Directive 51 (57 page)

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been kind of turning a bunch of ideas over and having trouble sleeping.”

“Well, I can always carry you home on my shoulder,” she said. “Let’s just take the trail up the ridge, and you talk whenever you feel like talking.”

On the gentle slope in the strong winter scent of the evergreens—the cold of the mornings seemed to cling to the shadows even though the afternoon was warm—Arnie said, “I know sometimes I’m an irritating bastard.”

“You’re also a brain we depend on, Arn. And if something’s disturbing that brain, spill it.”

“There’s an idea I’ve been hoping to run by Graham, privately, but I guess he’s not coming back anytime soon?”

“Basically he’s stashed till the war is won. Cam is convinced that Graham is target number one. My guess is that they found some way to take him out to an aircraft carrier.”

“That’s what I’m having a problem with.”

They walked on for a while, Arnie kicking occasional stones from the trail; he must be trying to think of the least offensive way to say it. That, all by itself, was out of character. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to sound like a sore loser about the system artifact idea. But just consider where Daybreak used its big bombs. It looks to me like Daybreak wasn’t able to change its plans. Chicago, Milwaukee, Gary, the whole industrial southern end of Lake Michigan, had been a burned-out wasteland for most of a month. Its factories and facilities, labs and resources, canals, roads, and rails were already useless. And yet they hit it.

“At the same time, Fort Benning and a dozen other vital centers went untouched. It looks to me like Daybreak intended to destroy several of the places where technically advanced civilization is most likely to regrow: the northeast United States; northwest Europe; the industrial heart of modern China; Israel, Jordan, and Palestine. Add in LA and south California if that bomb in the Pacific was just a case of the delivery crew screwing up. Add Buenos Aires for that matter. All of those were places with good concentrations of resources nearby, plenty of people with technical educations, and some kind of entrepreneurial tradition.

“So it looks to me like they may have been targeting the places where they
guessed
civilization would re-grow and they had to make their guesses
before Daybreak
.”

“What difference does it make whether they picked the targets before or after Daybreak? Weren’t the guesses
obvious
? Didn’t their plan
work
?”

“
Some
of it worked brilliantly. Shanghai was a great guess and so was Buenos Aires. The Palestine bomb looks like someone using a bomb to pay off a score or settle a debt, or maybe just to make sure the Israelis didn’t inherit the Earth, but things were collapsing there and they didn’t really need to do it—for Daybreak’s purposes it would have been more effective on Mumbai. Los Angeles was
weird
.”

“It sure was, wasn’t it?”

“Okay, I guess the whole idea is stupid.” He lurched on up the trail ahead of her.

“Arnie, wait.” She swallowed hard and said, “It was a really dumb joke and especially considering everyone there was killed with that radiation bomb it was extra dumb and totally heartless and I’m sorry. You’re making me nervous about where this is going, and I don’t know if I want to hear it, but I guess I have to listen to you anyway, because you sound like you might be right.”

He stopped, very quietly, and said, “Why hit Los Angeles with
two
bombs? They’d already have hit Anaheim, if their plans had worked, and besides, we still don’t have any idea why they used radiological enhancement instead of a superbomb there, let alone why they used gold instead of cobalt. If they had any way at all to monitor what had happened in the month after the nanoswarm and biotes were released, and target accordingly, there were fifty better targets than Los Angeles or Chicago or even Washington—Pittsburgh, Savannah, Fort Lewis, or here for that matter. Especially the North Sea, Washington, and Chicago bombs mostly just re-scattered rubble, re-ignited debris, and killed people who were going to die anyway.” He ticked it off on his fingers. “That looks to me like something that can’t change its mind—a dead hand, not a live enemy.”

“So you think if this were really a war—”

“The enemy would have shifted to target Fort Benning, San Diego, Denver, or Pittsburgh, not Chicago. But Chicago was a good guess before Daybreak.”

“But you yourself said Shanghai was a good target.”

“On that one, they got lucky. No law requires all of their luck to be bad.”

They walked on for a while.

When they stopped to look down on Columbus, at all the plumes from the chimneys and the streets crowded with wagons, workers, soldiers, and families, Heather said, “So I see what you’re thinking. And all the explosions being groundbursts suggests they were pre-positioned too. But maybe they just had to do that anyway. They planted them where they expected it to work, and set timers, because they knew they couldn’t count on having a working plane or missile by now. Not because they aren’t still around, but because the only way to use the bombs was in places they had chosen before they started the war.”

“That could be,” Arnie said. “And I thought of it; that’s why I can’t go to Cam, and say, ‘Look, it
has
to be a system artifact.’ All I can tell him is ‘It’s not as strong a proof that we’re at war as you think it is.’ I don’t deal well with uncertainty.”

“That’s a weird thing for a statistical guy to say,” she said, taking his arm and steering him back down the hill.
Don’t go into a depression on me, Arn, I’ve got to keep myself glued together, and that’s hard enough.

“Even so,” Arnie said, “my gut isn’t uncertain at all. I realize they probably just buried the bombs and put them on a timer to go off five weeks after Daybreak. It was one more try to put another stake through the heart of civilization, to make sure the Big System doesn’t rise up again—but they didn’t have any way to aim. But it was the kind of thing a system artifact does. It doesn’t feel as confusing and weird and malicious as something a human being would do.”

A thought struck Heather. “Arnie, how are
you
doing on the human side?”

He shrugged; transparently he didn’t want to volunteer but was desperate to talk about it.

Heather put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, guy. Your brain is a national resource. I can’t let anything disturb it without filling out forms in triplicate.”

“Well, it’s Allie. This’ll sound stupid. I just get . . . it bothers me that she’s so obsessed with finding out Graham’s secure location. I mean, okay, he’s one of her closest, oldest friends, okay, she really liked being his chief of staff, okay, all that, okay—”

Heather hugged him. “You know, two of my ex-husbands were really jealous of Graham, and after every divorce he was the first guy I ran to. It sort of goes with being his former student.”

“Did your exes have any
reason
to be jealous?”

“I don’t know. Graham never made a move. But his wife was still alive back then, and he was pretty crazy about her, and about his kids. Anyway, all I mean, Arnie, is that if you think your jealousy is irrational, it probably is.”

“I didn’t even want to think it was jealousy.” He turned and beat his hands on a dead tree, not hard, but as if trying to wake something up. “I feel so stupid and schoolboyish. It’s just . . . see, it’s really a New Asian thing, you know, the big deal they started making about it a few years ago when they realized that Asian-Americans were . . . um . . . well, not exactly taking over, but because . . . um.”

“I’m not one of the Euros who thinks you’re a menace, Arnie. And I read the news too, and we’re the same generation. I’m used to the idea that in most offices I’ve worked in there’s been way more dark straight hair than frizzy red like mine.”

“Wavy,” Arnie said. “Lenny always insisted it was wavy. You don’t get to change that. Even though at the moment”—he reached out and brushed her scalp—“it’s more fuzzy than anything.”

The mention of Lenny had brought tears to her eyes, and Arnie looked away awkwardly. “Anyway,” he said, “anyway, um . . . okay, so it’s like, why the deal with Allie is a New Asian thing, at least to me. See, there were two stereotypes. Nerdy genius people and stylish brilliant people. And for a guy like me—nerdy genius—the idea of someone as stylish and brilliant as Allison Sok Banh wanting me for a boyfriend . . . jeez, I don’t know if I can explain what it meant. It made me feel, I don’t know, different about myself, less like a freak, more like . . . um . . .”

“More like a genius, which you still are,” Heather said, firmly. “And you’re attached to someone who besides being brilliant and stylish, is also ambitious, and is used to climbing on the coattails of her mentor, who has just disappeared. Relax, Arn, the part of you that’s saying to just chill is right. Concentrate on the issue you just brought up, and thank you for making me pay attention. You’re right to be worried. If it’s really a war, we’re losing, and if it’s not we’ve got to stop fighting before we do something stupid.”

“I’m looking for graphite lubricant,” Chris Manckiewicz said, “the pure stuff that’s used for a Linotype machine. I’ll trade cans of tomatoes for it.”

The old man behind the counter said, “You’re about two weeks too late. Guy came in here and bought me out of it just before Thanksgiving. Also got a box of matrices and I think some escapements from a torn-down Linotype.”

“Humm. Think he was getting them to sell or getting them for his own Linotype?”

“Oh, he was a hobby printer, easy to tell that, trying to set himself up as a real printer. I guess he’d got ahold of an old Linotype that had a gas heater for the metal pot or something, real old, World War One or so, in one of the little towns near here, and he had most of a couple more recent ones, and was trying to figure out how to cannibalize everything all together. Took every Linotype supply part I had. He’s local, and I’ve got his card because he wanted me to tag up with him if anything else for a Linotype came in. You want to get in touch with him and see if the two of you can do some kind of deal?”

Chris nodded. “Oh, yes, sir. Maybe he’s sorted out what he’s keeping by now; I’ll probably want anything he didn’t end up using. Hope he likes tomatoes.”

A few minutes later, Chris was walking south, in the middle of Lumpkin Street, hands well in sight, no weapons visible, all the things you did in a peaceable, functioning town nowadays. A beat cop stopped him for a minute to get his name and business—that happened to everyone all the time, these days, and Chris reminded himself to comment about that in some story soon—and seemed pleased that a newsman was looking for a local printer, and even more pleased to find out who it was. “Abel Marx is a good guy,” the cop said, “you’ll get along. And he’s no writer or reporter, he won’t be wanting to compete with you—he’ll be happy printing your paper. He’ll be glad to have a steady job to do with his printing stuff, he loves that, but even though he opened up his shop just a couple days after Daybreak, he hasn’t had much work yet, just the flyers for the town government.”

Reporters and policemen learn to keep a conversation going because you never know what bit of information might be useful, so Chris and the cop had a nice chat there in the street. The cop learned a great deal about conditions east and north of town. Chris learned that Athens, Georgia, hadn’t suffered terribly because so many of the students had fled homeward immediately, leaving the town with food reserves for a much bigger population; the remaining students, being young, strong, healthy, and willing to work, had been the labor force needed to deal with the many crises that Athens, like every other functioning town, had faced daily.

“And of course the real critical thing we did, we were able to throw out a line of militia all over to the west of town, so the refugee wave out of Atlanta were turned aside, or went back, or at least calmed down before we let ’em in. We really only had to hold about a half dozen crossroads,” the cop explained, “and from Atlanta to here is one
long
walk for hungry, desperate people, so they didn’t arrive in too good of a shape.

“Once we sorted the dangerous ones out, we could take in a lot of decent folks, put ’em in the dorms and hotels and all. The bad actors showed up early, and there was some bad fighting over by Bogart that I was in, but once we chased off the worst, we could be pretty Christian with the rest. I felt pretty good about that.”

Chris wrote down the officer’s name—John Longstreet—and station, thinking,
FIGHTING AT BOGART—there’s a good long article to put together for some issue soon. VETERANS SHARE MEMORIES OF FIGHTING THAT SAVED OUR CITY. HEROIC LOCAL MILITIA KEEPS ATHENS SAFE. MILITIA VETERANS RECALL BATTLE OF BOGART. Something like that. Create local pride and tie it in to support for the paper.

“So how do you feel about Athens being declared the new capital?” Chris asked. “I was over in Lincolnton, on my way to Fort Benning, when I heard. So now I’ll just let the government come to me. Want to be my first man on the street?”

“Can you spell ‘this is gonna be a pain in the ass for us cops’?”

“Yep. And I can spell anonymous.”

“Then we have a deal. Abel ought to be in his shop, still, if you hurry.”

As he neared the university, he could see the scramble of preparations for the Temporary National Government that was supposed to at least try to be here before Christmas. Nothing could really have prepared a classic state-college town for abruptly becoming the capital of the United States, but at least the University of Georgia had enough big buildings with big rooms for meetings, smaller rooms for offices, and the remains of a library close at hand, as workers carried the paper books, journals, and so forth back from storage, scrounged for shelves, and dragged out most of the lounge furniture that had been put in when the library had gone electronic.