Operation Damocles (31 page)

“What about the weapons?” another reporter asked. “Who controls them now that Dr. Somerset is gone?”

“They are controlled at present, by a five-member committee, and overseen by the IUS at large. Dr. Somerset programmed the weapons to operate automatically for a long period of time. At the end of that period, unless we interfere, they will self-destruct. All the committee can do is reset the program clocks every month. If anything happens to the committee, and the weapons are not reset, they will begin to destroy thousands of targets, all over the earth.”

“What are the targets?”

“Only the weapons know. They are
smart
systems, capable of reprogramming themselves within limits. They can analyze every square meter of the earth’s surface, monitor communications, compare global activities among themselves. If something is not right, they will override their reset instructions and fire. Only Leland Somerset knew their full capabilities. For a few decades though, no one had better try to raise an army. The machines won’t tolerate it.”

“What about news and entertainment programming? You’ve made it plain you don’t like the media. What happens now?”

“What we don’t like,” said Ortiz, his eyes black with anger, “is manipulative lying. Only absolutely factual reporting will be tolerated in the future. No anti-liberty political propaganda, and no media bias will be permitted. No monopoly of attitude, and no constant barrage of one social viewpoint. The crime for violating a public trust is treason, and the punishment will be life on an island work farm. You reporters will be given a transcript of this meeting at its conclusion. Make certain you do not alter its meaning or edit any information out of it. You will regret it if you do.”

XLVI

A Halloween party was in progress at the Townsends’ house. Ortiz’s faculty friends and a few people from Townsend’s company had brought their families. Small children, costumed as witches, fairies, rock stars, ghosts, skeletons and various mythical creatures were bobbing for apples, drinking Kool-Aid and playing pin the tail on the donkey amid squeals and shouts. The few teenagers present were talking, drinking cider, and listening to “The Monster Mash” and other classical Halloween music on the radio. Adults were talking and drinking in casual groups.

The Townsends, Teller, Ortiz and Haas stood apart from the other guests for a few moments, sipping their drinks and watching the children play.

“Is everybody back from Chile, now?” Townsend asked.

“Yes,” said Ortiz. “We had almost three hundred people in all. The last bunch came back through Mexico by train.”

“How did they all take it? And how did you manage such a big camp without the government becoming suspicious?”

“Actually, everybody did quite well. Had fun, in fact. You and Eve should have come. We excavated a pre-Columbian tomb of at least moderate significance, and it was a lark for almost everyone. A few complained about living in tents and showering outside at first, but when news of the killing and plundering started coming in, they suddenly saw things in a different light.

“As for the government finding out, it’s not that much out of the ordinary for universities to have summer camps. It would be impossible to track what all of the various institutions do, or where they go. They didn’t consider us that important, anyway.

“That has been our single, greatest advantage throughout all of this. Universities are generally treated as being somehow apart from mainstream life. That’s really the only reason we were able to accomplish what we did. The general public think of colleges as if they were on another planet that you send your kids to for four years. The government treats them as databanks that they consult occasionally, and not much more.

“Our camps in Alaska, Canada and the Caribbean seem to have enjoyed similar experiences. It was much more difficult for our European people. They’ve always had tighter controls, over there.”

“Where did they hole up?” asked Townsend.

“In the Austrian Alps and the French Pyrenees,” answered Teller. “They trickled into staging points by rail, bus and car over a period of several weeks, then guides took them on to camp. One group was at eleven thousand feet, in a glacial cave. Conrad had his hands full with logistics. He spent a year stockpiling canned rations, blankets and fuel at four different sites. Got to hand it to him, though. He did a first-rate job. Only one small group got caught, before they ever left town. An alpine patrolman found one site and had to be killed. Other than that, all the sites were remote, and didn’t interact with the locals. With the world in a state of chaos, they were essentially forgotten. I guess you had it pretty bad here, huh buddy?”

Townsend hugged Eve to his side as he answered. “It was bad enough. San Francisco and L.A. really got the worst of it. The suburbs didn’t put up as much resistance, so the retaliation wasn’t what it was in the cities.”

“Where were you and Eve?” asked Ortiz.

“We stayed in the hills above here, most of the time,” said Townsend. “There’s a water reservoir back over that hill.” He pointed southward. “It’s off the beaten path, and no one bothered. Inside two weeks, their subjugation of the local population was over. They herded everyone into school auditoriums and public parks, and laid down the rules.

“Eve and I holed up inside one of an array of big concrete pipes that form an overflow system for the water reservoir. We did a little sniping. We blew up a supply area in Palo Alto ten days before Damocles fired.

“After that, we formed citizens’ groups armed with confiscated weapons. Those occupation forces left alive after Damocles fired were rounded up in short order. We have thirty-six holding compounds full of prisoners, being held by civilian guards. That’s in addition to the jails. Almost ten thousand prisoners in all. We’re preparing tent camps at Fort Irwin, near Barstow, to receive them. They don’t have a lot of fight left in them, right now, but we’ve got to get them moved to places where they can be contained. After a while, they’ll get restless, and we need to be prepared.

“They had a big encampment near San Jose that was destroyed, and all the major Army, Navy and Air Force strategic and tactical combat bases in California are gone, of course. I guess it’s the same across the rest of the country, isn’t it?”

“Pretty much so,” said Ortiz. “Leland was thorough. He didn’t want the government of any country to have the military capacity left to recover. All tactical and strategic bases were destroyed.”

“I still don’t see why Leland had to die,” said Haas, his eyes tearing for his lost friend. “He didn’t have to shoulder all the blame. We should admit to our share of the responsibility, Hector.”

Haas and Ortiz had viewed a computer file the evening before—a file that Somerset had left for them. It contained Somerset’s good-byes, the reset control codes for the weapons, and some final suggestions. For the most part, he tried to absolve them of any guilt for the destruction, and shouldered the responsibility for creating and firing Damocles and his siblings.

“I think that would be a grievous mistake,” said Ortiz. “If all of us involved in the conspiracy were to come out of the closet and admit to the public that Leland wasn’t alone, that there are several dozen people who cold-bloodedly planned the deaths of millions of people over a period of several years, we would be looked upon as war criminals. That’s okay for you, if you are just so full of remorse that you need to be punished for your sins so that you can die at peace, but what about this new world we’re trying to build? It will lose all its leadership just when it needs it the most. All the planning and dying will have been for nothing. No one will want to be led by, or want to follow the mapped-out plans of a bunch of mass murderers. They won’t be able to admit that they had to be forced into action under a lash, and that their new leaders are the people who whipped them without mercy. It would drive them into festering resentment—not creativity and hope for the future.

“We’ve psychoanalyzed this to death, Paul. If we do what you suggest, in ten years little children will hate and distrust all scientists. There probably won’t be any scientists left, and the earth will be covered by tiny, warring, bickering feudal states again, with no goals and no progress. It will set mankind back centuries. If we do what’s best for the world, we’ll see an advanced society in twenty or thirty years, with colonies on the moon and Mars, with great gains in scientific knowledge. We’ll be on the threshold to the stars. Would you rob the world of that, and destroy the lives of billions? Would you rob Leland of that?”

“I guess I’m not thinking straight,” said Haas. “I suppose I am being self-indulgent, and parading my guilt. I’m over it. I promise. Just tell me, Hector—how do you feel about what Leland did?”

Ortiz stared into the glass of beer he was holding, his forehead gathering in a frown. After a moment, “I don’t know what I feel. Leland meant a lot to me. I can’t go to the innocent dead, and justify to them why it was necessary for them to die. How does one ever justify such a thing, in any war, no matter how noble or righteous the reasons for the war. How do we justify the innocent children at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or Berlin, or Viet Nam.” He sighed, looking at Eve in a remote, introspective way. “I believe that what Leland did was necessary, in order to achieve all those important objectives I just mentioned. Someone else will have to say whether or not the objectives were worth all the innocent lives. It depends on the future, I guess—what eventually comes from it all. From a personal perspective, I knew the boy—knew his heart. I can’t think of him as a monster, any more than I can believe I’m a monster. Maybe that’s just my own human hypocrisy. It was war.

“I don’t suppose it makes any difference, anyway, at least not now. He believed that he had to do what he did. For him, as horrible as the act was, there was no other way. He could not live with the billions of lives that would endure centuries of suffering if he did not act. He couldn’t permit the loss of centuries of progress. It was a scientist’s choice. You put aside your emotions and prejudices, and face facts. It was those lives, or the end of civilization, maybe forever.”

Ortiz paused a moment, thinking. Finally, “I think he planned to die all along. It was his genius that made the weapons possible, no matter that others helped put them up. I think he knew that the nation couldn’t heal, especially the relatives of those who died at his hands, until someone paid for those lives. I think he also knew that some sort of trial would have divided the country and set old animosities into new channels, and if we refused to try him, we would be viewed as just another bunch of tyrants, with a different set of standards for ourselves than those we forced upon the rest of humanity.

“I think Leland wanted to avoid all of that, and to give the country a fresh start. As excited as he was about the potential for a new, free and peaceful world, and as much as he dearly wanted to be a part of it, he thought that this was the only way. He taped a statement for the press, which will be aired in a few days, explaining everything, taking full responsibility, and passing control to us. Now, people can have a sense of closure.”

“He consolidated the scientific community too,” said Haas, “in a way that I would never have thought possible. That is his real legacy, and unfortunately, its importance will likely be lost on the general population. Thanks to him, we now have an open, international community for the first time ever. Humanity can progress as a whole. Everybody will share in the discoveries. Maybe future generations will have fewer fears and suspicions to divide them.”

“I know it’s self-centered, but I wish I could have played a bigger role,” said Townsend. “I know why it had to be, but I still would like to have been in the thick of it.”

Teller clapped him on the back. “Well, now that we know you’re straight, you can be in on the next one,” he said, laughing. “Seriously, Jimmy, there was just too much at stake. You said it yourself, this was probably the last chance we would get. If they had won, mankind might have been enslaved for centuries. Besides, you did more than you know. You saved the lives of a million people, maybe more, by discovering the plot to destroy L.A., and you crippled their ability by destroying Broderick and his international terrorist links. In that light, you did exactly what you were trained to do. You protected this sovereign nation. You upheld your oath and defended the Constitution. Thanks to you, and to the others who gathered intelligence and fought to save our country, we have another chance.”

Townsend swatted Eve on the bottom, lightly, and smiled. “Another chance,” he said.

She smiled and took his hand. “I love you,” she said, looking dreamily into his eyes.

Teller rolled his eyes. “I gotta get another beer, or I’m gonna cry. Maybe I’ll take a leak while I’m at it,” he said, ambling toward the bathroom.

Ortiz cast a meaningful look at Townsend. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d make him go in the yard.”