Tomorrow’s Heritage (23 page)

The images vanished. The eighteen names remained for a full minute. Then the tape ended. No playback. If he didn’t know them now, it was too late.

He sat and thought for a long time, the white-noise garble from the wall screens humming. None of these claims was proved. He had only Mari’s and Kevin’s word for the accusations. And, in counterargument, he had Pat’s adamant insistence of fair dealing and his own knowledge of SE Antarctic Enclave’s operations. Todd admitted to himself that it had been a while since he had checked up on the Enclave; it wasn’t his concern. Besides, the place was under P.O.E. franchise, off-limits except to authorized personnel.

He had seen a sign with those words at Goddard. Secrets. In Goddard’s case, most likely secret defense systems and weapons. Was there something going on in the Antarctic that was illegal, too?

When he had left the Enclave after helping set up the sophisticated com and electronics network there, Todd decided he had been there enough to last him the rest of his life. He wouldn’t return while he could still function, though of course if he fell terminally ill or had an accident . . .

As Ward Saunder had.

I have to know, Dad, it’s a problem, a riddle, and I have to know. It’s like breaking the alien messenger’s language. Finding out the facts, even if they’re terrifying. Knowledge is better than ignorance.

“Intercom, connect me with Iris Halevy on level one, main desk.” The screen cleared, and Iris’s face appeared. “Iris, would you . . .”

She wasn’t hearing him. Iris grimaced and punched at her monitor’s manual keys, muttering, “What’s the matter with this thing? All I’m getting is garbage.”

Todd realized what was wrong. He removed the translator strip from the slot and slipped it in his pocket. Immediately, Iris’s expression became sunny. “Oh, yes, boss?”

“I’m going to be on my ultra-private com circuits for a while. Would you relay any vital calls to George or Elaine? They can handle everything I would.”

“Will. Oh, boss, you’re supposed to pick up Dr. Foix at three.”

“Oh, God, yes! Thank you for reminding me. Would you please call Arrivals and leave a message in case I’m delayed a bit?”

When Iris had cleared the line, Todd activated his full privacy comcircuit and contacted Protectors of Earth Archives. The Brasilia installation was obligated by international law to maintain complete available records on every citizen, living or dead, who had been alive during the past thirty years. In theory, anyone could talk to the computer. In practice, doing so wasn’t that easy. The system was set up to discourage casual inquiries and needless comp traffic. But it was supposed to cooperate with a reasonable customer. Yet it didn’t. From the beginning, Todd detected resistance in the system. His Suspicions increased.

He didn’t go straight down the list of eighteen. That would be too obvious. Goddard’s agents would have probed regarding these same people. He skipped about randomly, calling for data on innocuous people, investors he knew personally, people he had met socially who might well become SE ComLink shareholders. In all ways, he attempted to make this look like a legitimate business data search. In nearly every instance, the names he called for were solid citizens. Here and there, at widely separated points in the inquiry, Todd inserted a few of the eighteen names.

The records on people he knew were handed over without a quibble. Potential Saunder Enterprises investors didn’t exactly roam the streets in rags. He had expected the comp’s cooperation there. On the selection from the eighteen, the response was cold and reproving: CONFINED TO SE ANTARCTIC ENCLAVE.

Todd let six responses like that go by without challenge. At the seventh he let the comp sit there, holding the telltale readout a minute. “Need further data,” he finally said. “Check to see if property confiscated.” A safe and logical request if he was running a financial search.

DATA IS CLASSIFIED.

The suspicions stirred around in Todd’s belly like a pitcher full of ice. “Recheck data. Confinee records are not closed. Property confiscations under term of conviction in subject’s Maui-Andean nation must be entered in public record. Answer.”

This time the comp made
him
wait while it thought over the specific demands and rules. Todd wasn’t surprised by the response when it came.

DATA IS CLASSIFIED. IF YOU WISH TO INQUIRE FURTHER, PLEASE FILE REQUEST FOR UNSEALING OF CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS AT THE DEPARTMENT OF . . .

Todd tuned it out. He made a few more phony requests, considering whether to try again. Once more might be safe. He got the same results. Classified. Unavailable. He changed the tactic slightly and said the confinee had an outstanding debt owed Todd Saunder and restitution could be claimed from the confinee’s relatives or estate. The comp wouldn’t budge. He was talking its language, but it refused to open up.

He cleared and established another secured line to SE Central Financial in New York-Philly and started talking to a different computer. Here he had what he hoped would prove an extra advantage.

“Todd Saunder, clearance classification Priority A-One. Lock this on full confidential, my readout only. Do not record dupe of inquiry or data requested.”

“Yes, Todd Saunder. How may I help you?”

Todd crossed his fingers. He hadn’t done that since he was a kid. He desperately wanted Mari to be wrong. Let the damned computer spit back everything he asked for, no quibbling, everything neatly printed in green and white, all the people and their property exactly where they should be.

It didn’t. Several times he interrupted the data request to remind the computer whom it was dealing with. He made it search its programming to confirm his clearance rating. The Saunders were equal. They had A-Ones, and no one else in the firm—or anywhere else in the world—did, not with this computer.

Nonetheless, the damned machine was holding back on him. He hounded the comp about one of Goddard’s supporters who hadn’t been convicted, according to the records, but who suddenly had disappeared. “Look, I know Kirpalani isn’t at that address. And what do you mean, no funds registered? He’s got two hundred prime shares of ComLink stock.” In his agitation, he slipped out of comp phase and had to pull himself together and phrase the questions properly, not that it did any good.

He turned to another attack angle. “Van Eyck’s confined? Confirm.” The computer went through its little ritual. Todd didn’t let it off the hook. “Clear Human Rights Committee, Protectors of Earth, available-access view circuits. View of Van Eyck.”

Todd demanded to see the frozen body which lay 16,000 kilometers away.

“Time requested, Todd Saunder. Relay connect necessary.”

“Go through SE Central Expedite, Emergency Relay,” Todd ordered it.

Computers had been a subsidiary industry of ComLink from SE’s beginnings. It wasn’t Todd’s preferred field, but he hadn’t forgotten the way these particular systems were set up. Not many SE employees still working with the company knew about that Expedite command. It was strictly for use by a Saunder, and the computer would undoubtedly read back through its little memories to be certain it was okay to let him through.

“Executing, Todd Saunder . . .”

That was one form of reply. Yet for some reason the dispassionate machine-voice’s words sent a chill down Todd’s spine. He shivered and added a stern qualifier. “I wish the view held until I release.”

No acknowledgment. He started to repeat the order when the screen shimmered and he was seeing Van Eyck. The man seemed to float in his cryogenic cubicle. The color wasn’t normal, of course. It wouldn’t be. Preservement monitor readouts skimmed across the bottom of the screen, establishing that Van Eyck’s body was being held properly in suspended life, ready to be revived when time and the political or medical situation would make that possible.

The image vanished. Todd jumped and leaned forward, addressing the SB Central Comp angrily. “Regain image. I wish the view held until I release.”

There was a very long wait. The image did not return. At last the comp voice said tonelessly, “Maximum allowable viewing under Human Rights Committee regulations is one minute. Time must not be exceeded. View of image will not be restored.”

“Break connection,” Todd ordered curtly, not even allowing the machine the usual ritual of signing off politely.

The computer had lied to him. Why? The maximum allowable viewing time under the original Human Rights Committee regulations was not one minute. It was open-ended. If the privilege was abused by a confinee’s relatives and friends or by the merely curious, the limitation factor clamped on and one minute was it. Todd couldn’t imagine hordes of interested people demanding to see Van Eyck. It was possible the Goddard agents had abused the privilege and triggered the limit. But the
Expedite
should have overridden that.

Just what hadn’t the system wanted him to see?

Todd did some more mental replaying, since the computer had denied him its services. He formed Van Eyck’s body in his mind’s eye, studying it, reading the monitor figures. In order, seemingly.

Shouldn’t he have been able to see other cubicles beyond Van Eyck’s? According to the confinee numbers, Van Eyck’s body was preserved in the middle of a fully occupied section of SE Antarctic Enclave. At the angle the camera had been using, Todd should have seen at least a suggestion of the other cubicles in the line.

Frost on the scanner? Not possible, not the way those scanners were built for Antarctic usage. Unless the techs were letting efficiency slide. That didn’t seem likely, not with P.O.E. franchising the Enclave and with Human Rights Committee tours checking up on the techs twice a year and reporting back to the P.O.E. assembly. And the Committee said everything was as it should be.

Was it? He didn’t know! He had asked the questions, and he still didn’t know. At least when he was trying to communicate with the alien, there was ample reason for the problem. This one didn’t satisfy. He couldn’t be sure. Maybe there were security checks going on. Political machinations. He kept out of politics, didn’t like it. Now he was running up against walls he might have been able to breach if he had known a bit more about how these other comp systems were now programmed.

But if that wasn’t the reason . . .

Asking the questions hadn’t produced any real answer.

It had just given him more questions. This was something he would have to dig at, and dig hard. He had bragged, not realizing how deeply the data was buried—or hidden. Now it was more than pride driving him. The possibility that Mari’s accusations might be valid wasn’t going to go away until he broke down those barriers and Found out what lay behind them.

A light was flashing at the lower left-hand corner of the screen. Todd unlocked the privacy circuits. “Yes, Iris?”

“It’s getting pretty late if you’re going to the terminal.”

“Thank you. Tell Bob and the crew I’ll be up to the hangars in a minute or two, please.”

Todd removed the white-noise override from the wall monitor screens. In place of the masking murmur, a babble of conflicting voices and music rose, each individual screen vying for attention. Documentaries. News. Dramas. Comedies. Religion. Politics.

Which was which? There were times when he couldn’t separate it all any more, couldn’t tell truth from illusion. Todd dimmed the lights and left, heading for ComLink offices’ roof.

CHAPTER TWELVE

ooooooooo

NORMALLY, the hangars and company piers were available to all his executives and top techs. But on the advice of his new security chief, guards had been posted and access carefully restricted. The precaution seemed sensible, after what had happened to Project Search. Todd passed through the ident and regs checks just like the rest of his staff. The security guard smiled tolerantly at him and waved him through the electro-protected gate onto the roof flier strip. The guard’s stance wasn’t quite military, but uncomfortably close to that.

The mechanics held the door open for Todd. They had already made sure he had a spare coat stashed in the luggage holder, too. He thanked them with a thumbs-up and sealed himself into the two-seater, running through the takeoff checks. Everything green. He was piped through to CNAU Flight Control. His ident let the distant traffic regulator note his takeoff point, vector, and destination.

“Recorded. Cleared for the New Washington regional guidance systems, Todd Saunder. ETA commercial domestic terminal at 1500, Atlantic Time.”

Todd checked his watch and frowned. He would have to boost it to get there before Dian’s flight arrived. He triggered navs and power; the flier lifted and sidled off the edge of the building. Once cleared, he pulled up to his assigned altitude, circling to get onto his proper vector. As he swung southwest above the fifty-story buildings being erected under CNAU’s urban revitalization program, Todd could see crowds thronging the streets far below. Whose office or residence or commercial outlet was getting smashed and burned now? Whose people were they hurting or killing?

He engaged primary drive and headed toward the terminal. Much of his route went through the oldest surviving sections of New Washington and its southwestern suburb cities. Empty skyscrapers and burned-out husks of businesses and apartments lined the flight path. Broken eyes of windows peered at Todd. Limbs of metal frameworks were rusting away in the elements. Stone had crumbled and fallen hundreds of stories to the streets. Plasticene facing had scorched and melted into meters-long icicles, dripping down the buildings. Far off to his left lay the waters of Atlantic Inlet. The day was clear but cold, visibility excellent up here.

There were other aircraft in the lanes. Todd kept watch on his monitors, but Traffic Control was maintaining distances okay. He spotted some Enforcement Patrol fliers, a number of commercial craft, and a few private-ownership fliers such as his own. Sometimes he kept track of idents, just for curiosity’s sake. Today he didn’t bother putting them up on his screens.

He kept mulling over the conversation with the Protectors of Earth and Saunder Enterprises computers. It didn’t make sense. He would have to talk the situation over with Dian. She could help him get his thoughts in order . . .

Traffic. Someone behind him and above, and dangerously close. For a fraction of a second, Todd assumed it was an enforcement officer, close-checking his idents, on the alert because of all the rioting. But the expected enforcement hail didn’t come.

“Ident approaching aircraft,” Todd demanded of his monitors.

The flier leaped off the screen at him. No enlargement. True viewpoint. The mysterious craft was no more than fifty meters to the rear and closing fast. Very sleek flier, military design, one-way view canopy to hide the person at the controls.

It bore no identification whatsoever.

Unmarked vehicles—of any kind—were illegal. What was this cretin doing? He was begging for Enforcement to ground him for life. And the sooner the better! It would make the skies safer for everyone.

“Do you read, vehicle on Delaware Ten Zero vector? You are intruding.”

They were flying at high speed through an area thick with teetery old buildings. He had to get hold of that pilot! This was not merely reckless, it was suicidal.

No reply. The pilot refused to acknowledge. Enraged, Todd called a general distress, summoned Enforcement and CNAU Flight Control’s observers to pick up on this lawbreaker.

Com circuity roared in a burst of static. Todd tripped the relays and sent the transmission again. Nothing. Backups green. Scrambler override!

The unidentified pilot was knocking Todd’s distress call right out of the sky! He wouldn’t let him call for help! And he was using illicit military equipment to stop Todd.

None of this could be happening! A missile couldn’t have tracked his shuttle up toward Goddard. But that had happened!

A red bolt slashed by under Todd’s left wing. The flier rocked in the shock wave. Todd fell over in a steep dive, power on full. The streets, a hundred stories below, swept toward him for a horrible instant before he righted the craft on the other wing and began to climb.

His heart was trying to slam its way out through his breastbone when another bolt came at him from a different angle. Missed him by meters, and not very many! Nav monitors screamed warnings, pinpointing a second intruding aircraft.

Another unidentified! Right and high above him.

Once again Todd put the flier over in a dangerous dive and rolled sharply. But all too quickly, the pilots overcame his tactic, working him between them, each trying to force him into the other’s sights.

Todd banked again, steering frantically. He triggered the automatic mayday. That probably couldn’t penetrate the scrambler override, either, but he had to try.

The third bolt almost hit his canopy. Red shock patterns danced in Todd’s eyes. When they cleared, he was heading straight for a row of old dwelling towers and had to elude at dangerous speed.

They weren’t going to let him get away. They meant to kill him. The attacker ahead of him now was racing to a turnpoint. There it would come for him head on, and the pair would pin him in a cross fire.

Time froze. He and Pat and Mari, riding mini-flitters, skimming the waves and buzzing Saunderhome. Too young to realize they were mortal, they had re-enacted sky battles out of ancient vid dramas. Mock warfare. Jael took away their flying privileges for weeks every time she caught them. But it hadn’t cured them of the reckless game.

Now that form of flying came back to Todd. It had brought him punishment when he was a kid. Right now it could prove his salvation. He was part of the beautiful machine, wheeling, dipping, cutting under his attackers as he doubled back on his own vector. He had eluded Pat and Mari that way more than once! But this was no game. Death waited three hundred meters below—if he weren’t disintegrated in mid-air first!

The tactic worked for a moment, giving him precious seconds. No way out. Not the way he had been going. And their override made chances of outside help nil. He couldn’t count on an Enforcement Patrol happening on this melee. He would have to get himself out, if he could.

His initial surge of fear was gone. Very steady, he boosted the little flier to maximum before they spotted what he was doing. Atlantic Inlet was too far. So was the terminal. And CNAU Enforcement HQ might as well have been on the Moon.

The attackers had been driving him away from inhabited streets, deeper and deeper into the Chaos-riddled sections. How old were those pilots behind him? Old enough to remember when this area was populated? The transcontinental missile strikes and burnouts hadn’t destroyed all the lofty structures. But many of those that were left were studded with hot places and cordoned-off hectares of land and buildings. No section for a sane flier to enter.

No options. Todd thought of the city he had known in his youth. The ship’s programs couldn’t help. They hadn’t been set up for these maps. Recall and instinct would have to do the job.

A blackened series of towers flashed by on his right. Memories clicked. A collection of dishes and antennae had once blossomed on those roofs, part of Ward’s original ComLink Corporation. The landmark gave Todd confidence. He hardly reacted when another energy bolt lanced by. Its strength was attenuated, proof he was putting considerable distance between himself and his pursuers.

Braced for the upcoming turn, he leaned into the bank, nearly rolling the flier. The little aircraft peeled hard. Todd forced himself to keep off the retros as a skyscraper kissed paint from the flier’s undercarriage.

He gave it a count of three, then leveled. Then he dived. The abandoned street was narrow, deeply shadowed, and thick with fog which rose from the ruins below. Todd stood on the foot brace, resisting the gees. That wasn’t Caribbean surf down there, but rubble and an unforgiving pavement. He searched through the darkness, his nav guides probing, the greenish glow of their readouts lighting the cockpit eerily. Todd cut his running idents to try to hide himself.

They were tracking him, of course. Anybody with a military override scrambler system would certainly have full tracking scan ability. They would home in on Todd’s own circuitry output.

That meant he needed a mask. Where? The streets helped. They were crooked and pinched with dozens of right angles and erratic intersections suitable for putting buildings between him and a clear signal contact. Each dart into a bolt-hole, though, was a replay of that harrowing swerve which had led him into this abandoned section of the southern city. Todd balanced the craft expertly, appreciating anew the flier’s superb handling. He abused its structural integrity again and again.

The flier’s warning systems chattered, picking out radiation spots. His ship didn’t like those. Neither would the attackers’. Standard shielding could serve all three of them only for a short period. But compared with a direct weapon hit, old, weakened radiation was a small worry.

Todd flew still lower. Rubble rose in stories-high heaps. Broken windows glared at him. Jagged ruins of penthouses loomed above. He was so far down in the bowels of the empty city that a fine, dirty mist filled the air everywhere. It bred in the accumulated garbage at street level.

Vision was severely limited, but he didn’t dare rely too much on his instruments. Todd swiped irritably at the condensation forming on his windows. Then he spotted another cramped intersection amid the gloom and hurtled into it.

He almost couldn’t complete the maneuver.

Smoke-scarred brick and the gaping teeth of shattered window-walls rose out of the fog like nightmares. Collision point, dead ahead!

Somehow, he kept himself calm. Todd tapped the retros delicately, avoiding a fatal yaw. The brief burst of braking fire spilled over the dirty bricks and through the broken windows. The flier skidded wildly, scraping something hard and unyielding.

Only a moment . . . and then he was free, moving clear, still banked over on his side, whistling down a snaky alleyway. Todd exulted, too in love with flying to be afraid.

Amazing himself, he righted the flier, slumping heavily against his safety webbing. He switched to manual on the com. He couldn’t break past their override, but maybe they would start talking to each other at a range close enough for him to hear them.

If he could find the alien messenger’s signal in the infinite reaches of space, he ought to be able to locate those bastards following him. They probably had a multi-system, Todd speculated, remembering the military specs he had read to update his knowledge after the shuttle ride to Goddard. Okay, that meant they would be using an unusual frequency for their two-way com between each other, to coordinate their attack. He rejected the normal frequencies, hunting, hoping they were too busy hunting him to notice that he was eavesdropping once he did find the frequency.

They weren’t very imaginative. Far end of the band. Static clearing, words coming through. Todd pounced on the setting. He had them!

“. , . no more full fire. Risky . . .”

Were they afraid a lot of firepower might be detected on CNAU Enforcement’s scanners, or what?

“Over. He’s in here someplace. Where’s he going . . . ?”

Todd grinned cockily for the first time since the hair-raising encounter had begun. He blocked the output feed so they couldn’t hear him and muttered nastily, “Where you’re not going to find me, you son of a bitch.”

The sooty mist opened a trifle. The alleyway was ending. Not good. Ahead lay a wide street. That would cancel out the maneuvering advantage of his small flier and let them get a straight shot.

Then Todd’s attention was caught by black maws high along the sides of the skyscrapers lining the avenue, Missing windows had left entire floors of the old structures open to the elements. Hundreds of them, like lofty steel and glass caves, beckoned the fugitive. Nav scans told Todd that the craft were coming after him low. He cut everything but motive power, and the screens went dark. He was blind, and so were his attackers if they tried to track him.

He climbed, navigating eyeball mode, lifting above the alley buildings before he merged with the avenue. The flier spanned the wreck-littered four lanes and kept climbing. Wiping more condensation off the windows, Todd burst free above the mist.

There! That one! He couldn’t say what made him select that particular ruin. Intuition? He swung over hard, not cutting speed. He didn’t dare lose it now, or he would be splattered all over the side of the building. He flew through the center of an immense, broken window-wall and simultaneously hit retros full.

The interior wall rushed toward him. Retro fire billowed along his glide path like a blue-white carpet. The little flier slued and began to roll, the left wing tip aimed at the floor. He was split-seconds away from an out-of-control cartwheel.

The awful moment lasted forever. Todd leaned back and right, hard. Then the skids came down, scraping, braking . . .

Forward motion ceased.

The flier was at rest, upright, and intact, turned on its axis to parallel the interior wall and the window. Todd hastily completed the crippling of his ship, cutting all power.

He sat very still. His breathing sounded unnaturally loud. He could hear blood rushing through his temples and ears, too. Only now was he aware of these physical sensations, his body protesting what he had put it through. Todd felt sick and hoped he wasn’t going to throw up. After a few seconds, the nausea settled to a bearable level and he peered out at his surroundings.

The burned-out floor he had picked as a haven was cavernous, low-ceilinged, and dark. The only light came through the broken window-wall. Todd cracked the canopy slightly and listened. There were dripping noises, possibly from broken conduits and condensation falling from the ceiling. Then he heard the distinctive high-pitched whine of flier thrusters.