it is not a coincidence. We are, right now, the object of a conspiracy between the Prosecutor General's office, in the person of Charles Eddore, the Peace Keeping Force, in the person of Unification Councilor Carson--who serves, in case I haven't made myself clear, as Chairman of the Peace Keeping Force Oversight Committee in the Unification Council--and the Secretary General's office, in the person of the Secretary General himself. They haven't been able to touch us legally, and they will not be able to. That leaves illegal means, beginning, but I'll warrant not ending, with this mess outside the front gates of my home.
McKann: Edit, subject of conversation with SecGen. Carl, do you want to discuss your conversation with the Secretary General? Or possibly just give me your recording of the conversation?
(A male voice from off-holocam, identified as Malko Kalharri's, says something unintelligible at this point. It contains the words "Secretary General." A text note inserted by the editors of the Electronic Times notes that no recording of the alleged conversation has been made available to the Times at this date.)
Castanaveras: No. We'll save that for another time.
McKann: Okay. Without some statement from you, you won't get any play on it when the interview runs.
Castanaveras: We're not looking for war, Gerry. That conversation might embarrass the Secretary General, but not much more. He said nothing actionable in it. I'm not looking to embarrass the man, Gerry. Just convince him to leave us alone.
McKann: You don't think you're at war now?
Castanaveras: I don't know. I haven't had a chance to read the Secretary General's mind, or Carson's either. There's a difference between playing chicken and actually fighting. Right now we're standing face to face, waiting to see who blinks first. (Grins.) If you always knew whether the guy across the table from you was holding, there wouldn't be much point in trying to bluff, would there?
(Pause.) I certainly hope we're not at war. I don't want that. (Castanaveras pauses again for several seconds, and adds:) If they have any sense, neither do they.
Tio Sandoval awoke in darkness.
For a moment he was not certain what had awakened him. Carolita was still asleep at his side, her breathing gentle and regular. The only light in the room came from the fish tank that ran along most of one wall, where Carolita's exotics navigated their way through the miniature submarine kingdom she had designed as a hobby. The light from the tank washed the room in a dim, aquamarine glow that wavered and shifted with the movement of the water. Carolita lay naked next to him, lovely in a pure and almost irrelevant manner. He felt no desire for her--had not felt desire for any woman since the death of the telepath girl.
A warm breeze moved across his bare chest, and he realized what had awakened him. A moment's sharp displeasure with Carolita passed through him; constantly, she argued with him whether the window was to stay open or shut. Better the heat of clean air, she said, than the false chill of air conditioning. Their only window, which looked out over the south side of the gentle slope upon which Casa Sandoval was built, was dilated to its full extension, the glassite shrunk back to the windowsill itself across the perimeter of the circle. He considered calling the window closed, but Carolita would surely awaken and complain at his noise. Sandoval left the bed and came to his feet in a single fluid motion, and strode across the room to touch the pressure pad that dilated the window.
He had the vague impression that there was some thing behind him, when a strong hand clamped over his mouth and a knife traced a shallow cut along the edge of his neck. He went rigid, and then relaxed and did not even consider resisting. Something was wrong with his thought processes--he had been drugged, perhaps, for though intellectually he knew he was in grave da
nger, emotionally the subject was hazy and irrelevant. They continued to the window, and another shape--de Nostri--was there, hanging seemingly unattached to the edge of the wall at his third story bedroom. The de Nostri, a female, handed him a pair of gloves, that he donned without question. He climbed out through the window, and accepted the de Nostri's help in grasping the almost invisible line that was attached near the window. He slid down the line to the ground, momentarily aware that the drop was enjoyable and frightening at the same time. A pain occurred in his knee when he reached the ground, but that was not important either. Instants later the de Nostri and the man with her came down the line after him.
Then the lights came on, everywhere, and then sirens.
With a shock of surprise almost great enough to penetrate the haze that insulated him from the rest of the world, Tio Sandoval recognized Carl Castanaveras.
Carl took one swift look around the daylight-bright lawns they were trapped upon, glanced up into the sky and saw the spyeyes and glowfloats and said, "Oh, shit."
McKann: What do the telepaths want?
Castanaveras: I'm not sure what you mean.
McKann: Everybody wants something. What do you desire from life?
Castanaveras: We want to be left alone, Gerry. There are a lot of good things in the world that we've never had time for. Time enough for the parts of life that make life worth living; that would be nice.
Several things happened at once.
Carl flipped his rifle over to wide-dispersion maser and fired straight up into the night sky, into the glowfloats and spyeyes hovering directly over their heads. There was no water in them, but there were delicate electronics that could not have been hardened against radiation without adding unacceptably to the cost of producing them. The spyeyes dropped like stones when the maser beam struck them. The glowfloats burst and fell in flaming wreckage to the yard around them, casting the yard back into gloom. He called for pickup at the same moment: Situation fucked, come and get us--first to Chris and then to Malko Kalharri, who was in a semiballistic orbital can, thirteen kilometers above their head, and descending already when Carl reached him. The distance was great, but with no other minds between them Carl's contact with the old man was as sharp as though Malko had been on the ground there with him.
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