Terminal Transmission td-93

by Warren Murphy

  Remo looked. There was the stony face of Don Cooder, looking steely-eyed into the camera. He was speaking.

  "In our efforts to bring you up to date on the crisis along Network Row, we are preempting Eyeball to Eyeball with Cheeta Ching for a special live 24 Hours. Tonight: '24 Hours on Blackout Street.' "

  "What about Cheeta!" Chiun cried.

  "Cheeta Ching will be seen at this time next week," Cooder said. "Unless, of course the big moment arrives, in which case BCN will cut in live for special labor coverage."

  "They're planning to broadcast the birth?" Remo grunted.

  Chiun said, "Of course. It will be a day of celebration."

  "Bulldookey," said Remo. "Look, I'm sorry Cooder's horned in on Cheeta's face time, but these things happen."

  "Why do these calamities keep happening to Cheeta? It is not fair!"

  "Hey, you got your dose of Cheeta for the night. Lighten up."

  "My evening is ruined."

  "Why don't we just watch this? Who knows, Cheeta may start having contractions and you'll get to see it all in its gory glory."

  As Remo settled onto one of the mats facing the screen, the Master of Sinanju ceased his pacing.

  "Why are you interested in this?" he asked suspiciously.

  "Smitty thinks that blackout may be something for us. Might as well get current."

  "It is not the work of that bearded ruffian, Castro, is it?"

  "Smith doesn't think so. We threw a pretty good scare into him last time. He still hasn't shown his face in public."

  "No doubt his beard has not yet regrown itself," Chinn sniffed.

  "Rat's nests aren't built in a day," said Remo cheerfully.

  They watched in silence. A graphic filled the screen. It showed a green circle indicating the area of broadcast interference. It was a big circle. All of the U.S. as well as most of Canada and Mexico were in what Don Cooder referred to as "the null zone."

  "While the source of this disruption has not yet been identified," he was saying, "sunspots cannot been ruled out. For more on this important story and how it may affect you, here by telephone is vacationing BCN science editor Frank Feldmeyer."

  As a Quantel graphic still of Feldmeyer showed on the screen, the correspondent's comments ran as a voice-over. He was a square-faced man whose features were made smaller by oversized horn-rimmed glasses.

  "Don, this phenomenon, if it is a natural one, is utterly baffling. Somehow, all video output was intercepted and substitute audio broadcast in its place. Sunspots might account for one, but not the other."

  "Frank, are you saying this could be man-made?"

  "Don, there doesn't appear to be any other explanation. Beyond that, it's too early to tell."

  "It's too early to tell," Cooder intoned.

  "Didn't Feldmeyer just say that?" Remo asked Chiun.

  Chiun said nothing. His hazel eyes were narrow in thought.

  Cooder was back on the air now. His ruggedly handsome black-Irish face was fixed. There were bags under his eyes large enough to double as coin pouches.

  " 'It's too early to tell,' " he repeated. "Portentous words. What can they mean? Is this just a glitch of the electronic age, or-something more? Something that will darken all of our lives? For another perspective, here is White House correspondent Sheela Duff."

  The picture cut to the White House correspondent standing, appropriately enough, on the White House lawn. She was speaking into a handheld microphone that looked like a candy box with a giant BCN logo.

  "Don, here at the White House there is no sign of a crisis atmosphere."

  "That's because there's no freaking crisis," Remo grumbled.

  "But reliable sources assure us that the President is aware of the situation and cognizant of its meaning."

  Cooder asked, "Sheela, as you know, Havana tried to jam U.S. airwaves not long ago. Is this an unscheduled rerun of that old crisis?"

  "No, Don. As the graphic you just showed indicates, Cuba is not the epicenter of the so-called null zone. In fact, reliable reports are that Cuban TV and radio were knocked off the air at the same time. In fact, Havana is angrily pointing the finger of blame at Washington. As are, I might add, the Canadian government and the Mexicans."

  Cooder came back on. "Let's look at that graphic again, shall we?"

  The graphic came on. Remo leaned into the screen.

  "Looks like he's right," he said. "Can't be Cuba. Otherwise the blackout would reach clear down to Peru. The transmitter must be in the U.S."

  "I understand none of this voodoo," Chiun said darkly.

  Don Cooder was saying, "If I read this graphic correctly, and I want to be sure I understand this . . . Frank Feldmeyer, are you still with us?"

  "Yes, I am Don."

  "I know you can't see the graphic, but it shows a circle encompassing most of North America. What should we be looking for?"

  "The center."

  "For those of us not well grounded in science, that's the middle, correct?"

  "Exactly, Don."

  "Actually it looks to me like Canada is the center," Remo muttered.

  "The epicenter appears to lie in the heartland of the United States itself," announced Don Cooder.

  "Any idiot can see it's Canada," Remo complained.

  Don Cooder went on, obviously making it up as he went along. "For those just tuning in, at this hour, the known facts are these: U.S. TV blacked out for seven minutes. Cause: Unknown. Motive: Unknown. Suspicion: Somewhere in the U.S. heartland a pirate transmitter waiting patiently. For-what? No one knows."

  Don Cooder paused, fixing the camera with his unblinking eyes. "For the story of those most affected by this, here's our national correspondent, Hale Storm."

  The image changed to show the prettily handsome face of BCN national correspondent Hale Storm, looking as dashing as if he had stepped out of a soap opera-which he had. BCN had hired him from one of their own soaps in an effort to broaden their female audience base.

  "What was the first thing to go through your mind when the blackout hit?" Storm asked an off-camera figure.

  The face of Don Cooder, looking pensive, appeared. He was informal in a fawn-brown cardigan sweater.

  "I was at the anchor desk-we call it the Chair around here-and had just read the lead-in headlines when the producer noticed the line monitor had gone black. At first, he thought it was an internal glitch, but I knew that couldn't be. Here at BCN we have the finest technical staff in television. I immediately pitched in and, sensing something more serious amiss, discovered that the other networks were black too."

  "Very astute, Don."

  Don Cooder offered his trademark forced smile and said, "Don Cooder has been in this news game a long time, man and boy. He can smell a story."

  Chiun nudged Remo. "Why does he refer to himself in the third person?"

  "Maybe he's schizo," Remo offered. "What I want to know is why are they interviewing each other. Shouldn't they be talking to the man in the street?"

  "Why should they waste their time speaking with peasants?" Chiun wanted to know.

  "Maybe because the story affected maybe sixty million people, and only a few dozen TV employees, that's why. These news guys all think they are the news."

  "They are obviously very important," said Chiun.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "They all look very much like the President of Vice, who is an important person as well."

  "Come to think of it, the Vice President does kinda look like he should be reading the news, not making it. And he's just like the network anchors. They're practically all airheads. They get paid a ton of money to just sit there and read."

  Out of the corner of his eyes, Remo noticed Chiun's wispy beard tremble. And he knew he had made a mistake.

  "They are paid how much to simply sit and read?"

  "Uh, I forget," Remo said evasively.

  "I will settle for a rough estimate."

  "Oh, I heard Cooder gets oh, four or five."
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br />   "Thousands?"

  "Millions."

  "Millions! To simply read!"

  "Cheeta isn't exactly paid in seashells, either, you know."

  "That is different. She does not read mere news, but recites poetry in her lilting voice. She is a fountain of culture in a barbarian land. No amount of money can be too much for her."

  "And she's just the weekend anchor."

  Chiun's eyes narrowed. "Why are they called anchors?"

  "Good question. Ask Smith next time we see him. He knows all kinds of useless stuff."

  The taped interview with Don Cooder ended and the live Don Cooder returned to do a live interview with the national anchor who had just interviewed him. Then, Don Cooder interviewed the producer, the news director, and up on to the president of the news division, who vowed that this would never happen again, but if it did, BCN would be there to cover it. Round the clock, if need be.

  How BCN could cover a disruption that would prevent them from broadcasting was not explained, and no one thought to point out the lapse in logic. Everyone spoke in crisp, authoritative sentences, wore expensive suits, and boasted perfect helmets of hair that could decorate storefront manikins. Some possibly had.

  At the end of the broadcast, the camera closed in to frame Don Cooder's face and he said, "BCN Evening News pledges to keep you up to date on this developing story. Until next time," he added, giving the peace sign, "Rock on."

  Immediately, a local anchor came on with a teaser for the eleven o'clock news.

  "TV blacked out nationwide. The story at 11."

  "Why do they do that?" Remo complained.

  "Do what?"

  "We just watched a half hour of national coverage and the local station immediately jumps in trying to get us to watch it all over again at eleven."

  "I do not understand these American customs," Chiun sniffed. "I only know that I will have to wait until the weekend before beholding the sight of Cheeta the Beauteous."

  "You'll make it."

  The Master of Sinanju arose like a pale column of smoke. He had changed to evening white. "I will retire now," he said.

  "Kinda early, isn't it?"

  "Awake, I will only feel sadness. Perhaps in sleep I will dream of Cheeta the Fair."

  "Does that mean I gotta resume boom box patrol?"

  The Master of Sinanju paused at the door. He turned, his face stern.

  "If I am dreaming of Cheeta, and rude voices awaken me, there will be heads adorning the gates by dawn."

  "Trust me," said Remo. "You'll sleep peacefully if I have to sleep outside."

  "I would not mind," said Chiun, padding off to his bedroom.

  And hearing those chilly words, Remo's spirits fell.

  Chapter 5

  The office of Harold W. Smith was a Spartan cube that looked as if it had been furnished in 1963 from a municipal auction of sixty-year-old surplus school equipment.

  The desk was a scarred slab of oak; the leather executive chair in which Smith sat was cracked with age and the corrosive action of human perspiration. Smith had sweated out countless crises in the chair.

  There was a faded green divan that might once have sat outside a school principal's office for discipline-problem students. The file cabinets were a mixture of dark green metal and oak. Intelligence analysts could have pored over the contents of those cabinets for a hundred years and would have been forced to conclude that Folcroft was no more than a stodgy private hospital.

  Behind him, Long Island Sound was a crinkling expanse of moonlit India ink visible through a picture window of one-way glass so prying eyes could not read Harold Smith's lips or peer over his shoulder at the computer terminal that occupied one corner of Smith's pathologically neat desk.

  The illumination was fluorescent-as an aid to Smith's nagging eyestrain. One filament shook nervously. When the day came that it finally burnt out, Smith would replace it, not before.

  As he worked the keyboard, Harold Smith was not even aware of the annoying problem.

  From this terminal, Smith could reach out with invisible fingers and touch virtually every computer net accessible by phone line. Right now, he was monitoring the internal computer systems of the three major networks and Vox TV.

  On his screen appeared, in rotation, news stories being written in distant terminals by network newswriters, internal office memos, and electronic mail.

  All four networks were busy. According to their computer activities, there was a great deal of gossip and speculation going on, but no hard facts. Doggedly Smith logged off one network and switched to another. It sometimes seemed to him that it had been easier in the early days of CURE, before computers revolutionized American business. In fact, it had been more difficult. It was just that the proliferation of computers meant that much more raw data was accessible to Smith-and hiring a staff to keep track of it all was out of the question.

  As Smith secretly prowled the Multinational Broadcast Corporation database, unknown fingers were typing a fragment of electronic mail.

  "This weird fax just came in," the fingers wrote. "And the brass all went into a huddle."

  Smith dropped out of the MBC net and accessed the AT that processed telephone calls. He brought up the MBC headquarters active billing file and backtracked the most recent incoming calls. There was no way to differentiate between voice and fax transmission calls, except that the latter were usually brief. In the last five minutes, Smith found, MBC had received six incoming calls. Only one was long-distance. It was from Atlanta, Georgia.

  Smith dropped out of the file and brought up the American Networking Conglomerate billing file. ANC, too, had received a long-distance call from Atlanta. The number was the same. Ferociously, Smith accessed the BCN file.

  There had been no call from Atlanta. Then, as Smith watched, one appeared.

  Like a demented concert pianist, Harold Smith dropped out of AT ed up the BCN database. Most faxphones, he knew, were tied into computer software so that on-screen text could be faxed by the simple press of a hot key, without bothering to generate a hard copy. Smith raced from screen to screen, breathing like a jogger in motion, looking to see if an incoming fax was appearing anywhere in the system.

  Then he found it. Line by line, it began manifesting itself on his own terminal.

  "My God," he croaked. "It is worse that I imagined."

  Without taking his eyes off the screen, Smith reached for one of the many telephones on his desk. From memory, he called the Atlanta number that was the source of the fax. The other telephone rang six times. Then there was the click of a backup line cutting in, followed by more ringing.

  As the fax completed itself in ghostly green letters, a telephone voice was speaking in Harold Smith's ear.

  Smith groaned, a low inarticulate sound. The voice had told him exactly where the fax had originated.

  If it meant what he thought, a new and terrifying kind of conflict was about to be played out. And the battlefield would be an electronic one.

  Chapter 6

  Cheeta Ching was afraid to leave her office.

  Normally, Cheeta Ching wasn't afraid of man, beast, or machine. Behind her back, she was known as the Korean Shark. Even her coworkers feared her. But if there was one colleague even she feared, it was senior BCN anchor Don Cooder.

  Theirs had been a long-running feud, dating back to the days before she had jumped rival MBC for BCN. Cheeta had never wanted to leave MBC. Certainly not for a lateral slide from MBC weekend anchor to BCN weekend anchor. She would never have done it. Never in a million years. Except for Don Cooder.

  With Cooder in the Chair, BCN was dead last in the ratings, heading for the ratings cellar with a millstone around its corporate neck. Nobody expected him to last. And as the pressure had mounted, the hothead from Texas had become increasingly unstable.

  There was the famous seven-minute walk-off. The shouting matches with presidential candidates. Being kidnapped by irate taxi drivers. It was only a matter of time, the industry kn
ew, before Don Cooder cracked like an overboiled egg.

  Cheeta Ching knew that she was making a potentially disastrous career move. She also understood that if Cooder went off the deep end, whoever was his heir-apparent was certain to land her lucky ass in the Chair. And Cheeta Ching wanted to be the proud owner of that lucky ass.

  Industry critics all but wrote her professional obituary when she accepted the BCN weekend anchor slot. In interviews, she shrugged off all predictions of doom. After all, she was Cheeta Ching. The Cheeta Ching. The only female Korean anchor on earth. Or at least outside Korea. Nothing had ever stood in her way.

  Except, she had discovered to her everlasting chagrin, Don Cooder.

  The man was like a starfish attached to an oyster with that damned Chair. He couldn't he pried up, knocked off, or smashed loose.

  Not that Cheeta Ching hadn't tried. During one of their smoldering feuds, she had hired a group of thugs to jump him outside his Manhattan apartment crying, "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

  It should have sent him over the edge. It didn't. The man was a barnacle, inert and immovable.

  After that, Cheeta shifted tactics, announcing the start of her heroic struggle to become pregnant. As Cheeta saw it, the publicity value would be incalculable. She was over forty, female, and a symbol to career-minded women across the nation. To have a child would have made her the ultimate emblem of having it all. And why not? It had worked for Candice Bergen.

  Except that Cheeta Ching couldn't conceive to save her life.

  It was embarrassing. Entertainment Weekly called her the "Little Anchor Who Couldn't." Don Cooder had ramrodded onto the air a special report, "Why Superwoman Can't Ovulate."

  It was especially embarrassing because her husband was a gynecologist-turned-talk-show-host. They did it in every position except free-fall-but only because Rory's fingers couldn't be pried loose from the open aircraft door. He was petrified of heights.

  Next, they resorted to every fertility drug known to man. Her biological clock ticking, every tabloid holding her up to ridicule, Cheeta Ching grew desperate as a starved barracuda.

  Then, like a miracle, a man had appeared in her life. A Korean. Of course. Only a fellow Korean, a member of the most perfect race ever to grace a sorry world, could have helped barren Cheeta Ching to total, womanly fulfillment.