Delicately she returned the knob to the intermediate position and there was a fat grinning kneeblank in West African robes swimming in a blur of color as though a very thin film of oil on water surrounded every sharp edge between pale and dark zones. She’d hit one of the pirate satellites, probably Nigerian or Ghanaian, of which two or three were launched every year and kept their orbit over areas with disaffected black minorities until the PCC could wheedle the appropriaand fund an interceptor to knock them down. The African and Asian countries had opted out of the PCC almost as soon as it was founded, and declined to recognize its rulings.
With a perfect imitation of the harsh-sweet Gullah/ Creole/Jamaican accent affected by large numbers of knees in the black enclaves of America, the man in the screen said, “We scoop Mister Charley’s lying propaganda, broze an’ sis! We got truth an’ the buckras’ lies will fade afore the win’, the sto’m an’ tornaduh of nigra wrath! They runnin’ to hahd in N’yohk City-watchah, watchah, broze an’ sis!”
The screen flicked to a satellite view of New York, and instantly it was clear there was something wrong. Street lights were out over polyblock areas, and threads of silver stabbed across them: rocket-trails.
“Oh, Christ!” Lyla whispered, knuckles to teeth in a childish gesture of apprehension.
“That the X Patriots, broze an’ sis,” said the revoltingly smug voice over. “To’ch-berrer Mohton Lenigo fresh from tri-yumphant battles with the British gumment, Cah}diff, Blackman-chester, Birming-ham!” And matching cuts of stock news stabbed in: Cardiff Castle fountaining skyward into rubble, the last white Lord Mayor of Manbeing driven out barefoot and in chains to a waiting government skimmer, Lenigo himself in Birfamous old Bull Ring, surrounded by grinknees.
“Come to kick yoh lazy nigras off yo’ asses!” the voice said sternly. “When yo’ gone drahve them buckras outa N’yohk-hey? Tonaht? Could be! You get at it, broze an’ sis! Ev’y metah an’ centimetah o’ those tawllll towahs, those deeeep basemen’ss, they been watered with BLACK BLOOD-”
Convulsively Lyla tore the leech away from the wall and the set died.
They let in Morton Lenigo? They let in Morton LeniThey let in MORTON LENIGO?
Impossible. Incredible. No, they couldn’t. She looked at herself in the faint gray light which seeped through the windows on the side away from the street, seeing her summer tan fishbelly-pallid, thinking honky dont let the sun shin on you head it make you an easy target.
“Dan,” she said in a trembling little-girl voice. “Dan?”
But he wasn’t there. In darkness, silence except for the distant racket of the fighting which grew louder and softer by unpredictable turns, she waited passive as the Lar for someone or something to rescue her from the insufferable real world.
Conservative-perhaps because elderly-Marcantonio Gottschalk the grandfather of the clan based on the traditional Mafiareas of the New Jersey seaboard; not so Anthony or Vyacheslav or any of the other tranyounger generation. For them the ultimately defensible heartland, the Nedesert: indrawn like a closing sea-anemone, waitfor the sooner-or-later moment when boom.
And here, right on schedule, boom! Anthony Gottwhose picture had not for five years found its way onto any official file, whose polysyllabic praenomen was not household knowledge like Marcantonio’s but who was already thinking of possible extensions to suit the eventual dignity of headship (current favorite: Anlying second: Antoniescu for no particular reaexcept he liked the sound of it), in his Nevada forwith noises underfloor to signify work proceeding ace-apace on apace-in-the-hole Robert Gottschalk-name deliberately chosen to mislead since it was impossible to hide the project completely from the scrutiny of Fedcomputers, capable of interpretation as some pregifted new recruit vulnerable to a gun or a grenade.
But Robot Gottschalk was vulnerable to virtually nothing. At his quasi-father Anthony’s fortress home he grew like an embryo seventy meters below the lowest basement, deep in the living rock; sounds from work on him were channeled via tunnels which would later be closed with armored doors; you’d have to risk conor firing the whole western half of the conto make sure of shattering his solid-state circuitry.
Thick-set, dark-haired but very pale with milky eyes, Anthony Gottschalk stood breathing the clean desert breeze wafting off his estate, scented with oranges, lemons, bougainvilleas, frangipanis, uncountable varieof lovely trees and shrubs. Coup after coup shed rosy glows in his mind: sales to Blackbury of weapons stick-in-the-mud old Marcantonio wouldn’t risk for fear of Federal clampdown (and who among that gang of clowns would risk action when they found out? asked Anthony Gottschalk)-hinting in Detroit how to solve the Morton Lenigo impasse-solved today and coming along nicely, with insurrection almost on Marcantonio’s doorstep by God, wonderful!-and stacked up in the pipeline the biggest and most profitable of all, of all, of all.