Difference between revisions of "Talk:XXIII: Deadly Window"

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XXIII: Deadly Window

In the final analysis the only thing the Federalists lacked was intellectual courage. Their inheritance as well as ours included the maxim, “That government is best which governs least.” But it was an act of enormous daring for Gallatin to perceive that “The government which governs least is no government at all.” And such daring, not a part of the Hamiltonian makeup, in the end sealed their fate.

—Jennifer A. Smythe

Madison: the Final Days

“DENVER!”

“What?”

“Denver, that’s where they are!” I slapped my forehead, disgusted I hadn’t thought of it sooner. “The regional SecPol headquarters.”

Ed nodded grimly. “Saint Charles Town. It makes sense.”

“All this is very interesting,” Lucy said, “but are we gonna stand out in the street all day, burning daylight?”

“Wait!” Something else clicked in my head. “I’ve just had another thought.”

“Did it hurt?” Lucy and Ed asked simultaneously. Clarissa grimaced and put a hand delicately over her mouth. I like loyalty in a woman.

“Okay, wise-asses. Burgess was regional head of the most important federal agency in the country. There were a couple thousand flunkies available to get their hands dirty for him on field operations. So why his personal involvement in this whole thing? Why did he return to the Meiss murder scene? Why did he follow me to Fort Collins? Why did he kill everyone who interfered with him: Meiss, MacDonald, all the attempts on me?”

Lucy nodded impatiently.

“He was up to something on his own,” I finished. “Something he didn’t want others—especially his bosses—horning in on. He had a plausible excuse to keep Meiss under surveillance, but some Federal lab in Denver or Washington should have been duplicating Meiss’s work, not a second-rater like Bealls.”

“Now wait a minute,” Ed said. “Are you implying that your ‘benevolent’ government would never have gone along with—”

“No, Ed, I’m not. Burgess just didn’t want to share the pie. I think Bealls will be contacting SecPol cold. They may not even know that the Confederacy exists.

“That’s pretty iffy, Winnie.”

Clarissa had caught on. “But if Win’s right, Bealls will have to send a great deal of information through to SecPol, something like Deejay sent to Meiss. That’s going to take time, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said, “and perhaps a bigger Broach than Bealls is capable of generating. It also means bureaucratic delays of all kinds, passwords, countersigns—”

“So we’re not gonna get nuked day after tomorrow,” said Lucy. “That’s good news.”

Ed was shaking his head. “Based on a tenuous string of unsupported suppositions. Win, you’re making up fast for all my fumbling. Suppose you’re wrong and the whole agency knows about the Broach. Suppose they simply assigned their top man because it’s important. Suppose—”

“Okay! Okay!” I said. I’m still betting they’re in Saint Charles, and I’m going down there to get Madison. You coming?”

“I am, Win,” Clarissa said. I put my arm around her, wanting to refuse, knowing she’d never understand or allow it. This was a different culture, and Confederate womanhood is quite capable of loading hell in its own holster.

“Oh, very well. But no more birthday surprises, okay?” Ed scowled hard at Lucy and me, creasing his face into a reddened, fleshy X. We all burst out laughing.

“So how do we find Bealls?” Lucy asked, blowing her nose. “Saint Charles Town ain’t exactly the big time, but—”

“I’ve got an idea.” I lifted the Neova’s door panel, punched the combo for Deejay’s laboratory. Presently the screen displayed a terrific view of another Telecom screen.

“Please identify yourself,” requested Ooloorie’s twice-relayed image.

“It’s me, Ooloorie. Is Deejay there?”

“Greetings, Win Bear. I witnessed your combat yesterday, gallantly against sharks. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll—”

“No need, dear.” Deejay squeezed in beside the robot. “Win, I was just about to try your number again. I wanted—”

“We’ve been otherwise occupied,” I grimaced, outlining our recent humiliation and such conclusions as we’d reached. “You mentioned building a device to detect someone else’s use of a Broach?”

“But that’s why I’ve—We finished it this morning. A simple matter of harmonics. We could have saved you all the trouble you got into!”

“Oh my aching bank account! Any idea where Bealls might be by now?”

“I’m afraid so. Somebody’s firing up a Broach a hundred miles or less to the south. But Win, my small-scale dirigible Broach could—”

“Swell. Can you pinpoint that other Broach—point it out on a map, even narrow it down to a street address?”

“Oh, much better than that! I can name the square foot within a room! But once you know where it is, what are you planning to do about it?” She gave Ooloorie a concerned glance.

“Do about it? Why, we’ll just smash in there and—”

“Landling,” observed the porpoise, “you leave too much to random factors. Has it not occurred to you that they will have taken security precautions?”

“Well sure, I—”

“Have you not also reasoned that you will be violating their rights, as fully as they plan to violate ours? Would you—”

“Fuck all this philosophy jazz!” I shouted. “This is a matter of survival!

“And importing unprincipled behavior is an aid to that end? My poor ignorant—”

“I agree, Win,” Deejay interrupted diplomatically. “It’s not only suicidal, but morally wrong, as well.”

“And unnecessary,” the principled porpoise added. “Nothing encourages ethical practices so well as a practical alternative to evil.”

“Didn’t Gallatin say that?” Deejay asked.

“No, I did,” Ooloorie replied.

“What are you two driving at?” I demanded. Clarissa, Lucy, and Ed crowded behind me, following the debate.

“We’ve discovered an interference factor!” Deejay said excitedly.

“A who?”

“Stated very simply,” Ooloorie condescended, “one Broach mechanism can interfere with another, an effect, ordinarily, of little or no practical benefit. However—”

“Who’s telling this, Ooloorie, you or me?”

“Why, I was, naturally, Deejay.”

“Well, I’m telling it, now. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t mean a thing. You’d have to line up two generators, practically touching, before you’d notice any effect. But a dirigible Broach, one that projects over distance—”

“I get it! If Bealls turns his machine on, all you have to do is send your … your …”

“Field interface?”

“Field interface close enough to interfere with his! That’s great! We can hold ’em off forever!”

“It isn’t quite as simple as that, Win,” Deejay said. “There are some qualifications. Alignment is critical; the two fields can’t be more than a tenth-inch apart. They must also be non-concentric. It’s like the inverse-square law for electromagnetics, only in this case, the exponent is—”

“Exponential. What happens if the fields are concentric?”

“Well, I … hmm. It’s just like building one window in front of another: whatever goes into Broach A comes out Broach B, instead of winding up in the other universe.”

I thought about that. “Sounds like you’ve invented matter-transmission. But seriously, can you interfere with Bealls, way down in Saint Charles?”

“If that’s where he is, no, Win. That’s another qualification. Range. It’s less a consideration of power than of accuracy, but—”

“How far can you do it from?”

“Detection or interference?”

“Well, both.”

“Oh, detection is easy. I’m picking up intermittent signals now. I think Bealls is tuning up his machine. Interference—not more than a couple of miles, I’d say.”

I looked at Ed, then back at the Telecom. “How difficult would it be to set your machinery up somewhere else?”

She considered. “Providing we had sufficient power? All we’d need is a pinhole, and detection hardly requires—”

“Great! We’re all going on a little trip!”

WE DROPPED CLARISSA and Lucy off to get another car, and headed for the university, where Deejay readied several bulky packages. We filled Ed’s luggage boot and waited for the Thorneycroft to take the rest. A few minutes later, a little red Sunrider swept up into the lot. Clarissa at the wheel, Lucy beside her looking unhappy.

“I told you this was a mistake!” she complained. “That junk’ll never fit in this wind-up toy of yours!”

“Lucy, your car just isn’t fast enough to keep up. Isn’t that right, Ed?”

“I abstain,” he equivocated, “on grounds of long friendship—and continued survival.”

“Not to mention the Chinese ideogram for ‘trouble,’” I added.

“Besides”—Clarissa shuddered—“I’ve ridden with you behind the wheel before.”

“No sportin’ blood to this generation,” Lucy muttered. “All right. Let’s get this show on the road!”

Riding within the city limits hadn’t prepared me for Greenway 200. Draw two ocean waves, adjacent curves, joined in the middle, a round-bottomed W. That’s a cross-section of the Greenway—parallel troughs covered with mutated crabgrass, that titanium rocket tunnel buried under the median. Drift too far from the center of your lane, and the upslope gently pours you back where you belong. The outside edge works the same, except for an occasional off-ramp or feeder advertised miles in advance.

Don’t let the simple construction fool you: within and underneath the roadbed, sophisticated systems provide power for induction vehicles, guidance, information and entertainment, arrangements for eliminating ice and snow.

We enter a landscaped cloverleaf, accelerating until the up-curved roadbed was a greenish blur. Deejay and her equipment were crammed into the scanty back seat. The Sunrider followed “bumper-to-bumper,” about a mile behind.

I glanced over at Ed’s instrument panel—my own controls were folded away, making room for an extra box resting uncomfortably on my lap—and read our ground speed: 355.

“Say, Ed, I thought you said this thing would fly. Wouldn’t that get us down to Saint Charles quicker?”

Ed snapped a final switch, and, to my horror, folded his steering wheel into the dash, turning his seat around to face me! “You look a little pale, Win. What’s that you were saying?”

“I s-said how come we don’t fly down to Saint Charles?”

“Relax, we’re on autoguidance. The Greenway’s practically a straight line south anyhow; we wouldn’t gain that much. Besides, we’re overloaded—with Deejay’s bulk in the back seat.”

“I beg your pardon!” the physicist demanded.

“All your equipment, I mean. We can make better speed down here. Convertible or not, this is still primarily a ground vehicle. We’ll be in Saint Charles in another ten minutes.”

I shook my head. “Not even time for a good cigar. Do you realize this trip used to take me nearly two hours and without an automatic pilot? I had to—”

“Walk to school every day through six feet of snow?” Deejay asked.

“Split rails for a living, too. What can I say?” I craned back over my shoulder, trying to see through the sloping rear canopy. A tiny bright-red hovercar trailed behind us.

Abruptly the dashboard Telecom bleeped. Clarissa’s face appeared, Lucy squished into the display beside her. “Hello, darling! Ed, radar says we’ve got company about ten miles back. Altitude, three hundred feet. See it?”

He cleared the display. “Got him now. Making about four-fifty.” I twisted my neck again, trying to see what was coming. “I’m going back on manual. May be nothing at all, but—”

“There he is!” Deejay screamed. “Look out!”

A long slender shape flew beside us, paralleling the right-hand road crest, perhaps twenty-five feet off the ground, and dropping to our speed.

“I was an idiot!” Ed growled. “So busy watching Madison it never occurred to me he’d be watching us! Hold on!”

The aircraft pulled ahead, suddenly veered to the left, plopping clumsily into the roadbed. It wobbled a little on its rapidly inflating skirt and rode the camber down ahead of us.

“Another bloody convertible!” Ed wrangled with the wheel as we buffeted in the other’s wake—extremely dangerous proximity at these speeds. It was slowing gradually. Ed warned Clarissa to drop back. Still the other vehicle closed until less than ten yards separated us.

A rear section of the intruder gaped open—the turbulence inside must have been unbearable—the ugly nozzle of a weapon pointed at us. Ed slammed on the brakes, fishtailed wildly, while the barrel ahead spouted flames. Our windshield starred; a deafening whistle shrieked through the car. “Any way we can shoot back?” I yelled.

Ed jerked the wheel through evasive maneuvers, skidding up the right bank, then slowly back to the center. “No! If he keeps slowing, we won’t have enough momentum to climb the bank. He’ll have us trapped!” He charged up the left bank this time; we didn’t get as far, and came down sooner, describing a diminishing sine-wave on the road. When the curves finally, fatally flattened out …

I sat there, chewing the inside of my mouth. “See if you can pass. Will your rear hatch open so I can get off a couple of shots?”

“I’ll try. Get in back!”

I swiveled, squashing Deejay aside amid a tangle of equipment. She pushed into the front seat. I fumbled with the canopy toggle. Bullet holes screaming in the windshield were drowned suddenly in a roar. I was nearly sucked out the back with the ashtray contents.

“You okay, Win? Hold on!” We swerved to the right, gaining speed, and had pulled almost even with the enemy when he veered, forcing Ed to drop back. He tried again, on the right. Suddenly the car snapped back to center.

“Sorry—junction back there! We’d have smashed into a tunnel mouth!” He played the wheel side to side, avoiding shots from ahead. “We’ll try something else. Hold on tight! Really tight!”

Engines bellowed above the hurricane inside the car. We surged forward, upward, yanking my ears down to my bellybutton, and left the ground with a lurch. The other car passed beneath us, then we were down with a bump, the Neova groaning in protest. I climbed off the floor and rested my gun on the seat back, sighting as the hatch flopped wildly in the wind.

BLAM! BLAM! Their front window whitened in the center. Aiming more to the right, I smashed the windshield there with two more quick shots. Their car skidded up the center, slid down crabwise, and straightened—someone at the spare wheel now. Two more shots, badly placed. I didn’t relish trying to reload in this confusion.

“Try mine!” Ed passed his 375 back. I thumbed the cocking lever, peered along the top, and took up the trigger-slack. To my surprise, a brilliant spot of light appeared on the car behind as the laser sight caught it. They took evasive action, just as we had, swinging from bank to bank.

“No good!” I shouted. “Get back even with them!”

“I can try!” He nosed us up the left bank, almost flipping her with the brakes. The others rode beside us as we whipped past a sign: SAINT CHARLES TOWN 5. I laid the glowing dot on a shadowy figure at the controls, pumping the trigger as fast as I could. Slapslapslap! My own side window disintegrated, glass and chrome spouted from the other car, smoke began to pour out. They slowed, spilling dense black clouds, swerving desperately for an off-ramp.

They didn’t make it. The car glanced off a concrete pillar and came apart, smearing itself down the right embankment. Burning shards and a wall of smoke dashed across the road.

Ed twitched the wheel, dodging bigger chunks that bounced ahead, tearing ugly swaths in the grass. Then we were through. I watched nervously for Clarissa’s car. The road behind us was a sheet of flame.

A mile. Two miles. Smoke billowed a thousand feet or more. Then, through the flames, her little red machine emerged unscathed. I turned and sat back in the seat, one leg up on a carton, breathing easier, and lowered the .375’s hammer as gently as I could. Buildings began flashing by. Ed slowed the Neova, turned adroitly into a curving tunnel and out into the streets of Saint Charles Town.

WE LEFT SAINT Charles as quickly as we’d entered it, at Deejay’s direction crossing a ford, gliding through Auraria to a sliding stop beside the local outlet for Paratronics, Ltd. We hustled Deejay’s cargo into the office. On my second trip to the car, Clarissa’s little red machine skated up gracefully beside ours. This close, its plastic skirt looked scorched, the canopy cracked in several places. Clarissa was fine, though, Lucy energetic and noisy.

“C’mon, c’mon—plenty of time for kissy-face later, you two! Let’s get this crap inside!” She shifted one shoulder-slung holster around and grabbed the largest box in the car. I let Clarissa go and followed suit.

Deejay was inside, doing ghastly things to the innards of the office Telecom. “After I pick up their field, we’ll do a little microBroach reconnaissance.” Flipped from her iron, a surplus drop of solder sizzled its way into the carpet. “We’ll hook an optical fiber system into the ’com, here, and see what’s what!” She buried herself in the circuitry, groping along the counter for scattered tools without looking up.

Ed rooted around in the office, found coffee and a bulb of Coke for me. I tried handing tools to Deejay for a while, but couldn’t seem to give her what she wanted. I finally turned the job over to Lucy. All we could do was wait.

It was dark by the time Deejay sat back, turning knobs and watching the Telecom. Abruptly, the screen blossomed into an intricate moire pattern. She began making frantic adjustments. “I think I’ve got something here! Wait—yes, here it is! He’s just warming up again! Okay, I’ve got him. Hand me that meter, Lucy … we’ll know more in a few minutes.” She fiddled with the equipment, unable to resist lecturing. “You may notice that the heart of this rig is that little classroom demonstrator I showed you.”

“I remember too well. Pop!”

She grinned, nodding. “Well, now I can steer the field locus anywhere I want—up to a couple of miles, anyway.” She inserted a slender filament into the guts of the machine, plugged the other end into the Telecom, pushing buttons. I jumped three feet as the screen bulged with the proximity-distorted image of John Jay Madison.

“Whoops!” Lucy cried. “Another inch, and we’d be staring right up his nostrils!”

“Shh!” I whispered, a beat behind Clarissa.

“No need for that,” Deejay explained. The only thing coming across that interface is light, and that, only one way.”

I nodded, relieved. “What’s it look like from the other side?”

“Like a dust mote. We’re magnifiying what the fiber picks up at the interface. Want a look around?” The picture backed off and swooped around the room in Saint Charles, panning 360 degrees to catch Madison’s associates: Skinner, others I recognized from the Continental Congress, finally resting on Bealls himself, up to his armpits in haywired paratronics. An animated conversation was in progress, but we couldn’t hear a word.

“That was our friend Mikva!” Ed exclaimed. Clarissa clutched my hand.

“So what happens now?” Lucy asked.

Deejay started turning knobs again, the viewpoint whirled dizzily. “Forward a bit,” she muttered. “A little more … there! Now I’ll punch up a short program, and—Good! Bealls is still calibrating. When he goes on full power, we’ll match him, foul up his field symmetry, maybe give him some feedback to play with. The best part is, he’ll never figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t know enough field theory yet.”

Clarissa crossed over to the ’com, dragging me along. We watched Bealls’s distorted, sweaty face as he concentrated. “One thing I don’t understand, Deejay,” she said. “Do we have to watch him every minute, from now on, just to prevent him communicating with the other side?”

“That’s the cockroach in the hollandaise, all right!” Lucy muttered grimly. “Say, y’don’t suppose we could put a couple dozen slugs through this contraption of yours and …”

“Perhaps he’ll just get discouraged after a while,” Deejay offered, “and give up.”

Clarissa looked closely at her. “Would you?”

She frowned a little and then grinned. “No.”

“Deejay,” Ed asked, “I’ve been thinking. Remember what you said about the two fields becoming concentric? Well, what would happen if we did it deliberately? Bealls passes his first message over and we just grab it from him!”

“Better yet,” I suggested, “we can pretend we’re SecPol and string the bastard along for weeks!”

“Sorry, boys. It’s a great idea, but we simply don’t have the power. On regular wall current, this Broach is good for about three-tenths-of-an-inch diameter. I can louse up Beall’s operations, but that’ll have to satisfy us until we think of something else.”

“Nuts!” Lucy complained. “Can’t get a fifty-caliber bullet through a thirty-caliber hole!”

I scowled at the Telecom. Looking pleased with himself, Bealls backed out of the field of view.

“Here it comes!” Deejay warned. “I’ve got to be careful now. It tends to drift. Don’t jog my elbow!” She sat tensed at the controls, making minute adjustments. The screen blurred, then sprang into a mind-twisting kaleidoscopic display. “Shit!” Deejay startled all of us, ripping the fiber-optic tube out of the interface. “It’s gone concentric!”

A tiny silvery button popped out of the Broach and sprouted toward us on a slender supporting rod. When the second joint passed the interface, I recognized it. “Not a manuscript!” I whispered hoarsely. “Not even a note! That’s an antenna, an ordinary walkie-talkie antenna!” On impulse I snatched a pair of vise-grips from the bench and clamped them onto the chrome-plated shaft. “Let the son of a bitch figure that one out!”

The antenna stopped sliding into the room, backed up suddenly until the pliers banged against the Broach chassis, lurched forward, and retreated again, trapped. “Reminds me of that old vice detail joke,” I laughed. “You know, the one about the public restroom where—”

“Out!” Deejay screamed in horror, pointing at her instruments. “Get out of here before he shuts the field down!” She scrambled for the exit, dragging Lucy by the gunbelt. I shoved Clarissa through the door behind Ed, just making it to the sidewalk outside, when—

The world erupted in fire and thunder. Windows bulged and splashed, twin balls of fire either side of the door. We tobogganed along the walkway, fetching up beside the little Sunrider. I shoved Clarissa’s face against my shoulder for fear of raining glass. My hair and eyebrows crisped and singed. The world was hell, a raging, incoherent furious roar.

Yet, even above the explosion we’d escaped, I could hear a distant rumble, see the smoke and flame of a vastly greater cataclysm, a mile across the river in Saint Charles.