by Ginger Booth
“No, that I don’t,” Dave agreed. “Oh, one thing. Well, two. We need to broadcast a denial from you tonight.”
“Noted. The other?”
“Pam asks if you’ve cleared the wedding with Emmett, so she can broadcast a segment on your wedding dress. As a distraction. I haven’t received my invitation yet. Shall I congratulate you anyway?”
“Why thank you! I thought I’d invite the groom first. Protocol, you know.”
Dave laughed. “I’ll let you go. To manage that mob thing.”
“Yeah. Dave?” I stopped him. “‘Queen of Censors.’ I know you feel that I –”
“Utter nonsense, Dee,” he interrupted. “I know who you are, and what you’ve done. We all do. Stay safe.”
I considered triaging the rest of my email, and immediately slapped my computer shut and packed it away. Pam deserved a response. But that could wait. If I wasn’t done with the mob in time for the news, Carlos or Mangal or Cam could help her craft a denial.
Yeah, there was nothing left to do here except face the mob.
29
Interesting fact: The average IQ in Connecticut was 113, with Massachusetts and New Jersey tied for second place at 111. With average IQ defined as 100, that’s a pretty startling deviation. In general, the Western states of California, Washington, and Hawaii, and the Northeast (plus Minnesota and Illinois), had state IQ’s above average. Maine, Virginia, and Wisconsin matched the expected mean of 100. All other states had below average IQ’s. Mississippi deviated even further from the mean than Connecticut, with a mean IQ of just 85.
I opened the door to leave the office, to find Emmett leaning his head on the door-jamb, eyeing me sideways. “Invite the groom first?” he prompted. Apparently he was there long enough to eavesdrop.
“To our wedding,” I said. “In April.”
His eyes crinkled up, amused. “Uh-huh.”
“Emmett…” I hooked a finger onto his. “It’s going to serve as a public relations stunt. And our wedding. Both.”
His smile turned only a little bittersweet. “I live to serve. My job. Sorry for dragging you into it.” He scratched his nose ruefully.
“I think I dragged you into today’s SNAFU,” I said. “Sorry I hung up on you,” I added in a whisper. “Stressed.”
He nodded, and leaned over to whisper in my ear, “You forgot the explanation, darlin’. On the mob.” He kissed my ear while he was at it.
My return kiss was made rather perfunctory by Spec Cherie and three of her buddies surrounding us. They watched with interest. I don’t suppose the regular army is trained in the social niceties of guard duty.
I forwarded York’s ‘news’ sheet to Emmett, and showed it to him on my phone. “Last item invites people to this protest rally. I don’t know if you want to read that now –”
“Uh-huh.” Emmett hooked one of my fingers again and gave it a squeeze, until he needed to page down again. He read the whole newsletter, quickly but thoroughly, then paged through it again to review the overall shape of the thing. Then he clicked off the phone and handed it back to me without comment.
“Backup is an hour out,” he informed me. “Massing off-site to arrive in force. Time for our briefing on Boston infrastructure.”
“We’re just going to let them surround us?”
“They already did. Now we’re killing time. Rigging a public address system. This way.”
He took my elbow and steered me into the small lecture hall where the city engineers were nervously setting up for their presentations. He smiled at them languidly, and turned his slow southern drawl up to full. “Sorry for the delay, ladies, gentlemen. Who’s up first?”
I set up our computers in the front row of risers, and collected everyone’s digital presentations and backup data. This was a deluxe lecture hall, where each seat was practically an executive desk, with Ethernet jack, power outlets, and microphone available on a classy wood-grained modesty wall facing the lectern. The backplane of the lectern looked like a jet airplane cockpit with all its A/V options and banks of LED lights.
Emmett put his feet up and lounged back in his chair, seemingly giving his complete and rapt attention to each speaker as they presented. Occasionally he would lift a languid ‘wait’ finger and focus on the ear-bud in one ear. Then he’d apologize with a smile, and gesture for them to continue, or use the distraction as a chance to ask a question or refocus the talk on an aspect he was more intrigued by.
It’s funny, before I got involved with the Raj, I always thought of leadership in terms of organization, or how the manager structured reports and meetings and milestones. And Emmett was a wizard at organization. Yet my experience, even before I met the Raj, was that effective leadership involved being a leader. Setting the tone. Communicating high expectations to one’s people. Picking a story, and sticking with it. But corporate politics left room for being excitable. Military leadership did not. Emmett was accustomed to leading under far more chaotic conditions than this. His cool confidence and courtesies didn’t exactly cure our nervousness. But we were able to accomplish our briefing between flinches.
A breaking window crashed. Our room had no windows.
Emmett bid the speaker on the waste sewer system to continue.
The public address system went live, booming across the campus. After some sound checks, the crowd was advised that this was an illegal demonstration and they were ordered to disperse.
Emmett sat forward to ask detail questions on Internet and cell phone data availability in Boston, which was astonishingly advanced.
A shot rang out.
Emmett thanked the storm sewer presenter and requested we address the power infrastructure next, before urban agriculture.
Three shots rang out, and the power presenter froze.
Emmett leaned back and shared a funny story about rooftop windmills in Brooklyn. This was a room chock-full of geeks. We all laughed.
“Sadly, we need to cut this short,” Emmett said. “Thank you for your presentations. Dee and I will review them in detail, and get back to you if we have further questions. But, I am deeply impressed. I know from our experience in the Apple what a remarkable accomplishment you’ve managed here. Well done.”
He paused for a flurry of gunshot to pass.
“One more question, for the room. Has Governor-General Link been helpful? What I’m seeing here is superb progress in phenomenal time. How has the Raj helped? Hindered?”
Despite the group being distracted by a growing roar from the crowd outside, the consensus on Link was that he’d authored miracles in Boston. The Boston Resco, newly promoted Lt. Colonel Kelly, wasn’t quite there yet, but learning fast. What the infrastructure restoration teams needed, they got. The Army understood logistics, and delivered. Security teams like young Lieutenant Ruggiero’s ensured safe and productive work sites.
The technologists seemed less convinced that the Raj had a good handle on the populace. “The workers are fractious,” as one woman put it. “There’s a lot of anger here.”
Emmett calmly waited out a boom and its echo, and gestured for me to pack up. “Excellent input,” he assured the group. “Thank you all. I suggest you stay here for now. A pair of soldiers is just outside. They’ll keep you apprised.”
“Attention, attention,” I attempted shakily over the microphone. We were still in the building vestibule, but I could hear my voice booming over the mob outside. Their angry roar didn’t diminish. I could see their fists in the air, their signs, their rage on a monitor, set up to display security camera feeds from our building and a couple other vantage points.
Captain Sump signaled Ken Porter, the engineering undergrad and disc jockey who helped rig the sound system. Ken gleefully zapped the crowd with a maximum volume raucous electronic feedback noise. I cringed indoors. On the monitor, I saw people drop banners and signs to clutch both ears and bend over double. Emmett and Sump, dressed in full battle plate, stood impassive. They wore headphones under their helmets and visors. Th
ey made me wear the same protective gear over my civilian clothes, but minus the headphones, because I wasn’t on the tactical channel. Too confusing for me, Emmett said. I was glad at the time.
Combat armor weighs a ton. I looked like a pudgy armadillo. With stupid little pink-and-green plaid deck shoes peeking out under fleece-lined black leggings below. They were my lucky shoes this week. They’d seen me through the tsunami.
Sump took the microphone, and said, “You will listen to announcements. Or we will repeat that noise until you do.” He signaled Ken to dose them again, twice. “You will now listen to Dee Baker, of Project Reunion News.”
The crowd jeered and screamed, “Queen of Censors!”
Emmett held up a hand to forestall another dose of noise punishment. “Dee, just start talking,” he directed.
Emmett didn’t like my plan to address the protesters. I felt humbled that he let me do it anyway, and backed me now. That meant the world to me.
I froze up, as Sump handed me the microphone. Emmett calmly pointed to the infrastructure project leaders, pressed against a wall. They insisted on joining us in the lobby so they could see what was going on. “Just talk to them, darlin’,” Emmett said.
Good advice. “Hello, my name is Dee Baker. I’m one of the managing directors of Project Reunion News.” I paused as the crowd roared. But Emmett pointed again to the masters of sewers, parks, and power lines before me. Reasonable people who were trying to hear what I had to say.
“You were invited here today by Eddie York, a man who tried out for a job at PR News. I fired him yesterday. He used you, to get revenge on me. Do you know why I fired him? Because he wanted to rile you up. He wanted to make you angry. Not because it would do you any good. It won’t do you any good. No, he just wanted to feel important. He wanted to feel powerful. Anger, makes you feel powerful.”
I doubt anyone listened, except my captive audience in the lobby. Emmett spun a hand sideways, to suggest I get on with it. “I’m willing to hear your grievances, talk to your representatives. We’ll hold a press conference right here below the stairs to our building. Send forward your spokespeople to line up along the far edge of the drive.”
Sump took the microphone from me. Using that, plus Ken’s ear-splitting noise generator, and about thirty soldiers in armor plate, he got the crowd to back up across the drive, while spokespersons percolated up to the curb. The soldiers retreated to almost the top of the stairs and took up position, their rifles aimed at the crowd.
“We’re on, darlin’,” Emmett said, taking another wireless microphone. He led me out the doors to stand at the top of the stairs, facing the crowd.
I thought I was prepared. But armor plate was nothing to the palpable wave of hatred I felt hit me at the top of those steps. The force of it pushed me backwards a step. I knew it wasn’t a physical force. But it felt like a body slam. The crowd was nothing like 100,000. But Sump estimated over 20,000. Our guards were outnumbered by more than 200 to one. I’m no psychic, but I felt the crowd’s rage. My face burned from it. I could even smell them, sour and frightened.
I could read the protest signs more easily out here than on the monitor inside.
Queen of Censors!
Food Not Fascists!
Hudson Go Home!
New England Self-Rule!
New England Constitution!
Death Angel MacLaren!
Power for the People!
Chanting broke out. “Death to the Death Angels!”
Emmett pulled me forward again gently, level with him, and handed me the microphone. He didn’t look like himself, in full battle gear and erect posture. His own wiry build was masked. He was just another thickly padded soldier, with an impassive face and silver oak leaves. He didn’t carry a rifle, only an officer’s pistol, holstered. He nodded to me slightly.
I can do this, I told myself, gulping. I pointed the microphone at the first man in the spokespeople row. The soldiers had provided him a megaphone. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Never mind my name!” he bellowed back. Ken’s crew had performed some techno-magic on the megaphone, so it echoed to the masses across the PA system. “Shut up, everybody!” From the lobby, Ken supplied the horrid noise again. The crowd noise died back some. But that many people cannot be silent.
The spokesman continued. “Queen of Censors, Dee Baker! Do you deny that PR News lies to the people?”
“Thank you for your question. That ‘Queen of Censors’ newsletter was written by a man named Eddie York. Yesterday I fired him from PR News. That newsletter was his revenge. PR News is censored, like everybody else. We have been ever since the Calm Act.
“But that doesn’t mean PR News lies to the people. Amenac and PR News have done more to reduce censorship than anyone else in the ex-U.S. My colleagues and I founded Amenac to bypass censorship. We founded PR News to help bring down the borders that imprisoned New York City and Boston-Prov.”
That was too complicated, judging by the growling response. “We do not lie. If PR News broadcasts it, you can trust it. We publish the truth. I stand by that. Next question.”
“So you claim that all the stories in that newsletter were lies?” the next in line demanded.
How to say this so that an angry crowd could hear me? “Those stories were incendiary, and misleading. There was a germ of truth there. But it was twisted, to make you angry. Next question? You can ask about a specific story.”
“Do you deny you’re a puppet for the Hudson Raj?”
“I am nobody’s puppet. Are you your boss’s puppet? I work for the Hudson Raj. Because I believe in the Hudson Raj. Next question!”
The next tormentor I recognized, the woman mayor of Cambridge, the one Cam was surprisingly rough on, Peggy Lanford. “Dee Baker. Were you behind Connecticut being handed over to Hudson?”
Yes. But that wasn’t the whole truth. “The decision to transfer Connecticut to Hudson was made by Governor-Generals Sean Cullen and Ivan Link. The decision to merge New England and Hudson was also made by the governor-generals. I am not a governor-general. Next?”
From their body language and the way they conferred, the next man was a pal of Mayor Lanford. He looked surprisingly belligerent for a mayor’s sidekick. “Baker! Why are you protecting the death angels who killed New York and triggered the tsunami?”
The crowd roared and surged forward. I could barely hear Ken’s next blast of feedback torture in the wall of sound.
I didn’t hear the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher at all.
30
Interesting fact: One of the early ‘arks’, Biosphere 2 in the Arizona desert, had a rocky start. As the experimenters were sealed into their ecosystem, complete with pocket rain forest and ocean, carbon dioxide started to rise, and oxygen fell. Eventually, air quality got so bad that the doctor could no longer perform simple arithmetic. The Biosphere was unsealed to add a massive infusion of oxygen. Even then, the scientists’ planned two-year stay was aborted early. The problem wasn’t the living biosphere inside, but rather reactions between the atmosphere and the concrete walls binding up the oxygen. CO2 buildup made the in-dwellers very cranky.
The rocket exploded into the grey brick facade above and behind us. Its flying brick chips and concussion wave tossed me and Emmett and our screening wall of soldiers down the broad steps. I rolled to a stop at the base of the stairs, unable to hear a damned thing. I looked for Emmett but couldn’t see him in the grey dust cloud, just ghosts of soldiers who all looked alike in their armadillo armor and the haze.
I wouldn’t call it ‘thinking.’ The only shelter I could see was a burnt-out SUV six feet from me. I rolled across the sidewalk and scuttled underneath the car like a hermit crab. Then I shimmied to a better view, well protected by the reeking remains of a melted wheel. Not that I could see much – a confusion of legs and feet, some trying to surge forward, more trying to flee, a few unfortunates on the ground getting trampled. My stunned ears produced a loud ringing white noise.
&
nbsp; The pavement seemed to shake beneath me, but I didn’t trust my senses. The smell of the burnt car was so strong that I didn’t even recognize the smell of teargas at first. My armor included a gas mask tucked into the webbing somewhere. But it was a tight squeeze under the car without the loft of air in the tires. Teargas sinks to coagulate near the ground. So I got a few good lung-fulls of poison before I could affix the mask, then needed it off half the time to retch.
The ground rumble got much stronger, then suddenly softened. Civilian legs gave way to cammie and army boots. I shimmied back for a wider view. There was now a small tank between me and the mob. Scuttling to the other side, I could see soldiers helping other soldiers off the building stairs. I could see someone yelling, gas mask down around his neck, hands raised around his mouth like a megaphone. Emmett?
I’m not sure how long I lay there considering whether I believed he was Emmett. I was pretty loopy. I also needed to vomit a few more times. But eventually I decided it was time to risk leaving the tarry blackness of my refuge, if only for a breath of better air. I scuttled out and sat up. I was right. Even that couple feet of elevation provided cleaner air. And the one who was yelling for me, who I couldn’t hear, was Emmett. Not that I could tell by sight – he was coated in gray dust. But in seconds, he was on his knees, enveloping me in a hug.
No idea what he said. I yelled, “Up!” several times, and he pulled me up to standing. He loosened his hold. My knees buckled, and he caught me up again. I suspect he was mouthing, “Dee, are you alright?” He held my face, not ungently, and took a good look into my eyes through our protective visors. He looked around urgently, perhaps calling for a medic. Then he gave up and simply carried me up the stairs a ways.