“You can’t tell anyone about this, Savina. It’s very important that you don’t tell anyone, even your friend Dodd.”
“I won’t tell anyone at all. I’ll forget the moment you tell it to me.”
“Okay. This line down here,” he said, pointing at it, “this is the secure line for data communications between La-La Land and Sacramento, owned by the United States Food and Materials Corporation. This is an A-1 priority secure line.”
“Oh, so you’re going to sell stolen information.”
“No. We’re tapping into it because it’s the line JTV uses to send backup information between their two big mainframe computers.”
“JTV? Why are you guys interested in them?”
Aaron looked up, smiling evilly. “We’re tapping their hotline to God.” He and Wiley laughed.
Savina didn’t know if she should believe them or not. Finally she decided it didn’t matter, if they weren’t going to tell her the truth it was fine with her. It had nothing to do with her anyway. “Are you tapped in now?” she said.
“No, we’re just preparing it. If we tapped in now they’d know it. If they catch us doing this, well, uh … we’d be in it up to our necks.”
“Right to jail, huh?”
“Jail, nothing,” Aaron said, looking up at her. “They’d just kill us and bury us in this hole.”
She looked at Wiley. His expression was serious. “They’d kill you for this?”
Wiley nodded. “And you too.”
“JTV kills people?”
“No, Savina, not JTV. The USFMC – they control JTV.”
Savina looked back and forth between them. They were serious.
“How do you know all this?”
“Have you ever heard of CoGen?” Wiley said. “Your friend Dodd, if he was in the war like you say, with Danny, he’d have heard of it. It was the AI program that controlled the bombardment from orbit. Well, Aaron and I wrote the basic engine of that program, and Aaron designed a lot of the hardware.”
“What does that have to do with any of this?”
“We know the USFMC computer network inside and out,” Wiley said. “And we happen to know CoGen is still alive.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said, “but he’s got a new job.” The two of them found this very funny, and laughed as Savina stared at them in bewilderment.
19. 230,000 VOLTS
There were two groups of anarchists at the Euthanasia Center tonight, one coming and one going. It was like a shift change at work. Dodd had been watching them for fifteen minutes and hadn’t seen a sign of Danny or anyone he’d ever seen with Danny. He was hoping to at least run into the Indian woman. The only woman in this group was thick and short, and looked mean; it definitely wasn’t the Indian.
Savina hadn’t contacted her father at all yet, and Dodd hadn’t received any more messages. Today at work he’d decided to come out here and try to get word to her about Greg. In the back of his mind, he was hoping he would get to see her. This didn’t seem likely.
The anarchists had spotted him and knew he was watching; they gave the occasional suspicious glance, eyes betraying subdued hostility. This was not the way they usually reacted to people, it was like they suddenly had something to hide, like they had an enemy. You’re not supposed to act like this, Dodd thought.
Anarchists are friendly people who are disillusioned. You’re out to save the world. Why are you paranoid now?
The slogan ran through his mind: BEWARE THE ANTICHRIST AI! Is it this Second Coming? he wondered. Has that got them all upset?
Well, it sure has knocked my world around.
The two groups lingered together, talking, then the off-shift abruptly walked away, heading west. Why am I waiting? Dodd thought. You’re not afraid of them, are you? Dodd got up from the bench he’d been sitting at and crossed the street, wearing what he hoped was a friendly expression. He walked right up to the group standing in front of the Euthanasia Center and to his surprise they immediately surrounded him.
“Hey,” he said, “easy, don’t look at me like this. My name is Dodd Corely, I’m a friend of Danny Marauder.”
“Who?” a tall blond kid around 22 – 23 years old asked him.
He had a five o’clock shadow and his hair was thick and long, and a bit tangled. “We don’t know any Danny Marauder.”
“He looks like a Narco,” said one from behind Dodd.
“I’m not a policeman,” Dodd said. “I’m a war vet, I drive a forklift. I’m just looking for a friend of mine who was here the other day.”
“You mean he went in there?” the blond kid said, pointing toward the Center’s doors. “I don’t think you’ll be seeing him again.”
“No, he was out here. He’s an anarchist. Come on, you guys know Danny Marauder.”
“I’m afraid we don’t, Narco.”
“I just need to get a message to him.”
“Can’t help you.”
Dodd turned around, trying to look in all their eyes. They really had him surrounded. “Come on, one of you has to know him.
He helped a girl named Savina to get away from here Tuesday last week. I need Danny or someone to pass a message through to Savina.”
“Do we look like mailmen?” one of them said.
“Yeah, Narco,” said another. “Go use a terminal.”
“Look, her parents are pressing charges against her boyfriend for rape, and if she can’t at least call to convince her parents that he’s innocent he’s going to remain in jail.”
“The Narco thinks he’s clever,” said the blond kid.
“I told you, I’m not a–-”
“Nobody but a Narco comes out to a Euthanasia Center to ask an anarchist a favor!” the kid shouted at him. He placed an odd emphasis on the word anarchist. Dodd cursed himself, he was using the wrong word.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “My mistake. I’m not asking any anarchist for any favors. I am asking a Mutualist a favor …
please, get this message through.” He looked the blond kid straight in the eyes, pleading with him. The kid’s expression of aloof hostility didn’t waiver. He flexed his long muscles and made his shirt change shapes.
“Goodbye, Narco,” the blond said.
“Listen, come on now–-” Dodd was cut off as they rushed him.
He swung out in reflex but hit nothing. Two dozen hands had him, holding him tight, pulling him and pushing him along, his feet several inches off the ground. It was a nightmare sensation, paralysed by strong grips and moving along without walking, caught in an irresistible force. They twisted one arm to near breaking to stop his struggling. “Over here,” he heard one of them say. They were taking him around the building, down the same alley where he’d found Savina. He saw the black lid to the black dumpster swing up and down, and he was propelled up and down into reams of shredded paper. A lid slammed over his head. There was the slide-clunk sound of a bolt being thrown. With a sense of unbelieving horror Dodd realized they had locked him in the same trash dumpster Savina had been hiding in over a week before.
Locked in! He yelled in panic, pushing up on the lid and yelling, but the lid would only lift about an inch. “Hey! Hey wait! Goddamn you, listen to me! Come back here! Hey!” His yelling became more frantic and his language deteriorated to the vilest curses he knew.
He stopped, regaining control of himself. All was silent. The group was gone. I’m in here for the night, he realized. Angry again he began pounding on the side with his fists and kicking with his feet, banging it like a drum. After 30 minutes still no one had heard him. He propped the lid open with wadded shreddings so that he could get some fresh air, and then twisted about to make himself comfortable, thinking he might as well relax. All this, he thought, just because I’m trying to do some kid I don’t even know a favor. So much for bleeding hearts, he thought. So much for the brotherhood of man.
#
Using a faked Idex Danny had showed up at the United States Food and Materials Corporation Annex in the heart of Sacramento and had checked out a delivery truck. He was surprised by how easy it had been; he had thought this would be the hard part. Security was lax, depending too much upon software to detect things out of the ordinary. If I worked here things would be different, Danny thought, driving out of the Annex yard with a big grin on his face.
He drove to an old warehouse and backed the truck up to a loading dock. No one had paid any attention, not even thinking that the warehouse was abandoned and that the people loading the truck were “anarchists” – they were in costume, normal clean clothes – and no one even suspected that the large technical-looking piece of equipment they were loading was a hand-wrapped superconducting EMP cannon. It weighed about a ton, and looked like an anonymous piece of factory equipment. Danny grinned.