Just Compensation

by Robert N. Charrette

  But Yates interposed a shield, catching the sword and causing sparks to fly. Andy staggered back and the knight engaged Yates. It was an effective defense, the sword splashed flame as it jammed against the shield. But Andy could see that it wouldn’t last forever. The knight’s attack was developing a series of spidery cracks in the shield icon that represented Yates’s defense.

  Andy didn’t know what he could do. His attack program hadn’t fazed the other ice, what good would it be against this one?

  Yates parried the knight’s next attack—but while he did, he shoved his briefcase toward Andy. Without thinking, Andy took it.

  “Get out of here, Cee.”

  “What about you?”

  Yates’s answer was preempted as the knight slammed his sword into Yates’s shield with a fury that destroyed any hope of holding out against the onslaught. Between blows Yates shouted, “Go! I’ll cover.”

  “But what about you?”

  “No way I’m gonna stay and play with this any longer than I have to. Go!” The knight landed another attack, causing Yates to grunt. Pieces fragmented from Yates’s shield and flew away, burning.

  “Drek, don’t be a tortoise.”

  Yates snatched the briefcase back and used it to slug Andy in the head. The shock felt physical. Cyberspace started to strobe around Andy, disorienting him. He straggled, trying to stabilize his Matrix connection, but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do. He was caught, his Matrix presence unfocused.

  Helpless, he watched as the knight swung again and shattered Yates’s shield into a billion shards of fire. The sword swept in and sliced clean through the false Telestrian exec’s shoulder. Arm separated from body and was no more. Yates screamed as black fire ignited along the wound and rose to consume him.

  The knight turned to look at Andy, stepped toward him, raised the sword. There was nothing Andy could do. He was frozen as the virtuality around him flickered. His mind was flickering, too. Then he was gone but not gone, whirling away from the black ice knight and lying, panting, in the console chair. He was out, and not out, all at once. Away from the virtual ready room, yet still standing beneath the electron skies; spiraling away from the secret places through open cyberspace among streaks and stars of data, yet blinking meat eyes at the faces of a troll and a man. Out of the Matrix and falling back down into his sweat-plastered, limp body, yet already there, although simultaneously standing, frozen, watching the knight raise his sword of fire. The duality tore at his mind and overwhelmed him.

  The next thing his senses recorded was the troll saying, “Yates is gone.”

  Andy’s awareness crawled back, and with the understanding that he had experienced dump shock for the first time. Yates must have held some kind of control over Andy’s Matrix presence. He hadn’t known another decker could do that, but somehow Yates had cut him loose from the Matrix and sent his persona program crashing home. Andy didn’t understand, but he was glad he hadn’t had to face the black ice alone.

  “He got the stuff?” Shamgar asked.

  “He gave it to me.” Andy heard himself say.

  That was a stupid thing to say, even if it was true! But dump shock was supposed to do that to you: make you stupid and slow. It was supposed to pass, too. Andy hoped so. He felt like drek.

  “There’s nothing on the deck.” Rags said.

  Shamgar cursed long and hard.

  “Our new ally has headware.” Kit said.

  “Could Yates have dumped it there?” Marksman said.

  “Maybe. I haven’t got the tools to find out here.” Rags said.

  “And we haven’t got the tirr?.” Kit added.

  “Then somebody’s going for a ride.” Marksman said. “He’s too shaky to make time. You’ll have to carry him, Rags.”

  Andy tried to object as the troll heaved him out of the console couch. His stomach hit the troll’s hard bony shoulder and knocked the air out of him. He didn’t even feel them pull the datajack free.

  >NEWSNET DOWNLINK

  -[6:22:14/8-15-55]

  COMP ARMY: REACTION FROM THE HILL AND THE WHITE HOUSE

  While Federal District Police and Compensation Marchers clashed in yet another shouting match outside, President Steele spoke from the White House today. “I want to assure you all that everything possible is being done to ensure that each and every member of the so-called Compensation Army receives his or her just and proper compensation.” he said. “I know the country is with me on this.”

  Congressional leaders agree. Speaker of the House, Betty Jo Pritchard (Rep-ONT), on a scheduled trip to her home in Toronto, Ontario, holds the hard line. “Lawlessness and disorderly conduct are not conducive to justice.” she commented. “No one is denying the justice of the compensation claims, but the approach being taken by Randolph and his Compensation thugs is criminal. The UCAS government does not, cannot, and will not support criminals.”

  Meanwhile, the Gorchakov-Drinkwater Immediate Compensation Bill remains in committee and Christian Randolph, spokesman for the Compensation Expedition Force, is not happy. “Delay is what they really want.” Randolph said. “They’re expecting us to fade away. Well, I’m here to tell them that I’m an old soldier, and this old soldier is not going to fade away. Old soldiers know how to fight. We’re all Americans here, and we all know that Americans don’t like to start fights. But we’re not afraid to finish them. Back us into a corner and you’ll see what I mean.” When asked to speculate on whether Randolph was now threatening violent confrontations between the government and the Marchers despite his previous anti-violence stand, Cynthia Locke, Federal Capital Chief of Police would only reply, “No comment.”<<<<<

  7

  Ten hours wasn’t enough to wipe the sludge of the field exercise from his brain, but nature couldn’t be denied and Tom woke up. Instead of drowsing back off, he found his mind racing across the events of the last week, from the sudden transfer orders through the war game and on to the dismal debrief. All the secrecy bothered him too much to go back to sleep. And his small room was too stifling, not just from the day’s rising heat. The walls were too constricting.

  The kitchen at the officers’ mess hall was between breakfast and lunch, leaving the Nuke ’Em self-service section as the only food source. Tom knew how to deal with that. He went right past the dismal Protein Pick-ups, Breakfast Burritos, Easy Eggs, and Scrambled Starters to the drinks section and filled the biggest cup he could find with black soykaf. The cup he’d chosen wasn’t rated for hot liquids, so it slagged, and Tom barely avoided being scalded. Still half unconscious, he observed blearily. He found another cup, hot-rated this time, and filied it. Caffeine wasn’t supposed to chill the effects of too many wide-awakes, but it had gotten him through his share of mornings after.

  The hall wasn’t crowded, and he didn’t see anyone he knew. Just as well; acquaintances would have demanded acknowledgment. He didn’t feel like making new friends yet, either; so he looked for a table as far away from people as he could get. Spotting one in a nook near the empty buffet station, he headed that way, targeting the seat that would give him the best view of the hall’s big screen. From the snatches he heard as he walked, there was a news program on—weather just now, but they’d likely follow with at least the headlines. He’d missed several days of what was going on in the world and needed catching up.

  He got situated and tried focusing his bleary eyes on the screen. The map graphic was mostly obscured by a guy standing in front of it and doing a weatherman's dance with lots of arm-waving, finger-pointing, and hand-sweeping. Pointless antics, Tom thought. The whole country was caught in a stagnant hot spell. You didn’t need to be prescient to predict more hot and humid annoyance.

  It took Tom longer than it should have to realize that the guy on the screen wasn’t a meteorologist and the map wasn’t a weather map. The guy was Johnny Lessee, the talk show star, and the map was of the Federal District. Lessee was doing his Comp Army Forecast routine again. Tom was annoyed. The long, drawn-
out joke on which way the wind was blowing had gotten old in its first week of July when the first marchers, not yet an army, had arrived in Washington. But for some reason Lessee was clinging to the shtick, dragging the undead routine through July and into August. Tom wondered if Lessee’s writers were among the marchers, leaving the star short of material.

  Still, Lessee, or more likely his people, had the good sense to keep their graphics current. Or did they? Certainly the map didn’t match what Tom remembered, but could it be true that the tent city that had begun in the Tidal Basin parks had really grown so huge? Lessee’s map showed the camp to have spread across the river into Arlington and up the Mall as well, lapping at the centers of government power like a tide.

  Had he misread Colonel Molinovsky’s hint last night?

  Using the table’s console, Tom tapped in a vote to change the screen to a real news program. Nothing changed; so the computer’s tally of the diners’ preferences must still favor Lessee. Having learned to take what he could get, he sucked down a draught of throat-searing coffee and tapped on the sound feed for his table. Lessee’s voice came through loud and raucous.

  “So that’s the long and short of it, folks. Not to put too fine a point on it, the unmoving mass of hot air sitting atop the Hiil is still having no effect on the situation. A smaller but no less turbulent mass sandwiched between Pennsylvania and Executive Avenues has begun to rotate in concert with the larger air currents around it. Though this should come as no surprise to all you veteran weather watchers out there. The way the wind is—”

  Tom cut the sound. He’d forgotten how annoying Lessee’s voice was, and he knew he didn’t need the fatuous liberal’s opinions.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me if Steele up and joined the fragging marchers. Guy’s a wimp.”

  Tom turned to see Olivetti standing beside him. The rigger’s teeth shone in a broad smile. Olivetti gestured with his free hand, the flesh one.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Tom did; Olivetti wasn’t the sort he preferred to associate with. But there were times when it was politic to be polite. “It's a free country.”

  “Not all of it.” Olivetti replied.

  “We’re not the West without the West.” As Tom gave the traditional reply he raised his cup, and Olivetti brought his to meet it. The shock of contact slopped some of Tom’s soykaf onto Olivetti’s hand. The dark liquid beaded and ran in rivulets across the shiny chrome.

  “Sorry.” Tom said automatically.

  “Not like it matters, man.” Olivetti said taking a seat. “Unless they’ve gone back to draining waste battery acids into the coffee urns.” He put his cup down and flicked his wrist, shedding the last of the droplets. “Tactile sensors cut out at discomfort levels and all they leave behind are digital updates, informative but not painful. Wouldn’t want to lose a hand and not know about it, eh?”

  In Tom’s view losing a hand completely was preferable to replacing it with such an obviously mechanical substitute. Not exactly the current opinion in some circles—circles in which, it appeared, Olivetti ran. It wasn’t wise to have the commander of your support drones believing that you thought him some kind of perverted freak, even if you did. Tom wasn’t as sure as he once had been that cyberreplacement was a perversion—there were medical necessities, after all—but he still wasn’t comfortable around people who’d had it done voluntarily. He suspected that Olivetti’s enhancements weren’t medically necessary, but he gave the man the benefit of the doubt.

  “Can’t sleep either?” he asked, hoping to get onto a more comfortable subject.

  “Sleep is for meat.” Olivetti said, not helping at all.

  “Yeah, well, you need what you need.” Tom nodded toward the screen. “Interested in a change of subject?”

  Olivetti glanced at the screen, frowned, and swept his gaze across the hall. When his chrome replacement eyes came back to Tom, the rigger said, “Can’t have much support. What did you punch for?”

  “NewsNet.”

  “Good choice.”

  Olivetti cocked his wrist inward. A data spike snicked out above his knuckles. He slipped the spike into the table’s terminal and the picture changed; his vote had pushed the tally over the threshold. The news program was reporting on a speech President Steele had made to the Businesspersons’ Council for the Advancement of Science.

  “Steele.” Olivetti shook his head and made a rude sound. “He’s just lucky that Adams went belly up. Otherwise our dear commander-in-chief wouldn’t be sitting in the oval office sucking from the great corporate teat. It’s not like any thinking beings would have voted the geek in.”

  “Funny, I would have guessed you for a Technocrat.” The cold chrome eyes regarded him for a long moment before Olivetti said, “You’ve been hanging with the hoodoo squad too long. I’ve been a registered Techno Republic policlubber since the beginning back in ’32.” Olivetti tapped finger to eyeball; metal clicked against metal. “Chrome covers the future. Be plated or belated, your choice. The future’s already begun.”

  Tom didn’t want to discuss techno philosophy either. “Steele had a pretty high approval rating in the last poll I read.”

  “Polls are worth the paper they’re printed on, and they’re all electronic. Besides, Steele being a fragging Technocrat the e-polls are going to do nothing but favor him. Now I’m as forward-looking as the next guy, but these Technocratic bozos? Sure as there’s a God in the Machine, they’re gonna slot the country up worse than ever. They were ’crats long before they were techno, and like all good ’crats they can’t find their backsides without a road map and a guide. Drek, they can’t even get a decision to crap out of committee. And I’m not the only one who thinks that way, let me tell you.” Tom didn’t need Olivetti to tell him; he’d had his ears filled with anti-Technocrat sentiment at the Point, and overfilled in Denver. Most of it came from just the sort of people you’d expect: rednecks, displacees, Humanis sympathizers, the hoodoo crew, metas, and just about everyone not sporting chrome. When the same sentiment started coming from converts to the cyber revolution like Olivetti, the feelings had to be everywhere. Tom hadn’t been keeping up on Technocrat doctrine, but he wondered if what had once been the most rational branch of the Democratic Party hadn’t gone a little glitched once it got out on its own.

  Steele might be a Technocrat, and he might even be as slotted up as Olivetti implied, but he was still the President, and that still meant something to Tom. Olivetti’s ravings reminded Tom of some whispers he’d heard back in Denver, sourceless rumors about factions who found the president unsuitable, factions who might be interested in doing something about it. Were the whispers more than empty air?

  “Steel’s still commander-in-chief.” Tom said, just to see how Olivetti would take it.

  “Yeah? We’ll be getting a new one in ’56. Maybe sooner if Steele gets his butt gobbled up by those squatters on his doorstep.”

  Not by a secret conspiracy? “You mean the Comp Army?” Olivetti nodded. “Bunch of dangerous malcontents. Ought to be hosed out of town like vermin. If they won’t go peaceably, they can go feet first far as I’m concerned. World’ll be better off without the beggars.”

  Sounded to Tom like somebody’s Final Solution, or the Humanis Policlub’s Contract for a Better, Stronger America. “Pretty harsh.”

  “Harsh world.” Olivetti said sharply. “A man works for a living. He don’t go begging.” He rapped on the table with his chrome fist. “No matter what it costs him, eh?”

  “They’re only asking for what’s owed them.”

  “Yeah? So they say. But you know what? I think there’s a deeper truth here. One they don’t want to hear. It's real plain and easy to see, but folks who got their hands out, going ‘Gimme, gimme!’ don’t see nothing but ‘what’s owed them.’ Vermin! We’d still have the West if those old time cream-centers hadn’t folded. What they got to cry about, eh? They walked out on what they had, nice and peaceable. But, hey. since they’re all good little child
ren, why don’t you go pat them on their heads and send them all home? Be good to see them all straightened out just fine.”

  Despite Olivetti’s deadpan delivery, Tom assumed the remark was a joke. He had to; otherwise he’d have to consider spitting on the man. Besides—“I’m not headed that way any time soon. Got my leave denied in the morning posting.”

  “Ain’t so. The grandson of old General Rock ain’t going to be sitting around nowhere warming chairs.” Olivetti announced. “Ain’t gonna happen. Priv-il-edges of rank and that drek.”

  Tom wanted to tell Olivetti to shut up, but he said, “Any privileges are my grandfather’s, not mine.”

  “Who you slotting, man? Just remind them a little bit who you are. That’s all you got to do. Drop the name, man. All there is to it. You’ll be on the next flight out, you’ll see.” Tom had a fistful of Olivetti’s fatigues. “I don’t need a rebuilt man telling me how to run my career. I’ve earned everything I’ve gotten in this army.”

  “Don’t mean nothing, man.” Olivetti’s voice was up an octave. “Don’t mean nothing. Nobody never said you ain’t chill. Chill, man.”

  Tom didn’t remember kicking his chair back and standing, but he obviously had. He let go of the rigger’s uniform and eased back from the table. Sheepishly he recovered his chair and sat in it. He reached for his soykaf, but the cup was gone. Olivetti’s cup was still on the table, spinning slowly in a widening, black puddle

  “It’s the wide-awakes.” Tom said.

  “Yeah, man. The wide-awakes. That’s it.” He smiled placatingly. “We just watch the news now.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Yeah, man. Real chill.”

  But Tom noticed that Olivetti kept glancing at him throughout the rest of the NewsNet ’cast.

  >>NEKSNET DOWNLINK

  -[06:36:43/8-15-55]

  POLICY CHANGES IN WASHINGTON