Flash

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Chapter 16

  On Tuesday, I left Denv to follow the Carlisimo campaign, almost an anachronism with all the personal appearances. I'd looked into the campaign reports, and Carlisimo—or his campaign manager—had discovered a loophole in the Campaign Practices Act, a provision that had been required by the Justiciary almost forty years ago, and then forgotten. Freedom of personal expression included using personal time and limited personal funds to participate in politics. Somehow, Carlisimo had lined up, not dozens, but hundreds of volunteers with usable skills. Given the stiff qualification requirements for volunteers, and the need for no more than 10 percent of them to come from any one organization, it argued that the campaign had been orchestrated over a period of years. It also meant that my report had better be good, because it would be receiving scrutiny from an even wider audience than I'd anticipated.

  Although I didn't expect trouble, the project was odd enough that I'd decided to take a few precautions. One was the commando gloves, with the tensile nanetic stiffeners that turned an ordinary looking pair of gray gloves into lethal weapons. Because there was neither metal nor a stored power system, they'd clear any security gear. The other was the slingshot. "Slingshot" was a misnomer, because the word implied a child's toy. The commando slingshot was anything but a toy, yet every component was security proof, from the modified spidersilk elastic cords to the pocket marker styli that were actually stabilized darts capable of penetrating anything except a full battle shield or ceramic armor.

  That left the non-obvious weapon—me. Even if I hadn't practiced all the exercises in the past few years, I had kept up with some. The original training had been nanetically and neutrally conditioned, and I'd never been deconditioned. Call that the benefit of being a hero of sorts who'd been allowed to leave in a hurry because no one wanted my letter of resignation made too public.

  Getting to Monahans in West Tejas was anything but convenient— or inexpensive. I had to take the high-speed maglev from Denv to Epaso, and then charter a flitter to Monahans. I arrived there at a short airstrip west of the town at about two in the afternoon on Tuesday. There I had to pick up the groundcar rented at an exorbitant rate, particularly for a five-year-old Altus, so that I could drive it westward and leave it in Epaso on Saturday. Even so, that gave me more than four hours before the Carlisimo rally.

  Monahans had been one of the West Tejas towns that never should have survived the Collapse—not with the higher sea levels, the tornadoes, the killing droughts of the eighties, and the winds that followed. Almost everything had been rebuilt around the turn of the century. I didn't think that much had been built since then, not from what I could see as I drove through the dozen or so long blocks that constituted the center of the town. The houses were all one story and sturdy, designed to withstand the brutal winds of spring.

  Most of the commercial buildings were carbon-fiber, no more than two stories, textured into pseudo-stone or brick. That made sense because energy was cheaper than transportation in a place like Monahans, even after the oil fields that had surrounded the town, particularly to the northeast, had finally played out a century before. While nanetic-enhanced recovery techniques had prolonged the fields, they'd eventually been sucked dry.

  After all the traveling, I was hungry. Famished was more like it. I kept looking until I saw a restaurant that looked clean—Josett's Place. I parked the Altus beside a big stake lorry, its once-shiny navy blue polymer finish dulled by years of windblown sand and grit.

  Inside were fifteen tables or so, plus a long counter, at which a lone white-bearded local in overalls sat. His eyes took me in and dismissed me in less than a minute, and he took another sip of coffee from a brown mug.

  "Any table or seat that's clean," called an angular woman from behind the counter. "Be with you in a minute."

  Only one corner table was taken, that by a gray-haired and gray-faced woman, accompanied by a round-faced child with blond hair. He was enjoying something chocolate and gooey. I took a table by the window, where I could watch the main street. Josett's Place was low tech, so low tech that it still had pasteboard menus. I read through the short list of selections.

  The angular woman approached. Her hair was half-silver, half-blonde, and fine lines radiated from her eyes. She looked like a former Marine. "Know what you want?" Her voice was pleasant, but not musical.

  "You Josett?"

  "Nope. I'm Jael. Her granddaughter. Kept the name 'cause everyone thinks of it as hers. Mom ran the place till five years back."

  "What's best?"

  "Depends on what you like. Most fellows go for the fried steak. Chicken's not bad, either. Fred still raises chickens, and we get the beef from down Pecos way. Wouldn't think so, but it's good."

  "I'll try the fried steak. Iced tea."

  "Be a bit. Do it all from scratch."

  "That's fine."

  With a nod, she was gone. I watched two empty stake lorries roll past, heading westward out of town, then saw a new panel lorry heading eastward. A series of antennae were folded down on the roof racks, and the pale green sides bore a netlogo—a stylized "PN," signifying Politics Now. If the politics channel had sent a team, either the political beat was slow or they saw something more in Carlisimo.

  "Here's your tea."

  "Thank you."

  "You a netlinker?" Jael asked.

  "Consultant," I replied.

  "The political kind?"

  I laughed. "No. I research the way outfits and prodders sell things. Politics is a way of selling ideas."

  "Selling ideas. Could put it that way. You're here for the rally?"

  "That's right." I took a sip of the tea—black Grey, not my favorite, but acceptable. "You going?"

  "Nope. My daughter'll be there. Likes Carlisimo." She shook her head. "Told her that was a mistake. Go see a politician you like, and you'll come back disappointed. Better kept at a distance."

  "Some are. They say he's not."

  "Why are you here?"

  "Why's anyone anywhere? I was hired to be here."

  She nodded, then slipped away, back to the corner and the older woman and the child that was probably a grandson or nephew. I could hear a few words.

  "Consultant... Brock'd want to hear that... consultants, yet..."

  "... saw a news lorry earlier ... must be somethin' 'bout Carlisimo..."

  Jael left the pair and retreated through a swinging door—I hadn't seen one of those in years. Not since ... I pushed that thought away and waited for the fried steak.

  Jael brought it to my window table. As expected, it was drowned in milk gravy, as were the mashed potatoes. What I hadn't expected were the cinnamon fried apples and green beans that were steamed and firm, not quite crunchy, covered with butter sauce and crumbled bacon. Heavy as it all looked, it wasn't, and it was delicious. There was something to be said about good traditional cooking.

  I took my time eating, almost dawdling. As I was finishing the last of the cinnamon apples, Jael reappeared and refilled my tea for the third time.

  "You didn't like it much."

  "Best fried steak I've ever had."

  "That's what most folks say. Where you from ... don't mind my asking?"

  "Colorado ... outside of Denv." Not very far, but I wanted to make the point that I wasn't a total city flash.

  She smiled. "Don't want folks thinking you're a flash?"

  "Most of the people following Carlisimo are into politics. I'm not. I'm doing a study on presentation methods ... the way people and products are put in front of people."

  "You be following him all the way round and back to Lubbock?"

  "No. Just to Epaso. Then I'll head home and get on with everything else."

  She nodded, almost as if she were disappointed, then left a paper slip on the table, facedown. "Don't do the fancy tech here. Do take cards. Old-style reader, though."

  "With your cooking, you're doing fine without the tech stuff."

  She did smile at that.

  On th
e way out, after paying through the ancient reader, I stopped by the rack at the door and picked up a flimsy entitled: Monahans, What to Do. I didn't look at it until I was back in the Altus, with the conditioner on. September or not, the temperature was close to forty, and I'd never liked heat, especially after Guyana, although West Tejas was a lot drier.

  According to the town history, the Monahans Sandhills had once been a big attraction, a park of some sort in the days before the Collapse. Now, the Sandhills were still there, with restricted access, but there were so many other sand hills left in West Tejas after the Collapse and the shifts in weather that almost no one bothered to look. But the Monahans Sandhills were still worth looking at, the flimsy insisted. There was also the oldest hotel left in West Tejas, just off the restored million barrel museum that held all sorts of relics from the time Monahans had been a major petroleum center. The flimsy also explained the unique metal signs that dated back more than a century and a half, when the town had received some sort of designation as a "Main Street City," whatever that had been.

  Since I had time, I eased the Altus out of the carpark and headed for the old Holman Hotel, which had been a jail and a mansion, as well. All in all, in something like three hours, I saw not only the Holman Hotel, with all the period furniture from more than two centuries back, which was real and not replica, but every kind of antique oil drilling equipment ever devised. That was amazing, because, looking at the cumbersome and just plain complicated gadgets, it was hard to believe that the oil barons of the Commonocracy had managed to pump so many barrels of hydrocarbons from so many places for so long. I was just thankful for beamed solar power and hydrogen fuel cells.

  The rally was in the auditorium of the local secondary school, and I pulled into the carpark a good half hour before it was scheduled to begin. There were already about fifty groundcars there, plus two media lorries, including the PN outfit, and several tour trams. I locked the Altus and walked across the hot permacrete carpark. Before I got five steps I was sweating again.

  Outside the entrance were almost twenty men and women, all wearing navy blue singlesuits, neatly tailored, handing out old-fashioned paper brochures. Each wore a circular campaign patch, with a varistrip below. The patch had a stylized image of Carlisimo, with a slogan underneath: CARLISIMO—FOR THE PRESENT, FOR THE FUTURE. The varistrips changed messages. I caught two different ones as I approached a woman who looked to be my age, although guessing ages is always chancy except of those who are very young and very old. The first read, MAKE YOUR VOTE COUNT. The second said, CHANGE STOPS CORRUPTION.

  The woman smiled, taking in my vest and green shirt—I'd left the coat in the Altus. "Media, writer, or commentator?"

  "Writer." I was a writer. I wrote down everything I concluded from my analyses.

  She handed me the trifold brochure, and then a thicker package. "There's more background in the briefing package."

  "Thank you." I took the packages with a smile. Before I stepped inside the variably-tinted glass doors, I glanced back. The campaign volunteers seemed to be of all ages, suggesting a certain depth to the organization.

  Once inside, and past the standard scanners, there were more volunteers in the blue singlesuits. There had to have been thirty there in Monahans, and that was a sizable number for a town of perhaps five thousand, especially in NorAm, a continent not exactly known for personal involvement in political campaigns. I followed a younger couple past another set of smiling volunteers into the auditorium.

  The chairs were school auditorium standard, covered with bonded and coated green fabric, the kind that was impervious to sharp objects, stains, and age. But the fabric didn't breathe, and if it got too hot, I'd be sitting in the dampness of my own perspiration. I settled into an aisle seat about nine rows back from the stage. The auditorium was conditioned, but not to what I'd have called comfortable. I was more than glad I'd left the jacket in the groundcar.

  I studied the stage, using full visual enhancement, but the enhancement didn't reveal more than unaided eyes could have seen, only greater clarity and detail. The stage was set up simply, with a stepped set of platforms on the right side for the rezrock band that had yet to appear. Their equipment and instruments were set out, as if they had been practicing and stepped offstage. The name on the stands was RezRedders, and the third stand had a smudge below the name, faint, as if it had been mostly wiped away. Behind the band was a full width shimmercurtain, the portable kind that provided depth to holo projections. The holo projectors were set on each side of the thrust stage, and before them were the speakers, both standard and rez. On the left side was a small podium, more to contain a nanite shield, I suspected, than for any other use. The only projection was a simple silver slogan on blue: CARLISIMO FOR SENATE. After a moment, I realized that colors were shifting gradually until the logo had reversed itself to blue on silver.

  As people came into the auditorium, I studied each of them until about ten minutes before the rally was to begin, when there were too many coming at once. I got the impression that all ages and cultural backgrounds were represented.

  At that point the RezRedders appeared and began to play, something soft, and without vocals, almost soothing, and very out of character for a rezband. Even so, I didn't recognize the song, but I did detect the slightest hint of resonance. The second piece was slightly more up-tempo, and the rez was stronger. With the second song, the images and action scenes of West Tejas had appeared on the shimmerscreen. By the time it was seven o'clock most of the audience was swaying with the music.

  "And now ... the man you came to see, the next senator from West Tejas, the one and only Juan Carlisimo!" The words were boosted with modified subsonics, the kind that engenders respect, but not fear, and the hint of background rez.

  Carlisimo seemed to appear from nowhere. He hadn't, but he'd been holo-screened so that it just appeared that way. His black hair shimmered with overtones of blue, and with his pale skin and the brilliant blue eyes, he seemed larger than life. That was the intent. But... he did have that indefinable something, the sense of warmth that all good politicians have.

  "Glad to be here ... really appreciate your having me here in Monahans..." He smiled and let the band pick up slightly before he spoke again. "Being your senator isn't about bring important in Denv. Isn't about how long you've been a senator. Isn't about me. It's about you. About doing what you need done. For your family, for your friends, for where you live."

  As he spoke, images of Monahans filled the shimmerscreen behind him, images of schools, homes, and the Sandhills. I even caught a quick flash of Josett's Place.

  Carlisimo continued to stand there, smiling boyishly, as the band picked up the tempo and began to sing about how "home is where the heart is ... home is what we work for, live for..."

  As they sang, the screen began alternating the images of Monahans with images of Carlisimo and his family—and the Carlisimo images were backrezzed with the almost-prodplacement chords and products of the most popular and trusted products in NorAm. The impact was greater in person than onlink, probably because the equipment in the auditorium was set for all the overtones, and the images were huge.

  The band played two songs, with generally forgettable lyrics that delivered a gentle punch at the LR image. The chorus of the second song was something like:

  And they played on, in well-fashioned fun,

  While we worked on, and sweated in the sun...

  After the second song, the band kept playing, but not singing, and with even more rez. The actual auditory volume was down, so that Carlisimo's voice came out over the music.

  "Now, we can sing about the way things are, and song says more, sometimes, than most politicians..." He paused for the laugh and got it. "But you deserve a senator who'll give you more than a song. Or even a song and dance." He grinned broadly. "Always felt that folks'll make the right choices if you give 'em the facts straight..."

  I winced at that. Carlisimo and I were not living in the same world, not
if he believed that. People always claim that they want the truth, but most people only want a truth that fits their beliefs. Of course, they like to delude themselves that they make up their minds on the facts, but they really just select the facts that back up what they already believe. It's the delusion of rationality. Carlisimo was playing to that delusion, and doing it well.

  "... Why I'm asking for your support, and why I'm appealing to your brains, and not trying to tell you that I know everything. No man knows everything, but put everything together that you all know...

  that's something, and that's why I'll listen..."

  Another boyish grin ... and the band picked up and began another series of songs, three this time, and none of them political. The images of Monahans flashed on the holo screen were slightly less in number, while those of Carlisimo were more, and the rezchord and prodplacing were more prominent.

  The pattern continued for another forty minutes—a few minutes of Carlisimo speaking, followed by the band performing, and more Carlisimo. All in all, it was a masterfully choreographed performance.

  Carlisimo closed the rally with just a few words, again rezband-backed.

  "Sure like to thank the RezRedders for those wonderful sounds." He turned toward the band for just a moment, before looking out and projecting all that warmth. "We're not here just for music. We're here 'cause I'm asking for your vote. I'm not weaseling around suggesting you might want to vote for me. Sure as the Sandhills been here forever, sure as West Tejas has its own unique way of life ... you need a senator who's one of you, and I'm asking for that privilege, and it is a privilege..." Then came the boyish grin, and he left it at that.

  For the first time since the beginning of the rally, there was another voice, a voice-over, "If you want to keep us company ... be in Pecos tomorrow. Some songs you heard here, and some you didn't... But remember ... Vote for Carlisimo ... the man you know." Then the band picked up into a last up-tempo note and the images flashed across the shimmerscreen, including one of Carlisimo standing between two flags, one the old Tejas, and one the NorAm stars on blue.