Touched, roused, and the program assembled itself from storage, assumed a sort of shadowy dim self-awareness, and then Ralf, the Wise and Powerful, sought through the InfoNet for its master.
The fear was past; a vindictive enjoyment was evident in Carson's demeanor. "--and state that you falsified Sandoval's recording, that it was a complete fake."
Jany answered him. Carl sat next to her, glaring into the holocams. For a while that had, it seemed, disconcerted Carson, but no more. "How do you suggest we do that?" Her features were pale but her voice was steady. "The point behind the truth plate was that it made the recording believable. You can't fake a truth plate recording."
"You simply assert that you can," said Carson. "It will be believed."
"What then?"
"You'll further announce that not only were the Peaceforcers not responsible for the kidnapping of your children, but that we in fact recovered your children from the kidnappers, and that as a token of your gratitude you've agreed to renew your service with the PKF. You admit you've seen the selfishness of your previous position, and that you see that your skills are needed in the service of the Unification. You'll repeat yourself, loud and often."
Jany nodded. "They won't believe that. Not for an instant."
"They?" asked Carson with a note of flat, cold viciousness in his voice. "The media? The courts?" He smiled again, a horrible smile that literally made Jany feel sick to her stomach. "Or the public?"
Jany had no answer.
"The public will believe," said Jerril Carson.
Trent's Image came up and surrounded him.
Power and vision surged through him.
The filters he had spent years designing cut out the sheer vast bulk of irrelevant detail that flowed through the Information Network. With the tracers built into Ralf, Trent flickered across the thousands of optic fibers that serviced the Complex and localized the fiber that fed into the office where Jerril Carson's image glowed in midair. The glassite line was graded-index optic fiber, not true lasercable; he could not send a signal back through it in the opposite direction. No matter; localization algorithms mapped out the path of the central trunk that fed data from the InfoNet into the signal splitters inside the Complex.
The main trunk linking the Complex with the Information Network was true lasercable; Trent sent Ralf into the optic fiber, down the line following the digital pulses that contained Unification Councilor Carson's image.
A holograph flickered into existence, immediately behind Jerril Carson's image.
It held a map of Manhattan.
Jany's eyes did not move. All that Carson could see was the space before the holocams, and the map was not within that range. Carl did not seem to have noticed its existence; he continued to glare at Carson's image.
"When do we get the twins back?" Jany asked.
On the map behind Carson the image was zooming in on the eastern shore of Manhattan, where Franklin D. Roosevelt island bisected the East River.
Carson said, "That is an excellent question."
His image vanished. Behind the spot where his holograph had appeared, the map froze solid.
"Where is he?" asked Carl.
Trent twisted in his chair. His features were perfectly still. "I'm sorry. I didn't get it."
Carl rose slowly. "How close?"
"Somewhere around the intersection of Second Avenue and East 72nd Street." Trent hesitated. "Within five blocks in any direction, I think."
"Are you sure?"
"No."
F.X. Chandler had spent most of the day auditing the news Boards and the situation developing at his old home. He had excellent access to information; among the several hundred spyeyes above the Complex were three that belonged to him. Now he looked at Carl Castanaveras' image, floating in the center of his living room, a kilometer and a half above the surface of Manhattan. "What can I do for you, son?"
Chandler could hear chanting, somewhere in the background, when Carl spoke. "I need help. Jerril Carson is somewhere within five blocks of the intersection of Second Avenue and 72nd Street, and he has my children. I don't know exactly where he is, though, and I need to."
Chandler was slow in replying. "How certain are you about this information?"
"Frank, I need help. I'm surrounded by Peaceforcers; even if I made it past the riot outside I don't think I'd make it past the Peaceforcers, or I'd go myself."
Chandler did not reply immediately.
"Frank, please. These are my children."
The desperation in Castanaveras' voice decided Chandler. "Very well. I'll see what I can do."
Carl said simply, "Thank you. Thank you very much."
They waited. Jany and Suzanne talked in low tones in a corner; about what, Carl had no idea. He paced back and forth across the ready room's floor, mind disengaged. He simply did not think, about anything.
The hours passed. Chandler did not call. Trent and Malko were asleep in the bedroom next door; Carl had closed the door to the bedroom to give them some small measure of quiet. Captain Deavers had left to inspect the positions the Security Services guards were covering.
Johnny left and went somewhere else late in the afternoon. Carl did not know where he had gone, nor was he sure just when Johnny had left. Later he noticed that Andy was there, sitting in one of the chairs scattered through the room. Andy was watching him in silence.
Night had fallen when the Peaceforcers outside asked for an audience with Carl.
The doors slid aside, and Carl came face to face with a small mountain of a Peaceforcer Elite, with another Peaceforcer behind him, both of them in full formal black and silver uniform.
Mohammed Vance said with grave politeness, "I beg your pardon, M. Castanaveras. I have been dispatched to aid in controlling the unruly crowds. I am at your service."
Carl stared at the man. Carson's creature, here.
Trent appeared in the doorway to Carl's bedroom, and stood there silently.
"How dare you come here?"
Andy's thoughts struck him forcefully. Carl! He doesn't remember us.
Vance raised an eyebrow. "I am not sure I understand you, sir. I am here because I have been ordered here."
"Where are my children?" Without waiting for an answer Carl's eyes flickered shut, and he went inside the large man's mind, and found that Mohammed Vance truly did not know where the children were, and did not know where Jerril Carson was.
The stiff Elite features were almost incapable of expression. Vance managed a fair approximation of polite surprise. "I am sure I do not know, sir." He appeared to consider something. "If your reputation is to be believed, you will know that I have been dispatched here to control the crowds outside this building. That is my purpose here. May I aid you?"
Trent was staring at Mohammed Vance's profile.
Carl stood motionlessly. His hands shook. All his restraint was barely enough to prevent him from killing the man where he stood. His voice was ragged. "No." He stopped. "I mean, yes. We have three guests here who need safe passage so that they may go home."
Vance nodded. "Will there be anything else?"
The premonition struck Carl like a blow. His skin tingled as though an electric current ran over it. Trent was still staring at Mohammed Vance. Without using Trent's name, Carl said, "Son, go get Malko. You're going to leave soon. Do it now." He kept his eyes locked to Mohammed Vance's, and the Peaceforcer Elite met his gaze, and did not look aside, and did not see Trent turn away and go back inside Carl's bedroom.
"You can go now."
Vance inclined his head. "As you wish. I shall instigate measures to clear the streets."
"You do that. Get out and stay out. Go."
Vance went.
Peaceforcer troops drove riot sleds up to the Complex's front gate, moving the crowd aside slowly but surely. Suzanne's car hovered quietly with Security Services vehicles flanking it just the other side of the gates, until the Peaceforcers had forced their way through the massed humanity. Rain fell
gently as the car passed through the gate, and was followed by the Security Services riot sleds to the outskirts of the crowd. There the Security Services vehicles turned back, and Suzanne Montignet drove her car to the Peaceforcer perimeter. The Peaceforcers were letting those who chose to, leave; they were not allowing anyone to enter the enclosed perimeter.
A PKF Elite came up to the driver's window; Suzanne dilated the window at his approach. The cyborg was not Mohammed Vance; he leaned over and looked inside the vehicle, eyes sweeping across the interior of the car. His gaze took in Malko Kalharri, with an autoshot in his lap, Suzanne in the driver's seat, and Trent in back, and he nodded. "Drive safely," he said politely, and waved them through.
The car sped away, carrying its three passengers away from the Chandler Complex, never to return.
Behind them the cyborg clicked open a radio channel within himself. Commander Brèilleune.
I am here.
The car has left the Complex. It is traveling north along Westway Street. Kalharri is armed with an autoshot.
Very good.
The Peaceforcer hesitated. Sir, I am uncomfortable, to act so without informing Sergeant Vance.
A brief silence. I understand, and your loyalty is commendable. But you must realize, what Vance knows, the telepaths will know also.
I know this, sir.
Be strong. All will be resolved, and shortly.
Mohammed Vance sat in a PKF vehicle at the north end of the street and observed the movement of the crowd in the gentle rain, gaudy with dramasuits and holosigns. It was irrelevant that the PKF had helped engineer the crowds; they were now near rioting, and his orders, however incomprehensible, were at this point to protect the telepaths from the crowd.
He had been given three PKF Elite, and approximately a score of normal Peaceforcers, with which to work. The number was suspiciously small; Vance had the grim feeling that he was intentionally being placed in an untenable position. If Security Services, with more than fifty men inside the Complex, could not control the crowds, how was he expected to? The behavior was not what he had come to expect of Commander Breillune, but it was very nearly the only explanation that made sense of the data he had at his disposal.
When the idea occurred to him, he did not smile. He would not have smiled even if it had not been such a difficult thing for his face to do.
One way or another, he would carry out his assigned orders.
He called from his car. He had to go through three levels of her subordinates before he reached the office of Marianne Gravat, the woman who was the director of the Bureau of Weather Control.
"Mohammed," she said warmly, "how are you?"
"Quite well, thank you," he said politely. "And yourself?"
He listened for several minutes to her description of her current circumstances, and her troubles with her eldest daughter's suitors. When the moment was appropriate, he described his own problems and suggested his solution. "Can you arrange some bad weather?"
Gravat looked disturbed. Vance could imagine her thoughts; what he asked was difficult and considerably contrary to Weather Bureau regulations. But it had been done before, in France and elsewhere, and Mohammed Vance was the eldest son of what was certainly the most prominent and politically powerful Arab family in all of France. She answered reluctantly. "I think so."
"I need a storm, fairly vigorous. Something that will convince most of the demonstrators outside the Complex to get out of the streets. They are in my way right now; I cannot move in to control the situation until we get most of them out of here. A severe thundershower is a wonderful tool for crowd control."
"When do you need it?"
"Before morning."
"We'll need the use of military lasers to trigger a storm that quickly."
Vance did not even hesitate. Space Force would not argue with the orders of a Peaceforcer Elite of his standing, not in so trivial a matter as arranging the loan of military lasers for use by the Weather Bureau. "You shall have it."
They were at the intersection of Westway Street and Unification Boulevard, where the New Holland Tunnel led out under the Hudson River, when the two AeroSmiths came down out of the sky and settled to the ground flanking them.
Malko Kalharri left his crutch behind and with autoshot in hand dove out through the passenger door while the hovercar was still moving. His right leg shrieked agony at him, but he forced it to bear his weight. The nearer AeroSmith was still setting to the pavement when he reached it, and thrust the barrel of the autoshot up against the front of the canopy and held the trigger down while the canopy shattered inward and the shotgun blasts tore the interior of the vehicle to shreds.
From the other AeroSmith, on the other side of Suzanne's car, a Peaceforcer Elite burst from the opening canopy. Laser light pierced Malko's right shoulder from behind, and he turned away from the ruins of the first AeroSmith, finger still holding down the trigger of the autoshot. Blood sprayed away from the moving blur of the PKF Elite, but the wound was not mortal and the cyborg did not slow.
Malko Kalharri barely had time to recognize his death when the laser buried in the cyborg's fist swept across his face.
The Person sat alone, in a quiet place, and considered. Its thoughts were dim, only half-conscious, as though it were not intimately concerned with the subjects it pondered. It was threatened, and its existence might be terminated if it did not respond.
Where did correct behavior lie?
The Person was not certain.
It did not wish to hurt.
But it would not allow itself to be ended.
They were taken to a Peaceforcer station only a few blocks away. Suzanne Montignet was handcuffed, and two grim PKF Elite escorted her and the boy past an admittance desk, to an empty, harshly lit holding cell with nothing in it but a pair of benches. Suzanne seemed stunned by Malko's death; she did not say a word during the procedure.
Trent they did not handcuff. They searched both Trent and Suzanne and took away the items they found upon them. They did not find the traceset Trent had hidden in his shoes. It was a trick he had learned from a book about Harry Houdini. Its success did not surprise him, and he was too shaken to be pleased by anything. After a time, a Peaceforcer Elite whom Trent had never seen before entered the holding cell. Elite Commander Breilleune stood silently just inside the door to the room, studying Suzanne Montignet. He did not even glance at Trent. When he spoke, he did so in English, enunciating the words with clear disdain. "Assault upon the person of a Peaceforcer Elite is an act of treason," he said at length. "I suspect the courts of the Unification will allow us to prosecute the perpetrator's companion for assisting in the crime. The crime is one punishable by death, Doctor." He regarded her a moment longer. "There will, I think, be little sympathy for a Frenchwoman who has made so very plain her disdain for all things French." He left without further word. A Peaceforcer stayed with them, just inside the cell door.
Thoughts percolated slowly through Suzanne Montignet's mind. She knew Breilleune by reputation and did not doubt he meant to do exactly what he said.
She could not afford to stand trial for treason. She would be brain-drained before the trial, and too many people who had far too much to lose would be compromised by her testimony. Malko Kalharri, the notorious Colonel Kalharri of the Sons of Liberty, had never been a member of the Johnny Rebs.
But she had.
She did not allow the train of thought to continue; she knew what she must do.
On the bench facing hers, Trent sat looking at her.
Suzanne Montignet took a shuddering breath. "Trent--"
She got only the boy's name out. The Peaceforcer snapped, "You will not speak."
Suzanne looked at Trent with mute pleading. The boy simply shook his head no. "I can't hear you."
The Peaceforcer took one step and struck Trent in the side of the face. The blow knocked Trent from his seat. "You will not speak," the Peaceforcer repeated without apparent anger.
Suzanne Montigne
t tensed a group of muscles at the back of her neck. A relay touching the bone at the base of her skull closed with a click that was audible to her through bone induction.
Speaking three words now, in the correct order, would detonate the capsule inside her skull.
Trent climbed back to his feet and sat down again on the bench. Blood trickled from a cut on his cheek where the Peaceforcer's blow had landed.
The old woman closed her eyes. It would be easier to say the words, now that Malko was gone; surprisingly more easy. She tried to remember if she had ever told Malko she loved him, and could not. She hoped she had.
She did not want to have to look at Trent again. Without opening her eyes Suzanne Montignet said aloud, "God bless America."
Silent light flared behind her closed eyelids, and then there was nothing.
They waited in the ready room, watching the monitors that showed the approaches to the Complex from all directions.
On the monitor that showed the scene at the gate, from the north, a dot appeared at the edge of the monitor's resolution. Captain Deavers' first guess was that it was another of the damned spyeyes. The guess was wrong; as the item grew closer it changed from a featureless blur to an old Ford Systems VTL aircraft. Captain Deavers called up to the roof to warn of a possible attack from above. In moments it was apparent that that was not a danger; the craft was dropping far too quickly. "What the hell--" The Security Services man broke off in mid-sentence as realization struck him. "It's a kamikaze."
Sitting in the warmth of the Peaceforcer vehicle, Mohammed Vance watched the wind come up. Already the wind was fierce, and becoming more so with every moment. The Weather Bureau told him that the rain would arrive sometime around midnight, which should be soon enough.
A droning sound overrode the noise of the wind. Twisting his head, he turned and saw the approaching aircraft through his side window. He was still trying to decide what to do when the vehicle struck the Complex's front gate and, in a shower of sparks, brought down the gate and forty meters of the fence all at the same time.
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