“Are we going to have this same argument again?” Oliver threw his hands up in the air and let them come crashing down on his desk. The items on top of it rattled from the impact. “What if your death provides the margin the government needs to repress the rebellion? How many more people are going to wish they were dead, or will die some other way, because the Realists are still in control?”
Alistair stood up and loomed threateningly over his friend. “To hell with you, Oliver. I got you this information and we’re doing it my way. I’m not arguing about it. My way. Period.”
Gritting his teeth, Oliver looked aside and forced himself to breath slowly and deeply until his pulse was under control. “Fine. Your way. Kidnap the asshole. It ought to be easy. I’m sure I’ll see you again afterwards.”
Alistair sat back down on his cot. “You’d be surprised what sort of things I’ve been trained to do. I can get this guy if for no other reason than they don’t expect anything that sophisticated.”
“Well you’ve got two weeks to prepare for it,” Oliver replied and then stood up. “Oh, to hell with it all. Let’s get some food.”
Alistair nodded and started to rise, but then remembered something. From his sack he produced a piece of cloth with a dried bloodstain and held it for Oliver to see.
“Do you have a somewhere I can store this?”
***
With the overhead lights turned off, the many colored lights of the computers painted their faces in gentle tones and made indistinct shadows where Stephanie stood looking down into the 3D display. The young cadet at the computer seemed nervous to have her standing over him. During the many moments of down time, when he wasn’t relaying a communication or calling up something from the computer files, his fingers moved in the air, as if ghost-typing. Stephanie’s own superior sat unmoving in the back corner of the room, and she fancied she could feel his gaze as a tingle on her spine. They were the only souls on the fourth floor of the Civil Headquarters, and the darkness seemed appropriate for their present task.
The 3D display on the computer showed the outline of a building, the corners and edges traced in green and the walls nearly transparent. A section of the street could be seen as well, and the reds and oranges of a human form walked past the building carrying something in its arms. It walked from one edge of the display to the other and then disappeared.
“Just a civilian,” said a male voice over the speaker.
“Show me Beta and Gamma sites,” Stephanie commanded.
The cadet dropped his fingers to the keyboard and the display blinked off for a fraction of a second before a second display, also a building, came up. There was no sign of life.
“Go on.”
The cadet called up another building but it too was lifeless.
“If they don’t come soon they’re not coming,” said the same male voice over the speaker.
Stephanie did not bother to reply. Instead, she grabbed a chair, pulled it next to the cadet and sat down. It had been her intention to stand for the duration – somehow it felt more appropriate with Travis observing – but her feet were throbbing. She decided there was more dignity in sitting than in constantly shifting her weight.
“We’ve got activity at Alpha.”
The cadet brought up the view before Stephanie said a word.
“We see nothing,” said Stephanie.
“Nothing from our view, Alpha-1,” relayed the cadet.
“The group is still approaching. Six of them, all male.”
“Are they carrying anything?”
“One of them has a bundle, it looks like. Hard to say what it is.”
A moment later the group appeared on the display. Rising slowly from her chair, Stephanie watched as two stayed near the building while the other four fanned out, doing a poor job of effecting nonchalance.
“Sir, we’ve confirmed weapons on all six.”
“Copy that. Hold your positions.”
One of the two near the building’s wall went to his knees and worked with an apparatus of some sort. When he finally stood up he faced away from the building and turned in slow semi-circles.
“He’s scanning. Tell them to stay still.” While the cadet relayed the command, she twisted her torso to look at Captain Travis. “They’re better supplied every day.” Travis did not respond.
The man with the scanner hopped into an alley and walked to the other side of the building. They could see him through the walls made translucent by their equipment. When he finished a second sweep, his companions rejoined him and one of them picked the lock to a side door. Four entered while two remained outside. The four who went inside immediately separated and spread throughout the four floors, stopping now and then to plant something before moving on. Within ten minutes they were back outside and, without fanfare, departed.
“When they’re out of sight, send the team in.”
A couple minutes later, orange and red human shapes once again invaded the building, but these moved with more precision and discipline, rifles held at the ready.
“Sir, it looks like we’ve got audio and 3D video recorders. I don’t recognize the model. Probably not Aldran.”
“No explosives?”
“Negative. Just surveillance equipment.”
Sighing, Stephanie turned to Travis. “I shouldn’t have sent them in. Now they know we know.”
Travis’ response was to turn his hands palms upwards in a resigned gesture. “You need to think quickly, Caldwell.”
Stephanie turned to direct her command to the cadet. “Right now they’re giving the command to get word to their spy he’s been found out. The equipment was planted at Alpha… that means it’s… LaSalle.” She spoke the name with some regret. “We need to have someone there to arrest them both. Keep the teams in surveillance around the buildings just in case. I’ll send relief in a couple hours.”
While the cadet was busy relaying her orders, she turned on her heel to leave. Travis was just getting up. He retrieved his hat from the desk nearby, placed it neatly on his head and, posture perfect, fell in stride with her as she walked through the dark hallways of the fourth floor.
“I shouldn’t have sent them in,” she admitted before Travis could say anything.
“No, you shouldn’t have.” Stephanie was relieved to hear his voice was not cold. “If they were bombs, they could have been allowed to go off; that area is empty in the winter. But you salvaged what you could from the situation. Hopefully, we can pick up whoever comes to warn LaSalle. Then you and I will handle him personally.”
“Yes, sir,” she said as they reached the almost pitch black stairwell.
With a polite smile, Travis held the door open and gestured for her to go first. They made their blind way to the bottom floor and there parted. Travis went to the garage and his auto, Stephanie to the front door and a chill walk home.
Chapter 34
A fierce blizzard enveloped the island and tried to scrub it clean. Alistair’s first week in the hills consisted of furiously digging out snow from the cave entrance and long periods of nothing. Rebels huddled in small groups around a heater and listened to the wind outside. They spoke only softly if at all, as if to keep from alerting the storm to their presence in the belly of the mountain. Their beards grew longer, their lips became more chapped and their anxiousness grew.
Before the gusts arrived, there was a window of calm wherein they expected to hear from LaSalle, but they heard nothing from him nor from a team sent to bug a Civil Guard house on LaSalle’s tip. No sooner were the expensive bugs in place than Civil Guard picked them clean. Oliver, having been the one to order the operation, took it especially hard. Alistair later told his friend the Civil Guard probably gave different versions of a plan to different suspected spies and waited to see which information was acted on.
Bob LaSalle still did not know, and Oliver was not looking forward to telling him, though he insisted on being the one to do so. The mountainous rugby star spent an entire day brooding
, speaking only to Alistair and then just to list the number of ways the whole thing should have made him suspicious from the outset. He was angry enough to launch a full scale assault right then and there and, had the blizzard not decided the issue, Alistair might not have been able to talk him out of it.
The fourth day dawned still and bright. Alistair was the first to burst through the wall of snow blockading the entrance and peer through squinting and watery eyes at the blinding landscape. When his eyes finally adjusted, he saw an unspoiled white wilderness devoid of any other feature than smooth sloping mounds. He allowed himself a minute to survey, and then he and the others got to work, preparing to welcome President Duquesne and the Apex Committee members.
***
Prisoner cells, torture chambers and the like were always associated with dank and dark subterranean dungeon levels. However accurate this might generally have been, the cells in the Civil Headquarters, reserved for prisoners of special interest, were all on the very top floor. On the off chance a prisoner should actually escape, he had several stories of building to pass through before reaching freedom.
With a precisely regular rhythm, Captain Travis’ boot heels clicked cleanly and sharply on the black tiles of the upper story. As Stephanie followed a few paces behind, she stared at his murky reflections on the floor and walls, composed of the same tiles. Travis led her to the center of that story, where the interrogation rooms were. Each was shaped like a circle with a wall cutting through its diameter. The wall was light gray on the side where the room was brightly and harshly lit. On the other, the wall was transparent and the room barely illuminated at all. That half sported a couple computer stations and desks along with some stray chairs, and there Travis and Stephanie entered. On the other side, a naked Ryan LaSalle sat tied to a chair, his hands behind his back. He looked exhausted and abused.
“We haven’t gotten a thing out of him but we haven’t tried all that hard,” commented the Captain. He turned his hard gaze on his protégé. “You are going to get him to talk.”
Stephanie shifted uncomfortably and averted her eyes.
“Yes, Stephanie. You have reached your next step.”
Biting her lip, she looked her commander in the eye. “Is this for his sake or mine?”
“Both. And it needs doing. Now.”
She braced herself as if for an impact. “I don’t feel comfortable with this.”
Before the sentence entirely left her mouth, Travis turned from her and went to a computer where, with a grandiose flick of his arm, he threw a switch and turned on the audio to Ryan’s half of the interrogation room. The sound of his unsteady, fearful breaths came through.
“I do care about what makes you uncomfortable, Stephanie, but only inasmuch as it is in my interest to cure your discomfort. This is the job, now get used to it.” With one hand on his hip and the other supporting his weight on a table near the transparent wall, Travis indicated the door to the other room with a nod of his head. His demeanor, normally controlled and stoic, was flamboyant. Gone was the terribly quiet commander and in his place was a stentorian and dramatic man who unsettled her.
“This is not the job as I understand it,” she said as respectfully and firmly as she could.
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” Travis loudly replied and he paced around her. “You don’t understand what the job is. Few people do, but today you are going to learn.” Travis stopped in front of her, between her and the viewing wall. “You are going to make that man as miserable as he ever imagined possible, until he tells you anything you want to know. Then you’re going to do it some more for good measure. And then you’ll take him back to his cell and execute him and have the corpse burnt to ashes. That’s exactly what you’re going to do because that is exactly your job.”
Stephanie actually found herself shaking. Feeling anger well up in her breast, she fought to control her limbs. “This has never been what the job meant—”
“This has always been what the job meant!” Travis resumed his disorienting orbit about her. “I asked you a question a while ago, Ms. Caldwell, and I want an answer. How in God’s name can such a thing be justified? How do you justify this?”
“You can’t!” she howled, a dam finally crumbling. “He’s a traitor and should go to jail. Give him a trial and send him to prison.”
“You’re as fully aware as I am of what goes on in these chambers. Traitors are captured and tortured everyday. You haven’t raised a word of protest until now… now that you are being called on to do your part. You’ve made a career out of finding traitors and making sure they get their punishment. You know where these people get sent and what happens to them. Don’t try to tell me now you don’t support it! You may not want to get your own hands dirty, but you’ve been supporting this government so you DO support it!”
Once again Travis came to a stop in front of her, this time with his arms folded over his chest. Stephanie did not respond.
“How,” he asked in a softer tone, “do you justify what you are about to do to that man? The answer is you don’t.” Stephanie looked sharply at him. “You don’t justify it, you just do it. You do it because it needs to be done. Why does it need to be done? Because the State requires it. There has never been a time in human history when some group was not lording it over everyone they could bring under their dominion. It’s human nature. There’s no God who ordains these things, who punishes wickedness or rewards virtue. There simply is reality, existence, life. There are physical laws governing this universe, but that is all. If there are any moral laws they are undetectable, silent and entirely without effect, so you can either live your life being dominated or you can dominate. As sure as up is up and down is down it’s going to happen, and there’s no particular reason why it should or shouldn’t be you. The ones who control will be resisted, and the ones who resist will either be put down or gain control themselves. Science has progress; history does not. It’s a long tale made up of identical chapters. If it’s going to happen anyway, then fight to put yourself in a better position. If you don’t, then someone no more deserving will do it to you.”
Travis was pacing again now. “This is what the State is. It’s a collection of people, however keenly or dimly they realize the truth of what I am saying, who have gotten into power. Some feel guilty when they don’t become as altruistic as they pictured themselves being. Those were the Voluntarists, and they failed spectacularly. Others act not on a theory but just follow their nature. Some rare few see the State for what it is and know how to use it. The State is not here for the greater good; the State is here for its own good.”
“That’s not true!”
“The hell it’s not!” Travis roared. A single lock of hair fell out of place and hung over his forehead. “On Foundation Day whom do we parade before the citizens? Doctors? Mechanics? Accountants? We give them row after row of soldiers, followed by fat politicians in expensive autos. Steal from your company or your boss and what do you get? A large fine, paid to the State, and a bit of jail time. Steal from the State by not paying your taxes and what happens to you? Twenty cycles minimum. The Voluntarists suspended the death penalty… except for when the victim was a Civil Guardsman, an elected official or a soldier. What was the one other case where even the Voluntarists used the death penalty? Treason. What happens to you if you get in a bar fight and hit another civilian? But hit a Civil Guardsman, even an off duty one, and you get a minimum of one cycle in prison.
“Every penalty, every single solitary punishment, is increased if committed against the State’s agents. The State is here for itself, Caldwell, and the citizens are resources. We take the fruits of their labor and spend it on ourselves. We tell them what they may do and what they may not; what they may ingest and what they may not; what they may sell and buy and for how much; where they may live; whom they may marry; where they may educate their children and in what fashion; what they may say; how they may defend themselves; even how they may participate in the government they a
re being forced to fund, and if they don’t do it as we decide we send them to jail. And if for one moment they have the audacity to be less than enthusiastic about our governance, we invent a war to get them begging for our help and we denounce all protesters as traitors.
“This is what government is. It always has been and always will be this way. It is the very nature of the State, and it is the very nature of humans either to create the State or have it forced on them.” Travis stepped right in front of Stephanie’s face and looked down into her eyes. “Now I am on the verge of being named commander of the Arcarius garrison and head of the ARO. I am going to need good people at my side to keep control of this city. I don’t want individuals who obey the State reflexively and support it in the abstract. I want men and women who know what the State is, what it does, and don’t flinch when they are called on to do its work. You know now what the State is. You’ve always known but now it’s been made explicit. Can you be the kind of person I need or have I wasted my time with you?”
In response Stephanie, her enervated legs suddenly finding strength, pulled away and flew out the door. Breathing as if in labor, she felt her eyes sting with tears. She got six or seven steps down the hall, trying to swallow a searing lump in her throat, when she stopped. She couldn’t say why other than that a vaguely glimpsed image of the end of her present path flashed before her eyes. Behind her, the door burst open and Travis popped out, a look of alarm on his face. When he saw she had stopped, he relaxed. Stephanie twisted her torso around to look at him.
“Will you come back inside with me?” he asked and held out his hand.
***
Alistair sat slow and unmoving, repeatedly scanning the mostly open stretches of ground around him from the cover of an abandoned railroad car with its roof torn off. It was a bitterly cold morning, and he and his mates were thankful there was no wind. The new fallen snow formed a small hill covering the west side of the tracks, and he wished they could have gotten to the old passenger car without leaving footprints. He sat in one of the doorways and looked at the clear trail they left, feeling exposed. Not wanting to spend much time in a vulnerable and easily detected spot, he arrived with his small and hastily trained troop at the last minute.
Withûr We Page 32