Clarke County, Space

by Allen Steele

  As a bonus, surplus stalks were milled and refined as paper—one more item that did not have to be imported from Earth. Also, Clarke County paper was used extensively on the Moon and Mars, which provided an additional boost to the colony’s economy. It was a source of pride for the New Ark’s cadre of Bamboo Farmers, who wore T-shirts printed with a bamboo flower top and a slogan: “Clarke County Paper Company—So Who Needs Trees?”

  The Bamboo Farm was also a perfect place to hide.

  Among the aluminum rafters reinforcing the ceiling of Torus S-16, squatting on a narrow catwalk hidden among the shadows above the rows of light fixtures, Henry Ostrow sat with his feet dangling high above the dense yellow reeds of the Bamboo Farm, contemplating the ugly fact that, for the first time in years, he had screwed up.

  His escape had been well planned. That wasn’t the problem. He had not been noticed when he had slipped out the back of the LaGrange Hotel to hike through the darkened biosphere to South Station. He had then slipped onto a Green Line tram along with two tired New Ark colonists, whose access cards had allowed him to ride the little monorail into the labyrinthine South torus sections. He had studied the layout of Clarke County in a tourist pamphlet; he had not only selected Torus S-16 in advance, but had also pinpointed the overhead rafters as an ideal hiding place. When the bomb had gone off at the sheriff’s house, he had already been climbing a service ladder into the rafters, unseen in the vacated torus.

  No, the escape plan had been totally professional, flawless. There were no security cameras up here, and judging from the layer of dust on everything, the rafters were rarely visited. During the morning he had sat up here silently, watching Bamboo Farmers making infrequent inspections of the acreage below, completely unseen and unheard. He had eaten well the night before, and he had trained himself to fast for days. The Bamboo Farm was not a highly active area of the colony; he could last here for a long time …

  Were it not for the fact that he had screwed up.

  There was a wafer-size TV in his suitcase. Once he was settled in, Ostrow had pulled it out and tuned into Channel 2, Clarke County’s television station. The only station, in fact, the little Sony could pick up without being plugged into a terminal, and there wasn’t one up here. Channel 2 did not come on live until 7 A.M.; when it did, the morning news was its first program of the day. Ostrow had watched, and what he saw almost made him scream.

  Sheriff’s Department and fire officials are investigating the cause of a violent explosion which partially destroyed the Big Sky home of County Sheriff John Bigthorn, the newscaster said. Ostrow smiled as a bit of film footage showed flames licking at the rear of the bamboo house. The explosion, which occurred shortly before one o’clock this morning, has been tentatively identified by fire team inspectors as caused by a bomb planted on the back porch. The fire was brought under control by the colony fire team. The bomb was triggered when the back door was opened by …

  Here comes the good part, he thought smugly.

  Jenny Schorr, the wife of Big Sky mayor Neil Schorr. She was rushed to Clarke County General Hospital’s emergency ward, where hospital spokesmen list her condition as critical.…

  Ostrow scowled at the miniature LCD screen. “What the fuck!” he exclaimed.

  There was a quick shot of an enclosed electric cart, red lights strobing on top, taking off along the street in front of Bigthorn’s house. Sheriff Bigthorn was also taken to Clarke County General’s emergency room, where he was treated for a minor concussion and burns. Doctors list his condition as satisfactory and he is expected to be released later today. Sheriff’s Department spokesmen have given no comment as to possible suspects for the bombing.

  The newscaster paused. Visiting members of the Church of Twentieth Century Saints, Elvis Has Risen, will be conducting rehearsals this morning at …

  Since then, a single thought had repeated itself, again and again, in his mind. How had he gone wrong, and what could he do about it?

  Finding the sheriff’s house had been easy enough. That information had been available from his hotel room’s terminal, once he had accessed the county phone directory. No one had seen him when he had rigged the bomb on the back porch; he had done that just after he had left the Strip. Indeed, the very reason he had gone down to the Strip was to make sure that the sheriff was not at home, so that Ostrow could visit his house and arrange the trap.

  He had decided that it was necessary to get rid of the sheriff. Bigthorn was the only person he had met so far in the colony who had the guts to try to take him down. Somehow, Macy had gone underground almost as soon as she had arrived in the colony. Ostrow had discovered that she was missing when he had tried visiting “Mary Boston’s” room in the hotel, only to find it crawling with cops … but no girl. While the sheriff had been kicking his ass, she had been making her getaway.

  Ostrow folded his arms on the guardrail and rested his chin on his crossed wrists. This was going to be tougher than he had anticipated. He not only had to track down Macy Westmoreland, who could be any-fucking-where in this place, but he also had to get rid of Bigthorn.

  And, incredibly, he had blown his first try. Bigthorn was still alive. Undoubtedly he knew who had set the bomb, and he would be coming after him. If that wasn’t the pits, Ostrow was no closer to locating Westmoreland. And to make matters as bad as they could be, now he didn’t have freedom of movement: the goddamn Indian was probably putting his face on every screen in the colony.

  Ostrow shook his head, gazing down between his legs at the bamboo fields. I screwed up, he thought. I’ve blown it, big time. All because I let that red bastard get to me. Instead of thinking about the assignment, I tried to settle a personal score. Fuck me, I’ll be lucky if I can get out of here alive.…

  Absorbed in his thoughts, Ostrow failed to notice a lone figure sauntering through the Bamboo Farm below. He didn’t see him until the man stopped directly underneath his perch and looked straight up at him.

  “Good morning!” the stranger called up.

  Henry Ostrow froze. For a second, he thought irrationally that the young, well-dressed man with blond hair was addressing someone else. But there was obviously no one else on the catwalk. The greeting was meant for him.

  “Morning,” Ostrow said. His eyes flicked to his suitcase, which lay open a few feet away. He could grab a gun …

  “Nice view from up there?” the stranger inquired pleasantly.

  “What?” Ostrow asked.

  “I said, do you have a good view from up there?” the passerby repeated. He glanced around at the high reeds. “I’m sure you can see everything.”

  Ostrow forced himself to relax. The man didn’t look like one of the colonists; his manner suggested that he was a tourist who had managed to stray down to the agricultural zones. Tourists were always less observant than permanent residents, in any locale. “Good view, yeah,” Ostrow replied nonchalantly. “I can see everything.”

  The tourist nodded amicably. “Well, be seeing you,” he said with a wave of his hand; then he continued his stroll through the reeds.

  Ostrow watched him until he disappeared from sight. Nothing to worry about there; he had undoubtedly been mistaken for a colonist. But the fact that he had been seen at all was unnerving. If one person could spot him here in the rafters, it meant that he wasn’t as invisible as he thought. The next passer-by might be a colonist who wouldn’t be so easily fooled. Like it or not, he had to move.

  First, he needed any information he could get. Ostrow checked his watch, found that it was a few minutes after noon. He picked up the pocket TV, his only link to the rest of the colony, and switched it on again. Perhaps there was a midday newscast on Channel 2 which would fill him in on further details about the bombing, that might have been made public.

  He did catch a newscast, but if the bombing had been the lead story, he had missed it. He made himself watch, hoping that there would be a recap at the end. The first story he caught was about a town meeting scheduled for that night at
the Big Sky town hall; the top item on the agenda was rumored to be a surprise motion to have Clarke County declared an independent nation, a controversial initiative which was reportedly gathering force among a minority of the colony’s permanent residents. Ostrow took it in without really caring.

  The newscaster, the same one he had seen on the morning show, went to his next story. Visiting members of the Church of Twentieth Century Saints, Elvis Has Risen, this morning had a dress rehearsal at Bird Stadium for the revival they are scheduled to hold tomorrow night.…

  An image of Elvis Parker appeared on the tiny screen: standing onstage, dressed in black leathers, belting out a song which was drowned out by the newscaster’s monologue. Ostrow smiled briefly, remembering his encounter with Parker. Geeks on parade …

  The revival will be carried by satellite to viewers all over Earth, and is considered to be the biggest event which Elvis Parker, the church’s spiritual leader, has ever held. About seventy members of the Church, which worships Elvis Presley as a prophet, are staying in LaGrange as Parker’s personal entourage.…

  The footage suddenly switched to a young woman standing in front of the stage, beaming with blissed-out ecstasy. The Living Elvis is here and among you today, she burbled happily into the camera, and his message of universal love and everlasting glory will reach out among the stars, just as it has reached out to those here among you. Sister Mary has become the first of our …

  Then, as Ostrow watched, the woman’s arm snaked out to a point off-screen, to enthusiastically yank another woman into view of the camera. The other young woman appeared on the screen for only a moment …

  Which was just enough time for Ostrow to recognize her face. Reflexively he jabbed his thumb against the TV’s tiny RECORD button.…

  The girl hastily twisted herself out of the grasp of the first woman’s arm, disappearing off-screen. The first Church member glanced in her general direction, stumbling for a second before recovering.… Ah, um, new converts. Praise Elvis!

  The screen switched again to a wide-angle shot of the crowd, as seen from the stage. While the Church of Elvis has reportedly been gaining new members steadily since its inception, the newscaster’s voice-over continued, the estate of Elvis Presley has disavowed any connection with the cult.

  The scene switched back to the newscaster, who went on to describe how some goats had escaped the day before from some other part of the colony, but Ostrow was no longer interested. He quickly touched the REWIND button and ran the TV’s memory back, watching images blur past the screen until he caught the moment when he had started recording. Then he froze the scene and held the little TV closer to his face, studying the face on the LCD screen intently.

  The woman who had been momentarily caught by the camera was Macy Westmoreland.

  “I’ve got you,” he whispered.

  Ostrow ran the image back two more times, just to be certain, then put the TV down on his knee. She had been clever. He had to give her that. But the prey always makes a mistake, and Macy—Sister Mary, Sister Mary Boston—had just made hers. Henry Ostrow chuckled a little, feeling warm inside. Sometimes the predator gets lucky and picks up a cold scent. He had a second chance now.

  He pulled in his legs, stood up on the catwalk and arched his back, then reached down and zipped up his suitcase before picking it up. This time, he thought, there’s not going to be any mistakes.

  17

  Elvis Gets A Nuke

  (Sunday: 3:05 P.M.)

  An old Looney Tunes cartoon was on TV: Wile E. Coyote’s rocket-powered skateboard had just overshot a precipice as the Road Runner came to a dead stop, and the Coyote was taking another long fall into the canyon below. Gustav Schmidt ignored it; the TV was on only because he automatically turned on the tube whenever he walked into a room.

  The curtains were drawn; the light of day glimmered faintly around the edges of the heavy drapes. The hotel room was filthy because Schmidt refused to let the housekeeping staff inside. Candy wrappers and dirty underwear littered the floor, next to towels and scraps of computer printout; the sheets on the bed were curled next to wadded blankets, and empty Coke containers were piled next to the desk where he worked. The room smelled of rank body odors and last night’s half-eaten room-service dinner.

  Schmidt didn’t care. It kept other members of the Church out of his room. Although he was disturbed that the Living Elvis had visited him only once during their stay in Clarke County, the fact that no one wanted to share a room with him bothered him not in the least. Gustav Schmidt didn’t want or need company, especially since he secretly considered the rest of the members of the Church beneath his contempt. All that mattered to him was his devotion to Elvis, whom Gustav had determined was God’s chosen emissary to mankind.

  If Gustav Schmidt had ever been in doubt about his relationship to his master, that doubt had been swept away. His role was now apparent. He was about to give the Living Elvis the sword to bring mankind to terms with holy destiny.

  There had been no passwords to crack, no source codes to decipher, in the diskette which the Living Elvis, in his all-knowing wisdom, had delivered into Schmidt’s hands. That in itself was proof that the diskette had been predestined for the Church. All Schmidt had to do was boot the diskette into his Toshiba PC, and the program had automatically flashed its directory on his screen.

  It had taken Schmidt a few hours, from the time he had returned to his room after the rehearsal at Bird Stadium, to wander through the directory and piece together what was contained in the program. The terminology was as unfamiliar as the program’s function. Twice already Schmidt had had to admit to himself that he didn’t know certain terms or phrases, and had been forced to open a window into Clarke County’s central data bank to consult the library. It had been humiliating to do so; Schmidt consoled himself with the notion that perhaps these were subtle tests devised by Elvis to determine his worthiness as a true apostle of the faith.

  Yet it had all paid off at last. The control system to Icarus Five was now an open book to Schmidt, its meaning and purpose as clear as the Gideon Bible which lay on the pillow of his bed. Schmidt, hunched over the tiny keyboard, let his slender fingers run across the keys until he re-accessed the guidance subsystem he had found before.

  He moved the cursor down to the TRAJ. I setting and entered the command. On the little backlit screen, a three-dimensional schematic of near-Earth space was outlined on a flat grid described with concentric circles. He studied the orbits of Earth and the Moon for a moment, ignoring the curving red line which suggested the now-extinct trajectory of the asteroid Icarus through the inner solar system. Finally, he smiled and moved the cursor until it was centered over Earth.

  Now to choose the target of Elvis’s holy wrath. He pushed the ENTER key.

  The PC beeped. A short line of print appeared at the bottom of the display: TARGET CHOICE PROHIBITED.

  Schmidt stared at the screen for a moment. Any location on Earth was excluded from his options. He resumed worrying at the program, his nimble fingers scurrying across the keyboard. For the next fifteen minutes he tried every trick he could imagine to either defeat the program’s lockout or find a back door through the targeting subroutine. The terminal beeped so often it began to sound as if he were playing a xylophone … but he couldn’t overcome the lockout.

  All at once, Schmidt surged to his feet. Blindly enraged, he began to throw whatever he could lay his hands on—except for the PC—around the room. Soda containers bounced off the walls, spraying warm Coke across the bed. The desk chair crashed against the door, one of its legs splintering and breaking off. Wads of paper and trash were hurled mindlessly at the TV, which coincidentally was showing the Tasmanian Devil buzz-sawing through a tree. The phone on the desk buzzed, and he picked it up to fling it across the room, before he caught himself.

  Gently he laid the phone, unanswered, back upon the desk and stopped to take a deep breath. As suddenly as it had begun, his tantrum ceased. He stared at the telephone fo
r what seemed to him to be only a minute, although the digital clock on the TV showed that nearly an hour elapsed before he moved again. He didn’t notice.

  Calm once more, Schmidt started to sit down again. The chair was missing, though. He looked around and was vaguely surprised to see it lying next to the door, one of its legs broken off. How had it gotten over there?

  That thought disappeared immediately. It didn’t matter. He kneeled in front of the desk and stared with unblinking eyes at the computer screen, which continued to show the targeting display of Icarus Five.

  He couldn’t focus the trajectory of the interceptor to Hamburg. This was really too bad. There were many in his hometown who deserved to suffer the wrath of Elvis: his mother, his sisters, his childhood schoolmates, Herr Doktor Goff and the rest of the psychiatrists and inmates at the hospital. From the moment he had realized the purpose of the diskette, he had thought of making them all hostages for his demands—for Elvis’s demands, he quickly reminded himself. Too bad that was not a viable choice.…

  So what was left? The moon? It was tempting, but as he quickly opened a window and calculated the trajectory, he realized that the orbital mathematics for such a two-body problem, within the launch window necessary, didn’t work out. Icarus Five would run out of fuel before it reached Descartes Station. He didn’t care. The lunar base didn’t matter to him.

  But after that, what else remained, besides one of the LEO stations or the powersats? Destroying them was all but a futile gesture. The Promised Land wouldn’t be given to Elvis if one of them was threatened. Yet it was painfully obvious that Icarus Five could only be used against an object in near-Earth space. Nothing else existed except …

  Clarke County.

  Schmidt blinked. His bloodshot eyes widened, yet he barely noticed.

  Clarke County.

  It was a beautiful thought.