by Gini Koch
“But many times, they’re not,” Dad said. “Some bills are restrictive in their nature, such as bills about illegal immigration.”
Jeff nodded. “Right. Bills go to committee. This got explained to me when they shoved the job on me and then again earlier today. The different committees take the bills, research them, and make their recommendations. Sometimes they table the bill, which means they get rid of it, sometimes the committee favors the bill and sends it up for a vote. And all bills get debated somewhere along the way.”
“They also get amended along the way, which is where many politicians, lobbyists, and special interest groups come in to try to use their influence to affect the bill,” Dad said.
“Right,” I added. “The former Diplomatic Corps used their influence to, supposedly, ensure that bills and other actions going through Congress were doing things to help, versus harm, the A-Cs.”
“Okay, so someone wants to affect the bill. So the committee says no.”
“The committee doesn’t always say, no, Jeff,” Dad said. “Sometimes the committee agrees with what the lobbyist wants. And then they amend the bill. Sometimes they amend or change a bill about, say, protecting butterflies, with a single line forbidding the sale of alcohol in every state in the union.”
“Why is that allowed?” Jeff sounded worried now.
“Because that’s the way things work. Think about the Cabal of Evil. Lillian Culver represents a lot of big defense contractors. Let’s say you’re on the Defense Committee. She’s going to want to wine and dine you, so to speak, in order to influence your putting in something in the bill that suggests that you must use one of her clients. No biggie, right? I mean, they’re established defense contractors, buy American, sort of thing.”
“Okay, but that’s obvious, and there would be opposing sides on every committee. Someone would catch it and stop it.”
“Love your faith in the political system. And maybe that would happen. But let’s say that you’re on the Education Committee. Lillian still wines and dines you, and convinces you that her clients will give money to the schools if you’ll just get this one line in requiring that all schools have to have, say Titan Security instead of local police providing protection. You agree, and either slip it in or passionately argue the case for the committee, and the committee buys in and puts the line in willingly.”
“I can see how that would be dangerous, but even if the committee went for it, so what? These things get debated in session. That’s where something like what Sol just described could be stopped.”
“Only if everyone’s read it or someone brings up the line about forbidding alcohol in every state or having Titan Security in every school.” I held up one of the bills. “These things are humongous by the time they’re done and go to the Floor of the House or the Senate for a vote. And not everyone reads them. Many rely on the committees to make their recommendations and then they vote accordingly.”
Jeff nodded slowly. “And many who vote will think they’re voting for the obvious parts of the bill, not the sneaky stuff. So, every bill needs to be read carefully. That’s the job, isn’t it? At least a big part of it, I mean. To read every bill that comes your way?”
I dropped the stack of bills in his lap. “You’re an A-C. You can read at hyperspeed. I don’t believe every single representative is going to read every word, let alone find the line that Dad and I found, over and over again, in a plethora of legislative bills that have almost nothing to do with each other, and also almost nothing to do with the line being snuck in.”
“I’d agree with that in general,” Tito said, as he and Nurse Carter joined us. “But not for one in particular. We can guarantee that Santiago Reyes read every bill that he was given. And I’d bet he found the same things you did.”
“What did you all find?” Jeff asked. “I’m obviously the only one not clued in.”
I held up the last bill, which I still had in my hand. “This bill is supposedly about making the nation’s schools better. But get a load of this particular sentence—and really pay attention, because Dad and I found this or close to it in every one of the bills now sitting in your lap.”
“Edge of our seats,” Jeff said, sarcasm knob only at a sleepy six on the scale.
“You will be. I think Tito and Magdalena are already aware. From the middle of a paragraph describing school bus specifications in extremely boring detail, we have this gem: No aliens not naturally from Earth shall be allowed to overrule any U.S. state or federal government law, mandate, or directive, now or in perpetuity.”
We were all quiet for a few long moments. Tito cleared his throat. “That’s what Santiago was doing. He had a listing of every bill and the specific anti-alien lines from them. He had the ones about human illegals called out, too. This shouldn’t surprise anyone in the room, but there were a lot less of those than the ones clearly put in to cover the A-Cs both of Earth and elsewhere.”
“I understand why this is bad, but what does it all mean?” Nurse Carter asked.
Seemed obvious to me. “It means we know why all the representatives are being killed.”
CHAPTER 75
“HOW DO THESE lines correlate to the murder or suspected murder of over twenty people?” Jeff asked.
“Edmund Brewer told me that he’d been amazed to discover that two dozen people could mean the difference between a bill’s passage or failure. He also said that they were worried about filibusters and that this legislation is considered important.”
“So?” Jeff asked.
“So somebody has influenced every single one of the committees that worked on these bills. That’s a lot of influence. And yet, other than Club Fifty-One and similar crackpot groups we’ve discovered in the recent months, there is no functioning Anti-A-C lobby out there. So who got this line or its close cousin into every single one of these bills?”
“An enemy, I get it,” Jeff said. “But why does that equal murder?”
“I’m with Jeff,” Tito said. “I’m not seeing how these bills are related to anyone dying.”
Resisted the impulse to heave a sigh. Also resisted the impulse to wake Chuckie up and have him come in here so I’d have some help with my conspiracy theory. I was here, I was up, time to go it alone. Always the way.
“Ah,” Nurse Carter said. “There was something else. One line, near the bottom of what we think is the second page. ‘There is more going on than just this. Must find out what.’ We think it’s the last thing he wrote.”
“See?”
“Still not seeing anything other than Santiago being suspicious about how those lines got into every bill,” Tito said. “It makes sense he’d think more was going on.”
“Santiago died at our dinner party and the President asked New Mexico’s governor to appoint Jeff. That’s pretty much never been done before.”
“Everything that’s happened this year has pretty much never been done before, Kitty,” Tito said. “Appointing a representative is a lot less touchy than halting all general elections and everything else governments, ours and everyone else’s, have done since the invasion.”
“But I thought we’d decided my appointment was done to prevent an anti-alien faction from taking over,” Jeff said.
“Yes, and I’m sure that’s the excuse the President gave the governor. It’s a great excuse. But I think if Eugene had succeeded and killed Brewer instead, the President would have done the same thing, only asking California’s governor to choose an appointee. He needed precedent to be set.”
“You’re saying the President is behind all the killings?” Dad asked, sounding shocked and worried.
“No. I think the President has noted the many missing seats in the House and is trying to forestall bad legislation passing or good legislation failing. But more than that, I think he’s trying to avoid having legislation pass with the House down significantly so that no one can say anything shady happened. One less thing to protest, in that sense. In part because one of these bills, the
one from Transportation, is openly anti-alien in the extreme, and I’m sure the President knows of its existence.”
“Okay,” Tito said. “Let’s say you’re right. Why does killing people help whoever’s behind this?”
“Because the Mastermind, whoever he or she is, knows that this bill is around, and therefore knows that the President is going to want to do whatever he can to ensure that this one bill fails. We’re sitting precariously, as far as anyone in government knows, because the entire Alpha Centauri system, minimum, is watching. So if anti-alien legislation passes, it had damn well better pass with everyone’s consent. Only, it won’t. But this anti-alien bill is not the problem.”
“It’s the other bills,” Jeff said. “Right? We’re about to have twenty new reps sworn in the day after Christmas. They’ll have one week to read these bills before they vote on them. Some of them will read them fully, but some won’t, per the civics lesson you two gave me.”
“The House will normally have something of an even split for bills like these,” Dad said. “Not a hundred percent of the time, but bills pass or fail in part because of all that political maneuvering we talked about. It has to be worth it for a rep to vote yea or nay, and what’s worth it to one isn’t the same as another. Some will support a party-endorsed bill no matter what. Some will always vote no when a bill from, say, the Foreign Affairs committee comes through. So those two dozen votes can make the difference.”
“And it’s safe to assume they’ll be making the difference coming up, or else all those people wouldn’t be dead.”
“We still have no proof that anyone other than Santiago was murdered,” Jeff said. “And besides, so what if they pass through the House? They have to pass through the Senate, too, right?”
“Right. So, what if the President knows or has a good guess that the Senate’s already going to be on board with these bills, at least some of them? The government wants to control the A-Cs. These bills are giving them carte blanche to do it.” Sent a text to Caroline, asking her if I could get five minutes with McMillan on the phone and, if I couldn’t, if I could get those five minutes with her.
“I still don’t see how anyone could know the President would start appointing people,” Jeff said. Tito nodded. Nurse Carter and Dad didn’t seem convinced one way or the other.
“I can see it because I believe Colonel Hamlin was right—we have a Mastermind. And a Mastermind is going to be thinking of all of these things like a chess game. In chess you anticipate your opponent’s moves, and you do it based on the first move. The better the player, the more potential moves you can see.”
“It’s always a chess game, at least according to you and Reynolds,” Jeff said.
“It always is,” Nurse Carter agreed. “Chess is a game based on war, on strategy, and on politics.” She looked at me. “I can see how the President’s actions could be expected, if they were based on long-term observations of his character and earlier decisions.” Dad nodded.
“And I’m sure they were. If we have a Mastermind, not just for what’s going on right now but for literally everything that’s gone on, then that person has been around a long time and knows everyone.”
“Maybe.” Tito looked thoughtful.
“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.
“Maybe there’s more than one. I know Colonel Hamlin told you he thought there was one person involved, but what if he’s wrong? He didn’t have a lot of time to research before he had to run, right? So what if it’s a small group, just a handful of people?”
“The more people you have, the more people who can betray you,” Nurse Carter said.
“Good point. Look at the Cabal of Evil. They’re shifting their allegiances right now. Armstrong, Vance, the Brewers—they’re all suddenly much more aligned with us than with the others. And that means that they can give away each other’s secrets.”
“Yes,” Nurse Carter agreed. “So I wouldn’t think the Mastermind would want a lot of people. You always need someone to be your interface, at least if you’re going to hide in shadow, but you don’t necessarily need a lot of people.”
“Yeah, your underling could be the head of the crime syndicate, but he’d be the only one who knew who you were.”
“It seems farfetched to me,” Jeff said.
“So do aliens living on Earth and yet here you are.”
My phone received an automated text from Caroline: “In a locked-door meeting, will respond when able. Happy Holidays!” So much for getting answers from that source. Bit the bullet and sent a text to Armstrong.
The com came on. “Excuse me, Chief,” Walter said. “But Mister Dane has asked me if you’re awake. Are you? Awake to him, I mean.”
“Yeah, Walt, patch him through here.”
“Kitty?”
“Hey, Stryker, what’s up?”
“We’ve found some things I think you’re going to want to know about right away. Walter said he was going to patch Chuck in, too.”
“Okay. You guys are still up?”
“The slave driver won’t let us rest,” Stryker said bitterly.
“I heard that,” Chuckie said over the com. “So whatever you woke us up for had better be good.”
“Oh, it’s good. Okay, first off, Dulce just let us know that they’re confident they’ve identified what Mister Buchanan was hit with and they’ll have the cure ready in a couple of hours.”
“That’s great news!”
“It comes with a couple downsides, Kitty. The waking up process is slow, which is for the safety of the ‘sleeper,’ so it’ll take about twenty-four hours for Buchanan to come back to full consciousness. But that’s not a side effect, that’s just the way the cure has been designed.”
“Okay, that’s not the end of the world.”
“This will be, in that sense. Per everyone at Dulce, and based on what we’ve found in the information from Gaultier, the drug has one major side effect.”
My throat felt tight. “What is it?”
“Short-term memory loss. We’ll get him awake and he’ll be fine, but he’s not going to remember anything that happened to him from about thirty minutes before the drug hit him.”
“Fabulous,” Chuckie said. “So Buchanan won’t be able to tell us who attacked him, where he was when he was attacked, or anything else related to the incident, including who he was or wasn’t with.”
“Nope. It was considered a worthwhile side effect, since the idea was that all the recipient would be forgetting was going to sleep on a long-range spaceship.”
“Why does it affect memory?” I asked.
“Near as they can tell, it’s because it slows the aging process, and that affects the brain as well as the body. That’s the best we have, so focus on the happy that your guy will be back among the conscious by Christmas. We hope.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ll take the loss of intel to have Malcolm back alive and hopefully well. I’m sure, in the long run, he’d rather lose those thirty minutes than the rest of his life and all his training.”
“Anything else?” Chuckie asked.
“Yeah. We’ve hacked into all the police departments that work D.C. and the surrounding areas. We’ve also hacked into the F.B.I.”
Was suddenly incredibly glad Cliff had chosen the Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Don’t Have To Tattle About Evil plan.
“And?” Chuckie asked, sounding tired and impatient. Couldn’t blame him.
“There was a body in the car that exploded today. They’ve managed to make a DNA match.”
“That’s awfully fast,” Chuckie said.
“Yeah, well, that’s because the dead woman’s in the system. Because she worked for the C.I.A.”
Jeff and I looked at each other. “Well,” I said. “So much for us getting to interview Pia Ryan.”
CHAPTER 76
“HOW’D YOU KNOW?” Stryker asked.
“Our luck runs no other way, Eddy. So, do they think Pia was the one who set the bomb or do they think she was dead before th
e bomb went off?”
“They don’t have enough to be able to guess. They’re lucky they can identify the body at all. The blast was huge and burned hot. She had some weird dental work, which was all that was left of her.”
“Dental records can be faked,” Chuckie said.
“We’ve done her background check, Chuck. Unless someone altered all of it in advance of this, that was her in the car.”
“Now what?” Jeff asked.
“Now we all go back to bed,” Chuckie said. “Though I should probably ask why you two sound so wide awake.”
“There are five of us here, actually, and we’re all terribly alert because we’ve been working. I’m now convinced we have a Mastermind and I know why all the representatives have been killed.”
“Can I get this in a very high level right now?”
“Yes. We have a Sith Lord trying to control the Imperial Senate, and I think he, or she, is out their Apprentice. Meaning that there are others in line to be the next Sith and we need to figure they’ve been helping in anticipation of a move up the Sith Corporate Ladder.”
There was a pause while everyone in the room stared at me, each one giving me their version of the “you so crazy” look. I ignored them. The person I’d tailored my answer for wasn’t confused, I was sure. He was just processing.
“You think Pia was the Apprentice?” Chuckie asked finally.
“Yeah. I think she either blew something when she was supposed to kill Cliff, or she was tossed into his car already dead so she could blow up with him, probably being punished for failure, possibly for the fact that Eugene passed along her name to me and I’m still alive.”
“That theory would explain the long-running nature of the conspiracies,” Stryker said. “The Sith Lord who started it all could be dead and his Apprentice, or the Apprentice’s Apprentice, could be in charge now.”