The Shockwave Rider (29 page)

AT THE DISSOLUTION

What was I saying about overcompensation?

There had been a lot of whisky, of course, and he was unused to drinking.

But am I drunk? I don’t feel I am. More, it’s that without being partly stonkered I couldn’t endure the torrent of dreadful truth that’s storming through my brain. What Hartz said to me. What Bosch almost said, only he managed to check himself. But I know damn well what he substituted with “nonspecialist.” Why should I spend the rest of my life knuckling under to liars like Bosch? Claiming the dogs they have at Precipice can’t exist! And blockheads like Hartz are even worse. Expecting the people they lord it over to think of things they aren’t smart enough to think of themselves, then denying that the fault is theirs!

Carefully Freeman locked his apartment, setting the don’t-disturb signs: one on the door, one on each of the veephones.

Now if I can just find my way to the index of reserved codes activated when they surpled 4GH … From Tarnover if from anywhere it should be possible to pull one out and upgrade it to status U-for-unquestionable. That’s the best trick of all. If Haflinger had latched on to it he need never have been caught.

Owlishly, but with full command of his not inconsiderable faculties—more important, not obliged to make do with the limited and potentially fallible input of a pocket veephone such as the one with which doubtless Haflinger would shortly be performing his own personal brand of miracle—he sat down to his data console. He wrote, then rewrote, then rewrote, a trial program on tape that could be tidily erased. As he worked he found himself more and more haunted by a tantalizing idea.

I could leech three codes as easily as two. ….

Eventually the program was status go, but before feeding it he said to the air, “Why not?” And checked how many codes were currently on reserve. The answer was of the order of a hundred thousand. Only about five depts would have dug into the store since it was ordained, so …

Why the hell not? Here I am pushing forty, and what have I done with my life? I have talents, intelligence, ambition. Going to waste! I hoped I’d be useful to society. I expected to spend my time dragging criminals and traitors into the light of day, exposing them to the contumely of honest citizens. Instead the biggest criminals of all escape scot-free and people like Kate who never harmed anybody … Oh, shit! I stopped being an investigator years ago. What I am now is an inquisitor. And I’ve lost all faith in the justice of my church.

He gave a sudden harsh laugh, made one final tiny amendment to his tape, and offered it up to the input.

THE INFLUENCE OF AFFLUENCE

“For the convenience of the lazy plebeians, the monthly distributions of corn were converted into a daily allowance of bread … and when the popular clamor accused the dearness and scarcity of wine … rigid sobriety was insensibly relaxed; and although the generous design of Aurelian does not appear to have been executed in its full extent, the use of wine was allowed on very easy and liberal terms … and the meanest Roman could purchase, with a small copper coin, the daily enjoyment of a scene of pomp and luxury which might excite the envy of the kings of Asia. … But the most lively and splendid amusement of the idle multitude depended on the frequent exhibition of public games and spectacles … the happiness of Rome appeared to hang on the event of a race.”

Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr. Gibbon?

LET NOT THY WRONG HEAD KNOW WHAT THY RIGHT HEAD DOETH

Having completed his preparations, he disconnected the phone that had proved so invaluable, folded it, concealed it tidily in the inside pocket of his issue jacket. Then he hung that over a chair back, completed undressing normally, and went to bed at approximately his regular time.

What followed was a miniature—a microcosm—of his life, condensed into a span of no more than thirty-five minutes.

At an unidentifiable time of night one of the silent anonymous white-garbed escorts roused him and instructed him to dress quickly and come along, unperturbed by this departure from routine because for him routine might be expected to consist in unpredictability. It was, had been for centuries, a cheap and simple means of deranging persons under interrogation.

He led the way to a room with two doors, otherwise featureless apart from a bench. That was as far as his orders told him to go; with a curt command to sit down and wait, he departed.

There was a short period of silence. Finally the other door opened and a dumpy woman entered, yawning. She carried clothing in a plastic sack and a clipboard with a form on it. Grumpily she requested him to sign it; he did so, using the name she was expecting, which was not his own. Satisfied, yawning more widely than ever, she went out.

He changed into the garments she had brought: a white jersey shirt, blue-gray pants, blue jacket—well-fitting, unremarkable, unmemorable. Bundling up what he had worn in the sack, he went out the same way she had gone, and was in a corridor with several doors leading off it. After passing three of them, two to right and one to left, he arrived at a waste-reclamation chute and rid himself of his burden. Two doors farther along was an office, not locked. It was equipped with, among other things, a computer terminal. He tapped one key on its input board.

Remotely locked, a drawer slid open in an adjacent file stack. Among the contents of the drawer were temporary ID cards of the type issued to visitors on official business.

Meanwhile the printout station of the computer terminal was humming and a rapid paper tongue was emerging from it.

From the same drawer as the ID cards he extracted a neopolaroid color camera, which he set to self-portrait delay and placed on a handy table. Sitting down to face the camera, he waited the requisite few seconds, retrieved the film, placed his picture on the card and sealed it over with a device which, as the computers had promised, was also kept in the drawer. Finally, he typed in his borrowed name and the rank of major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps.

By then the computer had printed out what it was required to furnish: a requisition, in duplicate, for the custody of Kate Grierson Lilleberg. Having been prepared with a light-writer, which unlike old-fashioned mechanical printers was not limited to any one type style—or indeed to any one alphabet, since every single character was inscribed with a laser beam at minimum power—only examination under a microscope could have revealed that it was not a U.S. Army Form RQH-4479, the standard form of authority to transfer a prisoner from civil to military custody.

Suitably armed now, he replaced everything he had disturbed, tapped the computer board one more time to activate the final part of the program he had left in store, and left the room. Dutifully, the machines remote-locked the cabinet again, and the door of the office, and then undertook such other tasks as deleting their record of either having been unlocked during the night, and making a note of the “fact” that a temporary ID card had been accidentally spoiled so the stock in hand was one fewer than could be accounted for by recent visitors.

The door at the extreme end of the corridor gave into the open air, at the head of a flight of stairs leading to a dark concrete parking bay where an electric ambulance was standing. Its driver, who wore army uniform with Pfc’s badges, gave an uncertain salute, saying, “Major … ?”

“At ease,” the newcomer said briskly, displaying his ID card and duplicate forms. “Sorry to have kept you. Any trouble with the girl?”

The driver said with a shrug, “She’s out, sir. Like a busted light-tube oh-you-tee.”

“That’s how it should be. They gave you your route card?”

“Sure, they brought it when they delivered the girl. Oh, and this as well. Feels like her code card, I guess.” The soldier proffered a small flat package.

Peeling off the cover proved him half right. Not one code card, but two.

“Thanks. Not that she’ll have much use for it where she’s going.”

“I guess not.” With a sour grin.

“You already changed your batteries, did you? Fine—let’s get under way.”

Dark roads thrummed into the past to the accompaniment of a rattling of numbers, not spoken. He had memorized both codes before starting his veephone-mediated sabotage, but there was a lot more to this escape than simply two personal codes. He wanted everything down pat before the ambulance first had to stop for electricity, and the range of this model was only about two hundred miles.

Best if the driver didn’t have to get hurt. Though having been fool enough to volunteer for army service, of course, and worse still, having been fool enough to accept orders unquestioningly from a machine …

But everybody did that. Everybody, all the time. Otherwise none of this would have been possible.

Similarly, none of it would have had to happen.

FOR PURPOSES OF DISORIENTATION

At present and with luck from now on and forever regardless of what code I wear I am being Nicholas Kenton Haflinger. And whoever doesn’t like it will have to lump it.

PRESIDING AT AWAKE

“What the—? Who—? Why, Sandy!”

“Quiet. Listen carefully. You’re in an army ambulance. We’re about two hundred miles east of Tarnover supposedly on the way to Washington. The driver believes I’m a Medical Corps major escorting you. There was no convincing story I could invent to justify clothing fit for you to cross a public street in. All you have is that issue cotton gown. What’s more they shaved your head. Do you remember anything about this, or did they keep you all the time in regressed mode?”

She swallowed hard. “I’ve had what seem like dreams since they—they kidnaped me. I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.”

“We’ll sort that out later. We’re laying over to change batteries. I sent the driver for coffee. He’ll be back any moment. I’ll find some other excuse to make him hang around, because I’ve seen an automat where I can buy you a dress, shoes and a wig. At the next stop be ready to put them on and vanish.”

“What—what are we going to do? Even if it comes off?”

Cynically he curled his lip. “The same as I’ve been doing all my adult life. Run the net. Only this time in more than one sense. And believe you me, they aren’t going to like it.”

Shutting the ambulance’s rear door again, he said loudly to the returning driver, “Damn monitors up front! Showed the sedative control had quit. But she’s lying like a log. Say, did you spot a men’s room? I guess before we get back on the road I ought to take a leak.”

Over the hum of the many steam and electric vehicles crowding the service area the driver answered, “Right next to the automat, sir. And—uh—if we’re not pulling out at once, I see they got Delphi boards and I’d kinda like to check out a nervous ticket.”

“Sure, go ahead. But keep it down to—let’s say five minutes, hm?”

TEMBLOR

“What do you mean, he can’t be reached? Listen again and make sure you know who I’m asking for. Paul—T-for-Tommy—Freeman! Want I should spell it?

“His new code? What about his—? Are you certain?

“But they don’t have any goddamn right to snatch him out from—Oh, shit. Sometimes I wonder who’s in charge around this country, us or the machines. Give me the new code, then.

“I don’t
care
what it says in back of its head listing. Just read it over to me. If you can, that is!

“Now you listen to me, you obstructive dimwit. When I give an order I expect it to be obeyed, and I won’t be talked back to by a self-appointed shithouse lawyer. You’re addressing the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Data Processing Services, and—That’s more like it. Come on.

“It begins with
what
group? No, don’t bother to repeat it. I heard you. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

SPELLED “WEEKEND” BUT PRONOUNCED “WEAKENED”

A highway line drawn from Tarnover to Washington: a line to connect tomorrow with yesterday, via today. …

The most mobile population in all of history, the only one so totally addicted to going for the sake of going that it had deeveed excessive cost, energy crises, the disappearance of oil, every kind of obstacle in order to keep up the habit, was as ever on the move, even though half the continent was overlaid by end-of-fall weather, strong winds, low temperatures, rain turning to sleet. It was notoriously the sort of season that urged people to stop looking for and start finding.

He thought about that a lot during the journey.

Why move?

To choose a place right for sinking roots.

Go faster in order to drop back to a lower orbit? Doesn’t work. Drop back to a lower orbit; you go faster!

Even Freeman had had to have that pointed out to him. He knew obscurely he wouldn’t have to explain it to Kate. And she couldn’t be the only person who understood the truth by instinct.

Washington: yesterday. The exercise of personal power; the privileges of office; the individualization of the consensus into a single spokesman’s mouth, echo of an age when communities did indeed concur because they weren’t assailed with a hundred irreconcilable versions of events. (These days the typical elected representative is returned with fewer than forty percent of the votes cast; not infrequently he’s detested by four-fifths of those he purports to speak for, because the population of the state or district has turned over. They’ll surple him at the next opportunity, chafe until it arrives. Meanwhile his old supporters have scattered to upset another applecart. Voting registers are maintained by computers nowadays; all it takes to enter you on the roll at your new address is one, count it one, veephone call.)