Springboard (13 page)

The scout had located the hidden mines in their path, and electronically tagged them, so the heads-up panes in the unit’s helmets, run off the backpack computer, showed the location of each antipersonnel device. As long as the suits worked, you could zigzag your way across the field and not worry about stepping on a mine. If the suits failed, then you had to do it the old-fashioned way, which took a lot longer. Now and then, Kent arranged for the suits to fail, but not today. Today, they would make it across the field before they were ambushed by an automatic motion sensor-operated tracking machine gun that fired either electronic bullets or paint balls, depending on the programming. Today, it would be paint balls, because those left no doubt, even in the rain, as to whether or not you had taken a hit.

Looking down and seeing that bright red splotch on your groin would make the point. Paint balls would sting a little—but then a high-powered AP round, even in good ceramic body armor, was going to seriously wound or kill you if it hit solidly.

The colonel himself didn’t know exactly where the gun would be set up. The field sergeant had chosen a spot for it. Kent did know it would be out there somewhere, and he had taught his troops that they should always expect the unexpected, so
they
ought to be looking for it, too.

Kent had always thought the Boy Scouts had come up with the best two-word motto that dealt with this: Be prepared.

Seurat paused to consider which suit he would pack for the trip to the United States. The Versace was a more modern cut, with a rougher tooth to the fabric, but the Gaultier was a more classical “power” suit, with a darker tone.

As he considered the merits of each, he looked, as he often did, at the painting facing his private desk. It was one of his most prized possessions, an original Georges Seurat, largely unknown to the rest of the world.

The painting wasn’t as polished as some of the artist’s earlier works—certainly not as much as
La Grande Jatte,
which had taken two years and countless studies, but it did bear the Neo-Impressionist pointillist dots of color that had marked his ancestor’s later works.

It was small, only three feet or so wide, and more intimate in subject matter than many of the artist’s famous pieces: A small child sat on the floor in front of a sofa; behind him was a Christmas tree, and on the right, trailing down from the top of the frame, was an adult woman’s arm, reaching down to hold the boy. The tone was dark: a mix of warm ambers and saturated magentas. The colors blended beautifully, each dot giving the painting a vibrancy no solid patch could hope to match. The composition was pure Seurat: static shapes, with little to disturb them. The diagonal of the woman’s arm broke the verticals typical of the artist’s work, but did not jar the mood.

In front of the boy were some toys: blocks, a top, a small stuffed animal. But the child wasn’t playing with them. Instead, he leaned into the arm, and looked out at the viewer, a slight smile on his face. There was a look of innocent awe, thoughtful joy, and the anticipation of something good to come.

The CyberNation leader had always thought the boy’s expression was one that embodied the joy of discovery.

He blinked, his eyes warm, as he stared at the painting. The subject was his ancestor’s son, Pierre George, and the approximate date of the painting was December 1890. Seurat the artist had died suddenly in March of 1891 of some infection—and his son had followed him the month after, apparently of the same ailment. The juxtaposition of the joy in the painting against the certain death that was coming was powerful.

Seurat had known the painting for nearly his entire life. A great-aunt had given it to his parents when he was a young boy, and they had hung it in their sitting room. It had been purchased from Madeleine Knoblock, the artist’s wife, just before her death, and kept from the world. She had not been well liked by the rest of the family, and had disappeared for years after her husband’s and son’s death.

Many times he’d thought about the look of discovery on the boy’s face. It had encouraged him to try many new things, to seek out new experiences. He had been the boy. But tonight, he was the adult, reaching down to comfort the boy, to shepherd him from what might come. And the boy was CyberNation.

For him, the lesson was clear: You never see it coming. And it put him on his guard. Surely his ancestor hadn’t seen his end approaching—could he hope to do better than his famous forebear?

Perhaps. Then again, no matter what kind of spin he put on it, the truth was the truth:

He exhaled a long sigh, not having realized he was holding his breath. It didn’t matter really. Win or lose, one had to do what one could,
oui
?

He would do everything in his power to protect his own curious and thoughtful infant from the dangers threatening it. Which was why he was packing now, to go see the Americans, whose military systems had been attacked by the same person or persons who had assaulted his child.

Considering the history CyberNation had with the Americans, particularly their Net Force, Seurat would hardly have predicted such a trip for himself. But he would climb into whatever bed was required to protect
his
nation.

He grinned. Perhaps he might be able to find a beautiful woman’s bed somewhere along the way, eh?

That thought in mind, he considered the suits.

Power,
he thought, and carefully folded the Gaultier into the Halliburton travel case on the bed. Neatly stacked socks, shirts, and ties surround it in tightly webbed compartments. These days, luggage was so often opened by airport security that it was embarrassing to pack less than neatly. And Seurat never did things by halves. Anyone who saw his packing in an airport would see the product of an ordered and considered mind.

He closed the suitcase and checked the time on his old IWC chronometer. He still had a few minutes until Michel picked him up for the trip to the airport. Had CyberNation invested in its own plane—which it certainly could afford—there would be no need for such scheduling, but the nation of ideals kept one away from the physical world—he had never gotten around to it.

He wondered if the Americans would be able to help. They were smart—or at least they had a tremendous number of resources, which sometimes amounted to the same thing. An army of brutes could accomplish much, if there were enough of them. . . .

He had to remember not to underestimate them. No matter what he believed of the nation as a whole, there had to be at least a few sharp people keeping the bread and circuses running. Were there not, the last remaining superpower would not be such, eh?

The real question—and his real concern—was whether or not the Americans were responsible for what had happened. A faked incident of their own might have been staged to draw CyberNation in, to deceive them into joining as an ally against a foe that did not exist—the purpose to fuse a partnership where CyberNation would remain a weaker ally, or perhaps to link the two nations symbolically in world opinion.

He didn’t believe that, though. If what he had learned was true, such a plot would have cost a great deal, and money was always such a consideration with the Americans that it seemed an unlikely scenario. Still, one had to consider all the possibilities.

America’s allies had a tendency to act as ventriloquist’s dummies for the huge nation, and Seurat would have none of this to taint the purity of CyberNation. Sooner or later the torch of the most powerful nation would be passed to another—and Seurat did not want to delay this inevitability in any way.

He leaned toward the idea that a government was behind the attack. It seemed unreal that a single man with limited resources could manage to do so much damage on his own. A government could support an apparatus large enough and powerful enough. Too, only a government would care enough to want to bring another government down. It was approaching hubris to consider that CyberNation was worth going to war with, but the evidence was there,
non
?

But could the United States be so worried about CyberNation that they had decided to act?

He didn’t know, but as the shepherd, as the adult, he had to find out.

If the Americans planned treachery, they’d find him a difficult target. Years of fencing had kept his body and mind honed to a razor’s edge. The lamb might lie down with the lion, but in his case, it was more like a wolf in sheep’s clothing lying down with the lion.

He smiled. What was the term they used about the French? Ah, yes, frogs.

Well,
this
frog has teeth,
mon ami.

As they would find out, if they attempted to hurt his nation.

His alarm chimed. It was time to go.

It had been a long time since Chang had been to Washington. The place had a charm to it. It was different than New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Chicago. It felt much more like a Southern U.S. town than a big city. As the taxi took him to his hotel, he looked at the people and buildings, recently washed clean by rain and now basking in bright sunshine. Here was the head of the superpower that was the United States, and it looked so . . . ordinary. . . .

Looks could be deceiving, of course. Chang knew this as well as any. He recalled an old joke he had heard as a younger man, here in the States.

Chang smiled at the memory. No matter how you disguise it, an alligator is still an alligator.

Here in this city, this unique district, lived men who had more power than the greatest rulers in all of history. With a spoken command, their leader could more or less wipe out every human being on the planet. There were enough atomic and hydrogen bombs in America’s arsenal to directly destroy hundreds of millions, with the resulting fall-out killing millions more. And if the scenario of nuclear winter was true—that awful theory that enough smoke and dust in the air would cast a pall over the whole of the world and bring about massive weather changes—it might be that one man could destroy most of the life on Earth. It was a frightening thought. Nobody knew this for certain, and Chang hoped nobody would ever have to find it out the hard way.

Washington might look innocuous to a visitor, but it was, like the yellow dog in the joke, more than it appeared on the surface. Just like the people of this country. Many in the world thought that Americans were overfed and lazy, concerned only with their toys and their easy lives.

That kind of thinking was a mistake. Americans were an affable people, sure enough, but when attacked, they did not shrink from a hard response. Witness what they had done to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and what they were almost certainly going to do to any other nation that was stupid enough to threaten them. To attack such a country was to court a terrible retribution.

Chang smiled. Such was certainly not his intent. The new China was more interested in commerce than war—there were more than a billion mouths to feed, and business was growing better and better.

Before he went to visit Net Force, he had appointments with several software and hardware dealers eager to have Chang’s business. There were some limitations on the technology he could legally acquire, of course, and there probably always would be, but such restrictions had lessened in the last few years. Nothing Chang wanted to get his hands on presented a threat to the U.S.’s national security. At least, he didn’t think so.

The cab arrived at the Constitution, a small but well-appointed hotel on Chang’s approved list. It wouldn’t cost much more than staying in a comparable place back home.

Chang alighted, paid the driver, then followed the bell-boy who collected his luggage into the building.

A sunny day in a sunny city, and he was a man about his business. What could be better?

Well, he thought as he approached the check-in desk, a beautiful and sunny woman with which to share it would be nice. He was between relationships at the moment, no girlfriend back home. He had thought to be married and a father by now, but work had gotten in the way. He would have to spend some time in that arena when he got home. A loving and passionate wife, sons and daughters, these were things he wanted. Life wasn’t all about work, after all. The Prophet had said so, and Chang believed it.

The sun was warm on Jay’s bare back. He wore a pair of ragged shorts and nothing else. The hot sand made little
chee-chee
sounds under his feet as he walked. A line of breakers rolled sudsy white surf onto the beach. Gulls
crawed
overhead. Palm trees wafted in the gentle breeze. The bananas and coconuts were ripe, you could see fish in the tide pools, and the heady scents of flowers and fruits drifted about him. It was as close to a tropical paradise as Jay could imagine. Because, of course, he
had
imagined it.

In such a place, the set of small footprints on the wet sand at the shoreline was easy to spot and follow. Once Jay caught up with the person who had made those prints, he would have access to a vital bit of information. Which, at this point, would be a lot more than he currently had—which was to say, at this point, he didn’t have anything at all.