not enjoy the loyalty checks I ran on government employ-
ees to keep me in spending money, for I was not only
required to report traitors, but to delineate the abnormal
(as the government defined that) private practices and
beliefs of those I scanned, violating privacy in the most
insidious of fashions; secondly, I had just promised Harry
I would be there, and I couldn’t find a single instance when
that mad Irishman had ever let me down.
I cursed the womb which had made me, beseeching the
gods to melt its plastic walls and short-circuit those miles
and miles of delicate copper wires.
I pulled on street clothes over pajamas, stepped into
overshoes and a heavy coat with fur lining, one of the
popular Nordic models. Without Harry Kelly, I would
most likely have been in prison at that moment—or in a
preventive detention apartment with federal plainclothes
guards standing watch at the doors and windows. Which is
only a more civilized way of saying the same thing: prison.
When the staff of Artificial Creation discovered my wild
talents in my childhood, the FBI attempted to “impound”
me so that I might be used as a “national resource” under
federal control for “the betterment of our great country and
the establishment of a tighter American defense perimeter.”
It had been Harry Kelly who had cut through all that fancy
language to call it what it was—illegal and immoral im-
prisonment of a free citizen. He fought the legal battle all
the way to nine old men in nine old chairs, where the case
was won. I was nine when we did that—twelve long years
ago.
It was snowing outside. The harsh lines of shrubbery,
trees, and curbs had been softened by three inches of
white. I had to scrape the windscreen of the hovercar,
which amused me and helped settle my nerves a bit. One
would imagine that, in 2004 A.D., Science could have
dreamed up something to make ice scrapers obsolete.
At the first red light, there was a gray police howler
overturned on the sidewalk, like a beached whale. Its
stubby nose had smashed through the display window of a
small clothing store, and the dome light was still swiveling.
A thin trail of exhaust fumes rose from the bent tailpipe,
curled upwards into the cold air. There were more than
twenty uniformed coppers positioned around the intersec-
tion, though there seemed to be no present danger. The
snow was tramped and scuffed, as if there had been a
major conflagration, though the antagonists had disap-
peared. I was motioned through by a stern-faced bull in a
fur-collared fatigue jacket, and I obeyed. None of them
looked in the mood to satisfy the curiosity of a passing
motorist, or even to let me pause long enough to scan their
minds and find the answer without their knowledge.
I arrived at the AC building and floated the car in for a
Marine attendant to park. As I slid out and he slid in, I
asked, “Know anything about the howler on Seventh?
Turned on its side and driven halfway into a store. Lot of
coppers.”
He was a huge man with a blocky head and flat
features that looked almost painted on. When he wrinkled
his face in disgust, it looked as if someone had put an
eggbeater on his nose and whirled everything together.
“Peace criers,” he said.
I couldn’t see why he should bother lying to me, so I
didn’t go through the bother of using my esp, which
requires some expenditure of energy. “I thought they were
finished,” I said.
“So did everyone else,” he said. Quite obviously, he
hated the peace criers, as did most men in uniform. “The
Congressional investigating committee proved the volun-
tary army was still a good idea. We don’t run the country
like those creeps say. Brother, I can sure tell you we
don’t!” Then he slammed the door and took the car away
to park it while I punched for the elevator, stepped
through its open maw, and went up.
I made faces at the cameras which watched me, and
repeated two dirty limericks on the way to the lobby.