The Media Candidate

by Paul Dueweke

  Then a vision of Guinda’s body lying silently in her bed with a single puncture wound in her throat engulfed him. They’d gone so far together in such a short time. Now he must see it to the end. He stared at the obstacle in his path and knew there would probably be others ahead; but he had to conquer his fear, because fear could cause him to make a mistake, to misjudge, to miss the obvious.

  His heart beat wildly as his foot made the decision to go. Now Elliott was operating on instinct. He was no longer calculating the probability that he had somehow not blinded his adversary, nor determining what the capability of his foe might be if it were operating only with its IR imager. The pickup shot down the hill under the command of Elliott’s foot.

  Near the end of the driveway, Elliott saw the turret on top of the little car. Now his hands joined the team as they whipped the steering wheel viciously to the left causing the pickup to rip through a median filled with bushy geraniums, bounce over a curb, tear through a newly planted lawn, continually changing course and accelerating toward their joint victim, which sat motionless, only its turret tracking the pickup’s trajectory. A bullet shattered the windshield, but Elliott was aware of only one thing now. In that last second before the impact, the inside of the pickup was filled with the cry of the attacker, “Señor Bull, meet Elliott Townsend!”

  There was the briefest of silences before the crash of the large pickup into the side of the little car. The car caved in and careened across the street, rolling over twice, and coming to rest on its side against an oak tree. The pickup ricocheted out of control, spinning around, slamming against the opposite curb blowing one tire, and coming to rest in the parking lot of a computer distributor. Its front end was severely damaged and the windshield was mostly gone, however the electric drive train was operational.

  Elliott sat dazed and motionless for some time with a collapsed airbag in his lap. He seemed unaware of the emergence of a pair of legs from the partially open rear hatch of the little car. A spider-like creature proceeded to creep out through the narrow aperture, not as a Chinese acrobat gracefully negotiates a tiny opening between a pair of teammates, but as a red-nosed clown stumbles through the window of a Volkswagen. It stood, unsure of itself, testing its environment in every direction with exploratory taps. It walked slowly in the direction of the pickup, stopping frequently to test the ground before it with an extended leg—tap, tap, tap. Then more steps and more taps. It stopped as if confused about its environment and the description of its victim. It stood there, tapping in every direction with its perfect tentacles as if trying to restore some order to this puzzle.

  Elliott watched unresponsively. His mind was only slowly returning to the moment. Finally he understood the scene. He watched with pleasure as the spider, only about a hundred feet away, struggled with its blindness. A smile overtook him, but he quickly reminded himself that this spider, this thing, was incapable of suffering. Elliott wished he had the power to breath into it a soul. If only he could be God for just a minute, he would create in that spider a creature of extreme sensitivity, a creature that would be devastated by its disability, a creature that would agonize over its loss.

  In lieu of such a reality, he fantasized it, the fantasy giving it meaning. He pointed the truck at the spider and accelerated toward it in uneven thumps. The spider reached out with one tentacle toward its attacker just before the truck crushed it against the remains of the little car. The one tentacle remained on the hood of the pickup and slowly curled inward until it became motionless. The fantasy was complete.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Spiders and Spies

  Elliott stood behind a clump of pampas grass examining Guinda’s house. He had begun a new life there such a short time ago. Today’s few hours had been so jammed with a lifetime of trials that he hadn’t paused to consider the toll on his body—and on his mind. His physical agony clawed to the front now that he had lost the momentum of dueling with assassins for his next breath.

  This was the letdown, both physical and mental. The battles for his life, and for whatever he believed in, lay in the swirling eddies at his stern. Before him lay a fog. And a gnawing guilt.

  Trembling legs were the first sign of what was happening to his whole body. Some benches stood in the garden and beckoned him. One was partially hidden from direct view of the second floor deck that adjoined Guinda’s living room. He moved painfully toward that bench, instinctively looking around to see if anyone, or anything, was watching. The truth, in fact, hid well beyond such a token security check. A silent and nearly invisible sentinel lurked behind a bush on Guinda’s front porch at her downstairs entrance.

  It had watched him since he entered the garden, moving like a jackal, always stealthy, always shadowed. It could wait like a practiced sniper. It could observe endlessly with a patience and a vigilance that few humans could even comprehend.

  Elliott plopped down on the bench and surprised himself with a guttural sigh. The sentinel edged further out from behind the bush to a better position. Its interest in Elliott was as intense as Elliott’s interest in Guinda, but of a profoundly different nature. Its interest was based on a voluminous data set created by a bureaucrat motivated only by getting a paycheck. All that effort was being expended on Dr. Elliott T. Townsend, anarchist.

  Elliott tried to relax those battle-weary muscles, but anxiety wouldn’t allow it. His focus was stuck on Guinda and his role in whatever had happened to her. Was I attracted to her just as a woman? he wondered. Or as a comrade in some struggle, this silly adventure we cooked up.

  He shook his head. It wouldn’t clear. An adventure. Is that all this is? But it’s gone so wrong.

  He studied the windows and the French door to the deck for some clue. I have to do something. Can’t just give up now. But what? Just go to the front door and knock? Call the police? Something.

  “What if they haven’t killed her yet?” he mumbled to himself. He bolted upright in his seat. “What if … what if she’s a prisoner? But what if that wasn’t Guinda I talked to this morning? That’s for sure. I don’t know who, or what. But it wasn’t Guin.” He stared at the deck, but with just a glimmer of hope.

  Suddenly a figure appeared at the window. Elliott crouched. He couldn’t tell much about the man at the window except that he was smoking a pipe.

  “Sherwood,” he muttered.

  Elliott could tell he wasn’t speaking, just standing and blowing great clouds of smoke against the glass where it mushroomed. Then a moment later he disappeared. Elliott stood up and took a step toward the house before pain stopped him.

  As he moved, the sentinel stepped forward, ready for a confrontation, but still hidden from view. It lowered its body like a stalking cat, processing and measuring, not quite thinking. Each time Elliott took a step forward it inched its body closer and lower, always keeping its cover, always coming closer to that instruction buried deep in it’s operating program. One line of computer code would change it from surveillance mode to attack mode—a simple one-line instruction that meant life or death to Elliott.

  The window again went blank. Elliott’s torment surged. He weighed his options. The answer was inside that house.

  “I’ve got nothing to lose,” he whispered. “I’ll just go up to her front door. It’s still her door. She still lives there. If I do nothing, they’ll just track me down and kill me, and I’ll never know.”

  He began to take another step toward the door and the waiting sentinel, but he was interrupted by the French doors swinging open. A wave of smoke broke over the threshold. Slowly a figure emerged with the escaping flood. It wasn’t the same figure he just saw at the window. Elliott first squinted and then rubbed his eyes imploring them to work younger.

  “Guin!” he shouted taking a painful step forward, a step mimicked by the sentinel.

  Guinda looked down into the garden and had no trouble recognizing the figure. She also had no trouble seeing the object slowly creeping down the steps from her front porch.

 
; Elliott took more steps toward her shouting, “Guin, I thought you were dead!”

  The sentinel’s intentions became obvious to her. She watched each painful step Elliott made toward her, and she watched the sentinel reach the bottom step, creeping lower to the ground, waiting for the proper time to spring. It stopped and waited as Elliott repeated each agonizing step that brought the spider closer to its attack sequence.

  “Guin, are you okay?” came the cries from Elliott as he reached the center of the garden.

  Sherwood joined Guinda on the deck and watched the melodrama unfold. Guinda looked at the spider below. It was ready. She looked at the battered man dragging himself across the garden toward her and toward it. Her face showed no emotion. She stepped to the railing and shouted, “Townsend, stop!”

  At the sound of his name, he stiffened. “What?” he shouted back.

  “Stop where you are.”

  “What’s the matter, Guin?” Elliott said as he managed two more steps toward her.

  The sentinel’s fang now throbbed, and its body was fully crouched. Its eight feet were dug into the flowerbed beneath the bush. It waited and watched and calculated.

  “You’re in great danger here, Townsend,” she said with precision. “You’ll be killed if you come any closer. If you value your life, stop where you are.”

  The footprint of her words pierced his brain and then ripped into his heart, but he reacted only to the latter. “I want to make sure everything is okay, Guin. I’m coming up.”

  Sherwood stepped forward. “Burns was speaking the truth when she said you are in very grave danger, Townsend. You better stop where you are. The next step might be your last.”

  “I’ve come this far, and I’m not leaving until I come up there and see Guinda!” He took his last step forward.

  “Stop, Townsend! I don’t want you to come up. Don’t be a fool! Listen to Sherwood!” She turned abruptly and disappeared inside.

  Elliott froze as he watched her vanish. When he first saw her in the doorway, his sense of danger evaporated because they once more owned that danger together. As the precision of her command crystallized, he realized that he now owned the danger alone. The empty space beside Sherwood attested to this new reality. But it was new only to Elliott. He’d converged on Guinda with the values of a bygone era. He’d embraced her as a woman, as a peer, and interpreted her acceptance of him in the light of that same lost age. The fossilized values of a dead century had blinded him to the exigencies of today. She was a child of the media and may have questioned that parentage but could never reject it. This congruence burst upon him. Guinda had never been a part of his world.

  The loss of Guinda collapsed his view of this game. He suddenly lost interest in pursuing it to a solution. He’d once more betrayed himself. The memory of Ms. Dobbs’ eyes piercing his soul competed with the loss of Guinda Burns. But the reality of his present position could not be denied. He stared at the grass before him and reprimanded himself for being such a fool—such an old fool.

  “Go sit on your park bench, Townsend, and I will come out and talk to you,” Sherwood said.

  Elliott slowly obeyed. He had nothing left now but a blunted craving. Guinda had been his partner in the most exciting excursion of his life. But there was more. He was devastated by her betrayal of her principles—or were they his principles? In a sense, she had remained more faithful to her principles than he to his. No, it wasn’t just principles and adventures. He felt foolish, like a high-school boy who finds that his secret love has other interests. Could it simply be adolescent jealousy?

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The Media Republic

  Sherwood descended the stairs and walked gingerly past the sentry, maintaining eye contact with it. Although he surmised it had been programmed specifically to keep Elliott out, he felt vulnerable as he passed within inches of it. He envisioned the sequence of integrated-circuit triggers as the spider achieved the optimal orientation, as it charged the plunger capacitor, as it commanded the needle to penetrate and the force-sensor feedback circuits stopped the penetration at the optimal depth, as the plunger injected the deadly load, and as the command for withdrawal brought the glistening needle back to storage. He feared its effectiveness with pride.

  Sherwood joined Elliott on the bench, glancing back over his shoulder several times. They sat beside each other for some time in silence. Elliott leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands folded in front of him. Sherwood initially wanted to dispose of him like an annoying mosquito. But the fact that Elliott was sitting there beside him was an outstanding feat, for he knew of COPE’s plans to eliminate Elliott that morning. Elliott must have some exceptional qualities to be able to outwit such opponents as COPE would throw against him. Beneath his Don Quixote exterior there must beat the heart of a formidable adversary. He wondered just what kind of a man Elliott might be.

  Sherwood performed the ritual of selecting the appropriate tobacco for this occasion, cleaning his pipe bowl to preserve the purity of the blend, and filling the bowl and tamping it with his pipe-cleaning tool. He sat back against the bench and drew lightly on the pipe to insure that it was prepared. Elliott remained motionless as Sherwood applied fire to the tobacco and began producing clouds of some aromatic smoke of great complexity. The slightest of breezes carried the dispersing clouds past Elliott.

  “You are playing a foolish and dangerous game, Townsend. Burns says you are just a harmless old man. We have encountered cases like you before. We usually dispatch them much more efficiently. There is never any real threat, but COPE does not like loose ends. Not good business.” Settling back into a position of arrogant disdain, Sherwood continued, “Tell me, Townsend, what did you expect to gain with your incursion into politics?”

  Elliott turned his head enough to look at Sherwood and to attract his attention. “What’s going to happen to Guinda now?”

  The question startled Sherwood, causing him to divert his eyes from the clouds attempting to flee his presence. He looked at Elliott somewhat confused by this role reversal.

  “What’s going to happen to Guinda now?” Elliott repeated.

  “Well, G … ah, Burns has a great deal of potential, and we plan to use her assets in upcoming—”

  “You mean her body,” Elliott interrupted now looking squarely at Sherwood, causing him to shift his eyes away nervously.

  “Burns has many assets besides the obvious physical ones,” Sherwood continued.

  “Name some others,” Elliott demanded, still looking directly at the nervous Sherwood and moving his face closer to him.

  “Well … her … ah … hair is very … ah … beautiful and … she won some medals in the Olympics and—”

  “In what event?”

  “Well, let’s see, … it was tennis, that’s it, tennis.”

  “Swimming, you cretin, it was swimming. She won the gold in the 100 meter freestyle and the silver in the 200 meter butterfly, and she anchored the team that took the gold in the 400 meter relay.” Elliott returned his gaze to the earth just beyond his folded hands. “How about her Master’s degree in political science? How about her enthusiasm and dedication to the Party? How about her intelligence? How about her aggressiveness at uncovering the truth?” Silence now filled all the voids among the clouds of smoke.

  During Elliott’s short testimonial, Sherwood had risen to his feet and withdrawn a couple paces upwind. He tapped his pipe bowl sharply on a steel railing, disgorging the old ashes, still burning furiously, which had failed him. He fumbled in his pocket for a new pouch of tobacco.

  With a new charge of tobacco, Sherwood walked back to the bench and stood with his shadow directly intersecting Elliott’s folded hands. “I am here to convince you that it is in your interest, Townsend, and in the interest of whatever romantic and pedantic ideals you harbor about some nonexistent America, to desist in this nonsensical game you are playing.”

  “Why are you so interested in preserving my life?” Elliott asked,
turning to face Sherwood.

  “Do you know who Jean D’Alembert was?” Sherwood asked.

  Elliott maintained a fixed stare on Sherwood.

  “The great Dr. Townsend, having studied theoretical physics, of course knows the name. But do you understand the significance of D’Alembert’s Principle?”

  “What are you getting at, Sherwood? D’Alembert’s Principle is at the very core of our concept of classical mechanics. Without it, we could not have developed the Hamiltonian model of the physics of particles.”

  “Which links,” Sherwood gestured with his pipe, “the physics of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. The point, Dr. Townsend, is simply this. When pure science is pursued for the sake of the science, with no concern for what technology might ever derive from it, we never can know what incredible connections may be drawn from it in the future—until that future arrives.”

  “What’s the point, Sherwood?”

  “Neutrino Wave-Function Exchange may be such a principle.”

  Elliott held his breath as Sherwood projected a gray cloud into the air above him. “You won a Nobel Prize for discovering the Higgs Particle, a rather plebeian, yet time-consuming, effort by your own admonition. But your theory of Neutrino Wave-Function Exchange has been generally ignored by a physics community largely focused on funding issues. Your principle is quite subtle but may hold the key to understanding whence ninety percent of the universe derives its origin. Neutrino exchange may thrust physics into the twenty-second century.”

  “You think my life should be preserved because of some arcane principle I derived?”

  “The Principle of Neutrino Wave-Function Exchange exists quite independent of your life, Dr. Townsend. Where you separated yourself from the slugs surrounding us was your vision, your conscious decision to forsake all to pursue your science.”