Directive 51 d-1

by John Barnes

  “How are we doing for collision avoidance? We’re outside the shipping lanes now, right?” Tracy asked.

  She always worried like this, quite unnecessarily, when they were both below and trusting to automated systems, but Grady knew it was no use arguing. “Roll off me, fire us up some more herb, and I’ll see what the satellite says. Have to admit I’m going to miss this.” Grady gave one of Tracy’s fine, firm breasts an extra squeeze—he liked being crass with her because, despite her protests, it turned her on.

  She got up—he liked how sticky her thighs were as they brushed over his—and padded over to the table to reload the bong.

  Grady sat up, pulled the laptop over, and dialed up his GoogleNavReal-Time, setting it for CENTERHERE, 150 KM, and ALLBANDS so that anything registering infrared, visible light, or radar from any public satellite overhead, anywhere within 150 kilometers, would show up in the composite picture it generated; projected current position was shown in bright green, with the actual positions back along the track shown in progressively paler green as they came from longer ago.

  “No danger of collision, no weather to worry about, still good,” he said, “and autowarning is active and working fine. We can sleep whenever you want to.”

  “In that case,” she said, “how about I have the oven make us a fresh pizza, with lots of extra cheese, and we switch to a nice mellow red wine and some Gatorade so we don’t get dehydrated, and we start drifting off to sleep? I’m excited about Daybreak too, but it’s been a long day.”

  Grady had been thinking about one more good blow job from his pretty wife, but sleeping without having to set a watch was a pleasure that would be gone soon; might as well enjoy it while they could. He stretched and yawned. “We’ll go with your plan. It was still warm last time I checked; want to go up on the deck and look at the stars?”

  In sweaters and caps, they held hands, sipped warm green Gatorade from nice heavy china mugs, and savored the taste of the sweet/salty fluid and the cool, moist sea air. They admired the bright lights in the sky, picked out constellations, and even allowed the satellites to be sort of pretty too, before the automatic gizmo down in the galley summoned them to go back below for pizza.

  “I won’t miss a lot of things,” Grady said, holding out his glass for her to refill, and pulling over another piece of pizza, “but sailing like this, with the machines to keep us safe and take care of us… well, even that. Yeah. Even that.”

  “Even that what?” Tracy got all weird and puzzled sometimes like he wasn’t speaking English.

  He let that go. “Even that will be better after Daybreak, ’cause we’ll be able to afford a crew, and they’ll be family—like your nanny or the maid was family when you were a kid. And, and, you know, like, it won’t be like the machines, because they’ll actually care about us. Besides, right now any schmuck with money can have the machines, and too many schmucks have too much money, so it’s like, it’s not special. Like it will be special when we’ve got crew that’s like family.”

  “So pro fucking found, baby.”

  “Daybreak is like Christmas, you know? You know you can’t really but wouldn’t it be great to have it every day?”

  “Not if Daybreak was on Christmas. We’d miss the big dinner with my family.”

  “Silly girl.”

  At last they curled up like little animals in a burrow. The automated system was silent all night; the few ships in the area had people on watch and collision-avoidance systems of their own.

  ABOUT THE SAME TIME. PUERTO PENASCO. MEXICO. SOMETIME AFTER 1:00 A.M. PST. TUESDAY. OCTOBER 29.

  Ysabel’s coverall, plainly worn by many people before her, felt dirty, but not as soiled as she felt knowing that she was guilty as shit of helping to assassinate the vice president. She’d even liked Samuelson.

  She’d been more a part of Aaron’s infiltration than of Daybreak itself; she’d been totally duped and she was totally bogus, and she hadn’t really been acting for the planet and for the peasants and for her real values; she’d just been a tool for goddam Aaron. If his name was Aaron. Probably that was as phony as his commune and the sympathy she thought she’d seen in his big soft Latin-poet eyes.

  She’d fired that missile and risked all this so that Aaron and the other phony Daybreakers could kill one of the most sympathetic, decent politicians the pathetic old US had managed to produce. And it would be blamed on Daybreak.

  She felt dirty, but she felt more like a fool. For the first time in her life, her fluent Spanish was a drawback; the federales had already interrogated her. One of them had big kind eyes, and nodded like he understood her, and gently explained about the diversion and Vice President Samuelson being killed in a cloud of dirty chemicals that were smearing all over beautiful desert right now; she could feel how sad that made him.

  She’d wanted the kind-smiling, warm-eyed guy to understand that she wasn’t like this, that she’d made an awful mistake, contaminated herself with evil power-people armed-struggle hater macho games. And trying to help him to understand, she’d told the kind-eyed federale more than she meant to.

  I swear, if I ever get out of this horrible mess, I will never look a man in the eyes again. I’ll get a big dog with big dark eyes and long, shaggy facial hair, and talk to him all day long. Please God, that’s a serious offer.

  She couldn’t back out of the things she’d already admitted. Furthermore, she knew she’d be asked a lot more, soon, because they were just waiting for a truck convoy to take her to Tijuana, where she’d be handed over to the US authorities at the border.

  She could see through the cell door to where her pack was sitting; if she just had that, and was on the outside for just a few minutes, she’d so get away.

  Unfortunately, not even a body length away from her so-close pack, she could also see the local cop and his gun. Her efforts to engage him in a conversation in Spanish had been met with a curt Callate, fleje. Not a lot of negotiating you could do with that.

  She didn’t know where she’d find it in herself to say, Dad, it just seemed like I ought to fire this Stinger missile at that blimp—I mean aerostat. Or maybe Aaron lied about that too and it really was a plain old blimp.

  ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. RATON, NEW MEXICO. 3:30 A.M. MST. TUESDAY. OCTOBER 29.

  At four o’clock in the morning, not much moved in Raton, New Mexico; a few lighted signs had been on through the night, and the first few of the morning were just coming on as sleepy workers flipped the switches inside on their way to warm up grills, lay out sales charts, work through the night’s e-mail, or set up chairs.

  Jason, sitting in the cold dark in Zach’s passenger seat, lonely, scared, and determined not to show it, watched the first guy at the Greyhound station enter by the orange glow of the all-night lights. The man immediately flipped on the old fluorescents, lighting up the plate-glass window with cold glare; a moment later, the little neon-tube lights that said BREAKFAST SPECIAL, HOT FRESH DONUTS THIS MORNING SO GOOD!, and FRESH COFFEE all flickered to life. The man began loading a coffee urn.

  “I guess that’s my cue,” Jason said.

  “Wait till he turns on the OPEN sign,” Zach said. “He looks like the mean type that’d leave you to freeze your butt off on the sidewalk till he was good and ready. And besides, the coffee’s not ready, and you’re going to need that. Might as well sit in here till they’re ready to serve your breakfast.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hey, it’s been one long crazy twenty-four hours, you know? We’re somewhere between bonded and crazy-glued.” Zach sighed. “This was not how I pictured Daybreak.”

  “Me either. You think they’ll catch us? All of the Daybreak people, I mean, or most of us?”

  Zach leaned back and considered. Jason liked that gesture, as if something he’d said was valuable. “I think they’ll try. More than we planned on. We figured by the time anyone knew about Daybreak, the Big System would be dead, and they’d have no way to find us or put out the word.

  “Now people
are going to find a lot more of us than they would have if whoever it was hadn’t murdered the vice president. How did that slip through our filters? Why didn’t the peers stop that? I mean, I personally quashed at least ten stupid, cruel ideas.”

  Jason nodded. “I saw a bunch of notes from one guy who thought modern medicine was the biggest, evil-est part of the Big System, and he was trying to find people to help him wreck hospitals. Everyone I knew hug-mobbed the guy to chill him, focus him on acting for living things—but then he drifted away. What if he just found another AG to join, where they were even crazier? Are we gonna hear tomorrow that someone poison-gassed a whole hospital?”

  “Peer guidance was supposed to prevent that.”

  “Yeah, but every AG got to pick their own peers.” Jason slugged his fist into his palm. “We had the same problem my stupid-ass brother and father did, putting all our faith in procedures and organizations and our own good intentions, which is how Dad and Clayt end up supporting every stupid war and seeing the positive side of every ecocide. Yuck. I thought we were supposed to be different, you know?”

  “Yeah. ‘Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.’”

  “I’m guessing that’s your guy Jesus.”

  “No, Psalm 146. Big one for Stewardship Christians. But what I meant it to say was, hey, haven’t we all said, all along, we’re animals like the other animals? I wouldn’t expect the dog to do everything perfect, either.”

  “Yeah.” Jason thought. “But the real question is still, are they going to catch us?”

  Zach said, “Yeah. I know. I was avoiding the question too.”

  A bakery truck pulled up, and the man carried two racks into the bus station.

  “Just now I bet the doughnuts are warm,” Jason pointed out, “and the guy in there is pouring himself coffee.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, it’s time, and I should be getting home to Trish anyway, she’ll be worried silly. Got my number in case of trouble?”

  “Yeah, but I’ll be fine. Thanks for the ride, and the company.” He reached for the door handle.

  Zach said, “Just one thought, Jason. Don’t stop at home, grab your girlfriend and just take off—don’t stick around to see what your gun-crazy survivalist neighbors do. I have a bad feeling.”

  “Yeah. You take care too. Happy Daybreak.”

  “Happy Daybreak yourself,” Zach said, not sure why he felt so afraid to drive the three miles to his house.

  To Jason, the fluorescent lights on the linoleum and Formica looked cold, but it was a lot colder out here in the dark. To the far, cold stars, he thought, soon, soon. After all, what was more natural than things getting dark and cold, just before Daybreak?

  ABOUT AN HOUR LATER. JUST SOUTH OF EXIT 19 ON I-75. BETWEEN DAYTON AND CINCINNATI. OHIO. BEGINNING ABOUT 7:00 A.M. EST. TUESDAY. OCTOBER 29.

  Many of the far-bedroom commuters, who lived twenty or even thirty miles from downtown Cincinnati, in towns like West Chester, Jericho, Bethany, Gano, and Tylersville, liked to leave work early, to return to the big house with a view of a golf course or a jogging trail, in time to go to the kids’ after-school stuff. For most office workers, leaving work at three thirty required starting at seven thirty, so by seven in the morning, southbound traffic on I-75, even here, well north of the city, ran heavy: a mix of sturdy family-friendly minivans, first-good-job new subcompacts, and I’ve-settled beaters. A few bright stars remained, and low in the sky, a crescent moon bowed to the east, pointing to the sun that was still an hour away. The horizon was a line of blue-black, and the trees along the highway, mostly stripped of leaves in late fall, broke the dim twilit sky to the east into myriad panels, slices, and wedges.

  Traffic roared by at the speed limit. Trooper Davis appreciated the peaceful order of it all. He waited in a median pullout, not eagerly, for the first aggressive speeder to zip by. His days usually contained many moments worse than this.

  He was thinking about the coffee in his thermos when the minivan in the southbound left lane had a messy blowout—the tire totally grenaded, dropping the minivan onto the rim at that corner, and he held his breath while the driver fought it across the right lane; luckily the red Camaro in the right lane behind it was alert and the pavement was dry, so the minivan made it over onto the shoulder—

  Shit. Looks like the Camaro blew a tire, too, in the hard braking. The guy behind him, less alert, missed the Camaro by a hair, and only by swinging into the left lane. That sudden change triggered a wave of brake lights. Davis flipped on his bubble and siren and turned up onto the left shoulder to go sort all this out. At least his lights would make people slow down and wake up.

  Passing the now-forming traffic jam, he saw half a dozen more blowouts. Crap. That Daybreak stuff they were warning us about at the shift briefing.

  Closer to the front of the jam, he found a couple of fender benders. Davis called it in; didn’t look like anyone was hurt, and no air bags had fired, spacing had been good, speeds not excessive, and pavement dry. Nonetheless, this was going to be a major mess. Just behind the original blowout situation, three collided cars in a rough Z stretched most of the way across both lanes; everything in front of them had either made it to a shoulder or was finding a way through and rolling on.

  Davis decided that would do for a starting point. He braked, left the flashing lights on to tell drivers behind him that there was an officer on the scene, and walked up to the Z-form collision.

  The drivers were two lady office workers in sensible little hybrids, and a sad, frustrated-looking sales type in a cheap washable suit and an obvious by-the-weeker used Kia. Their paperwork was all in order, even the sales-guy’s insurance; the bar code on his license authorized a breathalyzer, but Davis didn’t see any reason to do that. They all had grenaded, torn-off flats; Sales Loser’s tire had blown after his car had stopped.

  They agreed to move their cars over to the left, so Davis pulled the patrol car across the lane to block traffic for them, and set up a choke point to keep things slow as he worked out the jam.

  He grabbed his electronic pad and headed up the snarl of traffic on foot, talking to dispatch on handset as he went.

  At least a third of the cars in the jam had flat tires. An odd stench, not like cow or pig or chicken, but definitely like some kind of manure, hung in the air. Yeah, this has to be that Daybreak thing. From a low rise he saw that he already had a two-mile jam, at least, on his hands, and called in to the dispatcher, asking for another couple of cars “and a Daybreak specialist if there is such a thing.”

  With a sigh, he got back to work, moving everyone with a burst tire to one shoulder or the other, clearing a lane for the trapped but functional cars. He flagged down a couple frantic idiots who were trying to zigzag between shoulder and lane to get past, and gave them their well-earned tickets. He noted a plate number on one asshole who shot him the finger and zipped on by, calling it in for an intercept up the road.

  The farther along he went, the more tires were blown, at least twenty so far in this quarter mile of stopped cars. He sent up a prayer of thanks; if this had been an icy morning, he’d be looking at real wrecks, deployed air bags, injuries, maybe even some deaths and fires, instead of merely the worst fall day he’d ever had.

  He saw the shreds of tire on the front driver side of the next car and leaned over the window. “When this guy right in front of you pulls forward, you can pull forward into the space he’s in, and then left, over there, onto the shoulder. It’s that Daybreak thing from the news last night. The best thing for everyone to do is sit tight, off the road, till we get whatever it is cleaned off.”

  “Sure thing, Officer.” The fiftyish woman wore a plain cloth coat and slacks; she looked like an office worker, probably taking the two grandkids in the back to day care. While her daughter works a shift at 7-Eleven or McDonald’s, bet you anything, and not a man in sight anywhere around
the place. Oh, well, not my business.

  The car ahead pulled forward. Nice Office Lady turned to go left onto the shoulder. With a sound like somebody’d fired a 9mm inside a trash can, something stung his lower leg. He looked down to see the remains of the other passenger-side tire from her sedan, smeared across the pavement and wrapped partly around his leg.

  “Oh, no,” she said quietly. “I only have one spare.”

  Davis flexed his ankle; it had stung but apparently done no other harm. “Yeah. I don’t know how soon they’ll be able to get help out here and it might just be to evacuate; I’d pack anything you don’t want to leave in your car, if you can.”

  “My god,” she said, “What’s that awful smell?”

  He bent to shine his flashlight at the damp mess of her tire. It looked wet or greasy, as if it had been splashed with black oil or partly melted. The reek of raw shit nearly knocked him out. “The Daybreak bug,” he told her. “Be real careful pulling over.”

  Her other rear tire blew as she parked it; they exchanged helpless shrugs.

  As Davis walked on up the line the thuds and bangs sounded like a distant war starting; with a loud report, one tire just behind him flung goopcovered shards across his calves, and he jumped. I wonder if it’s getting worse because it’s warming up. The stench of rotting tires was like putting your head up a sick goat’s ass.

  The smell grew stronger, the bangs and thuds more frequent, and some of the drivers were angrier with him, and some more resigned. When the sun came up at eight, and the temperature started to rise rapidly, the remaining tires started to blow in great volleys, and the reek became strong enough so that many of the stranded motorists were throwing up on the roadside.

  He had a moment of hope when the dispatcher called to tell him a Daybreak specialist was coming out, but then the rest of the explanation came: “He’s a microbiologist from Wright State. He’s walking out to you—it’s about six miles—and he’ll be taking samples of the rotting tires.”